[Heartlogic-dev] Descartes' Error

[Joshua N Pritikin]

I just got finished with this fascinating book.

One thing that caught my interest was Damasio's proposal for a
neurological basis of consciousness.  The proposal is laid out around
page 242:

"Finally consider that all ingredients I have described above --- an
object that is being represented, an organism responding to the object
of representation, and a state of the self in the process of changing
because of the organism's response to the object --- are held
simultaneously in working memory and attended, side-by-side or in
rapid interpolation, in early sensory cortices.  I propose that
subjectivity emerges during the latter step when the brain is
producing not just images of an object, not just images of organism
responses to the object, but a third kind of image, that of an
organism in the act of perceiving and responding to an object.  I
believe the subjective perspective arises out of the content of the
third kind of image."

This caught my interest because of the remarkable similarity to 1st,
2nd, and 3rd person perspective.  Just assume an object which has
intentionality, such as another person.  Also, the first two are
reversed compared to the typical order.

2nd person: "images of an object"

1st person: "images of organism responses to the object"

3rd person: "an organism in the act of perceiving and
             responding to an object"

So what to conclude from this?  Nothing definite, but I'm happy to
find someone else who believes that something important happens when
we reach something like a 3rd person perspective.

Grasping at straws ... :-)

-- 
A new cognitive theory of emotion, http://openheartlogic.org

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