Descartes' Error

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

The original paperback edition
Author	António Damásio
Language	English
Published	1994
Pages	312
ISBN	978-0-399-13894-2

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain is a 1994 book by neuroscientist António Damásio describing the physiology of rational thought and decision, and how the faculties could have evolved through Darwinian natural selection.^[1] Damásio refers to René Descartes' separation of the mind from the body (the mind/body dualism) as an error because reasoning requires the guidance of emotions and feelings conveyed from the body.^[2][3] Written for the layperson, Damásio uses the dramatic 1848 railroad accident case of Phineas Gage as a reference for incorporating data from multiple modern clinical cases, enumerating damaging cognitive effects when feelings and reasoning become anatomically decoupled.^[3] The book provides an analysis of diverse clinical data contrasting a wide range of emotional changes following frontal lobe damage^[4] as well as lower (medulla) and anterior areas of the brain such as the anterior cingulate. Among his experimental evidence and testable hypotheses, Damásio presents the "somatic marker hypothesis", a proposed mechanism by which emotions guide (or bias) behavior and decision-making, and positing that rationality requires emotional input. He argues that René Descartes' "error" was the dualist separation of mind and body, rationality and emotion.

• Damásio, António (1994). Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. Putnam. ISBN 0-399-13894-3.
  • Harper Perennial, 1995 paperback: ISBN 0-380-72647-5
  • Penguin, 2005 paperback reprint: ISBN 0-14-303622-X

• Hughes, Tom; Harding, Katharine (2014). "Review: Descartes' error". Practical Neurology. 14 (3): 201. doi:10.1136/practneurol-2014-000899. S2CID 219202774.
• Hyyppä, Markku (October 1996). "Review: Descartes' error". Journal of Psychosomatic Research. 41 (4): 386. doi:10.1016/S0022-3999(96)00093-1.
• Panksepp, Jaak (1998). Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-517805-0.
• Marg, Elwin (1995). "Review: Descartes' error". Optometry and Vision Science. 72 (11). doi:10.1097/00006324-199511000-00013. Retrieved 2021-09-08.

J. Birtchnell, The Two of Me: The Rational Outer Me and The Emotional Inner Me (London 2003)

J. Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience (OUP 1998)