File spoon-archives/marxism-psych.archive/marxism-psych_1997/97-03-06.061, message 14


From: "R Pearson" <spectres-AT-innotts.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-PSY: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
Date: Sun, 29 Dec 1996 14:20:09 -0000


Thanks very much to IIan for posting the mail on Damasio's _Descartes'
Error_ ,(and Chris for cleaning up the HTML).

Chris asks whether the book is another pop-psychology book- from the intro
I'd say not- it's certainly written with the layman in mind, but it appears
to be treating the subject matter in a serious way.

More importantly Chris asks what is significant in the intro.

The gist of Damasio's argument appears to be that without emotions there
can be no reason, and secondly, that both are grounded in the body. I see
no problems in this from a Marxist perspective: the early Marx with Engels
taking their starting point as 'real people' the bodily sensuous reality;
rather than people as narrated or represented, which is of course the
favourite topic of post-structurlaliam. However, I wonder whether others
will agree. 

Damasio argues that "The lowly orders of our organism are in the loop of
high reason." and that the same lower levels regulate "the neural edifice
of reason" *and* "the processing of emotions and feelings". Some
interesting metaphors here that our deconstructivist friends might wish to
dismantle, but otherwise Damasio is treating emotion/reason as the body
interacting in praxis with fellow humans and the 'natural'. 
This becomes interesting if we relate it to 'second nature', the
'artificial' and the commodified. For, Damasio argues that "the essence of
a feeling may not be an elusive quality attached to an object, but rather
the direct perception of a specific landscape: that of the body." How might
this be translated into the relation of the body to the commodity form, to
those objects whose fetishised existence Marx describes do eloquently in
the early chapters of _Capital_?
Furthermore, where would Value fit into this? (and I am thinking of value
in its intangible, sensuous aspect rather than reducing it merely to human
labour spent).

I have to finish this mail now, but once again thanks for an interesting
topic and a valuable reference.

*********************************************************
Russell Pearson
spectres-AT-innotts.co.uk (Home)
http://www.innotts.co.uk/~spectres/ 









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