Read Online Self Comes to Mind by Antonio Damasio - Free Book Online
Authors: Antonio Damasio
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rules and devices; in case they malfunction, the living organism’s body perishes; even more important, every component of the living organism’s body (by which I mean every cell) is, in itself, a living organism, naturally equipped with its own homeostatic rules and devices, subject to the same risk of perishability in case of malfunction. The structure of the admirable 777 has nothing comparable whatsoever, from its metal-alloy fuselage to the materials that make up its miles of wiring and hydraulic tubing. The high-level “homeostatics” of the 777, shared by its bank of intelligent on-board computers and the two pilots needed to fly the aircraft, aim at preserving its entire, one-piece structure, not its micro and macro physical subcomponents.
Biological Value
As I see it, the most essential possession of any living being, at any time, is the balanced range of body chemistries compatible with healthy life. It applies equally to an amoeba and to a human being. All else flows from it. Its significance cannot be overemphasized.
The notion of biological value is ubiquitous in modern thinking about brain and mind. We all have an idea, or perhaps several ideas, of what the word value means, but what about biological value? Let us consider some other questions: Why do we take virtually everything that surrounds us—food, houses, gold, jewelry, paintings, stocks, services, even other people—and assign a value to it? Why does everyone spend so much time calculating gains and losses related to those items? Why do items carry a price tag? Why this incessant valuation? And what are the yardsticks against which value is measured? At first glance these questions might seem to have no place in a conversation about brain, mind, and consciousness. But in fact they do, and, as we shall see, the notion of value is central to our understanding of brain evolution, brain development, and actual, moment-to-moment brain activity.
Of the questions posed above, only the question of why items carry a price tag has a fairly straightforward answer. Indispensable items and items that are hard to obtain, given the high demand for them or their relative rarity, carry a higher cost. But why do they need a price? Well, there is not possibly enough of everything for everyone to have some; pricing is a means to govern the very real mismatch between what is available and the demand for it. Pricing introduces restraint and creates some sort of order in the access to items. But why is there not enough of everything for everyone? One reason has to do with the uneven distribution of needs. Certain items are very much needed, others less so, some not at all. Only when we introduce the notion of need do we come, finally, to the crux of biological value: the matter of a living individual struggling to maintain life and the imperative needs that arise in the struggle. Why we assign value in the first place, however, or the choice of yardstick we use in the assignment, requires an acknowledgment of the problem of maintaining life and of its requisite needs. As far as humans are concerned, maintaining life is only part of a larger problem, but let us stay with survival to begin with.
To date, neuroscience has dealt with this set of questions by taking a curious shortcut. It has identified several chemical molecules that are related, in one way or another, to states of reward or punishment and thus, by extension, are associated with value. Some of the best-known molecules will sound familiar to many readers: dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, cortisol, oxytocin, vasopressin. Neuroscience has also identified a number of brain nuclei that manufacture such molecules and deliver them to other parts of the brain and the body. (Brain nuclei are collections of neurons located below the cerebral cortex in the brain stem, hypothalamus, and basal forebrain; they should not be confused with the nuclei inside eukaryotic cells, which are simple sacs where most of
Biological Value
As I see it, the most essential possession of any living being, at any time, is the balanced range of body chemistries compatible with healthy life. It applies equally to an amoeba and to a human being. All else flows from it. Its significance cannot be overemphasized.
The notion of biological value is ubiquitous in modern thinking about brain and mind. We all have an idea, or perhaps several ideas, of what the word value means, but what about biological value? Let us consider some other questions: Why do we take virtually everything that surrounds us—food, houses, gold, jewelry, paintings, stocks, services, even other people—and assign a value to it? Why does everyone spend so much time calculating gains and losses related to those items? Why do items carry a price tag? Why this incessant valuation? And what are the yardsticks against which value is measured? At first glance these questions might seem to have no place in a conversation about brain, mind, and consciousness. But in fact they do, and, as we shall see, the notion of value is central to our understanding of brain evolution, brain development, and actual, moment-to-moment brain activity.
Of the questions posed above, only the question of why items carry a price tag has a fairly straightforward answer. Indispensable items and items that are hard to obtain, given the high demand for them or their relative rarity, carry a higher cost. But why do they need a price? Well, there is not possibly enough of everything for everyone to have some; pricing is a means to govern the very real mismatch between what is available and the demand for it. Pricing introduces restraint and creates some sort of order in the access to items. But why is there not enough of everything for everyone? One reason has to do with the uneven distribution of needs. Certain items are very much needed, others less so, some not at all. Only when we introduce the notion of need do we come, finally, to the crux of biological value: the matter of a living individual struggling to maintain life and the imperative needs that arise in the struggle. Why we assign value in the first place, however, or the choice of yardstick we use in the assignment, requires an acknowledgment of the problem of maintaining life and of its requisite needs. As far as humans are concerned, maintaining life is only part of a larger problem, but let us stay with survival to begin with.
To date, neuroscience has dealt with this set of questions by taking a curious shortcut. It has identified several chemical molecules that are related, in one way or another, to states of reward or punishment and thus, by extension, are associated with value. Some of the best-known molecules will sound familiar to many readers: dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, cortisol, oxytocin, vasopressin. Neuroscience has also identified a number of brain nuclei that manufacture such molecules and deliver them to other parts of the brain and the body. (Brain nuclei are collections of neurons located below the cerebral cortex in the brain stem, hypothalamus, and basal forebrain; they should not be confused with the nuclei inside eukaryotic cells, which are simple sacs where most of
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