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Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: AudiobookHub Recommendation
Chapter 2: We can understand the functions of the brain’s different parts by examining the effects of brain damage.
Chapter 3: The story of Phineas Gage offers a vivid case of how brain damage can give us scientific clues.
Chapter 4: Gage’s case suggests that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is vital for practical reasoning.
Chapter 5: Practical reasoning involves more than just the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
Chapter 6: Further study of Elliot’s behavior led the author to an unexpected insight.
Chapter 7: Our emotions give our brains crucial information and direction.
Chapter 8: People with damage to the VPC are still capable of feeling primary emotions.
Chapter 9: Secondary emotions develop with experience and rely on the VPC.
Chapter 10: Elliot’s life reveals one last clue to how practical reasoning really works.
Chapter 11: The somatic marker hypothesis reveals how emotions guide practical reasoning.
Description
Descartes’ Error (1995) turns conventional wisdom about the human mind on its head. Combining sophisticated neuroscience with fascinating case studies about patients with brain damage, it shows how the traditional dualisms of Western thought do not stand up to scrutiny. Reason depends on emotion, and the brain is intimately connected with the body.
Who Should Listen
- Rationalists skeptical of emotions
- Emotional people sick of being called irrational
- Anyone interested in the intersections between neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy