Far too often discussions of consciousness are based on speculation and the desire to make presumed facts fit an ideology - yes, I am talking about you Mr. Chomsky. At other times we are fortunate to find people that start with identifiable facts and then attempt to explain them. In this fascinating TED talk Antonio Damasio lets us in on his latest understanding of the human brain, the human mind and the centrality of the self in generating a consciousness. Hold on tight as he covers a very wide range of topics in under 19 minutes, but at the end of the ride I feel much closer to an understanding of what we are.
This talk develops Damasio's earlier theories and is in line with what we know about brains from Edelman, about evolution from Deacon and about language from Halliday. The talk is based loosely on Damasio's latest book "Self Comes to Mind" which is reviewed in Constructivist Foundations 7:1.
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