Descartes' Error
by Antonio Damasio
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Damasio overturns the idea that reason and emotion are separate. His neuroscience research shows that feelings are essential to rational decision-making, not obstacles to it.
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- 336
In the Conversation
In this collection, Descartes' Error is cited by 8 other books.
It’s picked up by Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence, Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason and The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind and 5 others.
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What Descartes' Error Draws On
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What Other Authors Say About It
8The exact passages where other authors bring up “Descartes' Error” and what they take from it.
Cron leans on Damasio's Descartes' Error to show that emotion is not opposed to reason but the mechanism by which readers weigh meaning, making feeling central to every scene
Kohn references Damasio's neuroscience research from Descartes' Error on the integration of emotion and reason, supporting his argument that parenting approaches separating feelings from behavior misunderstand how the brain actually works
Cited in
Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reasonby Alfie Kohn
Siegel builds on Damasio's Descartes' Error framework showing that emotion and cognition are neurologically inseparable, applying this insight to explain why parents must help children integrate their emotional and rational brain systems rather than suppress feelings
Cited in
The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mindby Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson
Greene draws on Damasio's neuroscience from Descartes' Error to explain how emotion and cognition are intertwined in the brain, supporting his argument that explosive children have neurological deficits in emotional processing that drive their inflexible behavior
Didion's account of how grief hijacks rational thought patterns connects to Antonio Damasio's thesis in Descartes' Error that emotion and reason are inextricably linked, and that disruption of emotional processing fundamentally alters decision-making and cognition.
Clear cites Damasio's research (via The Strange Order of Things) for "Feelings of pleasure and disappointment" being the foundation of decisions — used to support his argument that emotions, not logic, drive habit change.
Chapter 5 (notes)
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