Abstract
The final chapter concerns two naturalistic views, which suffer from none of the problems inherent in dualism or materialism. Antonio Damasio’s ‘body-map-based’ view is discussed first, in light of what has been said in the foregoing chapters about how (and how not) to approach the mind-body problem. The second section is about Jaak Panksepp’s ‘affect-centric’ view—especially how this view compares with Damasio’s, in these same respects. Although Damasio’s view is not dualist, it is still characterized by its emphasis on perception, cognition, human reason, human consciousness, and the cerebral cortex. Because the commitments of the body-map-based view are problematic for anyone who is interested in phenomenal experience, and because the affect-centric view rejects these commitments, the affect-centric view should be preferred by such individuals.
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Notes
- 1.
Papineau (2020) understands ‘naturalism’ very broadly, incorporating all views according to which “reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing ‘supernatural’”—which is the understanding I will use in this chapter.
- 2.
- 3.
Damasio also uses ‘cognition’ synonymously with ‘mental states’ (1999: 85).
- 4.
For this reason, one should be cautious of assuming that Damasio has provided a superficial or incomplete treatment of some topic, when he may just be trying to simplify a complex issue so that it is easier for general readers to appreciate (for example, Panksepp 2003a: 118–9).
- 5.
Or ‘life regulation,’ see Parvizi and Damasio (2001: 136).
- 6.
I think Panksepp is making a similar point when he says that, in Looking for Spinoza, Damasio is still phrasing his claim about the role of the brainstem in a “slightly passive” way: subcortical structures “‘monitor’ and ‘map’ the state of the body” (Panksepp 2003a: 125)—as opposed, for example, to taking an active part in causing the state of the body.
- 7.
Insofar as Damasio does not have the same interest in what-it-is-like/experience that I have, one could perhaps say that my remarks do not function as criticisms of his actual view—just as I said I was not trying to assess those four philosophers’ views comprehensively (compare: beginning of Sect. 6.2.3). My claim is that Damasio’s framework does not help us to understand what-it-is-like/experience, and not that Damasio’s framework is incorrect.
- 8.
Whereas I have reserved the term ‘body-map-based’ to refer exclusively to Damasio’s views, in this section, I will discuss several other writers whose views I consider to be ‘affect-centric.’
- 9.
In light of these kinds of considerations, the confidence with which Damasio sets out his findings may be unwarranted. Certainly, he always seemed to give the impression that he and his colleagues knew exactly what was going on [Sects. 6.2.2 and 6.2.3]—whereas, if Panksepp is to be believed, it is actually not even possible for anybody to ‘know’ many of those things.
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Anderson, J. (2022). Twenty-first-century Biological Naturalism: The Body-Map-Based View and the Affect-Centric View. In: Biological Naturalism and the Mind-Body Problem. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99684-0_6
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