Book Review: Descartes Error (Part 2)

One problem with this hypothesis is that Damasio implicitly equates a rational consideration of response options with their conscious consideration. This is because non-conscious information processing was never considered or controlled for in Damasio’s work. One can act rationally without being at all aware of the logical reasons for behavior, and non-conscious information not only precedes the somatic marker, it appears to do so in every case. Indeed, most arousal occurs when we already know what’s happening, as when we become aware of bad turns of events. If you cut off the physiological input from the peripheral nervous system, and decision making goes on virtually unimpaired. Thus some claim that the somatic marker is unnecessary and does not aid in decision making.

Other explanations may exist for the behavior exhibited by both Gage and other patients suffering from prefrontal lobe damage. Gage’s behavior and the changes in his personality could be explained as his way of dealing with disfigurement that he suffered after the accident, or a coping mechanism. Lack of desire could translate into a state of severe depression in which the afflicted individual is unable to translate his intellect or past experience into present actions and decisions because there is no motivation for making such decisions. Severe apathy could render the emotional faculties virtually extinct and effectively cripple him.

Damasio never addresses the possibility that a value system could be “reconstructed” in an individual with frontal lobe damage. Religion has traditionally been a way that individuals have been “rehabilitated”. From criminals to alcoholics, spirituality has been used to give individuals purpose, meaning, and ultimately a value matrix. If such a value system could be reconstructed in an individual like Gage, desire that he once lacked to make a decision that was beneficial would exist- providing purpose and a reason to choose one alternative over another. Obviously this is a hypothesis in its earliest stages of development, but it does open up many possibilities to finding ways to help individuals with frontal lobe damage that are unable to function in everyday life.

While these are only possible alternative explanations, it does illustrate a significant point. In the area of neuroscience, every possible explanation should be explored so as to provide suffering individuals with a possibility of living a normal life- before discarding them as a victim of a physical fluke. Specifically, Damasio’s work has interesting connection to such issues as how to understand psychopaths, agents who lack normal feelings of guilt and other moral motives based on empathy. It seems that psychopaths are not rational amoralists but rather are unable to follow through reliably on long-term plans they make in their own interests. A failure of emotional empathy–with one’s own future self, in effect–apparently yields elements of practical irrationality.

It is possible that a deep knowledge of right and wrong consists of emotional and volitional components in addition to a cognitive one. Thus one should not claim in confidence that the psychopath’s moral deficiency is due solely to a cognitive failure, or that his lack of the deep knowledge of right and wrong can be explained entirely in terms of a defect of practical reason. Improperly functioning somatic markers may be part of the psychopath’s problem. However, physical limitations should not blindly absolve any individual of moral responsibility. The implications suggested by Damasio would change the way that we deal, as a society, with criminals. Are they responsible for what they have done? Can we blame everything on neurobiology? Does environmental damage cause the same significant damage as a tumor?

These questions and other like them cannot be taken lightly when examining the role of neurology in the criminal justice system. As philosophy and science strive to answer these questions and other like them, steps to understand the mind-body relationship should be carefully considered. In seeking to better understand humanity, we must also preserve the humanity of those we study. Damasio’s work has been invaluable to understanding more of the relationship between the mind and body, and he presents compelling reasons for accepting the existence of such a relationship. However, his work alone is not sufficient to justify a verdict in favor of strictly biological explanations for emotional bankruptcy, psychopaths and other sociopaths.