The ultimate protagonist is the conscious self at the center of every life story, the observer who answers to the name of “I” from the first moment of memory until the curtain falls. But what is consciousness, really? And how does it emerge so fully from the organ of the brain? These long-unanswered questions, grist for generations of philosophers, drive the discussion between neuroscientist and neurologist Antonio Damasio and novelist and essayist Siri Hustvedt—both authors of recent books on the topic, though from different points of view. Damasio, who directs the University of Southern California’s Brain and Creativity Institute, wrote Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (Pantheon, 2010) to explore “the phenomenal ability that consists of having a mind equipped with an owner.” Where is consciousness located in the brain, he wonders, and how does the brain make a conscious mind? He explores the terrain with Hustvedt, whose book The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves (Henry Holt, 2010) examines her own seizure disorder from historical, philosophical, and neuroscientific points of view. “How our brains become minds and how neurons create our inner selves remain burning questions in both science and philosophy,” she states. Like her book, this discussion investigates the nature of consciousness and the connections between body, mind, and the arts.
Siri Hustvedt:
When I got my Ph.D. in English at Columbia, the intellectual truism of the time was that language created consciousness. But over time I began to doubt this. Where was the body? Where was my felt, lived experience? I’ve had migraines all my life, and later a strange seizure disorder. I began to feel that biology was deeply connected to both personality and the flowering of human culture, and that was the beginning of my profound interest in neuroscience.
Antonio Damasio:
For a long time in Western discourse the body was nowhere. But of course the body is of the essence. We have brains and minds because they serve the survival needs of the organism. The regulation of life is the main business of brains and minds. It is called homeostasis.
