Antonio Damasio says feelings are needed for consciousness and intelligence

In short: Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio argues in a new book that feelings are a core part of how humans become conscious and think intelligently.

What happened

Antonio Damasio has released a new book, Natural Intelligence & the Logic of Consciousness. In it, he argues that feelings are not just “nice to have” extras on top of thinking.

His main focus is on what he calls homeostatic feelings. These are basic body signals like hunger, thirst, pain, and a sense of well-being. He says these signals are the foundation of conscious experience, including early signs of a “self” (the sense that experiences are happening to you).

In interviews and reviews, Damasio’s idea is often summed up as “we must be able to feel in order to become conscious,” and even more simply, “we are conscious because we feel.” He also describes intelligence as partly the skill of linking feelings with thoughts and memories, rather than treating intelligence as cold calculation alone.

The book also comments on artificial intelligence. Damasio’s view, as reported, is that today’s AI systems do not have bodies and do not have feelings in the way living things do. Using a simple analogy, he is saying AI can be like a very fast librarian, but it does not have the body-based signals that tell a human what matters, what hurts, or what is urgent.

Why it matters

This argument touches a common question about AI, which is whether machines could ever be conscious like people. Damasio is not just debating computers, he is also making a claim about everyday human thinking. If he is right, then emotions and body feelings are part of how we reason, make choices, and understand the world, not something we should ignore.

Source: NYTimes