Theatrical Elements in the Mind’s Eye

Abstract

Neurologist Antonio Damasio argues that nature evolved from animal to human consciousness, and human conscience, as a progression from proto-self to core self, plus autobiographical and extended selves (Feeling 16–17, 135–37, 230, 310). Even if there is not a single homunculus as cogito controlling a Cartesian Theatre within the mind, Damasio finds this humans generate not only a “movie-in-the-brain,” but also the “appearance of an owner and observer for the movie within the movie” (11, 160).¹ He argues that emotions existed in animals, prior to human evolution, but “were entirely unknown to the organisms producing them” (30). Consciousness evolved with humans as nature invented a “rightful owner of each individual life”—through the “apparent self [that] emerges as the feeling of a feeling” (30–31).²