So I hope you thought a little bit about the extent which your experience is somatically marked. And again, I want you to get used to that phrase, what does it mean for something to be somatically marked? It's not the case that there's an experience here and there's an emotional reaction over there. Rather, when you experience, your body is in the game as well. You are, �soma� means �having to do with the body�, so your body�s reaction to experience is crucial for giving that experience the shape that it has, at least in those cases in which experiences have an emotional significance for you. And this is very important for our discussion because it seems to me Damasio�s insight here about the way in which experience is often, not always, but often somatically marked, Is relevant to our attempt to get a deeper understanding of self knowledge for the following reason. You might think that, self knowledge is a matter of introspecting on your experiences, looking inside and asking whether you're happy, sad, hungry, tired, irritated, resentful is the case maybe. That's the modern introspection as a way of thinking about self knowledge. By contrast the Socratic and more generally ancient conception, and In at least the Western tradition which is one important ancient conception is going to be. Let's have a discussion which we try to bring up to conscious awareness our assumptions about the nature of justice, wisdom, virtue, piety as the case maybe. These two are important, they're valuable, And can influence the things we do a great deal. Damasio wants to suggest and in fact he's suggesting a third dimension of self knowledge which comes from looking outside. That is say, comes from paying attention in the way in which you experience the world. Be it memory, be it perception of what's going on in real time, or be it thought about the future. Paying attention in the way in which your experience is rife with, resonant with, bodily and thereby emotional reaction. When you look upon something cringingly. For example, you've got a to do list for example, you've written down things that you need to do. And there's one item on the list that you have trouble looking at: every time you look at and think about, it begins to make you shake or sweat, or shutter or cringe. You might not notice, but that's a reason for thinking that there's something that you feel about the prospect, of having to apologize to that person that you made a mistake with, for example. Or having to take care of a chore that is somehow unattractive to you. You might not have been aware beforehand of the fact that that prospect was somatically marked. But if you learn to pay attention to the somatic markedness of your experience, I want to suggest, Then even though your mind�s eyes so to speak is looking outward not gazing inward, Your mind's eyes is looking at this thing that you've got to do, this chore you've got to take care of, This phone call you've got to return, this email you've got to send, this bill you've got to pay, this thank you note you've got to send etc. Some of those things will resonate to you in a positive way. They draw you in, they call your name. Other things are going to resonate perhaps in a negative way, or in a way that's fraught. And if you learn to listen to the resonance of those experiences, I want to suggest, that's a route, not the only route, but a route to self knowledge. Because you can understand how your body reacts to a prospective situation or a past situation, and thereby learn about what's going on inside of you. In Wilson, we talked about Wilson's idea of learning about yourself by looking outward. But his focus was on your behavior, that aspect of your behavior, for example, that might show that you've got an implicit bias. You can learn about your implicit biases, for example, by looking at your behavioral performance on various assessments, for example. Or to see whether or not you show on your statistical behavior of your work as a realtor or teacher whether or not you favor one kind of client or student over the other. Damasio has got a different dimension and different prospective on these things. And he's saying, instead of looking at your overt gross behavior you can also pay attention to your experience, your perceptual experience. And think about by looking at that note that you've left to yourself, and that particular line on your to-do list, for example. Then listening to how your body reacts to your attention to that line, you can thereby learn about the way you feel about that prospect. That's another route into self-knowledge that I think is important for our purposes, in our understanding from different perspectives, what's involved in understanding ourselves, getting a better sense of ourselves. But Damasio starts a criticism that he bases on his conception of the somatic marker hypothesis that I want to discuss now. He asked you to consider the following case. Suppose you've got a business and your trying to make it go, and it is not been able to turn much of a profit yet, but your still trying. And you come across someone who is prepared to do a business deal with you, that will be very lucrative for your business. Get you finally into the black, make your business a success after all this effort. The problem is just that this prospective client that you're contemplating is also your best friend's worst enemy. So imagine you're about to shake hands on the deal, along walks my friend on the sidewalk. And he takes a look at us, sees what we doing, and I lock eyes with my friend. With that prospect there's something that I'd shudder, that I contemplate with revulsion. That is to say as that prospect one that is somatically marked for me in a strongly negative way. Well then if it is, I need to think about whether doing this business deal is actually a prudential choice. Whether it's a good thing for me to do. Likewise, many of us have learned, in my case fortunately, never the hard way. But I certainly know people who have learned the hard way, that sending for example an email, even if its an email that expresses some feelings that you've got towards the recipient. Whenever you send an email, especially if you are an employee of a large organization like a university, that email is not necessarily completely private. Whenever I send an email, I try to ask myself, how would I feel if the contents of this email were publicly available in a well known newspaper, for example, for the entire reading public to see? Would I cringe at that prospect? Then I'd better not send the email. Likewise, some people who are tempted to take a �five-finger discount.� Take some money or some goods when they think no one is looking, probably do well to ask themselves, How would I feel if my picture were in the newspaper of all the people who've been caught committing crimes in the previous week in this particular area where I live? That prospect, that threat of public humiliation for example, is one that hopefully will deter certain people from doing certain things. So Damasio says, when deciding what to do you need to, and most of us will normally appeal to our somatic markers in asking ourselves whether that would be a good thing to do or not. And when we're acting prudentially, those somatic markers will hopefully automatically and relatively spontaneously guide us in deciding what is the best course of action. They don't always do the entire decision making for us, but they certainly serve as good guides. Notice that, as Damasio would say, that when you've got compromised somatic markers. He wants to suggest that Phineas Gage and Elliott and various other patients who have what he calls the �Gage matrix�, In some important respect are similar to Phineas Gage, their somatic markers are in a sense broken. There are somatic markers that are in a sense dysfunctional. So that for example, Elliott can contemplate the prospect of doing a business deal with his best friend's worst enemy, but the fact that that could be problematic for his best friend if his best friend finds out leaves Elliott cold. Likewise, presumably, Gage was aware of the fact that his being offensive, his being profane in the front of women of his day might put them off. But, somehow, the prospect of putting them off didn't seem to resonate with him in any way. Whereas, for others, putting somebody off would resonate with us in a sort of don't do that, with the sort of don't do that kind of dimension or sound.
