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In his passionate essay located at the intersection of neurobiology, psychology, and philosophy, Antonio Damasio demonstrates the importance of emotions in the construction of consciousness. The brain furnishes us with “mental experiences that we unequivocally relate to our beings—to ourselves.” Far from being purely mental, emotions are “hybrids of mind and body,” but without consciousness we would know nothing of either pleasure or pain. It is the cornerstone of the extraordinary flowering of human cultures.