Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain is a book by neurologist Antonio R. Damasio presenting the author's "somatic marker hypothesis,” a proposed mechanism by which emotions guide (or bias) behavior and decision-making, and positing that rationality requires emotional input. In part a treatment of the mind/body dualism question, the book argues that René Descartes' "error" was the dualist separation of mind and body, rationality and emotion.
Damasio uses Phineas Gage and other brain-damage cases to argue that rationality stems from emotion, and that emotion stems from bodily senses. However, the book's presentation of Gage's history and symptoms has been criticized as fictionalized.[1]
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