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Emotions are triggered by what we like to call emotionally competent stimuli, that is, objects or situations that can be real, like in front of you, or be in your mind when you think and you recall, and they act on brain devices that were designed by evolution.

— António Damásio

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More quotes by António Damásio

Feeling implies the presence of a mind and a mental experience, [or] consciousness. I have every reason to believe that invertebrates not only have emotions but also the possibility of feeling those emotions.

There are three levels of self to consider: the proto, the core, and the autobiographical. The first two are shared with many, many other species, and they are really coming out largely of the brain stem and whatever there is of cortex in those species.

When you have an emotion you are recruiting a variety of mechanisms that came in the long history of evolution, long before emotions arose, and those mechanisms all had to do with how an organism manages its life.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: António Damásio (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.