A new theory of Neurobiological Emergentism that explains how sentience emerges from the brain.
Sentience is the feeling aspect of consciousness. In From Sensing to Sentience, Todd Feinberg develops a new theory called Neurobiological Emergentism (NBE) thatintegrates biological, neurobiological, evolutionary, and philosophical perspectives to explain how sentience naturally emerges from the brain.
Emergent properties are broadly defined as features of a complex system that are not present in the parts of a system when they are considered in isolation but may emerge as a system feature of those parts and their interactions. Tracing a journey of billions of years of evolution from life to the basic sensing capabilities of single-celled organisms up to the sentience of animals with advanced nervous systems, including all vertebrates (for instance, fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals), arthropods (insects and crabs), and cephalopods (such as the octopus), Feinberg argues that sentience gradually but eventually emerged along diverse evolutionary lines with the evolution of sufficiently neurobiologically complex brains during the Cambrian period over 520 million years ago.
Ultimately, Feinberg argues that viewing sentience as an emergent process can explain both its neurobiological basis as well its perplexing personal nature, thus solving the historical philosophical problem of the apparent “explanatory gap” between the brain and experience.
Conditions of Use
This book is licensed under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND). You can download the ebook From Sensing to Sentience for free.
- Title
- From Sensing to Sentience
- Subtitle
- How Feeling Emerges from the Brain
- Publisher
- The MIT Press
- Author(s)
- Todd E. Feinberg
- Published
- 2024-10-01
- Edition
- 1
- Format
- eBook (pdf, epub, mobi)
- Pages
- 216
- Language
- English
- ISBN-10
- 0262550954
- ISBN-13
- 9780262381475
- License
- CC BY-NC-ND
- Book Homepage
- Free eBook, Errata, Code, Solutions, etc.
Contents Preface Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: Neurobiological Emergentism Something It Is Like to Be: Sentience The Personal Nature of Sentience and the Explanatory Gap 2. General Features of Biological Emergence What Is Emergence? General Biological Emergent Features Aggregate System Functions and Novelty Unity Process Hierarchical Systems Promote Emergent Properties Summary and Importance of General Emergent Features 3. The Neurobiological and Behavioral Criteria for Sentience: Subtypes and Supporting Evidence General Principles for the Emergence of Sentience Summary 4. The Stages of the Emergence of Sentience: General Principles The Neurobiological-Evolutionary Model of the Emergence of Sentience 5. Emergent Stage 1: Single-Celled Organisms and the Emergence of Sensing Implications of Emergent Stage 1 Features Is There “Something It Is Like” to Be a Single-Celled Organism? The Question of the Unicellular Consciousness Summary 6. Emergent Stage 2: Neurons, Nervous Systems, and Evolutionarily Early Brains—“Presentient” Animals The Development of Central Nervous Systems: Bilaterians Some Emergent Stage 2 Species Conclusions 7. Emergent Stage 3: Animals with More Neurobiologically Evolved Nervous Systems and Brains—the Emergence of Sentience Four Phylogenetic ES3 Lines to Sentience: Vertebrates, Coleoids, Arthropods, and Onychophorans Summary: Emergent Stage 3 and Sentience 8. Neurobiology, Emergent “Levels,” and Sentience Emergence and Causation: Hypotheses and Controversies Emergence, the Brain, and Models of Hierarchical Organization There Are Myriad Levels and Different Types of Interactions That Can Contribute to the System Emergence of Sentience Summary 9. Neurobiological Emergentism: Panpsychism, Biopsychism, the “Emergentist Dilemma,” and Integrated Information Theory Panpsychism Biopsychism and Reber’s “Emergentist’s Dilemma” Phi and Integrated Information Theory Common Features Between NBE and IIT Differences between NBE and IIT 10. Demystifying the Personal Nature of Sentience How Neurobiological Emergentism Explains the Personal Nature and Character of Sentience Conclusions 11. Neurobiological Emergentism: Putting It All Together Postulate 1: Sentience Is Ultimately an Emergent Feature of Embodied Life Postulate 2: Sentience Evolved in Progressive Stages That Are Characterized by an Increase in Novel Emergent Features Postulate 3: The Increasing Degree of Standard Neurobiological Emergence Is What Makes Sentience Possible Postulate 4: The Emergent Mechanisms of Sentience Are Diverse Postulate 5: An “Explanatory Gap” versus an “Experiential Gap” Conclusions Epilogue: Emergence, Process, and Sentience Process and the Personal Nature of Sentience Notes References Index
