From Sensing to Sentience: How Feeling Emerges from the Brain

A new theory of Neurobiological Emergentism that explains how sentience emerges from the brain. 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) that integrates 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.

Table of Contents:
Preface Acknowledgments 1 Introduction 2 General features of biological emergence 3 The neurobiological and behavioral criteria for sentience 4 The stages of the emergence of sentience 5 Emergent Stage 1. Single-celled organisms and the emergence of sensing 6 Emergent Stage 2. Neurons, nervous systems and evolutionarily early brains 7 Emergent Stage 3. Animals with more neurobiologically evolved nervous systems and brains 8 Neurobiology, emergent “levels,” and sentience 9 Neurobiological emergentism 10 Demystifying the personal nature of sentience 11 Neurobiological emergentism Epilogue Notes References

About the Author :
Todd E. Feinberg is Director of the Yarmon Neurobehavior and Alzheimer's Disease Center of Mount Sinai Behavioral Health Center in New York City and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. He is coauthor of The Ancient Origins of Consciousness (MIT Press).

Review :
“By focusing on sentience and placing it in an evolutionary context, Feinberg has created a compelling argument that the principles of neurobiological emergentism can aid our attempts to understand the brain and consciousness.” —The Lancet Neurology