Sentience - The Invention of Consciousness

Conscious sensations ground our sense of self, but is it only humans who feel this way? Do other animals? Will future machines? Nicholas Humphrey tells the story of his quest to understand the evolutionary history of consciousness and explains the startling answers he has come to.

We feel therefore we are. Conscious sensations ground our sense of self. They are essential to our idea of ourselves as psychic beings: present, existent, and mattering. But is it only humans who feel this way? Do other animals? Will future machines? To answer these questions we need a scientific understanding of consciousness: what it is and why it has evolved. Nicholas Humphrey has been researching these issues for fifty years. In this extraordinary book, weaving together intellectual adventure, cutting-edge science, and his own breakthrough experiences, he tells the story of his quest to uncover the evolutionary history of consciousness: from his discovery of blindsight after brain damage in monkeys, to hanging out with mountain gorillas in Rwanda, to becoming a leading philosopher of mind. Out of this, he has come up with an explanation of conscious feeling - 'phenomenal consciousness' - that he presents here in full for the first time. Building on this theory of how phenomena l consciousness is generated in the human brain, he turns to the morally crucial question of whether it exists in non-human creatures. His conclusions, on the evidence as it stands, are radical. Contrary to both popular and much scientific opinion, he argues that phenomenal consciousness is a relatively recent evolutionary innovation, present only in warm-blooded creatures, mammals and birds. Invertebrates, such as octopuses and bees, for all their intelligence, are in this respect unfeeling zombies. And for now, but not necessarily for ever, so are man-made machines.

Inhaltsverzeichnis:

Prologue
1: Sentience and Consciousness
2: Foothills
3: Phosphenes: The Touch of Light
4: Blythe Spirits
5: What the Frog's Eye Tells the Monkey's Brain
6: Blindsight
7: Sight Unseen
8: Red Sky at Night
9: Nature's Psychologists
10: On the Track of Sensations
11: Evolving Sentience
12: The Road Taken
13: The Phenomenal Self
14: Theoretical Misprisions
15: Coming to Be
16: Devising a Test
17: Panpsychism
18: Sentience All the Way Down?
19: Mapping the Landscape
20: Getting Warmer
21: Testing, Testing
22: Qualiaphilia
23: The Self in Action
24: Taking Stock
25: Machina ex Deo
26: Closer to the Truth
Acknowledgements
References and Notes

Rezension:

Sentience is full of provocative ideas, as well as lively anecdotes from decades of pondering these issues. Humphreys thesis offers a great deal to think about. Philip Ball, New Scientist