{"product_id":"sentience-isbn-9780262548311","title":"Sentience","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe story of a quest to uncover the evolutionary history of consciousness from one of the world's leading theoretical psychologists.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe feel, therefore we are. Conscious sensations ground our sense of self. They are crucial 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? Weaving together intellectual adventure and cutting-edge science, Nicholas Humphrey describes in \u003ci\u003eSentience\u003c\/i\u003e his quest for answers: from his discovery of blindsight in monkeys and his pioneering work on social intelligence to breakthroughs in the philosophy of mind.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe goal is to solve the hard problem: to explain the wondrous, eerie fact of “phenomenal consciousness”—the redness of a poppy, the sweetness of honey, the pain of a bee sting. What does this magical dimension of experience amount to? What is it for? And why has it evolved? Humphrey presents here his new solution. He proposes that phenomenal consciousness, far from being primitive, is a relatively late and sophisticated evolutionary development. The implications for the existence of sentience in nonhuman animals are startling and provocative.TABLE OF CONTENTS\u003cbr\u003ePrologue vii\u003cbr\u003e1. Sentience and consciousness 1\u003cbr\u003e2. Foothills 13\u003cbr\u003e3. The touch of light 16\u003cbr\u003e4. Blythe spirits 21\u003cbr\u003e5. What the frog's eye tells the monkey's brain 32\u003cbr\u003e6. Blindsight 40\u003cbr\u003e7. Sight unseen 50\u003cbr\u003e8. Red sky at night 54\u003cbr\u003e9. Nature's psychologists 67\u003cbr\u003e10. On the track of sensations 77\u003cbr\u003e11. Evolving sentience 101\u003cbr\u003e12. The road taken 105\u003cbr\u003e13. The phenomenal self 114\u003cbr\u003e14. Theoretical misprisions 125\u003cbr\u003e15. Coming to be: Sentience and body sense 130\u003cbr\u003e16. Sentience all the way down? 134\u003cbr\u003e17. Mapping the landscape 145\u003cbr\u003e18. Getting warmer 148\u003cbr\u003e19. Testing, testing 153\u003cbr\u003e20. Qualiaphilia 158\u003cbr\u003e21. The self in action 175\u003cbr\u003e22. Taking stock 202\u003cbr\u003e23. \u003ci\u003eMachina ex deo \u003c\/i\u003e207\u003cbr\u003e24. Ethical imperatives 214\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eAcknowledgments \u003c\/i\u003e219\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eReferences and notes \u003c\/i\u003e221\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eIndex \u003c\/i\u003e239Nicholas Humphrey, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the London School of Economics, is a theoretical psychologist based in Cambridge, who studies the evolution of intelligence and consciousness. He was the first to demonstrate the existence of “blindsight” in monkeys. He has also studied mountain gorillas with Dian Fossey in Rwanda, proposed the celebrated theory of the “social function of intellect,” and investigated the evolutionary background of religion, art, healing, death-awareness and suicide. His honors include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, the Pufendorf Medal, and the International Mind and Brain Prize. His most recent books are \u003ci\u003eSeeing Red\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eSoul Dust\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"The MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300806807781,"sku":"NP9780262548311","price":24.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780262548311.jpg?v=1767736351","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/sentience-isbn-9780262548311","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}