SENTIENCE

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 phenomenal 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