Foundations and Applications of Sentiomics

the Science of the Feeling Capacity

Abstract

(This article is part of a project by Trans/Form/Ação: Unesp Philosophy Journal. It is the Authorial Philosophy Dossier, to be published in 2022.) Sentience, defined as the ability to experience basic sensations such as hunger and thirst, heat and cold, is a psychobiological phenomenon involving dynamic patterns of electrochemical waves in living systems, both in animals and in plants. The process of feeling can be studied in two ways: a) Identification and analysis of the universal temporal patterns that characterize feeling, whose study would be Sentiomics; b) Identification and report of the variety of qualitative conscious experiences, from a first-person perspective, whose study would be Qualiomics. Qualiomics is undoubtedly a challenge to conventional science, as stated in the “hard problem of consciousness” (Chalmers, 1995), as the first-person perspective is not accessible to conventional scientific measurement methods and explanations. Sentiomics, focusing on dynamic patterns that define the ability to feel, is therefore susceptible to empirical and experimental treatment. In this article, we propose to contextualize the philosophical assumptions and problems of Sentiomics and present some of its various applications, focusing on the relationship between Sentiomics, music and consciousness.