Pereira’s Sentience
Neuroscientist Antonio Pereira, Jr. hypothesizes that cognitive consciousness depends on sentience. He distinguishes “two modalities of consciousness: sentience, in the sense of being awake and capable of feeling (e.g., basic sensations of hunger, thirst, pain), and, second, cognitive consciousness, i.e., thinking and elaborating on linguistic and imagery representations.”
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Alfredo Pereira, Jr.
Philosopher
Alfredo Pereira, Jr. is a retired Brazilian philosopher of science and cognitive neuroscience, formerly at São Paulo State University. He’s known for developing “Triple-Aspect Monism” and advancing theories on consciousness, astrocytes, and “sentiomics.”
Key Takeaways
Core Claim
Consciousness has two layers: basic sentience and higher-level cognitive awareness.
How It Works
Sentience arises from biochemical homeostasis; cognition depends on neural electrical activity.
Distinguishing Idea
Feeling comes first—thinking requires sentience, but sentience doesn’t require thinking.
Implications
Medical care should prioritize signs of sentience, not just higher cognitive functions.
Raises the Question
Can a person feel pain or hunger without showing any signs of mental activity?
Pereira’s Sentience
Neuroscientist Antonio Pereira, Jr. hypothesizes that cognitive consciousness depends on sentience. He distinguishes “two modalities of consciousness: sentience, in the sense of being awake and capable of feeling (e.g., basic sensations of hunger, thirst, pain) and, second, cognitive consciousness, i.e. thinking and elaborating on linguistic and imagery representations.” He proposes that the physiological correlates of sentience are “the systems underpinning the dynamic control of biochemical homeostasis,” while the correlates of cognitive consciousness are “patterns of bioelectrical activity in neural networks.” His primary point is that “cognitive consciousness depends on sentience, but not vice versa” (Pereira, 2021).
Pereira applies his concept of sentience as a theory of consciousness to the medical sciences, especially neurology and psychiatry, for both diagnostics and therapy. This implies that “medical practice should also address the physiological correlates of sentience in the diagnostics and therapy of disorders of consciousness.” The minimal requirement, he says, “for considering a person minimally conscious is … if she can feel basic sensations such as hunger, thirst, and pain. The capacity for feeling is conceived as closely related to the capacity of dynamically controlling the physiological processes of homeostasis.”
In applying theories of consciousness to medical care, Pereira posits that higher-level capacities “such as verbal or imagery thinking, the retrieval of episodic memories, and action planning (e.g., imagining playing tennis, a technique for assessing residual consciousness in vegetative states), may not be adequate as a general standard for medical diagnosis of prolonged disorders of consciousness, since … in many cases the person may not be able to perform these tasks but still be able to consciously experience basic sensations” (Pereira, 2021).
Taking general anesthesia as an example, Pereira states that “if the main criterion is not being able to feel pain, the goal of the procedure would be broader than the loss of cognitive consciousness. In some cases, the neural correlates of cognitive representations may not be the main target of treatment, since they correspond to a high-level specific ability that is not necessary for lower-level sentient experiences, which also deserve attention for proper medical and also bioethical reasons” (Pereira, 2021).
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