Foundations and Applications of Sentiomics: the Science of the Feeling Capacity.

Abstract

Sentience, defined as the unconscious capacity of having conscious feeling experiences, is a psychobiological phenomenon involving dynamic patterns of electrochemical waves in living systems. The process of feeling can be studied in two ways: a) Empirical identification and analysis of the universal temporal patterns that characterize feeling, forming a science to be called Sentiomics; b) Introspective identification and report of the variety of qualitative conscious experiences, from a first-person perspective, a study that could be called 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 capacity 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 its the relation with music.