Emotional sentience and the nature of phenomenal experience.
Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology December 1, 2015 Katherine Peil Kauffman
Emotion, defined broadly as evaluative feelings that trigger approach or avoidance behaviors, emerged with life itself as a primitive form of mind—a stimulus-response information loop between organism and environment. This emotional self-regulation serves an ancient function of sensory-motor control, giving organisms an active, adaptive role in evolution. However, the biophysics of emotional signaling involves constituents incompatible with classical physics, prompting an investigation into the self as the subjective observer central to quantum measurement. The author proposes a new phenomenological dualism: human experience arises from both a classically embodied mind and a deeper quantum consciousness inherent in the universe, implying Whiteheadian interpretations of emotional self-regulation. The paper sketches this speculative territory, mapping it to theoretical models of consciousness and philosophical themes.