Natural Intelligence & the Logic of Consciousness

Antonio Damasio sets out to shift the debate about the origins of consciousness away from high-level cognition and abstract reasoning and toward interoception, the body's own internal monitoring system. His central claim is that homeostatic feelings bound to survival, among them hunger, thirst, pain and well-being, are the foundation of conscious experience and carry the first glimmers of a self. Drawing on his own research and newer findings in neurobiology, he recasts consciousness as nature's answer to the task of regulating life in complex, vulnerable organisms. He also takes up sentience in plants and bacteria, looks at politics, religion and commerce through homeostasis, and weighs the rise and risks of artificial intelligence. Damasio is also the author of Descartes' Error.

Adam Grant put it on The 12 New Books to Spice Up Your Fall, calling it a bold rethinking of what makes people sentient.