An ability to comprehend meaning is a key indicator of sentience but defining sentience more generally is notoriously difficult. We have no qualms attributing consciousness to ourselves but hesitate to say that a tree, for example, is conscious in spite of the fact that it comprehends meaning in its environment and responds appropriately.

For the purposes of this story I term a being sentient if it has a capacity for experience, that is, it has a capacity to perceive its environment (and perhaps itself in it), comprehend serial and perhaps other meaning, make choices and act intentionally - which I believe a tree has; and I term a being conscious if it is sentient of its sentience (and perhaps that of others), which a tree is not.

(Or rather, I do not see consciousness in a tree. We only comprehend the fields of meaning available to us, according to how we as functional organisms have aggregated. People and trees, as organisms that have aggregated along very different paths, have very different fields of meaning available to them. So while I do not see consciousness in a tree, trees may well see consciousness in each other. Deeming an organism to be conscious depends on who is doing the deeming.)

Consciousness - sentience of one's own sentience - opens up dimensions of attention, reflection, introspection, association, abstraction and conception, facilitating a considered and directed appreciation of one's experience and choices. While I see memory as a sometime supplement to sentience I see it as necessary for consciousness.

Importantly, consciousness - sentience of one's own sentience - delivers an experience of being sentient, bestowing on the consciousness ownership of its sentience - a sense of 'I', a personal agency that includes a responsibility for its choices and actions. Personal agency allows the development of personal traits such as temperament, taste, style and disposition.

A conscious being may also see sentience in others, and may even recognize an experience of sentience in another; that is, it might recognize another's consciousness. I see playfulness and humour as expressions by which consciousness can be recognized (rather than mere sentience). A sentience that is not conscious experiences its environment and acts in its own interest, but does not reflect on its experience, does not have a sense of personal agency and does not have a sense of humour.

In this way I see all functional organisms, from the greatest trees to the tiniest viruses, to have the possibility of sentience, but see the possibility of consciousness only in animals.

Our human sentience is not fixed. As our cultures and environments evolve, we acquire new fields of meaning. Technology specifically has afforded us vast new fields of meaning to play in. Importantly for this discussion, many of these new fields of meaning have widened, not only the ranges and kinds of pattern we can perceive (perhaps only indirectly via these new tools), but have widened the ranges and kinds of pattern we can conceive of, as the microscope and telescope have extended our conceptions of the very small and the very big.

Widening the range of our discernable patterns also allows us to discern patterns in patterns; that is, our discernment of pattern may not only be widened but may be deepened by the acquisition of new fields of meaning. Extending our understanding of the very small to atomic scales and of the very big to galactic scales has significantly altered our understanding of our place in the universe and the way we relate to it. These extensions have not been shared by trees. Perhaps a significant difference between our own sentience and that of trees (and between that of plants and that of animals) is one of the kind, width and depth of pattern and meaning we are capable of discerning. The capacity to perceive pattern and comprehend meaning is crucial to sentience.

Modes of Sentience

As compound functional organs, our brains utilize both modes of interaction and comprehend both modes of serial meaning, allowing us to negotiate our bimodal world successfully. But serial meanings of one mode are not comprehensible in the other, so our brains must be utilizing the mode of the phenomena they are perceiving in order to comprehend their serial meanings (though not simply to perceive the phenomena).

The comprehension of serial meaning is an essential element of sentience, so I speak of connective and architective modes of sentience according to the mode of serial meaning a sentience is utilizing and able to comprehend.

There would be gaps in our comprehension if our brains were to switch from one mode of sentience to the other, for they would be blind to serial meaning not in their current mode. Our brains need operate sentiences in both modes simultaneously to ensure an inclusive comprehension. I see us running two sentiences concurrently, an architective sentience and a connective sentience, rather than only one.

Entirely different realms of serial meaning are perceived and negotiated by each sentience, with each comprehending the serial meaning and narratives of its own mode only.

Connective and Architective Experience

Our architective and connective sentiences perceive the same world but experience and respond to it very differently.

Our architective sentience appreciates the stasis of things. It experiences the endurance of objects, their enduring separateness, identity and composition. Our architective sentience is aware of having a separate body and of being different to others. It appreciates precision and exactness of definition, responds to good or bad figurate fits, attends to contests and responds to loss or gain in a contest. It takes steps towards definite goals (whether constructive or destructive), exercises control or subservience and plays games of rank and power. It is able to appreciate complexity in construction and its greatness.

Our connective sentience experiences free flowing motion and change. It can play with waves, vibrations and their interference, the flows of empathy and the connective plays in relationships. It can negotiate uncertainty and penetrate limitless subtlety and grandeur.

Our connective sentience distinguishes harmony and dissonance, empathy and antipathy, in flows, waves and vibrations. It experiences bodily pain and pleasure. Our architective sentience has regard for identity, placement, fit, firmness, composition, commitment and challenge. It distinguishes between wholeness and impairment, submission and domination, and gain and loss. It experiences poverty and plenitude.

Our architective feelings and emotions are of achievement or failure, superiority or inferiority, anger or supplication, triumph or fear, comfort or vexation. Our connective emotions are of attraction or repulsion, frustration or exhilaration, satisfaction or longing.

Our connective sentience memorizes flowing movements while our architective sentience memorizes snapshots - images, symbols and representations - and sequences or arrangements thereof. Each sentience can only access memories of its own mode.

Our connective intelligence judges flows, harmonies and empathies. It feels its way uncertainly, by giving and taking, acting and responding. Our architective intelligence judges matters of position, threat, composition, identity, rank, and fidelity - precisely - by analysing them, categorizing them and perhaps planning steps to achieve specific aims. Our architective intelligence makes things and breaks things. It puts things in place or takes them out. It distinguishes the proper places for things and constrains relationships to fixed roles.

Fear of extinction is an architective experience, for only architectures are subject to the possibility of demise. Our architective frailty necessarily imbues our lives with a sense of insecurity and I suspect the entire gamut of our existential fears have an architective component.

Our connective sentience is attentive to all relevant stimuli while our architective sentience tends to be focused, usually on the item of greatest urgency or strength. I can attend to multiple musics simultaneously (though not necessarily independently), whether in concert or noisy, but I would have great difficulty attending to multiple sentences at the same time. Multiple musical instruments played at the same time could be a symphony but speakers have to raise their voices to be heard above a crowd.

Architective attention jumps from one point of interest to another while connective attention accesses all its interests concurrently. A quiescence of one's architective attention (say by means of meditation) allows the merging of a wider connective perception rather than providing more points for it to jump between.

My architective sentience follows architective narratives - stories and epics of construction and destruction, identity, intrigue and challenge, gain and loss, submission and domination, achievement and failure. My connective sentience follows connective narratives - dances of speed and agility, whirls and gyres, discords and harmonies, excitements and tranquilities.

Connectively we may have preferences regarding degrees or styles of subtlety, curvature and motion, the smoothness of a ride, perhaps preferring one dance or music to another. Our architective preferences may be in regard to the straightness of lines, the symmetry of forms, clarity of distinction, correctness in social interaction, comfort of fit, winning in contests, the soundness of constructions and in the reasonableness of an argument. Architective preferences may alternatively develop for destruction, existential angst, physical and emotional discomfort, greed, oppressive control, dogmatic fixedness, excessive submissiveness or obsessive organization.

We may develop a preference for one mode of sentience rather than the other. We may prefer to see everything in its proper place, have well-charted avenues of social interaction, enjoy precision of expectation, fidelity of information, clear categorizations, respect for rank, and take pleasure in expressions of strength, control or subservience. Alternatively we may relish the connective interplay of feelings, colours and sounds, the excitements of empathies and harmonies, and the surprises of uncertainty. Of course we may enjoy both.

Our architective sentience reaches or fails to reach objectives while our connective sentience journeys through landscapes of greater or lesser profundity. From a connective point of view, life is an ongoing and varying participation in profundity rather than a search for perfection. For my connective sentience it is the passing sensations along the way, for my architective sentience it is the stations and destinations that count.

I suspect that connective and architective sentiences have very different experiences of time, in that an architective sentience experiences time as a series of distinct events which can be categorized as past, present and future while a connective sentience experiences time as an indivisible, uncategorizable, ongoing duration. An architective sentience enjoys drama in stories - events situated in time - while there are no stories for a connective sentience - it simply enjoys the ongoing flows and stimulations of harmony, surprise and constellation. I think life becomes more problematic when we rush from station to station (objective to objective) and don't have time to enjoy the journey in between.

Perhaps using the word 'intent' with respect to a connective sentience is misleading, for 'intent' suggests a view to a definite aim while a connective outlook would be less specific.

In his book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World ^##, Dr. Iain McGilchrist has suggested that the operations of our left and right brain hemispheres display different characteristics: He sees the left hemisphere being responsible for a focused attention to detail and precision, as being manipulative, restraining, limiting, fragmented and isolating; offering a knowledge of the parts, of the composition of things rather than a view of their contextual setting. The left hemisphere employs definition, representation, abstraction and rationality in its understanding of what things are while the right hemisphere employs intuition to guess uncertainly at how things change and how they might relate. The left hemisphere pursues perfection in its placement of detail and attempts to eliminate rivals or pieces that don't fit its understanding, while the right hemisphere permits compromise and seeks diversity and freedom in its aim for a wider harmony.

You will notice, as he has, ^## how closely the behaviour of the left hemisphere approaches architectivity while that of the right approaches connectivity. It would seem that our brains have coped with the necessity of running two sentiences by providing two hemispheres.

Modes of Consciousness

Since our sentiences comprehend serial meanings of their own mode only, each of our sentiences cannot comprehend the serial meaning or follow the serial narratives of its own opposite sentience. My architective sentience cannot follow the serial narratives my connective sentience is following, and vice versa.

This also means that my architective sentience cannot be sentient of my connective sentience - and vice versa - since sentience necessarily involves a comprehension of serial meaning. Consciousness - sentience of a sentience - requires that the sentiences' modes be the same. A consciousness can only recognize another sentience when both are in the same mode. Sentience of one's own sentience is feasible but only when the subject and object sentiences are of the same mode. Each of our sentiences could be sentient of itself but would be oblivious of its opposite sentience, let alone be unable to follow its serial meaning and narratives. To a conscious sentience, its own opposite sentience lies unrecognized (though actively sentient) in a manner we term subconscious.

It is my consciousness that gives me a sense of 'I', that recognizes my sentience, and as a consciousness 'I' can be conscious in and of only one of my sentiences at a time. My sense of 'I' may switch between my sentiences but at any one moment 'I' am an unabashed consciousness of only one sentience and in only one mode - while my sentience of the opposite mode lurks unseen in subconsciousness, sentient but without personal agency. Only when the conscious/subconscious status of the sentiences is switched does the sentience that was subconscious become aware of itself and acquire the personal agency of 'I'. My sense of 'I' is different in each mode of consciousness.

In answer to the question "Who am I?", in the architective mode of consciousness I might identify with my body (as being separate from others), with my profession, ancestry, cultural heritage and social status, for example. I would have opinions, expectations and a self-image acquired over my personal history and these would be difficult to change. On the other hand, in the connective mode of consciousness I would respond to the question along the lines of "I am sitting comfortably, enjoying the breeze and the sounds of birds coming through the window while I tap at this keyboard." My connective sense of 'I' is a vibrant feeling of being, a receiver and giver of connective sensation. If asked how it was feeling, it would describe the sensations it was experiencing now and these would be different tomorrow.

Our consciousness, our sense of 'I', switches from one mode to the other.

Keep in mind that the serial narratives each sentience experiences may be seamless, since the serial meanings in their opposite mode are meaningless or irrelevant. Each sentience may experience seamless serial narratives even though its narratives are being interrupted and even though it may be switching in and out of consciousness.

The relevance of this arrangement for the present discussion is that when one's connective sentience is conscious all one's comprehension of architective serial meaning is subconscious, and when one's architective sentience is conscious all one's comprehension of connective serial meaning is subconscious. One may be sentient in both modes simultaneously, but conscious in only one at a time. (This does not mean that all one's comprehension of architective serial meaning is conscious when one's architective sentience is conscious - and vice versa - only that when one's architective sentience is conscious none of one's comprehension of connective serial meaning is conscious.)

Narratives in its opposite mode are completely opaque to a consciousness. One's consciousness could at best cobble together an approximation of what a narrative or experience of its opposite mode might be like using what few concepts it has to convey something that is totally alien to it. The act of reading or writing this book, for example, is an architective one - no words on these pages can convey what the experience of music is like, while no (wordless) music can possibly convey the ideas presented in this book. I can see or hear the words in both modes, but I will only understand them in one. Consciously, I either read a book or listen to music, or switch rapidly between them, but I cannot consciously do both simultaneously. I can do both simultaneously, but only one will be conscious.

We see the glory of this arrangement when a musician, having consciously mastered the architective mechanics required to perform a piece of music, consigns this architective mastery to their subconscious, allowing a connective consciousness to direct the performance in an empathic expression conveying the musician's feelings rather than their architective exertions.

While we are not conscious of our subconscious sentience, others may be aware of it through our subconscious expressions. However, they too can only be conscious of our subconscious sentience when their conscious and our subconscious sentiences are in the same mode. Similarly, I might be conscious of someone else's subconscious sentience that is in the mode of my consciousness.

Note that any serial meaning being communicated, consciously or subconsciously, must be of the same mode as the sentiences involved. Connective sentiences might communicate vibrationally while architective sentiences might communicate symbolically, for example.

I see both our conscious and subconscious sentiences capable of laying down memories and both sentiences capable of retrieving memories and constructing narratives, but of their own mode only.

Serial meanings that were perceived by one's subconscious sentience (and therefore in the mode of that sentience) do not necessarily percolate through to one's consciousness, only perhaps through to one's consciousness of that same mode. For example, during a business meeting one might subconsciously be attracted to another attendee, but it is only if one disengages from the architectivity of the business matter that one may consciously recognize the attraction.

Choice of Consciousness

My consciousness delivers my sense of who I am, and it is mode dependent. In the connective mode I am a flowing sense of being while in the architective mode I am an identity with a placement and history. My mode of consciousness significantly flavours my sense of who I am at any one moment.

My mode of consciousness also flavours my interaction with my environment and my appreciation of other sentiences, for it is only serial meanings of that mode I can evaluate and implement reflectively, and only sentiences of that mode I can recognize in others. It is my conscious sentience that reflects on questions of ethics and responsibility, and it does so in the context of its own mode only.

The choice of which sentience to engage consciously is not a trivial one.

But who exactly is making this choice? Is there another 'me', someone who is neither of these sentiences choosing which to implement consciously?

I think not: The sentience that is conscious is making the choice.

In the next chapter I show how our lives are dominated by architectivity, through environmental and social pressures, and because our sense of insecurity requires that we be in control at all times. Under these pressures, our architective sentience insists on consciousness while our connective sentience is considerably less anxious, so architective consciousness becomes our default, only to be released - perhaps - when not under architective pressure. It is an architective judgement that is made as to whether or not our architective consciousness can be released. Architective consciousness can become so habituated that an architective consciousness will always choose itself. A connective consciousness, on the other hand, will happily let go.

That an architective consciousness invariably chooses itself is the main reason why our choice of consciousness is so important. I think a major step in one's personal development (and one's success in negotiating a psychedelic experience) is having one's architective consciousness learn how and when to let go.

The habituation of architective consciousness is probably a trait we acquire in order to accommodate the overwhelming dominance of architectivity in our world. It is quite likely that as babies, or at least before becoming aware of our need to consciously respond to architective pressures, that the connective mode of consciousness was our default.

(In discussing sentience in this chapter I have been thinking only of our waking state. States such as sleep or coma require a different discussion. I have also only been considering sentiences associated with functional organisms such as ourselves. Sentiences not associated with functional organisms such as those attributed to our spirits are explored in Part III.)

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