Abstract This volume is the natural follow-up to Arthur Reber’s 2019 book, The First Minds: Caterpillars, ‘Karyotes, and Consciousness (TFM). In that earlier work, the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) theory was developed based on a number of earlier efforts published in a variety of journals between 1997 and 2019 as well as in talks, colloquia, and presentations at conferences. The core proposition in TFM was that life and mind are co-terminous. All organisms, all species extant and extinct, are sentient. All have an existentially secure consciousness—without which they would have been evolutionary dead-ends, unable to survive in the chaotic, dangerous environment in which life first appeared. And, importantly, all forms of sentience, all forms of cognitive functioning right up to and including those expressed by humans, evolved from the original expression of consciousness at the birth of life in prokaryotes. The proposition that all life forms evolved from those first unicellular species is a widely accepted, foundational principle of the biological and social sciences. The CBC simply applies that same proposition to sentience.
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