From Shadow to Substance: The Sentient Principle as a Unified Framework for Sentience Across All Life

<p><span>Current debates surrounding “basal cognition,” “minimal cognition,” “plant intelligence,” and “consciousness” remain mired in terminological disputes, with disputants arguing over definitional boundaries rather than engaging with the biological phenomena themselves. This paper proposes a meta-theoretical framework grounded in the “Sentient Principle,” shifting the focus of cognitive research from the shadow of classificatory disputes—definitions, analogies, and phenomenological labels—back to the substance itself: the observable biological reality of sentient life.</span></p> <p><span>We advocate the “sensation-behavior loop” as the foundational unit for understanding sentience across all life, providing a coherent explanatory framework from unicellular organisms to human cognition. By distinguishing between “value-based selection” (one-time physicochemical execution of innate programs) and “value-dependent selection” (iterative consolidation based on experiential feedback), we elucidate the essential difference between adaptive flux and genuine learning, and introduce “iterative depth” and “memory depth” as measurable parameters of learning capacity. We further propose that the qualitative leap in human cognition is enabled by “perimpletion”—the extension of the sensation-behavior loop beyond individual boundaries through tools, symbols, and cultural transmission—a concept developed from Feigenberg’s (2006) work on Homo sapiens perimplens.</span></p> <p><span>We argue that all empirical research should be evaluated by a single criterion: does it illuminate how an organism senses, is driven by, and acts to resolve states of unease relative to its three fundamental tensions—defensive, aggressive, and empathetic? Ultimately, we call for a shift from terminological disputes to direct engagement with the biological reality of sentience as a universal property of life.</span></p>