In the film Independence Day (Emmerich, 1996), hundreds of gigantic spaceships invaded the earth, their shadows slowly blocked out the light in the cities over which they flew and filled the cinema screen with darkness. A group of humans gathered on top of a skyscraper over which one of the space ships hovered, in the hope that contact with an alien civilisation would promote the dawn of a new ...

The chapter describes a mathematical theory of sapience and consciousness: higher mental abilities including abilities for concepts, emotions, instincts, understanding, imagination, intuition, beautiful, and sublime. The knowledge instinct drives our understanding of the world. Aesthetic emotions, our needs for beautiful and sublime are related to the knowledge instinct. I briefly discuss neuro...