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Sentience is a capacity for basic consciousness—the ability to feel or perceive, not necessarily including the faculty of self-awareness, the ability for sapience is not a necessity. The word sentient is often confused with the word sapient, which can connote knowledge, higher consciousness, or apperception. The root of the confusion is that the word conscious has a number of different meanings in English. The two words can be distinguished by looking at their Latin roots: sentire, "to feel"; and sapere, "to know".
Sentience is the ability to perceive. It is separate from, and not dependent on, the other aspects of consciousness; because of this, some have suggested the possibility of philosophical zombies, beings which are not sentient but nonetheless behave exactly as you would expect a human to behave.
Philosophy and sentience
Many philosophers, notably Colin McGinn, believe that sentience cannot ever be understood, no matter how much progress is made by neuroscience in understanding the brain. Holders of this position are called New Mysterians. They do not deny that most other aspects of consciousness are subject to scientific investigation, from creativity to sapience, to self-awareness. New Mysterians believe that only sentience cannot be comprehensively understood by science. This is called the hard problem of consciousness. There continues to be much debate among philosophers, with many adamant that there is no really hard problem with sentience whatsoever.
Animal rights and sentience
In the philosophy of animal rights, sentience is commonly seen as the ability to experience suffering. The 18th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham raised the issue of animal suffering and sadism in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation:
In terms of deductive argument, the case is as follows:
- Human and some non-human animals are sentient beings.
- All sentient beings have the ability to suffer.
- (We hold that) it's wrong to cause unnecessary suffering.
Therefore: (We should hold that) it is wrong to cause unnecessary suffering to human and non-human animals.
As Peter Singer argues, this is often dismissed by appeal to a distinction that condemns humans suffering but allows non-human suffering. However, as many of the suggested distinguishing features of humanity - intelligence; language; sapience etc. are not present in marginal cases such as young children or mentally disabled people, it appears that the only distinction is an irrational prejudice on the basis of species alone, which animal rights supporters call speciesism - that is, differentiating humans from other animals purely on the grounds that they are human.
Artificial intelligence
The issue of sentience also frequently arises in science fiction stories describing robots or computers with artificial intelligence. Intelligence and sentience are quite distinct, so the question arises as to whether computers with artificial intelligence will become sentient.
Some science fiction, most notably the recent Star Trek series *, uses the term sentience to describe a species with human-like intelligence, but a more appropriate term for intelligent beings is 'sapience'.
Eastern religion
Eastern religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism recognize nonhuman beings as sentient beings. In Jainism and Hinduism, this is closely related to the concept of ahimsa, nonviolence toward other beings. In Mahayana Buddhism, which includes Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, the concept is related to the Bodhisattva, an enlightened being devoted to the liberation of others. The first vow of a Bodhisattva states: "Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to free them."
References
- Book about A Theory of Sentience Readership: Philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists interested in sensation and perception. Authors, Austen Clark, Professor of Philosophy, University of Connecticut, Storrs
"Sentience"