Concept
Sentience
Overview
Sentience is the ability to experience feelings and sensations. It may not necessarily imply higher cognitive functions such as awareness, reasoning, or complex thought processes. Some theorists define sentience exclusively as the capacity for valenced (positive or negative) mental experiences, such as pain and pleasure.
Sentience is an important concept in ethics, as the ability to experience happiness or suffering often forms a basis for determining which entities deserve moral consideration, particularly in utilitarianism.
The word "sentience" has been used to translate a variety of concepts in Asian religions. In science fiction, "sentience" is sometimes used interchangeably with "sapience", "self-awareness", or "consciousness".
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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This perception, they say, is an _act_ of the mind, proceeding from its own spontaneous activity; while in a sensation the mind is passive, being merely acted upon by the outward object. And according to some metaphysicians, it is by an act of the mind, similar to perception, except in not being preceded by any sensation, that the existence of God, the soul, and other hyper-physical objects is recognised. These acts…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic
States what Sentience is; the author is tied to Sentience in the knowledge graph.
All or most of these various sensations frequently are, and, as we learn by experience, always might be, experienced simultaneously, or in many different orders of succession at our own choice: and hence the thought of any one of them makes us think of the others, and the whole becomes mentally amalgamated into one mixed state of consciousness, which, in the language of the school of Locke and Hartley, is termed a…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Sentience is; the author is tied to Sentience in the knowledge graph.
If a determination of the feeling of pleasure or pain is called sensation, this expression signifies something quite different from what I mean when I call the representation of a thing (by sense, as a receptivity belonging to the cognitive faculty) sensation. For in the latter case the representation is referred to the Object, in the former simply to the subject, and is available for no cognition whatever, not even…
Immanuel Kant, Kant's Critique of Judgement
States what Sentience is.
Philosophers who discussed Sentience
- John Stuart Mill
- Francis Hutcheson (philosopher)
- Peter Singer
- David Chalmers
- Plotinus
- Nick Bostrom
- Peter Godfrey-Smith
Related ideas
- What Is It Like to Be a Bat?
- Emotion
- Subjective character of experience
- Artificial intelligence
- Sentient beings (Buddhism)
- Hinduism
- Creativity
- Jainism
- Feeling
- Pleasure
- Saṃsāra
- Intentionality
- Skandha
- Functionalism (philosophy of mind)
- Thomas Nagel
- Mind
- Eastern religions
- Qualia
- Nervous system
- Sense
- Peter Singer
- Pain
- Jīva (Jainism)
- David Chalmers
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Animism.