The authors contend that reactive behaviour without intentionality is not ‘sentience’ as it does not involve phenomenal consciousness and is merely the capacity to react to external stimuli. Plants and computers have this property without being aware of the qualitative aspects of the stimuli they react to.
Having phenomenal conscious experiences requires the awareness of some qualitative aspects (or qualia) of the experiences, for instance the brightness of a colour one perceives visually. Another characterization of sentience is the capacity to feel emotions, such as pain or pleasure. While plants and computers react to external stimuli, they do not feel emotions. This concept is central to the philosophy of animal rights, since sentience is necessary for the ability to suffer, and is thus held to confer certain rights. Indeed, Ned Block asserts that ‘fundamentally different physical realization from us per se is not a ground of rational belief in lack of consciousness’. Furthermore, Marc Bekoff believes that humans are not exceptional or alone in the arena of sentience. He insists that we need to abandon the anthropocentric view that only big-brained animals such as ourselves, non-human great apes, elephants and cetaceans have sufficient mental capacity for complex forms of sentience and consciousness. In science fiction, an alien, android, robot, hologram or computer described as ‘sentient’ is usually treated in the same way as a human being. Foremost among these properties is human level intelligence (sapience) but sentient characters also typically display desire, will, consciousness, ethic, personality, insight and humour.
Sentience is used in this context to describe an essential human property that unites all of these other qualities. The words ‘sapience’, ‘self-awareness’ and ‘consciousness’ are used in similar ways and sometimes – and confusingly –interchangeably in science fiction.It’s okay to kill animals because they aren’t sentient/sapient Rebuttal Quick ResponseĪnimals can sense the world around them just like we can, feel pain just like we can, and they most definitely can suffer, just like we can.
Sentience vs sapience full#
What else is it that should trace the insuperable line ? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? he question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but Can they suffer? The famous quote from Jeremy Bentham is appropriate here: Just because animals are not self-aware (sapient) does not give us the right to cause them suffering and death.
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