Sapience vs sentience
#Sapience vs sentience 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. 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 is used in this context to describe an essential human property that unites all of these other qualities. Foremost among these properties is human level intelligence (sapience) but sentient characters also typically display desire, will, consciousness, ethic, personality, insight and humour. In science fiction, an alien, android, robot, hologram or computer described as ‘sentient’ is usually treated in the same way as a human being.
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. Furthermore, Marc Bekoff believes that humans are not exceptional or alone in the arena of sentience. Indeed, Ned Block asserts that ‘fundamentally different physical realization from us per se is not a ground of rational belief in lack of consciousness’. 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.
While plants and computers react to external stimuli, they do not feel emotions. Another characterization of sentience is the capacity to feel emotions, such as pain or pleasure.
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. Plants and computers have this property without being aware of the qualitative aspects of the stimuli they react to. 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. Bortolotti and Harris emphasise the distinction between the capacity to have experiences and react appropriately to external stimuli (sentience) and the additional capacity to be aware of oneself as a distinct individual whose existence began sometime in the past and will extend into the future (self-consciousness). OXFORD DICTIONARIES defines sentience as the ability to perceive or feel. Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: