Sentience
Sentience is the ability to experience.
Last updated
Sentience is the ability to experience.
Last updated
Basic Intelligence - Capacity for processing information, using memory to apply logic, often in reaction to external stimuli. - Not to be confused with more colloquial definitions of intelligence which refer to high-cognition problem solving. - Computers can be considered intelligent in this way, but not sentient. Sentience/Mind - An emergent property of intelligence that generates the intangible experience of life that includes perceptual experiences. For example, the experience of seeing the colour blue is different from simply the concept of that wavelength of light. - Sentience is not to be confused with sapience. - Sentience (experiencing a feeling) is not to be confused with a simple input signal, such as is the case with nociception. - Sentience is generally the root trait for recognizing ethical relevance. Consciousness - Is confusingly sometimes used synonymously with sentience. - Is confusingly sometimes used synonymously with self-awareness. - Is sometimes used to refer to whether someone is awake and aware of their surroundings. Self-awareness - Capacity for self-reflection. - The famous phrase "I think, therefore I am" refers to how one can know one's own self-awareness and therefore sentience and existence. - Passing the mirror test is commonly used as an indicator for self-awareness. Several animals can pass this test. Sapience - Capacity for wisdom. - The term 'sapience' is rooted in the Latin word 'sapiens' (meaning intelligent) which was also used in 'homo sapiens'. In this way, we have developed the term and concept of sapience based specifically on human wisdom, which has been criticized as a form of gatekeeping.
Sentience is typically the minimum required trait for ethical relevancy. "The question is not 'Can they reason?' nor 'Can they talk?' but 'Can they suffer?'" - Jeremy Bentham Suffering: If something isn't sentient, it cannot feel pain nor anything at all, since feeling is a conscious experience (separate from nociception). Therefore the concept of suffering and enjoyment only applies to sentient individuals. Rights: If something isn't sentient, it has no interests to consider. Someone cannot be a moral subject without having a subjective experience. Sources on nociception: "Nociception is the neural process of encoding noxious stimuli, whereas pain is defined as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience" "Nociception refers to a signal arriving at the central nervous system as a result of the stimulation of specialised sensory receptors in the peripheral nervous system [...] Nociceptors are activated by potentially noxious stimuli, as such nociception is the physiological process [...] nociception and pain should not be used synonymously, because each can occur without the other"
Determining sentience is currently done by observing the presence of physical structures and behaviours that we have come to associate with sentience. A brain or central nervous system, reaction to negative stimuli, the mirror test - stuff like that.
Logical path: - I think therefore I am. I am aware of my own self, therefore I can know myself to be sentient and self-aware. - Other humans behave in a lot of the same ways as I do and have the same kind of neural structures that I do, so they are likely sentient too. - We can see the same stuff in a lot of other animals, so they're probably also sentient (and therefore ethically relevant). We cannot know anything for certain beyond "I think therefore I am" because scenarios like the brain in a vat are unfalsifiable. It is also so far impossible to directly measure sentience and there is still much to learn about it so far. Nevertheless, looking at neurological structures and behaviours are the best tools we have so far for determining sentience, and are already widely accepted ways to infer sentience. (The brain in a vat scenario is a thought experiment showing that it is a possibility that you are actually just a brain in a vat with wires connecting your brain to a supercomputer that is simulating reality. Whether true or not, it is a useful thought experiment to test the limits of our ability to determine what is true.)