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Sentience
Sentience is the ability to feel or perceive subjectivity|subjectively. It is an important concept in the philosophy of animal rights, in eastern philosophy and in science fiction, although in each of these fields the term is used slightly differently. Advocates of animal rights argue that all animals are sentient and that sentience (the ability to feel) entails suffering (the ability to feel pain), which in turn entails certain rights. In science fiction sentience is "personhood": the essentialism|essential quality that separates humankind from machines or lower animals. Sentience is also sometimes used in philosophy to describe the ability to have qualia (or "experiences"), one aspect of a central philosophical subject, consciousness.
Non-human animal rights and sentience
In the philosophy of animal rights, sentience entails the ability to experience suffering. Animal rights advocates argue that anything which can suffer is sentient and anything which is sentient has the same or similar rights as a human being.
In the 17th century Thomas Tryon, a self-identified Pythagorean, raised the issue of non-human suffering. Soon thereafter, many philosophers used the anatomical discoveries of the Enlightenment as a reason to include animals in what philosophers call "Glossary_of_Stoic_terms#s|sympatheia," the principle of who or what deserves sympathy. Benjamin Franklin's autobiography identifies Tryon's writings as an influence in his decision to try vegetarianism; no other part of the book mentions his reverting back to eating meat.[Ben Franklin, autobiography] Joseph Ritson coupled Tryon's work with Rousseau's for "Essay on Abstinence from Animal Food" as many Rousseauists became vegetarian. Voltaire compared the Hindu treatment of animals to how Europe's emperors & Popes treated even their fellow men, praising the former and heaping shame upon the latter; in the 17th century, Descartes, Pierre Gassendi, and Francis Bacon also advocated vegetarianism.[Guardian (UK) newspaper, review of Bloodless Revolution, published by Harper-Collins]
The 18th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham compiled Enlightenment beliefs in ''An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation'', and he included his own reasoning in a comparison between slavery and sadistic_personality_disorder |sadism toward animals:
In the 20th century, Princeton University professor Peter Singer argues that Bentham's conclusion is often dismissed by an appeal to a distinction that condemns human suffering but allows non-human suffering, typically "appeals" that are logical fallacies. Because many of the suggested distinguishing features of humanity -- extreme intelligence; highly complex language; etc. -- are not present in marginal cases such as young or mentally disabled humans, it appears that the only distinction is a prejudice based on species alone, which non-human animal rights supporters call speciesism - that is, differentiating humans from other animals purely on the grounds that they are human.
Gary Francione also bases his Abolitionism (animal rights)|abolitionist theory of animal rights, which differs significantly from Singer's, on sentience. He asserts that "all sentient beings, humans or nonhuman, have one right: the basic right not to be treated as the property of others."[Francione, Gary. Official blog]
Andrew Linzey, founder of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics in England, is known as a foremost international advocate for recognizing animals as sentient beings in Biblically-based faith traditions. The Interfaith Association of Animal Chaplains encourages animal Religious ministry|ministry groups to adopt a policy of recognizing and valuing sentient beings.
Science fiction
In science fiction, an extraterrestrial life|alien, android, robot, hologram or computer who is described as "sentient" is often ascribed qualities such as will, desire, consciousness, ethics, personality, intelligence, insight, and so on. Sentience is being used in this context to describe an essentialism|essential human property that brings all these other qualities with it.
Some science fiction plot lines explore ethics of artificial intelligence|ethical concerns, analogous to the concerns of advocates of animal rights. In an episode of ''Star Trek: The Next Generation|Star Trek: The Next Generation'', "The Measure of a Man (TNG episode)|The Measure of a Man," Data (Star Trek)|Data, a sentient android, takes legal action to prove that he has the same rights as a human being. In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Author, Author" the Doctor, a holographic program by nature, Fights for his rights as a sentient lifeform. The film ''Artificial Intelligence: A.I.'' considers a machine in the form of a small boy which has been given the ability to feel human emotions, including the capacity to suffer. Another example could be the film ''WALL-E'', where the titular character is an initially non-sentient robot who develops sentience over the 700 years he has been active. Other robots in the film also display similar signs of personality.
In many science fiction works sentience is often used as a synomym for ''sapience'' meaning "human-level or higher intelligence". But others make a distinction, for example in David Brin's Uplift Universe| Uplift stories the Tandu are undoubtedly sapient (both technologically skilled and cunning) but only marginally sentient, since they regard other races and sometimes other Tandu mainly as potential prey.
Eastern religion
Eastern religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism recognize nonhumans as sentient beings. In Jainism and Hinduism, this is closely related to the concept of ahimsa, nonviolence toward other beings. In Jainism, all matter is endowed with sentience; there are six degrees of sentience, from one to six. Water, for example, is a sentient being of first order, as it is considered to possess only one sense, that of touch. Man is considered to be sentient being of the sixth order. According to Buddhism, sentient beings made of pure consciousness are possible. 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 Bodhisattva vows|vow of a Bodhisattva states: "Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to free them."
Sentience is, from a Buddhist perspective, the state of having senses (sat + ta in Pali or sat + tva in Sanskrit). In Buddhism, the senses are six in number, the sixth being the mind or consciousness, just as consciousness is in the whole body.[Sugunasiri, Suwanda H J, The Whole Body, not Heart, as 'Seat of Consciousness': the Buddha's View', Philosophy East & West, vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 409-430] Sentience, then, is the ability to sense / experience pain and pleasure, make conscious choices, such as abstaining from action, speech, speculation, etc. Thus, while an animal qualifies as a sentient being, a computer doesn't, for at least two reasons: (a) Even if it makes intelligent decisions (which no computer will ever be capable of without sentience), it has to be programmed by an outside agent (human or even a super-computer), whereas a sentient being is self-directed, and (b) a computer must always perform using instructions in order to communicate, whereas a sentient being, can still express in silence - through kinesics (body lanaguage), oculesics (eye language) and proxemics (distance).
Philosophy and sentience
In the philosophy of consciousness, "sentience" can refer to the human ability to have subjective perceptual experiences, or "qualia".Sentience quotient
The Sentience Quotient concept was introduced by Robert A. Freitas Jr. in the late 1970s.[Dr. Freitas, Robert A. Jr., ''Xenopsychology'', Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, Vol. 104, April 1984, pp 41-53] It defines sentience as the relationship between the information processing rate of each individual processing unit (neuron), the weight/size of a single unit and the total number of processing units (expressed as mass). It was proposed as a measure for the sentience of all beings living and computer from a single neuron up to a hypothetical being at the theoretical computational limit of the entire universe. On a logarithmic scale it runs from -70 up to +50.
Sentience vs. Sapience
The word ''sentient'' is often confused with the word ''sapience|sapient'', which can connote knowledge, consciousness, or apperception. The root of the confusion is that the word ''conscious'' has a number of different usages in the English language. The two words can be distinguished by looking at their Latin root (linguistics)|roots: ''sentire'', "to feel"; and ''sapere'', "to know." Thus, sentience is a subjective experience, while sapience is a somewhat more objective cognitive ability.
Notes
References
- Sugunasiri, Suwanda H J, The Whole Body, not Heart, as 'Seat of Consciousness': the Buddha's View', Philosophy East & West, vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 409-430). Prof. Sugunasiri is Founder of Nalanda College of Buddhist Studies, Toronto, Canada
- Jeremy Bentham - Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
- 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
- D. Cole: Sense and Sentience SENSE5 8/18/90; rev. 1-19-98. (original 1983) copyright David Cole University of Minnesota, Duluth
Category:Philosophy of mind
Category:Self
Category:Consciousness studies
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