Sentience

Sentience is being capable of feeling, consciousness or having some form of mind. Eighteenth-century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think (reason) from the ability to feel (sentience).

Intelligence and sentience

In simple English, to be sentient means displaying and/or having the ability to:

1. Feel
2. Perceive
3. Desire
4. possibly Will, though this goes beyond some definitions.

Philosophy and sentience

In the philosophy of consciousness, sentience can refer to the ability of any thing to have subjective perceptual experiences, or as some philosophers refer to them, "qualia".

Animal rights and sentience

Thinking about sentience is important when studying animal rights. This is because feeling is needed in order to suffer. The basis of animal rights is that some animals have emotions, can feel pain and also feel happy and well.

Sentience Media

• 

  Determining which animals can experience sensations is challenging, but scientists generally agree that vertebrates, as well as many invertebrate species, are likely sentient.

• 

  An octopus traveling with shells collected for protection. Despite evolving independently from humans for over 600 million years, octopuses show various signs of sentience. Octopuses, along with all other cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans, were recognized as sentient by the United Kingdom in 2023.

• 

  Experiments suggest that bees can display an optimistic mood, engage in playful behavior, and strategically avoid threats or harmful situations unless the reward is significant.