Sentience
what defines sentience?
refering to the recent debate "what do you think of the belief that life begins with the first brainwaves?" i thought this might be a more direct and covering question over abortion and babies and maybe some other things such as being comotosed and braindead.
out of a dictionary it says "being able to percieve or feel things" although i would disagree with this (in the sense we use the word today)
what do you think?
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I always thought sentience was the ability to see, feel, touch, taste and smell. What every animal does. This topic reminds me about something I read. To test if an animal is self-aware, scientists would place a mirror in front of the animal and see if it recognises itself. Some birds can't. Dolphins can. Humans can. In the end you could say that intelligence defines sentience. 2
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i can agree that intelligence would have some affect on whether something is sentient, but not all animals 'see, feel, touch, taste and smell'. some humans are blind, can we classify them as less sentient? or some animals can sense things we cannot, eg. cows before a storm. other animals can sense better than we can, eg. the mantis shrimp, ables to see colours we can't imagine. do we call these animals more sentient in ways than ourselves? 1
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I wouldn't say we would. The point I was trying to get across is that an animal that can do one or more of these things is a sentient being. If any animals happen to have seemingly supernatural abilities, that is from an evolutionary advantage- not because they are more aware of themselves and their surroundings. |
