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Originally Posted by Phang
what's the official science definition, as supported by science, of sentience?
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Well, quite. I have no problem with animals being defined as sentient, since by dictionary definition this generally seems to apply to capacity for sensation, or feeling. Quoth Wiki :
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Sentience is the capacity for basic consciousness — the ability to feel or perceive, not necessarily including the faculty of self-awareness. The word sentient is often confused with the word sapient, which can connotate knowledge, higher consciousness, or apperception. The root of the confusion is that the word conscious has a number of different meanings in English. (One can easily distinguish the two by looking at their Latin roots: sentire, "to feel"; and sapere, "to know".)
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Animals certainly "feel" things, as in respond to stimuli of various kinds. However, sentient (in the Star Trek sense of the word) sometimes means more advanced consciousness or "self-awareness". This seems somewhat stretching it, based on the evidence. If animals are conscious in the sense that I mean consciousness then I see no justification (aside from perhaps "speciesm") of saying humans lives are more important than animal ones. Certainly there would not be such a clear cut distinction between "cosmetic" research and "medical" research (even ignoring the fact that some medical research is cosmetic).