This morning, let's take a quick look at a frequently misused, or at least misunderstood, set of terms.
Common mistake: Sapience versus Sentience
"Sentience," the noun form of "sentient," frequently heard in science fiction and fantasy, means the ability to perceive individual experiences. According to the Miriam-Webster Dictionary, the exact definition is:
sentient: 1: responsive to or conscious of sense impressions 2: AWARE 3: finely sensitive in perception or feeling
"Sapience," noun of sapient, is the ability to think, and to reason.
sapience: WISDOM, SAGACITY
It may not seem like much a difference, but the ability to reason is tied more closely to sapience than to sentience. Most animals are sentient, (yes, you can correctly say your dog is sentient!) but only humans are sapient.
For further reading on the difference, check out these articles:
Wikipedia Sapience
Wikipedia Sentience
AskDefine Sentience (of particular interest is the user-contributed dictionary)
AskDefine Sapience
Sentience is commonly used in science fiction and fantasy as synonymous with sapience, although the words aren't synonyms. Does applying the proper definitions change your interpretation of the stories? If all the characters in Star Trek (or your favorite Sci-Fi show) know that sentience is the ability to perceive but not to reason, does their use of the word mean they're all mostly vegan?
Common mistake: Sapience versus Sentience
"Sentience," the noun form of "sentient," frequently heard in science fiction and fantasy, means the ability to perceive individual experiences. According to the Miriam-Webster Dictionary, the exact definition is:
sentient: 1: responsive to or conscious of sense impressions 2: AWARE 3: finely sensitive in perception or feeling
"Sapience," noun of sapient, is the ability to think, and to reason.
sapience: WISDOM, SAGACITY
It may not seem like much a difference, but the ability to reason is tied more closely to sapience than to sentience. Most animals are sentient, (yes, you can correctly say your dog is sentient!) but only humans are sapient.
For further reading on the difference, check out these articles:
Wikipedia Sapience
Wikipedia Sentience
AskDefine Sentience (of particular interest is the user-contributed dictionary)
AskDefine Sapience
Sentience is commonly used in science fiction and fantasy as synonymous with sapience, although the words aren't synonyms. Does applying the proper definitions change your interpretation of the stories? If all the characters in Star Trek (or your favorite Sci-Fi show) know that sentience is the ability to perceive but not to reason, does their use of the word mean they're all mostly vegan?
OK, mussels react with anxiety when a dog whelk enters the vicinity. The snail is carniverous, and eats the muscle by drilling through its shell. But if the snail enters too far into the mussel bed the surrounding mussels attack it by attaching those threads they use to anchor themselves to the snail's shell. The snail eats the mussel it is already on, (it takes several weeks) but then cannot move. It eventually starves to death. Are the mussels sentient? Just asking.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading, Bart! It seems to me that sentience is tied to the ability to perceive unique experiences, from the articles I've linked. There should be a sense of individual feeling, which I'm not sure a mussel would have. While the mussels might react to an intruder, I'd think the nervous system wouldn't be sufficiently developed to have a central awareness (and thus the ability to have subjective experiences). I could see the attack being a physically triggered response mechanism (like a plant turning to face the sun), instead of a "hey that's a predator, oh shoot, I need to kill it or run away" reaction. The ability to have an "I" or "me" is something I don't think a mussel would have. By my interpretation, that would mean a mussel would not be sentient. Still, I think that very argument you've just made is a valid justification, and used by some animals rights' groups.
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