sentience
SEN-shuhns
/ˈsɛn.ʃəns/
The capacity to experience feelings and sensations subjective to an organism.
Specifically emphasizes feeling, pain, pleasure, and sensory feeling rather than complex abstract thought.
The story behind the word. From Latin 'sentire', meaning to feel or perceive by senses. Shares lineage with sense, sensory, and sentiment.
Word relationships
- sentiency: Sentiency is an older variant form of sentience.
- insentience: Inability to feel or perceive emotions and sensations.
Commonly confused with
- sapience: Sapience implies wisdom and intelligence, whereas sentience implies feeling and sensation.
Word family
- sentient (adjective): Able to perceive or feel things.
Collocations
- animal sentience
- artificial sentience
- degree of sentience
Example sentences
- "Ethical frameworks concerning animal rights are grounded in the recognition of animal sentience." Animal ethics
Memory hook
SENTIence comes from SENSE: feeling sensations like temperature or pain. Sensing and feeling.
When not to use
Do not confuse with high intelligence or reasoning power.
Fun facts
- Legal debates now center on whether advanced AI could eventually achieve sentience.
Related words
Explore more words
hedonic, sensation, subjectivity, subjective, sensory, sadistic
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