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Science fiction often kicks around terms like the rights of sentient beings.

If that's going to be the standard for how we treat new species that we meet or make in

the future.

We better give us some serious thought now to what we truly mean by sentient.

So today we'll be exploring the concept of sentience, what it is and if we can replicate

it, along with the parallel concept of sapience.

Neither is a very easy concept to define, but that's probably the best place to begin.

Sentience is considered to be the capacity to fear, perceive, or experience subjectively,

and is often considered separate from the faculty of reasoning or thinking.

It is the ability to experience sensations,

which tells us both a lot and very little.

Sentience is one of those fundamental philosophical concepts that is hard not to talk about

self-referentially, but in many ways it isn't just part of what you are, but the bit of

you that lets you even be aware there is a you.

We have a classical expression by René de Carre, Cajito ergo sum, or I think therefore

...