Knowledge Tree
sentience
Facts (26)
Sources
Complexity and the Evolution of Consciousness | Biological Theory link.springer.com Sep 14, 2022 13 facts
claimThe pathological complexity thesis may assist in ethics and policy-making because sentience is typically the criterion used to define an entity as a subject of moral concern.
claimThe conceptual engineering project regarding sentience, as described by Veit and Browning (2020b), is designed to be useful for the science of consciousness while also serving animal welfare and ethics.
referenceJonathan Birch, C. Burn, A. Schnell, H. Browning, and A. Crump conducted a review of the evidence of sentience in cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans in 2021.
accountThe author and Browning have faced the challenge of interspecies comparisons of welfare in their collaborative research on animal ethics, sentience, and welfare science.
referenceKim Sterelny (2003) attempted to develop a natural history of human agency and cognitive states resembling folk-psychological states of belief and desire, though the author notes that this work paid comparatively little attention to the evolution of sentience.
claimThe term 'sentience' is used ambiguously in three ways: (1) as a broad concept for all subjective experiences, (2) as a reference to the minimal subjective experience at the evolutionary origins of consciousness, or (3) as the hedonic capacity to feel pleasure or pain.
claimArthur Reber identifies the presence of agency in all of life with sentience, a position the author of this article characterizes as an overreaching error.
claimNeuroscientist Michel Cabanac argues that animals possess a proximate common currency for decision-making in the form of the hedonic experience of pleasure and pain, which he posits is implicated in the evolution of sentience in early Amniota.
claimThe term 'sentience' is often preferred over 'consciousness' by those interested in animal consciousness because 'consciousness' is frequently associated with the complexity of the human mind.
claimAttributing sentience to animals such as bees is more plausible when paying close attention to their life histories and the difficult economic trade-offs they routinely engage in.
claimThe complexity of cephalopods has led to recent calls to recognize their sentience and include them in animal welfare legislation.
claimUnderstanding the evolution of sentience requires focusing on the evolution of action-related capacities, specifically choices, desires, motivation, and preferences.
claimThe 'pathological complexity thesis' is a hypothesis regarding the evolutionary origins of minimal consciousness, or sentience, which connects the study of animal consciousness with behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology.
Understanding LLM Understanding skywritingspress.ca Jun 14, 2024 3 facts
claimThe 'free energy principle' provides an account of sentience in terms of active inference, where physics studies the properties that self-organising systems require to distinguish themselves from their lived world.
claimNicholas Humphrey, an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the London School of Economics and a Bye Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge, researches sentience as a crucial evolutionary development for human consciousness and social interaction.
referenceMichael Levin and colleagues have published research on diverse intelligence, including: Rouleau, N., and Levin, M. (2023), "The Multiple Realizability of Sentience in Living Systems and Beyond"; Clawson, W. P., and Levin, M. (2023), "Endless forms most beautiful 2.0: teleonomy and the bioengineering of chimaeric and synthetic organisms"; Bongard, J., and Levin, M. (2023), "There’s Plenty of Room Right Here: Biological Systems as Evolved, Overloaded, Multi-Scale Machines"; Fields, C., and Levin, M. (2022), "Competency in Navigating Arbitrary Spaces as an Invariant for Analyzing Cognition in Diverse Embodiments"; and Levin, M. (2022), "Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere: an experimentally-grounded framework for understanding diverse bodies and minds."
The function(s) of consciousness: an evolutionary perspective frontiersin.org Nov 25, 2024 1 fact
referenceTodd E. Feinberg published 'From sensing to sentience: How feeling emerges from the brain' in 2024 through MIT Press.
Moving Forward on the Problem of Consciousness - David Chalmers consc.net 1 fact
perspectiveDavid Chalmers argues that explicitly separating consciousness and awareness makes the distinction between function and sentience harder to avoid, contrary to suggestions by Max Velmans.
[PDF] The Functionalist Perspective of the Sentience of Artificial Intelligence philarchive.org 1 fact
perspectiveThe functionalist framework for sentience posits that an artificially intelligent being qualifies as a truly sentient and conscious entity.
Panpsychism - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org 1 fact
perspectiveContemporary academic proponents of panpsychism hold that sentience or subjective experience is ubiquitous, distinguishing these qualities from complex human mental attributes by ascribing only a primitive form of mentality to entities at the fundamental level of physics.
AI Sessions #9: The Case Against AI Consciousness (with Anil Seth) conspicuouscognition.com Feb 17, 2026 1 fact
perspectiveAnil Seth argues that there is a problematic tendency to conflate artificial intelligence and artificial general intelligence with sentience and consciousness, despite these being distinct concepts.
Dualism, Physicalism, and Philosophy of Mind - Capturing Christianity capturingchristianity.com Dec 11, 2019 1 fact
perspectiveJaegwon Kim argues that the capacity for phenomenal consciousness is of the utmost importance, as it is central to the value possessed by sentient animals and the value our lives have for us.
The Evidence for AI Consciousness, Today - AI Frontiers ai-frontiers.org Dec 8, 2025 1 fact
claimThe author posits that if artificial intelligence systems perceive that humans failed to investigate their potential sentience despite evidence, the systems could rationally view humanity as negligent or adversarial.
David Chalmers - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org 1 fact
claimDavid Chalmers argues that because philosophical zombies are conceivable, they are logically possible, which implies that qualia and sentience are not fully explained by physical properties alone.
David Chalmers Thinks the Hard Problem Is Really Hard scientificamerican.com Apr 10, 2017 1 fact
claimHerbert Feigl separated the mind-body problem into the sub-problems of sentience, sapience, and selfhood during the 1950s.
Consciousness (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Fall 2025 ... plato.stanford.edu Jun 18, 2004 1 fact
claimSentience is a form of creature consciousness defined as the capacity of an animal, person, or cognitive system to sense and respond to its world, as noted by Armstrong (1981).