Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-24048868-20200724135354/@comment-45692830-20200724164107

Well, it's not clear that a dog is sentient by the actual dictionary definition, no. Certainly it can react to stimuli, but what matters for the definition is whether it has qualia.

Note also: "Phenomenal consciousness refers to the qualitative, subjective, experiential, or phenomenological aspects of conscious experience, sometimes identified with qualia. (In this article we also use the term “sentience” to refer to phenomenal consciousness.)" (Just noting here that that entire article is relevant [but especially 4.2], this issue is deeply contentious.)

Many moral philosophers have held dogs are sentient (Bentham, most famously, and modernly most every utilitarian and quite a few but not all Kantians [note I mean modern in the contemporary sense, not in the modern period of philosophy sense]), but it's not a trivial fact. Humans are the only "non debatably" sentient species we know of, and well, under the qualia definition, technically you could argue humans aren't sentient either.

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So I don't see a massive issue with "sentient" if we do choose to use it, even if "sapient" might be slightly better, it's a 60/40 split sort of thing. I certainly agree with a rework in general as well.