Sentience in science fiction 101

Abstract

OXFORD DICTIONARIES defines sentience as the ability to perceive or feel. Bortolotti and Harris emphasise the distinction between the capacity to have experiences and react appropriately to external stimuli (sentience) and the additional capacity to be aware of oneself as a distinct individual whose existence began sometime in the past and will extend into the future (self-consciousness). The authors contend that reactive behaviour without intentionality is not ‘sentience’ as it does not involve phenomenal consciousness and is merely the capacity to react to external stimuli. Plants and computers have this property without being aware of the qualitative aspects of the stimuli they react to. Having phenomenal conscious experiences requires the awareness of some qualitative aspects (or qualia) of the experiences, for instance the brightness of a colour one perceives visually. Another characterization of sentience is the capacity to feel emotions, such as pain or pleasure. While plants and computers react to external stimuli, they do not feel emotions. This concept is central to the philosophy of animal rights, since sentience is necessary for the ability to suffer, and is thus held to confer certain rights. Indeed, Ned Block asserts that ‘fundamentally different physical realization from us per se is not a ground of rational belief in lack of consciousness’. Furthermore, Marc Bekoff believes that humans are not exceptional or alone in the arena of sentience. He insists that we need to abandon the anthropocentric view that only big-brained animals such as ourselves, non-human great apes, elephants and cetaceans have sufficient mental capacity for complex forms of sentience and consciousness. In science fiction, an alien, android, robot, hologram or computer described as ‘sentient’ is usually treated in the same way as a human being. Foremost among these properties is human level intelligence (sapience) but sentient characters also typically display desire, will, consciousness, ethic, personality, insight and humour. Sentience is used in this context to describe an essential human property that unites all of these other qualities. The words ‘sapience’, ‘self-awareness’ and ‘consciousness’ are used in similar ways and sometimes – and confusingly –interchangeably in science fiction.