Sentience & Sapience

Public sentientologic record
Property of the Royal Atheneum of Hövnís, Eörpe

In sentientologic studies, when defining whether something is to be considered alive (and thus, a lifeform), sentience and sapience are two concepts that are considered among the most important to quantify and test against.
In most texts a lifeform is defined as something that fulfills at least two of the four following criteria: a) isn’t non-sapient b) isn’t non-sentient c) features a biochemistry d) doesn’t rely on explicit external input to function and operate. Even so, it's rare to see something officially accepted as alive and a lifeform unless sentience is observed. Sapience isn't considered crucial for being classified as alive, but is considered necessary for forming advanced civilization.

Complementary Documentation For:

The documentation below will briefly go through the concepts of Sentience and Sapience.

Sentience

In its simplest and most fundamental definition sentience is the capacity for a lifeform to experience sensations, such as light or pain. While the capacity to feel emotions, such as fear and grief, is also commonly associated with sentience these two abilities shouldn’t be confused.
A sentient lifeform can be able to experience sensations without being able to experience emotions. In later years, it’s become increasingly popular to make a distinction by calling lifeforms documented to have the capacity for experiencing both as Anisentient. This is, however, not considered an official term in the general science community.
Sentience stands apart from sapience which is, simply explained, the capacity to think and comprehend the world in an elaborate way. Typically, it’s regarded as required to be sentient in order to be sapient, but the reverse isn’t true.
Sentience should also not be confused with the concept of consciousness, which defined as the ability to have subjective perceptual experiences. Sentience, intelligence, sapience, self-awareness, and intentionality is often considered parts of a consciousness.
It should also be mentioned that the ability to form qualia, which succinctly explained is the subjective awareness of experiences, isn’t a requirement in order to be qualify as sentient.

Affective Valence Evaluation

When evaluating whether a lifeform is sentient or not, it’s often studied to see if it enters a subjective state that has so-called affective valence (a positive or negative reaction) when subjected to a sensation. If a lifeform can distinguish between positive valence (such as pleasure) and negative valence (such as pain), they are most assuredly sentient.

Sentient Rights Act

All sentient life is considered to have a moral status that has to be taken into consideration in the modern galactic society. Within the United Worlds, all sentient life falls under the Sentient Rights Acts – a collection of legislations and laws meant to protect sentient lifeforms from having to unnecessarily experience sensations of negative affective valence. This includes the right to a healthy life without needless suffering, and the right to have food, water, and shelter.
Several advanced worlds have also added additional legislations regarding the rights for wild animals to live undisturbed in their natural habitats, and the number of protected reserves found on different worlds have increased significantly in the last few years.

Sapience

The perhaps most common definition of sapience is the capacity to think and comprehend the world in an elaborate way. A sapient lifeform is able to contemplate and act productively using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight. They often possess a complex sense of self-awareness and is capable of reasoning and abstracting.
A lifeform that is sapient is also considered capable to have foreknowledge of something, and to reflect on the consequences of all available courses of actions, and to be able to yield or pick the option with the most advantage for either present or future implication.
Commonly sapience is also associated with the ability for unbiased judgment, compassion, experiential self-knowledge, self-transcendence, non-attachments, ethics, and benevolence. It gives a lifeform the ability to deal with difficult questions of life and to adapt to its complex requirements.
This in turn often requires a certain level of metacognition which affords life reflections and judgment about critical life matters. This can include such things such as recognizing the limit of one’s own knowledge, acknowledging uncertainty and chance, paying attention to contexts and the bigger picture, and to integrate different perspectives of a given situation.

Personhood

Sapience is considered a requirement to be able to develop a level of individuality that in most ethical systems quantifies as personhood.
Exactly what makes a person count as a person is still a common topic of philosophical debate, and the definition can also differ slightly between cultures. But generally, a person tends to be defined as a being that has certain capacities such as reason, morality, consciousness, or self-consciousness, and is able to be a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, or legal responsibility.

Sapient Rights & Equality Act

Regardless of actual definition, it’s formally legislated within the United World that all sapient lifeforms reserve the right to be treated as a person and to be treated equally.

Variable Sentience & Sapience

An interesting phenomena that has been observed in several species is a variable level of consciousness among it’s specimens, especially regarding sentience and sapience, depending on a range of different factors. It’s assumed most of these originate from evolutionary adaptions. Below is a few examples of such variability in some well-known species.

Age

The ultholl, a species adapted to living in the vacuum of space, start out as non-sentient tadpoles lacking sensory organs and incomplex nervous and neural systems.
By the age of twenty they have developed organs for sight, touch, and hearing as well as attained sentience. Though rarely reaching that age, specimens over a hundred years or more have been found to exhibit full sapience.

Biological Sex

The akreians were a target of study for a long time due to their species’ unusual characteristic of having only females being born as sapient bipedals while the males are born as sentient quadrupeds.
The newly discovered Kolalu species feature similar sexual dimorphism, though there it's only the males that develop sapience.

Caste

Among the hive minded sketh only three castes of a hive have been observed to exhibit sapient traits while the rest of its population appear at most sentient.
These key specimens are responsible for directing the efforts of their hive, and it has proven an effective tactic to locate and eliminate them when combating the skethal infection.

Environmental Factors

The nullvox, developed by Ascendant bioengineers, is capable of consciously and reflexively regulating their biochemistry in order to save energy and adapt to extreme situations.
This includes putting certain regions of their brains into a dormant state, which can lead to side-effects such as partial or full loss of a sense or cognitive/deductive ability.

Transformation

In the ktlac ktlac lifecycle, it’s only the larval form that is sapient. Sapience, along with cognition, intelligence and collected knowledge and experiences, appear to be largely lost during the metamorphosis into adult form.
Most studied adult ktlac ktlac exhibit sentience, but seem only concerned with basal needs and mating.

The Suszukoro Model

The Ascendancy, or more specifically the Suszukoro family, employ a model for measuring sentience and sapience that is considered outdated by most other galactic societies. Despite the consesus across the majority of the galactic science community, the Ascendancy hasn't yet shown any intentions of revising and modernizing this model.
The Suszukoro Model is also considered by many to heavily favor Lusocentralism. The current social status of the rejinat, baluke, akreians and other non-lusoyan sapients living within the Ascendancy is often brought up as a proof of this. As is the rejection to recognize the nullvox bioborg species as even as much as sapient which escalated to one of the bloodiest uprisings in recent Ascendant history.
One of the most notable differences between the United Worlds’ official documentation and the Suszukoro model is that in the latter sentience and sapience are placed in a hierarchy rather than being considered semi-isolated concepts. Each level builds upon the next, meaning a lifeform needs to fulfill most if not all qualities of a level before being considered for the next one in line.

1. Non-Sentient

The lifeform only concerns itself with physiological needs. The conditions needed to be fulfilled for a species to be considered non-sentient are as follows:
• Exhibits no distinguishable intelligence.
• May function on a pure automaton-based level.
• Will only react to stimuli of the moment.
• Has no variance in response to the same stimuli.
• Exhibits only a need for consumption and procreation.

2. Semi-Sentient

The lifeform is capable of learning from experience. The conditions needed to be fulfilled for a species to be considered semi-sentient are as follows:
• Capable of changing behavior based on experiences from past stimuli.
• Observes basic capabilities of planning ahead and anticipating environmental conditions.
• Tend to find or create shelters for themselves and/or their young.

3. Sentient

The lifeform is capable of experiencing feelings. The conditions needed to be fulfilled for a species to be considered sentient are as follows:
• Capable of expressing emotions, in limited or full capacity.
• Capable of forming interpersonal bonds.
• May recognize the increase of safety in numbers.
• Capable of forming a social hierarchy.
• A group of individuals can observe internal roles that are more advanced than alpha behavior.
• A group of individuals may assign roles to members based on their skills.
• A group of individuals tend to look after members even when they no longer are of use.

4. Sapient

The lifeform is capable of thinking and acquiring wisdom. The conditions needed to be fulfilled for a species to be considered sapient are as follows:
• Has the capacity for abstract thought.
• Can express creativity and exhibit more advanced problem-solving capabilities.
• Can form long-term goals.
• Have a sense of self and recognizes itself as a unique individual.
• May be able to make moral choices.
• Capable of, internally or externally, reflect on their choices.

5. Sophont

The lifeform exhibits intelligence equal to or greater than lusoyans. The conditions needed to be fulfilled for a species to be considered sophont are as follows:
• Can raise existential questions.
• Capable of psychological self-influence.
• Can make choices based off projected long-term outcomes.
• Can live a life in pursuit of a concept.
• Can form complex social hierarchies (civilizations) and express cultural diversity between groups.
• Can categorize individuals in a group based on conceptually or culturally based ideas of value.
• Can create advanced tools, and not always because there is a defined need for said tool.

6. Trans-Sophont

The lifeform transcends the typical hierarchy of needs. Either of these criteria may qualify a being as a trans-sophont:
• May no longer need to consider physiological needs.
• May hold enough power that safety is no longer a concern.
• May have a complete enough sense of self to not require external sources to satiate their need for love, belonging, esteem or self-actualization.
• May seek to perpetuate their full ideological understanding by passing it onto others.
• May no longer surprise oneself due to full understanding of the self.