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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nihil who wrote (33052)	3/23/1999 11:37:00 AM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Actually, there is a huge literature on the subject of what sentience is, and how it works, not only in academic philosophy, but across disciplines into areas like neurology. I haven't even nibbled at this literature. But I've consulted the OED, and conclude that there is a good argument that you're quite right. At least that you're mainly right.'Sentient' is for the most part defined as "That feels or is capable of feeling; having the power or function of sensation or of perception by the senses." I agree with you in suspecting that the bee and the dog and the baby are reacting according to 'feeling,' if we define 'feeling' (tautologically of course) as the neurological mechanism that drives them to the specific behavior that results in their survival. But of course there is a rather different definition of 'sentient' that i think is more in use today, and is clearly in use by LRR and me, and is the one that somewhat complicates the issue philosophically. That is, "conscious* or percipient of something."* Some would say complicates it utterly, and that complication is where the philosophical/neurological debate is situated. The word 'consciousness' has connotations that the word 'feeling' doesn't-- "Having an awareness of one's environment and of one's own existence, sensations and thoughts;" "intentionally conceived or done; deliberate;" and "mindful," are descriptions of 'consciousness,' but not of the 'feelings' of bees when they suck nectar. We don't in normal discourse think of bees as 'mindful.'