Understanding Sentience

Sentience is defined as the capacity to have positively or negatively valenced feelings, encompassing experiences beyond just pain and pleasure. This broad concept allows for the recognition of various emotional states such as joy, stress, and discomfort among different species. Philosophers argue that sentience serves as a crucial threshold for ethical considerations in animal welfare, influencing how laws and policies are framed around the treatment of animals. The distinction between sentience and consciousness is significant, as sentience focuses more on basic feelings rather than complex cognitive processes, which highlights the need to recognize feelings in less understood animals like insects and cephalopods.