Stuff To Blow Your Mind From the Vault: The Edge of Sentience, with Jonathan Birch
Nov 15, 2025
In this enlightening discussion, Jonathan Birch, a philosophy professor at the London School of Economics and principal investigator on the Foundations of Animal Sentience Project, delves into his book, "The Edge of Sentience." He defines sentience and contrasts it with consciousness, explaining why understanding sentient beings matters. Birch explores the potential for AI to become sentient unnoticed and emphasizes ethical obligations towards all sentient life, including octopuses. He advocates for compassion that extends beyond humans, ultimately urging a thoughtful approach to future ethical dilemmas.
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Sentience As Feeling Capacity
- Sentience means the capacity to have feelings that feel good or bad, including pleasures and pains.
- Jonathan Birch frames sentience as a broad, actionable concept for assessing welfare across species.
Sentience Vs. Consciousness
- Consciousness is a broad, ambiguous term while sentience focuses on immediate raw sensations like pains and pleasures.
- Birch argues sentience is a tighter concept useful for moral and scientific discussion than broad notions of consciousness.
Where Sentience Is Contested
- Scientific consensus has recently accepted sentience across mammals but debates remain for fishes and many invertebrates.
- Evolutionary distance (e.g., octopus, insects) makes sentience judgments controversial and scientifically interesting.
