Overcoming inertia to deliver sentience policy commensurate with sentience science

Sentience Everywhere

Philosophical understandings of consciousness divide into emergentist positions (when the universe is sufficiently organized and complex it gives rise to consciousness) vs. panpsychism (consciousness pervades the universe). A leading emergentist position derives from autopoietic theory of Maturana and Varela: to be alive is to have cognition, one component of which is sentience. Here, reflectin...

A Theory of Sentience

Sentience and Pain in Invertebrates

Stem cell research, personhood and sentience.

In this paper the permissibility of stem cell research on early human embryos is defended. It is argued that, in order to have moral status, an individual must have an interest in its own wellbeing. Sentience is a prerequisite for having an interest in avoiding pain, and personhood is a prerequisite for having an interest in the continuation of one's own existence. Early human embryos are not s...

Sentience and pain in relation to animal welfare

The concept of sentience, which concerns the capacity to have feelings, involves cognitive concepts and awareness. The cognitive capacities of parrots, corvids, cows, pigs and sheep are substantial. All vertebrates, including fish, are shown to have pain systems. There has been rapid development in animal welfare science, including pain assessment. Examples of new pain indicators in sheep and o...