![]() ![]() ( TNG: " The Measure Of A Man", " The Perfect Mate" DS9: " The Abandoned")Ĭyberneticist Bruce Maddox gave three soft requirements during a 2365 hearing: Despite centuries of consideration and linguistic changes, how one determined whether a lifeform or machine was sentient, and the legal and moral implications of being sentient, were neither fully understood nor agreed upon. There was, however, no commonly understood definition of the term. The tide turned again in the 24th century and intelligent life was referred to as it was in the 22nd: as sentient. Whether he meant the word in the 21st century sense or the 22nd century sense was unclear from the sentence fragment. In TOS: " Arena", Spock begins to speak of the Gorn as "sentient", but his sentence was cut off. ( TOS: " Spock's Brain", " Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", " All Our Yesterdays") ![]() Intelligent life was therefore generally called sapient rather than sentient. In the 23rd century the word "sentient" again meant what it had in centuries past: the ability to feel or perceive. ( ENT: " The Seventh", " Rogue Planet", " Hatchery", " Similitude" TNG: " The Offspring") The concepts of perception and intelligence had been combined such that the word now meant an intelligent, self-aware, conscious entity deserving of rights, respect, and freedom. At that point intelligent life was referred to as sentient. That changed sometime prior to the 22nd century. Intelligent life was therefore called "sapient". So, for example, a plant could be "sentient", and a computer "sapient" with neither having to have the attributes of the other. A separate concept in use at the time was the term sapient, which meant the ability to act with intelligence. During the 21st century, for example, it meant the ability to feel or perceive, which may or may not have included being intelligent or self-aware. The term sentience has shared several meanings across the centuries. ![]()
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