11 conditions for sentience.

I have managed to articulate below 11 conditions of sentience, four of which may correspond to a classification of Henry Stapp’s {{44 Stapp, Henry P. 2004;}}. (I am certain there are others and some may find my categories insufficient):

1) They probe their environments and analyze experiences.

2) They embody or internalize their experiences into a symbolic schema (ie. the synaptic associations of dendrites in the human cortex).

3) Their schema forms a point of view or perspective that defines their subsequent approach to experiences.

4) They are transformed by incorporating new data and using it to further refine their internal schemas.

5) 5) They can establish symbolic communications with other sentient beings in order to engage the world on a more complex and cooperative level They can codify their experience in language and seek concordances with other beings and form a collective representation of the communicants’ schemas.

6) They can transmit their embodied history (sexual/asexual reproduction).

7) They affect other beings in the act of probing them.

8) They gain an awareness of their effect on their environment.

9) As internal, symbolic schemas (metaphors) mature a strong sense of self develops that, although derived from engagement with the environment, is unique in construction (with respect to type, period, sequence and duration of experience) and stands as a constitutive symbol of that unique engagement or point of view.

10) They have the capacity to negotiate external, symbolic communications with other sentient beings (culture).

11) They possess the capacity to utilize external material objects to enhance their apprehension of and their effect on the external realm and its constituents.