sentience
sen·tience
noun
1.
state of elementary or undifferentiated consciousness
- “the crash intruded on his awareness”
2.
the faculty through which the external world is apprehended
- “in the dark he had to depend on touch and on his senses of smell and hearing”
3.
the readiness to perceive sensations; elementary or undifferentiated consciousness
- “gave sentience to slugs and newts” Richard Eberhart
Origin
From sentient, from Latin sentiēns, present participle of sentiō (“feel, sense”). Compare with sentence, its equivalent formation from Classic Latin sententia (for *sentientia).
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WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.