---
title: "Sentience · Library · Simulation Hypothesis"
url: https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/sentience
description: "Sentience is the ability to have experiences that feel good or bad."
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
credit: "Ross Allan Dahl, Simulation Hypothesis (simulation-hypothesis.com)"
---

## Philosophy of mind

# Sentience

Definition

Sentience is the ability to have experiences that feel good or bad. It means being able to feel, and especially to suffer.

On this site

The inner-lives ladder from fruit fly to human is ordered by how likely sentience is. It isn’t a list of confirmed cases.

Role in the model

The inner-lives ladder runs from fruit fly to human, ordered by how likely it is that the entity can suffer. Where you set the cutoff decides how many billions of inhabitants the ethics meters have to weigh. It’s a gradient, not a roster.

Related

[Consciousness](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/consciousness)[Qualia](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/qualia)[Moral status](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/moral-status)

In the trees

[Can they suffer · Ethics](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/trees/ethics?n=c-bentham)[Crabs and octopuses review · Ethics](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/trees/ethics?n=c-birch)[The UK’s Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 · Ethics](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/trees/ethics?n=c-sentience-act)

## The people behind the terms

14 short pages, one per thinker, each with its matching dial. See also the [reading list](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/reading).

[Plato’s cave](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/plato)[Zhuangzi’s butterfly](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/zhuangzi)[Vasubandhu’s dream](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/vasubandhu)[Shankara’s māyā](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/shankara)[al-Ghazali’s doubt](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/ghazali)[Ibn Arabi’s imagination](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/ibn-arabi)[Calderón’s life is a dream](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/calderon)[Descartes’ demon](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/descartes)[Berkeley’s perceiver](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/berkeley)[Borges’ circular ruins](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/borges)[Nozick’s experience machine](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/nozick)[Putnam’s brain in a vat](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/putnam)[Bostrom’s trilemma](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/bostrom)[Chalmers: virtual worlds are real](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/chalmers)