Re: "Sentient"

 :) I love this.  Part and parcel of the boundaries you describe, of
course, are the metaphysics- or assumptions about reality, that a
particular culture takes for granted.  As four out of four of my (known)
ancestral ethnicities have been considered iredeemably "other" at some
point in U.S. history, the study of other worldviews has been crucial to
me- which leads to the obligatory conlang question:

How far do y'all deconstruct cultural assumptions about subjective reality
when deciding on the 1) grammatical structure 2) lexation 3)lexical choice
4) anything else, when working on your languages?  Have you ever had the
experience of reading a direct translation of a natlang, where nothing
seems to make any sense (motives, cause/effect, rationality, etc.)? Are
any of your conlangs like this?  Unfortunately, many of the cultures and
languages that could give us wonderful insight into the possibilities are
disappearing or assimilating.  Maybe some constructed languages can
provide new insights :)

a haes,
.yasmin.

On Tue, 21 Dec 1999, Ed Heil wrote:

> "Sentient" can, according to its Latin roots, mean "having feelings"
> or "having opinions." (cf. two words derived from the same root:
> "sentiment" and "sentence.")
>
> It's also used by science fiction types to mean "having minds like
> humans'," but given the ambiguity of its etymology I am not sure it is
> the best word for that purpose.
>
> I think "sapient" would be somewhat better, as it brings to mind the
> species name of humans.  Presumably, biologically, sapience is the
> quality which differentiates Homo sapiens from previous Homines, which
> would then be at best partly sapient.  (I'm not familiar enough with
> paleontology to know whether this is accurate -- to know whether the
> increase in brain volume that allows culture and language and all
> those goodies actually occurred at the border between _sapiens_ and
> his predecessors, though.)
>
> I've heard "sophont" used too, which is nothing but the Greek
> equivalent of "sapient," and which sounds pretty cool.
>
> I'm not sure we can get around speciesism in these matters.  We just
> can't step outside our human selves and see what an "abstract"
> intelligence would be, and then look for it in places besides humans
> and say "there it is," or "there it isn't."
>
> Of one thing I am sure, though...  To the degree that there has been
> a perceptible moral growth and maturation among humans (and it's
> arguable whether there has been any, but assuming there has), it seems
> to have involved the extension of empathy beyond boundaries; the
> ability to consider as "one of us" those who were once considered
> irredemably "other."
>
> I see no reason why this should in principle stop at species
> boundaries any more than it should stop at family, ethnic/racial, or
> national boundaries.
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>                        edheil@postmark.net
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>