Science Fiction
In science fiction, an alien, android, robot, hologram, or computer described as sentient (properly sapient) is usually treated as a fully human character, with similar rights, qualities, and capabilities as any other character. Foremost among these properties is human level intelligence (see above), but sentient characters also typically display desire, will, consciousness, ethics, personality, insight, and many other human qualities. Sentience is being used in this context to describe an essential human property that brings all these other qualities with it. The words "self-awareness", and "consciousness" are used in similar ways in science fiction.
Read more about this topic: Sentience
Famous quotes containing the words science and/or fiction:
“Until politics are a branch of science we shall do well to regard political and social reforms as experiments rather than short-cuts to the millennium.”
—J.B.S. (John Burdon Sanderson)
“It is with fiction as with religion: it should present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)