So what's a sapient species anyway?

[Ares Land]

As for sound, I don't know about your cats, but with mine, I wonder if the reason he doesn't react much to recorded sound is because of some difference he can hear between real and recorded sounds? He very occasionally reacts to recorded sounds, but it's never when I expect it (e.g. he never reacts to animal noises, he doesn't seem to care about loud music or high volume, it'll be in the middle of a Youtube video or something random and he'll freak out for no discernable reason). As such I suspect he's reacting to something outside my range of hearing.

Mine has a very strong reaction to cat sounds, and especially to kitten sounds. She digs around the laptop to try and figure out where the sound's coming from. Other than that, she doesn't care and likewise she never reacts to animal sounds. Cats have a different hearing range, so presumably recordings do sound odd to her (but she'll still react to poorly recorded kitten recordings!)
And, of course, being a cat, she'll just start running around growling at random intervals, or stare fascinated at empty spaces.

[hwhatting]

And, of course, being a cat, she'll just start running around growling at random intervals, or stare fascinated at empty spaces.

Spaces of which you think that they are empty

[Pabappa]

In my early writing there were five sapient species on one planet, with no one species dominating over the others. Lately Ive written mostly about humans though, and Ive been trying to find ways to rectify this with my earlier writing about the same world. Ive come up with a sort of compromise, I guess, where I state that even these wild animals are naturally tame, and form stable societies of their own with no help from humans. I leave open the question of how intelligent each of the other species is, and whether their intelligence is similar to humans' or wildly different.

Tameness, at least what I consider it to be, has evolved on Antarctica with penguins, even though penguins are the prey of several different species, so there's no reason that humans or some other species needs to be present. Humans on planet Teppala are more instinctively peaceful than humans on Earth, and I may say that whatever triggered this different behavior in humans also affected other animals who reached the top of their respective food chains.

This has dire consequences for humans, however. Tameness among animals leads to cooperation and high population densities, and the potential for organized conflicts against the more physically vulnerable humans. This means that humans are confined to discontinuous habitats, and spend much of their time near the sea so they can flee if one of their natural predators leads an attack on a human settlement.

The other animals are also confined to discontinuous habitats, because they also fight each other rather than just ganging up on the humans. Where habitats overlap, it is an agreement between two different species to stick together rather than fighting each other. Alliances cross species lines, so for example the humans in Moonshine are allied with the dolphins in Moonshine's bays and oceans, while the humans in Dreamland are allied with the dolphins off their north coast. This also gives me an explanation .... though I admit it's better described as an excuse .... for why some human nations that one might expect to be quickly wiped out instead survive unmolested, at least by other humans, for thousands of years.

One idea that I'm almost certainly going to drop, though, is the idea that structured language evolved even before fish left the sea, meaning that all tetrapods on planet Teppala had their own languages, mostly with only one language per species (because it's instinctive, not learned), and humans diverging from this only because humans needed to create words for new concepts because they could no longer rely on instinct.

Since Im (probably) not going to do it, I'd love to see a language that's etched into DNA such that babies achieve full fluency while still in the womb (or egg), and yet cannot learn a single new word ever afterwards. The birth process should be interesting, among other things. It's possible I may yet pursue this idea myself, though probably in a weaker form such as, e.g. baby dolphins are born fully fluent and already capable of the muscular movements needed to speak properly, but nevertheless do still learn some new words as they grow up.

[sasasha]

I've been thinking about this a bit as I have three non-magical species you might call sentient in my con-world, and a further one (maybe more, as yet unplanned) in its wider universe - as well as a host of magical sentient species that inhabit a simulated sub-universe.

I agree with a lot of what has been said, and don't have much to add, except that when past a certain point (probably somewhere past the border with 'sapience'), the measurability of intelligence becomes horribly subjective. Yes, we can measure things like problem solving fairly objectively. But can we measure wisdom, self-restraint, effective governance, and other more abstract 'intelligences' while working outside of human parameters?

For instance, both of my non-human world-inhabiting sapient species are avoidant of humans, avoidant of forming anything resembling 'civilisations', avoidant of wasteful action, avoidant of fads and obsessions, and don't go in for economic growth - just continuation and improvements of efficiency. They wouldn't score very high in Civ 6, that's for sure. But they are both proficient problem solvers, both have complex language, and both have secured an ecological niche unto themselves (one more successfully than another, but that's by the by). Both use fairly complex tools, though neither have anything resembling organised industry.

Their apparent aloofness comes in part from the fact that both are physically superior in certain respects to humans (one in strength, the other can fly), and have used these advantages to move themselves successfully to marginal environments which humans are less capable of exploiting, and defending them. Imagine Neanderthals, just more successful (/luckier).

Are my humans more intelligent than my Vashari or my Giants? Who can say? The Vashari and Giants are less interested in designing new technology and covering the face of the earth with their spawn by any means possible - but they potentially could do these things, if they wanted to. Arguably they are wiser. Certainly, they are happier. Is there a barrier beyond our notion of 'sapience' that these species have breached, but humans haven't? - the understanding of how not to degrade and destroy themselves by overpopulation, rampant degradation of their environments, and internal aggression?

[bradrn]

Personally, every time I think about what sapiency is (which admittedly is not often), I end up at the same conclusion: for me, a sapient species is one which can use language. True, this may be missing out on some hypothetical species with human-level intelligence but no intelligible language — but, really, humans are only ever going to conclusively categorise a species as sapient if we can find some way to communicate intelligently with it.

[Imralu]

Personally, every time I think about what sapiency is (which admittedly is not often), I end up at the same conclusion: for me, a sapient species is one which can use language. True, this may be missing out on some hypothetical species with human-level intelligence but no intelligible language — but, really, humans are only ever going to conclusively categorise a species as sapient if we can find some way to communicate intelligently with it.

I think if it could be proven that dolphins definitely do have languages, we would have to regard them as sapient, whether or not we can use their languages to communicate with them or not.

[bradrn]

Personally, every time I think about what sapiency is (which admittedly is not often), I end up at the same conclusion: for me, a sapient species is one which can use language. True, this may be missing out on some hypothetical species with human-level intelligence but no intelligible language — but, really, humans are only ever going to conclusively categorise a species as sapient if we can find some way to communicate intelligently with it.

I think if it could be proven that dolphins definitely do have languages, we would have to regard them as sapient, whether or not we can use their languages to communicate with them or not.

Well, yes, that’s sort of my point. (Though I’m not sure how we could prove dolphins have language but still not have a way to talk to them.)