The quality or state of being sentient; esp., the quality or state of having sensation.

1. The ability to sense. Awareness. 2. Self-awareness.

The capacity for feeling, perceiving or sensing, the lack of which is the exclusionary criterion of the Sentiencist sect of Abortionism.

state of elementary or undifferentiated consciousness; "the crash intruded on his awareness"

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"

the readiness to perceive sensations; elementary or undifferentiated consciousness; "gave sentience to slugs and newts"- Richard Eberhart

Sentience refers to possession of sensory organs, the ability to feel or perceive, not necessarily including the faculty of self-awareness. The possession of sapience is not a necessity. The word sentient is often confused with the word sapient, which can connote knowledge, consciousness, or apperception.