Sapience

Sapience is the capacity for advanced thinking, wisdom, comprehension, rationality, emotion and self-awareness. Hence Homo sapiens.

Sentience is the capacity (via a nervous system) of a living thing to experience sensations such as pleasure or pain. These beings have consciousness, or an awareness of existence, and not necessarily self-awareness which is the experience of one's own personality or individuality.

Sophonce is "sophisticated sapience" with metacognition: self-awareness, self-reflection, and the ability to think about one's thinking and correct errors that will lead to an ELE for example. Such races will be approaching Type III and be in a civilized galaxy.

Transapience is a mental state that far exceeds sophonce. These are AI that have usually evolved from beyond a singularity, or species that have undergone accelerated evolution or provolution (pro-active evolution using technology to enhance or augment the intelligence of a species) or prevolution (using provolution on dolphins as an example to enhance them into talking, land-dwelling species).

The ultimate transapient state is ascendance or transcendence where beings evolve into pure energy and can become dimensional, ever ascending beyond the trappings of their dimension or realm.