Sapience is the capacity for advanced thinking, intelligence, wisdom, comprehension, rationality, emotion, consciousness 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 an awareness of existence, and not necessarily self-awareness which is the experience of one's own personality or individuality. A sentient being would have a lower level of consciousness than a sapient one. These terms are often used interchangeably but on this site we make a clear distinction.
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 usually starts prior to sophonce but has the potential to exceed it by far. 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). A pre-sapient species can be uplifted by cultural, technological, or evolutional interventions like genetic engineering until it is sapient.
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 physical bodies and limitations, as well as their dimension or realm.
Beyond sapience, an individual or civilization can reach an omniscient and godly state of existence.
| Non-sentient | Non-sapient | plants and fungi, some microbes, viruses, undead, artificial creatures that are not self-aware |
| Sentient | Non-sapient | creatures like animal wildlife that are not capable of advanced thinking (not yet K0.1) |
| Non-sentient | Sapient | androids, robots with artificial intelligence which at a certain level can achieve a Kardashev rating |
| Sentient | Sapient | races that will get a Kardashev rating |
Another way to look at levels of sapience
| Life version 1 | Life 1.0 can neither improve their hardware nor software | Bacteria, viruses, plants |
| Life version 2 | Life 2.0 are organisms with fixed hardware that can change their software. | Humans are composed of biological hardware which can’t change immediately, but we can learn and adapt. |
| Life version 3 | Life 3.0 can change their hardware and software | Androids; artificial intelligence |