what exactly are Sentient Beings? do they include animals or just intelligent beings?

Answer 1

The definition of Sentient beings have consciousness and feeling.

Contrary to David's response. Self-awareness is a concept that can only be created or understood by beings who already meets the criteria for being sentient.

So the primary definition is consciousness, and then having an ability to feel.

According to wikipedia:
Sentience refers to utilization of sensory organs, the ability to feel or perceive subjectively, 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. The root of the confusion is that the word conscious has a number of different usages in English. The two words can be distinguished by looking at their Latin roots: sentire, "to feel"; and sapere, "to know".

Answer 2

Sentient beings are self-aware, which is about impossible to tell in any other creature unless we figure out how it works in the brain. If an ant knows it exists, it's sentient. It doesn't have to be intelligent.

Answer 3

Technically, anything that is aware of it's environment, no matter if it's through actual awareness or simply reflexive response to it's environment, makes it sentient.

I believe what you want to know is what is a sapient being, which is any being that is capable of acting with intent and forethought. In this case most animals would fit the description. Certainly all mammals would. As you go further down the complexity scale of life you'll start to see things like insects that, while able to plan to some extent (such as a spider "planning" where to put it's web to catch food), you're heading into a fuzzy area as far as sapience is concerned. Sapience generally includes self-awareness in order to distinguish if something is truly sapient or merely sentient.

Eventually you get to things which, while they react to their environment, are not sapient because they don't consciously "think" about what they're doing--it's mere reflex that's triggered by some stimulus or other.

Answer 4

ok, well it depends on what school of thought you ask this question. for example buddhists believe that sentient beings are any being that is able to experience "dukkha," or suffering. also, some activist groups promote good treatment of farm animals & refer to them as sentient beings, which they define as beings that are capable of awareness, feeling, & suffering. so i suppose both of these schools of thought are at two different ends of the tandem, but they both refer to suffering in beings, so i believe that all beings (including animals) are "sentient."

Answer 5

Sentient refers to beings that are "Self-aware" it is difficult for us to know if other species on the planet are self-aware as we lack a common language. Many species show signs of self-awareness. For instance, I have 3 Dogs that respond to a command directed to them only and not to one of the others.
Apes and Dolphins also seem to exhibit signs as well as some others.