37.138, FYI: MLAG Seminar, Online: Julian Kiverstein, "The Sentience-Sapience Problem"

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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-138. Tue Jan 13 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.138, FYI: MLAG Seminar, Online: Julian Kiverstein, "The Sentience-Sapience Problem"

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Date: 11-Jan-2026
From: MLAG - Mind, Language and Action Group [mlag.porto at gmail.com]
Subject: MLAG Seminar, Online: Julian Kiverstein, "The Sentience-Sapience Problem"


"The Sentience–Sapience Problem" is a talk by Dr. Julian Kiverstein,
presented as part of the 2025-2026 MLAG Seminar Series. The event will
take place online, via Microsoft Teams, on January 22, 13.00–14.30
Western European Time (WET, GMT+0) (see abstract below).
The seminar is jointly organized by Sofia Miguens (MLAG-IF), Dan Zeman
(MLAG-IF), James Grayot (MLAG-IF), Rafael Antunes Padilha
(MLAG-IF|IFCH-UNICAMP), Samuel Lima (FLUP) and João Carlos Rocha Lima
(FLUP). Information about MLAG can be found here:
https://ifilosofia.up.pt/research-groups/mlag . To contact the
organisers, please send an email to mlag.porto at gmail.com.
Microsoft Teams details:
Meeting ID: 342 872 637 288 12
Passcode: L79oQ3KH
All welcome!
ABSTRACT:
Radical enactivists like Dan Hutto and Erik Myin have argued that
contentful forms of intentional thinking have their origins in
cultural and linguistic practices. They allow that humans share in
common with non-human animals non-representational forms of
intentionality, which they characterise using the concept of
“ur-intentionality”. They therefore disagree with philosophers like
McDowell who have questioned the existence of non-conceptual states
that are common between humans and other animals. However, they also
agree with McDowell in making a distinction between the sapience of
humans that is characterised by conceptual and linguistic forms of
intentionality that originate in cultural practices, and the sentience
we share with other animals that could be analysed in non-conceptual
terms. Sentience is a capacity we share with other animals to respond
perceptually and skillfully to the solicitations of motivationally
salient situations. Sapience consists in the human ability to make
assertions and other normatively governed speech acts and to engage in
thoughts with inferentially articulated propositional contents. How
did rational minds grow out of the nonconceptual and nonlinguistic
coping we share with animals? I will label this the sentience–sapience
problem. My aim in this talk is to introduce the sentience–sapience
problem as it arises for radical enactivism and to argue for a
continuity of sentience and sapience as a response to this problem.
Sapience, I will argue, consists of culturally developed techniques
and skills for engaging with an environment structured by linguistic
activities.

Linguistic Field(s): Philosophy of Language




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