Sophont Scale

Definition

Sapience is the capacity for advanced thinking, intelligence, comprehension, emotions, self-awareness, theory of mind, and, ultimately, consciousness. It is distinct from sentience, which is the ability to feel, perceive, or experience sensations, though the two are closely related, as it is difficult to reason about emotions while not experiencing any. While it is possible to be sentient but not sapient, and sapient but not sentient, this is rare for the aforementioned reasons. An entity that is sapient but not sentient, though it acts like one, is called a p-zombie. Entities that are both sapient and sentient are called "sophonic" and are "Sophonts".

This list is specifically designed to be used in conjunction with the Standard Technologies list and is not standalone. I am also not a philosopher and do not think that consciousness holds a non-physical component, which is why you may disagree with my placing of some attributes. If this is the case, feel free to ignore the list in its entirety or in parts.

The Scale

Non-Sophont

Non-sophonic entities are those that do not have any experience of self, lack the ability for reasoning, and do not experience qualia. This includes everything from simple rocks, viruses, plants and fungi, to complex microbes as long as they do not possess a central nervous system.

Sub-Sophont

Sub-sophonic entities are those that exhibit a very limited amount of experience, generally defined as having a central nervous system or equivalent structure. Such entities are generally sentient, with the ability to feel pain beyond the purely mechanical feedback as qualia, but lack advanced reasoning and do not have a world model. Most animals are sub-sophonic.

Semi-Sophont

Semi-sophonic entities are those that display a limited amount of experience, including self-awareness and emotional complexity, but do not possess a theory of mind and as such lack the ability for metareasoning. This precludes the development of societies and can be seen as the dividing line between animals and persons. Examples on Earth include the great apes and dolphins; certain artificial intelligence systems may also fall into this category, but as this provides no additional benefits to sub-sophonic systems, this is rather rare as an explicit design feature.

Sophont

Sophonic, sometimes also fully sophonic, entities are those with the full range of the human experience. This includes the ability to reason and metareason, partake in social interactions as a sovereign entity, and experience consciousness. All natural intelligent species are roughly on the same level of sophonic development due to selection pressures reducing dramatically after the creation of agriculture and society to the point where no further natural development occurs via evolution. The same is true for artificial intelligences based on brain emulation of these species and, to an extent, those created from scratch.

Super-Sophont

Super-sophonic entities are everything "beyond" the human experience, including a wider range of emotion, qualia, and cognition. As it is not possible to fully comprehend these as a regular Sophont, further categorization is difficult, but as the selection- and decision-making process can only be optimized to a certain extent, the amount of additional experience gained is, at best, logarithmically correlated to overall computation. Examples primarily include artificial intelligences with excessive computational resources.