The distinction between subjective and objective experience and perception is not black and white, but a continuum in which grey predominates. Thought and action is seldom wholly objective and understanding and insight seldom wholly subjective. Both coexist. The spectrum of sentience to sapience is their ratio. The definition of sapience in “Wikipedia”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom#Sapience is somewhat different from what is given in this question. “Wisdom or sapience is the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense, and insight.”
“Sentience”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience, on the other hand is defined as “the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively. Eighteenth-century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think (reason) from the ability to feel (sentience). In modern Western philosophy, sentience is the ability to experience sensations (known in philosophy of mind as ‘qualia’). In Eastern philosophy, sentience is a metaphysical quality of all things that requires respect and care.”
… In the philosophy of consciousness, sentience can refer to the ability of any entity to have subjective perceptual experiences, or as some philosophers refer to them, ‘qualia’. This is distinct from other aspects of the mind and consciousness, such as creativity, intelligence, [wisdom or] sapience, self-awareness, and intentionality (the ability to have thoughts about something). Sentience is a minimalistic way of defining consciousness, which is otherwise commonly collectively, describes sentience plus other characteristics of the mind.”
Wisdom is knowledge with understanding. Assuming the existence of an omniscient deity, not only will it have both, its sentience and sapience will be synonymous. However, most conceive of deities as being transcendent, therefore, any ascribed qualities are irrelevant.
Given its vastness, sentient/sapient beings must exist in many places in the universe. They likely will evolve socially along distinctively different paths, aspects of which would not relate to our own. Current technological limitations make communication over their distance impossible.
Consider that our perspective on what is the experience of sensation, thought and emotion may not apply to other species. Creatures we observe seem to have behaviors suggesting intellect and emotion, yet many wish to reject this conclusion; those that appear different are presumed inferior.
We have problems communicating with each other and with the other living creatures on earth including, as you intimated, plants. They can communicate with each of their kind and secondhand with others; feedback stabilizes an ecosystem. Obviously, communing with our imaginary aliens would be more difficult. Just as with our deity, they may transcend our notion of sentience and sapience having merged them.
If, as I suggest, sentiency and sapience are intertwined, their proportion changes over time and the ratio at any instant is information that does not predict the ratio at a previous or future instance, and therefore except when we give them meaning they are meaningless.
Before we can create a sapient machine, we will need to understand better how our minds work. Our emotions are biomechanical responses that qualify and quantify the importance of an experience, delineating its relative goodness and badness. However, designing a mechanistic equivalent is currently beyond our ability.
We can program Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics” into a machine; a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws. However, without the subjectively of an emotional filter to resolve perturbations arising from conflicting potential actions the machine would cease functioning.
From the beginning to the end of time, the cosmos exists without the need for either sentience or sapience. Qualities like consciousness cannot be ascribed to the ongoing creative force. As much as some seek a creator with the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively with the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense, and insight, such attributes are wholly human.
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