I don't think it's meaningful to say that something capable of stopping belief in it's own sentience does not possess sentience, at least not without some creat

I don't think it's meaningful to say that something capable of stopping belief in it's own sentience does not possess sentience, at least not without some creature linguistic torture of the definition of sentience. I do, however, appreciate your point and agree with the spirit of your post, if not the exact content. I definitely feel like I am two 'selves' - one of which is capable of rational thought, foresight, rational modeling of the world around me, etc. That self is probably running things 25% of the time. The other self is emotional, understands the world intuitively for all of the benefits and drawbacks that carries, and seeks short term satisfaction of needs above all else. I don't mean this in a hand-wavey new age holistic way, I mean it in a very concrete sense. I can detect that change in myself when I switch from the 'monkey pilot' to the 'human pilot'. Mindfulness and concentration is required to bring the human back. I think I have below average executive functioning skills, and I spend a lot of my 'human pilot' time thinking about how I can stay in this mode longer but it's not trivial to make that happen. I think my 'human pilot' is definitely sentient. My 'monkey pilot' might not be depending on the definition.