[mellosouls]

it's bad faith to choose a fringe definition that hands off its definition to such a nebulous term.

I do not think it is at all unreasonable or "fringe" to regard understanding as involving intentionality: ie a directedness of thought toward the object-relations being "grasped". That may not be the only possible conception of understanding but it is a mainstream philosophical idea.

In fact, I'd argue that statements about what "is" and "is not" sentient relies on even more spirituality and word games for anything that isn't a terran tetrapod.

Then you seem to be confusing "hard to understand" with "meaningless".

you're just expressing dogma rather than having a discussion.

Anything else is bad faith, or assuming bad faith on the part of the participants

Have a think about that (repeated) tone before responding.

Fwiw I am a long-time believer in consciousness being fully realisable in machines; I think the jury is still out on LLMs.