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Since I’ve mentioned Star Trek, I think it’s interesting that your definition of “sentient” wouldn’t seem to apply to the android, Data, who appeared in that series. He was intelligent, capable of learning from his experiences, and obviously self-aware, but because he didn’t have emotions, he didn’t seem to “suffer” in either a physical or a mental sense. There was one episode in which he was under the control of his evil twin, Lore, and was forced to torture his best friend, Geordi Laforge. When he had returned to normal, he realized that what he had done was morally wrong, and he was very sorry, but only in an intellectual way. Even then he didn’t seem to “suffer” over the realization that he had come very close to killing his friend.

Of course I’m certainly not basing any argument on a fictional story, but it does make me wonder how “sentientism” would apply to artificially intelligent computers and in some cases to animals. Suffering is not just physical but mental. Has anybody ever asked a horse if it LIKES being ridden?