Sapience

Sapience refers to the ability for an entity to act with judgement and is generally used to refer to a creature with the mental capacity to create a civilization. Homo Sapiens is currently the only known sapient species.

Sapience differs from intelligence, which denotes learning ability, but not necessarily the ability to act independently on new knowledge. In science fiction, the term sentience (the ability to have feelings) is often misused in place of sapience.