The only explanation I can come up with is that Sauron's "strength and will" have given the Ring passive powers that do not require sentience (preventing decay, invisibility, lust) and that any sentient-like behaviour is merely interpretation and anthropomorphization. The Ring could also have an independent will that mirrors Sauron's, but this is getting close to giving life to an inanimate object, which only Eru can do (as with the Dwarves, for example). It may be that the Ring becomes a extension of Sauron, but that might require two-way communication at a distance, which clearly doesn't happen (or it would have been found easily). The Ring is, as far as I know, the only occurrence of this kind of ability. There is no clear explanation as to what transferring one's strength and will to an object means. The Silmarillion, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age, p.
What is the Ring?Īnd much of the strength and will of Sauron passed into that One Ring for the power of the Elven-rings was very great, and that which should govern them must be a thing of surpassing potency and Sauron forged it in the Mountain of Fire in the Land of Shadow. A simplistic example (that some might disagree with) would be this: a table is neither, an animal is sentient, a human is sapient. This is not to be confused with sapience: "the ability of an organism or entity to act with appropriate judgement". Let's define sentience first: "the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively". Finally, there are other passages that would imply self-awareness and conscious decision making, but even those are unsatisfactory. Other powers are ambiguous, as they could be more of a reaction to its environment than a conscious decision, such as changing its size. The Ring seems to have several passive powers that would not require sentience, such as preventing decay and invisibility. Tolkien has written no texts that I could find about the exact nature or sentience of the Ring. You cannot press the One Ring too hard, for it is of course a mythical feature, even though the world of the tales is conceived in more or less historical terms.
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