I believe your questions would be better directed at the topics of free will and inner monologue than sentience.

The mention of a “conscious” decision to loose an arrow leans more toward those than basic sentience.

Feelings are feelings; they’re a brain chemical response that assists with instinct development/control and reinforcing patterns of behavior. All evolutionary effects are, kinda, side effects, and the ones that help or don’t hurt too too much get kept.

::: spoiler Actual commentary on the topic But, flipping back to the “you gotta learn when to loose the arrow”–not really? Like, that’s not exactly a conscious thing. You consciously analyze it after the fact, and (until you’re totally awesome at it) make a plan for what to do going into it, but done right it’s mostly a zen/muscle memory thing. Anecdata, sure, but I’m speaking as a decent amateur archer and highly adept firearm user.

I don’t know if my cats have a true train of thought, but I know they got better at pouncing with practice. There’s no inner monologue, but they’re conscious and sentient.

I’ve also been high enough to notice that my body just kind of does stuff without me prompting it, including real useful stuff like grabbing water and food–this goes back to the action potential thing in the neuroscience of free will article. We’re extremely complex systems that continue to exist and survive even when significant chunks of “the norm” are missing. Aphantasics can still create. Anendophasics can still put together stories and design intricate systems. We’re thoroughly redundant systems thanks to the sheer screwiness of evolution.