This paper aims at taking an approach to zubiri's idea of "sentient intelligence" from the sensualist tradition.Disregarding, for its extreme views, Hume's position, we propose Hobbes' sensualism as a wider framework.According to zubiri, an analysis of sensing doomed to failure is carried out from these points of view, because these positions advocate for a "sensible" intelligence which, like intellectualism, rules out Reality's formality.This very formality, given in sensing, makes science a probabilistic (but related to truth) knowledge, motivated by and contained in this formality of Reality.