sentire
The Italian is from the same root word as the English word "sense" (both a noun and a verb). This is another of those famous Saxon/Latin pairs -- we have both "feel" and "sense" and in many cases they mean the same thing. However, my understanding is that "sense" is more wide-ranging than "feel" -- that we sense in more ways than we feel. In both cases, both sensing and feeling are often done without use of our physical members -- it's an intuitive process.