> I find our assumption that other living beings are not self aware fascinating. Sponges lack a CNS. I am quite confident that they have no self-awareness. C.

> I find our assumption that other living beings are not self aware fascinating. Sponges lack a CNS. I am quite confident that they have no self-awareness. C. elegans has 302 neurons. I am fairly confident that it has no self-awareness by any useful definition thereof. At some point a brain will be sufficiently complex for the possibility of self-awareness, but that does not guarantee that it arises. And even when it arises it might be weak (e.g. the animal might have to be given many opportunities to realize it) or only true according to some definitions and not others. So since not all animals have self-awareness it is then a matter of default position. Do you assume they're likely to have it until proven otherwise or vice versa? Considering that by raw numbers there are more simple animals than complex ones the latter position isn't all that unreasonable.