Especially if there are well-known counterexamples: E.g. Birds were long thought physically incapable of many higher-level cognitive tasks, because they lack th

Especially if there are well-known counterexamples: E.g. Birds were long thought physically incapable of many higher-level cognitive tasks, because they lack the required brain structures that humans have for those tasks - no prefrontal cortex, etc. Apparently though, no one told that the corvids, especially new caledonian crows, which were observed performing many of those tasks without problems, despite not having a cortex. [1] To my knowledge, the current hypothesis is that their brain is simply differently organized than a human brain, so the processes that happen in a human's prefrontal cortex may have equivalents in other regions of a corvid brain. In the same sense, the OP spends a lot of time describing how humans acquire consciousness, a sense of self, etc, but just takes for granted that this would be the only way to do so - so therefore anything that doesn't go through the same proces necessarily cannot have a sense of self. That seems unfounded to me. [1] e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982219300880 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221...