What I meant by my post was that self-awarness my not exactly be an existing quality. After all, if we program a computer to look like it is self-aware and to "think" it is self-aware, saying it isn't only prove that we could be "not self-aware" at all. Complicated to explain on text, but I understand myself
we cannot prove anything is or isn't self-aware. After all, animals could be a lot smarter, in a sense, than us, and we butcher them. (daulphins will end up leaving the planet singing...)
I like raapys' point. We are nothing more than chemical reactions in a natural computer, which animals have too, and at a lower (or higher, who knows) degree, plants too. The fact that ours is a bit bigger doesn't mean we're the only sentient beings, in terms stated above. What would make us different is the level we are at, like communication etc. After all, a brain, like a computer, is, in a way, a machine. A gearbox is too. so what matters is only the complexity of that machine. No soul or whatever bull**** religion bring to us. (sorry for religious types, no offence intended)