I see the anthropomorphic approach to consciousness and self awreness that you seem to espouse just like the "Humans, the tool making animal" standards of my childhood. We defined ourselves in terms of an imagined gap between humans and the rest of life.
Tool use was once thought to distinguish humans from animal — until, that is, so many animals proved able to use them.
Granted, the fine folks at Leatherman aren't about to be undercut by cheap chimpanzee-manufactured multitools. But it's hard not to feel a species-level déjà vu when seeing a gorilla using a walking stick or capuchin monkey thoughtfully selecting an ideal nut-cracking stone.
Below is a compilation of some of the most interesting animal tool use yet observed. Much more likely remains to be found: until Jane Goodall watched chimpanzees fishing for termites with sticks, scientists had been reluctant to credit animals with such sophisticated behavior — perhaps because, as Charles Darwin noted, “Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal.”
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/animaltools.html
We have defined consciousness in a similar way: so that only humans fit the definition. And lo and behold, cracks in that imaginary world are appearing as we discover it may not just be a human trait. Now you can say that no other critter has the same consciousnes as a person and be correct. But that is not of much more use than saying "No one else has the same personality as me!" It may be correct, but so what? A more interesting question is how are our differeing personalities similar? Or what makes mine different from yours?
Like with tools, I suspect that we will see that consciousness/awareness will be found thoughout life and the task ahead will be to discover how it differs between people and elephants and dogs, as well as, how is it similar. The human inclination to set humanity apart from the animals is most likely a product of our greater awareness, but that does not make it true.
I am not claiming that dogs have human consciousness, only that they have dog consciousness which is less refined and less capable than ours, but none-the-less similar and connected to ours through evolutionary development.
Yes. Certainly the mirror test is not effective on animals that don't rely on sight greatly.
Probably not. They [dogs] have emotion, but that is not the same as consciousness. Then again, maybe the reason dogs fail the mirror test is that their reflection does not smell anything like them.
So with a better test, you might accept that dogs are self aware? And with a better test we might be able to show that horses are self aware. If that is the case, then the problem is that we have not figured out how to test for awareness and not that the critters have it or not. History has often shown us that generally we assume things incorrectly and later figure out how wrong we were. I'm trying to give you a jump start on the future.
Well yes, we as humans can imagine the concept of ourselves. Each of us considers ourselves as distinct from other people. Now we don't really know what physical process is going on under the hood, but the result is apparent. I think of myself as distinct from the world around me.
I think it is apparent that dogs also think of themselves as distinct from other dogs, as well as, people. And with dogs we have even less knowledge of what is "going on under the hood".
Individual cells show no indication of being able to have such a concept.
They may not think of themselves as people thinkl of themselves, or even "think" at all, but they do ssense what is around them and have the ability to respond to changes in that environment. Isn't that rudimentary awareness?