[Helm]

Helm,
I think that "self awareness" is one of the key components of being human or, in simpler terms, realizing that there is an "I". To me, the development of this "I" can only come from the realization that there are other objects, living and nonliving, which serve to make us view ourselves as an "other" entity separate from "them". The next logical step is in seeking communications with "them", which is another keep contributor to our humaness that most other animals (subject can be debated to a degree ... re: dolphins, apes, ect.).

I agree to as much. The dialectic connection between what is and isn't, is apparent in such definitions. What is being alive? Not being dead. What is being a human? Not being an animal. Those are the 'hardcoding', the basic premises needed to formulate any more developed cognitive forms.

Can I get an Icon made up that sort of a heiroglyph meaning Vinth said something stupid? I'm not quite ready to ignore him,
but this is way too much typing.

Vince's post in this thread has been the least offensive one by him I've had to read in good long while. Not to say that it wasn't a somewhat base observation to make, but at least I think I detected a honest urge to actually set those rusty wheels in his mind in motion. I can't say I expect more of Vince, and thus did not berate him in my reply (although I did allow myself to be a bit patronising, which in retrospect is a very petty thing to do). I feel it to be excessive to attack him for this one post. I think you making an effort to so thoroughly hound Vince in a bit worrying in itself.

Self-Aware and Sentience are kind of esoteric terms. What passes as Self-Aware to you is just as different from that for a puppy as it is for a mentally handicapped person.

No. They are not esoteric because they are expressable, and thus logically quantifiable. This is a fundamental division between the two, and it should be understood and maintained if those notions dependant on it can remain meaninful. And it's pretty dead-easy to express, at that. You simply have to state something in the lines of "I am I, and not other" and you're done as far as far as proof of sentience goes. A puppy cannot express this in any way, because it lacks the equipment that provides for cognition at such a level. A mentally handicapped person that is no longer in touch with the world as well shouldn't be enthusiastically adressed as human. I know you're thinking that to suggest such a thing is preposterous, but it's not. Men attribute too much on the physical, so if it looks like a human, it just has to be one. But if something that looks like a man cannot longer relate to it's existance as part (and of course, seperated from ) of it's context, then it simply is not.

A sewer rat is aware of itself and has sentience, but not to the same degree you do.

Such a thing cannot be logically expressed. Thus it is not so. Reason as Law, if you will.

If human sentience and self-awareness are uniques to humans, it's possible that sewer rats have some other defining trait that is as equally valuable to them as our Sentience is to us.

An entertaining notion, but to use the eshtablished, sentience is what it is because it is not something else. So there can be no parallel drawn between it and your imaginary vermin attribute. At least, no parallel that can be logically inspected to any useful degree.