I listened to an interesting philosophical discussion on the topic of animal consciousness recently and so thought to make a comment on an element of that.There are several theories regarding how various animals might experience reality such as horses with nearly 360 degrees of vision, and octopus with neuron in their arms, yet it is the coherent concentration of neurons, the optimal spacing and size of circuits resembling the max theoretical for a computer regarding distance of connections, overheating and processing capacity that seems to be the main thing for consciousness.
Human self-consciousness allows a reflective capacity for making complex decisions that probably isn't existent in simple neural networks. Atheists however tend to disregard intelligent decision making preemptively and shut themselves out of intelligent thought on greater topics than empirical existence. Yet even atheists may be able to consider the epistemological context of not existent objects such as Pegasus, a balanced federal budget, unicorns and etc.
Non-existent objects are a development of the capacity of self-consciousness to imagine and comprehend what exists and what might exist with detachment form automatic processing of immediate empirical sensory input. It is doubtful that animals without self-consciousness can imagine non-existent objects. Instead, like the face recognition circuits of a digital camera,the neural network of non-self-aware animals probably processes just immediate data possibly with pre-wired responses to threat objects such as fish with larger teeth.
Well, there is much work on the topic of self-awareness, animal consciousness (e.g.do they feel anything like being alive?) etc. that make it worth reading and thinking a little about. Following are a pair of web pages summarizing the work
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