Science: Can Animals and Robots Be Self-Aware?

Here's a very interesting article sent to me about metacognition - "the ability to think about your thoughts, to engage in self-reflection, to introspect." It describes a few clever tests that show significant evidence of such self-awareness in animals, comatose humans and even computer programs. It challenges this last bastion of human uniqueness. Perhaps animals and future computers may one day state Descartes' "Cogito, ergo sum" (Latin for "I think therefore I am"), and in some "real" way be as certain about their own existence as any one us can claim.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18108859/site/newsweek/