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I don’t necessarily agree with the notion that only humans,who are fully self-aware, are the only organisms that could have completed thetask in the house simulation. I think that humans have developed the neocortexbecause they lack other senses and processes that other organisms have. Forinstance, a dog, who doesn’t have a fully developed neocortex, could haveeasily found its way out of the house because of smell and certain types ofbugs could have found their way out because of community relationships (ie. antcolonies). Humans don’t possess the extraordinary skills that some of theseanimals use, so they have had to develop other ways to get themselves out oftricky circumstances. If, along the course of human evolution, we developed asense of smell akin to dogs, do you think the neocortex would still havedeveloped? Or is it possible that being self-aware is simple another “specialskill” that humans have because of an evolutionary fluke? If humans onlydeveloped a neocortex to compensate for failures in other areas of the nervoussystem, our seemingly amazing skills are not so amazing. I think it’s humannature to look at a dog sniffing the air for a squirrel and attribute thisskill to the animal’s nature, but look at our own skills and see something thatis out of the ordinary, something that is way beyond anything that any other organism could possibly do. The neocortex allowshumans to complete certain specialized activities, just as the dog’s noseallows the animal to sniff an animal from across a field.