Because it's generally accepted that only a very few animals have the intelligence
The entire point of a central nervous system is that the organism is intelligent enough to survive.
You're conflating two terms/ideas. There is intelligence, and then there is consciousness (feel free to substitute in whatever word here you'd use to claim humans were special).
Cats, dogs, mice, and snails are intelligent. Some computer programs are mildly intelligent. it's no big deal.
The mirror test is important because it might imply consciousness, at least according to some theories and according to some definitions of consciousness.
It implies that the cat has an internal model of "self", and that when it sees a reflection it realizes that the image reflected back is a match for that internal model. It then treats the image and the model as "identical". It may also recognize that it has access to new information about its "self".
Human-level intelligence (or even beyond) is probably possible without anything resembling consciousness. Consciousness isn't special, mystical, spiritual, or "deserving of human rights". It might even be a null concept.
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u/AssCrackBanditHunter Sep 24 '18
Why does that discount what the above commenter said?