I think it's a mistake to conflate sentience or self-awareness with intelligence. There is a prank (it might have originated as a real experiment) where someone pretends to be a researcher and gets a victim to put their hand in a box/curtain device that hides the hand. Next to the box is a prosthetic hand. The researcher simultaneously touches both the real and fake hands in the same places while the victim watches. Then the researcher pulls out a knife and stabs the prosthetic hand. The victim panics.
The prank works because the victim began to identify with the fake hand. It might even have the same neural basis as our ability to identify with reflections. But in this scenario, one could argue that someone who doesn't fall for the prank is "smarter" in some sense.
Both humans and ants are very cooperative creatures. And compared to say dogs, we also collaborate on a large scale, possibly including strangers. Perhaps this requires a strong ability to put oneself in another persons shoes (figuratively)? And that self-awareness is more a side-effect of this?
Sure, you can say that not being tricked is smart, but if you're not even aware that the prosthetic represents your hand then you've extra-failed the test.
If the test depended on understanding that it's supposed to represent the real hand, then humans wouldn't fall for it. The brain just sees a hand and starts integrating the visual and tactile sensations despite full knowledge that it's not a real hand. Pretty dumb, eh?
> If the test depended on understanding that it's supposed to represent the real hand, then humans wouldn't fall for it.
I don't know why you would say that. Maybe you're interpreting 'represents' much more narrowly than I intended?
Go ahead and call it dumb all you want, it's much smarter than failing to notice that these two sets of stimuli are perfectly correlated. Misusing information is much closer to properly using it than to being incapable of comprehending it.
The prank works because the victim began to identify with the fake hand. It might even have the same neural basis as our ability to identify with reflections. But in this scenario, one could argue that someone who doesn't fall for the prank is "smarter" in some sense.