Selective pressures on early humans "caused" them to behave as though they were experiencing emotion and demonstrating a sense of self, because those were the ones that got more food and produced more offspring. If dogs have evolved to demonstrate some of the behaviors humans do, how can anyone prove that they are simply mimicking those behaviors instead of actually experiencing the same neurochemical reaction we do?
It seems to me this could easily slide into a philosophical zombie argument. If dogs continue to be bred for human-like qualities for thousands more years, and eventually come to mimic nearly every human behavior, are they any different from humans at that point? Or are they actually just zombie animals demonstrating behavior without actually "experiencing" anything?
