> how do I know if they're answering truthfully?
> anyone who professed non-consciousness
The ability to lie seems to me to imply at least some level of consciousness. How could/why would you deceive others if you have no concept of your own existence?
For a philosophical zombie, you'd need this behavior to exist independent of the zombie having a theory of mind and conscious awareness which they can use to reason about the state of another's awareness. That's a lot leaps of faith to take.
We don't need to die by walking off a cliff, if we can have a conceptual version of ourself walk off, imagine the result of walking off the cliff and choose not to do it.
Yes this expands consciousness to animals, but I doubt it goes much farther than that. I think it fits.