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What I don't quite understand is why the "null hypothesis" here is frequently assumed to be "crows are not self-aware". We have no idea how prevalent self-awareness in the animal kingdom actually is, so shouldn't it rather be "we don't know whether crows are self-aware or not"?

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The funny thing is we have no way of knowing that any other human (other than yourself) is self aware.

This is why the study of consciousness is so difficult. We each clearly know that we are having a subjective experience, but we have no way of knowing that any one (or anything) else is.

I kind of sympathize with the hypothesis that simply all matter has some degree of self consciousness.

Hmm, TBH I think that is pop-science (wrong) take... Humans can stop being self aware and we can measure that very easily. There are many different degrees of self-awareness damage, and many of them are precisely codified.

The problem of other minds is very much a serious problem in philosophy, cf. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/

Philosophy itself is a problem because it seems to be allergic to evidence. Look elsewhere for information concerning the mind, brains, and neurochemistry

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