No, if you follow the conversation, I was making the point that self-awareness (or "knowing you're alive") is not necessary for a human to be a person, even under our current laws, and the problem with trying to call on sentience as a necessary criteria for the right to life - or the right not to be killed - of a human. Okay. It's not that you are saying self-awareness isn't sufficient, you're saying that it isn't even necessary? Rights exist in the absence of any self-awareness?
So how can we tell if a thing has rights?
We can tell whether it's of the human species. For the benefit of protecting the inalienable right not to be killed, we should not allow the killing of any human who is no immediate danger to life.
If we codify which humans are human enough to be protected and which are not, we codify discrimination and build a system to justify discrimination, we end up in conversations such as Peter Singer's monologues on the ethical equivalents/equivalency of adult chickens and neonates. Or geriatric value versus young adult value.
There are no clean cut lines other than 'living' and 'dead' and 'human' and 'non-human.'
I'd be willing to give any species which engages in this sort of discussion the designation of 'human.' But, I wouldn't require that each member of the species be competent at all times to engage in the discussion to my satisfaction.
Go read the portion of Dr. Spitzer's book that is sampled on Amazon. He begins his discussion on defining and naming in those pages.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0898707862/ref=lib_rd_next_7/002-4150258-6226432?v=glance&s=books&vi=reader&img=7#reader-link