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The neurology of self-awareness
- haberman 10y agoA very interesting and thought-provoking essay. This part in particular stuck out: > Otherwise monkeys would have self awareness and they don't This suggests the existence of other research that has both defined the concept of self-awareness robustly and made it testable enough that we can state as fact that monkeys don't have it. Does anybody know what this might be alluding to?
- aleksei 10y agoYeah, the essay was good, but unsatisfactory in explaining why monkeys, dolphins, or even most other animals would not possess self awareness. It's easy to disregard others, when we don't share a common tongue.
- SCAQTony 10y agoThere appears to be more evidence that dogs are self aware rather than not: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/opinion/sunday/dogs-are-people-too.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&single=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/opinion/sunday/dogs-are-pe... Newer studies illustrated with MRI scans that dogs can comprehend language and the emotional tone of their owners.... And dogs can get jealous too. http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/08/dogs-recognize-both-words-and-tone-to-know-when-theyre-good/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/08/dogs-recognize-both-w... Reference regarding jealously: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jul/23/dogs-jealous-owners-attention-study https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jul/23/dogs-jealous...
- ThomPete 10y agoThis sounds more like humans interpreting behavior rather than proof of that behavior.
- MacsHeadroom 10y agoEqually like, anyway.
- eli_gottlieb 10y agoWhen you're referring to measured brain activity as "behavior", you've redefined the word beyond any usefulness to neuroscience.
- ThomPete 10y agoI wasn't, bad choice of words.
- noam87 10y agoIn that case someone should set out to investigate whether humans are self aware.
- dominotw 10y ago>Does anybody know what this might be alluding to? According to the article, Self-awareness is 'other awareness' applied to yourself where 'other awareness' is constructing meaningful models of other peoples minds in order to predict their behavior. But as you said it seems like 'monkeys are not self-aware' was a presumption made by the author, i.e monkeys don't have model for self. But, how can we verify this?. He is saying'mirror neurons play important role in self but not that important otherwise monkeys would have a self', so the original problem still remains.
- cel1ne 10y agoI wonder why they use the word "other awareness", when there is a long-established term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind
- solipsism 10y agoBecause he's talking about "other awareness" and "self awareness" as distinct concepts. ToM includes both.
- type0 10y agoI think he had chosen the wrong words here, it's foolish to think that great apes are not self aware. However they don't have the kind of insight in their own thinking that humans posses. We can draw some conclusions on how they use tool or organize themselves socially and on the surface we might not be that different. Apes can teach each other how to dig for water in cases of drought, but their planning and preparation only goes so far. I think our self awareness is much more linked to curiosity and goal determination than anything. I don't mean that it arises from those but that it is our inherent ingenuity of that made us conquer the Earth.
- amelius 10y agoOut of curiosity, do apes understand death, like humans do?
- woliveirajr 10y agoDeath as in "someday I'll die" or in the "I'll kill" ? There was a footage on some simians ambushing and torturing (?) and killing another one.
- joshvm 10y agoWhether the phrasing was intentional or not, monkeys are not apes.
- eagsalazar2 10y agoIt is a common arrogance, even among "scientists", to assume that no other animal has self awareness or even emotions.
- ThomPete 10y agoCan you point to any evidence even in the fringe sciences that would attempt to prove that monkeys have self awareness?
- janpieterz 10y agoNot an expert, but it's certainly something that's actively researched... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-awareness#Animals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-awareness#Animals
- daveguy 10y agoI always thought the mirror test / mark test was a pretty well established test for self awareness, and several animals pass it. It's not particularly fringe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test
- greggyb 10y agoActually, this is called into question in the fine article: > (Incidentally, Gallup's mirror test — removing a paint splotch from your face while looking at a mirror — is not an adequate test of self awareness, even though it is touted as such. We have seen patients who vehemently claim that their reflection in the mirror is "someone else" yet they pass the Gallup test!)
- daveguy 10y agoThe point is that awareness testing is not a fringe part of animal behavioral studies. This would be a potential area of research for mainstream animal behavior study (paired mirror tests).
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- littlepenguin 10y agoi think the author is referring to the Gallup Test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test
- wellpast 10y ago> But hopefully we have paved the way for future models and empirical studies on the nature of self, a problem that philosophers have made essentially no headway in solving. This final statement not only seems snide but also dumb to the difference between science and philosophy. (I'm not an expert on that difference but I can see that there is one. I can see that there is a clear difference in spite of the fact that each steps on the others' toes, that each side attempts to take credit for the others' insights at times, or makes snide comments at each other like this statement here.)
- type0 10y agoI think philosophers often free-ride on the discoveries of cognitive scientists without adding anything to the discussion. That doesn't mean that philosophy can't have its place, it's there to ask questions but very often those questions are meaningless without the way to gain answers.
- bjd2385 10y agoI like this comment. Honestly it makes sense; that is not to say that philosophy doesn't have a place in science, but I would liken it to writing a website in assembly as opposed to JS, etc.
- mpweiher 10y agoWell...Philosophy ("love of wisdom") originally encompassed all of science. In a sense, once a discipline was able to be conducted more empirically, it split off. So at any particular stage, Philosophy will be trying to answer those questions we can't answer empirically. So I find the "free-ride" a little harsh. What happens over time is that more and more questions that used to be purely "philosophical" have more and more empirical answers. I think it might be useful for Philosophy to be less its own specialty and more an umbrella for the whole enterprise of "love of wisdom".
- foldr 10y ago>What happens over time is that more and more questions that used to be purely "philosophical" have more and more empirical answers. I sometimes think this might be a bit of a positivist myth. Most of the domains where we've gained a great deal of empirical knowledge are domains which people always investigated empirically, albeit less systematically and with fewer available resources (e.g. astronomy). On the other hand, most of the big philosophical puzzles that Aristotle engaged with remain largely untouched by developments in science. E.g. Is it possible to make true statements about the future? How is change possible?
- marknadal 10y agoWoah Woah Woah, there is a fatal flaw and assumption in just the first couple paragraphs - the bootstrapping problem. If we evolved self in order to predict what others feel ... that depends on others having those feeling, but if those feelings in others don't evolve unless others have evolved those feelings, we have a circular fallacy! Who was the first feeler to cause others to evolve, and how did that person evolve then?
- wellpast 10y agoAll you need is one instance where one agent mistakes that the other agent feels when that agent doesn't -- and then I think your fallacy is moot.
- type0 10y ago> If we evolved self in order to predict what others feel ... This has quite obvious evolutionary advantages. If you can predict how someone feels or what he might think you can outsmart him in competition for food. You could trick him for trade (e.g. food for tools) when he least suspects that it might not be in his favor. Essentially externalizing mirror neuron processes is much more beneficial in the short term, if you can think how the other person might think. In the long run in order to be successful you also need to internalize you mirror neurons - you need to think how to think about yourself and to start thinking what this person might think about you and what kind of self awareness they could have. You can't just trick the other, the deal is to trick them without them noticing otherwise you end up with prisoners dilemma. Probably those processes could also had led to evolution of language and trade.
- bjd2385 10y agoMakes a lot of common sense. The more I read about stuff like this the more ``common-sense" Nature seems. I mean, having this near- or far-future predictive ability gives a species a real advantage among others that don't.
- simonh 10y agoThat assumes that a sense of self is required in order to have feelings. I don't think that's true. I do find the idea that a sense of self developed from an ability to model the mental states of others, but I don't think having a mental state requires having a sense of self.
- rrggrr 10y agoThis could neatly explain Stockholm Syndrome, cult joining and other identity deficits.
- dominotw 10y agowouldn't monkeys have cults if this was a sufficient explanation for those?
- kaffeemitsahne 10y agoMaybe monkeys indeed have cults.. :)
- brassic 10y agoLike this? http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/nature/2016/03/could-chimpanzees-have-religion http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/nature/2016/03/could-chi...
- 77pt77 10y agoI've been looking for this for ages. Thanks.
- meowface 10y agoI mean, in some sense, mirror neurons could explain almost all social behavior, and culture/society in general. I'd be interested in knowing exactly how the mirror neurons communicate and work with the rest of the brain.
- pharrington 10y agoThe current understanding is that people join abusive and captive organizations/people not knowing they are such, and stay because acknowledging the abuse, coercion, and lies means admitting you've been fundamentally taken advantage of, which in the short term is harder than simply believing the lies you're continually getting fed.
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- alongub 10y agoThis might be an extremely stupid question, but does it make sense to apply the concept of mirror neurons to ANNs?
- type0 10y agoWell isn't it applied in a way, think assisted learning etc in certain applications, but I'm not a computer scientist so I don't know really.
- MrQuincle 10y agoOf course. There is a field in AI that is dedicated to imitation learning. See e.g. "Mirror neurons and imitation: a computationally guided review" at http://pacherie.free.fr/COURS/MSC/Oztop-Kawato-Arbib-2006.pdf http://pacherie.free.fr/COURS/MSC/Oztop-Kawato-Arbib-2006.pd... for an overview. The reason why you don't see so much of this type of literature is because the dominance of virtual AI: Google, Siri, etc. Hardware is expensive and learning with hardware is slow. However, the type of AI required is IMHO much more interesting. I think we really understand how our brains work if we have an AI competing at the Olympics.
- MrQuincle 10y ago2007 article A very interesting hypothesis nevertheless. There are pathologies in which theory of mind is impaired. For example Baron-Cohen studies that aspect of autism. There might be hypotheses formulated what that means for self-awareness.
- orthoganol 10y agoHe insists that 'mirror neurons' give rise to the aspects of self, but who's not to say that they are a reflection/ habituation of processes 'out there', I don't know, something like the (aptly named) 'mirror stage' of childhood? Shouldn't a discussion of correlation vs. causation be important for his argument?
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- taormina 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_stage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_stage
- orthoganol 10y agoI'm not saying the mirror stage is the explanation, formative experiences more generally in childhood might be a reason you see 'mirror neuron' networks. A feral child can't learn language after a certain point, and hypothetically I would imagine he would not show a 'mirror neuron' network (or sense of self awareness). Either way, I think the author needs to address correlation vs. causation before assuming the latter.
- ThomPete 10y agoRamachandrans Reith lectures are also worth a listen http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/
- ajcarpy2005 10y agoI'm going to play the buddhist card on this one and contend that it's the enlistment of "outside" energies like food, air, water, prana...which are coming into an organism and experiencing or "re-experiencing" itself which gives rise to this effect. There are many levels to this effect though and there must be some sweet spots where an experience seems somehow new (as in worthy to be paid attention to) and yet not-altogether old either. Familiar enough to recognize and "alarming" or "surprising" enough to be worthy of giving attention towards.
- hyperpallium 10y ago"Mirror" neurons sound more like "concept" or "verb" neurons, rather than a subset of "command" neurons. Firing when its monkey "reaches for a peanut", and when it sees another monkey "reaching for a peanut" sounds like it means the verb "to reach for a peanut". It also seems unlikely that a single neuron would carry a complete meaning in themselves... like probing a single bit in a data structure, you might be able to tell if it's odd or even, positive or negative, but probably need a constellation of bits/neurons to make sense of it. But he may be simplifying in this high-level essay, and I haven't read papers in the field.
- suyash 10y agoSelf Awareness is something that is uniquely human. It relies on consciousness.
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- MacsHeadroom 10y agoConsciousness is the experience of being. If there is an experience of what it is like to be a thing, then that thing can be said to be conscious. Such things may be some subset of or superset containing "things with brains." But the idea that it is uniquely human seems absurd.
- visakanv 10y agoHow do you know; have you ever tried not being human?
- type0 10y agoRamachandrans The Tell-Tale Brain is certainly one of my favorite books, anyone who is interested in neurobiology should read it.
- 77pt77 10y agoJust another ape pretending he's special. Sure, monkeys don't have self awareness.
- tantaman 10y agoHow he defines self awareness: "'other awareness' applied to yourself" is a self awareness we entertain as children but definitely not real self awareness or the self awareness we posses after reaching any level of even moderate development. "Self-awareness is 'other awareness' applied to yourself where 'other awareness' is constructing meaningful models of other peoples minds in order to predict their behavior" ^ This is totally circular. You(others) have some way of guiding your(their) own behavior before being aware of others and using that to construct a model of behavior and self. This essay is armchair philosophizing completely removed from any real experience. I'd go so far as to call it psychologically harmful to anyone that entertains the essay as true and attempts to apply the ideas presented in it to understand their self.
- mehwoot 10y agoThe neuron fired not only (say) when the monkey reached for a peanut but also when it watched another monkey reach for a peanut! These were dubbed "mirror neurons" or "monkey-see-monkey-do" neurons. This was an extraordinary observation because it implies that the neuron (or more accurately, the network which it is part of) was not only generating a highly specific command ("reach for the nut") but was capable of adopting another monkey's point of view. It was doing a sort of internal virtual reality simulation of the other monkeys action in order to figure out what he was "up to". It was, in short, a "mind-reading" neuron. I don't really see how this follows- maybe the neurons are just recognising things that happened, like seeing a peanut being picked up. That doesn't require "adopting another monkey's point of view" or "figuring out what he was up to". It could just be the brain attempting to verify that the action happened, which is going to be seen regardless of who made it happen.
- zer0gravity 10y agoThe man is simply saying that the underlying neurological mechanism (i.e. mirror neurons ) used to decode others behaviour and possbily make a prediction about "what they're up to" is used also to decode/simulate our own actions, which is really what we call self awarness. This actually makes quite a lot of sense, and I don't see why some pople detect a circular dependecy here.. At sensory level our own "doing" is not really different then sombody else's "doing" , and that can pe processed by the same mechanism, but reconized as "our own doing" based on additional cues..
- pointernil 10y ago-- 'other awareness' applied to yourself -- I find the work and ideas especially the "attention schema theory" of sentience, consciousness, self-awareness proposed by Michael Graziano[1] most compelling in that area; they as well propose an evolutionary path towards the development of "consciousness" And yeah sure, why should/could the mirror-neurons-"apparatus" _not_ be involved? [1] https://www.princeton.edu/~graziano/ https://www.princeton.edu/~graziano/ : including some The Atlantic essays.
- dgregd 10y agoWe already know that we are very similar to animals. Our mind and consciousness are last things that distinguishes us. We are strongly attached to this idea. It was hard for people to accept the fact that the Earth is not the center of the universe, and despite the simple explanation of the phenomena that surround us. Regarding consciousness there is too much philosophical discussion. Wordplays of which little is clear. The sense of sight has exhausted such emotions. We are able to say that a simple multicellular organism having one photosensitive cell is a primitive ancestor of the eye. What do you say if we define consciousness as the next sense, but in contrast to other senses directed to the center, that is, to our memory.
- kungfooman 10y ago> the TOM evolved first in response to social needs and then later, as an unexpected bonus, came the ability to introspect on your own thoughts and intentions Does that somehow mean that introverted people are on another evolutional level than extroverts people?
- dmfdmf 10y agoThis theory is reversing the cause and effect. Self-awareness is not the primary because it is a consequence of free will, i.e. the capacity to direct the focus or object of your consciousness. Initially the focus of attention is external to the mind for its obvious survival value and the higher animals clearly have some primitive ability to direct their focus. But the step they cannot (or have not made) is to direct that focus onto their own cognitive states (i.e. self-awareness) and discover such things as anger, jealousy, want, love, motivation, etc. From there its a small step to project that certain other animals have similar internal states that explain their behaviors, i.e. mirroring. Hours of observing others animals perceptually would never lead to mirroring nor self-awareness. It is a projection of our observation of the internal states of the only consciousness you can or ever will directly observe, your own.
- zde 10y agoNaive factorial() implementation is self-aware, I'd say. So what?