6 ms·

It's not an assumption. Self awareness has been scientifically tested in many species, most prominently by using the mirror test: testing if an animal can reco

It's not an assumption. Self awareness has been scientifically tested in many species, most prominently by using the mirror test: testing if an animal can recognize itself in a mirror by observing if its behavior changes after surreptitiously placing onto its body a mark, which the animal can only see through the mirror. One can argue about the merits of the mirror test, but it's inaccurate to say that scientists are merely making assumptions. They're doing their best to rigorously test self awareness.

dfischer 6y ago
They’re doing it within their frame of definitions which is largely evidence of constrained models leaving options unknown outside the realm of reason thereby excluding outliers of surprising potential.
- the8472 6y ago
  This sounds like critiquing science for not having all answers. Do you have a better approach?
  - dfischer 6y ago
    My critique of is shaded by an irritation of within the both the "non-scientific" community that has been indoctrinated to take what "scientists" say as expert factual irrefutable statements and the "scientific" community that has become not what I'd call scientific and more close to dogma, orthodox, ideological, and or protectionist to break novel grounds. The scientific community is explicitly sanctioned by a centralized order of groups that endorse individuals within a process enforced upon anyone born. You either accept the game and fight to get into "science" or you're not a "scientist." I know plenty of individuals who are more-expert, more scientific than any scientist publishing papers funded by poorly designed incentive structures between education, research, monetary incentive, and survival. There's a lot of "clique politics" within the academia of science and it deeply troubles me. It's largely based on the university system being in control of it and the processes that contribute to that structure. Luckily it does seem to be getting more attention so that is good. Additionally the trend towards self-organization with the internet and wherever that leads us will most likely lead to new structures that allow more freedom of information within science to propagate without as much dependence on centralized entities being corrupted and tainting the scientific process. Outside of that, my critique here is largely based on various modes within Functionalism (theory of mind) > In an analogous manner, the role of mental states, such as belief and desire, is determined by the functional or causal role that is designated for them within our best scientific psychological theory. If some mental state which is postulated by folk psychology (e.g. hysteria) is determined not to have any fundamental role in cognitive psychological explanation, then that particular state may be considered not to exist . On the other hand, if it turns out that there are states which theoretical cognitive psychology posits as necessary for explanation of human behavior but which are not foreseen by ordinary folk psychological language, then these entities or states exist. I think the solve I'm looking for is required on both ends to communicate truth and "fuzziness" of truth. I'm not sure if English and current languages will ever trend towards this because every statement has a value of assigned truth based on existence/to-be. So short-term would be communicating the meme of this through the zeitgeist/noosphere and embed it within the culture - then potentially evolve towards a language that is fuzzy based.
    - the8472 6y ago
      This doesn't seem particularly helpful for the conversation here. Claiming something is self-aware because I say so or because I don't trust the state of research will hardly convince anyone. Random social media videos of animals exhibiting interesting behavior is not sufficient either, it is interesting but can be misattributed due to anthropomorphisation. And if you want to preach about better communicating uncertainty and statistics then I am afraid you're preaching to the choir in a particularly ranty sermon. Yes there are plenty of uncertainties, but those uncertainties cut both ways.
      - dfischer 6y ago
        Well I appreciate the audience for whatever its worth. The exchange added value. Thanks!
- stouset 6y ago
  If you have any better ideas, the scientific community would legitimately love to hear them. It’s not like nobody realizes that we don’t have flawless definitions for “self-aware”, “intelligent”, or even “life”. Or that the experiments we devise to test for these things come from our own experiences and bias, and might exclude creatures with novel presentations of these traits. But they’re the best we have for now. And smart people have spent countless lifetimes trying to improve upon what we have, attempting to broaden these categories and their testing apparatuses without expanding the definitions past the point of usefulness. So, yes, we get it. Everyone knows our tests and definitions aren’t perfect. We know they’ll exclude life forms with presentations of these traits that we haven’t even conceived of. Not only doesn’t science have all the answers yet, but it hasn’t even agreed on the wording of the questions yet. Pointing this out for the thirteen trillionth time just isn’t useful or insightful.
  - dfischer 6y ago
    If it keeps hurting, it should keep being mentioned. When things that hurt are turned into silence, then things don't change that can stop hurt. I understand your point though, and I'm sorry if it came off as an attack. It's a criticism rooted in a few things. I typed up more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24601665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24601665
    - smallnamespace 6y ago
      I mean, would you go around reminding your friends of their shortcomings and then reminding them how helpful your feedback is? Sometimes people are well aware of the problems and are actively trying to solve them.
      - dfischer 6y ago
        I won’t remind them of my feedback but I’d never give up on telling them where they should improve.
    - stouset 6y ago
      Mentioning it would be helpful if this was something the relevant scientific community wasn’t already keenly aware of. “We don’t have all-encompassing definitions nor tests of self-awareness” isn’t something people have forgotten— it’s virtually the most well-known open question in the entire field! It’s like popping into a discussion of general relativity and “helpfully” chiming in with the criticism that “But we know GR must be wrong, since it’s incompatible with quantum mechanics.”
bigpumpkin 6y ago
I think it's likely that social animals are almost all self aware. How can an individual animal manage social relations within its pack without a knowledge of self and of other selves?
- exo-pla-net 6y ago
  I disagree. Ants are highly social, but few would ascribe them self awareness. They pursue social objectives using instinct. But pack animals? Maybe. We don't have an answer to how our own self awareness works, so we're largely working in the dark.
  - root_axis 6y ago
    We're definitely working in the dark, but i don't see any compelling reason to suggest that ants aren't self-aware; why wouldn't they be? What about their behavior makes you feel like they aren't?
    - eternalban 6y ago
      Extreme self-abnegation.
      - klyrs 6y ago
        What are your thoughts on kamikaze pilots in this regard?
        eternalban 6y ago
        Humans are capable of self sacrifice for a cause. Duty, honor, love of one's homeland, spiritual convictions, etc. These are psychological motives and forces and their factual impact on the subject person is observable. I just recently saw Eien no Zero (aka The Eternal Zero). If that movie reflects the actual events, then the pilots were subject to serious psychological stress coming to terms with their duty to Japan. If we can ever measure 'psychological stress' in ants, then we can observe if they experience a shift from a normal psychological state to a stressful one before "deciding" to sacrifice themselves on whatever heroic ant task awaits them.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
root_axis 6y ago
The mirror-test is not even close to exhaustive with respect to conclusions about self-awareness. It is certainly conceivable that a self-aware creature could simply be incapable of understanding a mirror or that they might be otherwise indifferent to what they see in it. For example, dogs fail the mirror test, but they are obviously self-aware creatures.
- read_if_gay_ 6y ago
  > but they are obviously self-aware creatures. Is it that obvious? Mine gets scared by her own farts sometimes.
  - root_axis 6y ago
    I think it's axiomatically true. If we don't consider dogs to be "self-aware" then I think the discussion becomes an issue of semantics, because dogs clearly possess an emotional intelligence that necessarily implies a kind of "self-awareness" that is common to humans.
    - drdeca 6y ago
      I would think that self-aware would imply not just emotions, but having awareness of oneself, not just "of one's body", but like, being able to think about how one would react to something, or at least some things somewhat like that. Wikipedia says "While consciousness is being aware of one's environment and body and lifestyle, self-awareness is the recognition of that awareness."
      - root_axis 6y ago
        > Wikipedia says "While consciousness is being aware of one's environment and body and lifestyle, self-awareness is the recognition of that awareness." If we use that definition dogs may not be self-aware, but then the mirror test tells us nothing since it only shows that the animal is "aware of one's body" not that it has "recognition of that awareness".
  - 6y ago
rbecker 6y ago
The mirror test also gives widely different results in humans. Canadian children pass it at 2 years old, while Kenyans fail at 5: https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Journal%20of%20Cross-Cultural%20Psychology-2010-Broesch-%20Cultural%20Variations%20in%20Children's%20Mirror%20Self-Recognition.pdf https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Journal%20of%20Cross... Would you conclude from it that Kenyan children are less (or not at all) "self-aware" than Canadian ones? Or that the leap from "recognize reflection" to "self-awareness" is unjustified?
- thatguy0900 6y ago
  What a minefield of a question
- the8472 6y ago
  Skimming the paper, the researchers already propose their own interpretation of possible causes, but one thing I couldn't find is whether they controlled for familiarity with mirrors. A full-height mirror (within reach of small children) might simply be more common in western households. Edit, nevermind, there's a whole paragraph on that towards the end: > It may be important to note the general use of mirrors in each of the cultures. Although we did not include an independent measure of the extent and nature of mirror experience in these cul-tures, the experimenters visited many homes in these various communities. Although mirrors are present in most non-Western and all Western homes, their use varies considerably. It is more conspicuously and frequently used in the West, compared to any of the other cultures considered here. Western children are more likely to have shared mirror exposure with others or to have seen themselves in a mirror in the presence of others, a situation presumably unfamiliar to the non-Western children we tested. The unfamiliarity with public mirror exposure may be linked to the enhanced “freezing” behavior by non-Western children, particularly when discovering that their face is marked. This inhibition may correspond to the fact that children do not know how to behave, one way or another, in this context.
  - rbecker 6y ago
    They also cite a different study: In contrast, research with humans suggests that children’s relative familiarity with mirrors, which greatly varies across contexts, does not correlate with the age at which the mark test is passed (Priel & deSchonen, 1986). Priel and deShonen (1986) tested Bedouin nomadic children with no previous mirror experience and compared them to same-age Israeli children familiar with mirrors. They found no significant difference in the developmental onset of MSR between mirror familiar and unfamiliar children.

dfischer 6y ago

They’re doing it within their frame of definitions which is largely evidence of constrained models leaving options unknown outside the realm of reason thereby excluding outliers of surprising potential.

the8472 6y ago
This sounds like critiquing science for not having all answers. Do you have a better approach?
- dfischer 6y ago
  My critique of is shaded by an irritation of within the both the "non-scientific" community that has been indoctrinated to take what "scientists" say as expert factual irrefutable statements and the "scientific" community that has become not what I'd call scientific and more close to dogma, orthodox, ideological, and or protectionist to break novel grounds. The scientific community is explicitly sanctioned by a centralized order of groups that endorse individuals within a process enforced upon anyone born. You either accept the game and fight to get into "science" or you're not a "scientist." I know plenty of individuals who are more-expert, more scientific than any scientist publishing papers funded by poorly designed incentive structures between education, research, monetary incentive, and survival. There's a lot of "clique politics" within the academia of science and it deeply troubles me. It's largely based on the university system being in control of it and the processes that contribute to that structure. Luckily it does seem to be getting more attention so that is good. Additionally the trend towards self-organization with the internet and wherever that leads us will most likely lead to new structures that allow more freedom of information within science to propagate without as much dependence on centralized entities being corrupted and tainting the scientific process. Outside of that, my critique here is largely based on various modes within Functionalism (theory of mind) > In an analogous manner, the role of mental states, such as belief and desire, is determined by the functional or causal role that is designated for them within our best scientific psychological theory. If some mental state which is postulated by folk psychology (e.g. hysteria) is determined not to have any fundamental role in cognitive psychological explanation, then that particular state may be considered not to exist . On the other hand, if it turns out that there are states which theoretical cognitive psychology posits as necessary for explanation of human behavior but which are not foreseen by ordinary folk psychological language, then these entities or states exist. I think the solve I'm looking for is required on both ends to communicate truth and "fuzziness" of truth. I'm not sure if English and current languages will ever trend towards this because every statement has a value of assigned truth based on existence/to-be. So short-term would be communicating the meme of this through the zeitgeist/noosphere and embed it within the culture - then potentially evolve towards a language that is fuzzy based.
  - the8472 6y ago
    This doesn't seem particularly helpful for the conversation here. Claiming something is self-aware because I say so or because I don't trust the state of research will hardly convince anyone. Random social media videos of animals exhibiting interesting behavior is not sufficient either, it is interesting but can be misattributed due to anthropomorphisation. And if you want to preach about better communicating uncertainty and statistics then I am afraid you're preaching to the choir in a particularly ranty sermon. Yes there are plenty of uncertainties, but those uncertainties cut both ways.
    - dfischer 6y ago
      Well I appreciate the audience for whatever its worth. The exchange added value. Thanks!
stouset 6y ago
If you have any better ideas, the scientific community would legitimately love to hear them. It’s not like nobody realizes that we don’t have flawless definitions for “self-aware”, “intelligent”, or even “life”. Or that the experiments we devise to test for these things come from our own experiences and bias, and might exclude creatures with novel presentations of these traits. But they’re the best we have for now. And smart people have spent countless lifetimes trying to improve upon what we have, attempting to broaden these categories and their testing apparatuses without expanding the definitions past the point of usefulness. So, yes, we get it. Everyone knows our tests and definitions aren’t perfect. We know they’ll exclude life forms with presentations of these traits that we haven’t even conceived of. Not only doesn’t science have all the answers yet, but it hasn’t even agreed on the wording of the questions yet. Pointing this out for the thirteen trillionth time just isn’t useful or insightful.
- dfischer 6y ago
  If it keeps hurting, it should keep being mentioned. When things that hurt are turned into silence, then things don't change that can stop hurt. I understand your point though, and I'm sorry if it came off as an attack. It's a criticism rooted in a few things. I typed up more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24601665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24601665
  - smallnamespace 6y ago
    I mean, would you go around reminding your friends of their shortcomings and then reminding them how helpful your feedback is? Sometimes people are well aware of the problems and are actively trying to solve them.
    - dfischer 6y ago
      I won’t remind them of my feedback but I’d never give up on telling them where they should improve.
  - stouset 6y ago
    Mentioning it would be helpful if this was something the relevant scientific community wasn’t already keenly aware of. “We don’t have all-encompassing definitions nor tests of self-awareness” isn’t something people have forgotten— it’s virtually the most well-known open question in the entire field! It’s like popping into a discussion of general relativity and “helpfully” chiming in with the criticism that “But we know GR must be wrong, since it’s incompatible with quantum mechanics.”

bigpumpkin 6y ago

I think it's likely that social animals are almost all self aware. How can an individual animal manage social relations within its pack without a knowledge of self and of other selves?

exo-pla-net 6y ago
I disagree. Ants are highly social, but few would ascribe them self awareness. They pursue social objectives using instinct. But pack animals? Maybe. We don't have an answer to how our own self awareness works, so we're largely working in the dark.
- root_axis 6y ago
  We're definitely working in the dark, but i don't see any compelling reason to suggest that ants aren't self-aware; why wouldn't they be? What about their behavior makes you feel like they aren't?
  - eternalban 6y ago
    Extreme self-abnegation.
    - klyrs 6y ago
      What are your thoughts on kamikaze pilots in this regard?
      - eternalban 6y ago
        Humans are capable of self sacrifice for a cause. Duty, honor, love of one's homeland, spiritual convictions, etc. These are psychological motives and forces and their factual impact on the subject person is observable. I just recently saw Eien no Zero (aka The Eternal Zero). If that movie reflects the actual events, then the pilots were subject to serious psychological stress coming to terms with their duty to Japan. If we can ever measure 'psychological stress' in ants, then we can observe if they experience a shift from a normal psychological state to a stressful one before "deciding" to sacrifice themselves on whatever heroic ant task awaits them.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

root_axis 6y ago

The mirror-test is not even close to exhaustive with respect to conclusions about self-awareness. It is certainly conceivable that a self-aware creature could simply be incapable of understanding a mirror or that they might be otherwise indifferent to what they see in it. For example, dogs fail the mirror test, but they are obviously self-aware creatures.

read_if_gay_ 6y ago
> but they are obviously self-aware creatures. Is it that obvious? Mine gets scared by her own farts sometimes.
- root_axis 6y ago
  I think it's axiomatically true. If we don't consider dogs to be "self-aware" then I think the discussion becomes an issue of semantics, because dogs clearly possess an emotional intelligence that necessarily implies a kind of "self-awareness" that is common to humans.
  - drdeca 6y ago
    I would think that self-aware would imply not just emotions, but having awareness of oneself, not just "of one's body", but like, being able to think about how one would react to something, or at least some things somewhat like that. Wikipedia says "While consciousness is being aware of one's environment and body and lifestyle, self-awareness is the recognition of that awareness."
    - root_axis 6y ago
      > Wikipedia says "While consciousness is being aware of one's environment and body and lifestyle, self-awareness is the recognition of that awareness." If we use that definition dogs may not be self-aware, but then the mirror test tells us nothing since it only shows that the animal is "aware of one's body" not that it has "recognition of that awareness".
- 6y ago

rbecker 6y ago

The mirror test also gives widely different results in humans. Canadian children pass it at 2 years old, while Kenyans fail at 5: https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Journal%20of%20Cross-Cultural%20Psychology-2010-Broesch-%20Cultural%20Variations%20in%20Children's%20Mirror%20Self-Recognition.pdf https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Journal%20of%20Cross... Would you conclude from it that Kenyan children are less (or not at all) "self-aware" than Canadian ones? Or that the leap from "recognize reflection" to "self-awareness" is unjustified?

thatguy0900 6y ago
What a minefield of a question
the8472 6y ago
Skimming the paper, the researchers already propose their own interpretation of possible causes, but one thing I couldn't find is whether they controlled for familiarity with mirrors. A full-height mirror (within reach of small children) might simply be more common in western households. Edit, nevermind, there's a whole paragraph on that towards the end: > It may be important to note the general use of mirrors in each of the cultures. Although we did not include an independent measure of the extent and nature of mirror experience in these cul-tures, the experimenters visited many homes in these various communities. Although mirrors are present in most non-Western and all Western homes, their use varies considerably. It is more conspicuously and frequently used in the West, compared to any of the other cultures considered here. Western children are more likely to have shared mirror exposure with others or to have seen themselves in a mirror in the presence of others, a situation presumably unfamiliar to the non-Western children we tested. The unfamiliarity with public mirror exposure may be linked to the enhanced “freezing” behavior by non-Western children, particularly when discovering that their face is marked. This inhibition may correspond to the fact that children do not know how to behave, one way or another, in this context.
- rbecker 6y ago
  They also cite a different study: In contrast, research with humans suggests that children’s relative familiarity with mirrors, which greatly varies across contexts, does not correlate with the age at which the mark test is passed (Priel & deSchonen, 1986). Priel and deShonen (1986) tested Bedouin nomadic children with no previous mirror experience and compared them to same-age Israeli children familiar with mirrors. They found no significant difference in the developmental onset of MSR between mirror familiar and unfamiliar children.