I think an animal capable of self recognition may still fail the mirror test if visual sense is not their primary window to the world.
Take a hypothetical example, say we were presented with a non-visual smell mirror, would we pay it any attention, let alone recognize or identify ourselves in it ? Highly unlikely, on the other hand an animal like scent-hound might find such a thing interesting.
> I think an animal capable of self recognition may still fail the mirror test if visual sense is not their primary window to the world.
You first do the mirror test with many animals that do primarily use vision. Then you rank those using a different test - if you pick your alternate test properly it can act as a proxy to the mirror test.
Then you test your target animal to see how it does on the proxy test.
Hmmm, okay, let me think this through a little bit.
An elephant passes the mirror test. An elephant can be trained to brush it's own teeth. Over time, a well-trained elephant develops an understanding that the habit of dental care is beneficial and rewarding, and teaches other elephants to do the same.
Thus, we might conclude that all tooth brushing elephants are sentient, self-aware beings.
This would mean that some of the possible pre-requisites for intelligent life are now either eyes OR teeth...
Now, to extend beyond elephants, we'd need to find another behavior, trait or defining aspect that elephants can share with another species that humans cannot. Thus if elephants must be the bridge-species to self-aware-intellect without natural eyes, they must carry three intelligence defining attributes.
1. Eyes, to relate to humans, enabling primary confirmation
2. Teeth, as a shared attribute, for secondary confirmation, especially in elephants stricken blind by randomized misfortune
3. Other: something that does not relate to humans, but can confirm intellect
So, sticking with elephants, let's say elephants have a prehensile tentacle like organ, in that they can grasp and articulate objects with their trunk.
This means that elephants can see themselves in the mirror, so humans can know that elephants are fellows in individualized personal experience.
A sighted elephant might manage to teach a blind elephant to brush it's own teeth, thus, elephants that fail the mirror test can still be confirmed as intelligent, if they can carry the capacity to brush their own teeth.
Elephants can be encouraged to brush their own teeth, and hypothetically devise opportunities to teach other creatures to do the same, if they recognize that the other creatures have teeth, but no eyes. Emphasis on the HYPOTHETICALLY, since this is a thought experiment.
Elephants, furthermore, can reach beyond the normal capacity for humans to recognize intelligence, in that they can operate their trunks in a manner that confirms intelligence in other creatures with trunk-like appendages, such as ant-eaters, snakes, octopuses, squids, worms and even certain, very long slugs.
Now, given that elephants act as the bridge species to these other creatures, could we extend beyond elephants, and use elephants to confirm intellect in these other creatures that can confirm intellect in creatures humans and elephants, otherwise, cannot?
Does this hold hypothetical water? Possibly, but man, does it ever feel like a long shot. It's like the Monty Python test for a witch.
How about insects? For example, what if we start with bees as a likely candidate? How do we confirm self-awareness in bees? Could we extend this logic from bees, and beyond, over to another type of insect, through a recognition of mutual traits shared with bees?
Perhaps, but when we're forced to grasp at so much uncertainty, and with no accepted precedent for self-awareness beyond humanity (and possibly apes, by proxy), it's difficult to come up with examples that are safely rooted in reality. Consider some other chaotic organization of matter, that spontaneously forms a Boltzmann Brain?
Would we be capable of defining a reliable test for a spontaneously self-aware wisp of cigarette smoke? How intelligent would it need to be, before we notice it? Would it need to start organizing it's shape in front of a mirror?
What about a not-so-spontaneously-arranged swarm of self-aware nanites, which, from certain distance, for all intents and purposes, might bear a striking resemblance to a dust mote?
One biologist has attempted to create a test with dogs. The basic hypothesis is that dogs should be able to recognize their own urine if they can detect "self" through smell. The results so far have been inconclusive[1]
It has to be a very very flat and even wall, otherwise the echo image will be distorted or "blurry". Such do not really appear in nature. Just like the only natural equivalent to a visual mirror is a very still pond, viewed under an angle.
I think the hardest part of creating a mirror for these other kinds of senses would be the fact that you need to be able to modify the 'reflected medium' in such a way that you can:
1: Determine if the subject is capable of detecting the modification
2: Determine if the subject has detected the modification
3: Have the subject acknowledge that they are the subject of the modification by attempting to correct it.
I guess hearing a crow clear his throat would be an indication of sentience.
I'm not sure about all cats. My cat ignores mirrors - even previously unseen ones - altogether, at the same time he reacts to youtube videos with cats. However, when he has seen himself in the mirror for the first time in his life he behaved like it was another cat, for two minutes or so.
Divide an almost identical uniform background with a piece of glass, block smell and sound if possible. Put two cats on the opposite sides of the glass and observe their reactions.
Put mirror in the place of glass and observe reactions.
I can bet the reactions would be drastically different, and not just for cats.
My cat ignores mirrors. He also ignores screens and isn't bothered by audio of dogs or cats. At the same time, he's very alert and will generally spring to attention if he hears a dog or cat outside. A few years ago he was introduced to another cat, separated by glass, and his reaction was completely different compared to looking at a mirror. I don't remember the first time he saw a mirror.
I think that cats have a pretty decent idea of what is and isn't real. While a reflection may be interesting in that it looks like another cat, it lacks the accompanying sound and smell of an intruder and is therefore safe to ignore.
On a related note, many years ago my family lived in a house with a lot of bird life in the back yard. There was a family of magpies, a number of chickens and a solitary male guineafowl. While moving in we leaned an old mirror against a fence in the yard and it ended up staying there for years.
Initially, the magpies attempted to fight their reflections but they quickly learned that there was no point. After that they ignored the mirror. The chickens never seemed to notice it in the first place. The guineafowl, though, was most interesting. This is a species that forms flocks in the wild. This particular guineafowl, though, had been separated from its flock for years and was completely alone. To begin with it had the same reaction as the magpies and attempted to fight itself in the mirror. Over time, however, this behavior stopped. Instead of fighting, it would simply stand in front of the mirror for hours on end.
My cat also totally ignores mirrors, screens, etc. And she completely flips out when she sees another cat through the window, fifty feet away.
I'm pretty confused by this. I don't think that her sense of smell or hearing is so acute that she can smell or hear the other cat through glass from so far away. She doesn't have binocular vision at that distance, I would assume. Parallax? How does she determine that that's a real cat while cats in mirrors and screens aren't?
Cats have much better long-range vision than short-range. Long range they are probably better than you think. Short of about a foot they don't really focus at all, and rely on their whiskers. Like most predators they key in on movement. Taken together I think these features explain the behavior you've seen.
My cat will react to unusual movement outside a nearby window even when he's curled up with his eyes closed. I remember one instance in particular where I was playing music fairly loudly. He had his eyes closed and was lying down facing away from the window when a dog walked past. His ears perked up and he immediately got up and looked around. I can only assume it was the sound that tipped him off.
It's not necessarily that their hearing/smell/vision is so much better than ours, but rather that it's more specifically evolved for their role as predators (as another poster pointed out).
I'm fairly certain my cat recognizes me through mirrors as I have a large 3-pane sliding closet-covering mirror in one room and when she sees me "in" it and I do the slow-blink, she responds just like she does sans mirror (she slow-blinks in return).
I never saw her first experience with a mirror though and have no specific indication that she recognizes herself but she is very skittish around other cats and has no negative reaction when around said large mirror, so if she notices the image of herself at all in the mirror she must associate it in a very different way than she does other cats.
My dog never saw a mirror in his life, he lived outdoors, and aside from a puddle, he would never have an opportunity to see his own reflection. One day I had a fullsize mirror outside. I walked my dog infront of it, pointed to it, tried to hold his head to look into the mirror, and there was absolutely no reaction. It's like my dog was looking into an empty wall. It wouldn't make eye contact with the reflection, it was simply like it didn't exist.
So, what's going on here? My dog would go crazy if another dog was anywhere within view, but nothing happened. Did my dog just understand without doubt that's a reflection, that dog is me, that human is you, there's no point in even looking at it for a second? Or did my dog just recognize it as a 2D surface, and think anything in the mirror doesn't exist, it's just a bunch of shapes moving around. Kind of like holding out a printed photo of a dog, where it would just see a blob of color on the paper, recognize there's no dog here, nothing physically present, no depth, no smell, no noise, etc.
I have this theory that some animals (e.g. cats and dogs) do in fact recognize that mirrors are reflections, but they just don't care about what's in the reflection. We are fascinated by the idea that we are watching ourselves, but that's a somewhat meta concept and animals just don't care. Just because an animal doesn't care about reflections doesn't mean it necessarily feels like it needs to rub red paint off its reflected self or even really make that connection.
This seems right. I work with monkeys, and some of our monkeys have mirrors attached to their cages. They don't use the mirrors to inspect themselves, but they do seem to use the mirrors to surreptitiously spy on other monkeys. It's likely that a monkey can quickly figure out that the thing in the mirror isn't another animal and when they move, the thing in the mirror moves, but drawing the connection that they are the thing in the mirror seems quite a bit harder.
If you never saw your reflection before, then suddenly someone places a mirror in front of you. It would probably take a few minutes for you to realize that it's you in the mirror and not another human.
One of my cats clearly recognizes me in the mirror and understands that the mirror is a reflection of me. I've done tests where I put the cat in front of the mirror and I stand behind the cat. The cat looks at me in the mirror. I pull out a treat and the cat turns around to get it from me.
My other cat clear recognizes itself in the mirror because whenever I force it to look at itself in the mirror, it strains to look away from its disgusting recognition that it is a cat and not a human. I'm serious about how it reacts, though it's only my interpretation as to why it acts that way.
>I've done tests where I put the cat in front of the mirror and I stand behind the cat. The cat looks at me in the mirror. I pull out a treat and the cat turns around to get it from me.
Have you done the same thing with a piece of cardboard instead of a mirror? Your cat may be hearing you pull out the treat.
Anecdotally, I know that some cats will follow a mouse pointer on the screen and can determine both its movement and location (since some of them will directly attack it if you move it around, particularly if you try to mimic the rough movement behavior of bugs, which is what I assume they think they are attacking).
And FWIW, I've observed this behavior on old 30hz CRTs as well as modern 240hz LCDs and various things in between.
This one is interesting because the cat tries to reach underneath the tablet to get the mouse, which to me implies that it perceives it as an object rather than just showing a "swat at any movement" reflex.
the same about my dog - as a puppy he initially reacted to his mirror image like it was another dog there. Since that, passing by the mirror, he sometimes quickly glances into it like humans do. He does usually react to dogs on TV.
With human subjects, we have other ways to gauge theory of mind.
Take the statement, "For example, compared to controls, schizophrenic individuals were less likely to understand a request hidden in a husband’s statement to his wife, 'I want to wear that blue shirt, but it’s very creased.'
Perform these alternate types of tests on subjects in a FMRI machine. Conceivably with enough subjects, it may be possible to discern distinct sections of the brain responding to these questions.
Then test the subjects with the mirror test. Place a spot on the nose, or eyebrow, etc.
The first thing to check is if, indeed, the same areas of the brain respond in the mirror test as in the other non-visual tests. If so, this is an excellent indicator that the mirror test is actually showing what researchers have believed it to show.
The next step would be that if the mirror test proves to be accurate, hook up chimpanzee subjects in a FMRI and perform the mirror tests. See if associated sections of their brains respond as ours do. Further, test this against various great apes. If all of us have passed the standard mirror test, I would hypothesize all great apes will have similar responses.
Things to check for in subjects (human and ape): Mental disease. As is mentioned in the article, patients with schizophrenia would not be good test subjects. Try to make sure the apes aren't diseased in a similar way.
In the same vein, I have come to the conclusion that my dog does not have a sense of humor.
I have never seen it play a joke on another dog or a human. It will tease others, but not play jokes.
I have never seen it exhibit anything similar to a laugh. It will wag its tail in happiness, but never respond to a situation or event with anything that would be construed as a laugh.
I've always wondered what would happen if they had two chimps they thought could recognize themselves in the mirror, and marked one. Would the unmarked one look at the chimp in the mirror? or recognizing the other chimp turn around and look at it directly?
As mentioned in the article, Elephants can recognise themselves. The article mentions the example of elephants using "their trunks to touch white crosses on their foreheads". You can see this in the following clip from the 2011 Royal Institution Lectures (in London) which discusses the idea of "sense of self"
There is a counter argument which is also called out in the article: "[David Povenelli] has come to believe that a chimp doesn’t need to have an integrated sense of self in order to pass the mirror test. Instead, it needs only to notice that the body in the mirror looks and moves the same as its own body, and then make the connection that if there’s a spot on the body in the mirror, there could also be a spot on its own body."
So the question of "Does the chimp see a reflection as another chimp or a chimp on this side of the mirror?" is the fundamental question. A two chimp experiment might resolve that question, which is can the Chimp distinguish between a visual of a chimp and the actual chimp when both are present.
I'm not sure about dogs. I have two and except a handful of occasions (where did they bark at the mirror) they completely ignore mirrors. The same can be said about TV or other screens as well: sometimes they are interested but mostly they can't be bothered.
I wonder what's going to happen when computers will pass the "mirror test" (think of it as an advanced Turing test). Should we consider them as persons too, with their own rights? Should we be morally responsible for turning off a machine, even though its internal state is completely represented in a finite amount of information, and could be "paused", "resumed", and even "cloned"?
Interesting questions. Part of the implication with granting personhood is that we recognize the creature in question is aware of its situation and suffers for it. Would a computer that can recognize itself suffer? Although computers can be turned off, depending on how we define consciousness and what physical components make those up, it could be argued that a computer is not guaranteed death in the way that all other biological creatures are.
And what I've always wondered is if animals of the same species recognize each other as belonging to the same 'group' and, if yes, then at what point would they recognize another animal as different. For example, a horse seeing a zebra, or a cat seeing a lion.
I think it is a basic ability most animals have. They need to know which animals are prey, dangerous or harmless. Just look at how dogs reacts differently when they see another dog, a cat or a human.
My dog does exactly the same thing. Every chance he gets he lies down and stares at himself in the mirror. I have one in my bedroom that's visible from a particular spot on my bed. He always chooses that one spot. I've always wondered what's going on in his mind when he does that. I almost get the feeling he's thinking "Wow, so this is what I look like!". He's incredibly bright, very social, with a lot of personality. Terrier breed, 2 years old.
My children are fascinated with mirrors. I have observed them staring at themselves for minutes on end. Whether it is vanity or curiosity - I don't know. At one point I had to put newspaper over the mirrored wardrobe doors to break the habit of walking into a room and ....stopping and staring at the mirror.
I found in intercultural situations that you miss a lot when you try to apply your point of view to others. So animals might not see the world at all in the binary shapes of self awareness and non self awareness. They might see something completely different. Instead of finding a way to apply our logic onto the animals thinking we should spend more time understanding how they think and might be surprised and educated by what we find.
The only terms in which we can understand things are ones we understand. That seems to be what the mirror experiment is about - trying to understand how animals see themselves.
Doesn't your comment apply to any insight which humans discover about animals since we must necessarily express it in terms we understand?
Maybe I didn't show the difference clearly enough. On one side you have an assumption on how things work and you just check if they apply and assume if they don't apply then the negative must apply. But often there are more options we simply don't know about. So if your assumption A is false it doesn't mean it must be "not A -> B", it can as well be C which you don't know exists as well. And if your assumptions proofs correctly it can actually be because of D, which looks quite similar to your assumption A.
You are absolutely right that we can not avoid completely to fall into this fallacy. But we can try to mimize its effect by not asking "A or not A?" but instead ask "What is that?" and "How to describe that?".
I always found David Brin's idea of "whalesong" thinking for uplifted dolphins (vs. the rational mind) fascinating to ponder on. I fully expect that different living things (plants included) experience the universe in ways that we simply are unable to imagine or really accurately describe.
I have always wondered about such mirror experiments. If an animal became aware of the spot on the forehead, has this aninimal known previously the spot was not there before? How an animal who does not use a mirror on a regular basis would be become aware of the spot? What if the spot was there from the birth? Would it mean they have been using some sort of natural mirrors like water reflection to look at themselves?
It's about recognizing differences in appearance based on association with others of the same species. If I've never looked in a mirror but I know what my mothers face looks like, I don't need to have ever seen my own face to know that I probably have two eyes, a nose, and a mouth.
They do this experiment with human babies: At a certain stage, if you put something on their head they will recognize that it doesn't belong there, because they recognize that something is "different" about the human appearance in the mirror.
I think that while those tests do a good job of proving a certain amount of self-awareness, I don't think that a non-reaction by the animal disproves it.
I'd like to recommend the WWW Trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer. It explores the thoughts behind the instilment of conciousness and awareness. A highly thought provoking read that has a lot of neat parallels to this article.
Folk psychology is precisely the way I see this supposed link between self-awareness and mirror recognition.
Ascribing intelligence and self-awareness only to those species that share specific superficial traits with us is the kind of thinking that allowed us to think one sex is inferior than the other, or that one race is inferior than the other.
But while all intellects start from the same place (nothing), they are not all necessarily going in the same direction. A monkey is not a less evolved human and a cat is not a less evolved mammal.
Many animals have abilities, including intellectual, that we can't match (and some we can only crudely replicate with tools). Species have the traits they needed in nature to survive and be efficient. So those that didn't need the circuitry for dealing with mirrors, simply didn't evolve that ability.
You can't prove self awareness or disprove it. Even science has limits. Hell, I can't even prove anyone except me is self-aware. But I don't have the arrogance to claim everyone but me will be presumed not self-aware until proven otherwise.
So as a species, it'd be best for humans not to cast the animal kingdom as not self-aware "until they prove otherwise" (in silly arbitrary tests).
Maybe humans are wrong about mirrors and the animals know it isn't them.
Humans can be arrogant in their assumptions about animals.
“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.” - Douglas Adams, hitchhikers
To me it looks like any living thing is somehow self-aware, it is what makes anything a live. Even plants take conscious actions, like specifically calling a pollinator among others, recognising members of the family and helping them.
If something doesn't show evidence of self-awareness it doesn't prove it isn't. It just proves it don't show up how you'd expect. Maybe it is self-aware but in a different way.
Take a hypothetical example, say we were presented with a non-visual smell mirror, would we pay it any attention, let alone recognize or identify ourselves in it ? Highly unlikely, on the other hand an animal like scent-hound might find such a thing interesting.