Animal Minds; how much can we learn about them? (Animals)

by David Turell , Thursday, April 13, 2017, 15:40 (2783 days ago) @ dhw

The mirror test is used to probe the issue of self-awareness in animals. Out a mirror in front of a chimp and he does notice things about himself, but what does it mean?

http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/what-do-animals-see-in-a-mirror-rp?utm_source=N...

"Showing chimpanzees their reflections seemed like a fascinating little experiment when he first tried it in the summer of 1969. He didn’t imagine that this would become one of the most influential—and most controversial—tests in comparative psychology, ushering the mind into the realm of experimental science and foreshadowing questions on the depth of animal suffering. “It’s not the ability to recognize yourself in a mirror that is important,” he would come to believe. “It’s what that says about your ability to conceive of yourself in the first place.”

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"Gallup wasn’t the first to come up with the notion that it might be significant if a person or animal recognizes itself in the mirror. He would only later learn that Charles Darwin had shown mirrors to orangutans, but they didn’t figure the mirror out, at least while he was watching. Darwin had also noted that, for their first few years, his children couldn’t recognize themselves in their reflections. In 1889, German researcher Wilhelm Preyer became the first to posit a connection between mirror self-recognition and an inner sense of self in people.
 
"More than 50 years later, French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan conceived of a childhood “mirror stage,” in which mirrors contribute to the formation of the ego. By 1972, developmental psychologists started using mark tests similar to Gallup’s to pin down the age at which children begin to recognize themselves in the mirror: 18 to 24 months.

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"As for why dolphins and other non-primates recognize themselves in mirrors, Gallup isn’t yet convinced they do. He suggests an alternative explanation for why his former student’s dolphins wriggled in the mirror: to see marks on what they perceived as another dolphin peering back at them. And he requires replication of recent studies finding that elephants use their trunks to touch white crosses on their foreheads, and magpies dislodge stickers on their chests with their beaks.

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"Then there are researchers who discount whether the mirror test says anything about theory of mind in any animal, including humans. Most notably, Gallup’s mentee, Daniel Povinelli. ... He’s 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. That ability would still be pretty sophisticated, Povinelli adds,

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" To apply Povinelli’s logic to humans, we may think deep, reflective thoughts when using a mirror to brush our teeth, but that doesn’t mean that the part of the brain that’s using the mirror to direct our toothbrush is the same part of the brain that’s contemplating the self. Those two abilities may develop at the same time in children, but that does not mean that they’re related, much less one and the same. 

"Povinelli’s critiques aside, most comparative psychologists say there’s something to mirror recognition, not least because it’s only been observed in intellectually superior animals. Neuroscientists are now trying to shed light on the matter by searching for a physical basis for the ability in the brain. Although they haven’t found a clear signal yet, Gallup remains undeterred. After nearly 45 years of fending off challengers, he is not likely to wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and change his mind."

Comment: We can imply too much to animals recognizing themselves in the mirror. They do but that does not mean they have complex thoughts, concepts, or any form or deep introspection. We are different in kind as we look in the mirror.