/lit/ - Literature

>>5124508
For animals, the easiest way is to put them in front of a mirror and see if they recognize themselves (most large apes do, but smaller monkeys do not).

For humans if you're a solipsist you should go and stay go. There's no point in arguing about it

>>5124522
>put them in front of a mirror and see if they recognize themselves

And how do we do this?

>>5124522
What does recognizing yourself in a mirror have to do with conscious experience?

>>5124545
Because if an animal is smart enough to recognize what they themselves look like that means they are self-aware.

>>5124557
It might, depending how the test is done.

Not recognizing themselves certainly doesn't prove they are not self-aware.

>>5124573
This thread is shit; your thoughts are trite.

Try again when you have something interesting to say.

>>5124557
How do tell if they recognize themselves if you aren't already assuming they are experiencing?

>>5124522
Why is an animal more conscious if it recognizes itself vs. thinking what it sees is another of its own species? Both involve self-awareness, they know what they look like, and they know another of their own species by sight.

And do you know what self-awareness is? An autistic person might look at themselves in the mirror but be uninterested, looking away, just as if they were in that mirror test and failed, yet they had self-awareness. Is self-awareness intelligence? Perhaps an animal has self-awareness but not the higher intelligence to know what a mirror effect is?

See why that test is nowhere near conclusive?

The classic mirror test is performed by surreptitiously marking the animal with two scentless dye spots. The "test" spot is put on a part of the animal that would only be visible to it through use of a mirror; the "control" spot is on an accessible but completely visually hidden part of the animal's body. If the animal reacts in a manner consistent with awareness that the test dye is located on its own body, yet ignores the control dye, it can be arguably concluded that the animal recognizes the mirror as an image of itself. Such behavior includes turning and adjusting of the body in order to better view the marking in the mirror, or tactile examination of the marking with a limb while viewing the mirror.[1]

>>5124508
Is there any way to confirm anything?

It's all just levels of faith.

Have you ever interacted with an animal or human? Have any of them exhibited behavior that corresponded with them experiencing consciousness? Was it consistent enough for you to believe they were conscious? That's all it takes.

>>5124587
>Why is an animal more conscious if it recognizes itself vs. thinking what it sees is another of its own species?
You're wrong. If you're smart enough to realize the ape in the mirror's movements correspond with your own you're smart enough to realize it is yourself. Smaller, less intelligent apes do not realize this and often try to intimidate or fight their own reflection.

Maybe autistic people aren't self-aware. I don't fucking know.

Dude, I'm not going to fucking argue this with you. This is all established science. Read some fucking wikipedia before you ask "deep" questions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test

>>5124595
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U

>>5124595
>Have any of them exhibited behavior that corresponded with them experiencing consciousness?

How would I know what the correlates are?

>>5124599
You've completely missed the point of the thread.

>>5124595
>Have any of them exhibited behavior that corresponded with them experiencing consciousness?

Or in other words you already have to assume that some observed behaviour can correlates with conscious experience beyond that behaviour

but this just begs the question on what to look for when checking

>>5124606
Well, you would need to define for yourself what consciousness actually is, and then determine which response to a given stimulus would be consistent with consciousness.

The mirror test mentioned above is an attempt to create a scientific (ie objective) version of this.

It could also be as simple as knowing you have consciousness and deciding that if a being acts similarly enough to how you act, they must also have consciousness. It's really up to you.

>>5124613
You're right your philosophical musings are probably just too deep for me.

It's obvious you're a teenager who just had his very first philosophical notion. This is so intro level I could make an OP asking "What is "right?" and have it lead to better discussion than this. If you make a shit thread expect shit replies. You didn't even bother defining the extremely ambiguous phrase "conscious experience".

>>5124599
>Dude, I'm not going to fucking argue this with you. This is all established science.


hahahahaha

If you think that science should not be argued or questioned, you should probably just not bother thinking anymore because it's clearly not for you.

Established science is an oxymoron.

>>5124599
That's why I asked "is self-awareness intelligence"? Because an animal doesn't understand that it's seeing itself means it isn't self-aware? So you think self-awareness is intelligence? How do you know the animal isn't self-aware just because it doesn't have the same type or level of intelligence as you? And how do you even know by its actions that it isn't self-aware, if people may demonstrate the same lack of caring about their reflection? (I'm repeating myself) How do you know it isn't just being like a an actor, for instance, looking in the mirror and seeing how it looks while performing the normal requirements of social interaction for its species? You don't, you don't know shit, because it is a silly test.

>Dude, I'm not going to fucking argue this with you
An argument from authority ain't no good argument. And why say you're not going to argue with me while arguing with me? but you've demonstrated bad thinking, so I've no further desire to argue with you either, but I have the compulsion. "read wikipedia"... lol.

>>5124668
>Established science is an oxymoron.
It should be questioned, just not by a bunch of teenagers online who clearly have no idea what they're talking about.

>>5124655
>It could also be as simple as knowing you have consciousness and deciding that if a being acts similarly enough to how you act

but the beings that I encounter will be part of my conscious experience just like the walls and sky etc
how can some parts of my conscius experience be indicative of experience beyond it and not others, and what criteria do I have to distinguish the two

I mean a dead cat for example why isn't me seeing a dad cat indicative of consious experience?

No, OP, there isn't, but 1) it's part of not being a cunt to assume they are, and 2) it's less fucking spooky to assume they are. Also, it's just kinda crazy to think it's all about you, even though it might well be.

>>5124671
let me tell you something you're gonna have to find out sooner or later. you mask your lack of knowledge and ability for abstract thinking by appealing to scientific data, you don't realize your views are two dimensional because you so far don't have the ability to think in more dimensions and some science experiment seems to agree with you. You may not be cut out for philosophy.

>>5124671

Scientists base self-awareness on vision. If dogs did the Pee Test to see if we could recognise our pee by smelling it what would be the results?

"Human expressed discomfort and manifested distress while smelling his own pee. As this does not correspond to the normal behaviour of canines, we can thus conclude that humans do not possess a developed level of self-awareness."