First, here's some kids being kids.
It shouldn't surprise you that we aren't born with the ability to recognize our own reflection. Self-recognition is a skill that can develop as early as 18 months in children. In their article, Self-Awareness, Social Intelligence and Schizophrenia, Gordon Gallup and his colleagues delve deep into just what it means to be able to identify yourself in a reflection.
So, you're not a vampire. What else?
The evidence provided by Gallup and his colleagues strongly suggests that the ability to recognize yourself in a mirror is closely related to your ability to conceive yourself as an individual, and infer information about the mental states of other individuals. As a matter of fact, self-recognition typically develops in humans around the same time as primitive social intelligence. In other words, whenever you can recognize yourself, you can try and piece together what other people are thinking or feeling.
On the flip side...
Species that fail to self-identify show no evidence whatsoever that they can infer information about the mental states of other individuals. I'm sure at some point you've all seen a cat or dog look at its reflection in a mirror. Normally, dogs will behave as if their reflection is another dog, and may bark or growl at its own reflection. Cats, from my experience, totally fail to give a single fuck about their reflections.
How do we know anything else can self-identify?
Gallup et al. provides an experiment in his article that was done using chimpanzees. The chimps had mirrors placed in their housing, and were given several days to grow accustomed to them. At first, the chimps behaved as if there was another member of their species with them. but after several days, the chimps began to use the mirrors to look at their bodies and groom themselves in new ways. Eventually, the chimps were sedated, the mirrors were removed and they had red marks applied to their bodies in places that were not visible without the use of a mirror. When the chimps were awake, fed, and watered, and the mirrors were reintroduced. The chimps began to investigate the marks, and even smelled their fingers after touching them. Orangutans and bonobos have also demonstrated self-identification skills, while evidence for the fourth great ape, gorillas, is mostly negative.
Do you see what I see?
As I said before, there is a strongly suspected link between self-recognition and the ability to infer information about the mental states of others.
Does this image make you cringe just a little bit? If not, get help. But the fact that I expected this image to conjure up that ungodly noise in your mind is an example of me making a social inference. If the ability to self-identify and the ability to make inferences about others is as closely linked as many suspect, then we can suppose that species that cant self-identify are incapable of empathizing with other of their species. And we would seemingly be correct.
In 1997, Anil et al. observed the reaction of pigs when they were shown the slaughter of other pigs. Or, rather, they observed the lack of a reaction. Besides mild stress caused by the jostling of the handlers, the pigs showed absolutely no distress while watching the slaughter of their piggy comrades.
The Cortex is the cause.
The ability to self-recognize and mental state attribution (infer what others are thinking) is believed to be located in our frontal cortex.
The right prefrontal cortex is considered the prime culprit for self recognition and mental state attribution. In a study by Keenan et al. subjects were asked to press one key if an image of their own face was shown, another if a friend's face was shown, and yet another if a stranger's face was shown. Now, many of you may have heard that the right side of the brain plays a larger role in the left side of the body. In fact, subjects were asked to press the keys first with their right hands, then with their left, and they identified their own face faster while using their left hands.
Self-recognition and mental health.
Schizophrenics will commonly react to their own reflection as if it were the reflection of a completely different person. In rare cases, some schizophrenics claim to see no reflection at all. Evidence suggests that a fascination with mirrors may be the precursor to schizophrenia, as many schizophrenics are extremely interested in mirrors and the images in them.
Many schizophrenics also struggle with the ability to identify what others are thinking or feeling. If a schizophrenic is told a joke where an assumption must be made about a mental state, they will have a very difficult time finding it humorous. Coincidentally or not, people with damage to their frontal cortex also display difficulty understanding these situations, as do children, whose brains have not fully developed yet. There is plenty of evidence now pointing to frontal lobe dysfunction as the cause of schizophrenia.
Putting it all together...
The abilities of self-recognition and mental state attribution obviously play an enormous role in our lives every day. If the key to these behaviors lies in our frontal cortex, as evidence suggests, there are many possibilities not only within the field of psychology but also medicine. Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness, and the key to understanding it is within our grasp.
It is easy to see the relation of self-recognition and the ability to feel empathy. How can you understand and perceive someone else as an individual if you can’t even recognize yourself as one? I see Gallup’s point as I relate to others as I also relate to myself. For instance, I try to treat others as I would want to be treated as I recognize that what I do affects others. This ties into schizophrenia as schizophrenics aren’t necessarily able to have a healthy, functioning relationship with themselves. This overflows into the way they relate with people. I am no psychology major, but I do see TV shows and movies all the time with schizophrenic individuals killing people, usually in strange, sick ways. Even though society tells us it is never okay to kill others, how would someone with this neurological problem be able to recognize the pain they are causing others when they murder someone?
By the cat and dog mirror example, if one doesn’t have the ability to learn self-recognition or any level of social intelligence, they can’t fully understand why harming someone is wrong. From my understanding, their lack of these learned behaviors makes them more animal like than human. Even though they have the ability as a member of the human race to feel empathy, there is a defect in their brain keeping them from having the full use of their greater intelligence. This makes me think about natural selection and survival of the fittest. If a lion is hungry and it kills a smaller animal for food, does it feel guilty? No, because it doesn’t think like that. It thinks of survival.
I better understand schizophrenia after tonight’s reading and blog as I realize that self-recognition is learned. We are trained to know who we are, and life, in short, is a journey to find one’s personal identity. Imagine if your brain didn’t allow you to look into the mirror and realize that you are the reflection. How would this change the way you look at others? It would be hard for me to identify with others as I wouldn’t know myself in the most basic, superficial terms. How can anyone understand anyone else without first understanding themselves?
Where's your author profile?
When I saw that there were 3 separate authors, I wasn't entirely sure how to profile them. I suppose I could have just profiled all 3 of them. Is it too late to do this...?
As a biology major with an inclining interest towards neuroscience, I found this article to be especially interesting and informational. It brought to my attention the significance of the role that mirrors play in our everyday lives. Anywhere you go there will be a mirror nearby, which is pretty compelling evidence that human beings crave that type of self-assurance. Its basis lies on the need to reassure oneself that their appearance will fit in appropriately with the rest of the public. It’s the need to conform, whether consciously or not. It’s hard to imagine a world with no mirrors. Personally, I would be constantly worried about whether or not my hair was parted correctly or if there were crumbs on my face. It would be uncomfortable to not have any assurance about these matters, as petty as they are. Other species, however, don’t really need this assurance. Gorillas don’t necessarily need self-recognition to survive and that may have factored in to the reason they lost their ability to do so; although, this observation doesn’t explain why they would have even possessed the trait in the first place. But a human that lacks self-awareness today will have an extremely difficult time surviving in society which can be seen in individuals with full blown schizophrenia. Self-recognition provides for an imperative attribute that allows society to function as a whole: empathy. This made me whether the correlation between ability to empathize and ability to conceive the self relates at all to the behavior of psychopaths. Criminal psychopaths either can’t or won’t empathize with others. From what I know, they appear to have a normal self-awareness but they also appear to fail at using their negative experiences as motives for not causing someone else the same negative experience. Evaluations of notorious criminal psychopaths, like Ted Bundy, show that they actually abuse their ability to infer mental states in others in order to lure their victim in like pray; much like a vampire, who, coincidentally, has no reflection. Obviously people like Ted Bundy have a reflection and are fully aware of themselves. So after doing a little research I found several articles about the correlation between psychopaths and damage to the right half of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. It has been shown that the right half of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex plays a major role in regulation of emotions (as well as suppression) and damage to this region can cause lack of empathy, irresponsibility, and bad judgment as well as many other things. Though schizophrenia and psychopathy are enormously different topics, the behaviors associated with each come from an underlying issue concerning the prefrontal cortex. Schizophrenics lack self-awareness and therefore find it difficult to identify the mental states of others. As I said, it appears psychopaths do possesses these abilities however it is as if they ignore them. I wonder what would happen if all of the tests mentioned in the article were given to a criminal psychopath. Perhaps, with damage to this particular region of the right prefrontal cortex, an individual can defy the notion that self-awareness is directly related to social intelligence. In other words, maintain the ability to identify the mental states of others while not being fully self-aware and self-conscious. After all, one thing that is consistently upheld in the mentalities of psychopaths is their absence of consciousness.
Something that came to mind as I read this blog post was this question: how would we self-identify without mirrors? Do babies who do not understand what mirrors are yet have a sense of self-identification? They are learning their own names, the functions of their bodies, their surroundings--but at what point do they begin to identify themselves, and would a whole sense of self-identification be possible without seeing what they look like to everyone else? How did this work for people before they really had mirrors? My hypothesis is that without mirrors, we would begin to identify ourselves by much more metaphysical terms and ideas. Our likes, dislikes, interests, etc.
Next, I thought about how the theory of pigs watching other pigs slaughtered with utter disinterest would apply to humans. Not only is this concept present in cases of murder, but also the death penalty which gets very controversial. Are we, humans with full self-recognition and mental state attribution capabilities, also capable of turning off these mechanisms when we want to? In other words, can murderers choose not to attribute a mental state to their victims, or do they just ignore it? How does this tie into our capacities for empathy and other emotions? Are there any species that DO display signs of distress when their kind are killed? I hear cows have best friends, so, just wondering.
I always found it amusing when my dog would walk over to the glass door in the evening and wag her tail at her reflection. My family always referred to her nightly reflection as her friend, and every night she would sit at the door, wagging her tail and ‘asking’ to be let outside to play with her friend, only to be confused when we opened the door to find that her reflection had disappeared. “Where’s your friend, Dixie?” My brother’s dog, however, has not made friends with his reflection, but rather considers him a threat to be intimidated and growled at. But my cat, on the other hand, cares very little for her reflection, it seems. And of course, it was very cool to see my youngest brother become self-aware as a baby (well over a decade ago) and play the “who’s that?!” game with the mirror: “Brenny!” Man, I love babies.
I’m not gonna lie, self-recognition is still something that gets me. Sometimes, I’ll catch a reflection of myself and sit there thinking: this is how other people see me; this image is what people associate with “Hannah Gene.” Just as I experience life from my own perspective and see the “outside” of others, others experience life from an entirely different perspective and see this, my reflection, as the “outside” of me. It is really a fascinating exercise, to sit in front of a mirror and try to observe as an outsider, and make the connections with how you feel. In face-to-face interaction, both parties experience only part of not only each other, but also of themselves. For example, other people see the creases in my forehead or pursing of my lips that I myself, without the help of a mirror, cannot, but they do not experience the internal process that creates my reactions, just as I cannot experience what they themselves are experiencing, but I can see them in a way that they generally cannot. It’s really a beautiful thing about social interaction.
If you consider it enough, I think it can make you a more empathetic individual. You realize that your appearance, your reflection, is an ambassador of your self to others; your body is you, but you know there’s more to you than just the face others see, and also realize that there things another can notice about you that you might be unaware of—just think of all the times someone has pointed out, “You always do such-and-such when you’re nervous/irritated/bored.” The next natural conclusion then is to recognize that others’ appearances are only reflections to them as well, only ambassadors of who they really are. You wonder what they might be experiencing behind their visible expression, and how they might be perceiving your physical representation of self. But maybe that’s just me? Perhaps this is why social interaction becomes so exhausting to me. Anyway, my point is that obviously I am self-aware and can recognize my reflection, but even still it is mind-blowing to think that the image, the body and face I see in the mirror is physical representation of my person, my existence.
I cannot even imagine what it would be like to not have a sense of self or to not be able to identify myself in the mirror. Can schizophrenics identify others in mirrors or in life? This is probably a bit bizarre, but I find myself worrying about my own sanity frequently. In the same way my mother worries about getting Alzheimer’s, I worry about losing my mind in other ways. Any time I’m driving and a light turns green but no one else moves, I worry that I’m crazy and going to be pulled over for driving through it. I have always been terrified that the things I see aren’t really happening. This, I think, has also led to my curiosity about how others see the world. I wonder all the time about what other people’s thought processes look like in comparison to mine. I think mostly in words, do others think in pictures?
I tend to disagree with the argument made by Ashlyn. Lions don’t feel guilt about eating their prey, but neither do humans for the most part. I can’t say that I’ve ever felt guilt about eating a steak. If I had to kill the cow, on the other hand, I’m sure I’d feel extremely guilty- until I killed enough of them that I was conditioned to the feeling. Maybe the first time a lion kills it also feels a little remorse. Who knows.
I also think there are a lot of problems with the case of the pigs. Death is an extremely difficult concept to grasp. I don’t even really understand it half the time. My dad died over a year ago but sometimes I still wake up and go through the realization that he’s gone all over again. But I think my point is, did these pigs understand they weren’t going to see their friends again? Were any of these pigs even friends otherwise? What sort of deaths did the other pigs experience? Was there any loud squealing to indicate to the other pigs that they were in some sort of pain? I hope not because that sounds like an inhumane way to kill them, just for a study especially.
Since we are on the subject of mirrors, I’d like to bring up what we discussed during my blog about gorillas. While most research has determined that gorillas do not self-recognize using the mirror test, there has been at least one gorilla, Koko, who has. I think that her ability indicates that others may have the ability and that perhaps the mirror test is flawed. Most gorillas see eye contact as aggressive behavior and so perhaps that is why most don’t “recognize” themselves in the mirror. I find it very difficult to recognize myself and others without first making eye-contact.
Anyway, this topic is incredibly interesting and I’m glad we were able to discuss it!
It’s amazing to me how much this topic plays into our course as a whole. It is the back bone of so many different theories and the starting point of all self-recognition. It makes so much sense to me but what are the flaws in this? In my own blog on arboreal clambering hypothesis, there was a chance this theory failed on certain species such as gorillas. I would really like to do some more side research on this topic and find out how much self-recognition plays into other things, like mentioned in this blog, schizophrenia. How much is this a factor? I would also like to do further research in how this cornerstone of a testing method fails. I would love to find some literature against this theory but wonder if there is any. What do you guys think?
Part of this article that interests me is the idea that when you recognize yourself, you can piece together what other people are thinking and feeling. I think this is why self-esteem is so closely tied to your perception of other people’s opinions of you. Many people struggle with low self-esteem and depression because they see themselves as worthless or terrible, which then affects how they perceive others’ thoughts—they fear that others will view them in the same way. In other words, how you see yourself can become how you believe other people see you, too. It is an example of a downside to mental state attribution. A big part of the mental state attribution phenomenon is that once you have the ability to recognize yourself, you can see others and know that they recognize themselves too. Once you know they recognize themselves, theory of mind informs you that they will recognize and form opinions of you, too. Am I sounding schizophrenic yet?
Think about a baby that’s younger than 18 months, without the cognitive mechanisms to recognize him or herself in a mirror yet. That baby has absolutely no qualms about her appearance, has total confidence to an almost brazen degree. Little kids will walk around naked anywhere you let them, and not have any idea that they might be super chubby or out in public where others could see them. Once that baby reaches the self-recognition age, they begin to become more aware of others and slowly develop the self-consciousness that tells them to monitor their actions, and subsequently others’ opinions.
Reading this literally gave me anxiety. I suppose it's because I have a serious fear of suffering some traumatic brain injury where I can no longer distinguish between what is real and what isn't. The whole article makes me think of the Russell Crowe movie "A beautiful mind", where the main character is a schizophrenic genius that can't properly distinguish reality. Not calling myself a genius, because I know I'm not quite there, but I think it can be pretty hard to distinguish reality sometimes. Why do we remember some things differently or not remember them at all? quite a scary thought.
Our ability for self recognition is something that is a little confusing to me. Sure, we can see ourselves in the mirror and obvious marks on our bodies (like in the case of the chimps), but I wonder if we see ourselves differently than others see us. Maybe we think we're a lot more attractive than everybody else does. Just like hearing our own voice on a recording makes most of us cringe, I wonder if seeing ourselves through another person's eyes (not just in a mirror) would create a similar effect. I don't know too much about schizophrenia, but I guess if they can't recognize themselves, they just see a completely different person in the mirror. As you said in the article, animals without the ability to self recognize also seem to be incapable of empathy. As some of the previous comments have mentioned, many serial killers lack empathy. I find that absolutely terrifying that people are somehow unable to connect with other people, and therefore have no problem committing atrocities.
Unlike what Ashlyn said, I don't think that a defect with self recognition capabilities affects intelligence, unless she is referring strictly to social intelligence. I feel like in some circumstances, it is actually the opposite; where people who have defects in their social capabilities are actually geniuses. I know the article didn't mention autism, but I have been reading online about how it is potentially related to Cortical layer disruption in early brain development, so I thought it is relative. I think it is a fascinating and unfortunate disease because it directly affects the afflicted person's social abilities. My cousin is autistic and though he is almost completely unable to pick up social cues, he is very intelligent. Brain diseases are so particularly fascinating because they are so much harder to observe and identify than physical ailments.
Follow up:
I just laughed at Matt’s comment saying that most of us don’t like our recorded voices- I prefer my recorded voice to the one I hear in my own head! I also read a “Today I Learned” on Reddit a couple of months back that apparently the voice you hear in your head is deeper than the one everyone else hears. And so apparently hearing a recording of your voice is more similar to what everyone else hears from your mouth! That in itself is completely mind blowing. You would think that you should have a better grasp on the sound of your own voice than others, right? So yet again, we wonder about perspective and the way others see things versus the way we see them.
The other day PBS posted an article and link to a NOVA video about Raven intelligence on Facebook. As I mentioned when we spoke on Shamanism and our spirit animals, the Azure Winged Magpie is in the crow family along with ravens. All of these are exceptionally intelligent birds with problem solving skills better than most other animals. In the video, one of the researchers brings up a question that I’ve asked myself so many times- what do others animals think like? Is it truly incomparable to our thought processes? Also I’m totally convinced that the raven first featured in the video, Bran, has been on Game of Thrones.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/nature/ravens-can-recognize-social-order-outside-of-their-own-communities/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=pbsofficial&utm_campaign=nova_next
I can relate to Hillarie's post about constantly wondering whether what I'm seeing is what everyone else is seeing also. I got into a car accident about eight months ago because I "allegedly" drove right through a red light at the intersection of Mcfarland Boulevard and Skyland. I swore up and down that I had a green light but several others who witnessed the accident claimed that I had a red light. Ever since, I have been extremely hesitant when arriving at an intersection and I always wait until the other cars move when the light turns green, before I do. Color blindness disorders aside, this experience has made me wonder whether or not my experience of the colors red and green is the same as everyone else's experiences with the colors red and green. For example, my favorite color is red but my best friend's favorite color is green. I cannot stand the color green and she cannot stand the color red. Are we perceiving these colors differently? Does she see a different type of red than I do? It's interesting to think about given that, through our experiences, we are able to relate, predict and empathize with others and their experiences. This makes it sound like we are living under a universal reality but when you think of it in terms of individual perceptions, the experience of life is uniquely different to each person. As interesting as this topic is, it give me anxiety to think about.
When relating to other articles ,the idea that we should cringe when we saw the fingernails on chalkboard due to social inference reminded me of something that was brought up during my presentation on symbolic thinking. When Dr. Lynn got up and made Charlie move the chair, Charlie understood what Dr. Lynn was doing without any verbal cues, but only social cues. He knew to put it down because he recognized Dr. Lynn was putting his end of the chair down and acted accordingly. His knowledge of Dr. Lynn’s actions and reacting in turn goes to refute the claims Gallup is making about the mental state of others. As far as it connecting to self-recognition, Charlie was mirroring his actions to the actions of Dr. Lynn and they can both identify themselves in a mirror (I hope), and even though this is not an end all be all for this idea, the self-recognition on both of their parts at least allowed them to understand what was going thought the others mind. This all happened in a matter of milliseconds and not even consciously (I’m talking about the recognition of what the other was doing, not the whole process of moving the chair) which is incredible considering the amount of information that was processed. The fact that pigs don’t react to what happens to other pigs and the fact that they possess lower levels of cognition and lack the ability to self-recognize combined with the chimps ability to self-recognize and in turn “empathize” shows that this self-recognition does have a deeper meaning on the level of development of human cognition.
I was able to witness an amusing animal-mirror interaction the other day that reminded me of this post. On Monday we had that big storm and were under a tornado warning for about an hour late at night when I was trying to study for my Latin final, which was very distracting to say the least. Anyway, my roommate was kind enough to invite me to hunker down in her closet along with her, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend's adorable Australian Shepherd named Sawyer. All things considered, this dog was coping with the storm extremely well--much better than my dog ever could. Dixie would get so anxious about thunder that we would have to sedate her.She was kind of a mess. However, although Sawyer didn't seem worried about the storm, he was getting a little worked up about being smushed all up in a closet with the 3 of us, and kept climbing over us and whatnot. After a while, his owner just told him, "Sawyer, look in the mirror. Who's that handsome guy in the mirror?" and that dog calmed down and just sat in front of the mirror hanging on my roommate's closet door and stared at himself. He didn't show any sign of "recognizing" himself, but also didn't get aggressive or try to play. He just sat there, perfectly content to look at himself. I do wonder what thought process that situation was to him,
Also, here's a video of a bunch of dolphins passing the mirror test:
I will start by saying that before I actually started reading the article I scrolled through the entire thing, and I really enjoyed the pictures that were attached.
This article poses many questions for me, all of which I know can never really be answered. The first ties into something someone said in my Motion Picture History and Criticism class. She said that because of the existence of video cameras, we are much more self conscious and self aware than we would be otherwise. She was talking about reality television and how you can never be really sure if people are being their true authentic selves, or if they are just trying to look authentic while also maintaining a good look in front of the camera. Would we act differently today if cameras had never come into existence in the first place? And even though this idea was more posed for reality tv stars, I feel that this idea can really translate into the real lives of people who aren’t involved with crappy reality television (*cough cough KARDASHIANS). This was a theory that I was able to test and see for myself whether or not it was true, and I agree with the idea wholeheartedly. We don’t act like our true selves when there is a camera present. Because I am a film major, I really enjoy devoting my time to an assortment of film projects and I happened to try one out at the beginning of the semester. My honors fraternity held a retreat, and I really wanted to make a fun video out of it for everyone to enjoy. Little did I know that all of my brothers would become complete camera whores. Any time I had the camera focused on anyone, they immediately faced it and tried their best to look fun and goofy, but not in a way that would be considered embarrassing. For half the day I actually carried the camera around and held it up without recording, just to see how people suddenly act in its presence. So it seems as though the girl in my Motion Picture class was completely spot on about how people’s behavior changes in front of a camera.
This idea ties in very closely to that of the mirror. Due to the presence of mirrors in our lives, humans appear to be much more self-conscious and self-aware. So then the question remains, what if mirrors had never been invented in the first place? Would we still be as vain and obsessed with appearances as we are today? Would the human race be less sympathetic creatures like the pigs watching other pigs be butchered? Would we act exactly the same as we do now? These are all questions that we will never have an answer to, but are entertaining to ponder.
Gallup’s approach to defining self-conception is really interesting. Since reading these articles I’ve often wondered how long it would take me to recognize myself if I were in the same situation. If self- conception gives us the ability to conceive ourselves as an individual then I think it plays a major role in our ability to define morality. I think morality probably came from our ability to empathize with other and put ourselves in their shoes, and if we couldn’t even recognize ourselves in a mirror it would be hard to try and relate our emotions to others in different situations. At the same time I do believe self-conception is a social derivative and can probably be observed without understanding mirror use. Relating social experiences of great apes to those discussed in the Social Identity Theory developed in the prior article you can see many instances of great apes excluding members of any group that isn’t their own. In Ashyln’s post we briefly discuss the social intelligence hypothesis. Although it was partially debunked because of gorillas, I think the ability to differentiate your group from others and understand that you don’t want to mingle with them (possibly a Behavioral Immune response?) shows some form of self-conception.
I hate you for that picture of nails on chalk board. I get creeped out whenever my finger nails touch any sort of hard surface and I have to clip them like 3 times a week. But I digress. Our ability to empathize with other people is a beautiful thing, I already hate most people as it is and I can only imagine how annoying we might be without any self-conception. In a world full of butt sniffing dogs I think mine is king. I swear he could sniff butts for hours. But the second a dog tries to sniff him he freaks out and sits on the ground so they can’t smell him anymore. He’s not the brightest dog in the world but that’s his one behavior that I can just never understand. But without self-conception I guess he is unable to understand that he is doing the exact same thing that every other dog is doing. If it was a person doing something like this they would be ridiculed for being a hypocrite and rightfully so. But I have to say, the study on the pigs sounds downright gruesome, as well as surprising. I know if this same research was done with dogs I would a) be depressed as all get out and b) be shocked by that result. The emotional connection dogs have shown with their owners make me believe they would be feel some sort of sorrow or depression, as well as fear, in that situation. I’m surprised the pigs aren’t the same way, but I don’t believe their as social a species as dogs so that may have been the difference. Or maybe I’m wrong about dogs…
When I initially read this article I couldn't help but wonder whether animals that can't self-identify can experience altered states of consciousness. While I guess animals could feel something that is different from their normal, attaining any mental growth or health benefits would have to require self-recognition. Since the ability to self-recognize is the basis for being able to understand the feelings of others, which we have learned aids in human evolutionary survival, attaining an idea for how one relates to others is essential. While we are blessed with the ability to linguistically communicate complex emotional feelings with other humans and scientifically examine our brains to locate areas that are pertinent to the ability to self-recognize, early humans did not have all of these capacities. This makes me wonder whether this has any connection with the use of mind altering substances in early humans that Maddie's entry talked about. When used to obtain altered states of consciousness, these substances are known to create "out-of-body" experiences that, with the ability to self-recognize, might give early humans the ability to see themselves in a different light. Since these substances were often used in combination with community ritual, they could easily foster greater social understanding between groups of early humans that weren't yet capable of expressing complex emotions verbally. The cave paintings that are believed to be influenced by mind-altering substances in Maddie's entry portray the evolution of how humans conceptualize themselves. One of the most important facets of self-recognition and understanding others is knowing the fact of death, which early humans portrayed their feelings on in their cave paintings. I think mind altering substances could definitely have played a role in the development of greater social capabilities in humans that come from our ability to self-recognize.
Alright guys, we're finally talking about something I have a lot of experience with: farm animals. The idea of self-recognition is such an integral part of our society that it's sometimes hard to even consider that some animals and even people have no need or ability the do the same. I definitely think that this factors in strongly with both human and ape sociability. In a society that is built to be cooperative and social, observing yourself and having a strong sense of self also allows you to have a stronger sense of the other, and allows you to conform to the societal norm. On the other hand, pigs are not strongly social beings. Though pigs do recognize family bonds, they don't typically have the sort of social bonds you might see in other groups of animals. Like the article says, you can kill a one pig and fully expect the others to walk over and start eating the still warm corpse of their old friend. Though pigs do have a high level of intelligence, they've never needed to evolve any sort of social consciousness that might make them care for the good of a herd, in the way that horses or cows care for the older and younger members of their herd, even when they do no share a blood link. To relate this back to mirrors, schizophrenics, and the class at large, I just want to touch briefly on the development of this sense from infancy. I recently had a chance to skype with my baby cousin, and though he always responds to me when he sees me in person, and he responded to my voice, it was obvious that he didn't make the connection between me and the image of me he saw on the computer screen. I think this development of the sense of self as distinct from others, and inversely as others distinct from yourself, is fascinating. I can't imagine this slow development being very advantageous in the wild; after all, if a baby can't tell it's father from a mountain lion, then it probably won't survive very long. In fact, that in itself may partially explain our social natures, as a way of caring for our young who have not yet learned to do it for themselves.
How are we supposed to be sympathetic to what someone is going through if we don't have a sense if self and recognize the self worth of others. This article really aids in establishing the way that humans have grown to accept the culture of others, and how this sets us apart from other creatures. In the article it mentions how unsympathetic pigs are to watching each other be maimed and killed. Without the invention of mirrors, would we be just like the pigs who are stoic and unsympathetic to the misfortunes of others? Or would we have found a way to unite people and developed our sympathy another way? I have a hard time believing that if mirrors hadn't been invented, that we would have subjected ourselves to an isolated and unsympathetic existence.