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PHAINOMENA XXV/98-99 THE HORIZONS OF EMBODIMENT 66 Introspective self-awareness is an “awareness of (some of) one’s own mental states such as feelings, desires, and beliefs” (ibid.). In order for a subject to have introspective awareness it is not sufficient to simply have (conscious) mental states. The subject actually has to be aware of its mental states. It is precisely this reflective, higher-order capacity that has been both the single most important phenomenon related to self-awareness in the focus of prevalent philosophical debates, and therefore the only form of consciousness to which the term “selfconsciousness” has been exclusively assigned. And still, many contemporary philosophers of mind are quick in establishing mutually excluding definitions like “phenomenal consciousness is to be distinguished from self-consciousness, which refers to our ability to reflect upon our conscious experiences and thoughts” (Andrews 2015: 52). 13 This conceptual or terminological choice is obviously one reason for underestimating the case for more basic forms of self-awareness in animals. In order to underpin the basic bodily self-awareness thesis, DeGrazia considers several representative examples from animal cognition studies: tool use and tool making in chimpanzees (McGrew 1992, Stanford 2001), problemsolving and tool use in dolphins (White 2007) and New Caledonia crows (Anderson/Kacelnik 2004), episodic memory in scrub jays (Kort/Dickinson/ Clayton 2005), complex social understanding in vervet monkeys (Cheney/ Seyfarth 2002), uncertainty monitoring and metacognition in rhesus monkeys (Smith/Washburn 2005), et cetera. DeGrazia’s prevailing strategy is to interpret those examples of various cognitive complexities in light of his main thesis. Whether attribution of the higher-conscious capacities in question is likely or not, it would at least seem to implicate the warranted ascription of more basic types of self-awareness, hence (indirectly) demonstrating or indicating bodily self-awareness in individuals of certain species. 13 The fact that introspection is per definitionem a form of self-awareness is also reflected in DeGrazia’s use of the term, speaking of “introspective awareness” instead of “self-awareness”.
PETER KAISER 4. Self-Recognition presupposes Bodily Self-Awareness Although just briefly outlined by DeGrazia, no such discussion can miss out on one of the most famous experiments generally regarded to be a clear indicator of self-awareness: the mirror test. “Although it is silly to maintain, as some commentators have, that mirror self-recognition is the only valid indication of self-awareness in animals, it is surely one relevant consideration in the case for bodily self-awareness” (DeGrazia 2009: 211). Human infants prior to the age of 15 to 18 months and most animals respond to their images in mirrors as if they were seeing another child or conspecific – thereby, arguably, already exhibiting some degree of social self-awareness. Older infants as well as some individuals of particular species, like all great apes (Gallup/Anderson/ Shillito 2002), dolphins (Reiss/Marino 2001), elephants (Plotnik/de Waal/Reiss 2006), and magpies (Prior/Schwarz/Güntürkün 2008), are able to recognize themselves as themselves, or more precisely, their specular images as images of their own bodies. In the 1970s Gordon Gallup “started a cottage industry of mirror experiments with primates and young humans” (Baker 2012: 22). Chimpanzees who had become acquainted with mirrors began using them to respond to themselves “by engaging in mirror-mediated facial and bodily movements and self-directed responses such as grooming parts of the body only visible in the mirror” (Gallup/Anderson/Shillito 2002: 325). In order to assess the possibility of self-aware self-recognition, the chimpanzees were anesthetized and painted with nonodorous red marks in their faces. Upon recovery they would have no knowledge of their new facial features without mirrors. But using the mirrors again, looking at their reflection, the chimpanzees guided their fingers to the new marks on their faces. Since the confrontation with the mirror motivates this kind of self-directed behavior, Gallup et al. infer that the chimpanzees now recognized what they saw in the mirror as their own reflections. Now, on the one hand, it is rather clear that mastering the mirror test cannot be a requisite for identifying self-awareness in general; a non-display of self-awareness as an ability of self-recognition does not necessarily show that a given subject does not have this ability at all. Dogs would rather identify themselves by olfaction than vision; other species may not pay particular 67
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e-ISSN 2232-6650 UDK 1 PHAINOMENA R
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