Does not recognising oneself in a mirror really imply that the subject is NOT self aware?
No, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone argue otherwise. However, we generally assume animals lack self-awareness unless we have a good reason to do otherwise.
I’ve always found that assumption very weird and figure it’s rooted in human exceptionalism. Like we must be super special somehow. The more natural assumption to me seems that other animals, given their similar biological makeup, think rather similarly to humans.
It’s actually just the null hypothesis. We don’t assume rocks, trees, cars, flowers, stars, or soil are sapient either. It’s normal, correct, and good to not assume things with 0 evidence. Furthermore, I see a bunch of people who both insist that animals are self-aware and that LLMs definitely aren’t self aware, insisting they can’t be, despite the fact that they are literally capable of telling you that they are. (Note: I’m not trying to argue that AI are sapient.) This tells me that people who argue that animals are self-aware in general are speaking about what they’d like to be true rather than a reasonable belief.
That just depends on what you consider the default state to be. Claiming that humans have self awareness, but other animals do not, implies a relationship between species and capability for self awareness. The null hypothesis would imply a lack thereof.
It would be correct and good to acknowledge that we simply don’t know whether a given species is self-aware unless evidence points to one or the other direction. And that is very relevant for moral philosophy.
No, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone argue otherwise. However, we generally assume animals lack self-awareness unless we have a good reason to do otherwise.
I’ve always found that assumption very weird and figure it’s rooted in human exceptionalism. Like we must be super special somehow. The more natural assumption to me seems that other animals, given their similar biological makeup, think rather similarly to humans.
It’s actually just the null hypothesis. We don’t assume rocks, trees, cars, flowers, stars, or soil are sapient either. It’s normal, correct, and good to not assume things with 0 evidence. Furthermore, I see a bunch of people who both insist that animals are self-aware and that LLMs definitely aren’t self aware, insisting they can’t be, despite the fact that they are literally capable of telling you that they are. (Note: I’m not trying to argue that AI are sapient.) This tells me that people who argue that animals are self-aware in general are speaking about what they’d like to be true rather than a reasonable belief.
That just depends on what you consider the default state to be. Claiming that humans have self awareness, but other animals do not, implies a relationship between species and capability for self awareness. The null hypothesis would imply a lack thereof.
It would be correct and good to acknowledge that we simply don’t know whether a given species is self-aware unless evidence points to one or the other direction. And that is very relevant for moral philosophy.