OrangePhilosophy

Good question. It's fun to see how different animals react to their own image in a mirror--especially young dogs. Sometimes they growl at that apparently univited guest. I don't see how self-recognition necessarily gets to self-consciousness. It seems like more of an association, rather than a kind of reflection (in the introspective sense). Maybe this tells us something about how mechanical self knowledge is. I found a random paper on the subject.

http://grimpeur.tamu.edu/~colin/TCA/Ch/Gallup/gallup-final.pdf

It reminds me of an old querry in Psychology. In most cases, empirical observers would describe that a subject in a certain time felt ashamed or embarassed because he flushed, while some behaviourists would oppose and claim that the accurate observation would be

The face of the subject became red.

But in this case, I guess all depends on how one defines self-conciousness, and if one considers a priori that irrationals are able or unable to identify themselves or to have a degree or kind of conscience, wherefrom you follow either (A) or (B):

(A) If your working assumption is none, if that is precisely what you want to check, then the aforementioned experiments count as an evidence that some irrationals can identify themselves.

(B) If you in your premises exclude the possibility that irrationals can do it, then it will take more than one experiment to convince you.

But mind that it is an illusion to think that empirical evidences are all perfect and convince everyone. As you point out right, experiments will not tell us anything unless we work with clear theories and clearly defined concepts.

I was assuming that you don't decide a priori one way or the other. I don't see the point of doing the experiment if you're going to do something like that.

It is true, Jeremy. As odd as it seems, people doing experiments in several fields often have decided things a priori. Somehow when they formulate a hypothesis they have already sketched explanations for the different possible outcomes they expect, and the experiment is just one way to confirm what they already suspect. It is rare when the experiment aims to solve a puzzle for which the researcher actually has no a priori answer. But, of course, this is the Centuries old empiricism versus rationalism discussion, Marc Moffet and me were talking about in his blog.

I just want to be clear that having a hypothesis and testing it is not the same as having an a priori answer that an experiment will "confirm" no matter the results. I don't think this test is the latter. I think it's more like the former, but I think they need more than just the mirror test to show it.

Now one curiosity from someone who does not work with this issue:

Has anyone recorded the behaviour of different animals in nature when they see themselves reflected on water? Or in more general terms: is the response of some animals to their reflected image something they somehow learned by being exposed to mirrors by humans, or do they already have this knowledge in their natural environment?

What is self-consciousness supposed to be, anyway? Is it supposed to be something like recognizing that the proposition "There is something, and I am it" is true? If so, I think I might know of some people who are not self-conscious.

PS
Jeremy,
Comparisons between different species and their cognitive capacities and comparisons between distinct cognitive faculties have been a major topic in psychology, psycholinguistics (which I am more familiar with), and cognitive science. But the experiments in and out of my fields of knowledge seem to revolve about the same questions: does the result of an experiment show the existence of an innate faculty, or is it exactly the contrary? In my field, Linguistics, linguists like Chomsky, for instance, always will explain the result of an experiment as an evidence that the human faculty language is innate. Others, like Halliday could disagree. I do not follow your field of research, and I beg you to excuse me for it, but, as the whole theoretic discussion sounds similar to others I have followed, I would suggest you to make a comparison between the rationalist and the empiricist alternative solutions to deepen your reflection and improve your argumentation.
Anyway, congratulations for your work on an very interesting topic.

My areas of research are philosophy of race, philosophy of religion, and analytic metaphysics. This isn't part of my work. I just raised a question about the philosophical underpinnings of this common argument in psychology. It seems I was right, because the only person who knows much about it who commented said they had to turn to other experiments to establish the conclusion that I didn't think followed from just this experiment. (Of course, that same person claimed that I was saying illegitimate things by saying that, but he showed in his very criticism of me why I was right.)

Oh! I see!