What does it mean to be conscious?
Generally, it means you are aware of the sensations, thoughts, motivations, and emotions that are occurring. Beyond that, what does it mean to say that you are conscious of yourself as an individual? We have already talked about metacognition and Theory of Mind, but we will take a step back and see what it means to be self-aware.
Generally, it means you are aware of the sensations, thoughts, motivations, and emotions that are occurring. Beyond that, what does it mean to say that you are conscious of yourself as an individual? We have already talked about metacognition and Theory of Mind, but we will take a step back and see what it means to be self-aware.
To be self-aware is, in a sense, to understand that you exist as a separate entity from the rest of the world. One creative way of assessing self-awareness is through a self-recognition test.
From this video, you should be able to define self-recognition and how we can test for a sense of self-awareness it with children and chimpanzees. Be sure to note the age at which self-recognition develops in children.
Self-Recognition in Apes
Self-Recognizing Elephant
So self-recognition is the first step and developing theory of mind. Theory of mind is an even higher level of self-awareness. Watch this video about theory of mind:
Theory of Mind - Robert Seyfarth, RDF TV
