
The neurology of self-awareness - type0
https://www.edge.org/conversation/the-neurology-of-self-awareness
======
haberman
A very interesting and thought-provoking essay. This part in particular stuck
out:

> Otherwise monkeys would have self awareness and they don't

This suggests the existence of other research that has both defined the
concept of self-awareness robustly and made it testable enough that we can
state as fact that monkeys don't have it. Does anybody know what this might be
alluding to?

~~~
eagsalazar2
It is a common arrogance, even among "scientists", to assume that no other
animal has self awareness or even emotions.

~~~
ThomPete
Can you point to any evidence even in the fringe sciences that would attempt
to prove that monkeys have self awareness?

~~~
daveguy
I always thought the mirror test / mark test was a pretty well established
test for self awareness, and several animals pass it. It's not particularly
fringe.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test)

~~~
greggyb
Actually, this is called into question in the fine article:

> (Incidentally, Gallup's mirror test — removing a paint splotch from your
> face while looking at a mirror — is not an adequate test of self awareness,
> even though it is touted as such. We have seen patients who vehemently claim
> that their reflection in the mirror is "someone else" yet they pass the
> Gallup test!)

~~~
daveguy
The point is that awareness testing is not a fringe part of animal behavioral
studies. This would be a potential area of research for mainstream animal
behavior study (paired mirror tests).

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wellpast
> But hopefully we have paved the way for future models and empirical studies
> on the nature of self, a problem that philosophers have made essentially no
> headway in solving.

This final statement not only seems snide but also dumb to the difference
between science and philosophy. (I'm not an expert on that difference but I
can see that there is one. I can see that there is a clear difference in spite
of the fact that each steps on the others' toes, that each side attempts to
take credit for the others' insights at times, or makes snide comments at each
other like this statement here.)

~~~
type0
I think philosophers often free-ride on the discoveries of cognitive
scientists without adding anything to the discussion. That doesn't mean that
philosophy can't have its place, it's there to ask questions but very often
those questions are meaningless without the way to gain answers.

~~~
mpweiher
Well...Philosophy ("love of wisdom") originally encompassed all of science. In
a sense, once a discipline was able to be conducted more empirically, it split
off. So at any particular stage, Philosophy will be trying to answer those
questions we can't answer empirically.

So I find the "free-ride" a little harsh. What happens over time is that more
and more questions that used to be purely "philosophical" have more and more
empirical answers.

I think it might be useful for Philosophy to be less its own specialty and
more an umbrella for the whole enterprise of "love of wisdom".

~~~
foldr
>What happens over time is that more and more questions that used to be purely
"philosophical" have more and more empirical answers.

I sometimes think this might be a bit of a positivist myth. Most of the
domains where we've gained a great deal of empirical knowledge are domains
which people always investigated empirically, albeit less systematically and
with fewer available resources (e.g. astronomy). On the other hand, most of
the big philosophical puzzles that Aristotle engaged with remain largely
untouched by developments in science. E.g. Is it possible to make true
statements about the future? How is change possible?

~~~
mpweiher
>I sometimes think this might be a bit of a positivist myth.

How so? For example:
[http://www.astronomynotes.com/history/s3.htm](http://www.astronomynotes.com/history/s3.htm)

Looks like an astronomy problem to me. Aristotle is also considered one of the
early astronomers.

>On the other hand, most of the big philosophical puzzles that Aristotle
engaged with remain largely untouched by developments in science

 _Exactly_ my point. Of the problems they worked on (and they worked on
_everything_ they could think of), the ones that we have solved we now
consider science, the ones that are still unresolved we consider philosophy.

Sort of like the definition of AI: if we solve it, it's no longer considered
AI.

~~~
foldr
>Looks like an astronomy problem to me. Aristotle is also considered one of
the early astronomers.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. My point was that Plato and
Aristotle (and other early astronomers) realized that astronomy had to be
based on observation. No-one (except perhaps a few cranks that no-one
remembers) has ever tried to do "armchair astronomy".

>the ones that we have solved we now consider science, the ones that are still
unresolved we consider philosophy.

I think the distinction is really just the distinction between empirical
science and metaphysics, which is a distinction that Aristotle would also have
made, though perhaps in slightly different terms. For this reason, I think the
image of armchair philosophy gradually yielding ground to science is wrong.
Broadly speaking, philosophers have always worked on philosophical problems
using philosophical methods, and scientists have always worked on scientific
problems using empirical methods. There hasn't been any great shift from one
to the other. What has occurred of course is a shift in prestige: society
currently values empirical science much more than it values philosophy.

~~~
mpweiher
You are equating "philosophy" with what philosophy looks like today ("armchair
astronomy").

The point is that this wasn't the case, philosophy was the umbrella that
included _everything_.

Heck, just look at the title "Doctor of Philosophy", which is the name for
doctorates in both the sciences and the humanities. _Not_ just for doctorates
in today's specific sub-discipline of philosophy.

~~~
foldr
Well sure, but I take it that the change in the way the word 'philosophy' is
used is not the interesting development. That's not what people usually mean
when they talk about philosophical problems becoming scientific problems.

~~~
mpweiher
The two are the same thing.

~~~
foldr
I don't think so. The suggestion is usually that questions which used to be in
the realm of philosophical speculation are now being addressed using empirical
scientific methods. That would amount to more than just a change in
terminology.

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mehwoot
_The neuron fired not only (say) when the monkey reached for a peanut but also
when it watched another monkey reach for a peanut!_

 _These were dubbed "mirror neurons" or "monkey-see-monkey-do" neurons. This
was an extraordinary observation because it implies that the neuron (or more
accurately, the network which it is part of) was not only generating a highly
specific command ("reach for the nut") but was capable of adopting another
monkey's point of view. It was doing a sort of internal virtual reality
simulation of the other monkeys action in order to figure out what he was "up
to". It was, in short, a "mind-reading" neuron._

I don't really see how this follows- maybe the neurons are just recognising
things that happened, like seeing a peanut being picked up. That doesn't
require "adopting another monkey's point of view" or "figuring out what he was
up to". It could just be the brain attempting to verify that the action
happened, which is going to be seen regardless of who made it happen.

------
tantaman
How he defines self awareness: "'other awareness' applied to yourself" is a
self awareness we entertain as children but definitely not real self awareness
or the self awareness we posses after reaching any level of even moderate
development.

"Self-awareness is 'other awareness' applied to yourself where 'other
awareness' is constructing meaningful models of other peoples minds in order
to predict their behavior" ^ This is totally circular. You(others) have some
way of guiding your(their) own behavior before being aware of others and using
that to construct a model of behavior and self.

This essay is armchair philosophizing completely removed from any real
experience. I'd go so far as to call it psychologically harmful to anyone that
entertains the essay as true and attempts to apply the ideas presented in it
to understand their self.

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dmfdmf
This theory is reversing the cause and effect. Self-awareness is not the
primary because it is a consequence of free will, i.e. the capacity to direct
the focus or object of your consciousness. Initially the focus of attention is
external to the mind for its obvious survival value and the higher animals
clearly have some primitive ability to direct their focus. But the step they
cannot (or have not made) is to direct that focus onto their own cognitive
states (i.e. self-awareness) and discover such things as anger, jealousy,
want, love, motivation, etc. From there its a small step to project that
certain other animals have similar internal states that explain their
behaviors, i.e. mirroring. Hours of observing others animals perceptually
would never lead to mirroring nor self-awareness. It is a projection of our
observation of the internal states of the only consciousness you can or ever
will directly observe, your own.

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hyperpallium
"Mirror" neurons sound more like "concept" or "verb" neurons, rather than a
subset of "command" neurons. Firing when its monkey "reaches for a peanut",
and when it sees another monkey "reaching for a peanut" sounds like it means
the verb "to reach for a peanut".

It also seems unlikely that a single neuron would carry a complete meaning in
themselves... like probing a single bit in a data structure, you might be able
to tell if it's odd or even, positive or negative, but probably need a
constellation of bits/neurons to make sense of it.

But he may be simplifying in this high-level essay, and I haven't read papers
in the field.

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zer0gravity
The man is simply saying that the underlying neurological mechanism (i.e.
mirror neurons ) used to decode others behaviour and possbily make a
prediction about "what they're up to" is used also to decode/simulate our own
actions, which is really what we call self awarness. This actually makes quite
a lot of sense, and I don't see why some pople detect a circular dependecy
here..

At sensory level our own "doing" is not really different then sombody else's
"doing" , and that can pe processed by the same mechanism, but reconized as
"our own doing" based on additional cues..

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MrQuincle
2007 article

A very interesting hypothesis nevertheless. There are pathologies in which
theory of mind is impaired. For example Baron-Cohen studies that aspect of
autism. There might be hypotheses formulated what that means for self-
awareness.

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orthoganol
He insists that 'mirror neurons' give rise to the aspects of self, but who's
not to say that they are a reflection/ habituation of processes 'out there', I
don't know, something like the (aptly named) 'mirror stage' of childhood?
Shouldn't a discussion of correlation vs. causation be important for his
argument?

~~~
taormina
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_stage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_stage)

~~~
orthoganol
I'm not saying the mirror stage is the explanation, formative experiences more
generally in childhood might be a reason you see 'mirror neuron' networks. A
feral child can't learn language after a certain point, and hypothetically I
would imagine he would not show a 'mirror neuron' network (or sense of self
awareness).

Either way, I think the author needs to address correlation vs. causation
before assuming the latter.

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dgregd
We already know that we are very similar to animals. Our mind and
consciousness are last things that distinguishes us. We are strongly attached
to this idea. It was hard for people to accept the fact that the Earth is not
the center of the universe, and despite the simple explanation of the
phenomena that surround us.

Regarding consciousness there is too much philosophical discussion. Wordplays
of which little is clear.

The sense of sight has exhausted such emotions. We are able to say that a
simple multicellular organism having one photosensitive cell is a primitive
ancestor of the eye.

What do you say if we define consciousness as the next sense, but in contrast
to other senses directed to the center, that is, to our memory.

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pointernil
\-- 'other awareness' applied to yourself --

I find the work and ideas especially the

"attention schema theory"

of sentience, consciousness, self-awareness proposed by Michael Graziano[1]
most compelling in that area; they as well propose an evolutionary path
towards the development of "consciousness"

And yeah sure, why should/could the mirror-neurons-"apparatus" _not_ be
involved?

[1]
[https://www.princeton.edu/~graziano/](https://www.princeton.edu/~graziano/) :
including some The Atlantic essays.

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zde
Naive factorial() implementation is self-aware, I'd say. So what?

------
ThomPete
Ramachandrans Reith lectures are also worth a listen

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/](http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/)

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ajcarpy2005
I'm going to play the buddhist card on this one and contend that it's the
enlistment of "outside" energies like food, air, water, prana...which are
coming into an organism and experiencing or "re-experiencing" itself which
gives rise to this effect. There are many levels to this effect though and
there must be some sweet spots where an experience seems somehow new (as in
worthy to be paid attention to) and yet not-altogether old either. Familiar
enough to recognize and "alarming" or "surprising" enough to be worthy of
giving attention towards.

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type0
Ramachandrans The Tell-Tale Brain is certainly one of my favorite books,
anyone who is interested in neurobiology should read it.

------
alongub
This might be an _extremely_ stupid question, but does it make sense to apply
the concept of mirror neurons to ANNs?

~~~
MrQuincle
Of course. There is a field in AI that is dedicated to imitation learning.

See e.g. "Mirror neurons and imitation: a computationally guided review" at
[http://pacherie.free.fr/COURS/MSC/Oztop-Kawato-
Arbib-2006.pd...](http://pacherie.free.fr/COURS/MSC/Oztop-Kawato-
Arbib-2006.pdf) for an overview.

The reason why you don't see so much of this type of literature is because the
dominance of virtual AI: Google, Siri, etc. Hardware is expensive and learning
with hardware is slow. However, the type of AI required is IMHO much more
interesting. I think we really understand how our brains work if we have an AI
competing at the Olympics.

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rrggrr
This could neatly explain Stockholm Syndrome, cult joining and other identity
deficits.

~~~
dominotw
wouldn't monkeys have cults if this was a sufficient explanation for those?

~~~
brassic
Like this?

[http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/nature/2016/03/could-
chi...](http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/nature/2016/03/could-chimpanzees-
have-religion)

~~~
77pt77
I've been looking for this for ages.

Thanks.

------
77pt77
Just another ape pretending he's special.

Sure, monkeys don't have self awareness.

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suyash
Self Awareness is something that is uniquely human. It relies on
consciousness.

~~~
MacsHeadroom
Consciousness is the experience of being.

If there is an experience of what it is like to be a thing, then that thing
can be said to be conscious.

Such things may be some subset of or superset containing "things with brains."
But the idea that it is uniquely human seems absurd.

------
marknadal
Woah Woah Woah, there is a fatal flaw and assumption in just the first couple
paragraphs - the bootstrapping problem. If we evolved self in order to predict
what others feel ... that depends on others having those feeling, but if those
feelings in others don't evolve unless others have evolved those feelings, we
have a circular fallacy! Who was the first feeler to cause others to evolve,
and how did that person evolve then?

~~~
type0
> If we evolved self in order to predict what others feel ...

This has quite obvious evolutionary advantages. If you can predict how someone
feels or what he might think you can outsmart him in competition for food. You
could trick him for trade (e.g. food for tools) when he least suspects that it
might not be in his favor. Essentially externalizing mirror neuron processes
is much more beneficial in the short term, if you can think how the other
person might think. In the long run in order to be successful you also need to
internalize you mirror neurons - you need to think how to think about yourself
and to start thinking what this person might think about you and what kind of
self awareness they could have. You can't just trick the other, the deal is to
trick them without them noticing otherwise you end up with prisoners dilemma.
Probably those processes could also had led to evolution of language and
trade.

~~~
bjd2385
Makes a lot of common sense. The more I read about stuff like this the more
``common-sense" Nature seems. I mean, having this near- or far-future
predictive ability gives a species a real advantage among others that don't.

