Self-Awareness and the Mirror Test

I have a problem with how the mirror self-recognition test is popularly portrayed as a test for self-awareness.

I’ll leave aside the thorny issue of how exactly we might define self-awareness and tentatively assume that we could agree on enough for my present purpose. I’m talking about conscious introspective knowledge of self.

Suppose an animal notices a foreign body on its skin and reacts to it. That doesn’t demonstrate self-awareness: even plants do that.

Being able to interpret a surface reflection certainly shows a degree of sophistication, but it’s not evidence of self-awareness: the observer may not even be in the reflection! Some fish can interpret images refracted at the air-water interface well enough to hunt flying insects, and there is no obvious reason why reflection might not also be used, though I don’t know an example.

So, reacting to a real object rather than its reflection doesn’t demonstrate self-awareness, and neither does reacting to an object on one’s own body. So, suppose an animal can interpret surface reflections and reacts to the reflection of something on its skin. Very clever! It’s combining two things neither of which suggest self-awareness. Yet this feat is precisely what is often claimed or assumed to show self-awareness. Am I missing something?

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Aniseed Balls

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