Thread: The conscious perception of aniamls

Originally Posted by O'nus

1) The empirical evidence pruports, via the scientific method, that animals can not distinguish an externally existing reality. Since self-awareness requires this ability, we can determine that animals do not have self-awareness.

You say "the" empirical evidence, as if to conclude 2 things:

1) That you have access to all of the empirical evidence given in all documented cases of the scientific exploration of the comparability of animal-to-human perception.

2) That there is no empirical evidence that shows that such an assertion may, in fact, be incorrect.

Please provide substantiation for both of the above claims. I've yet to see it.

Originally Posted by O'nus

Oneironaut:
- The mirror is just one residual result of not having self-awareness.

One in which the outcome seems to be the same, for both a human child that may have had interaction with a mirror, before, and with a non-human animal that may be encountering a mirror for one of its first few times. Nothing more, from what I've seen so far.

Originally Posted by O'nus

- The video of the child with the marker on his head is the only video I can find resembling the rouge test. The actual test does it much better as it uses rouge, not an obnoxious marker.
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Well, I'm sorry, but because of the way the results of that test can be explained away, due to the variables I've mentioned, it really does nothing to evidence that such a reaction is exclusively human.