Who or what should we blame for the lack of lucidity ?

**Occipitalred** · 01-13-2014 02:52 PM

Originally Posted by StephL

Found a short BBC feature on conciousness - with this mirror-recognition test Darkmatters mentioned - they show, that basic self-awareness sets in between 18 and 24 month of age.

If self-awareness was the only prerequisite to lucid dream, then kids could therefore start lucid dreaming at the age of 18-24 months. However, I have some questions about this mirror-recognition test:

1. What if the kids under a certain age and the animals that don't pass this test is only because they don't care about having a spot on their cheek?

2. If an animal can identify other animals in their environment such as prey, family, and predators, why would it not recognize itself? Maybe they can recognize their own arm, just not identify with an arm that's in front of them because that makes no sense for someone that doesn't believe in mirrors.

3. Just being able to recognize yourself in a mirror is something that even a robot could do. Therefore the mirror-recognition test does not correspond to the same type of self-awareness we are talking about. Self-Awareness is more of a mystical (as in hard to explain) experience where you are aware of your own awareness, your thoughts, your emotions, your actions, how they affect the world around you, how they are affected by the world and in what context-space-time you're in. Maybe I added more to the self-awareness definition, but this is more what I think about when I think about self-awareness. I think this definition corresponds more to what a child needs to be able to experience to have a conscious dream than being able to know they're looking at themselves in a mirror.

EDIT

4. I find it hard to be self-aware when looking into the big mirror in my bathroom because it feels like me is the person in the mirror that's looking right into my eyes.

5. Also, I feel like the mirror thing depends on an understanding of what a mirror is to some degree. Why would a horse say "Hey this is me, it makes total sense that I am here but I see myself in front of me. They're more likely to think. Hey, this other horse is copying me. I am self-aware so I know I'm here and not there."