More recently, empirical evidence has suggested that many nonhuman mammals, such as mice, appear to be self-aware (Wada et al. 2016).
Wow, this is interesting, although I’m not sure what to make of this. It seems like it could just be learned association, i.e. they’re teaching them to expect a sensation if this tail, which happens to be your tail, or this other tail, which happens to be a rubber tail, is touched. You might expect similar behaviour in any animal capable of learning through association with touch sensations. I guess there are at least two responses to this: it’s not actually good evidence for self-awareness, or we should entertain the possibility that some minimal self-awareness is widespread among animals that can learn through association with touch sensations.
Wow, this is interesting, although I’m not sure what to make of this. It seems like it could just be learned association, i.e. they’re teaching them to expect a sensation if this tail, which happens to be your tail, or this other tail, which happens to be a rubber tail, is touched. You might expect similar behaviour in any animal capable of learning through association with touch sensations. I guess there are at least two responses to this: it’s not actually good evidence for self-awareness, or we should entertain the possibility that some minimal self-awareness is widespread among animals that can learn through association with touch sensations.