Michele Pasin / Quotes

Self-awareness is uniquely human

Think about the mood you are now in. Can you identify it? What are you feeling? How would you describe your present mental state? Now think for a minute about how your mind is working. Is it quick and alert? Do you sense that you are torn between doing this mental exercise and evaluating the point to be made out of it? Your ability to do what you just did is uniquely human. Animals do not possess this ability. We call it “self-awareness” or the ability to think about your very thought process. This is the reason why man has dominion over all things in the world and why he can make significant advances from generation to generation.

Saved 25 December 2017 / www.amazon.com ↗

#consciousness #self #humanity #animals

Minimal self and autobiographical self

Different theorists use different descriptions, but most distinguish between what is variously called a ‘minimal’, ‘core’ or ‘implicit’ self and the…

The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) #self #consciousness #animals #time

How I know my dog is conscious

I think the answer is that the basis on which I am confident that my dog is conscious and has a specific content to his consciousness is not simply that his…

Mind: A Brief Introduction (John R. Searle) #animals #consciousness #other-minds #brain

What is it like to be a bat

One of the earliest well-known arguments against functionalist types of materialism was advanced in an article by Thomas Nagel called, “What It Is Like to Be…

Mind: A Brief Introduction (John R. Searle) #consciousness #subjective-experience #animals #materialism

Foresight and the autobiographical self

As well as hindsight, foresight is a characteristic part of autobiographical selves. We can plan ahead with incomparably more sophistication than even the…

The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) #self #future #animals

What neuroscientists agree on about the self

It would be misleading to suggest that neuroscientists speak with one voice on the self, but all the leading people in the field do seem to agree on a few key…

The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) #self #neuroscience #brain #animals

A sudden disappearance of the personal self

‘In one moment, everything that I had ever taken to be my personal self completely disappeared,’ she later recalled. ‘It was just gone. As I waited for the…

The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) #self #consciousness #experience