See my post above; all sentient beings innately have this. Anything that can respond to operant conditioning does. Singer actually isn't very well spoken on this point, if he even understands it himself. You have to have a sense of yourself as the operator, the responsive environment you're engaging with, time and causality in order to competently display such behavior.viddy9 wrote:Singer has talked about self-awareness in order to distinguish between beings who should not be killed and beings it is permissible to kill. He takes self-awareness to be an awareness of one's own existence, particularly over a time continuum, which is a prerequisite for having a preference to go on living.
This kind of behavior is seen even down to some insects. There is no question that the higher animals most people eat are self aware; they understand self, other, the environment, and have a sense of time and causality.
Plants. Sponges. Probably oysters. Likely jellyfish. Some worms.viddy9 wrote:For some preference utilitarians, it's not wrong in itself to kill beings without the capacity for self-awareness,
If a being lacks sentience, it has no preferences.viddy9 wrote:although it may be wrong for other reasons: the satisfaction of their other preferences may be cut short as a result of the killing.
I've heard it well said that, "The primitive sign of wanting is trying to get"; and that doesn't just mean moving toward or away from something in a programmed manner. E.g. a rock does not want to fall. That means responsive intelligent behavior that is adaptive to demonstrate a desire. Most explicitly, we're talking about operant conditioning here.
It is of course a gradation from worm to man. But it's not terribly difficult to measure. Operant conditioning is proof positive, and it roughly correlates to intelligence and problem solving.viddy9 wrote:I would agree that this is the case, but I'd also agree with others here that it's difficult to measure (the mirror test has been proposed as a possible form of measurement), and that it's not necessarily an all-or-nothing characteristic.
The mirror test is a joke (I think you already have a sense of this, but maybe not of the degree of criticism it deserves). If you want a real mirror test: that's learned disinterest.
When a kitten attacks a mirror, that is the kitten not understanding the reflection is itself. Once it understands that (it doesn't take long), the kitten has learned that the reflection correlates to its own movements, and is not an 'other' that represents threat or playmate.
Most animals are just not interested enough in the reflection to notice the spot, or not visually oriented enough to pick it out, or curious enough to care. Failure to do so demonstrates nothing. Unfortunately, people often take it as proof of a negative (although that's not what the research intends).