I don’t think it’s obvious that nonhuman animals, including the vertebrates we normally farm for food, don’t self-model (at least to some degree). I think it hasn’t been studied much, although there seems to be more interest now. Absence of evidence is at best weak evidence of absence, especially when there’s been little research on the topic to date. Here’s some related evidence, although maybe some of this is closer to higher-order processes than self-modelling in particular:
See the discussion of Attention Schema Theory here (section “Is an attention schema evolutionarily old or unique to humans?”) by the inventor of that theory, Graziano, in response to Dennett’s interpretation of the theory applied to nonhuman animals (in which he also endorses the theory as “basically right”!). Basically, AST requires the individual to have a model of their own attention, an “attention schema”.
Dennett wrote “Dogs and other animals do exhibit some modest capacities for noticing their noticings, but we humans have mental lives that teem with such episodes – so much so that most people have never even imagined that the mental lives of other species might not be similarly populated”, and then expands further.
In Graziano’s response: “Any creature that can endogenously direct attention must have some kind of attention schema, and good control of attention has been demonstrated in a range of animals including mammals and birds (e.g., Desimone & Duncan, 1995; Knudsen, 2018; Moore & Zirnsak, 2017). My guess is that most mammals and birds have some version of an attention schema that serves an essentially similar function, and contains some of the same information, as ours does. Just as other animals must have a body schema or be condemned to a flailing uncontrolled body, they must have an attention schema or be condemned to an attention system that is purely at the mercy of every new sparkling, bottom-up pull on attention. To control attention endogenously implies an effective controller, which implies a control model.”
I think the evidence for episodic(-like) memory in nonhuman animals is getting better, particularly with more unexpected question tests, which often ask about what the animals did (although I supposed this wouldn’t necessarily require a self-model, depending on the details):
I left a comment here, with some other weak evidence, e.g. animals being trained to communicate their emotions in different ways (see also this post), which I think would require them to be able to discriminate between their internal emotional states, i.e. their emotions are inputs to executive functions like (top-down/selective) attention, learning and memory. Also, cows may become excited by their own learning.
EDIT: Finally found the paper on pigs generalizing the discrimination between non-anxiety states and drug-induced anxiety to non-anxiety and anxiety in general, in this case by pressing one lever repeatedly with anxiety, and alternating between two levers without anxiety (the levers gave food rewards, but only if they pressed them according to the condition). This experiment and similar experiments performed on rodents are discussed here, in section 4.d., starting on p.81 (and some other discussion of them earlier). For example, rats generalized from hangover to morphine withdrawal and jetlag, and from high doses of cocaine to movement restriction, from an anxiety-inducing drug to aggressive defeat and predator cues. Of course, anxiety has physical symptoms, so maybe this is what they’re discriminating, not the negative affect.
In general, I think there’s more recent research on nonhuman metacognition and mental representation, although I haven’t followed this closely, so I can’t really tell you what’s up. There are some recent reviews on metacognition here.
Animals might not care about the marks. Cleaner wrasse, a species of fish, did pass the mirror test (the multiple phases, including the final self-directed behaviour with the visible mark), and they are particularly inclined to clean things (parasites) that look like the mark, which is where they get their name. I think the fact that they are inclined to clean similar looking marks was argued to undermine the results, but that seems off to me.
I would be interested in seeing the mirror test replicated in different sensory modalities, e.g. something that replays animals’ smells or sounds back to them, a modification near the source in the test condition, and checking whether they direct behaviour towards themselves to investigate.
Some criticisms of past scent mirror test are discussed here (paper with criticism here). The issues were addressed recently here with wolves. Psychology Today summary.
I think animals are more likely to show body (touch, pain) awareness and have a related self-representation (a body schema?). For example, mice get the rubber hand (tail) illusion. From having their tail and the rubber tail just stroked together, they extend their expectations of having their tail grasped to the rubber tail.
I don’t think it’s obvious that nonhuman animals, including the vertebrates we normally farm for food, don’t self-model (at least to some degree). I think it hasn’t been studied much, although there seems to be more interest now. Absence of evidence is at best weak evidence of absence, especially when there’s been little research on the topic to date. Here’s some related evidence, although maybe some of this is closer to higher-order processes than self-modelling in particular:
See the discussion of Attention Schema Theory here (section “Is an attention schema evolutionarily old or unique to humans?”) by the inventor of that theory, Graziano, in response to Dennett’s interpretation of the theory applied to nonhuman animals (in which he also endorses the theory as “basically right”!). Basically, AST requires the individual to have a model of their own attention, an “attention schema”.
Dennett wrote “Dogs and other animals do exhibit some modest capacities for noticing their noticings, but we humans have mental lives that teem with such episodes – so much so that most people have never even imagined that the mental lives of other species might not be similarly populated”, and then expands further.
In Graziano’s response: “Any creature that can endogenously direct attention must have some kind of attention schema, and good control of attention has been demonstrated in a range of animals including mammals and birds (e.g., Desimone & Duncan, 1995; Knudsen, 2018; Moore & Zirnsak, 2017). My guess is that most mammals and birds have some version of an attention schema that serves an essentially similar function, and contains some of the same information, as ours does. Just as other animals must have a body schema or be condemned to a flailing uncontrolled body, they must have an attention schema or be condemned to an attention system that is purely at the mercy of every new sparkling, bottom-up pull on attention. To control attention endogenously implies an effective controller, which implies a control model.”
Dogs (Canis familiaris) recognize their own body as a physical obstacle (pop-sci article)
Pigs learn what a mirror image represents and use it to obtain information. EDIT: there was areplication experiment, in which only 1 of 11 mirror-experienced piglets used the detour that the mirror would help them find, and none of the 11 mirror-naive did.I think the evidence for episodic(-like) memory in nonhuman animals is getting better, particularly with more unexpected question tests, which often ask about what the animals did (although I supposed this wouldn’t necessarily require a self-model, depending on the details):
Mental representation and episodic-like memory of own actions in dogs
Animal models of episodic memory (see the section “Incidental Encoding and Unexpected Questions”)
Episodic-like memory of rats as retrospective retrieval of incidentally encoded locations and involvement of the retrosplenial cortex
Experiments with pigeons and rats are discussed in the section “The unexpected question” in Animals Represent the past and the Future.
I left a comment here, with some other weak evidence, e.g. animals being trained to communicate their emotions in different ways (see also this post), which I think would require them to be able to discriminate between their internal emotional states, i.e. their emotions are inputs to executive functions like (top-down/selective) attention, learning and memory. Also, cows may become excited by their own learning.
EDIT: Finally found the paper on pigs generalizing the discrimination between non-anxiety states and drug-induced anxiety to non-anxiety and anxiety in general, in this case by pressing one lever repeatedly with anxiety, and alternating between two levers without anxiety (the levers gave food rewards, but only if they pressed them according to the condition). This experiment and similar experiments performed on rodents are discussed here, in section 4.d., starting on p.81 (and some other discussion of them earlier). For example, rats generalized from hangover to morphine withdrawal and jetlag, and from high doses of cocaine to movement restriction, from an anxiety-inducing drug to aggressive defeat and predator cues. Of course, anxiety has physical symptoms, so maybe this is what they’re discriminating, not the negative affect.
In general, I think there’s more recent research on nonhuman metacognition and mental representation, although I haven’t followed this closely, so I can’t really tell you what’s up. There are some recent reviews on metacognition here.
Of course, many animals have failed the mirror test, and that is indeed evidence of absence for those animals. Still,
Animals could just be too dumb (or rely too little on vision) to understand mirrors, but still self-model in other ways, like in my top comment. Or, they might at least tell themselves apart from others in the mirrors as unique, without recognizing themselves, like some monkeys and pigeons. Pigeons can pick out live and 5-7 second delayed videos of themselves from prerecorded ones.
Animals might not care about the marks. Cleaner wrasse, a species of fish, did pass the mirror test (the multiple phases, including the final self-directed behaviour with the visible mark), and they are particularly inclined to clean things (parasites) that look like the mark, which is where they get their name. I think the fact that they are inclined to clean similar looking marks was argued to undermine the results, but that seems off to me.
I would be interested in seeing the mirror test replicated in different sensory modalities, e.g. something that replays animals’ smells or sounds back to them, a modification near the source in the test condition, and checking whether they direct behaviour towards themselves to investigate.
Some criticisms of past scent mirror test are discussed here (paper with criticism here). The issues were addressed recently here with wolves. Psychology Today summary.
I think animals are more likely to show body (touch, pain) awareness and have a related self-representation (a body schema?). For example, mice get the rubber hand (tail) illusion. From having their tail and the rubber tail just stroked together, they extend their expectations of having their tail grasped to the rubber tail.
I also don’t think GPT-3 has emotions that are inputs to executive functions, like learning, memory, control, etc..