After watching the BBC Horizon "The Secret You" I really began to think about our mind and body, and how every person has her or her own conscious. Mark de Sautoy sits in on a study testing whether or not babies are fully aware of themselves and their conscious. This study proves that it is not until we are between the age of 18-24 months until we become self aware. Watching the baby looking in the mirror and examining himself, but not noticing that it was really him or that something was different on his face, such as the sticker on his face, shows that the baby doesn't fully recognize who he is. This is extremely interesting to me because babies can see, hear, smell, move, and respond before this time, however, they cannot recognize themselves and who they really are. It is fascinating to think that everyone, for a small part of their lives, was unconscious of who they were. Although I cannot remember that time as a young child when I was unaware of who I was, I wonder what it was like and if other people have had an experience like this that they can remember. Also, I would be interested to know what it is that changes in our brains, from the time we are unconscious of our selves to that time when we become fully aware of our self and our conscious? With the technology and resources scientists and doctors have today, I think it is very probable that we can find an answer to this question, and further investigate complex concepts such as how one's conscious works.
When do we actually become aware of our conscious?
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I think the process that we become aware of ourselves must be really interesting. I was wondering why my dog can't recognize itself when I forced it to be in front of a mirror. It either wasn't paying attention or seemed to be scared. I really want to know if it knows he is different with other dogs. I feel I am really lucky to be a human and be aware of who I am and how I look like. Also, Psychology class helped me with understanding myself better inside.
Self-awareness is a very abstract concept in my opinion. What makes it more compelling is the fact that no one can remember the first time when you became self-aware. It would be interesting to see what was actually going through our head at the time.
This is very interesting to me as well. I hope that there will be a follow-up study on this type of thing, so we can figure out what actually changes when we gain consciousness of ourselves, like you said. I am also curious to know what the differences in consciousness and self awareness between others actually is.
when i think about how a baby isn't conscious of who it is, i'm not too surprised. think about what a baby has to work off of. number one, an incomplete brain with synapses that have not been utilized yet. two, new senses that it's never had before, so to them having these senses would be strange and definitely not fully understood. and three, babies do not even really have a self to recognize initially--all they do is get desires fulfilled, for the most part. in other words i just can't see a baby being aware of itself for awhile, at least until it's been in the world for a long enough time to start recognizing it's place in it.
I also think this subject is very interesting, it's really crazy to think about the fact that there was a time when we didn't know who we are. It's also weird to think about the fact that the only proof we have of what we look like is our reflection and photographs or videos. Otherwise we just have to believe people! That seems kinda bunk. Why should we?