Something to remember about the MSR test. The high level conclusion that we draw from it is a large leap from what the experiment is able to show and we haven’t been able to distinguish it from any number of plausible theories.
For example, I caught my dog looking at me through the mirror in the room when she didn’t have direct line of sight and we were the only two in the room and I was talking in ways that would get her attention. That indicates some level of recognition of the role a mirror plays and that the image in the mirror is a reflection and not a mystery animal. That animals utilize their senses differently and find different things interesting to them says more about the limitations of our ability to evaluate other animals than it does about their actual sentience and intelligence I think. Eg maybe the MSR test is simply a test that works well on animals that have a similar working sensory model to us (or at least vision is important enough and interest in mirrors is aligned).
> there are different things like ability to see and project oneself into the future and to assign value to those projections, the ability to empathize, the ability to miss things that are no longer there, etc. are often metrics used for higher levels of sentience.
That’s a bold claim. I’d say at most we have a sample size of one species because we’re able to communicate and compare notes with each other + within a species animals work fairly similarly enough for the most part. We have absolutely no knowledge of whether the things you said are important for sentience/intelligence. Not if candidates we think are likely closest in intelligence (elephants, dolphins, crows) demonstrate these traits as it requires a degree of insight and communication we don’t have. - we have to do convoluted experiments to try to tease out effects but we don’t actually know what the experiments are telling us.
Maybe if our brain imaging technology gets better some of these questions will become more answerable.
Additionally, couldn't MSR results simply be produced by mirror neurons firing? I.e., touching a marked part of the body does not mean "Animal in the mirror is me", it can simply mean "Marked part of that animal is 'itching' me"?
Are there MSR tests that used windows to other animals instead mirrors as a control?
For example, I caught my dog looking at me through the mirror in the room when she didn’t have direct line of sight and we were the only two in the room and I was talking in ways that would get her attention. That indicates some level of recognition of the role a mirror plays and that the image in the mirror is a reflection and not a mystery animal. That animals utilize their senses differently and find different things interesting to them says more about the limitations of our ability to evaluate other animals than it does about their actual sentience and intelligence I think. Eg maybe the MSR test is simply a test that works well on animals that have a similar working sensory model to us (or at least vision is important enough and interest in mirrors is aligned).
> there are different things like ability to see and project oneself into the future and to assign value to those projections, the ability to empathize, the ability to miss things that are no longer there, etc. are often metrics used for higher levels of sentience.
That’s a bold claim. I’d say at most we have a sample size of one species because we’re able to communicate and compare notes with each other + within a species animals work fairly similarly enough for the most part. We have absolutely no knowledge of whether the things you said are important for sentience/intelligence. Not if candidates we think are likely closest in intelligence (elephants, dolphins, crows) demonstrate these traits as it requires a degree of insight and communication we don’t have. - we have to do convoluted experiments to try to tease out effects but we don’t actually know what the experiments are telling us.
Maybe if our brain imaging technology gets better some of these questions will become more answerable.