You may well be right that the cat doesn't know that he's a cat. He does appear to know that he is himself.
I guess this is where our ideas split. I don't think that self-awareness is that hard to define especially given our very learned positions. Let my try and compare and contrast our ideas.
OK, thanks...
Self-awareness includes the presumption that we are individuals. We can't be individuals without some sort of "Self" or "Consciousness" and this is something I say that a cat can not have for the following reason. For us to have this higher manifold of awareness requires that we understand just exactly what this awareness is.
You now are shifting into a discussion of what it is to be an individual. Here you are merging together 'self' and 'consciousness'. They are VERY distinct concepts. Every individuated thing may be seen to have a 'self'. The cat certainly has one - he ministers to it, feeds it, preserves it... So lets look at 'consciousness', as you start to do. You seem to be saying that we can only have consciousness if we can understand what consciousness is. There are three immediate responses. Firstly, it appears wrong. Higher animals are obviously conscious (see later). Secondly, the activity of understanding is a feature of consciousness, which means you are saying that to be conscious we must be conscious. Thirdly, if this is so (that we must understand consciousness to have it) then humanity is not conscious, since there are currently no robust theories of just what it is. NObody is widely accepted as understanding what consciousness is.
And the only way we can put these feelings of self-realization is to communicate with ourselves as well as others. The tool for this communication is language and is the requirement for any human to become "self-aware."
Again we have some slipping and sliding around with terminology. Where did self-realisation come from, how is it related to self-awareness? We also seem to be schizophrenic in that we communicate with ourselves (communication implies utterer and audience - two separate entities). So far the argument seems to be that:
- we need to be aware that we are aware in order to be aware
- we must verbalise that we are aware of being aware in order to be aware that we are aware
- we have to have language to do this
- so language produces awareness QED.
I think the premises are all highly suspect.
So when we are born, we don't know that we are babies yet until we begin to learn words, phrases and ideas and then have the cognitive ability to understand that when we look in a mirror we are actually looking at our "self."
I am going to switch our animal of focus to dogs. For a dog to look in the mirror, (and this is where we may disagree) is that it does not have the ability to understand that it is aware of its own self. In fact you find this sometimes funny when dogs look into mirrors they bark at themselves even though what they are perceiving is understood as another dog. And to that fact, they may even learn that they themselves are being reflected in the mirror however, they can't comprehend that they are actually a living being. Something separate of this world. The only thing that they can distinguish between is by a learning behavior that I can not deny many animals have.
I don't think that babies need to learn to speak to learn as they develop that they are individuals. 'Wolf children' seem to do that. In some primitive cultures mirrors have been unknown, the concept of a mirror lacking from the culture. Yet their introduction - with no language support - has had the expected results of people learning how they function. Chimpanzees appear to be able to perform the same trick of recognising themselves in mirrors. The concept of self seems to be prior to language.
You are on thin ice by assuming that dogs do not have an awareness of themselves as living creatures. The empirical grounds are by no means certain and, in the proper logical sense of the phrase, you are begging the question (assuming what is to be proven as part of the argument). (As an aside, does the phrase "Something separate of this world" mean an individual thing separate FROM everything else in the world, or are you trying to imply that minds are something 'outside' this world?)
But when trying to put these memories into context, only humans have the ability to place meaning behind it, in which, because of language, we communicate to others and ourselves that we are an actual person, an individual, that is "self-aware." So when we look in the mirror we are not barking at it, but communicating with ourselves to try and figure out what it means...
Only humans have a language-facility developed to their high standard of complexity - yep. Language is a medium for transferring information. ANY species that communicates amongst its members is transferring information - i.e.
functionally using a language. Cetaceans have a (lesser developed) language-fascility, we think. Are they therefore to be considered more or less self-aware? Chimps certainly communicate their individual desires, useful information, they plan and organise. Self-aware just a little less? Ant colonies are immensely complex in their organisation and projects...
