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Animals
Consciousness
Mind

Does personality prove self-consciousness? If an animal has a defined and changeable personality (can get depressed, etc.), is it then self-aware?
Accepted:
November 9, 2005

Comments

Jay L. Garfield
November 9, 2005 (changed November 9, 2005) Permalink

There is a difference between consciousness and sel-consciousness. It is one thing to be aware of things around oneself, or even of one's own physical states, and another to be aware that one is so aware. The latter is self-consciousness. Personality is yet a third thing. As a reasonable first pass we could take it to be a bundle of behavioural, affective and cognitive dispositions. Those would seem to require consciousness, but not self-consciousness.

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