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This chapter discusses research on facial self-recognition. The ability to recognize one’s own face, for instance by passing the mirror mark test, has often been heralded as providing empirical evidence for the presence of self-consciousness. A failure to pass the test has also been seen as evidence for the absence of self-consciousness. Some, such as Gallup, have even argued that creatures incapable of passing such a test lack conscious experiences altogether. The latter interpretations are criticized, and the plausibility of an alternative interpretation of mirror self-experience is assessed, one that sees facial self-recognition as testifying to the presence of a rather special kind of self-consciousness, namely, one that in the case of human beings often has a distinctive social dimension to it.

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199590681.003.0013

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