In a talk, I mentioned that it is impossible to point to oneself; one always points to another person. There is an objection to this argument, namely, that one can point to oneself in a mirror. There are ways to respond to that critique that are mainly of a biological nature, to do with the relatively late evolutionary history of self-recognition in mirrors. However, there is a more fundamental metaphysical question: who does one see when one sees a reflection in a mirror? In some ways, a mirror is a special kind of visual illusion. Here, there can be two lines of argument:(a) That visual illusions -and mirror images in particular- teach us a lot about the workings of normal perception. This is the dominant line in philosophy as well as in cognitive science.(b) The heterodox Gibsonian view, and the view consistent with my “action potential” theory of mind is the exact opposite, that illusions do not tell us much about the normal operations of the mind. If so, mirror images are no more problematic than mirages.
The Mirror Self
The Mirror Self
The Mirror Self
In a talk, I mentioned that it is impossible to point to oneself; one always points to another person. There is an objection to this argument, namely, that one can point to oneself in a mirror. There are ways to respond to that critique that are mainly of a biological nature, to do with the relatively late evolutionary history of self-recognition in mirrors. However, there is a more fundamental metaphysical question: who does one see when one sees a reflection in a mirror? In some ways, a mirror is a special kind of visual illusion. Here, there can be two lines of argument:(a) That visual illusions -and mirror images in particular- teach us a lot about the workings of normal perception. This is the dominant line in philosophy as well as in cognitive science.(b) The heterodox Gibsonian view, and the view consistent with my “action potential” theory of mind is the exact opposite, that illusions do not tell us much about the normal operations of the mind. If so, mirror images are no more problematic than mirages.