"Research shown, the author continues, that chimpanzees and possibly humans have a module of mind reading, a set of neurons that fire when we detect signs specific to a variety of mental states in others. It has been suggested that individuals that suffer from autism lack the mind reading module and that they can not connect, be on-line projecting an emotional distance."
"To be self-aware means recognizing the limits of self-hood."
To recognize what? Where your own self-hood ends and the world begins? What separates your self-hood and the world around you? Or what you are capable of and what not? How being capable of distinguishing that the world as a self-hood perceives it, is distinct from the way other self-hoods perceive the world, make it possible to recognize their self-hood limits?
Certainly they realize that the information they have about the world is different from the information ....
That should be based on information you gather about your self-hood and the world. I think that should come when a self-hood realizes that is capable of thought in a world populated by other self-hoods, and by default as mirror images, all capable of thought. As a self-hood is capable of thought it gathers information about its self-hood and the world around. Being aware of your own thoughts, you recognize that a 'self' is capable of thought as your own self is.
You can't step back and reflect on your thoughts without recognizing that your thoughts are finite, and that other combinations of thoughts are possible. Without those limits, we would certainly be aware of the world in some basic sense - it's just that we wouldn't be aware of ourselves, because there would be nothing to compare ourselves to. The self and the world would be indistinguishable.
So the limits discussed are about our thoughts being finite. Finite as opposed to infinite. Our thoughts aren't infinite or omniscient as the three-year old.
Reflection on your thoughts is a conscious process and could not be performed by a four-year-old. Does that imply that a reflex action, hard-wired in the brain? Still a reflection process less plausible
Without recognition of other thoughts to measure our own thoughts against, our own mental state wouldn't even register as something to think about.
He knows that as he extrapolates his conclusion that the perception is aware of, would be owned by the other self-hoods, and his perspective allows him a unique view and other self-hoods that are alike him would see the world from their own perspective, their unique view. And the differences he perceives other self-hoods would experience is due to the realization of the uniqueness of perspectives of self-hood. I would dare say the theory of minds implied it does not come out of any reading of the mind of other individuals as mostly the result of the rudimentary concept of the expected contents of the box.
Self-aware and limits of self-hood. It gives a measure of what he can and he can not do, which by itself represent limits nevertheless but acts mostly as confirmation. The authors have messed it up by going further than what can be legitimately concluded from the findings. Their plea to indistinguishableness between self-hood and world can not be affirmed, it is not a logical conclusion. It muddles up, confuses and stirs away from a realistic conclusion.
