Anil Seth

Who passes the mirror test? Among mammals, some great apes, a few dolphins and killer whales, and a single Eurasian elephant. A parade of other mammalian creatures, including pandas, dogs, and various monkeys, have failed – at least so far.

In humans, this ‘mirror self-recognition’ ability tends to develop some time between eighteen and twenty-four months of age. This doesn’t mean that younger infants lack consciousness – only that their awareness of themselves as an individual, as separate from others, may not have fully formed before this age.

anaesthesia is the art of turning people into objects.

our conscious experience is all there is. Without it there is nothing at all: no world, no self, no interior and no exterior.

A creature that comes into being only for a moment will be conscious just as long as there is something it is like to be it, even if all that’s happening is a fleeting feeling of pain or pleasure.