Singer's views

[Marta Russell]

>On Wednesday, June 5, 2002, at 05:42 PM, Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>
>
>meant to send some of the below with the above, but accidentally hit send.
>
>"Before about two years of age, no one has experiences that can be 
>consciously recalled in later life. Consistent with my 
>interpretation, this period of "infant amnesia" stops at about the 
>same time that children begin to show self-recognition. As would be 
>expected, the onset of an autobiographical memory only begins with 
>the emergence of self-conception."
>http://www.sciam.com/1998/1198intelligence/1198gallup.html
>
>also see at least one of the entries on the following page:
>
>"Mirror recognition has been used as a sign of self-awareness. 
>Monkeys exposed to mirrors certainly look in them and seem to find 
>them fascinating, but this alone does not imply self-recognition. To 
>test for self-recognition, scientists use the "mark test" in which a 
>mark is placed on an animal's forehead, without them knowing it. Now 
>when animals look in the mirror, will they realize that the image 
>they see with the strange mark on the forehead is them? If they do, 
>they will touch their own foreheads. If they do not, they will touch 
>the mirror. Human children beginning about 18-months of age "pass" 
>this test (that is, touch their foreheads), as do chimpanzees and 
>orangutans, but at an older age. Most gorillas seem not to 
>understand that they are looking at themselves in the mirror, and, 
>to my knowledge, no monkey, even the very bright capuchin, "pass" 
>this test."
>http://www.pbs.org/saf/1108/hotline/hbjorklund.htm
>
>my understanding in general is that it is pretty generally agreed 
>that 15-21 months is where this typically happens in human children. 
>i haven't found a convenient quotation from singer, but i would 
>imagine he works with some similar figure.

NO he doesn't.  His line is drawn much earlier - This has already 
been posted on LBO in the past so I'm not going to take the time to 
look it up and give you the quote.  It is in the archives and it is 
28 or 30 days.

So all these various "scientific" statements are really guesses, it 
is not known for certain.
Can you imagine if society were to allow parents to kill their babies 
based on this? It would be absolute chaos.

Marta

-- 
Marta Russell
Los Angeles, CA
http://www.disweb.org