Neuroscientist Ignacio Morgado: “As far as science can show, only humans can think about thinking”
Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.
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- Neuroscientist Ignacio Morgado says humans are the only beings scientifically shown to think about their own thinking.
- He distinguishes this metaconsciousness from animals’ possible self-recognition, saying claims about animal awareness remain unproven.
- Morgado also argues that people should compete mainly with themselves and help colleagues when they can.
What truly separates humans from other animals? For neuroscientist Ignacio Morgado, the answer is not intelligence itself, but the more subtle ability to know that we know.
A cat, when it looks in a mirror, does not know that it is itself. It thinks it is another cat. Well, after looking many times, it may eventually learn it, but the first time it does not know, and neither does a dog.
Morgado, a professor of psychobiology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona’s Institute of Neuroscience, illustrates the point with a cat facing a mirror. The cat does not initially understand that the reflection is its own. It thinks it is looking at another cat. A dog behaves similarly, he says. Even if an animal eventually learns what it is seeing after repeated exposure, that does not prove it understands its own consciousness.
Some scientists have treated delayed mirror recognition as evidence of animal self-awareness. Morgado is more cautious. “But that has not been proven,” he says, rejecting the leap from recognizing a reflection to knowing that one is conscious.
And some scientists believe that this is proof of self-awareness, that these animals think that they think, that they are conscious of being conscious. But that has not been proven.
This is where he draws the line between humans and other living beings. “As far as we can demonstrate scientifically, only we human beings can think that we think,” Morgado says. He describes people as self-conscious or metaconscious, able not only to perceive the world but also to reflect on their own perceptions and thoughts.
As far as we can demonstrate scientifically, only we human beings can think that we think. We are self-conscious or metaconscious beings.
For Morgado, this second layer of awareness is the highest mental ability found among living beings today, particularly humans. He links it to complex human capacities such as long-term planning and the construction of personal identity. He also connects the idea to an everyday lesson shaped by his years as a teacher: people should help colleagues when asked, while reserving competition for themselves. The goal, he says, is to become better each day rather than constantly measure oneself against others.
We should compete, probably at almost every age of our lives, with ourselves, to try to become better every day in every respect.
About this summary
Originally published by Clarín in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.
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