The modal-modular model of animal self-representation: a comparative and operational framework.

Self-awareness in animals is not a single capacity that a species either has or lacks, as the classic mirror test implies. Instead, self-representation can be understood as a modular regulatory system through which an organism accounts for its own body, actions, and agency. The authors propose a Modal-Modular Model with three levels of self-representation—implicit bodily, minimal self-related awareness, and reflective self-consciousness—and several candidate modules such as body size, weight, agency, and appearance. The framework shifts research from asking whether an animal 'has' self-awareness to constructing species-specific profiles across sensory channels and ecological contexts.

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Abstract

Research on animal self-awareness has long been organized around the mirror test and related self-recognition paradigms, encouraging a binary framing of whether a given species does or does not possess self-awareness. However, accumulating evidence suggests that animal self-representation cannot be reduced to a single experimental criterion, sensory modality, or linear evolutionary scale. This article proposes a comparative and operational framework for analyzing animal self-representation as a modal-modular regulatory architecture through which an organism takes its own body, actions, and agency into account in behavioral regulation. First, we clarify the distinctions among self-processing, self-representation, self-awareness, and self-consciousness, and distinguish three levels of self-representation: implicit bodily self-representation, minimal self-related awareness as anticipatory bodily and agentive regulation, and reflective self-representation, or self-consciousness. Second, we introduce the Modal-Modular Model, in which self-representation is analyzed along three functional dimensions: sensory input, represented bodily or agentive parameter, and motivational-behavioral context. Within this framework, we specify several candidate modules, including body size/passability, body weight/support, agency/action control, appearance-related self-representation, and modality-specific self-signal recognition. Third, we outline principles for operationalizing and validating these modules by matching tasks to species-specific sensory ecology, identifying target bodily and agentive parameters, separating epistemic from pragmatic actions, distinguishing module-specific evidence from alternative explanations, and using behavioral contrasts, dependent variables, transfer tests, control conditions, evidence grades, and falsification routes. The proposed framework shifts the focus from asking whether animals "have" self-awareness as a unitary capacity to constructing species-specific profiles of self-representation across modules, sensory channels, ecological contexts, and operational criteria.