Level | Label (short description) | Added quality/mechanism added to the lower level | Purpose/function performed for the higher level | Description of subjects1 |
VI | Meta―consciousness II I know that others also know and judge | Ability to construct mental representations of other actors’ mental states (thoughts, judgements) and to assume their perspective (understand their intentions, state of knowledge, feelings) | Widely understood social relations. An individual capable of perspective taking, successfully regulates his social relations, fit to enter social contracts, predict how others will behave in changeable conditions. | Those healthy adults who achieve fullness of mental development. It seems that attaining this level requires strong cultural training, rich vocabulary, fluency in verbalizing feelings and psychological states. |
V | Meta―consciousness I I know that others feel, want, (dis) like, stick “with” or fight other members of the group | Ability to read emotions, what another individual knows (sees), others’ attitudes towards the subject and other interaction partners. Ability to personally recognize individual interaction partners. | Relations within a small2 social group. Building alliances within the group. Coherent in-group relations, maintaining group identity with regard to other group. | The majority of human population, including schoolchildren. Some primates and cetaceans, elephants, some corvids and parrots. |
IV | Self-awareness I know that I exist and that there is a boundary between me (my body, mind) and the environment | Ability to read one’s own feelings and thoughts. Experiencing oneself, one’s body and mind as separate from the rest of the reality. Establishing a representation of “Self” fairly stable temporally and situationally | Basic aspects of regulating behavior towards others within a community and in interspecies relations. | Majority of human population, including children under 3 years of age. Significant proportion of primates, cateceans, carnivorans, corvids and parrots. Possibly a large number of animals so far not assessed in this respect. |
III | Sensory-affective awareness I know that I can feel and that sensations are aversive or pleasant | Ability to experience pain and emotions. Memorizing emotions (generation of acquired drives) | Basic mechanism for regulating organism’s behaviour towards external events and objects by assigning them affective meaning (sign). Avoidance of aversive events and desiring events arousing pleasant sensations. | All vertebrates that have evolved structures responsible for emotional responses (e.g. amygdala), starting from fish. |
II | Sensory awareness I know that I sense | Ability to experience sensory stimuli perception | Basic mechanism for regulating organism’s behavior with respect to external events and objects through locating source of stimulus. | All vertebrates with mesencephalon (midbrain), which is the centre for sensory integration in ancient vertebrates. |
I | Nonconsciousness (nonconscious sensation) I sense, but I do not know that I sense | Ability to experience sensory stimuli and respond to them | Adaptive automatisms (taxes, tropisms). | All animals equipped with nervous system and sensory organs |