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Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness
Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness
Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness
Ebook325 pages5 hours

Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

By Peter Godfrey-Smith

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Philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith dons a wet suit and journeys into the depths of consciousness in Other Minds

Although mammals and birds are widely regarded as the smartest creatures on earth, it has lately become clear that a very distant branch of the tree of life has also sprouted higher intelligence: the cephalopods, consisting of the squid, the cuttlefish, and above all the octopus. In captivity, octopuses have been known to identify individual human keepers, raid neighboring tanks for food, turn off lightbulbs by spouting jets of water, plug drains, and make daring escapes. How is it that a creature with such gifts evolved through an evolutionary lineage so radically distant from our own? What does it mean that evolution built minds not once but at least twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter?

In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how subjective experience crept into being—how nature became aware of itself. As Godfrey-Smith stresses, it is a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. Tracking the mind’s fitful development, Godfrey-Smith shows how unruly clumps of seaborne cells began living together and became capable of sensing, acting, and signaling. As these primitive organisms became more entangled with others, they grew more complicated. The first nervous systems evolved, probably in ancient relatives of jellyfish; later on, the cephalopods, which began as inconspicuous mollusks, abandoned their shells and rose above the ocean floor, searching for prey and acquiring the greater intelligence needed to do so. Taking an independent route, mammals and birds later began their own evolutionary journeys.

But what kind of intelligence do cephalopods possess? Drawing on the latest scientific research and his own scuba-diving adventures, Godfrey-Smith probes the many mysteries that surround the lineage. How did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? What is it like to have eight tentacles that are so packed with neurons that they virtually “think for themselves”? What happens when some octopuses abandon their hermit-like ways and congregate, as they do in a unique location off the coast of Australia?

By tracing the question of inner life back to its roots and comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Godfrey-Smith casts crucial new light on the octopus mind—and on our own.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherMacmillan Publishers
Release dateDec 6, 2016
ISBN9780374712808
Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

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Peter Godfrey-Smith

Peter Godfrey-Smith is a professor in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. He is the author of the bestselling Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, which has been published in more than twenty languages. His other books include Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science and Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection, which won the 2010 Lakatos Award.

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Reviews for Other Minds

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  • 5/5
    Fascinating book about evolution and consciousness, and the octopus. Describing an early roundish ancestor that doesn’t seem to have had much in the way of perceiving organs (and seems to have existed before predation was a thing), he describes them as “[m]acarons that pass in the night.” Much of the book is intriguing discussion of the nature of consciousness and the need for a moving being to be able to distinguish things that happen because it acted (e.g., my field of vision shows something different because I stepped forward) from things that happened for some other reason (e.g., my field of vision shows something different because a fish swam in front of me). Although some theories of cognition depend on embodiment being a specific kind of constraint (we have knees, we have arms of a certain length (aiding us in perceiving distance), etc.), the octopus body is almost completely unfixed—“a body of pure possibility”—and it still has some kind of problem-solving/interacting ability, though its scope is unclear. As one researcher said, fish have no idea they’re in a tank, but with octopuses, “[a]ll their behaviors are affected by their awareness of captivity.”
  • 5/5
    Fascinating and through provoking. A biology book written by a philosopher, pondering how we evolved and asking what "isness" is for other animals.
  • 4/5
    Making Philosophy of Mind (a subject I always used to doze off in) more concrete by exploring just how intelligent an octopus is. Their minds are so different from ours – embodied in their arms – and despite their glorious colour-changing they seem to be colour-blind, or experience colour in a way we don't yet understand. Oh, and they only live for two years. Challenging our narratives of consciousness in many ways, and a good read, with only a couple of dry philosophical stretches.
  • 4/5
    Cephlapods are interesting and often overlooked in the intelligence department. This book mainly focuses on the octopus - evolution, nervous system, behaviour, memory, their skin and how and why they change colour. There are some funny stories along the way as well as some cool pictures. I definitely enjoyed my time in Octopolis where octopuses hang out, mate, fight and eat scallops.

    It was also interesting to read about how the first living things lived during the Ediacaran period and how things evolved and came to be what they are today. As the book went on I found it a bit repetitious and boring as some things did not tie in with cephalopods. Once I got a taste of octopus that was all I wanted. But still an enjoyable read overall.
  • 5/5
    Covers the evolution, experiments and research done on octopi, a species regarded as a having taken a distinct route to intelligence on earth.The topic of consciousness is only briefly covered, but good points are made.I enjoyed reading it.
  • 4/5
    We generally consider mammals and birds to be the smartest creatures on Earth. It's not unreasonable; that includes us and crows.

    But an entirely different branch of life on this planet also shows surprising intelligence--the cephalopods, including octopuses, cuttlefish, and squid. Their line and ours (that is, the vertebrates) separated hundreds of million years ago. Even our eyes and theirs evolved separately. Most of them live less than five years. They don't appear to be very social.

    Yet they have large and complex central nervous systems. Organized very differently from ours, but large and complex nevertheless. They show many signs of being intelligent, curious, and inventive. But why should an octopus that lives only two years, apparently isn't social beyond breeding once, and broods her eggs but dies when they hatch and certainly doesn't raise them, evolve such a complex nervous system and apparent intelligence? What are those expensive resources for?

    Godfrey-Smith gives us a really interesting exploration of this question, including tales of his own and others' direct experiences with cuttlefish and octopuses in their home environments, not just in labs. (Though they do some pretty darned interesting things in labs, too.) His own experiences with a cuttlefish, at the end of its breeding season and thus nearing the end of its life, are fascinating.

    There is also a lot of exploration here of what consciousness is, how it evolved, and what it really does--for us, and perhaps for cephalopods.

    All in all, an absorbing book, grounded in science, and exploring some fascinating territory and ideas.

    Recommended.

    I bought this audiobook.
  • 5/5
    Deep in the past, very early in the history of complex animals during the Ediacaran, a little worm like species was divided somehow and it became two branches of life. One branch developed an internal skeleton and a nervous system that led some of the ancestors to big brains. The other terrorized the seas as decapods and octopods, and developed their own big brains. What is the driving force for the development of mind.
  • 3/5
    Without doubt, octopi have to be one of the strangest creatures on the planet. Almost entirely without rigid structure, able to squeeze through a space the size of their eyeball, rapidly changing colour at will, with tentacles that have enough neurons to function semi-independently - it’s all a bit of a puzzle. And a tempting one indeed for evolutionary biologists and their philosophy of science colleagues. But it does make for a fascinating read.Of course, as one might expect, there is a fair bit of hand waving in any of the evolutionary scenarios invoked here. There is very little fossil record of octopi due to their fluid makeup. And relatively little direct observation given their preferred locale. Only recently have serious quantitative methods been employed in their study along with genetic sequencing. So much of what is described here is anecdotal, impressionistic, and speculative. That’s not a criticism in itself; it just sets the limits on what you might want to take away.Godfrey-Smith’s writing is enthusiastic yet workmanly. It is as though he’s taken a concentrated scientific paper and puffed air into it to expand it to book length. The result is a bit disjointed. The opening sections of evolutionary speculation may not sit comfortably with the more rigorous philosophical questions of other minds. And the more purely scientific reportage shades over into personal anecdote. Which might be a recipe for a book that has something for everyone. I at least got enough out of it to keep reading through to the end. And so will you, I suspect.Gently recommended.
  • 4/5
    Rating: 3.5* of fiveA deeply (!) enjoyable look at cephalopod minds, not brains but minds, in parallel to our own mammalian ones. I was absolutely enthralled by the author's discoveries made at a site he calls "Octopolis," a community of octopuses on the seafloor near S