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

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

Hardcover – December 6, 2016

by
Price
$30.30
Format
Hardcover
Pages
272
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-0374227760
Dimensions
5.87 x 1.03 x 8.52 inches
Weight
14.4 ounces

Description

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice One of the Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2016 and a Top Ten Science Book of Fall 2016, Publishers Weekly "If this is philosophy, it works, because Godfrey-Smith is a rare philosopher who searches the world for clues. Knowledgeable and curious, he examines, he admires. His explorations are good-natured. He is never dogmatic, yet startlingly incisive." ― Carl Safina, The New York Times Book Review "Entrancing and profound . . . Godfrey-Smith takes us on a philosophical journey of a quite unique kind, for its backdrop is the sea. We accompany the author, an avid diver and admirable writer, as he explores the lives of the cephalopods and the origins of consciousness . . . As is clear from the title of Godfrey-Smith's book―as well as his enchanting descriptions of encounters with octopods―he believes these creatures have minds." ―Stephen Cave, Financial Times "A philosopher of science and experienced deep-sea diver, Godfrey-Smith has rolled his obsessions into one book, weaving biology and philosophy into a dazzling pattern that looks a lot like the best of pop science. He peppers his latest book with vivid anecdotes from his cephalopod encounters . . . [and] relates dramatic stories of mischief made by captive octopuses . . . [but] his project is no less ambitious than to work out the evolutionary origins of subjective experience . . . The result is an incredibly insightful and enjoyable book." ―Meehan Crist, Los Angeles Times "[ Other Minds is] a terrific mix of Cousteau-esque encounters with [cephalopods] in the wild . . . wide-ranging scientific discussion, and philosophical analysis. Beautifully written, thought-provoking, and bold, this book is the latest, and most closely argued, salvo in the debate over whether octopuses and other cephalopods are intelligent, sentient beings." ―Olivia Judson, The Atlantic "A smoothly written and captivating account of the octopus and its brethren . . . [Godfrey-Smith] stresses their dissimilarity to us and other mammals, but he also wants us to appreciate what we have in common . . . Mr. Godfrey-Smith mixes the scientific with the personal, giving us lively descriptions of his dives to 'Octopolis,' a site off the east coast of Australia at which octopuses gather." ―Colin McGinn, The Wall Street Journal “The alienness of octopuses, in [Peter Godfrey-Smith’s] view, provides an opportunity to reflect on the nature of cognition and consciousness without simply projecting from the human example . . . Godfrey-Smith starts with the conviction that consciousness is an evolved thing, and accepts the conclusion that it has more primitive precursors: that it comes in degrees after all.” ―Amia Srinivasan, London Review of Books "To investigate these astonishing animals with such empathy and rigor is achievement enough. To do so while casting light on the birth and nature of consciousness, as Godfrey-Smith does here, is captivating." ―China Miéville, author of The City & The City and Kraken "Brilliant . . . The beauty of Godfrey-Smith’s book lies in the clarity of his writing; his empathy, if you will . . . He proves that, like all aliens, these strange, beautiful creatures are more like us than our hubris allows." ―Philip Hoare, The Guardian "Peter Godfrey-Smith's Other Minds sells us on the sentient cephalopod and the history of our own consciousness, one tentacle at a time." ―Sloane Crosley, Vanity Fair "Fascinating . . . After reading this book, to paraphrase Byron, you will 'love not man the less, but cephalopods more.'" ― Callum Roberts, The Washington Post "[ Other Minds 's] subject is so amazing, it’s hard not to be drawn along, just as Godfrey-Smith was when he extended a hand to an octopus and it reached out to return his touch, echoing his interest." ―Irene Wanner, The Seattle Times "Godfrey-Smith skillfully links the details of evolutionary history and biology to broader philosophical debates about the nature and function of consciousness . . . [ Other Minds ] is a valuable contribution to some of the most basic questions about the origins of conscious life." ―Nick Romeo, Chicago Tribune "Delightful . . . Godfrey-Smith explores the issue from many angles, beginning with a succinct and thoughtful discussion of the evolution of animals, and extending to a look at the octopus' remarkable neurological systems . . . Throughout, Godfrey-Smith intertwines his own keen work observing and filming these animals at a remarkable site off of the coast of Australia he calls 'Octopolis.'" ―Adam Gaffney, The New Republic "Such wondrous creatures deserve a remarkable chronicler. They’ve found one in Godfrey-Smith . . . Other Minds is a superb, coruscating book. It’s exciting to see bottom-up philosophy ― philosophy that starts on the reef and in the sand and then crawls slowly up towards abstraction. That’s how all philosophy should be done." ―Charles Foster, Literary Review "Fascinating and often delightful . . . This book ingeniously blends philosophy and science to trace the epic journey from single-celled organisms of 3.8 billion years ago to the awakening and development of cephalopod consciousness." ―Damian Whitworth, The Times (London) "Peter Godfrey-Smith, a philosopher, skilfully combines science, philosophy and his experiences of swimming among these tentacled beasts to illuminate the origin and nature of consciousness." ― The Economist "Godfrey-Smith has set himself a double challenge with this book: (i) putting together what is known about octopi behavior and cognition and (ii) showing why this information challenges our philosophical and scientific conceptions of the mind. The result is most convincing." ―Ophelia Deroy, Science "A concise and elegant guide to evolution, consciousness, and marine biology." ― Gary Drevitch, Psychology Today "Deftly blending philosophy and evolutionary biology . . . Godfrey-Smith couples his philosophical and scientific approach with ample and fascinating anecdotes as well as striking photography from his numerous scuba dives off the Australian coast. He makes the case that cephalopods demonstrate a type of intelligence that is largely 'alien' to our understanding of the concept but is no less worthy of wonder . . . [ Other Minds is] thoroughly enjoyable and informative." ― Publishers Weekly "An engrossing blend of avidly described underwater adventures . . . and a fluid inquiry into the brain-body connection . . . Godfrey-Smith performs an exceptionally revealing deep dive into the evolutionary progression from sensing to acting to remembering to the coalescence of the inner voice, thus tracking the spectrum between sentience and consciousness." ―Donna Seaman, Booklist "I love this book, its masterful blend of natural history, philosophy, and wonder. Other Minds takes us on an extraordinary deep dive, not only beneath the waves, for a revelatory and intimate view of the mysterious and highly intelligent octopus, but also through the eons, to look at the nature of the mind and how it came about. It’s a captivating story, and Godfrey-Smith brings it alive in vivid, elegant prose. His ardent and humane passion for the octopus is present on every page. A must-read for anyone interested in what it’s like to be an octopus or in the evolution of the mind ― ours and the very other, but equally sentient , minds of the cephalopods." ―Jennifer Ackerman, author of The Genius of Birds "One of the greatest puzzles of organic life is how and why certain animals became aware of themselves. Peter Godfrey-Smith uses the octopus as a portal to enter nonhuman consciousness, doing so with great sensitivity and first-hand knowledge." ―Frans de Waal, author of Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? "Exciting, dramatic, vivid, revelatory, this book is full of jaw-dropping ideas and thrilling possibilities. In beautiful, clear, evocative writing, diver-philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith will transform your understanding of the nature of life, the course of evolution, and the development of the mind ― ours and others'. Other Minds will delight and challenge every naturalist, every diver, every person who has ever wondered about the nature of other creatures' experience. In other words, everyone should read this book ― and come away with a more complex and compassionate relationship to the other animals with whom we share both Earth and sea." ―Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus , a National Book Award finalist "Godfrey-Smith delivers a revealing exploration of one―no, two!―of evolution's most critical turns, and one remarkable creature's trail-blazing, eight-armed foray into a mental life." ―Jonathan Balcombe, author of What a Fish Knows "One of our species's worst qualities is our insistence on an exclusive pathway to consciousness. Fortunately Peter Godfrey-Smith has given us a roadmap to a whole new territory of thinking. Other Minds is a gracious and generous exploration of this different land, one that will make you rethink the entire notion of sentience." ―Paul Greenberg, New York Times bestselling author of Four Fish and American Catch 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.

Features & Highlights

  • 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.

Customer Reviews

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Most Helpful Reviews

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Brilliant

Manages to make some tough philosophical concepts very readily accessible, and does so in a way that is charming, entertaining, and incredibly thought-provoking. If you are even vaguely interested in the topic of the book, I highly recommend picking it up. This is what books in philosophy (and science!) aimed towards a general audience should look like.
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More Anecdote and Speculation then Science

Peter Godfrey-Smith begins this book with a fascinating hook: since human beings and octopi have each independently evolved highly intelligent brains the octopus is as close to an alien as any of us is likely to see in their lifetime. Even more intriguing, the author suggests that this parallel development will allow him to investigate one of science’s most speculated on but unanswered questions—the origin of consciousness. Reading further, however, Godfrey-Smith admits that little is understood of the nervous system of the octopi. So most of what we have to rely on is his own anecdotal observations while scuba-diving.

That said, Godfrey-Smith’s speculations on the both the consciousness of octopi and the origins of all sentience are well thought out and interesting. And while most of the book is devoted to anecdote and speculation there is well established science strewn throughout. I would not have known that octopi have neurons throughout their body rather than only in the brain if I had not read this book.

Still, the bulk of the book is not science but philosophical speculation on the experiences Godfrey-Smith has had scuba diving with octopi. If that is what you are looking for you will be pleasantly surprised by the obvious depth and perspicacity of the speculation. But if you were expecting a scientific treatise you will be disappointed.

In other words, Godfrey-Smith proffers ideas worth considering in Other Minds but their roots’ scientific foundations are, to say the least, not on firm ground.
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Alien Intelligence, Alien Consciousness

Peter Godfrey-Smith’s book is part philosophical exploration of consciousness, part speculative evolution, and part nature writing. If I have any strong criticism of the book, it’s that if you expect an in-depth version of any one of those, you may be disappointed.

Octopuses are relatively new to us as intelligent creatures. The most familiar non-humans in that class are dolphins, apes, maybe whales. We have more recently, in the popular understanding, begun to see that not only more species — crows, parrots, honeybees, ants, octopuses and other cephalopods — are intelligent, but that the intelligence of other familiar animals — dogs, cats, squirrels, . . . — has long been under-rated.

Franz de Waal’s book, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are, is very much to the point. Other animals’ intelligence may be just different enough from our own that we don’t always immediately recognize it when we see it. But, given divergent evolutionary paths, that’s exactly as we should expect.

When we say that the octopus is “intelligent”, I think we have to be careful. We are accustomed, for example, to ranking the intelligence of one species against another — chimps are intelligent, but not as intelligent as us. Dolphins fit into the ranking somewhere.

But “intelligence” is not one thing. Intelligence, like other traits, evolves with conditions — environmental and internal challenges and opportunities. And those conditions are different for each species. The intelligence it evolves is also going to be different.

This point is all the more poignant with the octopus. It is “alien” — the evolutionary branching that separates us from the octopus is very old. Godfrey-Smith puts our common ancestor at about 600 million years in the past (as opposed to just 6 million years for chimps). That’s 594 million more years of evolutionary differentiation, augmented by differences in environment.

The octopus has a nervous system, but it’s very different from our own, with the majority of its neurons in its arms rather than in a central brain. It lives entirely under water. The species Godfrey-Smith studies has a lifespan of only one to two years. It is mostly asocial. It’s just very, very different from us. The intelligence we recognize in it is the intelligence we are prepared to recognize, based on similarities and overlaps with our own intelligence. But its intelligence is its intelligence, not ours. Not so much more or less than different, alien, in the proper sense of “alien.”

Recognizing that octopuses are intelligent, the natural question comes to mind — what would the conscious life of an octopus be like? Would it be at all like ours? Would, for example, there be the same kind of unity to experience and thought that we attribute to ourselves, given the octopus’s more distributed nervous system? Or would it be almost internally social, made up of inter-communicating fragments?

As a philosopher studying consciousness, Godfrey-Smith asks that question. As he puts it, following Thomas Nagel’s paper, What Is It Like to Be a Bat?, what is it like to be an octopus?

What the subjective experience of an octopus is like is necessarily speculative. That there IS something that it is like to be an octopus may be less so. Octopuses engage in complex, deliberative, and exploratory behaviors. Something is behind that. They react to pain, e.g., caring for a damaged arm. They appear to decide to do one thing rather than another.

What all of those things feel like to the octopus is another story, and that’s a very speculative one. For example, Godfrey-Smith, taking into account the relative independence of the octopus’s arms in its neural system, contrasts its behavior to our own through an analogy. On a spectrum between an orchestra directed by a conductor and an improvisational jazz group, the octopus’s subjective life would feel more like the improvisational group and ours more like the conductor-led group, with our central brain playing the conductor’s function.

This “feel” of consciousness is necessarily elusive, I think. The conductor vs. jazz group still doesn’t convey that “feel” to me (maybe partly because, while it’s relatively easy to imagine being a member of the orchestra or jazz group, it’s not so easy to imagine what it feels like to be the whole orchestra or jazz group). It is helpful, though — it does leverage what we know about the octopus to convey something of what may go on in its subjective experience.

Godfrey-Smith actually moves away from trying to convey that feel, and instead offers a sketch of how consciousness may evolve, exploiting concepts dealing with sensing, acting, and communicating, all over two scales — one external, in interactions between the animal and its physical and social environment, and one internal, in interactions within the animal itself — parts of its nervous system, its nervous system and other functional components,. . .

Speaking a little too glibly, on my part, the internalization of sensing leads to the complexity of the nervous system, while the internalization of communication leads to consciousness itself.

Much of Godfrey-Smith’s account of how consciousness arises paints consciousness as arising in response to the problems of loops in an animal's doing and sensing. A very simple behavior doesn’t pose such a problem — an animal senses and it reacts. It moves away from something that causes it harm or discomfort.

But more sophisticated behavior places animals in a environment that they continuously change through their own actions. When an animal moves closer or farther from an object it will change the apparent size of the object. But the animal signals itself that the change is due to its own activity, not a change in the object itself (this is accomplished through what are called “efference mechanisms”). Much less complex animals than humans (or octopuses) are capable of making this distinction between changes due to their own actions and changes in the environment.

More and more complex animals produce more and more complex loops of action and sensing — an example Godfrey-Smith gives is of a person writing a note as a reminder for themselves later. Such a thing calls not only upon an ability to distinguish changes in the world due to your own actions (the presence of the note), but also communication, in this case a communication between your present self and your future self.

Godfrey-Smith’s full account is too much for me to try to reproduce here, and even then it is only a sketch, not a detailed account. But he also provides references to others who are working on details in various aspects of the sketch he gives, in case you want to pursue these farther and in more depth.

All in all, the book doesn’t confine itself to any one perspective — sometimes philosophical (as in the “what is it like to be . . .” discussion), other times biological (as in the accounts he gives of the possible path of evolution that consciousness has taken), and other times more popular (as in the accounts he gives of his own first-hand experience observing, interacting, and playing with octopuses).

I think it serves very well as a taking-off point for any of those perspectives — you don’t need to be all that conversant with any one of them to start here, and starting here could take you to much greater depths.
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I still very much enjoyed this book and learned from it

Goddrey-Smith (GS) assumes that complexity of behavior indicates level of consciousness. I am not convinced – most of us have experienced solving a problem we initially could not, with a flash of insight occurring after some time spent without conscious devotion to the problem, and there is a growing literature on how much of our processing and decision making occurs without conscious attention. I still very much enjoyed this book and learned from it. For one thing, GS is a master of the informal essay style of writing.

The book is about the evolutionary development of the nervous system, with a focus on the more “intelligent” cephalopods. Sensation of, reaction to, and generation of signals is made more efficient and speedy by the nervous system, but one is not required for such capabilities. GS traces the nervous system to the need to efficiently coordinate actions in multi-cellular animals. Of 34 animal phyla, there are only 3 in which some members have “complex, active bodies”. In the mollusk phyla, it is only the squid, cuttlefish and octopi, all cephalopods, which are of interest. The other2 phyla are the chordates (think vertebrates) and arthropods. Focusing on the octopus, as the best example among the cephalopods, it has a very large nervous system for its size, much more decentralized than the “intelligent” chordate and arthropod animals.

The octopus has a much more challenging body to coordinate than most animals; also, as a predator, with a variety of potential foods, but one which is highly vulnerable to other predators, lacking powerful defensive weapons, complex behavior is critical. At the same time, it is not known to be social, and has a short natural life span (even without predation), both arguments against a highly developed consciousness. Study of the octopus is apparently in its infancy, perhaps the toddler stage. For example, ethologists know motivation is important to successfully test animal intelligence, and food treats are not the motivator they are for many animals, with apparently no simple alternative found, especially if you exclude negative motivation like electric shocks. Much of the best evidence for octopus intelligence seems to be anecdotal, but convincing never-the-less. A weakness of this book is that it concentrates more on GS’s own observation of octopi in their natural environment, not his primary occupation, and less on a more thorough review of what others have found and concluded, other than the anecdotes.

Why is there senescence, a breakdown of life? GS concludes that a large factor is that undesirable mutations which shorten lifespan are not weeded out by evolution – because predation/injury/lack of foody destroys most individuals before they are harmed by the mutation – clearly not true of modern humans. For octopi it is predation and their natural life span for observed species, with the exception of the cold water giant octopus, is only 2-3 years.

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