Other Minds

The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

255 pages

English language

Published Aug. 7, 2016 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

ISBN:
978-0-374-22776-0
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
957696590

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (39 reviews)

"Peter Godfrey-Smith is a leading philosopher of science. He is also a scuba diver whose underwater videos of warring octopuses have attracted wide notice. In this book, he brings his parallel careers together to tell a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself. Mammals and birds are widely seen as the smartest creatures on earth. But one other branch of the tree of life has also sprouted surprising intelligence: the cephalopods, consisting of the squid, the cuttlefish, and above all the octopus. New research shows that these marvelous creatures display remarkable gifts. What does it mean that intelligence on earth has evolved not once but twice? And that the mind of the octopus is nonetheless so different from our own? Combining science and philosophy with firsthand accounts of his cephalopod encounters, Godfrey-Smith shows how primitive organisms bobbing in the ocean began sending signals to each other and …

7 editions

Review of 'Other Minds' on 'GoodReads'

4 stars

Очень enjoyable, но не очень хорошо сконструировано и структурировано. Россыпь размышлений о природе сознания и разума, не всегда, как можно почерпнуть из соседних ревью, находящихся на одной волне с актуальной наукой.

Главное перед ознакомлением — не иметь завышенных ожиданий (определенно не научное исследование; скорее всего не философский трактат; длинное эссе на свободную тему? возможно) и не ждать ответов на Большие Вопросы. Можно включить композицию Rise of the Cephalopods группы Alkaloid для усиления эффекта, сочетается идеально.

Review of 'Other Minds' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Peter Godfrey-Smith is an Australian philosopher and diving enthusiast, with particular interest in cephalopods, which goes someway to explaining this book. I did find it quite hard to absorb and switched to an audiobook part way through. I possibly missed something important but it seemed to drift from topic to topic and not really explain how the octopus can show us how human intelligence evolved.

You have to go a long way back the evolutionary tree to find a common ancestor between humans and octopus; our intelligence evolved in parallel. The book starts out explaining how single cell organised evolved into more complex creatures, how eyes might have coming into being and most importantly, the development of the nervous system. There was plenty of interesting bits but it was hard to just sit down and read it for long periods of time. It is a little dry in the delivery. …

Review of 'Other Minds' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

This is a fascinating look at the lives of cephalopods, with a focus on their evolution, nervous systems and minds. Along the way, these are compared and contrasted to chordates, human beings included.

It raises questions about how we think, the origin of consciousness and the origin of language.

If you’re looking for a book that offers easy answers to these questions, this isn’t for you. Many theories and ideas are explored here, but a lot of these are tentative and more research needs to be done.

If, however,you’re looking for a book that takes seemingly simple questions and takes you in a journey that arrives at more nuanced questions that still need to be answered, I can highly recommend this book.

Review of 'Other Minds' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Really great read. I didn't know much about the Cephalopods before reading this and thoroughly enjoyed it. We often wonder what it would be like to meet an alien intelligence but the Octopus and its relatives are the closest we have to an alien intelligence on Earth and how mysterious they are!

The other side of the book is about the general nature of consciousness which is also of great interest to me.

Review of 'Other Minds' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Good insights into what the definition of intelligence can be, and identifying our own chordate biases when approaching the development of artificial intelligence.

At points, he waxes philosophical, but never very deeply. I'd be more interested in examining how our monolithic human brain biases us when we think about our thoughts, our bodies, or intelligence. Explore the idea that our integrated subjective experience called "consciousness" is largely independent of our body's mechanisms for deciding to lift our arms or move toward food, as measured by neuroscientists who (perhaps wrongly) interpret it as neurological proof of our lack of "free will."

Even speculation into octopus qualia -- what does it feel like to be an octopus with semi-autonomous limbs -- or perhaps some thought experiments drawing analogies between human patients with inactivated brain regions vs an octopus with missing limbs.

Interesting, if a bit unfocused. The news that cephalopods use extensive …

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Subjects

  • Behavior
  • Evolution
  • Psychology
  • Animal intelligence
  • Consciousness
  • Nervous system
  • Cephalopoda

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