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

by Peter Godfrey-Smith

This was my first experience with an aspect of these animals that has never stopped intriguing me: the sense of mutual engagement that one can have with them. They watch you closely, usually maintaining some distance, but often not very much. Occasionally, when I’ve been very close, a giant cuttlefish has reached an arm out, just a few inches, so it touches mine. It’s usually one touch, then no more. Octopuses show a stronger tactile interest. If you sit in front of their den and reach out a hand, they’ll often send out an arm or two, first to explore you, and then—absurdly—to try to haul you into their lair. Often, no doubt, this is an overambitious attempt to turn you into lunch. But it’s been shown that octopuses are also interested in objects that they pretty clearly know they can’t eat.

They have simple vocalizations, three or four calls, but their internal processing of what they hear is much more complicated. They can recognize each individual’s calls and interpret a series of calls made by different baboons, constructing an understanding of events around them that is far more complex than anything a baboon could say. When they build these narratives, they have some means for putting ideas together which goes far beyond what they can express using their communication system.

The sounds we cook up in our heads, including the sounds of words, are broadcast in our minds in something like the way that many ordinary perceptual experiences are broadcast. Once a sentence of inner speech is composed, it is exposed to the same sort of processing that would apply to a sentence we hear. A novel combination of ideas, or an exhortation

Female octopuses, in general, are an extreme case of semelparity—they die after a single pregnancy. A female octopus might mate with many males, but when it is time to lay eggs, she settles permanently into a den. There the female will lay her eggs, and fan and tend them as they develop. This one clutch can contain many thousands of eggs. The brooding might take a month, or several months, depending on the species and the conditions (things are slower in cold water). When the eggs hatch, the larvae drift off into the water. Soon afterward the female dies.