Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life

by Peter Godfrey-Smith

The senses can do their basic work, and actions can be produced, with all this happening “in silence” as far as the organism’s experience is concerned. Then, at some stage in evolution, extra capacities appear that do give rise to subjective experience: the sensory streams are brought together, an “internal model” of the world arises, and there’s a recognition of time and self. What we experience, in this view, is the internal model of the world that complex activities in us produce and sustain. Feeling starts there – or, at least, it begins to creep into existence when these capacities creep into existence – in the brains of monkeys and apes, dolphins, perhaps other mammals, and some birds. When we think of simpler animals as having subjective experience, according to this view, we’re projecting onto them a fainter version of our own kind of experience. This is a mistake because our experience relies on features they just don’t possess.