November 2023 GN's/Novellas/Manga/Poetry/Nonfiction BOTM - Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith

[Alaina]

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.

**This BOTM thread will be open until December 5th @ Midnight (in your time zone)**

[Jessica]

Chapter Two
I can't say I would have picked this up if it wasn't a book of the month, but I'm enjoying it so far. I don't know much about the subject matter so I'm just taking it in.

[Andy]

Chapter 1: I think the chapter makes a good case foe the "otherness" of the octopus. I hope there is some science, and it's not all philosophy though!

[Andy]

Page 34: not loving the super early history detour, but the descriltion of the Cambrian period andevolution as an race to arms is interesting.

[Andy]

Chapter 4: too much phylosophy, not enough science.

[Andy]

Chapter 5: again, too many anecdotes for me...

[Jessica]

Chapter Four
Its interesting to hear about all these experiments, their results and his conclusions but I hate hearing about animal experimentation and I feel so bad for these poor octopus'

[Andy]

Page 140: ok,now I feel also insulted. No, dear author, Vygotsky is not a forgotten figure in Psychology, it is in the curriculum of Developmental Psychology 101 in every University I studied and worked at, right next to Piaget. He is even better recognised in Education research. Grrr

[Jessica]

Chapter Six
I'm getting lost. These tangents don't really seem to relate back to the actual subject matter. I feel like I've heard alot about things that aren't actually relevant to Octopus or any of his points about them.

[Jessica]

Finished
I don't know how I feel about this. I learned some things, but there were so many spots where it got off track into tangents he tried unsuccessfully to tie back. I feel like it started off stronger and more meandering as it went on.

[Andy]

Jessica wrote: "Chapter Six
I'm getting lost. These tangents don't really seem to relate back to the actual subject matter. I feel like I've heard alot about things that aren't actually relevant to Octopus or any..."

Agreed!

Chapter 7: I really enjoyed the discussion and explanation about old age decay and selection.

[Andy]

Jessica wrote: "Finished
I don't know how I feel about this. I learned some things, but there were so many spots where it got off track into tangents he tried unsuccessfully to tie back. I feel like it started of..."

Yes, I quite agree... Not sure how to judge this...

[Kira]

This was quite a struggle....

Chapter 1-2: (view spoiler)[Umm I don't know how to say this but I am definitely bored. Philosophy in itself can be a pretty interesting subject matter but I am not sure I am liking the author's approach to it. I am not even liking the little history lesson we just had in chapter 2. It is all written in quite a dull manner and so far, my curiosity has piqued at all. Hoping that it picks up soon (hide spoiler)]

Chapter 3-4: (view spoiler)[The only excerpts I find myself interested in are the experiments to test Octopus intelligence although the author has now mentioned several times that they are not social creatures so I can only imagine how violating it must feel to them to have humans trample around their habitat bringing in their equipments and disrupting their lives (hide spoiler)]

Chapter 5-6: (view spoiler)[I am so lost lol, I get interested everything the author talks about something tangible like the octopus or the cuttlefish but I can't bring myself to draw parallels with the philosophical aspect. It is all a bit too text bookish for me and I definitely am in no mood to study anymore tbh. I am trying to concenterate on all the info being poured out but it's a difficult task (hide spoiler)]

Finished: (view spoiler)[Phew I am just glad to be done with it honestly. There were several interesting points of discussion, I especially liked the aging theory but this was such a mess in terms of compilation I was honestly confused at times about what we were supposed to be learning from it. The last line was something I quite liked though. It nicely tied up the book with the title (hide spoiler)]

[☘Misericordia☘]

Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness What a nice visit to Octopolis!

(view spoiler)[An octopus is, first, an organism with a large nervous system and a complex active body. It has rich sensory capacities and extraordinary capacities for behavior. If there is a form of subjective experience that comes along with sensing and acting in a living system, an octopus has plenty of that. But that’s not all. In elusive and alien form, the octopus has some of the sophistications, some of the steps beyond the basics, described in this chapter.
Octopuses, of at least some species, have an opportunistic, exploratory style of interaction with the world. They are curious, embracing novelty, protean in behavior as well as in body. These features are reminiscent of what Stanislas Dehaene associates with consciousness in human mental life. (hide spoiler)] They might be intellectuals in hiding... so scary)
(view spoiler)[Trying to work out how octopuses relate to pain is not easy. At Octopolis, our site in Australia, we once got a lot of video of a large male octopus engaged in a series of aggressive interactions, roaming and wrestling with others at the site. He often “stood tall,” up on stretched legs, and sometimes raised his rear end high in the water, above his head. We think he was doing this to make himself look as large as possible; these displays were often precursors to an attack on another octopus. Once when he had his body positioned in this way, a small but vicious fish (a leatherjacket) darted in and bit him right on the rear. Here’s the bite as it happened, with the fish at top center: (hide spoiler)] The understatement of the year,methinks
(view spoiler)[The octopus may be in a sort of hybrid situation. For an octopus, its arms are partly self—they can be directed and used to manipulate things. But from the central brain’s perspective, they are partly non-self too, partly agents of their own. (hide spoiler)] They do feel the need to express their selves, obviously. Especially to divers
(view spoiler)[All these behaviors vary across individuals. (hide spoiler)] Of course they do!
(view spoiler)[The change to yellow was not accompanied by raised arms or other displays; there was no other sign of fuss. I have seen “overall yellow” described as a sign of alarm in other cephalopods. I (hide spoiler)] yellow alarms
(view spoiler)[While some cuttlefish seem friendly and curious, a second style of response to an exploring diver is intense hostility. Fortunately, this is rarer than friendliness. (hide spoiler)]
Yeesh! (view spoiler)[A large male will try to act as a “consort” to a female, monopolizing her and keeping other males away. When a rival male approaches, the consort and the intruder begin competitive displays. The two males will lie side by side quite close in the water. Each will stretch out as far as it can, often with a gentle curve in its body. They will blaze with color changes and patterns. Having stretched one way, a cuttlefish will often turn 180 degrees around and stretch out in the other direction. This turning, unfussed and deliberate, looks like a dance from the court of some civilized French king. The stretching, in contrast, looks like competitive yoga.
The mix of yoga and courtly dance suffices to determine which cuttlefish is larger, and the larger almost always prevails (hide spoiler)] Quite the dancers of the ocean, octopi are!.

[Alaina]

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