Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life

Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life
Peter Godfrey-Smith

What if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but 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 nature became aware of itself – a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared.Tracking the mind’s fitful development from unruly clumps of seaborne cells to the first evolved nervous systems in ancient relatives of jellyfish, he explores the incredible evolutionary journey of the cephalopods, which began as inconspicuous molluscs who would later abandon their shells to rise above the ocean floor, searching for prey and acquiring the greater intelligence needed to do so – a journey completely independent from the route that mammals and birds would later take.But what kind of intelligence do cephalopods possess? 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’? 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.

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COPYRIGHT (#uc649e0bc-c791-58d5-b7fb-d93d8bf30ffa)

William Collins

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2017

First published in the United States of America by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2016 as Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

Copyright © Peter Godfrey-Smith 2016

An excerpt from Other Minds originally appeared, in slightly different form, in Scientific American.

Cover art: Kunstformen der Natur (1904), plate 54: Gamochonia, Octopus vulgaris by Ernst Haeckel

All photographs were taken by the author, unless otherwise stated

Drawn figures are by the author, unless otherwise stated

Peter Godfrey-Smith asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780008226299

Ebook Edition © March 2017 ISBN: 9780008226282

Version: 2018-01-11

DEDICATION (#uc649e0bc-c791-58d5-b7fb-d93d8bf30ffa)

For all those who work to protect the oceans

EPIGRAPH (#uc649e0bc-c791-58d5-b7fb-d93d8bf30ffa)

The demand for continuity has, over large tracts of science, proved itself to possess true prophetic power. We ought therefore ourselves sincerely to try every possible mode of conceiving the dawn of consciousness so that it may not appear equivalent to the irruption into the universe of a new nature, non-existent until then.

– William James, The Principles of Psychology, 1890

The drama of creation, according to the Hawaiian account, is divided into a series of stages … At first the lowly zoophytes and corals come into being, and these are followed by worms and shellfish, each type being declared to conquer and destroy its predecessor, a struggle for existence in which the strongest survive. Parallel with this evolution of animal forms, plant life begins on land and in the sea – at first with the algae, followed by seaweeds and rushes. As type follows type, the accumulating slime of their decay raises the land above the waters, in which, as spectator of all, swims the octopus, the lone survivor from an earlier world.

– Roland Dixon, Oceanic Mythology, 1916

CONTENTS

Cover (#uebf1f9a3-43c5-5fc2-b527-1d3c0bb4a38d)

Title Page (#u6ead2d63-6adb-5797-9b64-3965e13827f4)

Copyright (#u36aef5ee-eb55-5a41-949d-c6f45c5f69b1)

Dedication (#uaec442f5-4dd9-55d0-8892-3e5a7712b2ea)

Epigraph (#u9d12d733-802b-5c04-bd67-f90cadb71b39)

1. Meetings Across the Tree of Life (#ubd3a7c14-8662-5bd0-93ac-802b3904cf2f)

2. A History of Animals (#u9b52b659-9ea1-55ae-b6ab-7102eee59ccd)

3. Mischief and Craft (#u16905612-7f83-560a-ab03-cf6782b39b64)

4. From White Noise to Consciousness (#litres_trial_promo)

5. Making Colors (#litres_trial_promo)

6. Our Minds and Others (#litres_trial_promo)

7. Experience Compressed (#litres_trial_promo)

8. Octopolis (#litres_trial_promo)

Notes (#litres_trial_promo)

Index (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Peter Godfrey-Smith (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

1

MEETINGS ACROSS THE TREE OF LIFE (#uc649e0bc-c791-58d5-b7fb-d93d8bf30ffa)