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    Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life
    Unavailable
    Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life
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    Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life
    Audiobook6 hours

    Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life

    Written by Peter Godfrey-Smith

    Narrated by Peter Noble

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    BBC R4 Book of the Week ‘Brilliant’ Guardian ‘Fascinating and often delightful’ The Times

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateMar 9, 2017
    ISBN9780008226305
    Unavailable
    Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life
    Author

    Peter Godfrey-Smith

    Peter Godfrey-Smith is a professor in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. He is the author of the bestselling Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, which has been published in more than twenty languages. His other books include Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science and Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection, which won the 2010 Lakatos Award.

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    Reviews for Other Minds

    4/5

    424 ratings39 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Godfrey-Smith writes this book as a philosopher while following the science of evolution and intelligence. His approach was refreshing and enjoyable to read.
    • 4/5
      "The mind evolved in the sea. Water made it possible."Biology isn't my thing. I don't recall how I even came upon this book but I found it easy to relate to and its reports of unusual behavior in Octopuses and Cuttlefish made for hours of interesting, and entertaining reading.
    • 3/5
      The book was interesting in its observations and worth the time spent listening to it.

      It postulated some interesting evolutionary applications, but left the reader with some disappointed expectations.

      I felt a little like the author set up for a sale but made the mistake of not closing the deal. He obviously had a feeling for the subject matter but fudged his closet of the book with a stunted appeal to do what is necessary to halt climate change.

      This book left me with a feeling that cephalopods are very interesting and mysterious creatures.
    • 3/5
      The narrative was a little dry to the layman on the subject. Lots of data collected over many years of research reside in this book. The author has obviously done their homework here. There's some great information here. For anyone who's interested in biology, this would be a good read. However I definitely do not recommend this to the casual reader. It will come off as boring.
    • 5/5
      Amazing, inspiring — full of delicious factoids, historical perspective, and sound philosophical reasoning
    • 4/5
      Great book. Open my eye on ocean dead zones. Well natmrated
    • 3/5
      The narrative was a little dry to the layman on the subject. Lots of data collected over many years of research reside in this book. The author has obviously done their homework here. There's some great information here. For anyone who's interested in biology, this would be a good read. However I definitely do not recommend this to the casual reader. It will come off as boring.
    • 5/5
      Very informative and lucidity written. Recording is great. A wonderful book
    • 4/5
      I loved the insights into cephalopod behaviour. Fantastic interconnection between science and philosophy!
    • 5/5
      Covers the evolution, experiments and research done on octopi, a species regarded as a having taken a distinct route to intelligence on earth.The topic of consciousness is only briefly covered, but good points are made.I enjoyed reading it.
    • 4/5
      Nice combination of biology and philosophy looking at the evolution of consciousness. Lots of great stories about octopuses too, if you like that kind of thing (of course I do).
    • 5/5
      Enjoyable read. It demonstrates how much more interesting the octopus really is. This a great compliment to the book The Soul of an Octopus.
    • 4/5
      Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea, and The Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith.That title is a mouthful and a steep order for the expectations of this book, and what it seeks to accomplish. Sadly, when the reading is all ‘said and done’ it falls short of those lofty expectations. The parts of the narrative where the author observes the various cephalopods and describes their behavior are the most interesting parts of the reading. Many people find the octopus and its relatives intriguing, and they are by virtue of their unique make up and obvious intelligence. But those interesting observations are mixed in with a lot of supposition and evolutionary opinion musing that left the reader wanting if they were really seriously looking for the origins of consciousness within this book. A natural history treatise about the octopus would have probably held more interest than all the ruminating the author was trying to do within the pages of this book. 3.5 stars
    • 4/5
      The best book on consciousness that's actually about cephalopods. Like a highway between the topics of evolution, neurobiology, consciousness, linguistics all connecting the central hub of cephalopods, this book isn't great as an introduction to any of these problems but rather as a meditation on all of them, for those already invested in the topics. It doesn't present singular conclusions but rather an overview of the state of arguments, and the possible answers, befitting the deep unsolved issues in multiple fields.
    • 4/5
      I don't know quite how to rate this one, so I went for 4 stars. This is likely to be more a collection of disparate thoughts rather than a cohesive review of any kind. Most people are not going to find Other Minds a 'popular' science book. It's not dry, but it is dense. The author merges what is currently known in evolutionary science with philosophy, and has written what is largely a thought experiment on the concept of consciousness and it's origins, and not just for the octopus; this covers all life. Octopuses get more page time than other creatures, but still only make up about ... 40%, maybe 50%? Not quite what I was expecting, but I was willing to go with it. I listened to the audiobook, although I have the hardcover as well. The narrator, Peter Noble, does an excellent job with the narration; his voice is crisp and clear and he reads it as though he has a thorough grasp of the material. But ... I don't know if it was me or if the title of the book was too open to interpretation, but I did not realise how deeply philosophical the material was - this made the audiobook very challenging for me; I'm not a fan of other people's thought experiments in general, so I really struggled with a wandering mind as I listened to this book. I understood the general concepts he covered, but whole sections of the narration would just wash right over me before I'd realise my consciousness checked out. Conclusion: I'd have been better off reading the physical edition, I think. It's a very well written book, but it's heavy material for someone like me, for whom listening requires a conscience effort. I'll likely re-read my hardcover sometime soon, so I can determine how much I missed, and give my mind a chance to reinforce some of the points I found most interesting.
    • 2/5
      This had some interesting ideas although I felt that it could've done with being edited down quite substantially - I would've preferred something a lot punchier and struggled to maintain my interest through some sections. But clearly it worked for many other readers here, so maybe it's just that I lack their appetite for detail. My other main reservation is that when describing his encounters with the octopus, I felt that the author frequently anthropomorphised it - projecting human consciousness onto it when there did not appear to be much evidence to support his interpretation of what was going on in the octopus' mind.
    • 5/5
      Accessible and interesting. Took me back to my earlier interests in embodied cognition and the philosophy of mind and biology.
    • 5/5
      This was fascinating. It was philosophically interesting, and I learned many cool facts about cuttlefish and octopuses. It touches on psychology, physiology, biology, and evolution. I was inspired to ask questions about topics which I'd yet to think deeply upon.A couple of warnings:1) If you are disturbed by depictions of animals being harmed, there is a brief section in here that speaks about experiments performed on animals. Some may find this upsetting to read, but it is a very tiny portion.2) If you only have a Kindle Paperwhite or original Kindle, be aware that this contains some lovely color photos (in the middle in the dead-tree, at the back in the digital). I simply pulled up the photos on a Kindle app on my phone, but this should be a factor to consider when deciding which format you want.I received a complimentary copy of this book via a Goodreads giveaway. Many thanks to all involved in providing me with this opportunity.
    • 3/5
      The mind is a complex entity, we have only scratched the surface in comprehending how it works and what it is capable of. The neural networks that make up the brain are capable of absorbing vast sums of information and making sense of them fast. The intelligence that we have, and can see in other mammals and birds, in particular, other primates, cetaceans, and corvids. There is another set of animals that seem to have also benefited from a large brain and complex neural networks and that is the cephalopods. You’ll probably know them better as cuttlefish, squid and the octopus. These are quite amazing creatures, not only are they aware of all that is going on around them, they can open jars to get the treat inside, have been known to squirt lights with jets of water as they don’t like the brightness and have been found crawling across the floors of laboratories in an escape bid. The skin operates like a high-res video screen as it is able to mimic its surroundings and ripple with colours depending on mood. They have been proven to recognise individual members of staff, even when in the same uniform, so much so that a person they took a dislike too would get drenched when they walked past.

      Peter Godfrey-Smith first came across them when someone introduced him to a place they had called Octopolis. This was a place that had many octopi that had brought and discarded scallop shells and begun to make it a safe haven from the predators around. There were a large number of the creatures there that seemed to tolerate each other most of the time, but every now and again there would be running battles between some of the males and Godfrey-Smith was fortunate to capture these on video. Godfrey-Smith though is a philosopher of science, not a biologist, but it got him thinking; just how had this creature had evolved down a separate branch of our shared tree and had ended up at a level of sentience which was quite advanced. The octopi that he regularly sees as he scuba dives off the coast of Sydney are willing to come up and interact with him and the other divers,

      It is an interesting book comparing our understanding of human consciousness with a creature that is so alien that we cannot fully get a grip on what it is thinking. There is a lot on the biological makeup of cephalopods and how their brain and nervous system works, as well as a couple of chapters on the evolution of consciousness and how the need to be aware of your surroundings has driven the development of the brain. I would have liked to read more about the observations that they had conducted on Octopolis as the chapters that were there were fascinating. Definitely worth reading for those that have an interest in marine ecology and peering into the dark recesses of the mind.
    • 4/5
      "The mind evolved in the sea. Water made it possible."Biology isn't my thing. I don't recall how I even came upon this book but I found it easy to relate to and its reports of unusual behavior in Octopuses and Cuttlefish made for hours of interesting, and entertaining reading.
    • 3/5
      An illustrated and accessible introduction into cephalopods intelligence and indeed intelligent life generally. This looks at evolution and the development of nervous systems in the past and looks at how they have developed until today. It also looks at marine behaviour. Fascinating and alien this book will open your eyes.
    • 4/5
      Making Philosophy of Mind (a subject I always used to doze off in) more concrete by exploring just how intelligent an octopus is. Their minds are so different from ours – embodied in their arms – and despite their glorious colour-changing they seem to be colour-blind, or experience colour in a way we don't yet understand. Oh, and they only live for two years. Challenging our narratives of consciousness in many ways, and a good read, with only a couple of dry philosophical stretches.
    • 5/5
      Fascinating book about evolution and consciousness, and the octopus. Describing an early roundish ancestor that doesn’t seem to have had much in the way of perceiving organs (and seems to have existed before predation was a thing), he describes them as “[m]acarons that pass in the night.” Much of the book is intriguing discussion of the nature of consciousness and the need for a moving being to be able to distinguish things that happen because it acted (e.g., my field of vision shows something different because I stepped forward) from things that happened for some other reason (e.g., my field of vision shows something different because a fish swam in front of me). Although some theories of cognition depend on embodiment being a specific kind of constraint (we have knees, we have arms of a certain length (aiding us in perceiving distance), etc.), the octopus body is almost completely unfixed—“a body of pure possibility”—and it still has some kind of problem-solving/interacting ability, though its scope is unclear. As one researcher said, fish have no idea they’re in a tank, but with octopuses, “[a]ll their behaviors are affected by their awareness of captivity.”
    • 4/5
      We generally consider mammals and birds to be the smartest creatures on Earth. It's not unreasonable; that includes us and crows.

      But an entirely different branch of life on this planet also shows surprising intelligence--the cephalopods, including octopuses, cuttlefish, and squid. Their line and ours (that is, the vertebrates) separated hundreds of million years ago. Even our eyes and theirs evolved separately. Most of them live less than five years. They don't appear to be very social.

      Yet they have large and complex central nervous systems. Organized very differently from ours, but large and complex nevertheless. They show many signs of being intelligent, curious, and inventive. But why should an octopus that lives only two years, apparently isn't social beyond breeding once, and broods her eggs but dies when they hatch and certainly doesn't raise them, evolve such a complex nervous system and apparent intelligence? What are those expensive resources for?

      Godfrey-Smith gives us a really interesting exploration of this question, including tales of his own and others' direct experiences with cuttlefish and octopuses in their home environments, not just in labs. (Though they do some pretty darned interesting things in labs, too.) His own experiences with a cuttlefish, at the end of its breeding season and thus nearing the end of its life, are fascinating.

      There is also a lot of exploration here of what consciousness is, how it evolved, and what it really does--for us, and perhaps for cephalopods.

      All in all, an absorbing book, grounded in science, and exploring some fascinating territory and ideas.

      Recommended.

      I bought this audiobook.
    • 4/5
      All the way through this work I was weighing in my mind how I was going to rate it, as the author is attempting to juggle difficult matters of evolution, consciousness, natural history, and philosophy for a popular audience. As such I have to give Godfrey-Smith sincere applause for basically keeping all the plates spinning until the very end. The importance of understanding cephalopod intelligence is that these creatures are the closest thing to an alien intelligence we are possibly ever going to meet and there is no doubt about the importance of studying of their lives, both in terms of their survival and our own self-understanding.
    • 4/5
      This book was sort of part biology/evolution and part philosophy. Godfrey-Smith delves into the lives of octopuses to explore the evolution of the mind. Humans and cephalapods share a very distant common relative so by exploring how octopuses use their minds, we are exploring a parallel but distinct evolution of thought. It isn't like other animals with intelligence, like other mammals and birds, where our thought systems were at least partially developed before we branched off from each other. Godfrey-Smith asks questions like what makes an octopus need the ability to have conscious thought from an evolutionary standpoint, why would an animal that only lives a couple of years develop these traits, and how did this develop in an animal that has a very limited social life? None of these questions has a firm answer, but the book's philosophical tone gives a lot to ponder. In the end, I'm not exactly sure what I got out of this and it seems a rather obscure topic, but it was fun to read and gave me some things to think about. Original publication date: 2016Author’s nationality: AustralianOriginal language: EnglishLength: 272 pagesRating: 3.5 starsFormat/Where I acquired the book: library kindleWhy I read this: sounded interesting
    • 5/5
      'Other Minds' can be considered essential reading, for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it is a magnificent defence of evolution, but not in the way that much of the Richard Dawkins canon is; instead, Godfrey-Smith writes from the (correct) standpoint that evolution is a fact, and considering the reality of evolution, here are some things that we can learn. Without accepting the fact of evolution, this book could not exist, and nor could our advanced understanding of other life forms on the planet that we share.Secondly, 'Other Minds' is the kind of book destined to become a classic of its genre, as it has a tremendous - I would say life-changing - effect on the reader. This reader included; after reading about the startlingly high level of intelligence possessed by octopuses, I cannot ever see myself ordering octopus as food in a restaurant again. It just seems wrong; they are as characterful as dogs and cats, and I think it would simply be terrible to treat these amazing creatures as a foodstuff any longer. I do hope, given my love of bacon and chorizo, that Godfrey-Smith's next book is not on the topic of porcine intelligence...And thirdly (for the sake of brevity - I could certainly go on in praise of this book), Godfrey-Smith makes a great case for the protection of the ocean environment. Overfishing and pollution have both taken their toll, and now that we understand how much intelligence - nay, sentience - is present in the depths, we owe it to our genetic relatives (by which I mean all species, in every shape and form) to do a better job of not destroying what life there is out there.
    • 4/5
      Despite what might be gleaned from your Star Treks and Dr Whos, the evolution of intelligent life is – as far as I can get my head round it – infinitesimally rare and unlikely. The emergence of cells, the development of eukaryotes, the first multicellular organisms, the start of sexual reproduction, and finally some kind of freak evolutionary drive towards increased intelligence – all these things happened once only, and didn't have to. It's presumably happened somewhere else in the universe (which is a sizeable place), but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that we're the only example in the 200 billion solar systems of this galaxy.People interested in such things have spent a lot of time trying to put concrete numbers to the odds of these things happening. That last step – the development of intelligence – seems among the most unlikely, but one of the implications of this utterly fascinating book is that perhaps it isn't so unique after all. Enter – by jet propulsion – the octopus.Invertebrates are not generally known for their brainpower. But octopuses (and, to a degree, all cephalopods) are an exception. In terms of sheer neurons, they are well up there with many of the mammals – they have more neural connections than cats, for example. As Godfrey-Smith puts it, they are ‘an island of mental complexity in the sea of invertebrate animals’.That does not mean that the way they think is comparable to us, though, or to your pet Persian. Although a few of an octopus's neurons are gathered into a walnut-sized ‘CPU’ of sorts, most of them are dispersed throughout their body: each of their eight arms can, in a very real sense, ‘think’ and act independently.Godfrey-Smith, though often wearing a marine biologist hat, is a philosopher by training, and he spends a lot of time here addressing the question of what it might feel like to be an octopus, without a centralised ‘self’ in the way that we understand it. I thought I would find these sections irritatingly speculative (which is my reaction to most philosophers, if I'm honest), but in fact they were so grounded in scientific data, and just so interesting, that I was more than happy to go along for the ride.Ultimately, though, the differences are perhaps less significant than the similarities. The most recent common ancestor of humans and octopuses lived upwards of five hundred million years ago, and was probably some kind of very simple worm-like thing without any neural network to speak of. That means that natural selection has, completely independently, developed complex ‘intelligence’ of some kind twice.‘Cephalopods and smart vertebrates are independent experiments in the evolution of the mind,’ Godfrey-Smith summarises. The implications are genuinely awe-inspiring. And looking at an octopus is, in all likelihood, as close to meeting an alien intelligence as we'll ever get.
    • 4/5
      Rating: 3.5* of fiveA deeply (!) enjoyable look at cephalopod minds, not brains but minds, in parallel to our own mammalian ones. I was absolutely enthralled by the author's discoveries made at a site he calls "Octopolis," a community of octopuses on the seafloor near Sydney, Australia.One of the most interesting facets of the book to me was its explanation, in terms of existing evolutionary thought, of how and why cephalopods, animals that live a single mating cycle on average, developed the astoundingly complex signaling behaviors and apparent cognitive abilities they have. It's a wonderful and involving story.That makes this sound like a four-and-a-half star book, doesn't it? I'm not going to beat about the bush, it would have been had it not wandered waaay too far down the human-mind-brain-consciousness rabbit hole without reaching any sort of conclusion that felt solid. In the space of this book, just over 200 pages of text plus index and notes, there is no chance that this could occur. So say "listen, there's about a bajillion petaflops of data I can't begin to pretend to digest for you, but here in 500 words is what *I* want you to know so you can see where I'm going with the parts about cephalopods."The glossy-magazine version, in other words, would've served this book better and been less simultaneously overinforming and underrepresenting a hugely complex and contentious area of human-consciousness study. But I recommend reading the book because damn it feels good to learn about something unique from someone so warm, wise, and witty as Peter Godfrey-Smith.
    • 4/5
      Cephlapods are interesting and often overlooked in the intelligence department. This book mainly focuses on the octopus - evolution, nervous system, behaviour, memory, their skin and how and why they change colour. There are some funny stories along the way as well as some cool pictures. I definitely enjoyed my time in Octopolis where octopuses hang out, mate, fight and eat scallops.

      It was also interesting to read about how the first living things lived during the Ediacaran period and how things evolved and came to be what they are today. As the book went on I found it a bit repetitious and boring as some things did not tie in with cephalopods. Once I got a taste of octopus that was all I wanted. But still an enjoyable read overall.