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

by Peter Godfrey-Smith

Book Overview

A philosopher dons a wet suit and journeys into the depths of consciousness in Other Minds

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374537194
• ISBN13: 9780374537197
• Release Date: October 2017
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

This made me want to see more octopuses. I didn’t know they can open a jar from the inside.

This opened my mind to Other Minds, it is so good that I bought one for my mom. He’s a good story teller, and his curiosity is a gift.

More factoids than philosophy

Don't get me wrong, this is a very good book and well worth a read from anyone, academic or general audience. Most of the book sketches out the evolutionary lineage of cephalopods and their general physiology, ecology, behaviour, etc. The key part is describing the neuroanatomy of the cephalopods and how radically different they are from other intelligent mammals, including ourselves. What was somewhat lacking, was how it relates to consciousness, and how it could radically challenge our anthropocentric views on cognition. Watching Peter's Google talk, that's what I expected from this book, however much was left wanting. The most obscure thing about the book was, the lack of notes and citations. Absolutely none, which was extremely annoying. It wasn't until I got to the end, I realized it did in fact have a bibliography, with numbered notes. It seems the publisher for whatever reason, I think accidentally, cut out the notes and citations from the main text. This was from the hardcover, maybe the paperback does have these notes.