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

"Fascinating but not quite as advertised" according to Angie Boyter. Pete Godfrey-Smith shares an important trait with the octopuses he loves to study---he is full of curiosity about his world, especially the marine world. Fortunately for us, Godfrey-Smith’s life has lasted a lot longer than the 1-2 years common to octupuses, so he has had enough time to tell us about the things he has seen and learned.Other Minds is really a set of loosely connected essays about the evolution of. Excellent Philosophy of Science book C. M. Stahl This was a profoundly interesting book to read. I became intrigued after seeing a review of it and had never come across the author before. It was intriguing primarily for the subject matter which I had a minor level of curiosity about. It was however, the first book I have read about cephalopods. My other experiences have been by reading articles and lately watching YouTube videos.It is not simply about octopuses and. But I loved the rest of it and even found that I John W. Weil This book really has two aspects. One is the telling of first hand experiences with octopi and cuttlefish, together with a summary of what others have found and what is known about these fascinating creatures. The other is a considerable amount of philosophizing and speculating about the development of these animals as a separate branch of the evolutionary tree. I found this latter aspect of the book less satisfying a

As Godfrey-Smith stresses, it is a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. 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. 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. As these primitive organisms became more entangled with others, they grew more complicated. 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