from Steven Willett

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

Episode 5: Our Minds and Others 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000vz80 available for only another 6 days

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, the philosopher and scuba diver Peter Godfrey-Smith explores the startling evolutionary journey of the cephalopods. It all started for him when he began scuba diving near Sydney:

In this final episode, he asks us to imagine what it feels like to be an octopus, raising big questions about the nature of animal consciousness. What is the nature of their consciousness, and how does it challenge the usual way we think about the brain/body divide? “In an octopus, it’s not clear where the brain itself begins and ends, and the nervous system runs all through the body. The octopus is suffused with nervousness; the body is not a separate thing that is controlled by the brain or nervous system. “The usual philosophical debate is between those who see the brain as an all-powerful CEO and those who emphasise the intelligence stored in the body itself. Both views rely on a distinction between brain-based and body-based knowledge. The octopus lives outside both the usual pictures. It lives outside the brain/body divide.” Peter Godfrey-Smith is a professor in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. 

SW Each sucker has ten thousand neurons. Each arm partially has a separate consciousness. There are 500,000 neurons in the brain but it can be injured if it swallows a sharp object. An octopus has perceptual constancy. It sees a unified scene whereas pigeons cannot learn a visual task learned from one eye with the opposite eye masked when only allowed to use the other eye. The functioning of the brain in pigeons is like some people who have had the brain divided as a treatment for epilepsy. Octupi learn from novelty, even novel behaviour from humans when in captivity and seem to have an excess of brain capacity.

This episode is particularly relevant to me as I see the ribosome and the female creative, life affirming and reproducing principle as evident we are dependent on the intelligences of other universes as evidenced by cosmic rays much older and more recent than the billion-fold world cluster from which the big bang developed to which I have been sensitive since before the age of two. At present we are not looking after our own planet, let alone other universes. Both quantum theory, relativity and united theory of the atom are evidence that time-space-mass-energy is a product of consciousness which can be changed through meditation as in Mahayana Buddhism.

Other episodes:

Episode 1 Meetings Across the Tree of Life

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000vxy7 available for only 2 more days

In this first episode, he tells the story of the evolution of the octopus, in a different part of the evolutionary tree from humans. And yet a great deal connects us. 

Episode 2 Mischief

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000vwvj available for 3 days

In this second episode, he explores what is known about octopus intelligence. “Octopuses in at least two aquariums have learned to turn off the lights by squirting jets of water at the bulbs when no one is watching, and short-circuiting the power supply. And an octopus took such a dislike to one member of the lab staff that whenever that person passed by she received a jet of half a gallon of water in the back of her neck.”

Episode 3 Octpolis

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000vx48 available for 4 days

In this third episode, he visits an extraordinary site off the coast of Australia, Octopolis, where the animals have developed a kind of city under the sea. He dives down to Octopolis and observes a site where generations of octopuses have learned to live close together, beginning to evolve new ways of communicating with each other. 

Episode 4 Experience Compressed

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000vypx available for 6 days

In this fourth episode, he meditates on why the octopus, with such high intelligence, lives for such a short time. “What is all the brainpower doing if an octopus is dead less than two years after hatching from an egg? Their situation reminds me of Ridley Scott’s movie Blade Runner, in which a class of artificial but human-like “replicants” are programmed to die after only four years. Blade Runner’s replicants, unlike cephalopods, know their fate.”