How octopuses challenge our idea of consciousness | Peter Godfrey-Smith
541Philosopher of science Peter Godfrey-Smith discusses animal consciousness and what it can tell us about the human mind.
Do you think animals are conscious?
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In this IAI Studio interview, philosopher and science writer Peter Godfrey-Smith explores the evolution of consciousness and the enduring mystery of the mind–body problem. Drawing on his work with octopuses and other animals, he argues that consciousness emerged gradually through increasingly complex forms of sensory-motor interaction, rather than as a sudden leap. Using cephalopods as a case study, he shows how minds can evolve in radically different ways, suggesting that subjective experience is more widespread,and varied, than we often assume. The conversation touches on ethics, the limits of physicalism, and how studying animal minds can reshape our understanding of our own.
#consciousness #animals #octopus
Peter Godfrey-Smith is a philosopher of science and a leading thinker on the evolution of consciousness and animal minds. He is a professor at the University of Sydney and the author of several acclaimed books, including Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness and Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind. His work combines philosophy, biology, and firsthand experience with marine animals to explore how subjective experience arises in the natural world. Through his research and writing, Godfrey-Smith offers a compelling naturalistic account of the mind that bridges science and philosophy, which he discusses in great detail during this interview with Georgina Feltham-White.
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00:00 Introduction
00:04 Evolutionary theory
03:08 Animal consciousness
07:03 Spectrum of consciousness
18:01 Octopus behavaviour
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