The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness | Peter Godfrey Smith | Talks at Google
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- Опубликовано: 27 сен 2024
- Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness
A philosopher dons a wetsuit and journeys into the depths of consciousness.
Peter Godfrey-Smith is a leading philosopher of science. He is also an accomplished scuba diver whose underwater videos of warring octopuses have attracted wide notice. In this book, he brings his parallel careers together to tell a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself. Mammals and birds are widely seen as the smartest creatures on earth. But one other branch of the tree of life has also sprouted surprising intelligence: the cephalopods, consisting of the squid, the cuttlefish, and above all the octopus. New research shows that these marvelous creatures display remarkable gifts.
What does it mean that intelligence on earth has evolved not once but twice? And that the mind of the octopus is nonetheless so different from our own? Combining science and philosophy with firsthand accounts of his cephalopod encounters, Godfrey-Smith shows how primitive organisms bobbing in the ocean began sending signals to each other and how these early forms of communication gave rise to the advanced nervous systems that permit cephalopods to change colors and human beings to speak. By tracing the problem of consciousness back to its roots and comparing the human brain to its most alien and perhaps most remarkable animal relative, Godfrey-Smith's Other Minds sheds new light on one of our most abiding mysteries.
Get the book here: goo.gl/nJCP3Y
petergodfreysmi...
Openly ponders about the degree of conscious activity in an octopus nervous system; subconsciously flails arms and hands while entirely focused on his speaking role.
Unconscious body language and microexpressions are huge in human social function (emergent from our complex minds, and in my opinion, should not be ignored when considering our superintelligent cousins (thrice removed)
He’s a great, thoughtful writer. Love his books.
Answers with Joe!
Same.
aye
great channel
I've just bought Other Minds and the sequel - Metazoa. Love that his thesis is not simply "this is an example of evolution in action" but has original and novel ideas. Especially compelling is his emphasis on the developmental grayness of complex systems - nervous, action, communication, response, etc
He stresses repeatedly that the current state of systems (nervous, for example) was not a step by step procedure but instead involved fuzzy relationships and combinations. The chapters on colors was just incredible.
this book was astonishingly good, came looking for more!
Just finished the talk and it doesn't contain nearly as much complexity or insight into this fascinating subject. I would 100% read the book even if you disliked the talk
im thinking of buying a book on the subject of consciousness and neuroscience and i really consider buying his book but im still not sure.Since you have read it,can you give me a few reason on why i should buy it?
@@lefrog3851 I'm slightly late but:
-Good deep knowledge on evolved aquatic life
-Interesting factual and open minded philosophy book regarding Consciousness
-PGS knows Cephalopods, and they are very interesting on every scale
It's on Radio 4
Stumbled across the book in a bookstore and read it pretty much in one sitting. Highly interesting and well written! It did leave me hungry for more, which lead me to this talk. As a previous comment states: read the book!
Thank you!
Excellent
I absolutely loved 'Other Minds'.
I've always been interested in life in the sea and how it developed before Tiktaalik made that giant step onto land. I found this lecture quite interesting and will get his book. I'd like to know more of his take on how all this got started. Thank you so uch for posting!
Very interesting!!
Consciousness is awareness - awareness is about truth - truth is about history, chemistry, biology, geology, glaciology, volcanology, botany, astronomy, politics, economics, etc. - no need to complicate it more than it already is.
I think an equally good question is how does it feel to be an octopus’s arm!
It reminds me of the left brain right brain split theory type stuff. Or how each part of our brain can almost be considered its own thinking individual and they all just somehow manage to work in concert with our sort of inner narrator part which understands language and stuff.
@@xavier84623 Have you seen the CGPGrey video on split brain patients?
ruclips.net/video/wfYbgdo8e-8/видео.html
I downloaded this Thank you
Nice video, to my Octopus it's like our brains but it brain evolved to make arms without body maybe?.
octopusses :)
cuttlefish on europa, think about it
Lot of potential real estate in the solar system that may host some form of aquatic life. I think the likelihood of there being very simple life (single cell or limited multicellular) is, potentially, really high. Complex life is less so, but let's hope so!
Harris Timothy Thompson Kenneth Davis Anna
Garcia Nancy Jackson Eric Thompson Jennifer
This talk does not go deep enough into the rules that govern our universe. What laws of physics govern self-awareness/consciousness? NOTHING can exist in our universe unless it follows the controls of some law of physics that allows it to exist and controls what it can do and when it forms and/or is destroyed. Building an electrical-generated nervous system that acts like a complicated wind-up toy and can perform various actions to solve problems like a digital or analog computer is based on the mechanical side of physics and how it governs the interactions of the particles that make up our universe.
Self-awareness cannot exist unless ALLOWED by some congiguratio0n of physical laws interacting on matter that is doing some sort of vaguely computational function. Matter, for example, can act like a clock by certain designs doing repetitive actions, but how does not translate into something that a self-aware being (us, I assume) finds some use for? The very term "use" implies that the being has the ability to choose from a selection of alternatives what it "wants" (again, a VERY odd word) to do. Where does "want" and "use" and related words follow from the laws of physics, no matter how complex the piece of matter is.
There has to be some special "rules" or extensions to the laws of physics that allows such behavior to come into being when the proper conditions occur. If we cannot understand these extensions to the laws of physics that allow things like self-awareness to come into existence, we are totally in the dark about a very important part of our universe. Like flight, you cannot fly unless you ALREADY HAVE wings of some sort -- this is true of >ALL< THINGS THAT EXIST, PERIOD.
Rules about how PATTERNS (sets?) arise and act are probably what we are talking about, which will be very complicated.
Cuttlefish buffets, spicy divers 24/7
Eh.
I'm probably going to cop it here, but every time he says "we don't know" or "mystery" or "we are not sure. I just think "God knows"..
Couldn't get past the first two-minutes --- the statement, "I am not saying everything was in place before we came up on land" is absurd and gives no consideration to the possibility of a creator. Obviously, Peter is an atheist, which is inconsistent in and of itself.
The wonder then turns on the great process, by which this or any other man, could grow to the immense intelligence that can know that there is not a creator. What ages and what lights are requisite for this attainment! This intelligence involves the very attributes of Divinity, while a creator is denied. For unless this man is omnipresent, unless he is at this moment in every place in the universe, he nor any other human-being can know that there may be in some place manifestations of a Deity, by which even he may be overpowered. If he does not know absolutely every agent in the universe, the one that he does not know may be God. If he is not himself the chief agent of the universe, and does not know what is so, that which is so may be God. If he is not in absolute possession of all the propositions that constitute universal truth, the one which he may want maybe that there is a God. If he cannot with certainty assign the cause of all that he perceives to exist, that cause may be God.Thus, unless he know all things, that is, precludes another Deity by being one himself, he cannot know that the Being whose existence he rejects does not exist. BUT he must know that he does not exist, else he deserves equal contempt and compassion for the temerity with which he firmly avows his rejection and acts accordingly.
I am however fascinated with the octopus and its extraordinary anatomy and physiology.
Just because we don't know how to explain a cause for something doesn't mean we should say "God did it." and raise our hands to the sky. PGS was being modest, like all wise philosophers.
@@TheEternalOuroboros Nor does it mean we shouldn't raise. . . . My contention is that it would take a Deity to be a true, consistent atheist.
Claudio Lordino i personally think we don’t know if there is a God thus we have no reason to think there isn’t or is one. Although, the late Christopher Hitchens said “Exceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.”
What do supernatural beings and magic have to do with a discussion on science? I don't get it.
every time he says "we don't know" or "mystery" or "we are not sure. I just think "God knows"
One of my favorite philosophers talk about one of my favorite animals. :)
26:17 This GoPro camera is now mine
Great book, great presentation. I find theost compelling part of this is the connection of a rich inner life, or rather the latent introversion trait.
The mysteryof consciousness is rooted in the breath in conjuction with the brain.
I guess women at google weren’t invited to this talk.
Yes, I’m sure that google (of all places) is just dripping in irredeemable sexism.
why does he say "arms" ? Does he think we're too stupid to manage a vocabulary of over 200 words? They are called tentacles. Not arms.
Octopuses don't have tentacles, you are thinking of squid which have two. Arms are covered in suckers, tentacles only have suckers on the end. It is confusing though, 'arms' feels like an arboreal thing.
thanks
@@130guenda 👍
"Octopolis" appears to be a deliberately overpopulated "maximum stress" environment for its solitude-preferring captive inmates, providing its resident human torturers maximum entertainment. He actually says the octopuses prefer solitude! A deliberate hell for beautiful intelligent creatures. Sadistic bastards.
octopolis is something that formed naturally, not something the scientists forced the octopuses into
(of course it is still a response to a changing environment though)
Dumb down “The Selfish Gene,” add the enthusiasm of any animal lover, mix in some script from an Animal Planet documentary, and intermittently pretend to be talking about philosophers = this presentation. (Or am I just in a bad mood right now?) On chapter 3 of the book but will be returning tonight. No greater thief than a bad book.
I actually loved Other Minds. The Selfish Gene is fantastic but i think PGS delved more deeply on the aquatic spectrum of how life evolved whereas Dawkins surfaced over it a bit more with less detail.