Mindscape 249 | Peter Godfrey-Smith on Sentience and Octopus Minds

Patreon: / seanmcarroll
Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: www.preposterousuniverse.com/...
The study of cognition and sentience would be greatly abetted by the discovery of intelligent alien beings, who presumably developed independently of life here on Earth. But we do have more than one data point to consider: certain vertebrates (including humans) are quite intelligent, but so are certain cephalopods (including octopuses), even though the last common ancestor of the two groups was a simple organism hundreds of millions of years ago that didn't have much of a nervous system at all. Peter Godfrey-Smith has put a great amount of effort into trying to figure out what we can learn about the nature of thinking by studying how it is done in these animals with very different brains and nervous systems.
Peter Godfrey-Smith received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, San Diego. He is currently professor in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. Among his books are Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness and Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind.
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Sean Carroll channel: / seancarroll
#podcast #ideas #science #philosophy #culture

[@producer2123]

Sean Carroll is one of the best podcast interviewer/listeners I know of. He is patient, lets his guests speak, and knows almost exactly when a question or clarification is in order.

[@ariadne4720]

I agree, but oddly, in this particular interview to me he challenged his guest more than I expected him to. He lets people who object to his favoured Everettian MWI of quantum physics off the hook more than he did this guest. I wish Sean had challenged those guests more like he did Peter Godfrey-Smith, but in those interviews he generally just let them speak.

[@raduantoniu]

I'm very excited to listen to this episode! I love Peter's work

[@andystewart9701]

Thanks for a great podcast and episode! Godfrey-Smith is one of my favorite philosophers. I love how he engages with the Biology and the science! Thanks to both of you for your work!

[@Erkynar]

Other minds was a great read. Thank you for this interview! The thing I did not know I needed today.

[@aanchaallllllll]

0:31: 🌍 The video discusses the challenge of studying life as there is only one known data point and no evidence of life elsewhere in the universe. 7:00: 🐙 The speaker became interested in cephalopods, particularly octopuses, after spending time in the water and observing their behavior. 13:44: 🧠 Evolution has built systems with points of view, leading to puzzles in understanding consciousness. 20:39: 🐙 The common octopus has around 500 million neurons in its nervous system, which is comparable to vertebrate nervous systems. 27:36: 🐙 The common ancestor of humans and octopuses may have lived around 565 million years ago, before the Cambrian explosion. 33:59: ! The octopus has a highly flexible body and evolved a large nervous system to control its movements. 40:39: 🐙 Octopuses have a unique sensory world and decentralized nervous system. 47:34: 🐙 There is evidence of personality differences in octopuses, but it is unclear if they have the ability to mentally time travel or imagine hypothetical scenarios. 54:26: 🐙 Octopuses exhibit behaviors that indicate consciousness and sentience. 1:01:43: 🧠 The speaker discusses the concept of a nervous system and how it is not solely based on network properties, but also involves oscillatory dynamics and biological properties. 1:08:07: 🧠 The combination of point-to-point computational interactions and diffuse electrical oscillatory interactions in the brain allows for integration and sensitivity to sensory events. 1:14:59: 🤔 The speaker believes that humans have undergone rapid biological changes due to the acquisition of language and symbolic communication, but it is unclear if other animals have experienced a similar change in consciousness or sentience. 1:21:30: 🔬 Viruses are unique organisms that have properties related to evolution and reproduction but lack their own metabolism, making them odd cases in the paradigm of life. Recap by Tammy AI

[@johngoodwin9606]

Can't help but bring up another favorite "intelligent" invertebrate group - Genus Portia Jumping Spiders. They hunt other spiders and have to problem solve how to reach their prey - sometimes "planning" a path that puts them out of sight of their prey.

[@chrispjr]

BRB, rereading "Children of Time" 🕷

[@charlottesimonin2551]

The Queston is do humans have real intelligence.

[@MrElvis1971]

If a person believes in a deterministic universe, then NO is the answer.

[@origins7298]

These are evolved social constructs, they're in the eye of the beholder, or in the mind of the perceiver. If a person or group of people can designate some things intelligent and some things dumb then they exist for those people. Just like eating or drinking or making art exists for the people doing it

[@origins7298]

Or to quote Forrest Gump intelligence is as intelligence does.

[@sarveshpadav2881]

what do you mean by real intelligence?

[@origins7298]

@@sarveshpadav2881 I don't know man he stopped communicating. He won't tell us what he means

[@immunitycorrupts3641]

good Morning Family :)

[@HarryNicNicholas]

i'm not your real father.

[@tau3457]

Another fascinating one.

[@scrubjay93]

The topic of animal sentience, intelligence, emotions, and consciousness is such a difficult one, especially when trying to consider a life form that is so different from ourselves like the octopus! People often mistake complex behavioral adaptations as intelligence in animals, but as was brought up in the discussion, it is often responses to "novel" stimuli or situations when we can tease out some sort of "problem-solving" abilities in some animals like octopus. Tool use in some primates and corvids might be an example. I haven't read Peter Godfrey-Smith's book but it has been on my list for some time now. I appreciate him coming on - it seems even our language is inadequate for tackling this incredibly complex subject.

[@ludviglidstrom6924]

Great podcast

[@chrispjr]

BRB, rereading “Children of Ruin”

[@HarryNicNicholas]

AFK?

[@petergolub]

Finally!

[@ariadne4720]

12:31 weak emergence vs. strong emergence. That complex adaptive systems may very well exhibit strong emergence, is put down by Sean when he says "... in ways that obey the laws of physics". If he didn't say this last bit, I would not accuse him of bias. It is biased to say "ways that obey the laws of physics". These are (for some of us anyway) charged words. Why would a complex adaptive system like an octopus, or a human brain-gut biome, not obey the 'laws of physics'?

[@jayjay-gl4fj]

what i found most... i dont know how to put it? how the animals are not in fear of people when diving like on land... that is just so cool!!!

[@thescoobymike]

He looks like a guy who’d be into octopus minds

[@ArodWinterbornSteed]

But what if the 'light switch' phase transition of consciousness is very low level? Subjectivity would be highly fundamental, and additional complexity adds shades of richness.

[@tamaslaszlo1745]

Can it be, that the dynamical system properties, the oscillations, the modular, recursive nature of nervous system does indeed utilize the intrinsic and homeostatic properties of the neurons / brain, and the resource availability etc. are constrains, inductive biases, or they induce noise or have some real role, they are indeed part of the computations, they do something, still, this does not preculde computational functionalism. Those functions may be modelled as well, the role of those intrinsic properties of living cells can be described and included in the abstract algorithm. Of course, if we modell it and do the computaion, and not the matter / physics will do it for us, it will be computationally much more expensive, but in theory, it may be possible. Or we can use other material properties (other than properties of the hot red soft living tissues) as constrains and functional part of the computation.

[@MNbenMN]

I would imagine that having a working model of human cognition (even if massively computationally expensive) would pave the way for coming up with other functionally equivalent models of better efficiency, approaching or surpassing the efficiency of the original. I don't presume the evolved mechanism is the most optimal for computation. It only has to be good enough to survive in the environment competitively, and just seems to have turned out be be more versatile than the bare minimum. It's either going to take a lot of fast RAM to work out optimizing something like that, or quantum computing may offer some other approaches... eventually.

[@tamaslaszlo1745]

@@MNbenMN Yes, and the specific evolutionary pressures of the human race are forming the human brain, other subtrates will be constrained and influenced by other selections pressures. AI won’t have to fit in our skull, won’t have to operate at a temperatura and power budget compatibile with the rest of our body, so if computaional functionalism is really true, we can create more intelligent and even conscious, more conscious entities, than ourselves.

[@KaliFissure]

Humans SO need to get over themselves.

[@MrElvis1971]

Eventually we all do. Some sooner than others.

[@1.4142]

Mic gets a little fried at the end

[@djdrocco]

Social dynamics may have been the crucible of human intelligence, but maybe we only needed other humans for this development because we have an individuated experience of self. If octopuses operate as multiple autonomous parts, they could have obtained an analogous developmental benefit to their intelligence without requiring inter-species interaction.

[@HarryNicNicholas]

1:00:00 okay, maybe someone in this episode can answer me this, signals get to the brain through the ionisation and neurotransmitters, but what form does the DATA take? in the sense that i guess it's not BINARY, but does - say - the brightness of a light get transmitted by the strength of the chemical action? in other words light comes in as a wavelength and an energy level - how does that get to the brain? (obviously neurotransmitters but i mean is it sent in morse code or what??).

[@tapksa]

Level, pattern and frequency of neurons firing? Idk

[@CorwynGC]

I think the answer you are looking for a is a neuron firing, which is electrical in nature. The timing between firings might be considered the smallest piece of transmittable information.

[@MNbenMN]

The wavelength and energy level don't get to the brain, just an analogous pattern that is associated with the pattern of receptors that were excited by the stimulus. It's pulses of electrical charge (the ionization of the sodium & potassium) when traveling along a neuron, which then triggers patterns of neurotransmitter chemicals in the synapse gap to the next neuron, but the data about wavelength and intensity/energy is not encoded in anything like a digital symbolic representation during the process of visual perception.

[@jynxkizs]

Does necessary or sufficient not apply to scientific understanding of life nor consciousness because they are bundles of aspects? If not, then maybe that's why science is struggling more with them.

[@mchammer1836]

And I thought the plural was octopi 😮

[@life42theuniverse]

My dictionary defines ‘octopi: irregular plural of octopus’

[@CorwynGC]

-pus ending is Greek, so the canonical plural would be -podes. But all bets are off if you consider it as an English word.

[@MNbenMN]

​@@CorwynGCLet's go, Awktyppodeez! 🎉

[@mchammer1836]

@@CorwynGC I thought you were going to say the plural of pus was pussies

[@Psittacus_erithacus]

Spelling reforms are a regular feature of most languages historically … unsurprisingly English in our time is no exception.

[@brianstevens3858]

A reason behind an evolutiontionary change, evolution is mindless, no agency in the process therefore the "reason" is moot. It's a result not a goal.

[@CorwynGC]

One could talk about the 'reason' that a random mutation, propagated through a population.

[@brianstevens3858]

@@CorwynGC Yes, but it isn't due to an agent it's just a process, just clarifying that, for some reason it isn't clear to a lot of people.

[@MNbenMN]

​@@brianstevens3858Anthropomorphic language like "reason" and "goal" do make good shorthand for discussing evolved mechanisms and behaviors, but, yeah, you are *technically* correct. And, that *is* the best *kind* of correct!

[@wilpertz]

Be careful dismissing quaila so fast.

[@hasanafricain2873]

💗💚💛👌✊✌✋👊☝👍

[@phytomene]

I got high listening to this

[@Hyzer_Sozay]

No talk of the mimic? Let's just keep that set aside 😅 nobody can explain those. Also how do octopus know their captors so well that they can pull pranks on them? How does an animal with no taught behavior know to shove it's tentacles into a sharks gills in order to force it to let go. All life will have some sort of commonality, but octopus aren't native to earth. How did the water bear know it needs to be able to survive the vacuum of space?

[@brianstevens3858]

Any creature with a nervous system at all feels pain otherwise it's a totally useless adaptation.

[@MrElvis1971]

Reacting to a stimulus is very different to pain. For example, no amount of sugar will cause me to experience taste pain as the sensation of taste doesn't ever result in pain.

[@brianstevens3858]

@@MrElvis1971 Yes that's the point.

[@MrElvis1971]

@brianstevens3858 taste isn't a useless adaptation. Not sure I understand your point.

[@brianstevens3858]

@@MrElvis1971 The point is that if it didn't feel pain it would have no avoidance incentive.

[@MrElvis1971]

@brianstevens3858 pain is generally defined as a subjective sensation as experienced by a conscious mind. I can be too close to a fire but not experience "pain" but experience discomfort which I want to avoid. The feeling of being overly warm is not a painful sensation and it is not related to the pain sensation of being burnt. But I agree to some extent that "pain" is the primary (and most rapid) motivation for an orgism but I also believe that many creatures may not experience pain and yet still have strong avoidance strategies and survive as a result.

[@c.f.3503]

First

[@HarryNicNicholas]

also first, but in a different way.

[@Dysolus]

Interesting, but Peter smacks his lips and tounge to much its really quite hard for me to listen to him speak.

[@Psittacus_erithacus]

I can scarcely imagine being so concerned by my own preferences for how words should sound that I'd be willing to miss out on an excellent, thought provoking discussion just because those preferences weren't consistently being met. Speech is a tool for communication not an aesthetic endeavor. But, I suppose we're all sensitive to different things and I should try not to judge your sensitivity too harshly (though I admit that I'm struggling a bit there). I will point out that you're in luck, as many of the ideas expressed in this interview are also in Peter's book … which transmits no mouth sounds at all to those reading it. So maybe check that out.