“This is probably the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien.” When seeking other minds, we find that “the minds of cephalopods are the most other of all.” because evolution built minds twice over,” Godfrey-Smith writes. “If we can make contact with cephalopods as sentient beings, it is. Cephalopods are therefore an independent voyage into complexity. Our last common ancestor, 600 million years ago, was a wormlike creature. Octopuses and cuttlefish - cephalopods - make surprisingly good foils here. Watching octopuses watching him, our author considers minds and meanings. He is an academic philosopher but also a diver. If we met an alien whose intelligence derived through an entirely separate provenance from ours, would we recognize the sparkle in each other’s eyes? In “Other Minds,” Peter Godfrey-Smith hunts the commonalities and origins of sentience. OTHER MINDS The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness By Peter Godfrey-Smith Illustrated.
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