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More on Cephalopods



A week ago I wrote here about cephalopods -- the octopus and similar creatures. I was then, and am now, motivated by some comments in Peter Godfrey-Smith's book about them, OTHER MINDS.

I want to add to those thoughts today. The reason Godfrey-Smith (a professor of philosophy at CUNY) is so interested in them is that they are arguably a case where mind, consciousness, and the use of language have emerged with an evolutionary path very different from our own.

Most writing on other, non-human, minds focuses on creatures with whom we share a lot of adaptive history: the other primates, for example, or even the marine mammals. But on the tree of life, the branching off that separates octopuses, squids, etc.  from humans and other mammals of land or sea took place a long, long time ago. This, Godfrey-Smith says, presents is with a situation similar to that which would occur were we to encounter a form of life that had evolved on another planet.

So: what do we learn by way of compare/contrast? We learn, Godfrey-Smith says, that we humans represent an "extreme case," that we have gone further in the development of this intelligence adaptation than the cephalopods have, and we can learn a little something about why.

The gist of it is that, as I noted in my last discussion of the book, cephalopods like humans talk to themselves. They continue their articulating activity (which in their case involves the varieties and rapidly mutating coloration of their skin) even when no one is around. That is the compare -- both for them and us that fact is critical in the development of consciousness. But the contrast is this -- we listen to ourselves when we talk to ourselves. They seem not to.

Humans have very tight loops of reafference, as Godfrey-Smith puts it. I might write a note to myself in my room, "remember to finish up blog post." Then I might do something else -- make a critical phone call, say. After the call, I see the note, and decide to return to work on this post. Tht is a loop of reafference. Talking to ourselves, and listening, is a tighter loop. Yet the loop can get still tighter and stay inside the skin.

Godfrey-Smith writes, then, "Making skin patterns, no matter how complicated they might be, is more of a one-way street. The animal can't see its own patterns in the way a person can hear what they say. There's probably no much role for efference copies that involve skin patterns." Yet efference copies, the neurological equivalent of the stick-it note, are precisely what allows for the uniquely "complicated minds" of humans.

There is much else, but that seems to be the gist of the book.
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