'Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea ...' By Peter Godfrey-Smith

Full title: 'Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness'

* NO SHOW POLICY: No Show once and you're dropped from our group.*

* Available at Mercer County Library:
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Goodreads description:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28116739-other-minds

"If this is philosophy, it works, because Godfrey-Smith is a rare philosopher who searches the world for clues. Knowledgeable and curious, he examines, he admires. His explorations are good-natured. He is never dogmatic, yet startlingly incisive." —Carl Safina, The New York Times Book Review

"Fascinating . . . After reading this book, to paraphrase Byron, you will 'love not man the less, but cephalopods more.'" —Callum Roberts, The Washington Post

Philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith dons a wet suit and journeys into the depths of consciousness in Other Minds

Although mammals and birds are widely regarded as the smartest creatures on earth, it has lately become clear that a very distant branch of the tree of life has also sprouted higher intelligence: the cephalopods, consisting of the squid, the cuttlefish, and above all the octopus. In captivity, octopuses have been known to identify individual human keepers, raid neighboring tanks for food, turn off lightbulbs by spouting jets of water, plug drains, and make daring escapes. How is it that a creature with such gifts evolved through an evolutionary lineage so radically distant from our own? What does it mean that evolution built minds not once but at least twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter?

- description from the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux