Octopuses possess a brain wave that has never been seen before in animals, along with others similar to those found in humans, first-of-their-kind brain recordings reveal.
What lifts Other Minds above mere slack-jawed voyeurism at nature’s weirdness typical of fluffy pop-science books is that Godfrey-Smith, as a philosopher, is both interested and capable of exploring this far deeper. Yet, he does this with a style that, for want of a better description, feels kind and caring. So, when on page 24 he talks of the sensory-motor view of nervous systems, he bothers with a polite footnote: “If you’ve seen the word “sensorimotor” instead, please treat this as the same“. Thus, when he introduces the psychological concept of embodied cognition, you can rest assured that, as a reader, you will not be left feeling out of your depth. This refers to the notion that some of our smartness is encoded in our body rather than our brain. The constraints imposed by the joints and angles of our limbs make walking a rather natural solution to the problem of moving around. But how does this work for an octopus, whose body has no fixed shape? Their embodiment is different, to say the least, but Godfrey-Smith takes it a step further, arguing that “The octopus lives outside the usual body/brain divide” (p. 76).
Once again Barbara - very unique stuff - nice post