Justin E. H. Smith, The Philosopher: A History in Six Types
Anthony Gottlieb, The Dream of Enlightenment
Jason Brennan, Against Democracy
Tommie Shelby, Dark Ghettos
Steven Patterson, Square One
Emrys Westacott, The Wisdom of Frugality
John Kaag, American Philosophy: A Love Story
Skye Cleary, Existentialism and Romantic Love
Carrie Jenkins, What Love Is: And What It Could Be
David Benatar, The Human Predicament
Peter Godfrey Smith, Other Minds
Einav Katan-Schid, Embodied Philosophy in Dance
Russell Blackford & Damien Broderick, Philosophy's Future
Michael Tye, Tense Bees and Shell-Shocked Crabs
Massimo Pigliucci, How to Be a Stoic
Nick Riggle, On Being Awesome
So the philosophy book I most enjoyed reading.... (drumroll) .... is Peter Godfrey Smith's Other Minds. Here's the review I wrote for Issue 78:
Peter Godfrey Smith’s new book
on cephalopods would be lovable for its metaphilosophy and beautiful writing if
it said nothing interesting about the octopus.
“Philosophy is among the least corporeal of callings”, he writes. “It is, or can be, a purely mental sort of
life. It has no equipment that needs
managing, no sites of field stations.” Yet his project, he says, had a “bodily
side”. He started studying cephalopods while spending time with them
underwater, primarily at a site that he calls “Octopolis” on the east coast of
Australia. His book is full of boats and diving, as well as biology and
neuroscience, so is it really philosophy?
Sure! “Doing philosophy is
largely a matter of trying to put things
together, trying to get the pieces of very large puzzles to make sense.
Good philosophy is opportunistic; it uses whatever information and whatever
tools look useful.”
In
fact, the book does say all sorts of interesting things about the octopus. It covers their evolution, way of evading
predators, lifespan, habitat, odd mating rituals, and incredibly cool colour-changing
skin, but it’s especially about octopus minds (hence, the title). Do they really have minds? Is there something
it’s like to be an octopus? Smith divides the issue in two: wondering whether
the octopus has mere sentience, and then wondering about more sophisticated,
full-blown consciousness.
The first thing
he says about the sentience question is that philosophers tend to think of
sensation as driving action, and think too little about action driving
sensation. You don’t just receive
sensations from this page; you turned the page a minute ago in order to acquire
new sensations. Apparently the fact that
you’re the actor can make a difference to the resulting sensations, as he
demonstrates with a fascinating example involving tactile vision substitution systems
for the blind. The device converts camera images into skin vibrations, so that
when a blind person uses the device, a dog in their environment is experienced
as a pattern of skin sensations. What’s interesting is that when they actively
seek sensations, having control over the camera, the dog is experienced as “out
there”. Acting, instead of just passively
receiving, makes a difference.
This emphasis on activity rather than
passivity is also in play in several discussions of perceptual constancy. For a cube to seem like it’s the same size,
as you get closer to it, you’ve got to not just be a passive receiver of sense
data, but process inputs with an awareness that you are an agent, getting closer. Ingenious experiments show that the octopus also
gets the cube size right. When researchers reward octopuses for discriminating
between big and small cubes, the octopus doesn’t make the mistake of treating
cubes as bigger just because they’re closer. Could the active life of an octopus make the
difference between insentience and sentience?
The suggestion is that this may be so, though Smith really does just
suggest, not insist, and he also explores other possible harbingers of
sentience, such as integration of multiple senses and coping with novelty.
The
most fascinating chapter of the book is about the coloration of the octopus and
cuttlefish. One layer of their skin is composed of chromataphores, which
contain cells filled with colored chemicals.
They are surrounded by muscles that are controlled by the animal’s
brain. Stretching the cell makes the
color visible and relaxing it makes the color invisible. The chromataphores are
controlled by a cephalopod’s brain, giving rise to the intriguing possibility
that when the animal’s skin changes color or exhibits patterns, something about
the octopus’s mental state is revealed. But what?
An
intriguing possibility is that the octopus is “chattering” as they move around,
constantly changing colors and patterns.
Could that be a sign of octopus consciousness? Smith tells a long story about human
consciousness that connects it to human speech.
When we speak, the brain has to treat the incoming sound as “just me”,
not confusing self-produced sounds with sounds coming from “out there”. It’s the same theme as before – brains have
to keep track of their own agency, to appreciate whether a change is inside or
outside. But if there are internal “just
me” memos being sent and received, there’s an inner, silent correlate of
speech. Maybe that’s central to our capacity for sophisticated consciousness. And so could octopus color chatter be a sign
of consciousness too? Smith rejects the inference for a very a very simple
reason. We hear our own speech, so have
to distinguish it from sounds coming from outside ourselves. But the octopus doesn’t see its own skin
color! Smith speculates that humans have
“a more complicated mind” and “Cephalopods are on a different road.”
But wait, we
don’t see our cheeks when we blush, but blushing does reveal inner emotional
changes. It’s a possibility too
delicious to give up quickly. It might feel like something to be an octopus
making as if to be a rock, or trying to scare predators with a psychedelic skin
pattern, or changing from gold to red. It
might be incredibly trippy to be an octopus.