When Thomas Nagel wrote “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” in the 1970s, he drew philosophical attention to the problem of understanding animal minds. The trouble is that while it is easy to imagine yourself as a bat (as if you are suddenly transported into one’s body), it is perhaps impossible to understand what it’s like for a bat to be a bat, without being one yourself.
Many animals experience the world in ways we struggle to comprehend. Dogs are sometimes reunited with a returning member of the family, and struggle to recognise them until they smell them. Migratory birds can sense the Earth’s magnetic field, in a way we do not fully understand, and use it to navigate. Octopuses (yes, you can spell it like that) contain the majority of their neurons within their many arms, which indeed sometimes act as if they have a mind of their own.
Such cases make it almost impossible for us to truly imagine what it must be like to be such animals. Yet using the scientific method and a bit of philosophy of mind, we may be able to make progress in understanding the mental world of other animals.
I’m joined in this episode by Peter Godfrey-Smith, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney, and author of Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness. Prof. Godfrey-Smith’s work is particularly interested in cephalopods, but we speak about both consciousness and other animals more broadly, in a fascinating conversation about the nature of the nonhuman mind.
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 – How Many Times Has the Brain Independently Evolved?
4:36 – What is a Nervous System?
7:12 – The Differences Between the Human and Animal Brains
13:40 – What Does an Octopus Brain Look Like?
24:04 – What is it Like to be an Octopus?
34:30 – Are the Mind and Body Distinct?
41:28 – Panpsychism: Is Everything Conscious?
54:35 – How Do Experiences Combine Into One Consciousness?
01:03:50 – Which Animals Feel Pain? What is it Like?
01:15:33 – Should We Make Shrimp Farming an Ethical Priority?
01:28:04 – Animal Science and Animal Foods
01:34:41 – The Ethics of Killing Animals
01:50:55 – Are Octopuses Playful?
