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glou89 's review for:
Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind
by Peter Godfrey-Smith
Godfrey-Smith seems to get a lot of flack for being a philosopher discussing biology. But I think the best works are interdisciplinary and often the ones that lead to new insights and fresh questions. For a philosopher, he knows his science (at least to the degree required by the subject matter). If you must critique those who write outside the bounds of their discipline, might I suggest Richard Dawkins.
All your favorite books that you’ve read throughout your life were about the human condition—this banal term worthy at best of high school sophomore English papers, and the better (more collegiate, speculative, philosophical, beautiful, etc.) works deal with this rather large idea in more sophisticated ways, and we appreciate them for that. But certainly that perspective is inherently narrow, vast in the individual perspectives of a single species. So how much more grand of a view it is when we pick up a book like this, a book whose premise is to discuss (with all the modern researches and the millennia of philosophies) consciousness as experienced by all living and evolved beings.
There is a term you must understand here: gradualism. This is the idea that evolution does not rapidly develop sentience/consciousness in this species or that, but instead enables it to develop gradually to varying degrees throughout species as advantageous to each species, adding more here, subtracting some there, as needed. Godfrey-Smith’s previous book Other Minds is all about cephalopods, their brains (which operate entirely differently than mammal, reptile, or fish bilateralism), and their path through evolution. Metazoa is a continuation of that book, and though the author spends a good chunk of time discussing octopuses and their ilk here as well, this book indeed branches out to discuss many other species (without much focus at all on mammals).
Talking of everything from dolphins to ants, bees to whale sharks, and the nervous systems of each, he eventually argues that to some degree subjective experience exists across species. (Plants are a bit different regarding the topic of mind. Read the book.) What subjective experience looks like can differ greatly of course. “If subjectivity is an important idea in making sense in the evolution of the mind, doesn’t everything with minimal cognition have a kind of subjectivity, a way things seem to it, and so on?” I think so, Peter. And all the while throughout, one can ruminate on how these ideas impact the age-old debate of monism v. dualism.
The human condition: “A likely difference between human and non-human cases is not the existence of elsewhere experience [the mind drifting away from immediate sensory experience] but the extent of its deliberate control. A feature of human cognition that really does seem to differ greatly from what goes on in other animals is something psychologists call “executive control”—the ability to direct oneself on a task, suppress momentary urges, and marshal one’s various abilities in pursuit of a consciously represented goal.”
I wasn’t even going to write a review, but how could I not. The research, the speculation, and the consideration for other species will get you every time. Give it a read and see for yourself.
All your favorite books that you’ve read throughout your life were about the human condition—this banal term worthy at best of high school sophomore English papers, and the better (more collegiate, speculative, philosophical, beautiful, etc.) works deal with this rather large idea in more sophisticated ways, and we appreciate them for that. But certainly that perspective is inherently narrow, vast in the individual perspectives of a single species. So how much more grand of a view it is when we pick up a book like this, a book whose premise is to discuss (with all the modern researches and the millennia of philosophies) consciousness as experienced by all living and evolved beings.
There is a term you must understand here: gradualism. This is the idea that evolution does not rapidly develop sentience/consciousness in this species or that, but instead enables it to develop gradually to varying degrees throughout species as advantageous to each species, adding more here, subtracting some there, as needed. Godfrey-Smith’s previous book Other Minds is all about cephalopods, their brains (which operate entirely differently than mammal, reptile, or fish bilateralism), and their path through evolution. Metazoa is a continuation of that book, and though the author spends a good chunk of time discussing octopuses and their ilk here as well, this book indeed branches out to discuss many other species (without much focus at all on mammals).
Talking of everything from dolphins to ants, bees to whale sharks, and the nervous systems of each, he eventually argues that to some degree subjective experience exists across species. (Plants are a bit different regarding the topic of mind. Read the book.) What subjective experience looks like can differ greatly of course. “If subjectivity is an important idea in making sense in the evolution of the mind, doesn’t everything with minimal cognition have a kind of subjectivity, a way things seem to it, and so on?” I think so, Peter. And all the while throughout, one can ruminate on how these ideas impact the age-old debate of monism v. dualism.
The human condition: “A likely difference between human and non-human cases is not the existence of elsewhere experience [the mind drifting away from immediate sensory experience] but the extent of its deliberate control. A feature of human cognition that really does seem to differ greatly from what goes on in other animals is something psychologists call “executive control”—the ability to direct oneself on a task, suppress momentary urges, and marshal one’s various abilities in pursuit of a consciously represented goal.”
I wasn’t even going to write a review, but how could I not. The research, the speculation, and the consideration for other species will get you every time. Give it a read and see for yourself.