Intelligence, Consciousness and Soul, oh my; Sy Montgomery's "The Soul of an Octopus"

[Whateverist]

The empirical facts and theories concerning the most intelligent of non-vertibrates are spaced between an easily consumed book of one nature observer's observations and encounters with octopuses.  (Apparently "octopi" is a mistaken plural form.)  Surprising to learn how much stronger they are than we even without a skeletal frame to which muscles may attach.  The main octopus species of interest is the giant Pacific species which is also one of the longest lived at 3 to 5 years, where some average just a year.  Yet in that time they learn to identify predators and prey and many strategies to cope with both. Oh, and they are famously good problem solvers.

Physiologically they're so different than us.  They have more neurons dispersed between their eight legs than they do in their centralized brain.  Each leg is capable of operating on its own.  If one is severed it can not only replace it, but the one that is lost can go on hunting and passing prey up the conveyor belt like arm to a mouth that is no longer there for some time.  They have three hearts.  Their capacity for color and texture camouflage is unequaled and seems to require learning.  A giant Pacific octopus might grow to fifty pounds or more but can still squeeze through an opening only a couple of inches wide.  The large parrot like beak is the limiting factor on that score.

But the question in the background here throughout is what is it like to be an octopus and how does their subjective experience differ from and converge with our own.  This was the question that drew me to the book from an interview on Science Friday.  Admittedly I found the efforts in that direction pretty thin.  But the author does a good job of drawing us along through the experiences which trigger the questions and the associations which follow.  In this she gives us a chance to grok what we can from her experiences to have our own questions and associations.  So not a failure by any means.  

The best quote is more descriptive that explanatory.  It comes from a well respected researcher in octopus intelligence who, at one point, the author gets to dive with. 

I am .. aware that in animals, as well as people, there is an inborn temperament, a way of seeing the world, that interacts with the environment, and that shapes the personality."

The author says of Mather's work:

Once overlooked or dismissed outright, Jennifer's work is respected and cited by cognitive neuroscientists, neuropharmacologists, neuroanatomists, and computational neuroscientists - including a prominent international group of whom gathered at the University of Cambridge in England in 2012 to write a historic proclamation, the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness.  Signed by scientists including physicist Stephen Hawking in front of 60 minutes cameras, it asserts that "humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness" and that "nonhuman animals, including all birds and mammals, and many other creatures, including octopuses also possess these neurological substrates."

[Angrboda]

Um, okay? I would agree that the substrates for consciousness likely occur early in the evolutionary tree. I'm not sure what to make of your post.

[Minimalist]

Couldn't resist.

[Exian]

Um, okay? I would agree that the substrates for consciousness likely occur early in the evolutionary tree. I'm not sure what to make of your post.

Well, we do kill them willy nilly.

[Whateverist]

Um, okay?  I would agree that the substrates for consciousness likely occur early in the evolutionary tree.  I'm not sure what to make of your post.

That was pretty much my reaction to the philosophy.  So much alluded to, so little delivered.  But the particulars of this one alien (to us) life form are so interesting and constantly challenge us to consider an 'other' which is not at all hypothetical.  How do our inner lives overlap.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, we do kill them willy nilly.

We kill alot of things willy nilly, including each other.  Didn't get to where we're at by being particularly nice.  I doubt that any realization about the neurological substrates possessed by various animals will or even -could- change that.  Human life depends upon a great flowing river of blood. We're hardly alone in that dependence, and I do think we handle it with a little more dignity than most of our compatriots. When's the last time anybody here ate a piglet alive, legs first, while it's mother watched?

[MTL]

Well, we do kill them willy nilly.

We kill alot of things willy nilly, including each other.  Didn't get to where we're at by being particularly nice.  I doubt that any realization about the neurological substrates possessed by various animals will or even -could- change that.  Human life depends upon a great flowing river of blood.  We're hardly alone in that dependence, and I do think we handle it with a little more dignity than most of our compatriots.  When's the last time anybody here ate a piglet alive, legs first, while it's mother watched?

I would reply to that in the same way I replied to Pool's comments in the thread,

"Should Gender Stereotypes Be Challenged?"  :

Certainly nature always has been, and always will be, Survival Of The Fittest.

But what makes  one creature the "fittest" can evolve over time, too.

Once upon a time, savagery was necessary for survival of our species.
(and, in certain contexts, it still is).

but at this point in time,

Compassion, and a learned reluctance to kill  could be essential to the survival of our species.

For instance, early in our evolution, we learned that by working as a team, we could accomplish things that solitary animals could not.

Our learned reluctance to kill each other on sight, as legitimate prey to "eat or be eaten"
(think of a larger shark that wouldn't hesitate to kill and eat a smaller shark, on sight)
was a vital step towards humanity dominating the planet.

And once we dominated the planet, we did things like ruthlessly slashing down rainforests,
considering the entire rainforest as "legitimate prey" to be consumed on sight.

But now again, we are learning to stop and consider, first:
We've already completely eradicated countless species, both plant and animal,
in our clear-cutting of rainforests,

and only recently have we realized that many poisonous insects, arachnids, snakes and amphibians
have venoms and toxins that can actually be used as exceptional medicines,
whereas before we only regarded them as threats.

[The Grand Nudger]

Pile up all of our compassion and reluctance to kill..which is already here and present within us to a greater degree than anything else we're capable of assessing...and we're still knee deep in rivers of blood in which we must drink or die. We didn't start being who we are once we came to dominate, that's -how- we came to dominate, and it's how we maintain our existence (nevermind our dominance). We didn't come up, then slash down the rainforest...we've been doing that, that was how we pulled ourselves up and kept ourselves from starving, insomuch as we could, and it still is, insomuch as we do.....while we wait for utopia to arrive, I guess. There is no place or thing on earth that could sustain us without exploitation. There is no such thing as human civilization and life without cost.

No free lunch. Heterotrophism combined with a hefty nutrient and natural resource requirement means that human beings can only afford to be -so- nice before the music stops. I think it's misguided to suggest that we should overcome hard limitations which we had no part in nor are we capable of altering..... or in failing to do that be deemed lacking....and ofc it seems like a moot point to begin with, because despite those hard limitations we -are- engaging in activities where we accept some cost on ourselves for the benefit of other species. We very literally decide that we can soak up a little death and misery ourselves if it helps the pacific tern (or whatever) plug along for a few more generations before the inevitability of extinction spreads it's "love" all over the species. We do this in more mundane, unappreciated ways with livestock all day long. Obviously keeping our food in fetid enclosures expending as little effort and resource as possible, nut to butt, is an effective way to exploit them, but we pass laws against this and lay costs on the producers which we are all too happy to pay ourselves at the checkout line. Compassion is a multi-billion dollar industry when it comes to food. All of those extra dollars, howevever, are precisely why that food never reaches the starving masses.

Set all of that aside, though, consciousness and neurological substrates aren't enough to stop me from killing another human being, it's sure as hell not going to make me blink in the case of an octopus.

(we "learned" cooperative exploitation, in your description above. We didn't learn not to kos each other -we still do that-...we simply learned that two people can kos a hell of alot more shit than one person can. It doesn't sound all that noble when it's referred to that way though, does it? lol).

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Couldn't resist.

In the future, you must try. Really, really hard. Resist. Please.

Boru

[Neo-Scholastic]

The notion that consciousness is 'generated', bottom-up only, from neural substrates is an unchallenged assumption. It seems like free lunch magic to me. But more to the point, I have no clue what it is like to be anything other that human. That said we could infer from its behaviour, even that of the severed tentacle, the forms it must embody and the ends for which it acts in order to 'be' an octopus. I would imagine that like behavior requires like concept formation.