#116 Peter Godfrey Smith - Animal Consciousness: What Can We Know?

Within Reason

Alex J O'Connor

Religion, Morality, Ethics, Society & Culture, Cosmicskeptic, Religion & Spirituality, Philosophy

4.9 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 10 August 2025

⏱️ 117 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Peter Godfrey-Smith is an Australian philosopher of science and writer, who is currently Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. Buy his books here. 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? 25:21 What is it Like to be an Octopus? 35:48 Are the Mind and Body Distinct? 42:46 Panpsychism: Is Everything Conscious? 55:53 How Do Experiences Combine Into One Consciousness? 01:05:08 Which Animals Feel Pain? What is it Like? 01:16:51 Should We Make Shrimp Farming an Ethical Priority? 01:29:22 Animal Science and Animal Foods 01:35:59 The Ethics of Killing Animals 01:52:13 Are Octopuses Playful? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey Harry.
0:00.7	Hello mate.
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0:29.8	How many times did the brain independently evolve?
0:35.5	It depends what counts as a brain.
0:41.2	Nervous systems themselves probably evolved just once, although it's not completely clear. It may have been twice. There's a huge collection of
0:48.0	animals that includes us and insects and octopuses and earthworms and almost everyone who have a nervous system that comes from a
0:57.4	single invention of that thing probably sometime around 600 million years ago or so. Now it may be
1:07.6	that there was a second invention of a nervous system which whose descendants
1:12.4	we only see today in comb jellies, those little light bulb like jellyfish that have beautiful,
1:20.1	colorful filaments that glow really along their sides.
1:25.6	They look like jellyfish but they're not ordinary jellyfish.
1:28.2	They're quite far from other jellyfish and other animals, it seems. And it's not impossible
1:35.0	that they invented the whole thing, the nervous system, separately for themselves, and that there
1:41.4	were two origins. Now, that's still a minority view, as I understand it.
1:45.6	And let's just proceed by talking in terms of the invention of the nervous system.
1:50.4	Probably about 600 million years ago,
	...

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