Consciousness & The Octopus

Paul Giamatti’s CHINWAG with Stephen Asma

Treefort Media & Touchy Feely Films

History, Society & Culture, Science

4.9 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 20 March 2024

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

🐙🐙🐙 The Octopus is fascinating and mysterious, and as Paul and Stephen discover, a cephalopod that offers incredible lessons in consciousness, intelligence, awareness and being. The octopus might also be the closest we have to studying the alien mind. Peter Godfrey-Smith is an author, Professor of Biology, philosopher of science and skilled scuba diver who’s looked right into the eyes of many an octopus, and they’ve observed him back. Listen as Professor Godfrey-Smith explains how the octopus’s unique brain architecture raises questions about the self. What’s the difference between consciousness and sentience, and does the ability to feel pain change our view of an animal? What about plants? Do sea squirts eat their own brains, and why would they do that? Is there a lights-on moment, or can one be half-conscious (like babies perhaps)? Then, is sentient AI possible, and how important is language to sentience? On to smart insects like bees and flies, and a discussion of whether brain size is a predictor of intelligence. A lot to unpack here…if you want to know what the octopus can teach us about our own minds, you’re Chinwagging in the right place! Bonus Chin-Word: PANPSYCHISM Paul Giamatti is an award-winning actor and producer. Stephen Asma is a professor and author specializing in the philosophy of science, religion, and art. Peter Godfrey Smith is a Professor of Biology in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. He’s also a very accomplished scuba diver and the author of many books including “Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind” and the best-seller “Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness.” 🐙🐙🐙 ========= 🎟️🎟️🎟️ New live taping alert!! CHINWAG is coming to Boston on Friday April 19th Tix on sale ➡ https://chinwagpod.fm/boston 🎟️🎟️🎟️ ========= New eps of CHINWAG drop Wednesdays for free... n(🧊) Make sure to follow us @chinwagpod 👉🏼 IG: https://www.instagram.com/chinwagpod/ Tik: https://www.tiktok.com/@chinwagpod Website: http://chinwagpod.fm YOUTUBE x CHINWAG Playlists ▶️ YT Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@chinwagpod Full episodes playlist: https://bit.ly/chinwagYT Animated shorts: https://bit.ly/chinwaganimations Send your stories, Qs, or thoughts to 📧 questions [at] chinwagpod [dot] fm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Paul.
0:05.0	Yes, sir.
0:06.0	Now I know you are a big NPR listener, right?
0:08.0	I enjoy it. I listen frequently, yes.
0:11.0	Have you ever listened to NPR's Thru Line podcast?
0:14.0	I have extremely interesting stuff Steve. I like it a lot. It's got a lot of texture.
0:19.0	Well they do the deep dives there. I think our fans would really like it.
0:22.0	On every episode of
0:22.8	NPR's throughline the host takes a story from the news and then they go back in
0:26.7	time to where it started because every headline has a history and they want to
0:30.6	answer one important question how did we get here?
0:33.0	This is the kind of thing that you like as a history buff,
0:36.0	and I think our fans will dig it too.
0:38.0	I was actually listening to one right around Valentine's Day
0:41.0	they did a show on love and you know I'm a hopeless
0:43.8	romantic it was really cool like they connected all of our interests in love and
0:49.1	even like online dating but also back to the romantic movement of Gerta and Schiller and all this stuff was very cool.
0:56.4	That's really cool.
0:57.2	Yeah. So by revisiting well-known historical events from new angles and introducing you to
1:02.0	historical figures that have been ignored for a long time,
1:05.0	Thruline tells kind of a different story.
1:07.0	At a time when information continues to come at as faster and faster,
	...

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