Comments on: Book review – Metazoa: Animal Minds and the Birth of Consciousness

By: Book review – Living on Earth: Life, Consciousness and the Making of the Natural World | The Inquisitive Biologist

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 12:57:59 +0000

[…] unlike ours, that of the octopus. In 2020, he followed this up with the altogether more cerebral Metazoa in which he explored the evolution of animal minds more broadly. I reviewed both books favourably. […]

LikeLike

By: Book review – A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness | The Inquisitive Biologist

Thu, 07 Dec 2023 16:28:30 +0000

[…] this is a slim but dense volume. In my earlier reviews of Godfrey-Smith’s books, I described Metazoa as a step up from Other Minds. Given the agreement between Veit’s and Godfrey-Smith’s […]

LikeLike

By: Book review – Aesop’s Animals: The Science Behind the Fables | The Inquisitive Biologist

Thu, 25 Nov 2021 12:25:00 +0000

[…] Aesop’s Animals is characterised by its nuance, never oversimplifying this rich and complex topic. Wimpenny highlights how we still know so little about many animals that some fables can neither be confirmed nor debunked. When she discusses wolves, a footnote cautions against the simplistic story of wolf reintroduction single-handedly regenerating Yellowstone National Park. In a few sentences, she provides the gist of what Yellowstone Wolves detailed in two technical chapters. When discussing horse domestication, she is quick to acknowledge that “for every domesticated plant or animal group, there were likely multiple, independent domestication events” (p. 138). And when discussing self-awareness, she quotes Frans de Waal who cautions against the search for a ‘Big Bang’ theory. Rather than all-or-nothing, he likens self-awareness to an onion, “built in layers, with different species possessing different gradations of this ability” (p. 111). This resembles what Peter Godfrey-Smith has argued for animal minds more generally. […]

LikeLike

By: 1914 – Transfer (movie 2010) – TimeSpace Warps

1914 – Transfer (movie 2010) – TimeSpace Warps — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 17:00:03 +0000

[…] is just one of widely distributed modes of thought and feeling developed and existing all around us. It is important to emphasize that the difference is only in degree, not in kind. A proper evolutionary account of human consciousness has to take this wide spectrum of sentience […]

LikeLike

By: Book review – Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life | The Inquisitive Biologist

Fri, 11 Dec 2020 14:09:43 +0000

[…] is popularly known as the scuba-diving philosopher and has just published his new book Metazoa, in which he plumbs the evolutionary origins of minds. In preparation for reviewing that book, I am […]

LikeLike

By: Book review – Contingency and Convergence: Toward a Cosmic Biology of Body and Mind | The Inquisitive Biologist

Fri, 11 Dec 2020 14:07:27 +0000

[…] portal on the world” (p. 212). This also entails fascinating discussions of the evolutionary history of brains and neurons, and behavioural evidence of sophisticated perception and cognition in […]

LikeLike