Mather consolidates the case for octopus mind and how it may be structured, shifting the starting point of inquiry from “If octopuses had minds, what would they be like?” to “What is the mind of an octopus like?”

Carls-Diamante, Sidney

English

WBI Studies Repository (WellBeing International)

Carls-Diamante, Sidney (2019) The octopus mind: Implications for cognitive science. Animal Sentience 26(17) DOI: 10.51291/2377-7478.1501 This article has appeared in the journal Animal Sentience, a peer-reviewed journal on animal cognition and feeling. It has been made open access, free for all, by WellBeing International and deposited in the WBI Studies Repository. For more information, please contact wbisr-info@wellbeingintl.org. Animal Sentience 2019.269:  Carls-Diamante on Mather on Octopus Mind 1  The octopus mind: Implications for cognitive science Commentary on Mather on Octopus Mind   Sidney Carls-Diamante Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research  Abstract:  Mather consolidates the case for octopus mind and how it may be structured, shifting the starting point of inquiry from “If octopuses had minds, what would they be like?” to “What is the mind of an octopus like?”.   Sidney Carls-Diamante is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research. She has published a number of philosophical papers on cognition and consciousness in octopuses.  Website   A difficulty that often plagues researchers on cognition in octopuses is the need to establish whether these animals are indeed endowed with minds. Disciplines studying the nature and structure of the mind, such as philosophy, are reluctant to accept the idea that a creature so unlike vertebrates may be on a par with them in psychological sophistication. One compelling reason to study octopus minds is that it reveals how similar outcomes can be realized (Godfrey-Smith 2016, 2019) through strategies that differ significantly from those used by vertebrates (Sumbre et al. 2005; Sumbre et al. 2001; Porcher 2019; Zullo et al. 2009). It thus occupies a place of particular significance in empirical and theoretical studies of the mind. Before conceptual discussion can proceed, it has to be shown convincingly that the octopus nervous system is capable of supporting mental capacities, i.e., that octopuses can and do have minds. Mather (2019) provides compelling evidence, thereby allowing the discussion to progress to the question of “What might the mind of an octopus be like?”, providing more details about the psychological life of a creature whose nervous system differs radically from the vertebrate one that has long informed cognitive science and philosophy of mind. Accepting that the octopus has a mind opens the door to learning more about a different kind of sentience.  Many accepted views of cognition are biased toward vertebrates and must now be rethought. Octopuses have evolved unique solutions for motor control and other cognitive tasks that are closely intertwined with their morphology (Hochner 2013; Guerra 2019). Cognitive tasks considered high-level in humans (e.g., dependent on representational capacities) may be realized through low-level or even non-cognitive processes in octopuses. Disciplines studying the mind need to be more pluralistic in their explanations. Morphologically influenced control strategies are needed to explain certain forms of octopus behaviour. An octopus model of cognition is necessary to account for octopus cognition.      Animal Sentience 2019.269:  Carls-Diamante on Mather on Octopus Mind 2  References  Godfrey-Smith, P. (2016). Other Minds. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.  Godfrey-Smith, P. (2019). Octopus experience. Animal Sentience 26(18). Guerra, A. (2019). The ingenuity of cephalopods. Animal Sentience 26(5).  Gutfreund, Y. (2019). Who needs a mind when you have thousands of fingers? Animal Sentience 26(3).  Gutfreund, Y., T. Flash, Y. Yarom, G. Fiorito, I. Segev, and B. Hochner. (1996). Organization of octopus arm movements: A model system for studying the control of flexible arms. The Journal of Neuroscience 16(22): 7297-7307.  Hochner, B. (2013). How nervous systems evolve in relation to their embodiment: What we can learn from octopuses and other molluscs. Brain, Behavior and Evolution 82: 19-30. Mather, J. (2019). What is in an octopus's mind? Animal Sentience 26(1).  Porcher, I.F. (2019). The perfecting of the octopus. Animal Sentience 26(15). Sumbre, G., G. Fiorito, T. Flash, and B. Hochner. (2005). Motor control of flexible octopus arms. Nature 433: 595-596. Sumbre, G., Y. Gutfreund, G. Fiorito, T. Flash, and B. Hochner. (2001). Control of octopus arm extension by a peripheral motor program. Science 293: 1845-1848. Zullo, L., G. Sumbre, C. Agnisola, T. Flash, and B. Hochner. (2009). Nonsomatotopic organization of the higher motor centers in octopus. Current Biology 19: 1632-1636.     

The octopus mind: Implications for cognitive science

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The octopus mind: Implications for cognitive science

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