The Octopus Never Climbed Up on the Land

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I think that if we conjured up your former classmate David Chalmers here, he would cast the hard problem of consciousness in terms of what it is like to feel something. I'm talking about something very practical, which is the space of imagination where we would ourselves figure in that imagination. And so that's the first moment at which our cell sort of became a, well, an item of thought. No self-awareness is clearly an important aspect of any one's definition of consciousness. So that's what you're getting at. What about the octopus? Yeah, so the octopus never climbed up on the land. So we should say octopuses are really, really smart.

Consciousness has many aspects, from experience to wakefulness to self-awareness. One aspect is imagination: our minds can conjure up multiple hypothetical futures to help us decide which choices we should make. Where did that ability come from? Today’s guest, Malcolm MacIver, pinpoints an important transition in the evolution of consciousness to when fish first climbed on to land, and could suddenly see much farther, which in turn made it advantageous to plan further in advance. If this idea is true, it might help us understand some of the abilities and limitations of our cognitive capacities, with potentially important ramifications for our future as a species. Support Mindscape on Patreon or Paypal. Malcolm MacIver received his Ph.D. in neuroscience in 2001 from the University of Illinois and the Beckman Institute of Advanced Science and Technology. (This was after an unconventional childhood where he dropped out of school at age 9 and later talked his way into a community college program.) He is currently a professor of Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Neurobiology at Northwestern University. In 2009 he was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering. Northwestern Web Page Google Scholar Talk on sensing and planning Paper: “The Shift to Life on Land Selected for Planning” Twitter See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.