Octopus philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith: rhythm, not wiring, may be key to consciousness
TOEwithCurt · x · 2026-08-17
Peter Godfrey-Smith, University of Sydney professor and author of Other Minds, lays out a new speculative theory of consciousness centered on rhythm.
- He argues "having a mind" is a graded property, not yes-or-no — extending the view to earthworms, bacteria, and plants.
- He suspects rhythmic, large-scale electrical activity in the brain, not just point-to-point firing, is essential to consciousness.
- A single octopus may contain multiple selves given its distributed nervous system.
- On Anthropic's discovered "workspace" inside Claude, he assesses what it does and doesn't demonstrate.
- He assigns computers a very low probability of consciousness, arguing a silicon neuron could never do "exactly" what a biological one does.
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