Alien Minds, Blindsight, and the Evolutionary Origins of Consciousness.

In his recent book, Other Minds, philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith starts with an epigraph from William James (1890) on the need for continuity in accounts of the origin of consciousness (Godfrey-Smith, 2016a, p. vii). Godfrey-Smith approaches the evolution of consciousness by "thinking about different sorts of animals" and "the long spans and successive regimes in the history of life." Among philosophers, he lists the positive influence of Daniel Dennett. Evaluating Godfrey-Smith's claims in the philosophy of mind in comparison to James and Dennett, on the defense of the "Spencerian," adaptationist view of Darwin and evolution, helps locate Godfrey-Smith's philosophy of psychology and mind. In spite of affinity with themes from Herbert Spencer, James and Dennett on biological evolution, Godfrey-Smith gets James's psychology wrong. Partly in consequence, tension arises from Godfrey-Smith's thesis that "subjective experience," as contrasted with consciousness, arrived quite early in evolutionary history. Another claim is that human encounters with the octopus are probably the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. Review of Godfrey-Smith's accounts of cephalopod intelligence provides relevant evidence from ethology. What eventually becomes doubtful, as argued below, is the scant attention to the experimental phenomenon of blindsight; and there is a related philosophical equation of sensory-motor intelligence with subjective experience. Following Dennett's "instrumentalism" too closely leads to serious misunderstanding of James; and misunderstanding James as an "internalist" gives rise to doubtful and poorly argued theses concerning consciousness and subjective experience. Godfrey-Smith's theory of "subjective experience" in contemporary animals does not rule out plausible, nonconscious alternatives regarding their ancient, Cambrian forbearers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]