![]() When consciousness fades, like in dreamless sleep, the brain becomes functionally disconnected. Our current best guess is that it depends on how different brain regions talk to each other. Which leads us to the basic question: Is an octopus conscious? In humans, consciousness can’t be traced to a single region in the brain. But it’s just these aspects that might be most different in species like the octopus, since their bodies and how they interact with the world are so different from us. Some aspects of self-consciousness, like experiences of body ownership and of having a first-person perspective on the world, are so continuous and pervasive that we take them for granted. For humans, conscious content includes colors, shapes, smells, thoughts, explicit beliefs, emotions and moods, experiences of desire and agency, and so on. ![]() It is not the same as wakefulness, however: one can be conscious while asleep or dreaming, and unconscious while sleepwalking or in a vegetative state.Ĭonscious contents refer to the elements of a conscious scene, or what you are conscious of, when you are conscious. Conscious level refers to how “conscious” an organism is it can be thought of as a graded scale from complete unconsciousness to vivid conscious wakefulness. The first is between conscious level and conscious content. Using humans as a benchmark, we can draw further distinctions. Our best guess is it depends on how different regions talk to each other. For conscious organisms, there seems to exist a continuous, though interruptible, stream of conscious scenes or experiences.Ĭonsciousness can’t be traced to a single region in the human brain. Or one can say that consciousness, at least for humans, is what disappears when we fall into a dreamless sleep and what returns when we wake up. A simple approach is to say that, for a conscious organism, there is something it is like to be that organism. To do this, we need a working definition of consciousness, although there is none that is universally agreed upon. If there are sentient aliens in the universe, one way of trying to understand what sort of consciousness they may have is to think about the inner universe of the common octopus. The common octopus, Octopus vulgaris, has about half a billion neurons, roughly six times more than a mouse. They can retrieve hidden objects from nested Plexiglass cubes, find their way through complex mazes, utilize natural objects as tools, and even solve problems by watching other octopuses do the same. The octopus is our very own terrestrial alien, with eight prehensile arms lined with suckers three hearts an ink-based defense mechanism highly developed jet propulsion a body that can change size, shape, texture and color at will and cognitive abilities to rival many mammals. Like many other people who have spent time with these remarkable creatures, I’ve been left with a vivid sense of an intelligent presence very different from our own. To find otherworldliness here on Earth, meet an octopus. You don’t need to go to outer space to encounter an alien. Dennis Moore By examining the eight-armed marine creature and the peculiar way it engages with the world, we can get a glimpse into different ways of existing and being, says cognitive neuroscientist Anil Seth.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |