Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
SPONSORS:
- Take Cheers Restore after your last drink or before going to bed and wake up feeling at least 50% better — or your money back. For a limited time our listeners are getting 20% off their entire order at cheershealth.com/TOE
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Peter Godfrey-Smith, professor at the University of Sydney and author of Other Minds: The Octopus and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, joins to explain why he thinks meeting an octopus is the closest we'll get to meeting an alien. He's now developing a new, speculative theory of consciousness centered on rhythm. The conversation explores why he thinks "having a mind" is a graded property rather than a yes-or-no one — and what that implies for earthworms, bacteria, and plants. We discuss how many selves may exist inside a single octopus. Godfrey-Smith explains why he suspects rhythmic, large-scale electrical activity in the brain — not just point-to-point neural firing — is essential to consciousness. He also addresses what Anthropic's discovery of a "workspace" inside Claude does and doesn't show, and why he assigns computers a very low probability of being conscious. Finally, he makes the case for why a silicon neuron could never do "exactly" what a biological one does. This is an in-depth conversation with Peter Godfrey-Smith.
FOLLOW:
- Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e
- Substack: curtjaimungal.substack.com/subscribe
- Twitter: twitter.com/TOEwithCurt
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- PayPal: paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=XUBHNMFXUX5S4
TIMESTAMPS:
- 00:00:00 - Cephalopods: The Closest Aliens
- 00:05:30 - Defining the Unconscious Mind
- 00:10:40 - Selfhood vs. Information Processing
- 00:16:10 - The Graded Nature of Mind
- 00:22:15 - Deflating the Concept of Life
- 00:29:00 - Convergent Evolution of Intelligence
- 00:35:40 - Distributed Neural Control Systems
- 00:42:50 - Multiple Subjects in One Body?
- 00:48:40 - Global Workspace Theory Critique
- 00:56:10 - AI and the Conscious Workspace
- 01:01:28 - Simulation Hypothesis Probabilities
- 01:08:40 - Biological Hardware Constraints
- 01:16:10 - Rhythmic Consciousness Theory
- 01:22:30 - Mind Uploading and Silicon Neurons
- 01:31:00 - Neural Dynamics of Subjectivity
- 01:37:00 - Deep Ocean Intelligence
LINKS MENTIONED:
- Other Minds [Book]: amazon.com/dp/0374227764?tag=toe08-20
- Peter's Website: petergodfreysmith.com
- Reality+ [Book]: amazon.com/dp/0393635805?tag=toe08-20
- A Materialist Theory of the Mind [Book]: amazon.com/dp/0415100313?tag=toe08-20
- Rodolfo Llinas: https://med.nyu.edu/faculty/rodolfo-llinas
- Bruno's Research: https://qbi.uq.edu.au/groups/vanswinderen
- Dehaene's Commentary on Language Models [Paper]: www-cdn.anthropic.com/files/4zrzovbb/website/cc4be2488d65e54a6ed06492f8968398ddc18ebe.pdf
- A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness [Book]: http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Baars_88.html
- Oscillations in the Central Brain of Drosophila Are Phase Locked to Attended Visual Features [Paper]: pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2010749117
- The ENCODE Project: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/genomics/encode-project.html
- What Is It Like to Be a Bat? [Paper]: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Nagel_Bat.pdf
- The Explanatory Gap [Paper]: philpapers.org/rec/LEVMAQ
- Inferring Consciousness in Phylogenetically Distant Organisms [Paper]: https://direct.mit.edu/jocn/article/36/8/1660/120485/Inferring-Consciousness-in-Phylogenetically
- Remarkably Bright Creatures [Book]: amazon.com/dp/0063204150?tag=toe08-20
- Giant Cuttlefish: https://australian.museum/learn/animals/fishes/giant-cuttlefish-sepia-apama-gray-1849/
- Cuttlefish Exert Self-Control in a Delay of Gratification Task [Paper]: royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article/288/1946/20203161/86132/Cuttlefish-exert-self-control-in-a-delay-of
- Stanford Marshmallow Experiment: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment
- How We Found the Giant Squid: ted.com/talks/edith_widder_how_we_found_the_giant_squid
More links at curtjaimungal.substack.com
Guests do not pay to appear. #science
SPONSORS:
- Take Cheers Restore after your last drink or before going to bed and wake up feeling at least 50% better — or your money back. For a limited time our listeners are getting 20% off their entire order at cheershealth.com/TOE
- I personally subscribe to The Economist. TOE listeners get 35% off the annual subscription. No other podcast has this! economist.com/TOE
Peter Godfrey-Smith, professor at the University of Sydney and author of Other Minds: The Octopus and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, joins to explain why he thinks meeting an octopus is the closest we'll get to meeting an alien. He's now developing a new, speculative theory of consciousness centered on rhythm. The conversation explores why he thinks "having a mind" is a graded property rather than a yes-or-no one — and what that implies for earthworms, bacteria, and plants. We discuss how many selves may exist inside a single octopus. Godfrey-Smith explains why he suspects rhythmic, large-scale electrical activity in the brain — not just point-to-point neural firing — is essential to consciousness. He also addresses what Anthropic's discovery of a "workspace" inside Claude does and doesn't show, and why he assigns computers a very low probability of being conscious. Finally, he makes the case for why a silicon neuron could never do "exactly" what a biological one does. This is an in-depth conversation with Peter Godfrey-Smith.
FOLLOW:
- Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e
- Substack: curtjaimungal.substack.com/subscribe
- Twitter: twitter.com/TOEwithCurt
- Discord Invite: discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs
- Crypto: nowpayments.io/donation/TOE
- PayPal: paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=XUBHNMFXUX5S4
TIMESTAMPS:
- 00:00:00 - Cephalopods: The Closest Aliens
- 00:05:30 - Defining the Unconscious Mind
- 00:10:40 - Selfhood vs. Information Processing
- 00:16:10 - The Graded Nature of Mind
- 00:22:15 - Deflating the Concept of Life
- 00:29:00 - Convergent Evolution of Intelligence
- 00:35:40 - Distributed Neural Control Systems
- 00:42:50 - Multiple Subjects in One Body?
- 00:48:40 - Global Workspace Theory Critique
- 00:56:10 - AI and the Conscious Workspace
- 01:01:28 - Simulation Hypothesis Probabilities
- 01:08:40 - Biological Hardware Constraints
- 01:16:10 - Rhythmic Consciousness Theory
- 01:22:30 - Mind Uploading and Silicon Neurons
- 01:31:00 - Neural Dynamics of Subjectivity
- 01:37:00 - Deep Ocean Intelligence
LINKS MENTIONED:
- Other Minds [Book]: amazon.com/dp/0374227764?tag=toe08-20
- Peter's Website: petergodfreysmith.com
- Reality+ [Book]: amazon.com/dp/0393635805?tag=toe08-20
- A Materialist Theory of the Mind [Book]: amazon.com/dp/0415100313?tag=toe08-20
- Rodolfo Llinas: https://med.nyu.edu/faculty/rodolfo-llinas
- Bruno's Research: https://qbi.uq.edu.au/groups/vanswinderen
- Dehaene's Commentary on Language Models [Paper]: www-cdn.anthropic.com/files/4zrzovbb/website/cc4be2488d65e54a6ed06492f8968398ddc18ebe.pdf
- A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness [Book]: http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Baars_88.html
- Oscillations in the Central Brain of Drosophila Are Phase Locked to Attended Visual Features [Paper]: pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2010749117
- The ENCODE Project: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/genomics/encode-project.html
- What Is It Like to Be a Bat? [Paper]: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Nagel_Bat.pdf
- The Explanatory Gap [Paper]: philpapers.org/rec/LEVMAQ
- Inferring Consciousness in Phylogenetically Distant Organisms [Paper]: https://direct.mit.edu/jocn/article/36/8/1660/120485/Inferring-Consciousness-in-Phylogenetically
- Remarkably Bright Creatures [Book]: amazon.com/dp/0063204150?tag=toe08-20
- Giant Cuttlefish: https://australian.museum/learn/animals/fishes/giant-cuttlefish-sepia-apama-gray-1849/
- Cuttlefish Exert Self-Control in a Delay of Gratification Task [Paper]: royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article/288/1946/20203161/86132/Cuttlefish-exert-self-control-in-a-delay-of
- Stanford Marshmallow Experiment: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment
- How We Found the Giant Squid: ted.com/talks/edith_widder_how_we_found_the_giant_squid
More links at curtjaimungal.substack.com
Guests do not pay to appear. #science
