"Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness" by Peter Godfrey-Smith (2016)

The book asks what it feels like to be the Internet, what it feels like to be a tentacle of an octopus, what it feels like to be Canada, what it feels like to be David Lynch. It all feels about the same.

What distinguishes the nervous system is that it is “fast.” Other cells communicate with other cells—inside or outside the organism—but slowly. Reaction speed is a defining characteristic of intelligence. Complexity, to be preserved in the face of competition, requires speed, which calls for centralisation: a nervous system, a brain. (The observation may also very well apply to social organisms: companies and states.)

One can partition human mind into two selves: the sleeping, dreaming, self and the awake self. This partition may serve as a metaphor for the multiple brains and, so, “selves” of an octopus. Each self thinks it is the principal one; while it may act in concert with other selves, in a kind of a dance, ultimately, the narrative is its own. Or so it thinks. When awake, an individual sticks to the awake narrative. Who knows what life the sleeping self imagines for itself? It would be unwise for either self to ignore the other, just as it would be unwise for a tentacle of an octopus to seek autonomy.

One can also partition human mind differently: the left-hemisphere self and the right-hemisphere self. To some extent, experiences within each such self are compartmentalised (more so in pigeons than in humans). Yet the subjective human experience is emphatically devoid of split personalities, at least most of the time. In a similar vein, even though the brain remembers events and feelings one associates with, say, one’s co-worker in distinct ways, one rarely recognises the tenuousness of the connection between the two kinds of memories. Human consciousness—and that of the Internet, an octopus, Canada, and David Lynch—is alarmingly unexceptional.