[FRIAM] What it is like to be good at something

[Jochen Fromm]

Today I have read "Other Minds" from Peter Godfrey-Smith while watching the Olympics games in Paris. Peter's book is about consciousness in octopuses. What would an Olympics among octopuses look like? https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374537197/othermindsPeter's argues in his book that sentience comes before consciousness and that all animals are sentient, i.e. they have the ability to experience feelings and sensations. He writes "Sentience is brought into being somehow from the evolution of sensing and acting; it involves being a living system with a point of view on the world around it".We always ask how does it feel to be someone, a person, a bat or even an octopus, but this seems to include a perception part - how does it feel for an agent to perceive the world - and an action part - how does it feel for an agent to act in a world. Olympics are all about action. Two weeks of nonstop action. An athlete who has tried an action in training which does not work will pick a different one, like a octopus who tries in vain to crack a crab and remains hungry. Peter writes it is not only our perceptions that change us over time because "your actions continually change your relation to what's around you".Just as our subjective experience is formed in Nick's words by the slice of the world we have experienced, our individual personality is formed by the particular actions we repeatedly do. Therefore the question what does it like to be an <X> should probably include what <X> has experienced so far and what <X> is good at. As Aristotle says we are what we repeatedly do. If there would be Olympic games for <X>, what would the sport events be? An octopus for example has superior camouflage skills to escape predators and can take apart anything from crabs to clams in no time.Does this make any sense or have I read too much of this octopus book? An octopus only gets 5 years old by the way. When humans start to develop self-awareness they already die.-J.
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