Living On Earth
The capstone book in a series that began with Godfrey-Smith’s landmark speculation on the octopus, Other Minds. Godfrey-Smith does a fine job at explaining what we know, and don’t know, about how plants and animals came to be. What is their felt experience? What is consciousness, anyway? Only in this last question does Godfrey-Smith falter, finding himself willing to countenance mollusk consciousness but unwilling to situate consciousness in a brain made from neurons. We have always known that this is in fact the case—we are dust—yet learned people still avert their eyes.