Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 28/08/2026Heading back from Ecuador and the ICCS consciousness workshop. Ecuador is great. The Galapagos, of course, but everywhere I went. Already thinking of coming back. 0100
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 25/07/2026A blog post about an unusually large giant cuttlefish, "Mr Big," who has been hanging out at Cabbage Tree Bay (Australia). metazoan.net/134-mr-big/ 0192
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 20/07/2026Writing a series of long blog posts about brain rhythms, fields, and related topics. To work through some ideas & difficult papers, correct some things I said earlier, note disagreements, and so on. Two posts so far. 1. metazoan.net/132-rhythms-1/ 2. metazoan.net/133-rhythms-2/ 2438
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 28/06/2026Preparing some video for a talk next week. These are screenshots from GoPro video at the 'Octopolis' site a while back. A big stingray cruising in. No divers present (fine with me in this case). The talk is a "How might complex behavior evolve on other planets?" talk. In Sydney on Thursday. 090
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 07/05/2026Link here to a preprint of my short article about consciousness, "biological naturalism," and electrical brain rhythms published by IAI TV earlier this year. Preprint: petergodfreysmith.com/wp-content/u... Published (no longer open access): iai.tv/articles/stu... 03711
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 15/04/2026Episode 3 of the London Review of Books "Nature in Crisis" podcast, with @meehancrist.bsky.social and myself, is about Helen Czerski's book "The Blue Machine." I enjoyed this one a lot, both book & conversation. (@helenczerski.bsky.social, @lrb.co.uk, link below). 1/ 1114
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 18/03/2026Next month at @columbiauniversity.bsky.social in NYC, a mind-body talk for the 2026 Nagel Lecture. Philosophy Department. Link below. I'll look at the debate taking shape between "biological naturalism" and "computational functionalism" (labels that are imperfect but not bad).. 1/ 141
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 04/03/2026Third in a series of short photographic blog posts about octopuses encountered a few weeks ago diving at Fly Point (Australia): metazoan.net/130-another-... 184
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 21/02/2026Baz Luhrmann has the right idea. I'm not much of an Elvis person, but looking forward to seeing this. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/m... (gift link) 020
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 10/02/2026Photo from my car window on the way to record episode 1 of the podcast series I'm doing with @meehancrist.bsky.social for the @lrb.co.uk (links below). Mill Valley, California. Highway 1 flooded (November). The series is called "Nature in Crisis." 1/ 180
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 04/02/2026A very fine octopus encountered at Fly Point (Australia) today. Like an old battleship. 1265
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 27/01/202649 degrees Celsius (= 120 F) down in Victoria? Tomorrow evening @meehancrist.bsky.social and I record episode 3 of "Nature in Crisis," a new podcast series with the @lrb.co.uk. Episode 1 looked at Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," and is available now (link in reply). 253
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 24/01/2026It's not AI or additive; just a matter telling the camera what to look for and what to dial back. I am a 'natural light ideologue' - see this blog post. metazoan.net/126-spun-of-... (Below is also an image from another blog post – how an adjustment for 12 meters or so looks at the surface.) 030
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 24/01/2026A passage below in a (good) book I am reading. I recommend against make the bet - your dollar may well be lost. One can photograph reds and oranges underwater without added light; just have to tell the camera to scour its input for the tiny amounts of red coming in, and ramp them up in the mix. 1/ 120
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 22/01/2026But now I don't think that the shell movement was incidental. The 'pause' before the release makes it unlikely. We saw that pause often with very clear gatherings-and-throws in our later data. Here's an excerpt of the video, just with the 'throw.' 3/ 040
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 22/01/2026At the time, I worried that this might have been a case where one octopus blew a water jet at another and happened to project some shells as well. I discussed the case way back, on my blog. metazoan.net/10-a-new-oct... (This case is not used in our 2022 paper on the topic.) 2/ 130
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 19/01/2026A blog post. About cockatoos, grooming, and affection. metazoan.net/127-affection/ 020
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 16/01/2026Each year round this time, Rainbow Lorikeets come in and make a huge fuss round some high tree hollows (where some Galahs raised a family in 'Living On Earth'). They make a stack of noise, rip things up, check it all out... and then leave again. 040
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 11/01/2026A favorite encounter of 2025 – bobcat, Point Reyes (California). Bobcat not lioness, but the image brings to mind the Iranian protestors right now. 081
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 05/01/2026This was the Karl Popper Memorial Lecture at LSE. I'm applying to speech a framework developed with Ben Kerr for understanding tolerance in general, especially in relation to "toleration of the intolerant." onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1... Preprint: petergodfreysmith.com/wp-content/u... 4/ 130
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 05/01/2026In the case of speech and elsewhere, we should understand tolerance using different levels: 1st-order tolerance (or intolerance) is directed at 'ordinary' behaviors; 2nd-order tolerance is tolerance of 1st-order policies, and so on. Different questions arise at each level. 3/ 100
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 05/01/2026Free speech thread: In the aftermath of the Bondi murders, the state govt here is moving, unfortunately, in the direction of suppressing protest and proscribing specific phrases. I gave talks in 2025 about tolerance & free speech. Wrote up the main one: petergodfreysmith.com/wp-content/u... 240
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 30/12/2025In relation to the blog post about lights and camera gear: this is from a recent dive trip. Mine is the diminutive rig at the end (red arrow). (Blog post: Metazoan.net) 020
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 11/12/2025Back in the water with Phyllodesmium poindimiei. A gastropodic marvel. (Fly Point, Australia) 1140
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 27/11/2025A Great Horned Owl, seen in Point Reyes during my recent California trip. Spotted (while quite a bit better hidden than he is here) by Daniel Dietrich. A young one, apparently. Flew off and then sat watching as I scrambled up the hill to get a photo. 1131
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 19/10/2025Driving down the east side of the Sierra Nevadas a few weeks ago. I keep coming back here. 160
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 17/10/2025The title is from a William James letter - "such flexible intensity of life in a form so inaccessible to our sympathy." Classic James. But perhaps not so inaccessible. 2/ 041
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 11/10/2025Australian whale populations – what a pleasure to read this. 15411
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 10/10/2025Weather coming in over Eagle Lake, (California, near Tahoe), last week. 030
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 23/09/2025I will do a thread here soon with a few highlights, or at least ideas that stayed with me, from the Virginia conference. Here is one passage, which contributed the title of Fesmire's talk: 010
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 16/09/2025I'll be talking about Dewey's treatment of "idealism." (Mainly objective idealism.) Will be a commentary by Ram Neta. 110
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 16/09/2025A century in the making - this week's University of Virginia conference on John Dewey's "Experience and Nature" (1925). A majestic, frustrating, (endless) book. Event organized by @cbarzun.bsky.social www.law.virginia.edu/event/sympos... 1/ 1115
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 05/09/2025Later this month I am giving the 2025 Howison Lecture at UC Berkeley. "Evolution and Animal Minds." It will have quite a lot on recent work looking at play and dreams in nonhumans. 1/ 1141
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 30/07/2025One of a quartet of gang-gang cockatoos that came to visit last week. Very uncommon visitors, very welcome. 191
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 17/07/2025As a professor dealing with this right now, I am squarely in the 3rd category below. The destruction of the college essay as a format for thinking, learning, & assessing is awful to see. 2/ 071
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 13/07/2025A Giant Cuttlefish at Cabbage Tree Bay (the "Bower" dive site, Australia) last month. Perfect conditions that day. I wrote a blog post about the encounters: metazoan.net/124-bower-cu... One very relaxed cuttlefish, one very wild one. 0100
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 01/07/2025Summer reading from the radio station KQED (@kqedarts.bsky.social) – *all* of the 'Other Minds' trilogy. www.kqed.org/forum/201010... 020
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 16/06/2025I saw the movie "DJ Ahmet" the other day (part of Sydney Film Festival). An absolute delight. Made by Georgi Unkovski. About a world combining TikTok and techno with arranged marriage [what a blight that practice is], and the call to prayer. Highly recommended if you get the chance. 070
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 10/05/2025For more on how beagles have been treated in US labs, this article - mainly about commercial labs - is shocking. theintercept.com/2018/05/17/i... And also from my book's notes, below is more on those confinement/exercise rules. Plus the first bit of the next (literally) nightmarish example. 3/ 100
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 10/05/2025The beagle lab has just been shut down by Jay Bhattacharya. The lab should never have been there and it's a stain on the NIH's legacy. Credit (and blame) where it's due. 2/ 100
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 10/05/2025In ch.7 of "Living on Earth," I single out US beagle experiments (toxicology especially) as among the worst forms of abuse of animals in science. Some discussion in the main text, more in the notes (see below). I didn't realize then that the NIH itself had a beagle lab on its main campus.. 🧵 1/ 200
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 07/05/2025A photo from my Royce Lectures at Brown (taken by Alison Simmons) that has the outline of all three lectures in the background. Life & Mind; Evolution & Goals; Biology & Idealism. 030
Peter Godfrey-Smith @petergs.bsky.social · 06/05/2025This, however, will be remembered for a long time. 010
