Humphrey spent a lot of time saying that authors like Peter Godfrey-Smith (whose book on octopus sociality and consciousness I have read, and also recommend) are wrong or not particularly serious when they argue that octopus behavior is play, because there are more mundane explanations for play-like behavior. I can’t recall too much detail here because I no longer have Humphrey’s book in my possession. In any case I think if you convinced him octopuses do play he would probably change his mind on octopuses without needing to modify any aspects of the overall theory. He’d just need to concede that the way consciousness developed in warm blooded creatures is not the only way it has developed in evolutionary history.
Humphrey spent a lot of time saying that authors like Peter Godfrey-Smith (whose book on octopus sociality and consciousness I have read, and also recommend) are wrong or not particularly serious when they argue that octopus behavior is play, because there are more mundane explanations for play-like behavior. I can’t recall too much detail here because I no longer have Humphrey’s book in my possession. In any case I think if you convinced him octopuses do play he would probably change his mind on octopuses without needing to modify any aspects of the overall theory. He’d just need to concede that the way consciousness developed in warm blooded creatures is not the only way it has developed in evolutionary history.