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Do we really see which way the stream of Time doth run?

I suppose it’s easy to understand why we humans judge everything by our own standards: we don’t really trust any other yardstick for comparison. Until relatively recently, we weren’t willing to grant other animals anything even approaching intelligence, and for many of them a grudging recognition of a crude form of consciousness was a benevolent concession. They were alive if they moved of their own volition, but the murky god of instinct ruled their thoughtless actions; they ate, they drank, they mated, and they died in soulless ignorance; they were not like us…

And yet sometimes, like with dogs, they seemed to care; there was something looking out at us from behind their eyes -a knowing appraisal of the world which, in a moment of weakness, we might judge as similar to our own. Of course, it would pale in comparison it to how we would see the world…

And yet, therein lies the problem: animals do very probably see the world differently; they interact with it differently, they face different constraints in it, and entirely different problems confront them. I am constantly reminded of the essay by Thomas Nagel, What it is like to be a bat. Because consciousness is quite obviously a subjective experience for the animal in question, considering its view objectively can never probe it accurately.

Bats are mammals and thus share some metabolic and developmental characteristics with us; if we cannot even enter their reality, how much more difficult would it be to understand the conscious state of an intelligent animal like an octopus with whom we share an ancestor that was a flatworm that lived on the sea floor about 600 million years ago and which had nothing like the neural complexity observed in either of us today? An article that I happened upon addressed just such a conundrum.[i]

There are many obvious differences that separate us from the octopus: it has eight arms, three hearts, and a quite malleable body with no bones. It lives in water, a three-dimensional kingdom where up, down, left, right, forward or backward are all equally accessible. It can camouflage itself, squeeze into tiny holes, its symmetrical array of arms allow it to move with ease in any direction, and with its two eyes positioned on opposite sides of its head, it has a near-total field of vision – so, unlike us, there is no ‘behind’ for an octopus.

The octopus has been the subject of intense scientific research recently, much of which has focused on the creature’s remarkable intelligence. Studies demonstrate exceptional learning, memory, problem-solving and recognition abilities, making octopuses credible candidates for animal sentience. Octopus intelligence is an example of convergent evolution -it shares striking similarities with human intelligence yet the two evolved completely independently from each other.[ii] 

But one thing that intrigued me in the article was a question I had never thought to ask: would something with such a different reality like an octopus have a similarly different conception of Time? Nagel’s question looms large, of course; if we can’t even imagine what it would be like to be a bat, how then could we ever hope to ask that question of an octopus? Humans also have different conceptions of the flow (if it does) of Time. Do we envisage remaining stationary while Time moves through us, or do we assume we move through it? We are, after all, directional creatures -our eyes face forward, and so we most easily move in that direction as opposed to backwards, or even sideways. It may seem like a bit of a reach, but at least in Western thought, it seems to me that our Time metaphors reflect this as well: in most of these cultures, time is usually considered to travel in a single forward direction, much like how our bodies work, with eyes and legs that draw us forward.

You see what I am getting at, I’m sure: these very human constraints do not apply to an octopus in its medium and with its abilities. So if an octopus can conceptualize Time, would it think about it differently than us? ‘There is good reason to believe that an octopus thinks about time. For a start, we can infer that the octopus mentally travels back and forward in time based on observations of how it behaves. ‘Mental time-travel’ refers to the cognitive ability to travel ‘back’ by recalling past experiences or ‘forward’ to simulating future scenarios. Evidence of the octopus mentally travelling back in time are observed when it temporarily avoids returning to the same location of a recently successful hunt. The octopus knows that if a clam was scraped off a particular rock, or a crab pulled from a particular crevasse, another would likely not reappear in the same spot for at least a short period of time, and therefore that location should be avoided.’[iii]

There is also evidence that octopuses can think about the future. ‘A soft-bodied octopus species found in tropical waters of Indonesia, has been observed carrying coconuts halves as it moves along exposed sections of the seafloor. When threatened, this species will assemble the halves in the form of a makeshift shelter to protect itself from attacks.’ So this is an example of tool use, which is a benchmark for cognitive sophistication, but it also suggests that the octopus can mentally ‘travel forward’ to simulate future scenarios, such as the potential for future predation in exposed sections of the seafloor. Of course, this is also very reminiscent of human imaginative ingenuity; it makes me wonder whether imagination plays a similar role in their worldview to what it does in ours.  In other words, an octopus does seem to have an idea of Time, but is it simply a functional thing -a survival thing- or might it include an imaginative tasting of the reality in which it exists?  

If human evolution with its forward-facing eyes usually imagines Time moving in the same forward direction, what would Time be like for an octopus without those constraints? Assuming the alien (to us) intelligence of the octopus can we imagine it even conceiving of an abstraction like Time? Unlike us, it is totally enclosed in an environment through which it can move in any direction with ease. Given the myriad possibilities for it, would Time, if an octopus senses it, have a preferred direction? Would the idea of a movement in Time even occur?

Most species of octopus are quite short-lived (usually around three years in the wild), so perhaps, in a semelparous creature like the octopus (they reproduce only once in their lifetime and die soon after -sometimes before their eggs hatch) even the concept of Time would likely be different than ours -or at least assume a different significance.  For them, Time might be thought of in terms of a container whose boundaries were merely those of existence before creating other selves which it may never see. But would their Time travel toward that?

Time for an octopus might be something in which it was simply immersed, with no preferred direction; Time would merely be that of an enveloping fluid, only drained -or resealed- after death. But, is that really Time?

What would a mental journey in Time actually be for an octopus? As the Christian Saint Augustine is reputed to have said about Time: ‘If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know’.

Perhaps an octopus wouldn’t care…

[i] https://aeon.co/essays/can-the-liquid-motion-of-the-octopus-radicalise-our-ideas-about-time

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid.

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