Living on Earth: Life, Consciousness and the Making of the Natural World

"Well, yes, but Peter Godfrey-Smith’s book builds up to a discussion of how we should treat other animals in a different way. For Peter Godfrey-Smith, it’s all about the evolutionary story. Briefly: Living on Earth is a book about how human beings have come to have consciousness. But other animals have different levels of ability to sense the world in sophisticated ways, and some have a concept of themselves doing that, or seem to have a concept of that. It’s the third book in a trilogy that he’s spun out of his interest in observing animals—mostly, in the past, aquatic animals. He’s particularly known for his brilliant first book in this area Other Minds , which was a bestseller. That one focused on the minds of octopuses. This is an excellent book too and could easily have made the list. But I think, in the slot on animal minds, Birch’s sentience book is a really important new book by a thinker who will be much better known in the future. Peter Godfrey-Smith is already very well-known and has a serious following. Like Emily Herring, Jonathan Birch has really broken into the public consciousness in 2024."