Octopuses’ strange way of being

Why do I seem to be “obsessed” with octopuses? Because they are cool animals—they are masters of camouflage and escape, they have eyes similar to ours but can’t see colours, they are smart and so strange in many ways, and above all, if you read The Soul of an Octopus, they are curious and adventurous creatures that like play and get bored easily and can recognise human individuals, and they also have personalities. That’s my short answer. 
Now look at this: 

“The octopus is sometimes said to be a good illustration of the importance of a theoretical movement in psychology known as embodied cognition. […] 1 central idea is that our body itself, rather than our brain, is responsible for some of the “smartness” with which we handle the world.”

That is interesting, because an octopus has about 500 million neurons (look at this table for comparison with other animals), most of which are not in the brain but in the 8 arms. Each of the arms has some independence.

“But the doctrines of the embodied cognition movement do not really fit well with the strangeness of the octopus’s way of being. Defenders of embodied cognition often say that the body’s shape and organization encodes information. But that requires that there be a shape to the body, and an octopus has less of a fixed shape than other animals. The same animal can stand tall on its arm, squeeze through a hole little bigger than its eye, become a streamlined missile, or fold itself to fit into a jar. When advocates of embodied cognition such as Chiel and Beer give examples of how bodies provide resources for intelligent action, they mention the distances between parts of a body (which aid perception) and the locations and angles of joints. The octopus body has none of those things—no fixed distances between parts, no joints, no natural angles. […] In an octopus, the nervous system as a whole is a more relevant object than the brain: it’s not clear where the brain itself begins and ends, and the nervous system runs all through the body. The octopus is suffused with nervousness; the body is not a separate thing that is controlled by the brain or nervous system. 
The octopus, indeed, has a “different embodiment”, but one so unusual that it does not fit any of the standard views in this area. The usual debate is between those who see the brain as an all-powerful CEO and those who emphasize the intelligence stored in the body itself. Both views rely on a distinction between brain-based and body-based knowledge. The octopus lives outside both the usual pictures…” 

Isn’t that so interesting? 
That is from chapter 3 of Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith. 
Whilst The Soul of an Octopus is more personal and poetic, in which Sy Montgomery mentions facts about the species but focuses more on her personal encounters with several octopuses, Other Minds is more scientific and study-based. The books have different approaches: The Soul of an Octopus is about octopuses as individuals, with different personalities and temperaments, memories and feelings, Other Minds focuses on consciousness, subjective experience, and the origins of it all. A lot of the book therefore deals with evolution, the ancestors of today’s animals (especially cephalopods), and theories and studies about the brain, neurons, and animals’ intelligence.  
Other Minds is more neutral (and academic), it doesn’t have the sense of wonder and infectious curiosity that you can find in The Soul of an Octopus. I’m not sure it can be enjoyable to someone who has no interest in octopuses and other cephalopods. But if you like them or have an interest in consciousness in animals, check it out.