[2] Born in Australia in 1965, Godfrey-Smith received a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, San Diego in 1991 under the supervision of Philip Kitcher.

[4] Godfrey-Smith was the recipient of the Lakatos Award[5] for his 2009 book, Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection which discusses the philosophical foundations of the theory of evolution.

[8] He was an early critic of Covid-19 lockdown measures, beginning with a series of Twitter posts in January 2021.

[9][10][11] In 2016, Godfrey-Smith published the book Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness.

[12] It explores the origin of sentience, consciousness and intelligence in the animal kingdom, specifically how it evolved in cephalopods compared to mammals and birds.