Interview with Ian McGilchrist by Jonathan Rowson

I ran across Mcgilchrist some time ago, I think through these forums (either this one or the previous). Makes sense to me.

If I am right, that the story of the Western world is one of increasing left hemisphere domination, we would not expect insight to be the key note. Instead, we would expect a sort of insouciant optimism, the sleepwalker whistling a happy tune as he ambles towards the abyss.

Ain't that Steve Pinker to a T? :smile:

From the introduction:
"The Master and his Emissary, 'the book that informs the following discussion, is about the profound significance of the fact that the left and right hemispheres of our brains have radically different ‘world views’."

So, another contribution to the field of Mereological Confusion.

Reply to Galuchat You're gonna have to unpack that one for me.

With the Enlightenment came a hardening up of the left-hemisphere point of view. Many of the aims of the Enlightenment were, of course, laudable, and much of what it brought we have to be thankful for. After all, the left hemi- sphere, the emissary of the story from which my book takes its title, is, at its best, the right hemisphere’s – the Master’s – faithful servant. But its problems are those of hubris: believing itself to be the Master, believing that it understands and can control everything, whereas in fact it is ignorant of what the right hemisphere knows. Thus the problem of the Enlightenment was its faith that, as long as we continue to think purely rationally, and prioritise utility, we can understand, and thereby come to control, everything.
With the rise of capitalism and the coming of the Industrial Revolution (both children of the Enlightenment), one sees a further cementing – literally – of the left hemisphere’s vision. The thinking they both involved is instrumental and competitive and they promote a more atomistic and competitive model of society, a more detached and manipulative stance in relation to one another and the world at large, which comes to be seen as just a heap of resources.

Well I was bound to pick out that bit, wasn't I?

There's a lot of brain-talk, scientific experimental hard-talk, directed at that way of thinking itself. A frantic left brain appeal to the left brain to shut the fuck up a minute. At least one of the 'reactions' seemed to take this as a contradiction, which I think is a mistake. One has to talk to the clever dicks in Cleverdish, because they refuse to speak Barbarian. But when not banging on about brains, my overall impression was, "I've been saying and thinking all this since '68 - what took you so long?"

One points out to the instrumentalist that his instrumentalism is disastrous, and he either demands or envisages a better instrument. When the controller is out of control, more control is the wrong answer.

Reply to Galuchat There's a section on the mereological fallacy that might help with the unpacking.

Quoting unenlightened

There's a lot of brain-talk, scientific experimental hard-talk, directed at that way of thinking itself. A frantic left brain appeal to the left brain to shut the fuck up a minute. At least one of the 'reactions' seemed to take this as a contradiction, which I think is a mistake. One has to talk to the clever dicks in Cleverdish, because they refuse to speak Barbarian. But when not banging on about brains, my overall impression was, "I've been saying and thinking all this since '68 - what took you so long?"

Yeah, one of my take-aways was how little the actual science mattered to me as much as the discussion it inspired. Like, you could find out later that there was actually some other causal fact which made the whole two-hemisphere's thing merely appear to be factual and the interview, at least, wouldn't lose all of its value.

However you define and conceive the relationships between, for instance, brain and mind, mind and individual behaviour, and individual behaviour and social and cultural phenomena, the nature of our brains must be implicated in some way and possibly in quite important ways

A non-sequituur if I ever heard one. If you take an instrumentalist view of neurology, then the brain simply has no nature that could even possibly be implicated in those relationships. You already have to buy into some mind=brain ontology in order to find that line of thought convincing, and there are good reasons not to buy into that ontology which I imagine Ghilcrist doesn't even bother discussing in the 350,000 word book that they are discussing.

And if you want an analysis of why things like the financial crash that Ghilcrist mentions happen, you'll find more inciteful analysis in Karl Marx than some modish neurologist.

Quoting ProcastinationTomorrow

A non-sequituur if I ever heard one. If you take an instrumentalist view of neurology, then the brain simply has no nature that could even possibly be implicated in those relationships. You already have to buy into some mind=brain ontology in order to find that line of thought convincing, and there are good reasons not to buy into that ontology which I imagine Ghilcrist doesn't even bother discussing in the 350,000 word book that they are discussing.

Probably not.

What reasons, along that line of thinking, do you find convincing?


Also, while that series of statements is a non sequitur I don't know if he came to the notion that the brain has something to do with mind/behavior/social-phenomena through said statement. It seems like he's got a series of experiments he's performed where he's disabled parts of the brain and then had people try to do various tasks -- so his inference is likely based upon controlled experiments where he has seen behavior change due to meddling with the brain.

That being said I don't disagree that he runs roughshod over mind/brain distinctions, as well as mind/behavior/social-phenomena in the interview. The thing is, in spite of all that, you can just cut the inferential underpinning off and the talk is still interesting.

In a causal-scientific sense I suspect social entities which survive are the sorts of entities which incorporate some mode of self-replication. So bureaucracy favors and creates bureaucracy (and assimilates non-bureaucracy) and survives more-so than other social entities because of this. No reference to brains or minds or even individual actors is used in this line of thinking.

All the same, this sort of distinction between the two hemispheres, as he calls it, or just two modalities of conscious experience, as he also calls it, or two possible social-environmental structures, as he seems to imply, is what's interesting. Especially the notion that they are co-dependent upon one another for the very act of thinking, as well as a structure of experience, to take place -- edit, as well as contradictory to one another while appearing to be seamless on the surface.

Reply to Moliere Well, I still think the arguments of Berkeley - which, as far as I can tell, are simply assumed to have been refuted these days by modern analytic "philosophers" - are pretty compelling reasons, or can at least be moulded into compelling reasons, for thinking that idealism is true, and if idealism is true neurology has to be understood instrumentally. Having said that, there are more recent arguments for Berkelean idealism. @jkg20 mentioned John Foster in another discussion thread. The structure of his main argument is that if realism is true, certain possibilities would obtain for our experience of the world which are not in fact intelligible possibilities - so basically a form of proof by contradiction (although you'd need to dive into some issues about types of possibility to get to the contradiction I think). He get's quite technical (some of what he writes looks like he's constructing a mathematical proof about geometrical space) which is perhaps why he never really made that much of an impact.

I suppose there is some interest/challenge for idealism, however, in the whole Ghilcrist ethos. If idealism is true then the world has certainly for the most part developed in such a way that neurological realism has taken root. There is perhaps some irony in the fact that a neurological realist is now trying to undermine the development of the conditions under which that realism thrives (something unenlightened points out I believe) but a challenge for idealism (and interestingly it was one Berkeley refused to accept) is to explain the hegemony of the assumption of realism. It is perhaps an area where some kind of Marxian analysis of historical development could be brought to bear (I know Marx is often taken to be an historical materialist but I think his ideas are largely neutral on the metaphysics of realism/idealism).

Reply to ProcastinationTomorrow Ah, I didn't realize your objection was primarily one of fundamental ontology from the perspective of idealism.

I guess from the materialist's perspective there are some reasons to infer that the brain and the mind have something to do with one another, though. Things which seem like any idealist should also have to reconcile, and probably could in one way or another, but the basis of inference seems to be that if we change the brain either by moving chunks of it around or removing parts of it, or if we introduce new chemicals to a living brain, or as the brain develops there is a corresponding change in both phenomenology and behavior.

Phenomenology and behavior are thought to be at least parts of or resultant due to the mind.

So to say that the brain has something to do with the mind, and to then infer that there is this physical component involved, isn't to commit very hard on any particular ontology.

Either way, though, I don't think that the research he's expounding on or the point of view from said research is deeply effected by fundamental ontological commitments. Regardless of our views there it seems that one would have to account for the facts, and he just seems to be attempting to do exactly that -- and is dealing mostly with brain/mind correlations and causal inferences from those correlations without coming down hard on some fundamental ontology.

Reply to Moliere Moliere is (par for the course :wink: ) right, I think. Provided that one views any purported causal correlations between mind/brain as causal correlations between observed (and possibly, obervable) events, and not causal correlations between soft chunks of matter and intangible vapours of mind, the ontological issue between realism and idealism is untouched by the neurological research of scientists like Ghilcrist (of course, bearing in mind the Kastrup thread, I have to insist here that "observe" is being used in its usual and strictly phenomenal sense, and not in any sense the word might have as it functions in the spiel of realist QM theorists). This is presumably to take the "instrumentalist" view of neurology that ProcrastinationTomorrow recommends. The idealsim/realism issue would be about whether one can be instrumentalist about neurology without also being a realist about the brain - that is where the jury is really out.
I haven't read the Ghilcrist article that sparked this discussion, so cannot comment on his analysis. However, if he is suggesting that we can analyse societal development in terms of the domination of the right-hemisphere by the left-hemisphere of the brain, then the question would arise as to why the left-hemisphere became dominant, and in responding to that question, perhaps the ontological issues become more signficant. To anyone who has read the interview, or any of the works of Ghilcrist, what response does he have to that question?

Reply to jkg20 The answer is, read his book.

Reply to Wayfarer Too many books to read, too little time in which to read them. Ghilcrist is a long way down on the list - I'm looking for a précis :wink:

Reply to jkg20 Fair enough, I didn’t read it either, but from what I read about it, he is someone I feel an affinity with. That PDF that is linked in the OP ought to suffice.

I totally agree with his fundamental thesis, but I think that perhaps he uses neurology as a kind of stalking horse to make a point which is basically philosophical and historical. If you rationalise it in terms of neurology then it wraps it in the white coat of scientific authority which is the sine qua non for anything to be even considered by the audience he wants to speak to.

A comparison might be made with the lesser-known and much more esoteric Julian Jaynes, who positited the ‘bi-cameras mind’ - that in the ancient world, the brain-mind was not integrated in the way it was later to become, meaning that humans interpreted some of what was arising from the neural circuitry as originating with the Gods or oracles. A different thesis but with some similarities.

Quoting jkg20

Moliere is (par for the course :wink: ) right, I think.

You make me feel embarrassed for myself. lol

Quoting jkg20

Provided that one views any purported causal correlations between mind/brain as causal correlations between observed (and possibly, obervable) events, and not causal correlations between soft chunks of matter and intangible vapours of mind, the ontological issue between realism and idealism is untouched by the neurological research of scientists like Ghilcrist (of course, bearing in mind the Kastrup thread, I have to insist here that "observe" is being used in its usual and strictly phenomenal sense, and not in any sense the word might have as it functions in the spiel of realist QM theorists). This is presumably to take the "instrumentalist" view of neurology that ProcrastinationTomorrow recommends. The idealsim/realism issue would be about whether one can be instrumentalist about neurology without also being a realist about the brain - that is where the jury is really out.
I haven't read the Ghilcrist article that sparked this discussion, so cannot comment on his analysis. However, if he is suggesting that we can analyse societal development in terms of the domination of the right-hemisphere by the left-hemisphere of the brain, then the question would arise as to why the left-hemisphere became dominant, and in responding to that question, perhaps the ontological issues become more signficant. To anyone who has read the interview, or any of the works of Ghilcrist, what response does he have to that question?

Here he gets close to answering your question in responding to his own question that prefaces it, " If I am right that we are living in the West in a culture dominated by the take on the world of the left hemisphere, how did this come about?"

I think its success can be attributed to several things. First, it makes
you powerful, and power is very seductive. Second, it offers very simple
explanations, that are in their own terms convincing, because what
doesn’t fit the plan is simply declared to be meaningless. For example,
to declare talk of ‘consciousness’ a delusion or a linguistic error has
the virtue of simplicity. It may not, however, satisfy the more sceptical
among us, those who are not in thrall to our left hemisphere’s way of
thinking. If what does not fit the model is just discarded we will never
learn, never sophisticate our model of reality, and our understanding
will come to a standstill where it is. Third, the left hemisphere is
also, as I suggest in the book, the Berlusconi of the brain – a political
heavyweight that controls the media. It does the speaking, constructs
the arguments in its own favour. And finally, since the Industrial
Revolution, we have constructed a world around us externally that
is the image of the world the left hemisphere has made internally.
Appeals to the natural world, to the history of a culture, to art, to
the body, and to spirituality, routes that used to lead out of the hall
of mirrors, have been cut off, undercut and ironised out of existence,
and when we look out of the window – we see more of the world
we had created in our minds extended in concrete all around us.

But I don't think these explanations come close to the ontological underpinnings. I think he runs roughshod, just a bit, over such questions -- but mostly because it seems, at least, that they just aren't pertinent to what he's getting at.


I picked up his book some time ago, but it just sits on the shelf. I read this interview wondering if it might be time to read it just because of things I'm thinking about. Now I don't think so, but it was interesting anyways. :D

Reply to Moliere Thanks for the précis! OK, his answer to the question is full of references to non-neurological concepts (power/simplicity etc) - so I guess the question now is why even bother with all the neurological underpinnings if the ultimate explanation one is going to give for sociological phenomena is going to be sociological and not neurological in nature. Anyway, thanks for starting the thread, I learnt something through it.