The Matter With Things Quotes by Iain McGilchrist


The right hemisphere seems to be involved more with new experience, new events, things, ideas, words, skills or music, or whatever it may be, while they are still fresh, original and unique, and so to speak present, to the mind. The right hemisphere's world is present – or more precisely ‘presences’ to us, as Heidegger puts it. By contrast the left
... See moreIain McGilchrist • The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning
Attention is not just another cognitive function. Attention is how our world comes into being for us. The altered nature of attention can appear to abolish parts of the world, collapse time and space, eviscerate emotion, and render the living inanimate. It is a profoundly moral act.
Iain McGilchrist • The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World
If one had to characterise the difference overall, is something like this. Experience is forever in motion, ramifying and unpredictable. In order for us to know anything at all, that thing must have enduring properties. If all things flow and one can never step into the same river twice– Heraclitus’s phrase is, I believe, a brilliant evocation of t
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