divided brain
It would be crazy to suppose that our brains were so perfectly constructed that they could understand and make us aware of everything in the universe.
from The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning by Iain McGilchrist
divided brain
The left hemisphere is not in touch with the world. It is demonstrably self-deceiving, and confabulates – makes up a story, when it cannot understand something, and tells it with conviction. Michael Gazzaniga first demonstrated this in split-brain patients. Subsequent research shows that, unlike the right hemisphere, which tends toward self-doubt,
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Using McGilchrist’s terminology: for such an increasingly delusional, left hemisphere dominated mind everything turns into just another inanimate object: be it a beautiful 5000 year old tree, or a rich indigenous culture. Something which stands in the way of getting from point A to point B on the map (or standing in-between the selfish individual a... See more
Meet The Mind-Virus: Wetiko
For active imagination to work, you have to dim the analytical mind, and you have to request it / prime it / coax it.
Further, the right hemisphere’s understanding of knowledge and belief is experiential, not a simple matter of information in the abstract or acquiescing in dogma. It helps us see that ‘belief’ – the root of the word is ‘love’ – is a matter of dis positions, not pro positions, and of unconcealing, not correctness. The word ‘truth’ is cognate with ‘t... See more
Iain McGilchrist • Moving on
One way of looking at the difference would be to say that while the left hemisphere's raison d'être is to narrow things down to a certainty, the right hemisphere's is to open them up into possibility. In life we need both. In fact for practical purposes, narrowing things down to a certainty, so that we can grasp them, is more helpful. But it is als
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certainty as an useful illusion
As Pascal wrote, ‘The ultimate achievement of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it. It is indeed feeble if it can't get as far as understanding that.’
Iain McGilchrist • The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning
I am just as sceptical of the naïve idealist view, espoused by some post-modernists, that reality is all in our heads – we make it all up. For one thing there would be no point in my writing this, since you don't exist to read it. I take it that we bring about a world in consciousness that is partly what is given, and partly what we bring, somethin
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attention is the key
It sees that our understanding has to be participatory , and that the soul and body are not opposed but discernibly different aspects of one reality. It is better at holding together apparently conflicting positions – whereas according to the left hemisphere, nothing can be separate and connected, precisely measurable and intrinsically imprecise, i... See more
Iain McGilchrist • Moving on
Only the left hemisphere encodes tools and machines – you will remember that the purpose of the left hemisphere is to allow us to manipulate the world, not to understand it.