The Matter With Things

One of McGilchrist’s central points is that our society is one in which we rely on representations of the world as our way of knowing it. Scientific theories expressed in mathematical form, economic models, photographs – all re-present the reality they purport to describe. They are maps, useful maps, but nevertheless just maps. However, we not only treat them as if they faithfully represent the territory, ‘the map, displaces the terrain that is mapped, and is taken for the reality’. So we live ever more in a virtual world, not the real one. Why should this be?

The prism through which McGilchrist explains his ideas is that of the difference between the two sides of the brain. As in his previous and widely acclaimed book, 'The Master and his Emissary', he demonstrates how the two halves perform in distinct though complementary ways. For example, ‘from the left hemisphere’s point of view, imagination […] is a species of lying, from the right hemisphere’s point of view, it is […] necessary for access to the truth’.

McGilchrist’s thesis is that the left hemisphere has come to dominate in our society; he maintains for instance that ‘the left hemisphere is being used largely for paying narrow-beam, sharply focused attention to the world, for the purpose of manipulation’. It is also the hemisphere ‘devoted to re-presentation’, hence our attachment to maps and models of reality. The right hemisphere, by contrast, is characterized by ‘paying open, sustained, vigilant attention to the world, in order to understand and relate to the bigger picture’. It is, therefore, he argues, ‘a more important guide and a more reliable one to the nature of reality’.

His use of language here can seem strange because he writes of the two hemispheres as if they are things with agency. In the Introduction, he clarifies this: ‘I am aware that a hemisphere on its own cannot properly be said to do what only a person can do: 'believe', 'intend', 'decide', 'like' and so on. These and similar formulations should be understood as avoiding the repetition of such cumbersome locutions as 'a person relying on the faculties of the left (or right) hemisphere believes (intends, decides, likes)', etc. You are not your brain; you are a living human being’.

It is also important to note that his development of the two hemisphere theory does not mean that he believes that the brain gives rise to consciousness. On the contrary, like a growing number of contemporary scientists/philosophers, such as Bernardo Kastrup and Federico Faggin, McGilchrist believes that ‘consciousness is prior ontologically to matter’. He discusses three current theories which attempt to explain the relationship between the brain and mind, and quickly dismisses the first – that the brain itself generates consciousness, the theory of ‘emission’. He gives more credence to the alternative theory of ‘transmission’ – the idea that the brain is a kind of radio receiver – but argues at some length for the third theory: ‘I believe that the function of the brain is to create by permission, in other words by acting as a kind of filter’.

In this he is close to Kastrup, who also sees an individual as a being filtering consciousness, but where he explains the process using system theory, McGilchrist’s explanations are in terms of the characteristics of the brain’s two hemispheres. Thus if we choose to rely heavily on our left hemisphere to filter, we are going to have a different consciousness than if we had chosen to rely on the right hemisphere which gives us an understanding of the bigger picture.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/doPtOwGPbT4