Consciousness, Purpose, and Values - Dr. Iain McGilchrist
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- Опубліковано 22 вер 2022
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In a previous two-hour lecture for TWU, I argued for the nature of consciousness as a foundational element in the cosmos, not derivative from anything else. In this talk, I will not attempt to repeat that argument, but start from where I left off. In a new book, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World (Perspectiva Press, November 2021), I ask how we come to know anything at all, and move on to consider what we can say about the irreducible ‘building blocks’ of reality: time, space, matter, consciousness, values, purpose and the sense of the sacred. I take value and purpose to be implied by the very nature of consciousness itself; constitutive of reality, not ‘invented’ (though obviously particular values and particular purposes may be); that although science is popularly thought to contradict such a view it does not, rightly understood, do so at all; and that reason and evidence strongly supports such a conclusion. I hold that our failure to understand this lies at the heart of our global predicament.
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Dr Iain McGilchrist is a Psychiatrist and Writer, who lives on the Isle of Skye, off the coast of North West Scotland. He is committed to the idea that the mind and brain can be understood only by seeing them in the broadest possible context, that of the whole of our physical and spiritual existence, and of the wider human culture in which they arise - the culture which helps to mould, and in turn is moulded by, our minds and brains. He was formerly a Consultant Psychiatrist of the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley NHS Trust in London, where he was Clinical Director of their southern sector Acute Mental Health Services.
Dr McGilchrist has published original research and contributed chapters to books on a wide range of subjects, as well as original articles in papers and journals, including the British Journal of Psychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry, The Wall Street Journal, The Sunday Telegraph and The Sunday Times. He has taken part in many radio and TV programmes, documentaries, and numerous podcasts, and interviews on UA-cam, among them dialogues with Jordan Peterson, David Fuller of Rebel Wisdom, and philosopher Tim Freke. His books include Against Criticism, The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning, and Ways of Attending. He published his latest book: The Matter With Things, a book of epistemology and metaphysics. You can keep up to date with his work at channelmcgilchrist.com
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The absolutely greatest thinker of our time.
Mcgilchrist's is not just life-changing, but literally, life-saving to me. He's rekindled my desire to seek the sacred. His profound compassion for humanity, is simply beyond comprehension. The fact that as a reader as he is, he's prepared to still, spend his precious time with... well, us mere mortals.
He supplies the "suppressed" ( like he touched in the end), with linguistic armoury, who seek to fight this losing battle of ideologies. We shall aim to at least, familiarise ourselves, to utter some coherence with the new language.
Nietzsche would have been comforted had he known about his "becoming". ; )
The father of modern psychology, William James, is quoted as saying that "religion consists in the belief in an unseen order to the universe, and that our supreme wellbeing comes from aligning ourselves to it".
Thank you for sharing this quote! Timely
A very astute man.
Dr. McGilchrist, thank you for clarifying and explaining what I have been seeing and experiencing for 45 years. You have opened up a world of understanding, and introduced me to a spirituality that will probably save my life. I have your books and will be absorbing them as I do your talks. You have done do much for me, please accept my profound appreciation.
I have heard Gilchrist mentioned in other talks along these lines but I am pleased to finally hear him here. I was able to follow him based on what I know up to this point, until toward the end, which was a little complex. Highly valuable (❤) content. Thank you all!
I wish I had paid more attention to Dr McGilchrist a few months ago .
I loved this thank you
wonderful
Thank you
We scoff at the sacred at the peril of desecrating the world.
What is beauty , if not the power to delight ... ?
There's no purpose if everyone is everybody . And there is no death ..
37:50
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I dont care what people believe about God/Gods on their own, its the ‘collective’ suffering they cause when they impose their dogma on others.
Hard to argue with that. However, the atheistic systems that continually pop-up cause untold pointless suffering without any semblance of compassion or charity. I'll throw my lot in with the Godly types thank you.
@@craigwillms61 great reply!
We all can see where a godless society is going right now where immorality is celebrated and encouraged while morality is being cancelled.
Dogmas are fossilized. To encourage seeing the numinous, the holy, the sacred as both real and worthwhile pursuing is necessary to overcome both utilitarianism and post-modernist nihilism.
@craigwillms61 Either side, taken to its extreme, does great damage. It matters not which.
😷🖤💀
What an intelligent person. By the way does anyone have the answer to the inherent suffering of animals in the natural world in the context of a benevolent Creator?..... to my mind whatever the metaphysical and God is has to reflect the material world somehow or another........ And this world is inherently predatory..... So what does that mean?
Any ideas?
Karma?
The fruit of the knowledge of Good and evil in the garden?
🤷
If God created evolution as a mechanism by which animals adapt without His extensive, frequent intervention, then pain, fear, suffering must be present.
The materialist belief that genes produce diversity through mutation ignores metamorphosis and the megabytes of digitally and non-digitally encoded information in the simplest possible bacteriak organism fails to grasp that neither the complexity seen can arise as parts, nor that living organisms are not things, but process.
Re: the Garden- look at J. Peterson and Pageaus' discussion of this Genesis story for the truth it embodies, not as literal, but as to expose something very important in what God wants humans to grasp about both themselves, and their relationship with Him/Them.
Yet it appears that the brains of mice in the the jaws of a cat, or in pain, release large amounts of pain relieving endorphins.
Many in battle report horrific wounds which they only begin to recognize when a task, like saving a fellow soldier, has been completed.
In NDEs, there is no pain.
C.S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain is very insightful.
Glad he's cleared that one up, maybe answer what was before the big bang next or is God real? Science is great
Another dude from Scotland, - full of wisdom - and the natureal resources of Scotland. When listinening to his lecturing - all about himself and how important he is to this world - make sure you got yourself a bottle of fine Scotch next to. This way - youhave at least one thing in common with him.
He is from England .
It seems as though McGilchrist here is suffering from an extreme case of as yet undiagnosed Stage 4 Platonism. Whether the condition itself is terminal remains to be seen, but, given what I'm hearing here, the prognosis does not look good.
(Edit: I apologize for the length of this rant in advance) I'm not saying Dr. McGilchrist is doing this -- I do genuinely appreciate and am fascinated by his work -- but ever since the Enlightenment, as positivist materialism has become the dominant ontology of natural philosophers and scientists, Christian intellectuals have increasingly felt the need to downplay their faith or cloak it behind more "respectable" worldviews in order to be taken seriously by their colleagues and, increasingly, the wider public. It's why conversations with characters like Jordan Peterson immediately devolve into semantic pat-a-cake when asked the question, "Do you believe in God?"
The closer you get to the modern day, the more layers crypto-Christian philosophers/scientists tend to hide behind when defending their metaphysics. They generally argue for vague propositions, working backwards from their by cherrypicking decontextualized scientific research that's often still in the tentative stage prior to acceptance. In tandem with this, they often make assertions that the scientific establishment has made some fundamental error back in whenever that has led the entire civilization down a dead-end alley; and they don't necessarily shy away from appeals to ooey-gooey, nebulous things of, at best, sketchy epistemological validity, like nostalgia for ancient wisdom, the communally sacred, and the associated ecstatic states that have been lost as a result.
When you really piece together these vague propositions, trimming away the fat and bloated (like this preamble) sophistry, it amounts to -- _drum roll_ -- Platonism... If pressed, however, this Platonism, which is relatively easy to defend in a common-sense sort of way (whether it's true or not is something else entirely) without much recourse to the mystical, will quickly give way to _Neoplatonism,_ which, with the addition of that small prefix, conveniently includes much of the metaphysical plumbing required to bootstrap a Christian ontology. From there, it's only a hop, skip, and a jump to claiming philosophical justification in believing a First Century Jew was the incarnation of the Creator of the universe who came to Earth to serve as a human sacrifice to himself in order to convince himself to forgive mankind.
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Stop looking for purpose and meaning , and breath
exactly. Linear mind is searching for purpose but cant see the paradox of the universe.
Or look for spelling hints.
Beauty=novelty
There are no things. Nothing has intrinsic value or purpose. Truth is just a concept. Belief is imagination. What is, does not depend on belief or thought, so imagination and conceptualisation does not lead one towards what is, but leads one away from it.
Why are you writing this commment then. Do you think you are saying the truth? A true cinic would not even care if someone thought there is purpose to things. He would write a comment to enlinght us with the "truth".
Is what your saying true and why does it matter?
So, if what you are proposing in your comment is true, your comment is meaningles and you wasted your time writing it. Posmodernism is also meaningless and has no value.
So, I ask why are you watching this particular talk then? Are you searching for something of value, something meaningful? Good luck in your quest, all the best.
"Truth is just a concept".
So in your world, if I bash someone over the head with a rock and kill them, when they drag me before a judge can I use that as a defence?
No, consciousness does not "permeate" the universe. Consciousness is a bloom of the earth. You would do well to get off your high horse and check out Joseph Campbell and Christopher Hitchens.
Now he knows where to go.
You think consciousness is only the bloom of the earth? That’s very small minded thinking.
What THE F' are you talking about? The universe may be "orderly" but this talk is a RANDOM MESS!!!
You must be young.
Words aren't 'it'. This guy is totally on the wrong track. His words are nonsensical.
No, consciousness does not "permeate" the universe. Consciousness a bloom of the earth. You would do well to get off your high horse and check out Joseph Campbell and Christopher Hitchens.