How Our Brains Model Reality & the True Nature of the World | Iain McGilchrist
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- Опубліковано 12 бер 2023
- In Episode 300 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Dr. Iain McGilchrist. Most people know Dr. McGilchrist for having authored “The Master and His Emissary” a book about what we popularly refer to as “the Divided Brain” and its role in the making of the modern world.
It is Dr. McGilchrist’s view that we have systematically misunderstood the nature of reality, because we have depended on the aspect of our brains that is most adept at manipulating the world in order to bend it to our purposes. It’s the same part of our brains that is most proficient at constructing models or representations of the world and doubling down on them even in the face of falsifying evidence.
In the conversation that follows you will learn how the brain is divided into two hemispheres: the left hemisphere, which is designed to help us apprehend the world and thus manipulate and control it, and the right hemisphere, which is designed to help us comprehend the world - to see it for all that it is in its richness, nuance, and glory.
The problem, according to McGilchrist, is that the very brain mechanisms which succeed in simplifying the world so as to make it more responsive to our ambitions for power and control have become the primary obstacles to our understanding of it. The consequences of this imbalance can be seen all around us in our ecosystems, our systems of government, our economies, and within the fabric of our very own societies. The rise of narcissism, paranoia, our obsession with categories and discrete identities, the rise in depression, the policing of language, and the panopticon of surveillance and control are all symptoms in Iain’s eyes of the tyranny of the left-hemisphere made manifest in the world around us.
The first hour of our conversation is devoted primarily to understanding the physiology of the divided brain and how to recognize each hemisphere’s contribution to the synthesized world-picture that we call reality. In the second hour, which is available to premium subscribers, we examine the various ways in which the dominance of the left-hemisphere is manifesting itself in society, as well as the deeper philosophical questions that have concerned humanity since time immemorial. We look at the ‘stuff’ of which the cosmos is made - time, space, motion, matter, and consciousness, - as well as why we might see it as divine in nature. We also explore its apparent paradoxical nature-a paradox that McGilchrist suggests has generally resulted from the clash between the ways in which the right and left hemispheres construe reality.
This was an absolutely wonderful conversation and despite some of the audio challenges that we dealt with on Demetri’s end of the microphone, we are confident that you will walk away from it with a sense of enlightenment, inspiration, and perhaps, even a new perspective on the world and our place in it.
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas
Episode Recorded on 03/07/2023
#1 podcast on the internet !!!!!!
So so glad I found this.
Please dont stop the great work!
Ive said for a long time that KoKo, the gorilla, taught us that humans made an error in attempting to manage abstract thought with far too little information about abstract thinking.
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I strongly urged DK to interview Iain a year ago. I guess others did as well. Wonderful conversation!
Good stuff
23:10 Try to imagine the left side, right side nerves signals crossing each others paths. Think about the bilateral body that need to be aware of what the other side is doing or feeling. From a subconscious utilitarian perspective - what better way for the sides of the body to be aware of the other, than by having the nerve signs cross each other at a strategic place (corpus callosum )?
As Dr. Solms points out: 'Our consciousness is the inside reflection of our body/brain dealing with itself and the environment it exists within.' I imagine that this internal neural crossover is the key to animal consciousness arising as it does. (Perhaps it primal breakthrough, the foundation of our self-aware human style consciousness.)
thanks
This is one of the best hidden forces episodes so far. Congrats to the team!
What you see depends on your approach. Approach it like a machine (imperial)and you see a machine. You have a brain to which you have direct access. Why not analyze what you have without bias? Start without the bias that a brain is a brain with no variation.
I felt like I was listening to Yoda for a second.
Iain is spelled with an I NOT Ian as poster says...
Is the host of this podcast an A.I. voice?
Yeah, something wrong with that one. I've seen some of the titles of his other videos as well. Poor guy.
Starts at 4:50
I love you, Torbjørn
This makes me wonder about autism. It seems those individuals operate much more out of the left hemisphere, and they seem to have many fewer skills associated with the right hemisphere.
I apologize for having no interest in shaping the world and reality, whether with my brain, or with my heart, or with my whatever. Live and let live. I don't like to be manipulated, influenced, trained and I don't like to do the same with other people either.
The interviewer is too much of a left hemisphere person. Too much organised conversation....