Prof. Iain McGilchrist GCAS Lecture: "Matter and Consciousness"
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2 December 2021.
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McGilchrist argues that consciousness is ontologically prior to matter and exists throughout the cosmos (panpsychism), with matter serving as a necessary phase of consciousness that provides resistance and structure; the brain's role is to filter and individuate universal consciousness rather than generate it.
- The assumption that brain generates consciousness is logically unfounded—parallel movement doesn't establish causation, and emergence cannot explain consciousness arising from wholly unconscious matter
- Consciousness appears in systems with minimal or no brain tissue (hydranencephalics, plants, single cells, slime molds), suggesting consciousness is fundamental rather than emergent
- Matter provides resistance and permanence essential to creation; consciousness and matter are distinct phases of a unified ontological reality, analogous to water's liquid, solid, and vapor forms
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Slime molds—simple aggregations of cells with no neurons—can solve mazes in the way rats solve mazes, and when a portion of a slime mold that has solved a maze is cut off and tested on the same maze, that portion retains the memory and can solve it again.
“slime molds are quite canny people who experiment with them and grow them in labs have to lock them in for the night because they will frequently escape from their dishes and wander around the lab much more interestingly they can solve mazes uh in in the way that rats can solve mazes and if you cut a piece off a slime mold that has solved a maze and then experiment with the maze the mold will this part of the mold will remember and be able to solve the maize”
Hydranencephaly is a rare condition in which the space above the brain stem is filled with cerebrospinal fluid leaving effectively no brain, yet subjects (about 18 studied) demonstrate consciousness: they recognize people, respond appropriately, have favorite toys, respond to music, and recognize themselves in mirrors (a sign of higher consciousness).
“one can go further there is a condition called hydranine kefir you may have heard of or know of a condition called hydrocephalus in which indeed there is more of the space in the cranium taken up by csf cerebrospinal fluid than is normally the case but i'm not talking about that i'm talking about a condition called hydroanine carefully it's rather rare and what it means is that it's effectively no brain but that the space above the brain stem is taken up with um csf a group of about 18 such subjects have been studied and have been found obviously not to have normal intelligence and understanding but nonetheless to do a remarkable number of things to be able to recognize different people to respond appropriately to them to have favorite toys to respond to music to be able to recognize themselves in a mirror”
The sensitive plant (Mimosa pudica) demonstrates learning and discrimination: its leaves close when touched, but if repeatedly touched without harm, it learns to stop closing to conserve energy. If instead a drop of water is applied, it closes instantly, showing it can discriminate between different stimuli.
“and there is a plant you will probably know mimosa pudica commonly called the sensitive plant that if you touch it the leaves will close up and if you carry on touching it and it finds that nothing much happens to it it will stop closing up because closing up expends energy and if it doesn't have to and it learns it doesn't have to then it will stop doing so”
Plants make sophisticated decisions about when to bloom by taking into account about 15 different factors, not just temperature, demonstrating decision-making capacity in organisms without nervous systems.
“the decision whether or not to bloom at any one time is made by taking into account about 15 different factors not just the temperature of the air”
James Shapiro, a professor of cell biology, states that a single cell is intelligent, and Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist Barbara McClintock noted that organisms seem to know when something is missing and act to rectify it, even without pre-programmed evolutionary pathways for the situation.
“single cells indeed possess intelligence james shapiro a professor of cell biology says the single cell is intelligent and barbara mcclintock who won a nobel prize um for her work in molecular genetics in the 1980s or 90s in her nobel prize acceptance speech commented on the extraordinary fact that organisms seem to know that something is missing or lacking um and act to rectify it without the being as it were a possible pre-programmed pathway because once again sometimes they were subjected to insults or adversities for which there was no um no evolutionary um model”
Denying the existence of consciousness is logically incoherent because consciousness must exist for anything to appear as an illusion, and denying consciousness requires invoking consciousness in the act of denial itself.
“there is no such thing as consciousness being an illusion because it has to be an illusion within some kind of a consciousness that's what we mean by illusion um there has to be something to be eluded uh also it's impossible to make this statement about consciousness not existing without using consciousness and invoking consciousness in your hero”
A young man with a first-class degree in mathematics from Leeds University, an IQ of 126, and normal functioning had almost no brain tissue (only a thin rim of cortex with the interior filled by cerebrospinal fluid), challenging the assumption that consciousness requires intact brain structures.
“there's a famous case described by um i think his name is john lauber um a physician who looked after a young man who had a first in mathematics from leeds university an iq of 126 and functioned entirely normally who had in the words of larva almost no brain it's a bit of an exaggeration he had a thin rim of cortex but most of the space inside his skull was taken up by fluid and the weight of his brain would have been an order of magnitude smaller than most people's”
In an experiment by Monica Gagliano, pea plants starved of light were grown in a Y-shaped structure where light came randomly from either arm. Experimenters caused a puff of air to precede the light from one arm. After three days, plants learned to grow toward the arm where the air puff came, demonstrating they learned a predictive association evolution could not have programmed.
“pea plants were grown in an environment starved of light they obviously need um light in order to thrive and so it's important for them to maximize the occurrence of light when it comes and in this experimental setup a light does in fact come on for periods of time in a y-shaped structure that is over the bed where the plants are growing now it's obviously advantageous for them to grow towards the light however the light comes on at random down one or other of the arms so you'd think that would create an insuperable problem however the experimenters decided um that they would allow the um random the machine that was randomly programmed to send a puff of air down the arm of the tube down which light would come sometime before the light came on and they found that after about three days the plants learned something that they could never have been programmed to know that they should make an effort to grow towards the arm down which the puffer of air came because that was the one down which the light would come”
The Cartesian solution of accepting mind and matter as totally distinct but non-interacting is false because consciousness demonstrably affects the brain (through therapy and placebo) and beliefs can change matter, establishing clear interaction between the two domains.
“we now know very obviously that the con the consciousness can affect the mind things like certain kinds of very simple therapies can change the brain um things like the placebo effect declare to us every day that um the uh that uh physical causes can make changes in the mind um and so and beliefs can change matter so we can't really accept that they don't interact they very obviously do”
Until the 1970s, it was thought that babies had no consciousness and could be operated on without anesthesia; only in the 1980s did the American Medical Association conclude that operating on babies without anesthetic was not good practice, showing how recently we expanded consciousness attribution.
“until the 1970s it was thought that babies had no consciousness and it was perfectly all right to operate on them without an anesthetic in fact i believe it was only in the 1980s that the american medical association said that it was on the whole not good practice to operate on babies and without an anesthetic”
Music provides a perfect example of why holism is essential: a complete list of all notes in a piece (e.g., '75 A-flats, 96 B-flats') contains all the components but none of the music, because music exists entirely in relationships between notes, not in the notes themselves.
“a good analogy of this would be a piece of music a piece of music is made of notes if you analyze it and list all the notes in your notebook well there's been um 75 a flats there have been um 96 b's and so on you won't find the piece of music there even though you've got all the notes because music exists entirely in relationship it's a very good example of what i believe to be in it's a very good matter for the structure of all existence that it exists in relationship”
Indra's net is a concept from Hindu and Buddhist cosmology in which every point in a cosmic net contains a jewel that reflects all other jewels, representing a holographic or fractal structure where the whole is present in each part and relationships are prior.
“i take it back to i know you're a great um um scholar of uh oriental philosophy so i i'm sure you would resonate with the image of indra's net this idea of a net over the cosmos in which at every crossing point in the net there is a little jewel in which every other jewel in the net is reflected so this has the idea of something which is hologramic in in or or fractal in its in its structure which i believe is is mathematically physically and and philosophically um likely to be true about the structure of reality um and the the image of a net immediately helps one to see that it is the threads that give rise to the things the crossing points that stand out when we look at a net we see first of all the crossing points and it's these that attract our attention where this bead is and in which if we look further we see the whole thing actually but it is actually those relationships that are prior to the things coming into being”
Resistance is essential to creation: nothing can exist without resistance, and matter provides this necessary resistance; without resistance, consciousness would have no way to differentiate, create, or endure in specific forms.
“and what does matter add it adds resistance and i argue in the book and again i haven't got time to go into it that resistance is essential to creation that nothing can exist without resistance in fact nothing exists without its opposite”
The context of something is prior to and essential to its nature; once something is taken out of context or paraphrased, it becomes something different. Context is therefore the most important variable overlooked by reductionist philosophy.
“that relationships are prior to relata and there are a number of ways of thinking of this one is the importance of context a thing only is what it is by virtue of the context in which it is once you've taken something out of the context you've changed what it is i started noticing this very early on when i was engaged in the process of analyzing criticizing works of art and literature that once you had paraphrased them and taken the thoughts and the ideas out of the very words in which they were embodied you had something completely different from what you'd started with and context as john dewey great american philosopher said is um the neglect of context is the most important mistake made by philosophers”
The idea that complexity alone generates consciousness is problematic because there is an unbridged epistemological gap between something wholly simple and lacking consciousness and something complex that apparently has consciousness; making something more complex does not logically overcome this gap.
“there is absolutely no reason to suppose that something that doesn't have consciousness within it can be made to produce consciousness just by making it very complex and it's very easy to refer to that and to gloss over the fact that there is an unbridgeable um epistemological gap between the notion of the simple and the complex um in in the sense that the one doesn't have consciousness and the other one apparently does i i don't see how complexity gives rise to this”
Paradigms are slow to be adopted because they threaten our consciousness and what our consciousness has made us believe about reality, creating resistance to fundamental shifts in understanding.
“paradigms are slow to be taken up because they um they threaten our consciousness they threaten what our consciousness has made us believe is the reality out there”
Simple organisms like insects can perform mathematical calculations and act purposefully toward goals they could not have been programmed to achieve by their genes because the particular goals evolution would not have prepared them for are nonetheless pursued.
“we know that can creatures that we would consider really quite lowly such as insects can make simple mathematical calculations um and act purposefully towards ends to which they could not have been programmed by their genes because the particular purposes that are required are not ones that evolution would have prepared them for”
Understanding that one hemisphere is universally less veridical (less able to understand reality, though better at manipulating it) is a philosophical advance: if we can identify the hallmark or imprint of the left hemisphere's view when it misrepresents reality, we can determine when we are being misled.
“i show you that one of the two hemispheres is universally less viridical it's better able to help us manipulate the world but it's less able to understand it now if that's true and if we can see the hallmark the imprint of the left hemisphere what it does to reality when it's the one that is telling us this is what it is like if we can recognize it we know that it is less vertical now that actually is a step forward in philosophy”
Science, reason, imagination, and intuition all complement rather than contradict one another, and in every case including in science and reason itself, the right hemisphere provides better understanding of reality.
“in the second part of the book i could talk about science reason intuition and imagination and the ways in which they help us understand things and in brief i think they're all important and we mustn't do away with any of them and and that they complement one another rather than contradict one another and that indeed in every case including in science and reason it is the right hemisphere that gives us um a better understanding”
William Blake wrote that every bird that cuts the airy way is an immense world of delight closed by your senses five, with the word 'closed' suggesting the senses function as a filter rather than an opening.
“william blake who's a poet for whom i have enormous love and a great respect wrote how do you know but every bird that cuts the airy way is an immense world of delight closed by your senses five that word closed is really interesting isn't it because i suppose most of us would think of the senses as the portals whereby as it were whatever is going on inside is open to something else but that word close is really interesting because it suggests to me the action of something which is like a filter”
The apparent differences between consciousness and matter (consciousness is mobile and can go anywhere, matter is solid and resistant) are not proof they are fundamentally different substances, but rather different phases of a unified ontological reality, analogous to how water exists as liquid, ice, and vapor.
“alternatively and this is the one uh alternative that i would embrace we could entertain the possibility that they're distinct phenomena that reflect different aspects of a nonetheless importantly invisible reality”
The cosmos is characterized by a coincidence of opposites where the one and the many are both needed and both exist as aspects of one and the same existence, not as contradictions to be resolved.
“one of the first things i want to emphasize in that part three of the book is that it is a cosmos in which there is a coincidence of opposites and that the one and the many are both needed and both exist and are aspects of one and the same existence”
Consciousness is ontologically prior to matter because each person directly knows their own experience depends on consciousness but does not know whether their experience of consciousness depends on matter, making consciousness the more fundamental existential fact.
“it is just a matter of observation that i know that my experience of matter depends on consciousness i don't know that my experience of consciousness depends on matter it might do or it might not it remains an open question”
Consciousness is always aboutness—it is always consciousness of something, and this 'aboutness' constitutes what we experience as reality that shows up for us in which we act.
“what strikes me as as critically important as is that another point you make about consciousness you make that consciousness is always about something and it's that aboutness that really concerns me because that aboutness in my way of looking at the world is what we might call reality that is that the the what what we experience through our consciousness is what we think is the world that shows up for us in which we act”
The cosmos is responsive; everything exists in relationship; relationships are prior to the things related; and this responsiveness appears to be fundamental, with the universe engaged in constant dialogue between itself and what it brings into being.
“i believe that the cosmos is again this you just have to take this as my point of view but i think there is a lot of evidence that the cosmos is responsive that whatever exists is responsive that everything exists in relationship in fact in the book i argue that um relationships are prior to relata prior to the things that are related um that everything exists in a relationship and the relationship is always implies a two-way um reverberation or resonance uh between two elements”
The term 'emergence' used in consciousness studies is essentially a 'black box' that says 'I don't know what happened here; perhaps a miracle; something comes out completely different from what went in,' making it scientifically vacuous rather than explanatory.
“there's a lot of hand waving and gesturing towards what's often referred to as emergence but emergency is a sort of black box really it says i don't know what happened here perhaps a miracle and something comes out of the box which looked completely different from anything that went into it”
The right way to flourish is to view the world through the lens of the hemispheric brain theory and recognize that modern society is in serious trouble due to left-hemisphere dominance, with recovery requiring embracing right-hemisphere wisdom.
“my latest book called the the right way to flourish is is to to arg it actually takes up his arguments in in in some more practical context uh it really argues much the same as he does that our our society's in a pretty bad way and that this way of looking at the world through the lens of the biohemispherical brain casts a lot of light and offers us some wisdom about how to proceed forward without making all the mistakes we've made in the past”
Self-consciousness (awareness of awareness, reflexive consciousness) is peculiar to humans and represents an evolutionary development, but it is not the same as consciousness itself; other animals likely have consciousness without self-consciousness.
“the awareness of thoughts and actions is a very special kind because depending on what you mean by action and aristotle define four kinds um only one of which is um the kind of action that we make but plants act darwin himself said that all parts of a plant are constantly engaged in something he called circumnutation with an n which means a constant circling and exploring of the environment their roots are doing it all the time their branches do it as well but the awareness of thoughts and actions is possibly something that is very peculiar to humans i i wouldn't say that um monkeys i i would be very lost in an eye consciousness to a monkey or to a dog but i doubt that it's aware of thoughts or aware of its actions in a self-conscious way there is self-consciousness which is the awareness of awareness it's a reflexive thing which is you know perhaps a blessing perhaps a curse it's a it's a fact about human beings that we have evolved this but it's not the same as awareness”
The cerebellum has four times as many neurons as the cerebrum and is massively self-interconnected with Purkinje cells (among the most complex neurons in the central nervous system), yet it does not sustain consciousness, refuting the hypothesis that consciousness arises from neural complexity.
“the cerebellum is massively self-interconnected and some of the most sophisticated and most massively connected cells in the entire central nervous system purkinje cells exist only in the cerebellum”
Consciousness is both personal and not wholly personal, like islands emerging from the ocean—appearing distinct but being manifestations of the same underlying bedrock—or like outpouchings of a cell where interior cilia appear enclosed but are actually continuous with the whole cytoplasm.
“consciousness is rather like the way in which islands um emerge above the ocean and appear to be separate entities well indeed they are simply different manifestations in different places of the bedrock under the ocean”
The book presents a theory that the two brain hemispheres bring into being two qualitatively different worlds with different qualities and modes of attention, and exploring this difference is central to understanding both consciousness and contemporary culture.
“the main theme of it of course is the main theme of it is about the difference between the two brain hemispheres and how they bring to existence for us two quite different qualities of consciousness the two consciousnesses that have different qualities two different takes on the world”
Descartes himself questioned whether people walking about outside the window might not be just machines covered in hats and coats, suggesting that the inference to other minds or other consciousnesses can be taken to absurd skeptical extremes, but if one truly believes this, one has something like autism spectrum disorder.
“descartes himself and sorry the word i could think of was res cogitans but he himself said if i look out of the window and see people walking about how do i know that they're not just machines covered in cats hats and coats well you can take it that far but i believe that if you do actually think that then you've probably got a something rather like a very severe schizoautistic um condition um which which is um perfectly okay but it it it stops conversation because most of us believe that it's perfectly reasonable to suppose that the people we live amongst and do have inward life”
McGilchrist is skeptical of both the anti-psychiatry movement (which is too dogmatic and causes suffering by discouraging people from beneficial psychiatric treatment) and orthodox psychiatry (which is also dogmatic), advocating instead for integration of therapy, medication, and experiential insight.
“for the record um i'm a critic of most things i'm a skeptic of most things and i'm a critic and skeptic also with the anti-psychiatry movement skeptical as it they may be i'm afraid it's skeptical of many very important things and i think thomas as has done the world and under service i also think that rd lang gave some wonderful insights but also was quite a problematic figure in some ways um so i i i i think that it behooves us to be skeptical of dogma in psychiatry but not skeptical of psychiatry per se”
Philosopher Galen Strawson argues that the denial of consciousness represents an extraordinary failure of human rationality, worse than any religious belief, because it requires demonstrating ignorance of the most basic fact of existence available to each person.
“as the mainstream anglo american analytic philosopher galen strawson writes some philosophers are prepared to deny the existence of consciousness and at this we should stop and wonder i think we should feel very sober and a little afraid at the power of human credulity the capacity of human minds to be gripped by theory by faith for this particular denial is the strangest thing that has ever happened in the whole history of human thought not just the whole history of philosophy”
Lucretius was probably the first to observe that since drugs, brain affections, and epilepsy change the mind, the brain must be dependent on or generative of the mind; this observation inaugurated the materialist assumption still dominant in science.
“it was probably lucretius who first pointed out that there must be some very strong parallel between the brain and the mind he believed in fact that the brain must give rise to mind because he noted that affections of the brain or drugs or epilepsy um changed the mind and he assumed that the mind must be dependent on the brain”
Darwin himself noted that all parts of plants are constantly engaged in circumnutation—a constant circling and exploring of the environment—with roots doing this all the time and branches as well, suggesting purposeful environmental engagement at the plant level.
“darwin himself said that all parts of a plant are constantly engaged in something he called circumnutation with an n which means a constant circling and exploring of the environment their roots are doing it all the time their branches do it as well”
The drive of evolution is not primarily about survival (as creatures become more complex, their survival becomes more precarious), but about increasing complexity, beauty, and responsiveness, suggesting evolution is oriented toward greater consciousness and experiencing.
“that if the business of the complexity and development of life is in the interest of survival it's probably going in the wrong direction because um as creatures develop and become more highly evolved that their survival becomes much more precarious there are some very very ancient and extremely simple organisms called actinobacteria living in the depths of the oceans single examples of which may be as much as a million years old as things become more complex and become large trees they may live for hundreds of years when they become um apes and and humans they don't live that long so um it is clearly the drive is not just about survival but about something else increasing complexity beauty and responsiveness”
Physicists David Merman and Piet Hoot explicitly state that relationships are prior to things, providing scientific support for McGilchrist's relational ontology.
“and i despaired of finding a physicist who would say this but i now find found two physicists who say that um i mean i think a lot of physicists would say this and imply it in their work but i know of two david merman and piet hoot who explicitly state that relationships are prior to things”
Industrial ecology and McGilchrist's hemispheric theory are deeply connected because industrial ecology emphasizes systemic, holistic understanding of energy and material flows, which requires the right-hemisphere view McGilchrist advocates.
“i see this work of the ends as as critical in in many many areas industrial ecology is one in in in which it is one of the ideas is so important is to see things in their entirety uh it's really an outgrowth of some of the the very reductionist ways of looking at a an industrial economy and it it preaches very strongly the need to take a systemic view the right brain view of of the world out there so i i say that yes that that even perhaps more directly than some other fields or sub-disciplines this whole idea of the biohemispherical brain is really very important in understanding uh the the underlying ideas that spawn the the whole field of industrial ecology”
Genetic programming explanations for organism development are 'woefully lacking' and don't stand up rationally or to scientific evidence; organisms respond intelligently to novel situations they could not have been programmed for, suggesting agency beyond genetic determinism.
“i doubt that it's aware of thoughts or aware of its actions in a self-conscious way... the whole idea that we or any kind of living organism is programmed by its genes is something i take apart in chapter 12 of my book um the whole idea that it's all there in some genetic program is woefully lacking and it doesn't stand up either rationally or to any scientific evidence i'm sure you will say well i can't believe that but you know if you'd like to read chapter 12 of my new book the matter with things i think you'll find things there that will make not necessarily convince you i can't convince everybody but should give you some cause for thought”
The modern Western consciousness, as shaped by brain laterality imbalance, exhibits the characteristic thinking patterns of people with right hemisphere brain damage or right hemisphere hypofunctionality: this is a specific, scientifically testable hypothesis about cultural pathology.
“the main theme of it of course is the main theme of it is about the difference between the two brain hemispheres and how they bring to existence for us two quite different qualities of consciousness the two consciousnesses that have different qualities two different takes on the world and i think it's that that you're overall referring to there and because i argue that through the way in which public discourse has evolved in the last couple of hundred years only a certain kind of thinking which is very characteristic of people with right hemisphere brain damage i mean i can be entirely scientific about this when you when you suppress the right hemisphere experimentally when people have strokes in it and when people have conditions psychological conditions in which their right hemisphere is hypofunctional then they start to think in the exactly the sort of ways that we now think as a culture so it's quite a specific hypothesis”
Florian, an M.A. student with a neuroscience background, raises a challenge to McGilchrist: in classical neuroscience, consciousness is understood as awareness of something; how can we say that plant and animal reactions amount to consciousness rather than just conditioning or stimulus-response without inferring intentionality?
“i'm very curious to sort of so if we sort of in a classical neuroscience way of course we would say consciousness is the awareness of something well someone's awareness of something happening right so the difference so so how especially in the examples that you gave with the the plants and the animals how can we say that these reactions um amount to consciousness as opposed to just yeah a type conditioning or or uh sort of reacting to stimulus because because how can we infer that's i think a deep problem always how can we infer uh intentionality maybe and does that even matter for for consciousness as you understand it intentionality and awareness of what's going on”
The threads of a net are prior to the crossing points (beads) that appear to stand out; understanding reality requires recognizing that relationships constitute things, not vice versa, and relationships are what give rise to the crossing points that appear distinct.
“the image of a net immediately helps one to see that it is the threads that give rise to the things the crossing points that stand out when we look at a net we see first of all the crossing points and it's these that attract our attention where this bead is”
The three logically possible relationships between brain and consciousness are: (1) the brain emits consciousness, (2) the brain transmits consciousness, or (3) the brain permits consciousness by individuating and filtering a universal consciousness.
“is that the brain might emit consciousness the the um if you like received wisdom of mainstream science or it could transmit consciousness or a third possibility it could permit consciousness”
Life speeds up the rate of becoming by an incalculable factor; one of the defining features of life versus inanimate matter is that life accelerates the process of becoming and development, whereas inanimate things remain relatively static.
“what is the difference between life and the inanimate i would say two important things that animacy life speeds up enormously in the order of billions-fold the rate of becoming i believe that all things are in the state of becoming that nothing is strictly speaking just being but always in a state of development or flux”
The book addresses fundamental philosophical questions—what is time, space, matter, consciousness, the structure of the world, values, and the sacred—offering a coherent cosmological picture that contrasts with the intellectual simplicity and moral and spiritual bankruptcy of reductionist materialism.
“in the last part of the book i sort of asked questions about you know what is time what is space matter consciousness what is the structure of this world what are values and is the purpose what is the sense of the sacred these are all questions that are important they're sometimes some of them not popular with scientists some of them are popular but nonetheless i believe i have an entirely coherent picture of the cosmos to offer here which is different from the one that's seems to me intellectually enormously simplistic morally and spiritually bankrupt that of reductionist materialism”
McGilchrist's work is relevant to understanding nearly all important areas of human endeavor, from business to environmental policy to education, because the hemispheric imbalance is a universal problem affecting all cultural institutions.
“i see this work of the ends as as critical in in many many areas industrial ecology is one”
Panpsychism or panexperientialism—the view that consciousness exists throughout the cosmos in everything—is endorsed by many mainstream Western philosophers and distinguished physicists including Max Planck and Niels Bohr, and McGilchrist personally embraces this position.
“and this is the view known as pansysm or pan experientialism and uh to cut a very long story short as i say i do apologize for giving very little um explanation of why i reach these conclusions but i simply can have time only to talk about some of my conclusions tonight i do myself embrace a position of panic experientialism that there is inwardness to the cosmos and the consciousness cannot itself be reduced to anything else”
The brain's filtering function is analogous to vocal cords in the voice: air could pass through without vocal cords producing no sound, but resistance from the vocal cords creates individual articulation, similarly the brain's material resistance individualizes and stabilizes consciousness.
“it's rather like my voice without the vocal cords the air could pass from my lungs out through my mouth but there would be no sound there would be no individual me able to speak it's because of the resistance offered by the vocal cords that it comes into being”
The assumption that the brain emits consciousness because brain affections correlate with mental changes is logically groundless, as parallel movement of two things does not establish whether one causes the other, or both are consequences of a third element.
“when two things move in parallel um you don't know whether the one course is the other or the other causes the one or both are themselves the consequence of a third element altogether and equally compatible with the observation that the brain and the mind move so often together”
Many people respond to McGilchrist's work by reporting that it articulated something they already knew but could not express—awakening or validating an intuitive understanding they had been suppressing or dismissing.
“many people respond to what i write by saying somehow you woke up in me something that i knew was there but had been disattending to or deliberately suppressing but which is unarguably true and present and is a you know a deep feeling that i've always had but have had no words to express it and no arguments for it you have given me arguments and facts and a way of understanding it”
McGilchrist's work is 'perhaps the most important person in my life for the last two or three years since I read the master in his emissary' because it has shaped Erinsville's writing, thinking, and teaching, and Erinsville believes it 'will shape the world in some time.'
“you have been a perhaps the most important person in my life for the last two or three years since i read the master in his emissary it has uh shaped my writing my thinking my teaching and um i do believe it will shape the world in some time”
Descartes' problem of res cogitans and res extensa—mind and matter as totally distinct—was his formulation of the mind-body problem, and this remains one of philosophy's central unsolved problems.
“well you could like descartes accept that they exist but that you simply can't see how they could possibly interact they're totally distinct this was his problem of race extensor and and the um uh rey's um mentis”