Ian McGilchrist, Part 1: Right-Brain Thinking

Music

Hello and welcome to the Coating the Guru.

So, podcast, we're an anthropologist and a psychologist.

Listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer.

And we try to understand what they're talking about.

On that brown on the psychologist,

resident in Australia, with me is Chris Kavanaugh,

the anthropologist, slash psychologist,

as he always likes to point out,

resident in Japan, though not Japanese, is he,

which he also likes to point out.

I'm not sure you are.

Yeah, now.

Yes, that's right.

I like to think of you as the left hemisphere to my right hemisphere.

Oh, the emissary to the master.

Oh, you, listen to this.

As you will shortly find out,

that was a definite ding.

It's not, it is not good to be the left hemisphere.

There's two, two parts of the brain,

two major hemispheres.

They're each important in their own way.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, just fine.

That's, you know, a little bit better.

But we'll, we'll fly that.

Why am I invoking you even talking about hemispheres?

Yeah, exactly.

What brought that up?

Well, why don't you tell people Chris?

Well, we are looking today at someone that's actually been

requested quite a long time.

But I have to say, I wasn't particularly familiar with this

output until we did the research for this episode.

I knew who he is.

But I, I hadn't spent that much time with stuff.

And his name is Ian McGillcrest.

He is a British psychiatrist philosopher and neuroscientist

amongst many other things.

He's most well known for a book he wrote in 2009 called

The Master and His Emissary, the divided brain and the making

of the Western world.

He's more recently published a book called The Matter with

things.

Yeah.

Oh, and also he's had various fellowships of prestigious

colleges in Oxford.

He was at also's college.

He was at Green Templeton, which was my old college mat.

And he's not the dean or the kind of headhunt show of

Ralston College in America, which is one of these like, you

know, quasi anti-walk universities, tapping even

police Jordan Peterson, I believe who's currently, you

know, in disposed.

Oh, yeah.

Well, that would make sense.

That would make sense.

There's a lot of correspondences with Jordan Peterson.

And yeah, he's had a long and storied career.

Unlike E. Chris, I knew absolutely nothing about him until we

did our research for this.

Now I know a lot.

Well, more than I expected to talk about it.

Yeah.

And so people had recommended to read his book before.

So I had come across, you know, his general thesis.

And I know that he is regarded a little bit like an earlier

career, Jordan Peterson.

You know, where Jordan Peterson was often presented that, well,

he might, you know, his culture worth it.

You might not agree with it, but you've got to respect his

level of knowledge about psychology and world religions.

So, I mean, the book, Immigilcrist, is often invoked very

similarly that, you know, you might not agree with all his

texts, but boy does he know his neuroanademy and neuroscience

research.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And widely considered a very deep thinker about the nature of

culture, religion, society, philosophy, all that stuff.

Lordhead.

Yeah, Lordhead.

Lordhead.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, very much so.

It is very hard to find a critical word to be said about.

He's, his background is kind of interesting because it seems,

early on, it seems to be almost entirely in the humanities.

So, you know, he, you know, he, you know,

a bunch of English literature, scholarships and things,

and then he taught in this literature, I think, and then sort

of, you know, moved more into philosophy and psychology and

then even in psychiatry.

It doesn't seem to, you know, he's published in things like

essays and criticism or, you know, language and history type

journals or stuff about Shakespeare, but he does have a couple

of papers to do with psychiatry.

Yes.

And, um, yeah.

So, you know, I kind of, um, yeah.

A storied career.

I mean, he had a period, right, working as a psychiatrist,

and I think eventually sent him to consultant psychiatrist

at a hospital in London.

So, like he has had a partial career as a psychiatrist,

a career as a literary scholar or philosopher, and also,

Naui, a sort of popular writer, kind of philosopher,

phylogian, the writer of popular books.

So, yeah.

So, okay.

But, as he said, Chris, he's, um, his mind claims to find

a way to revolve around his writing, not surprisingly.

Um, these, the big books with the ideas in them.

And, um, yeah, looking around at the various, um, interviews

that exist on YouTube, and there are quite a few of them.

Um, he's mostly talking about themes, essentially connecting

the howl brains work with how we construct the world and see

the world and establish meaning in everything.

The implications that has for society and human flourishing.

So, very much, big ideas, big thinking.

He's been seen in the company of SenseMakers.

You just pointed that out to me before.

Often, it was often seen.

Yes, in leather-bound chairs in very beautiful rooms.

Wood paneled rooms.

Yes, I think his natural habitat is leather,

fine chairs, and wood panel dining halls.

That seems to have converted dining halls maybe.

That's, that's the way it is.

And, you know, very much to me, Matt, he is the quintessential

image of a Oxford professor.

If you like, you know, he's got a big beard.

He sits back on chairs and he issues profiling thoughts about a variety of

topics.

Yes.

He's a man who looks very comfortable in tweed and, uh,

very, very serious as he gazes across the walls on his property

in Scotland.

That kind of thing.

Well, he's on the Alice guy though, but yes, um,

the, the more it's like on the me and lamp, I thought I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Are they, are they maybe murs?

It's just like a topographical description like Mark Dins.

Is that the way they work?

I did.

I definitely saw a photo of his head.

Okay.

He's on the he's.

And it could have been on the me and on the could have been on the

night.

We don't know.

You can't locate it.

But he's that he looks at home there.

He does.

He does.

That's fair to say.

So yeah, I think it's also fair to say that the content we're

covering today is pretty representative.

Um, and I think, uh, you know, we're following our format, which is

we do a deep dive into, you know, a single, um, long form unit.

And, um, tell us all about that, Ben.

Chris.

A single long form piece of content.

And in this case, it's an interview with Cosmic Skeptic, Alex O'Connor.

And I chose an episode that is from a year ago.

I was a relatively recently.

It is about a topic that he often talks about.

The title is Why Evolution Give You 2 Breins.

And the thumbnail says you are not a machine.

But this is actually written after his more recent book has been

published.

Showies incorporating ideas from the matter of things as well as

the master and the MSRE.

Right.

So.

That's why I thought it's good.

Alex O'Connor is associated with previously veganism.

But also, if he is, and like, you know, a kind of critical look at

theology in this, he studied theology at a, at master's level.

But it's fair to say that he's become more recently a channel that

likes to have conversations with sense-mickery type people.

Right.

You will have on Jonathan Pajot or Jordan Peterson.

But have like, nearly conversations about their philosophical

understandings or so on.

I think we covered him before whenever he was moderating

that to be at the between Jordan Peterson and Richard Dawkins

that you may recall.

It comes up in this conversation as well.

But, um, yeah.

So that's Alex O'Connor.

I know her, like, much younger guy, but also somebody that gives

the quick, essential Oxford graduate, postgraduate, vibe of

item.

Like, theologian, postgraduate vibe.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

So, ladies and-cris, how does this conversation start?

Well, yeah.

I'll, I'll, I'll ease us into things.

So, you know, it starts off with Alex and Ian Artlining, you know,

the, the general contours of the conversation.

Ian McGilgross, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much, Alex.

Delighted to be here.

Why is the brain separated into two physical hemispheres?

It's a basic and very good and important question.

Um, and it's not really discussed very much, but we know that all

the brains that we've ever looked at are divided in this way.

So it's not a human thing only.

That's the start, Math.

Okay.

So you did, they're get, you know, the kind of, I mean, they don't

talk about this a lot, Math.

You won't hear their sales or, right?

But it is a very important question.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So I probably should warn people that there's a lot of discussion

of the brain, bits of the brain, connections in the brain, what the brain does.

Correct.

Where it does it in this.

And I'll, I'll just mention for people who may not know that I did

teach neuroscience for quite some years, neuroanatomy and things

like that in the psychology department.

I always found it very difficult to remember.

Mm-hmm.

Would I be wrong in saying Math that you also did your PhD on things

related to neuroanatomy?

Well, that would be approximately correct.

I did do my PhD on analysis of the EEG, in particular I was focusing on the primary

motor cortex, which is the, the little bit of the brain, it's like a strip that runs

over the top of your head, which is kind of the immediate control signal for sending

information out to, you know, move your fingers, move different parts of your body.

You know, there are other parts of the brain, obviously involved in motor functions,

but they sort of lead into the primary motor cortex, which then goes out basically

towards actual motor control.

So, yeah, yeah, my background, I do have a bit of a background in this, but there are

a lot of parts of the brain and my memory is not all that great.

So I actually did brush up a fair bit on this because he, he does make a fair

few claims about the brain and, yes, he does.

It, it, it did inspire me to go and just do some checking and refresh my memory.

So I guess what we could summarize that as, you know, I want to put words in your

mouth, but you've taught neuroanatomy and neuroscience at the university level for,

you know, six years or so, and you've got a PhD, which is based on analysis of brain

regions and, you know, exploring things and that kind of thing.

Whereas, Emicil Krist, despite having a very storied career and, you know,

covered a lot of topics, I don't believe he's actually taught neuroanatomy at any

point at university.

No, I think so.

Just saying, I'm just, just saying, just fucking that out.

That's all.

So before we get the emails, saying check yourself, my is qualified to offer

opinions on some of the claims, me, I'm less so, but I did my two

diligence as well around various of the claims, me, but we'll get into that.

So anyway, the freemium, not the start, my, you got any issue in general,

brains are split into two, two, your hemispheres, including non-human brains.

Is that right?

Yeah, yeah.

So it is true that the very macro organization is hemispheric, at least in terms of the

cortex, there's a bunch of other regions inside the deeper in that are not necessarily

like that.

And I think the framing here is useful for him because he, you know, it sort of frames

a bit of a mystery.

Why is the brain, well, what does it have this symmetrical organization in the cortex

at all?

And what if it's asymmetrical?

What if different things are happening, the some sort of specialization happening in

different hemispheres and, you know, to a degree that is certainly true as well?

Can I just re-is a kind of stupid point, Matt, you know, just, you know, just

hear me out, just some thoughts here.

But like humans also are bilaterally organized in general, right?

Like we have two arms, two legs, two eyes.

Yeah.

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theorists and we've got two arms or two legs. Exactly. It is a good question. You know, you could say,

like, why do humans have two arms? It's a reasonable question. Like, why are insects organized in the

way they are around forks and abdomens and so on? And there is answers to those, right? I'm just

pointy-night. As he says, it's a good question to ask, but not the only thing split down the

metal in humans. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's pretty well understood that the sort of

developmental pathways, you know, interaction between genetics and actual embryonic development

and so on, but, you know, through the like, nodal signaling and things like that, that, that,

you know, leads to the creation of symmetries and also asymmetries throughout the body,

throughout development. And so in a very broad macro level, obviously, you do have two hemispheres,

as well as a bunch of other macro organizing principles. And you've got a sort of mix,

like in the rest of the body, of symmetries and asymmetries, right? There are some things that

happen on both sides and there are some things that specialize in one. And the two hemispheres

are obviously connected mainly. I think most people have heard of the corpus callosa, which is a thick

bundle of white fibers that connect the two hemispheres. And it's responsible for, I think, upwards of

90% of the communication that happens between the brains. And there is a lot of interconnectivity

between the two hemispheres. But there are other connections as well.

Well, get that, Matt. Don't get ahead of your skis. I know you neuro-emothermic geeks like

they talk a lot about all these funny neoms and whatnot, but all right. So we've got a,

a little bridge between the two hemispheres of the brain. And we acknowledge that, you know,

there's different stuff occurring as well as maybe things which are more network. But we'll hear

about that. So let's continue. Because one thing is that maybe people have heard some myths about

left and right brains. And it's good to address them up from. And I suppose the first thing I have to

say is that most people who don't know about the recent developments and particularly about my

work on hemispheres think that they've heard it longer ago was

exploded. It was a miss, a popular piece of psychology that had no basis in fact. And this is

sort of slightly right and mainly very, very wrong. The slight bit of right is that the

questions were good. Why are the hemispheres separated? How are they different? It's just that we

didn't get the right answers at the time. And when people start asking questions in science,

they didn't expect to find the right answers immediately. They expect to have to do further

thought, further gathering of data and to be able to come up with something that actually does

fit the realities. And the answer is, if you like, to cut to the chase, that all creatures in order

to survive have to do a remarkable feat, which is to pay attention to something that they need to get.

And at the same time, look out so that they're not themselves got. And for this, you need two types

of attention. And these types of attention are so different that they require neuronal masses,

each of which can sustain conscious attention independently. There we go. So the original

like idea about left and right-brain people, you know, that right-brain people are artistic and

the left-brain people are kind of scientific and buff-married. That is mostly a myth, but actually

it is speaking to the existence of actual differences that might be important. And here he

posits that's connected to like different attentional processes. Fair summary?

Well, no, no it's not. I don't think. But by me? No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Sorry, him. No, I think

his summary of attention there is not a fair reflection of what the current understanding is.

He basically is saying there's two kinds of attention, right? One, and you know, there's an

evolutionary basis. One is kind of broad, vigilant and contextual. And he says that's all happening

in the right hemisphere. At the same time, it's kind of an independent functioning type of attention

happening in the left hemisphere, which is narrow and targeted like a spotlight and much more

a positive end. He says they're so different that they require separate neuronal masses, right?

Yes. Now it's some that is very, very sweeping and completely out of step with mainstream

models of attention. So modern attention models, Chris. You know, it's a current era of research.

So I'm not saying this is the final story or the round other views, but you tend to break stuff

down to alerting, orienting and executive control, right? So so there are, you know, I think, you know,

keeping an eye out. So, you know, there's some similarities with what he said. There's the stuff

that you notice something that brings it, it brings it to your awareness or the further processing

orientation towards it and then sort of interaction or responses. And actually the main, like the

main framework that actually have traction that are actually supported by a lot of empirical

evidence now is not about left and right hemisphere is it's about a dorsal attention network,

right? Which is dorsal means over the top, right? No. Like a fin?

Like a fin. Yeah, yeah, just think fin of a dolphin. And that's that more sort of goal,

directed selection, right? So that's you giving your attention to something that you initiate,

right? That you're focused on. And then a ventral route, right? Which is more towards the bottom

and the sides, which is more like reactive, I guess, and reorienting, right? So so that doesn't really

fit. But that's in the wrong dimensions. Yes, that's like backwards and upwards, not left and right.

You've just exploded a whole lot of attention. That's right. A photo of the brain is three-dimensional

and you can go in, you can go deeper and out, or you can go to the sides and go to the top.

There's a whole bunch of stuff going on. And look in a nutshell, like I don't want to give you

a lecture or anything Chris, but you know, the way that researchers think about attention

is not like a left brain doing this and a right brain doing that. It's more about

there being distributed networks that recruit or incorporate multiple different nodes.

And these have scary names like, you know, the interperiote or sulcus and the ventral frontal

cortex, the anterior singular things like that. And those nodes are distributed in different places,

right? And so that dorsal ventral mapping is a pretty a pretty coarse one. But you know,

if you had to make a sort of a simple kind of flow chart thing, you'd go that way. But it's

it doesn't map it all really to his left brain, right brain thing. Like the ventral

detection network is a bit right lateralized, like it is a bit more of a right brain,

or you know, right side of the brain, you know, emphasis there. But importantly,

it's not like a whole picture. It's not that the right side of the ventral attention network

gives you the whole broad scale kind of gestaltor and like that. It's more of a reorienting

net function. Yeah. And the and the dorsal system, which is more voluntary and more kind of

a matter of your own will, that absolutely involves both hemispheres. So it's not, it's not

lateralized at all. Okay. We're already introducing fact checks. But that's all right. But maybe he'll

address some of that. So he was cautioning against the previous view, right, which might have

provided some insights, but was wrong. And he does explain that fellow. He used to be said that one

did reason and language and the other did pictures and emotions and so on. But all that is wrong.

We know that both hemispheres are involved in everything. But that doesn't mean that there's

nothing there. That doesn't mean we've met a dead end. It's that we were asking the question in

a slightly wrong way, which with what do they do these hemispheres as though they were machines.

It's the question you ask of a machine. And in fact, they're part of a person. And there's

important question to ask about anything to do with living beings and human beings is how,

in what way, with what reason, with what purpose are we doing, what we're doing, why are we

attending and in what way are we attending? So there is a clear thing that I'm not, you know, he's saying

they're both hemispheres are involved in everything. So our questions are up. So he is adding in

a disclaimer there that like ultimately we've got to talk about humans as unified units, right?

They're the brilliance are left and right operating within a single organism. So it would be wrong

to, you know, assign them purely to one side of the brain or the other because everybody has

a left and right hemisphere, right? Barring some caraval accident.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, he's right in that both hemispheres are involved with everything.

But, you know, I guess there's a, there's an unfalseifiable framework that he's setting up here.

On one hand, he goes on. Maybe you have the clip, but he talks about how the two halves of the brain

and their vastly different types of attention are sustaining essentially two versions of reality,

right? Let me, let me play that for you. Yes, you are correct. One of them is going to pay very

targeted attention, very narrow beam attention to something that it wants to get that it knows is

important, usually food or eventually something like a trick to build a nest or in, in apes,

get something to use as a tool. And that is the left hemisphere's attention. NARO,

fragmentary piecemeal attention. But at the same time, the brain has to be able to look out for

predators, but also for kin, for your, your mate, your offspring and so on, so that while you're busy

in surviving by getting stuff to eat, you're also looking out for the whole picture. And that is

evolved in the right hemisphere. And so effectively, the right hemisphere is looking out for everything

else, for the big picture of the world, while the left hemisphere is concentrating on a detail

that it already knows at once. And this has important consequences because the way we attend

to things changes what it is we find there. Yeah, so Stanisius Chris, Stanisius there.

Firstly, remember what I talked about earlier, which is that the way he's characterizing it as a

purely left brain thing and a right brain thing is not accurate, at least according to science.

But the second issue is like a logical contradiction there, like he's having his cake and eating it too,

right? And when Andy's saying he's got these two halves of the brain that are basically encompassing

different versions of reality and notice the left-hand side there, he not only says it's more

directed and more focused, but also that it's fragmentary and superficial somehow. And he

peace me, that's right. Whereas the right side of the brain, which as I said, the research

shows it's more about, you know, any specialization there is more about reorienting. But for him,

it's more of a deeper gestalt connecting more deeply with the fabric of reality. Now he says on

one hand that they are doing that, but then he also says that we know that both hemispheres are

involved in everything. So there's an obvious tension there, like if both hemispheres are involved

in everything, then in what sense do they sustain two different versions of reality? I don't see a way in

which it's not, it's an unfolds it like whatever he's doing, whatever his framework looks like,

it sounds like he could fit anything and it's kind of immune to criticism because he's doing it

both ways. Well, I have two clips that speak of that. So the first is to sharpen that point you're

making about, like it does sound like he's suggesting one hemisphere is better than the other. And if

you didn't get that from the clip that we just played, maybe this one will make it a little bit

clearer. And so in the left hemisphere, there is a build up of a phenomenological world, which is

composed rather of discrete fragmentary pieces that are decontextualized, static so that they can

be easily frozen and picked up rapidly and effectively inanimous. And everything that it understands

is clear, explicit, cut and dried, it's a seed, it's a rabbit, it's whatever, it's my lunch, I need to

get it. Whereas the right hemisphere is very much more subtle, it's looking out for everything else,

it sees that nothing is ever ultimately completely devoid of connections with everything,

really, everything else. That things are always in motion, they're never actually finally static,

that they're also never wholly certain that they may carry a certain degree of conviction,

but they're not black and white and cut and dried and the way the left hemisphere makes them,

the left hemisphere really understands what's explicit and the right hemisphere understands

what is implicit. And that's a very big thing because all things that really matter to us most

need in a way to remain implicit because they're reduced by the process of bringing them into

prosaic everyday language. And in fact, this is an animate world. So, again, if I'm my paraphore

it sounds very much like the left hemisphere useful, maybe for, you know, finding food or

identifying tables and chairs. Fundamentally, it misunderstands the nature of the world because

we occupy a world where things are interconnected and there's animacy and the left hemisphere doesn't

really get this. The right hemisphere is understanding implicit connections and so on, so like,

it does very much sound like the left hemisphere, why it might be necessary, it's not as good

as the right hemisphere, right, in this framing. Yeah, yeah, and in this framing, he's already

beginning to move into kind of, I don't know, kind of metaphysical language, which is becoming

increasingly disconnected from what evidence exists about lateralization or modularity and

specialization in the brain. And just it simply doesn't really conform to the sort of archetypes

that he's drawing for the left and right hemisphere. I mean, he describes the left hemisphere as kind of,

you know, this narrow procedural, superficial processing and the right hemisphere is, you know,

broad and, you know, notices the implications and so on. And, you know, there are grains of truth

in a lot of these things, but there is also a huge number of disconfirming examples, like examples

of specialization that absolutely is runs contrary to that kind of division. Well, let's, again,

provide more illustrations from this. So he talks about language, kind of metaphorically, but then

let's hear a little bit about the hemispheres and, you know, how languages produced. I mean,

one pairing would be the left hemisphere is in a way only aware or only interested in what can be made

unambiguous and explicit, whereas the right hemisphere is capable of sustaining things that are on

the surface of them, of them, perhaps opposite, but that coexist and need one another. And I,

perhaps at the same time in different ways present in the situation, it's also much better with

understanding the implicit. So there was some truth in what you just said, but let me try and

separate it out. So as I said, the difficult way we used to think was about what they were doing,

so reason, language, pictures, emotions. But in each of those cases, I can very clearly

explain that, for example, language, some of it is very much a part of the left hemisphere.

And what is very, very largely true is that speech, the articulation of speech is in almost

everybody in the left hemisphere. But that's not the whole of language. And the most important part

of understanding language actually is supplied by the right hemisphere. So the left hemisphere is a

little bit like a computer that's been given the Oxfording Distinctionary and a book of rules

of syntax, and it's trying to decode the message. Whereas the right hemisphere, the meaning of this

is something that is not being stated, that is quite different. So left hemisphere is important for

language, but it's like a dictionary and grammar rule book, right? So it's working in that

respect, like important for producing speech, but it's not really doing the most important thing,

which, you know, with language and words, understanding the connections, the implications,

the emotional tone of what people are saying, and what they might be trying to communicate.

If you just have a dictionary, right, with no living understanding of a language, you won't get

that far. So what about that, Matt? There, you're having at least acknowledgement that the speech

and language is across both hemispheres, but the right side's role is presented as perhaps the

deeper component of the language system. Yeah, I mean, there's some truth in what he says in terms

of where things are localized. So obviously, there's so many ways in which the brain is modular,

and the lateralization is probably, in my opinion, one of the least important ways.

Language in particular is quite modular in the sense that we've got specialized regions that do

different things. So you have, for instance, Brokeus area and other areas sort of in the interior

front area on the left, which is true. It's more to do with speech production and aspects of syntax.

Then you've got Wernex area, right, which is the posterior temporal area, and that's important for

language. Right, or left. Right, or left. Right, or left. Thank you. Left, left. Thank you.

And then again, on the left, you got the visual word form area, which is the other big one they

sort of teach students about, which is, you know, seems to be important for like reading and things

like that. So hence the name. So, you know, in terms of where the important regions are specialized

a bit on the right, you know, there's some truth in that in terms of like picking up on metaphor

and broader context and sort of prosody and things like that, that seems to incorporate some

areas on the right. But the more, the more correct way to describe what's going on is that we've

got as a strongly left lateralized core language network. Yeah, network of, yeah.

Well, I never have a network of modules. And that's taking care of a lot of core language

features both in production and in understanding. But you know, there's some areas on the right that

are kind of performing are sort of a support role in terms of incorporating context and stuff

like that. But yeah, there's obviously a lot of intercommunication between all of these regions

and including across the hemisphere. So there is no way for any of it to work really, I think,

unless they're all cooperating with each other. Yeah. So, yeah. But that, that sounds like, you know,

at least broadly, the distinctions are mapping onto the kind of hemispheres as he describes,

right? There. Yes, but importantly, it's not the hemispheres in general, of course, right?

It's particular modules that happen to be, you know, local, or localized on the left or the right

in some cases. Yes, but I think, you know, he would respond, yes, but it's on the left.

Right. But I think where he's wrong is that correct me for a monk, but he presented it as

like understanding is on the right and production is on the left.

Well, yes, deeper understanding is on the right. So, yes, but I don't think that's, I don't think

that's accurate, right? Because on the left, you have, you know, a lexical and semantic

processing going on, right? So, in other words, understanding meaning is also happening on the left.

Well, you know, I can imagine his response to this would be, well, yes, there's lots of things going

on in both sides, right? But that can't be the point that you meet that, yes, you can always

then just say, well, I'm not saying the left isn't involved in any of that, right? And actually,

Alex chimes in at a point during this to kind of make that distinction clear. And it's interesting

how he responds. So here's Alex trying to clarify the distinction being the end.

So, you've given a sort of sketch of what the different hampers fears do. And I know it's quite

tricky to pin it down exactly. And like you say, they're both involved in everything.

But if you have to sum up, you say that it used to be the case that people would think, left brain is

like, I don't know, reason, rationality, you know, language, maybe. And the right brain is like,

art, music, poetry. And that's misleading. I, it seems like you're saying, could you give us maybe

three better words on each side of the brain to try to approximate what it is that these,

these hampers fears are responsible for? Okay. So I think that's a good question. Tying up, you're not

making this simplistic distinction of the like previous era. So what is the distinguishing

feature of your approach? And here it says answer. In fact, if you wanted to make another difference

between the left and right that is global, the left hemisphere's whole

resolution that if you like, is to try to narrow down to a certainty. Whereas the

resolution that through the right hemisphere is to open up to a possibility. So it's always saying

yes, but it might not be that. Ramachandra calls the right hemisphere the devil's advocate because

it's, it's seeing other possibilities here. So so that's true of language. It's true reason,

too. So some kinds of reasoning are better done by the left hemisphere. But when you get beyond

the carrying out of wrote procedures, often the right hemisphere is better able to understand the

meaning of a calculation. So the left hemisphere is better at times tables partly because they're all

recited and ingested in that way in childhood. And it follows rules and procedures. It's very good

at that. It is in fact a bureaucrat. It was appointed as the emissary, you know, the one that would go

about and be a high functioning bureaucrat for the master. The master is the one that sees the whole

picture. So you've got a high functioning bureaucrat that can memorize the time tables. But on the

other hand, you have a subtle, you know, master who's able to appreciate different approaches to

way up and play devil's advocate and look at things from different perspectives and so on. So

I mean, the very, the very clear implication is that the the right hemisphere is the one which is

the most important when it comes to your understanding the subtle nature of the war,

social interaction and so on. Yeah, I mean, the issue with responding to that is that it doesn't

map on to any of the neuroanademy that I know, right? Like it's like simply the sort of the the

way in which cognitive functions are described and their localization in networks in the brain

just doesn't correspond to this two hemisphere framework that he has. So like if you take the

example of like he's like, so now we're sort of talking about higher order things, you know,

reflecting and considering and decision making and seeing other alternatives. So he's talking about

higher order functioning, right? So really he should be talking about the prefrontal cortex,

right? That should be that should be featuring in this kind of discussion rather than

the left and the right handbrake. Because the prefrontal cortex, there's sort of big air in the

near cortex in the front at the front. Yeah, hence the name. You know, that's executive function,

working memory, having a goal in mind, social cognition, theory of mind, your personality,

thinking about the past and the future, like, you know, big picture stuff, right? Human stuff,

stuff that humans tend to do more than say lizards. And so about the prefrontal cortex,

you know, it's got different parts too, right? You can divide it up into different regions

and it's connected to all kinds of other regions of the brain as well, obviously. But the issue that

well, he's got there is that the various parts of the prefrontal cortex exist in both hemispheres.

What? It's organized by function and connectivity, not the left part and the right part.

And furthermore, like a particularly problematic forum is the medial prefrontal cortex. And that's

it's directly on the longitudinal fissure. That's the division between the two hemispheres. And

that has heaps of bilateral connections, right? To other important parts to do with memory,

emotions and things like that, like the hippocampus, the amigdler and so on. So, yeah, like,

it doesn't really fit this, this, this framework that he's got. Like, the reality is, I mean,

I'm only touching on the surface because it's incredibly complicated topic. And it's like trying to

describe London in, you know, a few words, right? But, you know, the issue is, is that very little,

of it really maps to his left right thing. I won't say none because I think there are cases in

which you can find some elements that sit on the left or the right that that happened to,

to fit his dichotomy. But, you know, things like goal-directed attention, bilateral, things like,

you know, reflection or, or broad or internal attention. That's kind of organized around the,

what's called the default mode network, which again is organized around that midline PFC that I

mentioned or the media or PFC. So, yeah, the, there are asymmetries, absolutely, right? So,

so on the left hand side, you'll tend to have more of that verbal, working memory, approach

motivation and so on, and selecting stuff for retrieval based on what you're attending to. So,

so I think there's a grain of truth in what he's saying. There is a kind of a left orientation,

you know, charitable, you could say it's got to do with goal-directed type activity. And on the right,

we do see stuff that's more to do with global attention. But there's no way in which sort of this

global attention, like a broader focus there is, isn't anyway deeper or more in touch with,

I don't know, reality? Yeah, reality. The sort of narrative he puts on top of it is not consistent

with what we know about what they do. Yeah, so the general thing seems to be that he's taking

lateralization findings, which in some cases map on to established findings, right? Where there

there is differences. But one, he overstates them and ignores, for example, that

intentional processing doesn't neatly map into this left and right frame, right? But also

that he then extends out from that to much more loaded judgmental and really quite binary

comparisons, right? The left hemisphere is explicit, right? Hemisphere is implicit, left

hemispheres static, right is dynamic, left is fragmented, right is connected, you know, all these

kind of like binary things were, one is the emissary, the other is the master, right? I mean,

that's the clearest encapsulation of it and all along the way, it's not that nothing that he's saying

maps onto established research, it's just that it is very much over extrapolated and kind of

simplified. It's very selective in terms of the things that he points to. Like there's so many

examples of bilateral activation when it comes to both like gold directed attention and broader

vigilance style stuff and also the stuff that we know experimentally doesn't map onto the stories

that I guess he is inferring from that. Well, he's going to go on quite far low, but yes,

it is interesting because I actually anticipated before the episode from what I knew that

his description of neuroanatomy and the functions and different components and stuff that that

would basically all be rock solid and then it would, the issue that I would take would be the

extrapolations that he makes from that, but every time I looked into the status of something

that he claimed, the thing I kept coming back to it was like, well, this is a dramatic oversimplification

and it's overstating the strength of the evidence that we have for the kind of thing that he's

claiming. So the part where I expected them to be beyond reports is actually fairly, you know,

like it's quite rhetorically littered with judgment and overstatement. So this was interesting,

and I will see where he goes from there, but one other thing that they links into this lateralized

presentation is emotions. And see if you can pick out which side has the better emotion.

Okay. See if you can detect that. And to come to emotions, the most lateralized of all

emotions is anger and it lateralizes to the left hemisphere. Left hemisphere is not a cool

customer. It is not without emotions. It tends to have more self-centred self-righteous emotions

and more social emotions, but the deeper ones like empathy and melancholy and so on are more

appreciated by the right hemisphere. And so on, I could go on, but what I'm really pointing out

is it's the mode in which you're thinking about whatever it is. We'll tell you which hemisphere is

more important, not the actual sphere of activity, of human activity.

I'll have my back claim, Matt. I mean, I detected a slight hint about the emotions on the left side

were denigrated slightly there. The self-righteous self-centered ones were the ones on the right

are deeper, more reflective, more, shall we say, elevated. And his broader point is like it's not

about whether you're looking at art or doing science. It's whether you're doing it in a kind of

reductionist static frame of mind where you're not really seeing connections versus. Are you a

global galaxy-prepared thinker who's appreciating the beauty of the world and you don't understand

always things? So you could be doing the exact same activity and using your right hemisphere

or your left hemisphere. That's the implication I get there. But yeah, so what about the emotions?

Yeah, yeah, the emotions are a fun one. So yeah, so couldn't it him the bad emotions,

the self-centered self-righteous emotions are on the left and the deeper ones like empathy,

yeah, and melancholy. I'd imagine religiosity. Yeah, wonder, or I bet they're on the right.

Yeah, and look, as always, right, the story about how the brain processes emotion is vastly more

complicated than this two hemisphere model that he's got. There's a bunch of things involved. The

amygdala is involved in terms of fear and threat processing. Where's the amygdala? Left and right.

But neither. What? It's deeper and bilateral. Call it bilateral. That's right.

Oh, no. Most of them are bilateral. Actually, now I think about it. So yeah, if you work through

a bunch of really important structures of the brain that are involved in emotion, so you've got

the hypothalamus, the ventral striatum, which is kind of reward and pleasure and things like that.

The medial prefrontal cortex, which we mentioned, the orbital prefrontal cortex, reward and punishment

and social emotions, insular and so on. So there's a bunch of core brain structures there that are

kind of core brain structures and they're pretty much all either midline or bilateral. So basically,

the core processing of emotions doesn't fit this two hemisphere thing at all. And I think the

research on any kind of left right asymmetry in terms of the valence of emotions. There was

like an early kind of view, actually, that the left hemisphere was actually more to do with the

positive emotions, like approach motivations, things that you want to go that sort of attract you.

And the right hemisphere was associated with negative emotions and withdrawal motivations.

But that's been heavily undermined or qualified, I guess you would say, because these

the sort of asymmetries seem to be pretty small and really dependent on the situation and the

task and things like that. It all turns out to be a lot more messy. But what we do know about in terms

of what specific emotions you could maybe associate with the hemisphere is, it's really just

much more complicated, right? So discussed much, much more to do with the insular, happiness and

joy, more to do with bilateral activations, fear processing, again, it involves the amygdala,

but both the right and the left hand sides are involved in that sort of fear processing. So

yeah, like the idea that anger being a specifically left-laturized emotion would be

yeah, would be a great exception. Well, so there's some issues. Is that perhaps the way that we can

summarize around those claims? And like, there's the constant refriation. I should explain a little

bit. I think what he did, or whether there's a grain of truth in it, is that anger is like an

approach motivation, right? So fear is like a withdrawal motivation, right? Like fear and anger are

both negative emotions, right? They're both, I guess, you know, bad emotions, I suppose. But one of

them sort of activates a kind of an approach and one of them causes withdrawal. So it seems like

he's conflating the true fact that maybe the left hemisphere has got more to do with the

approach motivations with anger, right? Because that is also an approach motivation. But I think

he's narrative that he puts on it, which is these bad sort of more animalistic or reductive

emotions are on the left hand side. I don't think that's consistent with what we know.

Yeah, well, it is interesting whenever you know you start thinking about emotions and what not

what they're for psychologically or, you know, looking from an evolutionary frame and like a lot

of them, as you say, are about do I want more of this and to pursue it, right? Or make it so that I

can interact with this more? Or do I want to avoid this because it's scary or it might eat me or

I'm feel threatened by it? And similarly, discussed triggering, you know, the feeling that you

want to avoid certain potential contaminants and they tend to revolve around similar kinds of

substances, right? That are harmful to humans. And when you think about the kind of evolutionary

functional role of a lot of emotional stuff, it is in some sense a deflationary

kind because it makes it, you know, well, of course, like we would want to have a system that is

making us want to do more things that are beneficial to us and less of things that are harmful to us.

But there are higher order emotions or emotions which appear to be more detached from that,

like everyday evolutionary avoid the predator type thing like feelings of awe or, you know,

melancholy or this kind of thing. So he does seem to be tapping into that distinction about like,

you know, what have been sometimes referred to as like primary emotions versus secondary or more

reflective analytical ones. Yeah, but he's, you know, he's got a, I think he's got a high regard for

sort of emotions like empathy, for instance, right? And he would like to attribute these to

to the right hemisphere. But, you know, I refresh my memory on this a little bit of research and

again, there's no, no citations provided for this. And they do know a fair bit about, you know,

the brain regions involved in empathy. It involves things, you know, those brain regions I rattled

off before, the enig-del-er, the insular, the, the, the, the medial, prefrontal cortex, they're all

involved and they're all bilateral. You can't assign them to one hemisphere or the other. And,

and also the mirror neuron system, you're, you're, you're interested in mirror neurons, Chris,

because they're connected. I'm interested in however I know that the, the degree to which they're

responsible for things like your mind or whatnot have, yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't

also culture transmission and imitation and things like that, right? Yes, but, but, you know, they,

they do seem to be co-opted too for that kind of, you know, empathy, right? Because that idea of

having an internal model. Yeah, play a role. Yeah, play a role. Anyway, again, like, like, oxytocin,

right? People oversteate the role that oxytocin does for everything, but it is a, a hormone

involved in bonding and, yeah, and, and all the things. Yeah, so if you had to guess, Chris,

mirror neuron system, left or right hemisphere, it's a trick question. Well, like, if I was

in Macon, Chris, I'd say it's a, well, it's gotta be the, the right, come on, you know, but

I see it as a well-informed psychologist, my, I know there this verse across the hemisphere,

right? Both, both. Yeah, bilateral, bilateral, bilateral. So, like, I mean, the story is like,

it's pretty much like, Leon, we'll look at a lot of, you know, cognitive functions in this,

but pretty much any cognitive function you look at, whether it's processing of emotion or language

or attention, the correct mental model to have is like a network of nodes and the, the actual

network connectivity and the nodes differ as well as where they happen to be located and so on,

but it's a bunch of cooperating nodes that function together as an integrated system. So,

there is, like, in any of my textbooks that I taught students with about neuroscience, Chris,

there was no chapter dedicated to left brain processing and right brain processing. It's,

it's all talking about what nodes are recruited into functional networks. So, well, that's just

because they won't let you talk about lateralization these days, Mark, but we should be talking about

that and just to pre-empt this. So, Alex, at one point, reuses that he's been reading the book

in the Gulf of Christ's Master in the MSR and one of the interesting tidbits he's got from it is

that the anatomical feature that you mentioned, Mark, the corpus colosum, colosum is actually,

this is a anatomical feature which is often presented as enabling transmission between communication

between the true hemispheres, right? Eating it, but he says that, you know, in your book,

you kind of make the point that it's actually in large part about inhibiting the communication

between the true, right? So, we've essentially got here two brains and the thing that I find fascinating

reading the Master in his Emissary, which is an extraordinary volume. I've sort of only got a

little bit into it and was already thinking this is kind of blowing my mind. All my minds,

I suppose, I should say. One thing that got my attention is that this isn't something that people

I mean, people might think that, well, there are sort of two brains right now that are doing

different tasks, super specialised, but, you know, if we evolve, if we evolve further, they're

probably sort of merging to one big brain. It seems like evolution is selecting for this asymmetrical

brain separation. And as you've already said, the corpus colosum or colosum that connects the two

does more to inhibit communication between them than it does to facilitate it. I mean, that's an

extraordinary finding that the connector between the two parts of our brain is purposefully trying

to stop them from communicating and that this is something that is evolutionarily selected for.

And Imagelkrist responds by correcting him about like his understanding and presentation here,

and it's perhaps relevant to a correction that maybe you and I need to understand that. So,

listen to this. Yes, there needs to be a necessary balance between separation and togetherness,

if you like. And, in funnily enough, nature in general works with competition and cooperation.

One of the myths that really needs to be revised is the idea that evolution is all about

competition and that we are somehow competitive apes. There's no doubt that competition plays a

very important role in evolution, but actually those species that are really thrived have been

those that have learned to co-operate and collaborate. So, in fact, the situation is the same in

the brain everywhere in nature there is, and this was an insight that Gerta had in the 18th century,

that in nature all that is unified is being divided and what is divided is being unified.

I think that it doesn't perhaps sound very important, but it is actually a crucial insight.

And hence the hemisphere's need to work together, but part of the way of working together is

not to get in one another's way and try to compete to do the same task. I sometimes say in order

to carry out a successful operation, there needs to be a surgeon and there needs to be a scrub nurse

as a minimum. And without the scrub nurse the operation would be extremely difficult without

the surgeon impossible, but it doesn't make sense for the scrub nurse to make the incision.

The scrub nurse needs to do the job of the scrub nurse and the surgeon needs to do the job of the

surgeon. So that's the way it is. What I would say is you're completely right to say that the

tendency of evolution is not towards homogenization but towards preserving this distinction.

I think we know which side is the scrub nurse, but what about that, Matt? So it's reciprocal roles

or things working in unison, but they're working together, but they have very specific roles.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a way in which he's completely right, which is that balance between

separation and togetherness, which is what he said, right? A better way to put it would be

there's a balance between modularity and integration going on in the brain, right? So it's like

it's an incredibly complex system and there are there are specialized modules, structures,

and there is a lot of communication happening between them and then you have sometimes more

generalized structures as well that are more plastic. So where is totally right is that there's

always going to be a balance between functional specialization and functional connectivity.

But I think where it's a misdirection is that he applies this principle

completely to the left and right hemispheres of the brain as if those are the only two modules

and anyone can google this and check, but that is incredibly reductive. It's so much more

complex than that. I mean, what he said about evolution too, I guess Chris, what did you think about that?

Yeah, I mean, he's correct, right? There's been a whole bunch of evolutionary theorists that have

highlighted that humans are hypersocial, right? Then extremely cooperative with non-kin in a way that

is frankly unique right amongst the animal kingdom and you know ants and social primaries and

other sorts of organisms living together in groups. Yes, it is important for them to

cooperate in various ways. So the notion that all of evolution is just driven by competition and

survival of the fittest and nature red and two from claw. There is an important caveat there,

but it is a caveat that has been added by evolutionary theorists and for quite some time.

Well, many many many many decades. That's right. I mean, I think the point is a bit broader

though to be fair. I mean, and he's he's right that you know, you see so many examples of cooperation

in biology. So you know, symbiosis, multicellularity, the mutualism. Yeah,

usosial insects and all that stuff. And so that's true. It's all going on, but as well as symbiosis,

the symbiotic relationships, there's also predator-pray relationships and there's also parasitic

relationships, right? And ultimately, I still think the selfish gene kind of point of view is

fundamentally correct, which is fundamentally a genotype doesn't, doesn't care. Like it doesn't

wish other genotypes ill. It just simply doesn't care. If a relationship works for them, whether it's

symbiotic or parasitic or predatory or whatever, then it works for them just simple as that. So it

so it certainly permits a very broad range of relationships. So, but you know, he's basically

right about that evolution is not just about competition. I think the only other point that

Reis here is like, you know, when you're talking about like nurses and doctors, you're talking

about two different entities, they're individuals and so they have different roles. It's very easy

for us to understand, but the metaphor here is doing the work because he's arguing the brine.

You know, the brines are in an individual, like you're not the human. So they aren't

two separate individuals. They are both the same persons. Yeah, that's sort of, this is like a

fundamental category error that is intuitive, but he keeps returning to in his explainers.

And it's inconsistent with how the brain works. We know that the functions are spread across

these distributed networks and that each hemisphere is contributing lots of different specialized

regions. And if you take any given task or any given function, like emotional or attention or whatever,

it's going to typically rely on multiple modules communicating furiously with each other across

both hemispheres. And to the extent that there is any kind of lateralization, it's often relative

or not absolute. It's not kind of an either or sort of thing. So when you work with analogies of

his, the nurse and his, the doctor and they both understand their different roles and they

they work together, that's a poor metaphor, I think, for what the brand does.

Yeah, and it also said kind of counter-axis, Clim, that he's treating people as like unified entities,

right? He will go on as we'll see to just times people for not looking at people as like holistic

units, but his very system tends to do that. Yeah, and well, so Matt, there's a section of it,

as you know, where he goes on, Alex, I mean, goes on to discuss the, to be it that he moderated

between Jordan Peterson and Richard Dawkins, right? And he, he wants to use this as an illustration

if you like, off the right, Brian versus left, Brian view off the world. So listen to this.

What I'm interested in, I suppose, is what this means for us, because we've got these two different

hemispheres, sort of governing different ways of being in the world. Like you say, it's not so much

a different way of thinking about the world, but different ways of being in the world. It's just a

different way to react. I mean, you often see people have discussions with each other, and it feels

like they just don't understand where each other are coming from. And the terminology of saying,

one is being too left brain and one is being too right brain, can be very helpful there. It's kind

of like if you see Jordan Peterson and Richard Dawkins have a conversation about God and religion.

And Peterson is talking about sort of narrative and how things are truer than true, and that, you know,

it's kind of fiction, but it's a special kind of fiction. And then Richard Dawkins being like,

I want to know if you put a camera in, you know, if you put a camera in front of the

the tomb, would you see a man walk out of it? Like did it literally happen? And it's extraordinary.

I mean, it seems more understandable to me that Richard Dawkins is baffled by Jordan Peterson

being asked, did the Exeter story happen? And Peterson responds, it's still happening. That's his

response, quite baffling. But it seems equally baffling to Jordan Peterson. When somebody asks him,

you know, do you think it actually happened? Like, literally, do you think that a man rose from

the dead? Do you think that Jesus was born a fervor? There, ma, I just want to point out that Alex

is framing this as this is kind of different ways of looking at the world and both lead to people not

really representing the Oler's position very clearly, right? They get baffled by things which

otherwise might seem straightforward. So he's kind of presenting that, but well, these are

two different ways of looking at the world. Not really that one is automatically better than the Oler.

Yeah. But firstly, we have to reiterate that he's framing there that one hemisphere,

but left hemisphere gives you one way of being in the world and the right hemisphere gives you

another different way of being in the world. We just have to reiterate, this is not true, right?

It's not true, but it's the fundamental premise of all of the

it's going to be like taking as a given throughout the rest of the conversation.

So with that in mind, so let's see how Ian McGillcrest responded to bringing up this as an example.

Because I would think that this is a softball layup to hit out. Yes, these are different ways

and that illustrates the different perspectives you can have. That's not quite what McGillcrest does.

Well, I rather resist these rather simple ways of using the terms, but I can't entirely disagree with

you. I think that ultimately when you start unpacking the way in which the right and the left

hemisphere see the world, you can see that there are such differences. I mean, in many ways,

Richard Dawkins is a scientific reductionist. He's a reductionist materialist.

I hope I'm not doing him an injustice in saying that. But I think he therefore misunderstands

the meaning of many things. One of them is that when it comes to certain things like, for example,

consciousness, the ability to grasp it, to pin it down, to say what it is and where it arises.

This is almost the wrong way to approach it because it's not a thing like that. It's not

another thing in the world alongside the things that consciousness allows us to be aware of.

And God is not a thing in the world in the way that a rock or a stone or a tree is a thing in the

world, or at least I would begin to want to qualify that as well. But these purposes, let's say

a bicycle is a thing in the world. But God is not a very complicated machine. He's not a very

complicated anything of the kind that we know. And so to try to approach God in that way is

going to produce no insight into what people mean. And you have to be very arrogant or a very

confident person to say, well, all these people who think that they understand something that I

can't see, they're just wrong because I can't see it. Yes, yes. So Chris, I think the takeaway

is that Dawkins isn't so much wrong as neurologically limited. He's stuck, you see, in this rigid

literal and narrow left hemisphere thinking, right? Where you really have to access right hemisphere

wisdom, which is about symbols and how things are connected and the processes of things in order to

see things more deeply. And if you deny that, then that's simply arrogant.

I regained them wrong. And yeah, so I mean, one of the things here is that he starts off by saying,

you know, I resist these moves through trying pin things down in this course way. But he doesn't.

I mean, he really doesn't as well see as it goes on. If anything, he goes much more extreme than

this. Yes. Well, he has a strategic disclaimer at the beginning because he knows that you cannot say

there are right-brand people and left-wing people. This is scientifically nonsensical.

He knows this yet. He still wants to do it. So, exactly. So, so he, I mean, this is connected to

his previous statements where he says, well, you know, of course both hemispheres are involved in

everything, of course. But then goes on to speak very definitively about the entirely different and

independent ways of knowing that the that the left hemisphere has and the right hemisphere has.

Yeah. And again, here, there is the elevation that the way that Imbiccal Christage can clearly hear

thinks about God and these kind of questions. Is the correct way to do it? Richard Dawkins is doing

the wrong thing by asking, you know, reductive questions about whether there was actually a resurrection

or whatever because that's not really what any of it means, right? And I object, Matt, that first

of all to the claim that religious people never mean anything literal in what they're saying.

Lots of religious people all over the world believe in very specific literal claims, but Imbiccal

Christ kind of presents up. Well, they're all, you know, they're all essentially

fielo�ans who will be very careful to never state something clearly about whether a claim actually

occurred or not. So, he's wrong that that applies to all religious people when he's saying, you know,

so you're so arrogant as to believe that everybody in the world who believes in God or something

like that, that you can say they're wrong, but he equates to life the most elevated and abstract

theological discussions, right? Which doesn't accurately represent the majority of normal religious

people around the world. But also he's essentially skipped over Alex Fanger by, you know, is this

two ways of seeing the world? And instead moved on to you, Eilor, acknowledge his view as the

better one or you're kind of doing things wrong. So it's just like it's a very, to me, transparent

and quite self-centered response to Alex question work instead of engaging with the point about,

you know, different perspectives or whatever. He just wants to say the one that he likes is the

correct one. And like Dawkins is a bad guy because he doesn't approach it in the kind of

metaphorical sense-meager style, but Emigil Gris-Profirers. Yeah. Yeah. He's a left brain thinker.

It is very similar to Ken Wilber's integral theory where, you know, Ken Wilber positions

his kind of integral thinking at the tipi top of his framework. So it's so funny because it's a

theory about why the theory is true and people who believe the theory are correct. And, you know,

likewise, this is very much a case of where right brain thinking, that is Neil Krists,

way of thinking, is indeed the correct and appropriate way to deal with deep and substantive

questions as opposed to superficial materialist approaches. Yes, quite right. And, you know,

he elaborates a little bit more on this point about, you know, why the reductive approach is bad,

Matt. So let's hear him expind a little. Another way of looking at it would be, well, maybe I

need to revise my thoughts about what is true. And I know this sounds like sort of hedging one's

bats. But is the truth that can be stated in words that is true to what human nature is?

So is human nature another something that can be written down in a scientific text? And that

pins down and exhausts what a human being is. Now human beings we now exist and we all have

experience of them. But in order to convey the realities of what a human being is encounters

and is capable of, you'd have to turn to art, you'd have to turn to the works of Shakespeare,

you'd have to turn to narratives, you'd turn to stories, to great myths, which explain our

relationship to a divine realm or to the cosmos or to one another. And if you don't have, and I think

some people are just born without the capacity to feel what it is that art tells us, what

poetry tells us, what music tells us, what rituals tell us, what narratives tell us. Then you

won't understand why you're missing a very great deal because you're trying to make it all fit into

a very, onto a pro-crossed-g in bed. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of incredible really. Like it is very

arrogant that you have to like and appreciate the things that he likes and see deep fundamental

meaning in those particular things or your fundamentally kind of broken as a person. And you know,

I think you and I hit like his a good example. Like as you know, I like abstract expressionist

modern art. That's one of the things that I happen to like. I also know that a lot of other people

don't like it and they look at those paintings ago. I don't like it. You don't like it. That's

right. But I would not say that you would you not? Well, I think you have bad taste. That's,

you know, I've made that clear many times. But I mean, I wouldn't claim that you are simply

unaware of what it's like to be a human. And the thank you. And you're capable of deep

feeling or emotion or connections to other human beings in a phenomenal logical way or whatever.

Of course, despite your artistic limitations, Chris. You I think you are a fully realized human.

Right. But that's not something that I think he extends to people who disagree with him.

And he's mixing up the levels as well. Because you know, like what he wants to say here is,

oh, so you want the bright dawn that we are social primates and that we have two legs and two

arms and the world meet up of cells. And you think that exhaust, you know, does that explain the

beauty of looking at the sunset and feeling emotions? What about when you hold the hand of your

infant for the first time? Does the fact that you're, you know, genetically connected does not

encapsulate everything that you experience there? And of course not. But like,

knowing those scientific facts about evolution, about genetics, about, you know, human biology,

one, it doesn't remove the phenomenological side of like being a social primate,

orientating yourself through the world and having social relations. But secondly,

it actually also doesn't in any sense prevent you from developing an appreciation for things like

art or literature. Right. I'm a reductive materialist, Matt. I've managed to listen to music

and I've read Shakespeare and so on. And in the Gilchrist here, implies that there's a division.

Right. And it's a very silly division where he's basically suggesting that there's the reductive

scientists who wouldn't understand poetry or art. And there are the, the kind of artistic

philosophers. And actually, he will go on later to claim that they are the real scientists,

right? The real insights come from the people who are operationalizing that part of the brains. But

it is, like you said, it's just extremely arrogant to suggest that because you disagree with people

about what he talks about there, God and metaphysics and the spiritual realm, that your opponents

are simply devoid of any ability to appreciate art. Like it's a pretty arrogant and he puts it

in their mobs in a sense that they are the arrogant ones by, you know, dismissing that these

things matter. But like the majority of scientists do not say there's no value to art or subjective

experiences, meaning less because we're made up of atoms. No, I know. Like it is completely a straw man

of like a scientific worldview. And I've read this in various critiques of him that I've encountered,

which is he makes these very basic category eras in mixing up these sorts of levels as, as you

said, and other people have stopped that out pretty well. Like Jordan Peterson, he actually

does believe that there is a deeper truth, like a mythos, as opposed to Logos, which he, in his

heart of heart, feels is true than true and it is the underlying fabric of reality.

You know, in the true sense maker fashion, Jordan Peterson is focused or fixated on the Logos,

right? Like they often present the Logos as the mystical force animating true science and so on.

But in McGillcrest, in good sense maker fashion thinks it's not the Logos, it's the mythos,

and we'll hear him exclaim wise. So Dawkins should hold them in great respect, and they did

make extraordinary scientific advances. But they didn't think that these advances would tell them

the answers to the big questions like what is a human being, what is what does conscious mean,

where is it, who has it, what is the divine, what do we mean when we talk about the sacred,

which almost everybody experiences and and and finds a need to talk about the sacred, even if they

use the term God, it doesn't really matter. And so in this ancient Greek world, there were two

conceptions of truth, mythos, or mythos as it would be in originate, and Logos, and mythos has

given us the word myth, and Logos has given us the word logic. But they believe that the big truth,

the really deep truth, the great truth, could only be encompassed by by poetry, by

narrative, by what falls in the realm of myth. And that logic was the sort of thing that a lawyer

would do in a courtroom to settle a dispute and decide how much money was owed by one person to

another. So it operated on a much more trivial realm. Again, they're just a very clear value

judgment, like logic, where Jesus or Satan of Logos, which I've encountered in Peter's and might

have the issue with, but that deals with the much more trivial. You know, it might be good for

certain or two owes who more money, but like the truth is about human nature and beauty and art

and consciousness. This is all related to mythos. And and he knows about every time that he does that,

he always inserts God and the supernatural as part, you know, he talks about human nature and

consciousness and so on. And then he always adds in the spiritual, the secret as if they are also

equally faxed, need to be explained by the universe. So he can't just mix in the premise, but yeah,

so what about that? Yeah, yeah. Well, the things he doesn't like includes science essentially.

It's and it's quite interesting because so much of his book relies on this scientific basis

supposedly in terms of neuroscience from which he builds this great, I guess, mythical

frameworks. But then it was said by someone else that he basically treats science as like a latter

and Jordan Peterson does the same thing. So he uses us as a ladder to sort of climb up to support

his main claim. And then he kicks the latter away because because he's frankly not very

interested in that really what he's wanting is for that neurological stuff to serve as a grand

metaphor for the stuff that he's really interested in, which is religion, mythos, and these grand

narrative arcs. Now, he doesn't just dislike science in general as being reductive and petty,

but also analytic philosophy in particular, you know, logical positivism and things like that.

And that's kind of the stuff that he's hinting at there. That kind of logic is based on certain

pre-supposition. There's nothing wrong with that. It's not a weakness. It's the conditions on which

you can carry out these processes. The mistake is to think that this can answer all our questions.

So what has happened to an Anglo-American analytical philosophy, what I call triple A philosophy,

is it's disappeared up its own fundament. It's become more and more

petty. It's become less and less in touch with any of the really important questions.

And all the great philosophy of the last 100 years has been in other traditions. In the pragmatists,

particularly people like CS Purse, William James, I mean, I defy anyone to tell me that they weren't

insightful and highly intelligent people. And then I think that not everything that comes out of

the phenomenological tradition, but not everything that comes out of any tradition, particularly

the purely analytical one, is worth listening to. And Bitgenstein and other philosophers

who were trained in the analytical tradition eventually found that they had to go beyond it,

beyond it. Hi, Dugu, I'm studying Aquinas. And then decided that actually in order to understand

the deep things in being you had to go beyond it. And I will also note, it's also related to

this exact pose that we see in other gurus, right? Like Dr. K will often say, you know, he's

extremely scientific, he's pro science, but then in the majority of his content, he is

creating a comparison between scientific and diabetic insights and spiritual insights,

and suggesting that the scientific ones are, you know, less useful than the spiritual ones.

And it's always the case, right? That like the gurus who actually included in health and wellness

influencers and pseudo scientists, they always suggest that actually they respect science.

It's just that they recognize its limitations and have kind of gone beyond it, but they always

claim that like the true science supports what they say. So there's nothing unique in in McGilchris

claiming that he is a, you know, he is a hard-nosed scientist who's done his work in the scientific

minds. And no, he has transcended that because that is what they all say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like

essentially his philosophical tastes run to the continental and the phenomenological, and he

doesn't like like analytic type philosophy, right? That's left hemisphere. His stuff is right hemisphere.

The analytic stuff is arid and petty, and his stuff is deep and meaningful.

People like Dawkins try to be ultra clear, but they're far too technical and people like, you know,

are speaking to profound truths. So he likes people like Heidegger rather than their logical

positives. But the irony is kind of what you were saying is that he's constantly using

analytic style reasoning and argumentation when it suits him in a cherry picking fashion to base

his claims on scientific findings. So yeah, I don't know. It's basically incoherent. I mean,

his own approach is largely left-brained, and that he's systematizing and categorizing and

analyzing stuff. It's just like it's a bad example, I guess, of left brain thinking because

his left brain, right brain schema for how the brain works is just an incredibly reductive

and simplistic version. But it's in the same mold as the actual ones that are much more complicated

and nuanced, but actually supported by the empirical evidence.

Yes, well, I'm just going to play a clip. I'll get back to the Dawkins thing after this,

but just the illiterate Matt, because I think this is what people will pick up on, that he does

at times speak and correct Alex about misrepresentations in regards to like the scientific literature

and stuff. And I think this is part of what would give him the impression of being somebody that is

very careful, scientifically, when it comes to claims. So here's an example when after Alex has

talked about the visual cortexes, like, or the visual fields and the relationship through their

hemispheres. Listen to this. Yes, I don't want to be annoying and trip in, but I have to say

that actually it doesn't work like that in humans. So in humans, the left visual field of both

the left and right eye goes to the right hemisphere. And the right visual field of both the left and

right eye goes to the left hemisphere. In many animals, they have eyes on the sides of their head,

and there is literally just a straight crossover. But because humans have eyes on the front of their

head, partly because we evolved from apes that needed to be able to judge distances of branches

ahead. They needed to be able to do this, you know, by by focal way of seeing things. And so it's

not quite true. So you know that that is the kind of thing where you know if you took someone did not

really care about science, like why would they correct someone for overstating, you know, the way

that ambition works in the human system. And he is correct there, right? Yes. It is not left,

brain, right eye and right brain left eye. That's right. So he does do it when it suits him. The

issue of course is we have is that he's quite selective of where he chooses to lean on

reductive materialist science. Yeah. Well, no, you so we heard, you know, in general,

in his response to Alex's prompt that he basically just goes into a bashing thing about

how materialists are, you know, hollow humans who can't really appreciate the real answers to

the important questions. But Alex tries to bring it back to the end, we say it right, but you know,

we get a lot, but it is ultimately like different ways of thinking about the world. And there

is no one that is necessarily worse or better and listen to the response. So we think that we live

in a world in which is constituted by random lumps of senseless matter bumping into one another,

and none of it has any purpose, meaning or direction or any beauty for that matter. So I'd strongly

differ from that point of view. But it's also, you've said that the hemispheres are not two different

ways of thinking about the world, the different ways of being in the world. It's like no one is

more legitimate than the other. They're not, they're not sort of competing hypotheses or something.

They're just both ways of approaching the world. And so when somebody says, well, when I observe

the material world, and I see atoms, and I see them bumping into each other, and I don't observe

anything else, are they making a mistake there? The way you just described it, sort of parodying this,

person who says, you know, there's nothing, I mean earlier you were talking about somebody who

doesn't have meaning or love because all they see is sort of materialism. And I guess,

you know, there's a sense in which I agree with you. I saw someone put it like, you know,

do you kiss your mother with that worldview? Like do you really sort of believe that? Do you live

like that? Maybe not. But are they like making a mistake? So this is a good question to

be is because he correctly highlights that you're rhetoric at time suggests that you're not

intending to demigrate a approach has been wrong. But as we just heard, he does do that. So

you probably do you remember how you response map? You know what he does here? No, I don't recall

reminding. Well, it's going to bring us to another set of clips. But this is the answer to that

question. But I think a very simple point, which can be made in a sentence, is do you think love is

real? If you do think love is real, then you have to accept that something that we don't know where it is,

we don't know what it is. We don't, we can't measure it in the lab. We can't manipulate it in the

lab. We can't see it or photograph it. We don't have a dial or a meter, which will respond to it.

We can find, but this is a very erroneous way of thinking, you can find a kind of different

you can find that something that you presume is a proxy for love. But mistaking things for the

proxies that can be measured is a fundamental, a very basic error of thinking. Well, that's all

salt map. Love is real. So what are you going to do with that? It's rhetorically effective. May I

may I respond to it? Sure. Is it rhetorically effective? Okay, yes, please go.

So what he's doing there? So he's saying, you know, so you can follow it pretty easily. So

love is real, right? We can all agree about that. We all feel love except for Richard Dawkins probably

but it can't be measured. You can't weigh it. It doesn't have an atomic number. It can't be

photographed like physical objects. So therefore, reality includes things that are not reduced

to their material physical atoms. Therefore, materialism is wrong. Yes. That's the

kind of logic. If I don't have a affair with that. Yeah. So there's a fallacy there in terms of

his conflating all of these levels of description with like ontological categories. And you know,

love just like every other emotion can be described at multiple physical levels from physical,

biological, psychological or social. And unless you accept this ridiculous straw man,

other scientists who will only talk about atoms, doesn't see a cup that just sees, although that's

a collection of atoms, then you know, obviously what people really think is that there are many

emergent systems that arise from the material world. And there are, you can describe things

at an atomic level, at a quantum level, at a chemical level. And you know, you can talk about

neurological structures in the brain. These are all different levels of describing what's going on.

And you can talk about how people experience things, how people feel and how they relate to each

other as well. And you can, and scientists have of course, investigated lots of the biological

substrates of emotions like love without denying that it is, you know, experienced by conscious

beings and so on. So there's that fallacy there around confusing the levels. There's also the

measurement fallacy, right? If you can't measure it precisely, like get its atomic number, then it has

to be, you know, not physical or in the material world. It's got to belong to this other realm

of mythos that only people like him are qualified to deal with. But you know, so it just totally

ignores the fact of emergence, which is, you know, there's nothing special about love or humans.

It occurs in so many different ways, like wetness, right? It's something being wet, right? That's an

emergent property. Temperature, temperature, like things being hot or cold, that's an emergent

property of physical systems. It's not something that can be described really at lower levels of

description. And so if you're a materialist or a physicalist or whatever, you're not claiming that

everything is just atoms bumping around and that all phenomena are reducible to the lowest level

of description and that everything has to be measurable using a microscope or something like that.

You know, it's got a much more nuanced thing there. So I think the rhetorical argument there is

that first of all, you get the gut punch of, you know, love is real. People deny that love are real.

What a backup bastards. And then the straw man of claiming that unless you accept his, you know,

phenomenal logical religious, metaphysical kind of worldview, then you're denying the existence

of all of these things. Yeah. And so, you know, there's quite a few things that I will say in response

to this, but I'm going to let him spell out a little bit more how it connects to other parts

of his view, right? So he did reference this in a slightly earlier part of the conversation. So

again, he reuses the topic, but let's see how it connects in with the rest of it.

Now you can say I'm only interested in that trivial realm in which things can be measured and

demonstrated by a photograph and so forth. But do you believe in love? Do you think that love is real?

If you don't think it's real, I pity you because it's the most staggering experience in life.

And it has many forms. And as the loved one has a logic love for a partner, there is the

love one has for nature. There is for those of us who sense something greater and divine,

there is the love one has for that. But love cannot be demonstrated in laboratory. It cannot be

manipulated. It can't be measured in any way. Does that make it unreal? Not at all. So I feel

this is just a huge discrepancy between a very narrow idea of what truth is and

a broader one. And if you'll permit me, I just want to say something about truth there.

There are two, well, in many ways, of course, I think about what truth is and many types of theory

and philosophy about how to think of truth. But two that are very important because they're

quite different and we can recognize them. I stop there because we don't need to hear it.

Essentially going to be the Jordan Peterson style truth and the Richard Dawkins style truth.

But I wanted to note there that he very often connects these ideas about love, his kind of

rhetorical gacha into his broader framework where he wants to endorse his metaphysical reality.

And like you said, Matt, first of all, there's the notion that a construct, an abstract concept

like love, which as he highlights there can include depending on how you define it,

all sorts of different things like romantic love, affection for friends, enjoyment of the environment,

so on, right? That you use one word for that does not mean all the things are the exact same.

And also it doesn't mean that you cannot measure something, right? Because like in the most

trivial sense, if I bring someone into a psychology laboratory and they pick out people in their life

and I ask them to read, you know, how much do you love this person from zero to 10?

There. I've just measured a subjective experience of love and it's true to their internal

thing, whatever they take that to mean. And it will generally be the case that people that are

closer to them, family members, children, partners, right, close friends, will score higher on the

love scale and not know. Immigrant crystal say, oh, but come on. That's not you measuring on that,

but who's the one then demanding that we put everything into like a microscope and physiological

reactions? No, I'm measuring someone's subjective assessment of their connection to someone else.

Now, you can also measure things like physiological reactions and his objections, they work most

because he's invoking love, right? And people like to imagine love as, you know, this kind of

thing beyond the physical, you know, like a hiring, yeah, a hiring motion, right?

It's a force that exists in the world and the sort of reducing it to anything material is kind of

unpleasant. But let's take anger for a second. Is it possible to measure anger scientifically,

explicitly, in a laboratory setting? Well, yes, the way I talked about it, self-reported,

but you can also see physiological indications of anger, right? Like elevated heart. Well, in fact,

the good priest himself, he talks a lot about how the emotions can be localized in the hemispheres

of the brain. So he's very happy to talk about, oh, look, we can we can measure where the

emotions are happening and attribute them to the physical structures, the hemispheres, the brain.

So yeah, I mean, you can't have a fight. I know. So on that sense, I think like he's obviously wrong,

but also again, I know you've highlighted a, and I just want to keep repeating that that the

implication is that if you adopt the scientific worldview, if you believe that humans are made of

vatables and we are social primates and so on, that you simply must dismiss that love has any

value or meaning, but like why would that be the case? Because the very fact that I know that

you know, in my worldview, humans formed these social relations were highly social species,

and we are very bonded with the partners and people in our life that we are closely connected

through, including children for genetic reasons or, or also just for caregiver type reasons.

That does not bear for me that that robs the sense of beauty or enjoyment of spending time with

loved ones. It doesn't mean that you don't feel affection or fall in love, and I actually feel like

people like Miguel Christ, who demand that we invoke a supernatural force that is the ultimate

origin behind it. They are the ones like saying the actual experience itself is not enough.

It has to be more special and magical because if it's just the material world, if it's all caused by

atoms and the brain hemisphere is reacting, well that's just not enough, like that doesn't do

justice, and I'm like, well, what's the problem? I'm a reductive materialist. I love my kids. I love

my wife. I'm very happy with my friends and stuff, so just it's such a strong one that the only

people who get to have rich in our lives and experiences of love are, you know, sense-meekery and

kind and windbag filogens. Why? Why did they think this? Because I think they can experience love.

You know, I don't have any issue assuming that Jordan Peterson and other people that are

sense-meekering clives that they have rich emotional lives, but somehow they just aren't

extending the same things to the people that they disagree with, and then they kind of lament how

arrogant that their opponents are, which is just a surprisingly effective and rhetorical tactic,

because they are the ones being dismissive and patronizing and arrogant towards people that

don't agree with them. Yeah, well, as we will see after you play the rest of the clips,

there is a grand narrative arc that is being traced by the Guildquest, and it starts with

undermining sort of a kind of naive materialism, you know, and naive reductionism. You know,

it started off with mentioning about stuff like, you know, actually things are quantum fields,

so it's more complicated than that, or actually evolution is not just about this,

it's actually more complicated than that, right? So actually using actual real science to kind of

knock down a little straw man of other science, then he sort of kicks away the scaffolding of

science altogether, because now he's moving towards an anti-materialist kind of position.

That's- Oh yeah, well, we'll get there. We'll get there, that's right, but you know, I think this

thing about love is really important because it bridges the neuroscience stuff to his anti-materialist

metaphysics and makes materialism sound as if it's absurd, but it fails, right? Because materialism

does take into account emergence at all kinds of levels, and the straw man that he's describing

simply doesn't exist. There aren't people who believe that kind of thing. There might be some people,

go on, they might like- It's always going to be so, yes, we always have to say- Yeah,

when it comes to Richard Dawkins, for example, I have heard him talk about how fiction might be

harmful because of me, it's people think about worlds that don't exist. Okay, well, the point

that I want to make is that just because love is not will described at the molecular or atomic level,

it doesn't mean that it transcends material reality altogether, rather, most people believe that

it emerges just like democracy or inflation or consciousness or anything else, right? These

are emergent properties that can still be real and they're abstract, but they can be grounded

in the material world. Can you put democracy in a lab? Can you see it under a microscope? Can

yeah, that's a good example actually, democracy because we have all sorts of indices of democracy

across nations or whatever, but none of it involves measuring in the way that the immigrant

gochris is suggesting, but it doesn't mean there's nothing there, right? Or that the measurement

is stupid. Yeah, that's right. People do measure democracy, there's a democracy index

that they track. They do measure the economy, economy is still about that, so, you know, it's

obviously possible. And if you think that we're doing injustice about, you know, well, he's not

really denigrating that. He's just saying, you know, that he has a more inflationary view of that.

Oh, no, he is denigrating, but he realized so, listen to this. But I'd say it's simple minded,

because, you know, it's promissory materialism. We can't tell you how the feeling you have for

your partner, your love fund emerges from colliding atoms, but we're just going to say so, because

we're going to stick to our dog, but that's stupid. That's the kind of thing that people who have no

flexibility, no imagination, do they? Because it's all going to atoms bumping into one. How do they

know that? Where do they derive that? Is that really science? Yes, they derived it from science,

Ian. That's that's where they derived it. They're, they're piercing it on the evidence that

is available. Whereas you are talking about, you know, the Bible and what you want to be true.

Like that's the ultimate, ultimately, it's such an elaborate kind of rationalization for his

own preferences, right? And I understand these preferences. Like I understand why he likes Shakespeare

and he likes listening to Bach. And he feels that, you know, coming to grips with with great literature

is going to give you insights into the natural love. I totally get that. And that's fine, but

it's interesting how his own preferences and tastes are sort of developed into this whole metaphysical

philosophical worldview. The world must, the cosmos in fact must bend to endorse his, you know,

religious intuitions. But so one thing I just offer as a final analogy for this point, and you

can hear Alex O'Connor's version of Bruce Bach in a second. But is, you know, we know the Sun

is a giant, flaming ball of gas and chemical reactions going on out there, right? And yet,

at the same time, you can appreciate the beauty of a sunset. Now, I know that the Sun is a big

ball, right? And that the sunset is an illusion caused by visual perceptions and the angles of the

Arphinola. But it doesn't mean that like when I see a sunset, when you know, my wife or my friend

says, Oh, look at the beautiful sunset. I don't say, well, you know, though, it's actually just a ball

of gas. And if we were outside the earth, there wouldn't even be a sunset, right? But that is true.

But it, it, Nilo prevents me from appreciating the beauty of a sunset. No word doesn't make it untrue

that the Sun actually is a big ball of gas, right? And it's just the view from Earth that makes it

look to particular, right? So it's, it's just that he demands that you must only accept, like one,

right? And that if you're focused or accepting of the material reality, you simply can't appreciate

the aesthetic technological one. And you're like, why? Why? It's perfectly possible to hold two

ideas. You've had maybe the problem is that I'm saying you can be both left and right. And

that doesn't fit the narrative that he wants. But I'm looking to Chris, you're holding multiple

levels of description of everyality in your head at the same time. I'm spending two hard times

at the same time, only two. I'm working up to it. So here's Alex O'Connor trying to offer the

sea and push back, but in a, in a gentle form. And let's see how far he gets. But first, I do want to,

I suppose, push back on this idea. I mean, you said that the, the position can be summed up in a

single question. Do you believe in love? And I think a lot of my listeners will say it sort of

depends on what you mean. Because I experienced this thing love, you know, at least sometimes. And

a lot of people are satisfied to say that this is an emergent property of atoms bumping into each

other. And it's an interesting one and a fascinating one and one that we still have a lot to learn

about. But can essentially be understood by reducing it to its material parts. That is a very

left brain way of thinking about what love is. And a lot of people are simply satisfied to say,

well, that's what love is. It's a bit cynical. It's maybe a bit depressing. It's maybe not sort of

how you behave. But then people are constantly exercising self delusion all the time. And that this

is, this is what love is. I mean, what would you say to somebody who, who says that?

I'd say a lot of things. I mean, first and most trivially, of course, people are

believes that if they're being cynical, they're being more intelligent. Unfortunately, all the psychological

research shows that people who are cynical are less intelligent. Really people who's, yes, I

quote it in the matter with things. The matter with things took my thinking very, very much further

than what is in the master of this emissary into these realms, particularly. But I just say that

does it don't pride yourself on being cynical? Yes, yes, the cynicism claim. Did you

fact check this particular one, Chris? I did, yeah. And it's, well, so the basic claim is correct

that there are not many, but there are a couple of studies that show a correlation between cynicism,

measures, and lower scores on things that are usually it's not actually IQ. It's things associated

with IQ, but in any case, like, yeah, things associated with intelligence. But it's an

extremely weak correlation. And the measures of cynicism are like, it's proper cynicism, which is,

you know, do you think that people are all liars and are constantly trying to screw you over?

And that kind of thing. So what he's talking about, as a system, as like, you know,

recognizing that people are made of matter, which is not quite, yes, that's the end phase.

Yeah, I fact check it as well. And that was the same thing I found that it's, you know, yeah,

there are some findings up there that it's significantly overstated. And it doesn't surprise me if it

did turn out to be true. I mean, like, conspiratorial thinking. Exactly. It's very close to,

I thought that the measure was quite close to the way that you, you know, measure conspiratorial

ideation. But he states it here as yes, it's completely, completely validated and blah, blah, blah.

But it's only a very weak, minor relationship in these large correlational data set studies.

It's not what he implies, which is like, it's just completely, you know, robust finding that's

a course, literature and so on. Like, no, yeah, marginally true, but way overstated just as it

stands. But the important thing, of course, is how he uses it. Right. So it plays this role in

his rhetorical argument. So cynicism is, I assume it's a left-brained kind of thing. And it's

the kind, it's the kind of thing that people who don't think like him are, right? It's cynicism

about God. It's cynicism about mythos. It's cynicism about the great truths that literature and

ancient stories have to tell us. That's what he needs. So it's really a pretty weak rhetorical

maneuver. Well, I also feel that Alex, I didn't do a great job of steel money, the composition.

I'm glad that he brought it up, you know, that some of us listeners are going to be like,

well, I experienced love. But he again suggested that like they would, you know, fundamentally

accept that the ultimate level that's of significance is the atomic level. And that this is just like

a kind of depressing, you know, worldview, because you're just saying, well, it doesn't matter,

because we're all just atoms bumping and so on. And you're like, but it doesn't, like, it doesn't

follow that you can acknowledge that people are being of atoms. And that therefore that's,

that's all the matters right because it's the same thing as saying, well, this pile of dog crop

is meat of atoms. And this chocolate cake is meat of atoms. So fundamentally, what's the difference?

But, you know, why, why wouldn't I just eat the dog crap? It's all atoms. And you're like, no,

that doesn't follow, right? It doesn't logically follow that just because atoms are at the

underlying, you know, pieces of things that therefore that's the appropriate level for humans

to be discussing objects and how they're going to like feel or interact with them up.

Yeah, yeah, indeed. Yeah. It doesn't feel new though, it does it. I mean, we've definitely

I mean, Jordan Peterson obviously is all about this kind of thing. And, you know, dualism,

the idea that there's these non- not overlapping magisteria of the physical world, but also,

you know, the world of ideas and feelings and the human spirit and love and consciousness and

all that stuff, that it exists not that one emerges from the other, but rather that it exists in its own

parallel world. And then actually that it is more true, more real kind of like platonic forms or

something than the ugly base material world. This is a very old idea that he's kind of reprising.

Oh, yes, yes. And he actually ties it in to some of his later philosophizing. So, I mean,

we might just at least draw the connection that he perts here.

I mean, we came there earlier when talking about Dawkins, but of course, this is right. And this is a

point that is, I mean, no doubt some people will think, well, that's just to sort of get out

clause and so on, but I can't help people like that because you've got to actually broaden your

mind to see that there are different ways of knowing things. There are different kinds of truth.

You know, you can either accept that or not. And in a way, you have to live with your choice about

whether you would do it, accept that or not. But I would recommend opening your mind and reading

more philosophy and seeing that there's more going on than just mechanical, certifiable facts that

can be put into a textbook and verified by an experiment. I'm never going to get to what he was

talking about there, right? Because this is related to his theological worldview. But I just

think that's a perfect encapsulation that's like, you know, what you got to do, Ma, is you have to

embrace it. Yeah. If you're open-minded, then you will obviously agree with him. Yeah. No, it reminds

me of Sam Harris and also just Zen Buddhism more generally, which is that I can't explain this to you.

I mean, you know, I can, but you know, ultimately you have to accept it. But you know, if you don't

accept it, you're going to be living a limited more, more base kind of life. You have to open your

mind and, you know, do the reading, do the work and experience it. So yeah, it just, it falls

back on a, just a claim of like revealed truth, essentially. And, you know, and it is, it's so

funny that people like him always call the opposition arrogant. And yeah, don't forget to give

it arrogant, perhaps. But I mean, it's so incredibly arrogant for him to assume that someone like

myself that doesn't hold his dualistic, I don't know whatever you call it in philosophical terms,

phenomenal, logical, continental, whatever it is. Just because I don't agree with that,

then, then I'm just fundamentally limited as a human being. I can't think of anything more

arrogant than that. Oh, yeah, yeah. And we've got a long ways to go. Yeah, because this is really,

what we've covered so far is basically the foundation for where he really wants to go to the

conversation, right? And the, you, this is not the main story. This is just all scaffolding.

Yeah, this is, this is true, because he wants to leap from this to a diagnosis society, talk about

the nature of cosmos and also his own bespoke versions of panpsychism and theological beliefs

and, and so on, right? He has a whole much bigger worldview that he's going to outline. But this

is the foundation that it's based on, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, they, they go for so much

exciting new ideas, big ideas to sit out to the debut Chris. I don't think we're going to have time

to comfort all in this episode. Not in one setting, not in one setting. We're going to, we're going

to move on. But, um, but I think my, a nice way to end my pre to give people just the

taste of where we're going. You don't like it the end of back to the future where they, they say,

you know, where we're going, we don't need cars and the car flew off. And we're like, oh,

it was going to be, you know, look at, look at this. So, um, let's just hear Alex's question. Why

don't I play Alex's question to freedom? Where, where are we going to go in this conversation

next? And, uh, this will give you a taste of it. So where have we gone wrong here then? Because

the kind of Dawkins-esque approach of the, the primacy of, I suppose, in a way left, left

brain thinking, um, seems to be dominant. And, and I think you said in the past and recently that

the world is sort of becoming a bit left brain dominant or is a bit left brain dominant in a

way that maybe it once didn't sort of used to be. And I'm interested for two reasons that the

first is sort of like, you know, when I say how does that happen? I don't just mean what are the

social conditions that make people think this way. But, oh, yeah, how is it that the brain starts

acting differently? Is it like this mind that connects the two hemispheres just sort of starts

ignoring one side? Are we able to, to train the, the mind into sort of residing more in the right

brain or the left brain? That seems very strange. If you have one brain that is all connected and

communicating with each other, how could it even be the case that people would just sort of switch

one of them off in a lot of these conversations? Thank you. Questions, Alex. That's an excellent

question. It is strange, Chris. It is strange. He does have an answer. He does have an answer.

It's great. Well, go delving into what it is, um, next time. So, uh, yeah, go Matt, this is part one

of the two-parter on Imagel, Chris, and really could be in the other way because there's just a

a very debil, smorgasbord of ideas and, and high-level thinking being presented to us. It's not at all

simply this dichotomy that right-bring things are good and those are the kind of things that

Imagel, Chris, like, left-bring things are bad. And that's what our materialism is. No, no, no,

it's much more cool, but so much more nuanced than that. Very nervous. Both industries are involved

all the time. He said that. He said that. He did say that. He did, he said, and he's not, he said

several times that he's not making that simple dichotomy. So, I guess he's not. But, um, we'll hear

the various ways that he's not doing that next time in more detail. So, look forward to that.

Look forward to that. Thank you for the service, Chris. I see you all guys soon.

Bye-bye.