Iain McGilchrist & Rupert Read in Conversation: Are We in a War Against Life?
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- čas přidán 27. 07. 2024
- This conversation is part of an online seminar series taking place in the Spring and Summer of 2023 bringing innovative thinkers into conversation with Iain McGilchrist to explore his philosophy as laid out in The Matter with Things. www.amazon.co.uk/Matter-Thing...
In the week following each event, we hold free connection and inquiry sessions online to meet and reflect more deeply with others on the significance of the ideas shared in the previous week’s seminar. Incorporating embodied and relational practices, we’ll alternate between break-out room conversations and whole-group discussion. The emphasis is on authentic connections, epistemic humility, and a sense of wonder in relation to Iain and his interlocutors' work. You're warmly invited to join us!
To join the live events or learn more about this series go to our webpage here: systems-souls-society.com/iai...
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Dr McGilchrist has the patience of a saint.
In regard of particular events here??
@@liborsionko the whole thing.
No wonder the other fellow has turned to a kind of wishy washy Buddhism. He seems to be caught in an endless spool of intellectual thought...without the intuitive insight that can reach a unique conclusion that heads towards an ultimate truth.
@@simonbrownbridge9919 good luck with your 'ultimate truth' finding!
Rupert will eventually leave academia to get the necessary experience -a huge step into the «McGilchrist-brain»!
Conversation between a master and his emissary
There are not just 100s of followers but more. Many of us done have time to tune in to the streams but eagerly await the replays. Every word from Iain is a treasure to mankind. Cheers.
Iain is having to revisit McGilchrist 101, over and over... and he does it with grace and patience.
Didn't sound like Rupert was 'steelmanning' - it sounded as though he hadn't understood the basics of Iain's hemisphere hypothesis. Strange 'performance' by Rupert, though his point on moving away from the Woke / Peterson polarisation was a fair one.
What targeted questions did you ask? All you did was attribute beliefs to Ian that were clearly not the case in his writings. You seemed almost contrarian. If I want to know where I am I get on the hill, scrambling in the bushes isn’t the best vantage point.
@@poorandesai5315 exactly, in order to steel-man an argument you need to understand the other’s position. I couldn’t say Rupert was even strawmanning, he just didn’t seem to understand the basic arguments in Ian’s work.
Would like to have his grace and patience. I am a teacher.
McGilchrist's Master and His Emissary- I had to read it twice to sort of understand it. That said, I do wonder if Rupert Read did actually read that book carefully. He is brave to debate Iain, but he comes off as a good example of left brain dominance- he's obviously quite smart yet can't see the forest for the trees. I was curious about his critique, but there's no actual debate points here, only Rupert misunderstanding Iain's work with Iain clarifying. The clarifications are really lovely, though, and make the dialogue worth it because McGilchrist's points come out energetically and precisely.
completely agree, was thinking same thing watching this.
You read my mind ~ its funny but it actually makes the learning and richness far deeper and more powerful for me seeing it play out as an illustration in this way. Dr McGilchrists insights are outstanding.
I agree.
I think he may have asked others to read the books and give him talking point.
Rupert Read brought up several questions in regard to McGilchrist’s work, among them:
• Is there a fallacy of decomposition? (wholes vs. parts)
• Is there a performative contradiction?
• Is it better to 'point to' vs. explicitly state the truth?
• What is the relationship between 'ultimate' vs. 'conventional' truths?
• Is McGilchrist reconstituting the problem of dogmatism?
• Is it possible to "take a step forward" in a "faithful relationship with reality"?
• Can we become "attached to the right hemisphere"? (To the left?)
Most if not all of these have, in some form or another, already been anticipated and addressed by McGilchrist elsewhere. But it is good to do so again. Rowson said at the conclusion: “As somebody who's wrestled with Iain's work, I really value Rupert's attempt to clarify where he was less comfortable with it. It's invaluable for those who are interested in really giving Iain's work the rigorous attention it demands and deserves. So a heartfelt thanks to Rupert Read, and of course to Iain."
This is like watching the left hemisphere endlessly trying to justify its right as the master!
This conversation is essentially Rupert throwing important topics overboard and Iain having to fish them back onto the boat 😂
Which is not a bad way to tease things out 😉
I'm so relieved that it isn't just me.
I swear to holy god, I stopped the video and turned off CZcams, left the chat so to speak and laughed for a mentally ill length of time after reading this tweet…. My soul conveys its many thanks 🙏😂
McGilchrist's two cat problem was priceless!
Great conversation. Thank you.
Ian- you have a wonderful clear way of explaining things- I enjoyed listening to this
Absolutely love Iains work, it's so beautifully and clearly expressed and tackles so much.
Thank you all. Much enjoyed this discussion
Thank You! 😊❤️❤️❤️🌹🙏🏽 Blessings!!
Thank you. I am fortunate to appreciate this.
this was amazing ❤ THANK YOU SO MUCH 💝💟
It matters that an open mind that deepens and quests for contextual moving truth is not confused with ' superiority ' which is the either-or, oppositional-hunter language of debate rather than reverberative conversation.
Philip Goyal used the word superior too but he was exploring and clarifying within a resonating embodied conversation.
Oddly enough , his extraordinary
" insights " are dismissed as bunkum or pseudo - science by vast majority of those who have more than one functioning brain cell. He is strictly for the more
gullible among us .
It's amazing that someone can take a beating like that and not even know it's happened.
Rupert comes across as someone who hasn’t read Ian’s work or has and doesn’t grasp it.
Great question about how important the body is that houses the brain, and also great answers! 1:36:00
Thank you for these wonderful discussions with Iain McGilchrist and others.❤
At 45:10 The question posed is what I've been wondering.His answer does make sense. Even though poetry and imaginative prose can express so many things better, they can become abstruse to the point where the meaning becomes vague.
Again, @29.35, Rupert reads an absolute marvelous and poetic passage and unfortunately he does not get the cadence, tenor felt-and-articulated vision that Iain is voicing here. Instead, he takes issue as he proceeds to extract and compartmentalize the phrase, “..But waves they are!” and misses the point or, shall I say, “seeing” entirely!
"They are waves" is a claim. I was pointing that it. You seem to think it is no longer a claim if the word order is altered?
@@RupertReadClimate Actually, yes because the word order (how and where it is articulated from) is different in poetic license. It is more than the arrangement of signifiers or mere semantics. He is not saying the same thing, as say, for example, “Can be reduced to waves” and, as it were, presenting a schematic.
I take it he is claiming: the ultimate reality is that they are waves. There are passages in TMWT which make that very explicit.
@@RupertReadClimate when “waves” are described from the outside, as it were, information exchange across a “dissociative boundary”then(to borrow Kastrup’s phrase) that tends toward left brain reification or compartmentalization. However, when they are felt, lived, moved through there is an unknowing or a knowing of not-knowing (which is different from pure ignorance) and more along the lines of Intuition, which defies the incessant compulsion of reification or schematizing (or presented diagrams of waves as waves). Or perhaps to use a Zen phrase by the master in response to the monk (in accurately describing the great void), “Yes, but to say so is a pity.”
The questioner is also saying how things are, namely as Wittgenstein and "Buddhism" say that they are.
😂I think most of us are convinced that Rupert’s left hemisphere is clearly on overdrive..😉.
💜
👏👏👏
As a kind of first approximation in regard to human beings we could say that there is equality in essence and yet there is difference in function and can be hierarchy in function. Of course, it requires a long time of working together to understand just what such a statement might mean. Without some direct experience that my core subjectivity and your core subjectivity is one and the same, we are stuck in concepts which divide without knowing and being in touch with the Unity which can inform and re-inform the concepts to align and realign us and our concepts within the Unity. The point is we need to be able to return to the sense of Unity or the wholeness, that as a state of consciousness is prior to any and all concepts, any divisions. It allows us to enter into the question again and again and live in the question as need be. This is the mind of wonder or "don't know" mind or "beginners mind" that Zen points to and that can be found in all the real traditions especially at the esoteric level. It is our having access to this kind of pure or unadulterated wonder of consciousness that allows us to question all that we may think we know or not know. Returning to the sense of Unity, the sense of not-knowing, the sense of pure wonder can allow us to understand the parts and relative wholes in possibly a new and different manner. This type of unitive consciousness has a unitive vision that can show us different lines of perspective where reality and values fall differently and perhaps more aligned with the "One Ecology of the Whole" which probably can't be fully known yet it can inform us and re-inform us again and again to bring us out of our being caught by a limited view and realign us. Thanks be for this video....keep on keeping on.
To Ann'es last point/question about re- embodiement, I totally agree, and neither speaker seemed to pick up on the fact that their longest discussion point in this talk referred to a DANCE. So, perhaps they need to be less afraid to waltz their talk ? 😎
Saw the title, which omitted the last word. Thought it was going to say "China". I've heard him criticize the country twice but both the conversations didnt linger. Anybody know why?
This all sounds like (or is at least adjacent to) the notion of “moloch,” whereby healthy systems turn unhealthy by virtue if the same principles that made them healthy to begin with; cancer being an obvious example (cells going awol and stealing resources from the (now diseased) organism. I wonder whether there is some underlying physical (or mathematical?) basis to this phenomenon; And if so, what it might teach us about the nature of living things, including ourselves and society.
That's the sort of question I like. I suspect it has to do with life being a system that moves dynamically from one stable state to the other, including to "peak" stable states that are far less stable than "valley" states. The value of these "peak" states comes at the cost of their relative instability; they need to be maintained vigilantly, and one small error can be catastrophic.
It reminds me of Hegel’s writing
Erosion, stress and time transform both atoms and humans. Rain can alter a mountain, neutrions from the sun can alter chlorine into argon. In order to grow (transform into adulthood)we need a certain amount of stress...if we get to much our health/marriage/strength corrode or break.
There is no scientific basis for any of McGilchrists spurious claims.
Not that this matters to his " faithful " fans..... Or " rubes " as they call them in the States.
I wish I understood what Rupert Read's overall point is. Somehow I'm not seeing how it comes together into a coherent position. A lot of his questions/statements seem to start with "But don't you think..." as if he has a developed, differing position, but then what follows comes across as more like nitpicking, because it isn't clear to me what he's trying to build up to. Some of it seems to be predicated on the idea that Iain said the right hemisphere is superior, which I don't believe is what he said. Then he's arguing about whether the right hemisphere is more in touch with reality than the left. I think I understand the sense in which Iain means that: the left hemisphere's representations compared to the right hemisphere's perceptions are like looking at a road map versus looking at the actual road. But then Read tried to argue that if something is "useful" it must be "reality." Well, an atlas of the United States is useful, but the country is much larger than the surface area of 100 sheets of paper, and the roads don't actually look like red, green and blue lines, so someone who thought of the United States purely in terms of what they saw in an atlas would be disconnected from a major portion of reality. I was trying to figure out if what he meant was that the left hemisphere's representations conform to reality *to a sufficient degree to be useful* or that the left hemisphere's perspective is in some sense "valid" because the relationships it is able to perceive via its simplified models are also "real" (by analogy, when you look in an atlas, you can see the layout of roads across thousands of miles, and you can't see that by just walking down the road, so the atlas captures facets of reality that you can't see by direct contact with the outside world). Maybe it was something like that. Yet in the end, I couldn't tell *what* Read was trying to do with that line of argument. It was kind of that way all the way through -- I didn't get what the point was.
@27.40 so far. Rupert is so off! There is no self aggrandizement of the right hemisphere. Quite the contrary, it’s “Not knowing” does in fact lend itself to a more harmonious and greater fluidity without contradiction. That is to say, it sees-feels the implicate order of the whole without making a fetish out of it! In that sense, the unwitting, left brain disposition that Rupert is taking here is amusing as he sees (unwittingly from that perspective) a possible supercilious arrogance or smug egoistic resignation or comfort of a one-upmanship but that is an irreconcilable conflict of the reductionist, comparative and competitive left hemisphere rather than the right!
The question is: Does ultimate truth refute itself if it claims superiority over relative truth.
@@RupertReadClimate Yes, if it so holds and compartmentalizes the narrative (e.g., a type of disembodied self-conscious narrative) which would represent an egoistic stance of holding steadfast around a certain type of hubristic feeling or compulsion under the threat which gives rise to a necessary feeling of compulsion/ panic or perpetual askance, lest it risks it’s own existential demise or annihilation. However, the Vichian Imagination, for example, curiosity, knowing of not-knowing which also lends itself or an analogy can be made to the Taoist understanding of wu-wei (unforced action) and image of water does not feel, if you will, the need to make it into a self honorific superior claim or lorded over abstraction or fetish.
The wider lens of Intuitive knowing is superior but not by virtue of saying-so but precisely because of openness, receptivity, curiosity, not-knowing and allowing and wonder by the implicit sense-of-being which can allow (afford, lol) proposition, not proposition and the proposition of not proposition. Laughter and humor slips in rather than unconsciously strived for perfect machinery of some hubristic (superior) stance.
Ian's cats ❤❤❤
40;42 is a never ending dance the way to think if it all ?
Firstly you must realize the obvious that the hemispheres are involved in awareness. Awareness is at the core of your concerns. The shift required is expressed in the perennial philosophy in that the truth behind all religions is awareness of the transcendent dimension. It is frustrating and totally understandable that this union experience awareness is not being expressed in its fullness .
Clearly, Iain’s extraordinary insights haven’t managed to penetrate Rupert’s head.
Comedy 🎯💕
I have a question? How to educate in the arts when there is no more respect, compromise or seriousness on students and parents anymore
Halfway thru, thanks for the conversation so far. One symbiotic chain in Nature is the action of the grass family (object) leading the herd which leads the pack. Ruminants in the middle, as able to deal with the "accelerant" one-to-many action in/as the "object" of the grass which, in general, this action is super aggressive yet self smothering and needing to be restored by the punching down of thatch and eating, of the herd..
Self as the moving from One to Many to One etc. and Love as the whereness feeling of self? Symbiosis as self playing with objects; but, see the objects as the holes in Swiss cheese, the framework of cheese (the One) and the holes as Many; the reason they are holes is because as objects the being is the frequency expressed by that object, and the One is the range of expression and a hole-object on another level. To be the many object in the one object is to sequester that particular frequency, by expressing it within the bounds of the one spectrum. Creativity as the "top" non-object, the big cheese framework for objects?
A person as a microcosm of One with organs, each with a specific frequency, and the interesting evolution of higher object like endocrine system, which allow interface of fire between microbiology object(s) and person object. Humans think they are predators! instead of being lead by the powerful grass object, in the biosphere "many" of the planet "one", object to object intermingling as sharing, the green spectrum not used by the grass nor offered, observed by the person and inference allowed by this truth of what the plant isn't, along with other qualia.
Grass doesn't need to develop space travel to go off the planet. Objects don't touch directly it seems, except for trading organized by and as self. This is significant if humans - as One - evolved their Many brains initially by a symbiosis with grass as food, by human Self mimicking ruminant Self.
Possibly, for each civilization the efficacy of producing this somewhat indigestible material increases while labor saving devices proliferate, more time to be clever and more urge to control what isn't understood, with the objectification to reach that object which isn't apparently an object, Self, but the exploration between. The vibrational capacity of the organs changed by the sticky, viscous material, restored somewhat by drugs.
The interface tweaking the object of microbiology via pH or oxygen percentage; the interface fire of neurotransmitters, hormones and enzymes, object bookends in the brain "many", for mood of self as movement between bookend objects.
Initially a good group level compromise that developed intelligence (more food, more time) then a bad compromise for the individual if it becomes a staple, since the objects (organs) within are altered as to frequency expressed, this tweaks autopoetic self to objectify or not (be clever) and (I think) mood via tweaking the object of microbiology thru pH and O2 levels. Skinny people are equally messed up by drugs and constipation so appearance is meaningless.
Just my opinion! but also something that could be decided and legislated, and observed. Just dial the crap back by realizing how hard it is to remove, and the dubious (and replaceable with something more appropriate) value of it which are the trade elements unrecognized. Caveat emptor.
so they are among us 👽
Humans are distracted by themselves. All these verbals & rationalising will snuff us out Be like the bee 🐝 and just visit whatever's the next flower in your path and enjoy the scent... i.e. do what feels natural/ right if you can, react when needed, but don't go out of the way to do it. Get lost sometimes ;)
" rationalising " gave us all the scientific / medical advances we have today. Thankfully some of us
DIDN'T stick to sniffing flowers or using the left side of our brains .
@@2msvalkyrie529 Reason is always the limited, always the known... hence the so-called advances are not actually advances.
Climate Majority project is an NGO championing global corporate governance, net zero/zero carbon and all that goes with it , VERY left brain. I'm sure RR will be a very wealthy man.
My left hemisphere is telling me not to trust anyone with the name Rupert. Sorry couldn’t resist.
🙏♥️🌎🌿🕊🎵🎶🎵
21:55
The answer is given in the Kabbalah.
A left-hemisphere apologist is trying to grill Iain McGilchrist who seems to be amused by the many "buts" that take him to cover the same area again and again and still does not "satisfy" his questioner.
Rupert Read personifies the dry academic seemingly focussed on intellectual point scoring, not taking time to absorb what Iain was saying before adding his pre scripted objections.
p.s. In the Q and A, Read explains why he questioned like he did. Serves me right for jumping in too quickly.
@@mickmcmenemy7701 - I was wondering about that myself..... there was some rigidity in Rupert's stance, no doubt.
Very nicely put. This was irritating to listen too and Iain has all my sympathies.
The difference between an unfolding open ended evolution and a predetermined static goal
In response to Iain's comment between 1:11:22 and his water break, I just wanna say "Amen!"
This is exactly what I see and it's such a relief to hear it expressed so perfectly by him.
Was just feeling this again last night when I read about the most recent report on the origin of COVID 19.
Apparenrly, it's now a confirmed fact that the Wuhan Institute if Virology was doing gain-of-function research on the virus (Oops! We started a world wide pandemic that killed countless people...all because we we want to have the power to control viruses...(?!!)...The irony!
Was also remembering having heard...around the same time-frame of the pandamic....the story of the guy who took it upon himself to bring about the first "engineered human babies"...just ignoring the laws and the warnings and all of the obvious (to some) risks and implications of doing so.
I've felt this way about so many things I've seen in my lifetime and have felt almost sick to my stomach because it seems that the mindset behind such acts always seems to have this quality of complete disregard for the miraculous complexity and beauty of the world as it naturally already is....and either an inability or an unwillingness to see how this mindset always backfires. Maybe it's due to the left hemisphere's proclivity NOT to see the bigger picture?
It always strikes me as a hubris that is literally far more dangerous than is recognized by most people.
So just hearing these words come out of Iain's mouth was like my OWN much needed water-break, if you catch my drift
My personal environmentalism (going back to when I was fourteen), I suppose, had a distinctly ‘left’ flavour until I read Roger Scruton’s Green Philosophy (2012). What really struck me, esp having followed George Monbiot’s blog for years, was that if the left were really so sincere they would have welcomed a contribution from across the political divide, find some common ground, but as far as I can tell Green Philosophy was, and still is, criminally ignored *including* by so called conservatives.
I’ve had some correspondence with Mark Dooley, who was a friend of Roger Scruton and is rather well versed in Scruton’s Green Philosophy, it would be very interesting if Perspectiva could organise a conversation with Dooley.
Good H ay
We're at war with our own brains
Our brains are at war with themselves ...
Good question to pose ~ the relationship between man and the system ~ is it tautological (product of each other) that creates a spiraling effect that diminishes. As has happened when epistemology (science, philosophy) became fragmented disembodied
Re morality, Mary Eberstadt is very important in this area, I recommend her discussion on the Thomistic Institute podcast 29:00.
Eberstadt points out that Solzhenitsyn said the 20th century can be summed up in four words: “Man has forgotten God” Mary Eberstadt suggests the 21st century can be summed up in six words:“Man is at war with God”.
This is the best talk yet. Rupert did a great job in bringing forth the rigour needed for Iain's work to both land and thrive.
No
No
He made for a rather striking example of why philosophy needs poetry and music, silence and mystery more than ever. He was irritating and ungracious and missed the point entirely.
I wouldn't call asking the exact same question three or four times in succession, worded just slightly differently, in any way intelligent.
I beg your pardon? 'Rigour, land and thrive'?😂
Your corporate language tells me where you're coming from and why you like the self-absorbed RR. You really do not get Iain's work, I think.
50;11 :why stop the dance and poetry?
Just finished the first 100 pages of ''The matter with things'' This young philosopher seems to read Iain's work as if it were the finance act ....a sort of reductionism ....but fair play to him for engaging and seeing through the vacuous nature of a lot of academia
I see some anger at Rupert in these comments for arguing some points with Iain. This really isn't the kind of supporters that Iain needs. Moreover if you admire Iain's intellect you ought to be more confident in his ability to defend himself in the cut and thrust. One can greatly admire Iain's work whilst also being very vigilant for any attempt to put philosophy on a scientific basis. Remember that the right hemisphere is the devil's advocate. The saddest thing for a group of Iain's followers to become would be intolerant to debate. So let the debate flourish.
Of course, we have to change, and it is never too late. Indeed, the answer is glaringly obvious. So much so, that most simply close their eyes for comfort. There's been a growing hysteria since the 1960's, and rather than address the real issue, too many talk in extreme terms. Extremism is nothing new either, we see it in religions... and look how their madness has played out, and is still playing out.
The real underlying issue is one of awareness, and the shaping of consciousness. Belief is the engine of consciousness. All belief is make believe; a result of mere memory, the mentality, of repetitious thought, which in turn becomes emotion.
The controlling belief for thousands upon thousands of years has been one of limitation, of scarcity. That belief can easily be seen to be false. Akin to a weak man leaning upon a crutch, then assuming that he needs another crutch, then carried everywhere... the obvious answer is to address the underlying issue; build muscle, eat proper nutrients.
There is no scarcity, simply the misuse of resources due to the control by the few. Likewise, oil, natural materials, land use, etc, are not in themselves problematic. The way we approach every aspect of life is the way every aspect plays out. So, yes, it can be said that we are at war with life itself, due to the belief which is the basis of our social structure.
When we follow, we follow. We can't blame the leaders, we are the ones choosing to follow. So when one cries scarcity, yet sits on plenty, where does the problem lie; with their greed or within our compliance, our complicity? Environmentally, that is the basic issue. All advancement is driven by control, by us allowing that control to be. Take an offshoot, which is money. Money has become a serious issue for most, as we've been shaped by a system which has exploitation at its very heart. So few question the value of money, the necessity of such. Life has been reduced to a business system, nothing less - nothing more, but money was always a control mechanism.
Let's take a leap, one where awareness is shaping consciousness rather than the mentality itself. Awareness knows we have to eat, to have heat, to set up home, etc... none of that is a problem. It is all so basic, as is our interdependence... as is our independence. So we do not abuse our environment, we do not grab more than necessary, greed is not a factor as we know there is plenty for all. Dominance, control, that does not enter. Awareness, like life itself, is fluid. Co-operation is natural. With co-operation there is no falsity, no ownership. The latter being one of the great delusions.
Co-operation is the way forward for ourselves and this precious planet. By getting beyond money, we shake off the shackles of self-imposed limitation, which has given us only a poor quality life in every way, and costs all dearly as it does the planet. Money is power... and we all know here that leads. Yep, there's the cliff, just a few feet in front.
A world without money means we can all have quality housing, all have quality food, all have quality technology. The latter being held back in so many ways; from cost to the need for profit. Just imagine for a few moments, all of us working together for one another. It could happen tomorrow, even with today's technology. Co-operation not coercion, not control. Obviously, we all have to choose; remain on this path or make another.
McGilchrist: we have a serious problem with the left hemisphere isolating everything into tiny fragments and not allowing the more wholistic perspective of the right hemisphere to give us the wisdom and insight of the wider perspective
Rupert Read: I’d like to take issue with this tiny fragment of your work from page 446, and this tiny fragment of your work from page 732.
So taking the right hemisphere seriously means that we are not allowed to ask specific, targetted questions about theories built upon it?
@@RupertReadClimate No, it means that the left hemisphere ain't Da Boss, though vitally important
Hope your cat is okay Iain!
Oh, you said they are later in the video. Good 👍
1:27:20 "What is called woke......." This minute or so from Rupert is the golden takeaway from this talk.
Thanks to Ian Rupert and all involved. Let's do this!
??!
"Are We in a War Against Life?" doesn't come up until about 1:11:00 into the discussion. My answer:
No!
We are in a search for new ways to survive long term in our rapidly changing reality.
This is hard, because evolution has strongly biased our brains to find patterns that worked in the contexts of our evolutionary past, that don't necessarily work in our present.
One of those is a strong bias to prefer the simple over the complex. The more stressed we are the stronger this tendency becomes.
We are now in a reality that is deeply complex and demands very complex strategies in order to have a reasonable probability to survive long term.
Simple answers that were useful approximations even in our quite recent past are no longer workable. Three of the most critical are:
Competition can solve all problems;
Evolution is all about competition;
Markets deliver a reasonable proxy for human value generally.
Competition can be very useful in solving certain classes of problems, but any purely competitive system is necessarily destructive of complexity. Which leads into the second.
Evolution always has a competitive aspect, but at each new level of complexity it is critical that systems develop cooperative ways of protecting the constraints that are required in reality for the existence of that level of complexity. Which is reasonably approximated in the notion that competition is only survivable if built on a cooperative base. In this sense, it is cooperation, not competition, that is fundamental to the emergence and survival of every level and class of complexity. An overly simplistic focus on competition is necessarily destructive.
Markets deliver a measure of value in exchange. Value in exchange is always zero for things that are abundant (think oxygen in the air - vital to all humans, yet of zero market value due to abundance). The flip side of that, is that market incentives cannot, in and of their own internal incentive structures, deliver universal abundance of anything - poverty for some in an essential aspect of functioning markets. In the past this was not a significant issue, because most things were genuinely scarce. But with automation and AI that is no longer the case.
The bias for simplicity that evolution necessarily places into our neural networks has to be seen for what it is, something that was useful to our ancestors, but a major threat to us.
Our inventiveness has created (must create) ever more complex systems, and those demand ever more complex systems and strategies for long term survival.
Freedom is a fundamental aspect of being human, of being able to search the unknown for the useful and the survivable; but freedom without constraints is necessarily destructive (the literal bull in the china shop). Exactly where an appropriate balance is in any specific context can be extremely context sensitive.
Responsibility is essential for survival, being constantly on the alert for what constraints are actually required in any specific context, and any particular level.
Central control is not an optimal solution. Optimality for intelligent agents demands devolved responsibility, with every agent using their intelligence applied to the specifics of the contexts they find themselves in. This is true at every level. Every golfer knows that trying to consciously control their golf swing is not gong to end well. What works is giving the subconscious a clear picture of the desired outcome, then handing over control to the subconscious for execution. At the social level, control needs to be at the level of individuals, provided that those individuals are acting responsibly, and are working within sets of constraints that do have a reasonable probability of socially survivable outcomes.
In these senses, the classical notion of "Truth" - as in a one to one mapping between reality and our maps or understandings - is a dangerous over simplification.
The very notion of "truth" is prone to this over simplification, it biases us to accept "Truth", and once accepted a "Truth" cannot be questioned (by definition, if it can be usefully questioned then it cannot logically be "Truth"). Thus I prefer to avoid it, preferring instead to use the notion of "useful approximation", which demands of us that we are eternally open to question and refinement.
Where Iain says "The only thing that is certain is that anyone who says they are certain is almost certainly wrong". I agree with that; and the only way I have found to communicate that effectively, is to avoid using the word "Truth". Truth implies False in a binary world. Most people exist in some form of binary world most of the time, and some all of the time, and very few live in a world of probabilities most of the time.
I agree with Iain that we have relationships to reality, and the simplest possible relationship (the one most neural networks are strongly biased to prefer) is a binary - where things are True or False, and if True, need never be questioned again, ever! It is that very notion that needs to be avoided, and any use of any word linked to "True" or "False" needs to be avoided; if there is to be any reasonable probability of keeping minds from dropping back into their preferred binary simplicity.
The demands of our past, to have conceptual understandings and models that could respond rapidly to changes in context, is a threat to our current existence. In this sense, I agree with Iain.
But trying to redefine the word "Truth" to be something other than the opposite to "False", is going to fail with the majority.
What is demanded is to give that other thing a new label, that clearly distinguishes it as something different.
I am autistic spectrum, so one of those Iain explicitly excludes from his analysis, and I do not fit into his analysis, and I can see some power in what he is saying, and it is clearly something different and profoundly more complex.
The notion of making the implicit explicit, then re-enfolding into the implicit, is something I agree with in a sense, but it is something anathema to classical binary logic, yet fundamental to probabilistic logic (which is founded in uncertainty). The prime "Trap" is the very notion of "Truth". The idea of "useful shorthand" (my "useful approximation") needs to be understood as alternatives to the classical simplistic notion of "Truth".
I wholly agree with Iain when at around 55:30 he agrees with Wittgenstein that "certain kinds of philosophizing are less fruitful than others" - in my world, that notion is recursively, probabilistically, applicable to all things. And once one can distinguish that there exist infinite classes of logical systems beyond classical binary logic of "True/False" the simplest being trinary logic, and the simplest of the possible trinary logics being "True/False/Undecided", then one enters a realm where the classical certainty of "True/False" is lost, and may only ever be approximated in the asymptote. Yet evolution has (for the very good reason that it tends to punish the slow much more harshly than the slightly inaccurate) heavily biased our neural networks to prefer the simple (for speed) over the complex (for reliability).
Agree with Iain at 55:50 that "I emphatically do not belong to the school that truth is just something that we make up" and with the immediately following:
"If we don't really believe that there is any kind of truth that is accessible then we might as well all just stay in bed".
[continued]
But the key is in "kind of truth", and just using the word "truth" in that context is very prone to misinterpretation, so I like to avoid it, though I do understand what Iain is saying, I contend that many (perhaps most) will not. The tendency of our neural networks to classify anything that is near enough to fit in a "category" will place that use of the word "truth" into the category of "True/False", even if it is logically impossible for it to live there within the structure of that sentence - our neural networks will tend to ignore that fact, and put it there anyway.
So when Iain says (56:02) "I do believe there is truth. I believe passionately that it matters." Those two sentences will be misinterpreted by many, even though they are immediately followed by "I don't believe that any one human being is going to be in possession of 'The Truth', but that our goal is to get closer to something that calls to us, that reaches into something quite deep in us, and we respond to it, we answer to it. In other words, again, it is a relationship."
I can entirely agree with him in a sense, and at the same time, I would not choose to use those words to express that idea, because in many (perhaps most) minds, those words would necessarily be misinterpreted. And at some levels, it seems logically inescapable that misinterpretation will eventually occur, unless there is an entirely new label created for a thing that is not a binary notion; and it is explicitly acknowledged as such.
Trying to overload a classical binary distinction with a non-binary meaning is not going to work. It will, necessarily, semantically, fail.
Where Iain and I part ways, is in that the core problem is "positing as things". I think Iain and I are in very close agreement at the abstract level, but that the semantics he has chosen to try and express the ideas are likely to fail in the vast majority of minds.
Understanding is always and necessarily a recursive process of distinction, classification, abstraction, followed by new levels of distinction, reclassification, ..... "Positing as things" is a necessary part of that process. I agree with Iain that it cannot be seen as an "end point", but I do not agree with him that there is anything "wrong" with it. It is necessary part of the mind numbing complexity of what it is to be a human in this "thing" we call "reality" (whatever it actually is), all we can ever experience of it is our subconsciously created simplifications, impressions, maps, understandings - the logic, biochemistry, biophysics, evolutionary strategy of that complexity is beyond any shadow of remaining reasonable doubt, for those few who have taken the time to search deeply through the practices, results and interpretive schema (including the infinite realm of all possible logics, as well as the depths of strategy in the face of uncertainty that probabilistic logics must deal with).
There is no way to simplify that, other than some approximation to the ineffable, if one has not actually done the work to explore such spaces.
The notion of "thing" as a "solid object" has no place in modern physics. I simply don't understand why Iain uses that phrase around 57:30, at the same time as he continues to use the idea of truth. Both are overly simplistic notions that are guaranteed to cause confusion by overloading them with ideas that are essentially the inverse of there simple meaning. That really is not a very productive way to try and open people generally to the discussion of these notions that do in fact seem to me (beyond any shadow of remaining reasonable doubt) to be essential to our long term survival as a species.
The question of progress is core.
We need progress, and it seems to be "True" that progress demands acceptance of fundamental uncertainty.
"Attachment" is a useful term, as it seems to be an artifact of the neurologic bias that evolution has to have placed within our neural networks, and without which we could not have come to be, and accepting that it has to be seen for what it is, and not accepted as the over simplification it presents as at "face value" in our experience of being.
1:11:40 Agree with Iain that overly simplistic notions of freedom as being free of any and all constraints is necessarily destructive. Freedom has to have constraints if it is to survive, no escape from that at any level or class of logic.
Too little freedom, we die, as we are not creative enough to deal with the ever changing reality that we exist in.
Too much freedom and we destroy the very constraints that make pattern at our level possible.
Looked at another way, this same thing can be characterised as the role of competition and cooperation in evolution, where competition can be seen as freedom, and cooperation can be viewed as constraints. It is not one or the other, it is both, necessarily, and both must be in a balance that is appropriate to the specifics of the context, and even seemingly minor changes in context can demand massive changes in that balance.
We need to accept diversity, humility, and the need to engage in eternal enquiry, and successively useful approximation; and we cannot get there from the classical simplistic notion of "True/False", it demands greater complexity than that.
More extremism is not a solution, it is just more of the problem.
We need to see the need for change, and we also need to avoid any and all simple solutions.
Anger is one of those strong emotions that strongly biases our brains into simple binary modes. It must be avoided, in all normal contexts. We are in deeply more complex contexts than that.
I agree with Iain in the need for policy change, and it is deeper than policy, it is deeper than strategy (and both strategy and policy are important). The idea of hegemony, at any and all levels, needs to be seen as the overly simplistic approximation that it is. Hegemony writ large is not survivable, it is anathema to diversity and freedom and "Search". We need "Search", across every dimension of strategy and system to find more useful approximations that are needed for survival.
I don't see it as a hemispheric problem, though that is a part of the picture. It seems beyond reasonable doubt to me that the biggest issue we have now is a whole of brain bias to over simplify - all levels. We need to see that for what it is, accept it, not make it wrong, and in the full knowledge of its necessary presence, get on with accepting uncertainty and complexity, and being as responsible as we can, in the full knowledge of our limited and fallible natures.
We need reliability, not "Truth". And we all need to have things that we normally rely on, all levels, all domains.
What is is so interesting is the focus on relationship. Christianity is exceptional in having a God which is in a relationship. The doctrine of the Trinity is all about a strong, dynamic relationship
Poor Rupert.
It sounds to me like Ian is describing his fantasy land, trying to pretend it's deep and scientific, and Rupert is more than halfway playing into it. Whereas he should be saying, "this is just inconsequential BS."
Read doesn't understand that iain has to use the left brain as the form with which to transmit right brain content
If you’re going to steel-man an argument why ask questions that don’t reflect the argument whatsoever? And asking Ian if he had a “point of order” when he was trying to help was so ridiculously left hemisphered i almost fell out of my chair. Sort it out boys.
Wow.. That person is obviously suffering from some kind of mental disconnect. Extremely condescending, narcissistic, manipulative and absolutely devoid of any kind of cohesive argument or reasoning.
Ironically, I guess he perfectly showcased the quite literally insane behavior that Ian's work so thoroughly explores. So sad though..
Yes, and he constantly seemed to miss the point. This was the most disappointing talk in this series.
They have clarified that they are on good terms. As it were, civil resistance is the way to fruitful discussion, if you agreed all the time it would be rather stale and nothing new could arise.
I learned a great deal about Iain’s work from this discussion and I think the heart of their issues were that Rupert comes from a Buddhist perspective that appreciates the journey of the middle path on a personal level, and there is danger when one can righteously overcompensate against societal values. As it were, I think Rupert wanted Iain to avoid a sort of enantiodromia through over attachment (to the right hemisphere) via compensation.
But Iain agrees with this notion as well, that overall the right should be returned too but that doesn’t mean the left becomes an epistemological gimp but it’s this continual unfolding from left to right to left to right as context and process demands, and unfortunately the context in todays society doesn’t allow for this to happen, hence overcompensation of a kind that can seem worrisome.
@@jeffkitson9565 I think your powers of observation are a bit shit, Jeff.
If that is the case he makes Buddhism look very unappealing.
does it make everyone small minded and ungracious or only some?
@@jeffkitson9565 I think you’re right in the sense that Rupert was in those moments, more left-dominant. But I think it was clearly understood that he was playing a bit of a devils advocate in order to query Iains emphasis on the right hemisphere. It can become too overcompensated in a sense because I think that was the issue with Extinction Rebellion, Rupert experienced first hand where over compensative rhetoric can lead one. Iain is not perfect, no human being can be completely aware of where they are tending towards, and if one has everyone agreeing “yes yes the right hemisphere yessss” the left hemisphere can become as I said before a bit of a gimp instead of an emissary.
But Iain has addressed this many times, we need both-but the right should always have the last say, and our culture doesn’t allow for this to happen, hence the need for a sort of overcompensation. If Iain only said that as we process through various contexts we need to go back to the left in order to grasp at ideas appropriate to the emerging processes, the new contexts will need new ideas and the left is good at grasping at ideas, but of course it goes back to the right hemisphere that understands how to apply that effort towards a more whole understanding. But then back to the left again because we live in process, on and on. The problem lies in as we process we get stuck in the left (cultural reasons) and no longer understand a more whole and humane approach to life.
Here’s a comment I made on the RSA blog in 2013 (I’d modify it a little, but I think it’s worth repeating)
I’m going to try and put a dark, or perhaps even ‘bigoted’, turn on proceedings, perhaps hinting at, say, the likes of Galton and phrenology and eugenics and whatnot. Firstly here’s a few quotes:
“As Hobbes said, words are wise men’s counters, but they are the money of fools.
Unfortunately, the very foolish, fond old man, King Lear, does not attend to
this: his vanity (a universal vice that will, no doubt, one day show up on
brain scans) leads him to require extravagant declarations of love from his
daughters, which he then takes to express their inner states.”
Theodore Dalrymple, Diagnosing Lear
“Was the face on the canvas viler than before? It seemed
to him that it was unchanged, and yet his loathing of it was intensified. Gold
hair, blue eyes, and rose-red lips--they all were there. It was simply the
expression that had altered. That was horrible in its cruelty. Compared to what
he saw in it of censure or rebuke, how shallow Basil's reproaches about Sibyl
Vane had been!-- how shallow, and of what little account! His own soul was
looking out at him from the canvas and calling him to judgement.”
Oscar Wilde
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“It was an union that must have been to the advantage of both; by her ease and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved, and from his judgment, information, and knowledge of the world, she must have received benefit of greater importance. But no such happy marriage could now teach the admiring multitude what connubial felicity really was. An union of a different tendency, and precluding the possibility of the other, was soon to be formed in their family.”
An union of a different tendency eh? And why do we have such a vast financial deficit, crisis?
“How Wickham and Lydia were to be supported in tolerable independence, she could not imagine. But how little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue, she could easily conjecture.”
Darcy might not be there to step in with financial assistance but the modern state is premised on little else, bastards!!
Are you getting the gist? It may well be sentiments that McGilchrist would deplore but hey who has the luxury of not bearing grudges, and I say the unexamined grudge is not worth having.
Frankly there has been much (though I’m considerably more relaxed these days) for which I want revenge. It’s an ugly word perhaps, but that’s really because people are generally so bad at it, maybe I should say closure; but I’m not.
One such target of mine is basically ‘feminism’
We might well sympathise with Helena
“Bless our poor virginity from underminers and
blowers up! Is there no military policy, how
virgins might blow up men?“
But I mean come on! Slutwalk?
Feminism, it’s an ‘ism’ it has more to with ressentiment (I know, takes one to know one); why could not Maria Bertram play around like her dissolute brother Tom? Why did Marianne Dashwood have to settle for boring Colonel Brandon and not be able to play Willoughby at his own sordid game (bring on the Pill eh?); and lord knows, Willougby and Wickham are saints by todays lack of standards.
What did the Fonz say to Mork regards sexual relations? “I don’t know how you guys got so far advanced, you know, I mean there’s no incentive”. Yeah, incentive, is that like the civilizing effect?
Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen bank may have done much vital work to help women and their dependents but it seems trite and actually offensive and just plain wrong to describe it as feminism.
Anyway, that’s just one target (LH likes targets), or aspect of the greater ‘sleepwalking toward the abyss’ as McGilchrist describes.
McGilchrist’s book is profound and intriguing, that’s great, but how can it be used to expose Dorian’s picture? As it were. Making windows on mens souls? Hey, I don’t particularly wanna
go there, I’ve gone to a lot of trouble in life to build bridges, form
imaginative common ground, but of course people who’ve diminished themselves in the ‘pursuit of happiness’ i.e. pleasure, "lay waste their powers" needs must employ whatever psychic defenses, discount that which by comparison makes them feel bad about themselves. People, far too many, insist on behaving like freakin’ lemmings I’ll use virtually whatever non-violent
tools are at my disposal.
I think criticism of behavior I strongly disagree with might gain something from, say, being able to enumerate a list of symptoms associated with LH narcissistic (don’t know why
McGilchrist should wish to dissociate that term) life trajectories.
Prosopagnosia, Fregoli and Capgras syndromes, loss of proprioception, dissociation,
asomatognosia, anosognosia, misoplegia, body dysmorphia, anorexia nervosa, perceptuomotor slowing, palinopsia, forced utilization bias, autism, schizophrenia, impoverished sense of metaphor, predilection for cliché, confabulation, a morbid obsession with sex etc, etc, etc.
Something
like that.
This interviewer is insufferable
It is hugely unpleasant to listen to so many aahm, ähhm aaaaa
Damnable, nitpickin nuance !
Read comes across as a cossetted, over-educated, over-confident narcissist. For all his intellectual posture, his involvement with ExReb and JSO reveals the infantilism of his thinking, which he parades here. I sense that he is right to leave academia, but to indulge himself further in his left-brain fetishes? Perhaps a few years as a building labourer or hotel cleaner would be of more benefit, to him and to those with whom he concerns himself.
If we assume that Read is arguing in good faith, his sense that we can't sit around reading poetry when the world is burning, and it clearly is, even if Net Zero is a totalitarian Trojan horse, is understandable, as what the right hemisphere comprehends and flourishes within is considered an evolutionary byproduct, "cheesecake," as Pinker calls it, or a sort of luxury indulgence, fit for arcane societies and freshman survey courses. However, Gerard Edelman, winner of the Nobel, author of the theory of neural Darwinism, says poetry is the highest form of human thought. In an odd and kismetic convergence, Dr. Bret Weinstein, an evolutionary biologist, speaks of faith as a metaphorical truth which is adaptive, and Dr. MacGilchrist, in The Big Conversation Episode 3 said "I believe metaphorical truth is more important than literal truth. Literal truth is a subset of metaphorical truth, in which the potential in the metaphor has been collapsed into an actuality in the way a wave function has been collapsed into a particle"
We need a mother church of metaphoric truth! Here's John Ciardi:
Is it possible to say it without memories?
as if in answer to a questionnaire, squared
like columns in a statistician’s eye?
It is a plain thing. Plain enough for saying.
A white elk, for that matter, once you come on it,
is as visible as a jackass: there it is!
The trick is to happen next to it and
to be living there where it happens. I’ve known men
to see that elk and think it was a ground hog.
It is a plain thing, then, but one must be ready.
I can see it as it is: I cannot name it
by any names you know. “Poetry,” I say,
and you think of Longfellow, and I
of the race in its going: the family at its days:
the young at the edge of the thicket where that elk
sleeps.
I mean the thing behind the name of the thing.
from "Some Figures for Who I Am"
ozofe.com/john-ciardi/some-figures-for-who-i-am/
Scorcher.
I'm glad to see these comments. As bad the present ecological situation is, having these mechanically minded lawyer-academics with their super-egos try to lead ecological movements is somehow more despairing.
@@davidcryer2226 tell me about it. Those two better get their skates on because the tate modern closes at 6 and they have priceless works of art to destroy with their Tesco’s own beans. “ I’m leaving academia so I can save the world” ok, Superman.
Agreed. It doesn’t look good for the Revolution if this is the kind of heartless head at the helm.
Spokesman for extinction rebellion....green party spokesman? .....adios
Isn't it a debate?
Interested as to why you would disregard someone who is a spokesperson for those organisations?
When the guy asked the question if they should get more radical to get their message of. Lunate change across I could feel Ian getting uncomfortable.
A bit agonising to hear out. There is a disconnect here in outlook. Rupert is not yet well-versed in the wider philosophical positions vis-a-vis the eminently well-based and thought through structure of Iain’s bio-scientific work. Iain has it all down pat, but that is only possible by ignoring a vast and variable number of fields which have a bearing on the factual practicalities of his position. Rupert, it seems to me, seeks to draw in many more aspects of life than Iain. Experts such as Iain are better in their fields of expertise, but limited in the sense of knowledge about the practical use of their expertise. However much I like Iain and what he has to say and write, his knowledge, to be useful, must be weighed with many other fields and kinds of expertise. Iain’s views on the left brain-right brain dichotomy somehow discount the corpus callosum is our culture and the stage of development of that culture. I think Iain has come near the end of the road in philosophical terms, while Rupert is somewhere near the beginning, having barely started on his own outside of the mental prison of today’s academic environment.
The bone of contention here is due to political exigencies and how each differs in their political perspective.
Are you Rupert in disguise? Iain's books draw upon biology, physics, neuroscience, religion, music, poetry, etc.
What a load of waffle from someone who seems not to have read Iain's work at all.
Not anything. My social anthropology advisor was the HOD for a top 50 in the world universities. But his work was never aimed at anything other than policy. Sure he was drawn into stupid concepts in his early career, but now is a pioneer in the social anthropology of policy, and basically wrote the handbook. Why bring this up? Neoliberalism is the elephant in the room that will not go away, we just keep writing policy after policy to keep it alive. Professor Cris Shore if interested. We can be activists till the cows come home but if the policy is to always promote an economic ideology then in my view your guest is simply a professional neoliberal capitalist. Hopefully, all these women now dominating tertiary education can come up with a new economy. But even that would be sexiest for they were the true family economists while men were the breadwinners, usually drinking before lockin.
I recommend Jordan Peterson’s discussion with Amala Ekpunobi, at 33:00
Food for thought
yeah, the women from education just about came up with a new economy: the lockdown model
@@kiljoy3254 Jordan is like an Italian Catholic fighting the Italian Communists. With a bit of cog sci thrown in for Lobster's sack.
@@bogdanpopescu1401 Charles Schwab is more like. If the world is hierarchical. As for female leaders, your comment is pointless. Male/female or anything in between will be narcissistic to have gotten to that level of power. Then they forget about communal networking and teamwork for legacy is more important. In political circles.
@@geoffreydawson5430 my comment was not about female leaders