The second volume of McGilchrist’s magnum opus focuses on philosophy more than neurobiology. He is still concerned with the left and right hemisphere split of the brain, but he goes into much greater detail discussing objective truth, morality, consciousness, the nature of the self, human values, and what makes life worth living. He begins by discussing reality, subjectivity, language and concepts, and the map and the territory, “The left hemisphere thinks reality is what it itself puts together, because that is all it knows – the theoretical construct in which it lives. For it, theory trumps life. If it therefore decrees that a state of affairs shall be a certain way, then reality will, it believes, bend to the decree. Since the left hemisphere uses language to label, this often involves a belief that changing the label will change the reality…. That there is no one fixed reality, and truth is not single or fully certain, does not mean that reality has been mysteriously abolished. That there is no one view that encompasses all truth about the world, does not mean that truth is made up, and can be whatever we want it to be.” He continues by discussing how the brain processes new experiences, “There is a reliable difference between the hemispheres in terms of their handling of fresh experience. They have shown that new experience of any kind – whether it be of real-life objects, sounds, skills or imaginary constructs – engages the right hemisphere. As soon as it starts to become familiar or routine, the right hemisphere is less engaged and eventually the ‘information’ becomes the concern of the left hemisphere only…. New experience tends to come from the periphery of the field of attention, and that is the province of the right hemisphere – which is, after all, on the lookout for whatever unexpected is happening, at the moment that it happens; whereas the left hemisphere is concentrating on what is already identified as of interest, known and familiar, and at the centre of the attentional field.” He also discusses uniqueness, “Uniqueness presents particular problems for the left hemisphere’s tool, language. Uniqueness brings everyday language to a standstill. Anything truly unique cannot be expressed in such language, which is why whatever is profound, personal, or sacred, if it is to be expressed in words, can be so expressed only in poetry…. Reductionist thinking, more typical of the left hemisphere, to which uniqueness is opaque, holds that all can be accounted for by breaking things down to further, and yet further, entities. Uniqueness, however, halts analysis: it is a standing rebuke to our ever-ready categories.”
One’s own conception of the nature of the self is an area where the hemispheric split plays a role, “The self as conceived by the left hemisphere, should be – and is – an entity that is relatively static, separate, fixed, yet fragmentary, a succession of moments, goal-oriented, with its needs at any moment perceived as essentially competitive (since others may similarly target the same resources), determinate, consciously wilful, circumscribed in the breadth and depth of what it sees, at ease with the familiar, certain and explicit, but less so with all that is fluid, ambiguous, and implicit, and unaware of the limitations of its own knowledge. The self as conceived by the right hemisphere should be – and is – more akin to a process than a thing, essentially fluid and less determinate, nonetheless forming a unique whole over time, aware that it is fundamentally inseparable from all else that exists, open to others and to experience, more concerned with co-operation than competition, less consciously wilful, more engaged in what one might call ‘active passivity’ (an open attendant disposition, in which one is ready to respond to what emerges), seeing the greater picture in space and time, and aware of the extent of its ignorance…. In other words, the self as intrinsically inseparable from the world in which it stands in relation to others, the social and empathic self, and the continuous sense of self, with ‘depth’ of existence over time, is more dependent on the right hemisphere; whereas the objectified self, the external self, and the self as an expression of will, is generally more dependent on the left hemisphere.”
McGilchrist discusses how the nature of time is essential to the human conception of reality, “Conceptualising time immediately puts one on the outside of the experience, rather than being within it, the standpoint alone from which it can be understood…. Time is no thing…. Time is adverbial, if it is anything that grammar recognises; an aspect of being (itself a verbal noun, or gerund) or of Dasein (also a gerund). Time is not separate from events or experience…. It is itself an aspect of experience…. Reality is what we experience – ever moving, changing, and continuous. Things, however, are secondary, static, products of perception which supervene on ‘from above’, not support ‘from beneath’, that field of flow.” The nature of reality is embodied and the human body is a creature always in motion, “Motion is at the core of every aspect of our experience, and of our ability to make sense of it, in a way of which we are normally unaware, because our analytic intellect cannot deal with it…. Mind and body are inseparably connected.” Conversely, “Analytic thought and language tend to immobilise the world…. The idea that perception is altered by, and may even be secondary to, activity is familiar from the Gestalt theory of perception, according to which we are co-operatively constructing the aspects of the world that we see…. Perception is an active, not a passive process – or better, it is a profoundly interactive process…. Movement is as foundational as space and time. Each requires the other. Space is the potential for something to move within it; time is the potential for something to change within it. Both become actualised in flow…. Analysis, the forte of the left hemisphere, ultimately yields stasis…. Analysis wants measurement, and measurement begins the process of immobilisation and fragmentation. Yet it is never quite equal to what it measures…. Motion can, of course, never be reached by aggregation of static elements.”
Relatedly, McGilchrist takes on the concepts of space, matter, form, and time and how each relate to lived reality. “Space and time are not containers in which we live, but aspects of being…. Time speaks profoundly to the human condition in a way that space, however fundamental it might be, simply does not. Time is relentless, like another being’s will, where space is pliable and may be fashioned, though not without limits, to our own. Time is emotive; space is bland…. Despite this, space has the means to be generative: it is the potential for motion, and gives rise to form, which is what we see, precipitated out of potential, in space…. While time shows us that aspect of reality which is always incomplete, space shows us that aspect of reality which has been achieved…. Forms are usually evidenced in matter, and matter in forms: no-one has seen matter without form…. I can see imaginary or abstract forms, with the mind’s eye, or in certain states of mind with the bodily eye. But matter is inconceivable without form…. The forms that are found in Nature are the result of motion, and embodied movement, not stasis; similarly, movements found in Nature enact forms, not structures.” He continues, “40 years of efforts to simulate the Standard Model on a computer have so far failed. To perform such a simulation, one must first take equations expressed in terms of continuous quantities and find a discrete formulation that is compatible with the bits of information in which computers trade…. If reality is such that our knowledge is intrinsically, not accidentally, incomplete; if it is intrinsically, not accidentally, uncertain; if it is intrinsically inexpressible in everyday language, requiring exceptional, non-denotative, highly metaphoric, ‘poetic’ use of language to get beyond the limits of language; if we must deal not with facts but with connexions; if entities are never wholly separable from other entities; if the process of a knower coming to know is interactive or reverberative, each changing the other – not distanced, inert and owing nothing to the presence, and possibly the nature, of the one who comes to know; and if any attempt to model it reduces what is continuous and moving, to what is static and discrete – if all of this is true, it is clear which hemisphere will be better suited to discerning it.”
McGilchrist next takes a deep dive into the nature of consciousness, “When I use the word ‘consciousness’, I refer very broadly to all that we might call ‘the experiential’. This covers all the activities that go on, for each of us, as we say, unconsciously and preconsciously, as well as consciously; but could not go on without what is conventionally referred to as subjectivity, or inwardness…. I discriminate, reason, make judgments, find things beautiful, solve problems, imagine possibilities, weigh possible outcomes, take decisions, exercise acquired skills, fall in love, and struggle to balance competing desires and moral values all the time without being reflexively aware of it. Note that these are not just calculations, but rely on my whole embodied being, my experience, my history, my memory, my feelings, my thoughts, my personality, even – dare I say it? – my soul: ‘psyche’ in the broadest sense…. Even Descartes derived the ego from experience, not experience from an ego. What can more conservatively be claimed is that something about me – in the ‘field of me’ – permits these particular activities: and that something is what, in the broad definition, I am calling my consciousness…. I would say that matter appears to be an element within consciousness that provides the necessary resistance for creation; and with that, inevitably, for individuality to arise. All individual beings, including ourselves, bring forms into being and cause them to persist: each of us is not, ultimately, any one conformation in matter, but, Ship of Theseus-like, the conformation itself, the morphogenetic field, which requires matter in order to be brought into being, but, once existent, persists while matter comes and goes within it…. The conclusion we should draw is – not that all that we can encounter are representations of something we cannot know – but the precise opposite: that we do actually deal with reality and know it, just with an aspect of it that we partly call forth ourselves by our approach. The fact that we play a part in its being what it is does not make it unreal…. Things, it seems, emerge from our descriptions of experience: they do not constitute it. Whether a thing enters our world or not depends on the scale at which it is seen, or sought…. It may be objected that, whether we see something or not, it still exists. But what that tells us is that a ‘thing’ is a category within our thought…. If Nietzsche was right in saying that ‘A thing = its qualities’, and qualities change unrecognisably with scale, so do things come and go from experience depending on how they are observed. As the perspective shifts so do the Gestalten.” McGilchrist concludes, “If matter is a product of primal consciousness, and is the creative element of resistance within it which causes ‘things’ – becomings and processes – to be precipitated out as differentiated entities in space and time, this requires no further purpose than itself. It is the never-ending coming into being of the cosmos, in which the primal consciousness comes to understand itself…. I believe that what exists is a locally differentiated, but ultimately single, field of potentiality, which is constantly actualising itself. Thus all is one, and all is many. Each differentiation is, however, also a Gestalt that is complete in itself – a new whole, not a fragment…. There is no reason to dub our full experience of the world an illusion, while ascribing to the very partial mathematical description of the world the reality. I also believe internalism is a mistake, and that consciousness is located not inside us, but in a non-spatial ‘betweenness’ created by our attention and the object of our attention. It is, therefore, always a partial revelation – and partly, also, a creation of the act of experiencing – but our part in it does not negate its reality: that is reality…. I do not claim to know what experience is any more than anyone else, except that it is the condition on which I know anything at all. And yet we all understand it directly. It is what we know (kennen) better than anything at all, and yet know (wissen) least of all about. It is therefore difficult to discuss, since neither language nor reason are well adapted to it. Language is already at a remove from direct experience.”
McGilchrist stumps for moral realism, “The main claim is that value, whether it is truth, goodness or beauty, is not, as our culture has come to regard it, an ‘add-on’, a human invention, some sort of extra that is not intrinsic to the nature of the cosmos, but is, rather, itself constitutive of the cosmos and is discovered by, and disclosed in, the encounter of life…. I think truth matters more than utility, because I see truth as an ultimate value, irreducible to anything else: that is part of my view of the cosmos as pregnant with meaning, soliciting our allegiance, rather than a place where it is good enough to get by with comfortable lies. For me, values are part of its very fabric, not optional adornments…. Truth is a moral value, like beauty, and goodness…. Values are not just validated by the outcomes they achieve: they are inseparable from our deepest emotional experience.” He next tackles human purpose, “Whatever creative energy underwrites the unfolding of the phenomenal universe is continually active and involved in that universe; that the future is tended towards, but not closely determined; rather it is open, evolving, self-fulfilling. This means that it seems ‘purposeless’ to some; richly ‘purposeful’ to others. To me, a universe with tendencies towards beauty, complexity, and the rich unfolding of uniqueness is already teleological…. Though purpose may be more or less apparent at different levels, the process of life cannot, in reality, be broken down in this way…. Living beings equally shape and are shaped by a world that is coming into being alongside them in a reciprocal, and reciprocally paced, process, not negotiating a path across its already pre-formed surface…. Interdependence means not just interaction, but mutual constitution.” Finally, he takes a stab at the nature of the sacred, “God, truth, and infinity are all processes, not things; comings into being, not entities that are already fixed. All three seem to me, however, like rivers, to combine stability with flux. ‘All things flow’; but ‘by changing, a thing remains the same’. Ultimately, Being and Becoming are aspects of the same thing…. Becoming is even more fundamental than Being.”
Finally, McGilchrist describes what is ailing modernity, “We are now in the grip of an obsession with human power and the subjugation of nature, at bottom of which lies our infatuation with technology: the power to manipulate. We have subordinated ends to means. We emphasise self at the expense of others, our rights rather than our duties, what we have rather than who we are, the material rather than the spiritual, and vaunt the reach of the unaided human intellect. In such a world God is a nuisance…. When our society generally held with religion, we might indeed have committed many of the same wrongs; but power-seeking, selfishness, self-promotion, narcissism and entitlement, neglect of duty, dishonesty, ruthlessness, greed, and lust were never condoned or actively and openly encouraged – even admired – in the way they sometimes are now. In other words, we have lost all shame.” He concludes, “The deep truths about reality are likely to appear initially paradoxical. What look like things – with inevitable suggestions of stasis, certainty and fixity – are processes; and all such thing-like processes are interdependent with others, bringing one another into being. Everything is changed by context…. There is absolutely no reason to believe matter to be ontologically prior to consciousness.”
