Iain McGilchrist, Part 2: Hemispheres, Culture, and Cosmic Consciousness
00:26Hello and welcome again to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast, we're an apropologist and psychologist,listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer, and we try to understand what they're talking about.I'm Matt Brown. With me is the great, the world-famous, renowned scholar, Chris Kavanaugh,the man with more theories about the brain than you have had hot dinners.Here's my emotional support animal and cognitive apparatus prosthesis, helping me understand whatwhat's going on in part two of Ian McElchrist. Hi, Chris. Hello, that's right. A very right brainintroduction, if I do say so myself. It was good, therefore it's right brain. I was actuallywinging it. Could you tell? Could you tell? Well, that's the kind of thing the right brain lets you
01:15do is wing it and do things like that. So that's what we like to see. Actually, yeah, it's beena while, Matt, there's been a little bit of a gap between it. So this is us returning to thehypnotic world of the Mekyllchrist. Gilchrist or Gilchrist? You said Gilchrist. I think it'sGilchrist, but whatever. I think it is being Christ. You know me. I'd like to put my own littlespin on how things are said. I don't do it consciously. Yeah. So it'll be like approaching themwith fresh eyes. Maybe this time. It'll all land a bit better.To remind the listener, I'll just give a very brief recap of where we've been and where we're going on this podcast.So where we have been is that Ian McGilchrist, through his work experience and research and philosophical insights, has come to discover that the structure of our brain, which is lateralized between right and left hemispheres, is very important.
02:23for understanding how people behave and think and reason about the world.And basically, there is the left brain and there is the right brain.And although there's some lip service page, both of them being important,and both of them having important roles,in McGilchrist's model, the right brain is responsible for everything good,and the left brain is kind of bad and limited and reductionist.And, you know, it's basically like Richard Dawkins,and internal Richard Dawkins.
02:54And all of his friends are right-brained,all the people he likes are right-brained,all the good things in society are right-brained,and all the things which are limited or bador not looking at things right,they're left-brained.But he's not doing the simple dichotomybecause that would be wrong.
03:10So that's the background for the last episode.Yep, that's right, Chris.It's obviously far more complicated than that,far more nuanced,but I think you've covered it pretty wellin broad brush strokes.Yeah.That's it. And we're going to, we mentioned last time that that was really just the foundations that it was laying for his bigger insights into society, civilization, the universe, and so on. And that is where we're going to head today. But before we do that, Matt, I believe you had something that you want to show the class.
03:45Yes, Chris. Yes, yes. Well, listeners may remember that I was relatively critical.Even scathing, one might say, of Gilchrist's representation of the neurobiology.So before we leave that, because as you say, that is merely the foundation.It's going to come up again, but yes, carry on.In the meantime, since we last recorded, I did a little bit more homework, did a little bit more research.What do we do?That's not like you.No, it's not like me.
04:16And enthusiasm came upon me.And, yeah, I found that, you know, several.Although the general response to Michael Christ is just seems to be uncritical acceptance,there has been a few qualified academics who have actually responded to many of the claimsthat he makes in these books.So if you don't mind, Chris, maybe we could just mention a couple of those.Why not?Why not?
04:42We like to hear from scholars and phylogians and insightful people across the discoursesphere.So be my guest.Yeah, so one of those articles was written by someone called Corbalis 2014 in PLOS biology.And yeah, would you be surprised to hear, Chris, that it's really rather damning.The hemispheric theory of culture and mind that is proposed,Corballis says that it goes far beyond the neurological facts,this left-right cultural symbolism stuff that he's got going on.
05:21It's described as myth rather than evidence.And in general, the core verdict is that he's simply quite wrong in all of those claims.Yes, of course, there is a lot of asymmetries going on in the human brain, but it's multidimensional,you know, front, back, left, right, in, out, pretty much every dimension you can imaginethere's asymmetries going on and specializations happening, not this left-right thing that he's got.the higher order things like creativity and emotions, recruits bilateral networks across thehemispheres. And yeah, so really, really very much in line with my own critique there, Chris.Does that surprise you?
06:07No, but wouldn't the retaliation from McGilchrist and Allers be?Yes, that's right, because like these reductionist, materialist, neuroscient,neuroscience people, they are allergic to things like myth and larger holistic narrativesdrawing in sources from outside of biological, reductive approaches.So they regard it all as just stories and ideas and that kind of thing.But actually, that's the very point that it's not just based on knowledge of brain structuresand that kind of thing.It is all in the interpretation.
06:49Yeah.Well, that's as may be.The retreat into myth.But, you know, I think the fact remains that Gilchros does make a lot of claims about the brainand uses this as scaffolding or a foundation to build his more abstract and metaphorical structures.And, yeah, scientists like myself, has responded to those claims, which it may be.be reductionist to say things are true or false or have evidence or not.But still, that's how we do it.
07:22We're old-fashioned like that, Chris.I have more.Can I tell you about the second one?Okay.Yes, yes.What's second?Okay.So there was actually a really rather good meta-analysis done.
07:35So I think a professor of neurobiology who's based in New Zealand by the name of Spezio contributedto a special issue of religion, brain and behavior that was not.I think dedicated to Michael Christ's book.And this researcher did a very careful meta-analysis.So I won't go into the technical details too much,but basically did like a scanning for all the claims made in the book,and there's obviously heaps of them, it's all very complicated,but then did a very systematic check of whether or not
08:09those were supported by the literature.So over 11,000 studies went into his meta-analysis,meta-analysis and basically considered all of the kinds of claims.And in a nutshell, the conclusion was that the results offered no support from the Gilchrist'scentral claims.Spezia was really not ambiguous in the assessment.And to get more, to take some specific ones, empathy, as we talked about last time, bilateral,right-lateralized as McGilchrist would.
08:45would have emotion, actually in general, left lateralized, imitation, you know, social kindof interaction, that kind of thing, opposite, left lateralized.He makes claims about global attention and there's really no lateralization going on there.And even in terms of the most important thing, according to Kilcris, which is the understandingof metaphor, no, not a right brain thing, actually slightly left hemispheric, right?So all of this is taking the premise of McGilchrist that actually, you know, everything can be kind of categorized or divided up into left and right brain, which as we've talked about, is not actually a correct premise.And he's actually got more, even, I guess, deeper kind of critiques, which is that I think they fall into the category of like not even wrong, right?So on one hand, if you actually take the claims that are being implied, yes, a whole bunch of them can.
09:45can be shown to have no support, the vast majority of them in fact.But I think he had a deeper critique there,which was about how much of it is unfalsifiable.Many of the concepts that McGilchrist has,this is what you hinted at,is that it's lacking what he calls bridge laws,which is like a way it can be properly operationalized and tested.So I think we talked about before,
10:13which is that on one hand,there'll be the confident claim that all the good things, all the important things are on the right,but then there'll be the disclaimer, which is, oh, of course, it's a complex tapestry and thingsare happening all over the brain, so it's all very complicated. But the problem with that is thatit's unfalsifiable. There isn't any evidence that can be brought that can show that the claim is wrong,so it doesn't fall into the category. So I think the important thing for people to take away from thisis that, like, it's not like a scientific theory that just turns out to have the weight ofevidence against it.
10:47It fundamentally doesn't fall into the category of scientific theories.Yeah.And I think for some people, they regard that as not being of concern.But in my experience, they want it both ways, where they want to retreat from, well,it doesn't really matter, like, if the actual evidence supports them, because it's more about, you know,like a kind of values or philosophy-based view of human society.But that's not where his authority draws from.So when you see him introduced in lectures or discussions or panels,
11:27he's very much drawing his authority from the fact that he's basing all thison this scientific knowledge of the brain and the way that it functions and so on.And if that's all wrong, it means that it actually undermines a lot of the claims that he makes, or at the very least, makes them retreat into just his personal interpretations of, you know, literature.Like, he's basically come up with a classification system that is not related to the actual structures of the brain, but is just his way to classify everything into a good or a bad pile.So, yeah, I think you can't have it both ways and he wants to do.but do you have more, Matt? Is there more? There's actually quite a lot more, but I will restrainmyself a little myself to just one. Okay, one more. So there was a review done in the BritishJournal of Psychiatry, which was a review of the book by a chap called Alan Carson. And, you know,
12:30he says a couple of positive things. For instance, McGilchrist has written a book of breathtakingscope. The breadth of the source of school is dazzling and the actual writing is at timessuperlative.Is that good?Well, it's friendly, shall we say?Superlative?It's like a back-handed.No, subpolytive is good.
12:52Supperative is good.But then the review does become quite negative,very much along the lines that we identified.So he says that Nicolchrist talks eruditally,and we hope from a position of knowledge,about the scientific framework on which he both.his more artistic interpretations.However, this foundation does not seem entirely sound,
13:15and many of the conclusions presented go far, far beyond the available data.Furthermore, he goes on to say that Nikulchrist has a tendencyto acknowledge the limitations of the data,and then swiftly ignore them,selecting only those findings which support his thesis.Yes.So he mentions a growing disquiet,coming from the perception that the book was, in fact,
13:41another pop science representation of intra-hemispheric differences,albeit exquisitely packaged and persuasively presented.So, yeah, so I think these other authors are identifying exactly what we did,which is that the book is drawing a lot of authority from neuroscience.And so, therefore, you cannot say that the very weak version of neuroscience that he is doingis a side issue or not relevant because you cannot, as you said, have it both ways.Yes.Well, you know, this is a good illustration, Matt, that other people agree with us.
14:21It's good to be proven right.I don't mind.I'm going to take you this proof that I'm right.I've got three, at least three people who agree with this.Well, no, I think the relevant point here is, you know, triangulation.And it is good to see that other people are there, not just people in this.but in academic spheres are noting the same issues and bringing them up.So it hasn't gone unremarked upon, but perhaps not fully appreciated by the wider discourse.
14:52I feel like more people should have picked up that he's just saying people are left or right,period, that then categorizing them as good or bad.But, you know, whatever, hopes brings eternal.Why don't we move on, Matt, do you hear the man himself outline his thesis, though?Yes, let's, Chris, enough of this scientific nitpicking.Let's get to the big ideas.We're about to get the more scientific.That's all right.
15:16That's all right.So, as I mentioned, he's going to move from the individual to the wider society.And this is Alex introducing that topic.I'm raising, you know, some questions about that approach.So where have we gone wrong here then?because the kind of Dawkins-esque approach of the primacy of, I suppose, in a way, left-brain thinking, seems to be dominant.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.
16:02the first is sort of like, you know, when I say how does that happen, I don't just meanwhat are the social conditions that make people think this way, but I mean, how is it that thebrain starts acting differently? Is it like this mind that connects the two hemispheres just sortof starts ignoring one side? Are we able to train the mind into sort of residing more in theright brain or the left brain? That seems very strange. If you have one brain that is all connectedand communicating with each other, how could it even be the case that people would just sort ofswitch one of them off in a lot of these conversations. Good questions. Good questions there, Alex.And the thing I've often been thinking about in recent contemporary history matters is too many
16:41people being logical and rational. Our society just really valorizes, you know,scientific thinking and people being reductive materialists. That is what we see far too much ofin society these days. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I look back at the worst events,of the 20th century, for instance.My first, the underlying theme is just people being too rational, too logical.That's been the cause of most of our problems.And that's all because of the, it seems strange, but we've got these two parts of ourbrain that aren't talking to each other.
17:15And we've just, as a civilization, been using the bad half, not the good half.Well, Alex raised those questions.So let's see what Ian says.And, you know, I think communism would probably be a left.brain thing, right? It's definitely got, you know, the anti-religious component historically in there.So Ian McGraths, I suspect would put communism in the left brain side.Yeah. So, yeah. I think if you put all the bad things in the left brain side,then I think you'll see a lot of support from the Gilchrist theory. It's kind of, it's kind of
17:55self-proving. But anyway, let's hear from him.That's here.Yeah.As it turns out, Alex,questioning itself as too reductive.Well, because they're not,I mean, you're thinking in terms of an alternative,this is on, this is off or whatever,
18:15whereas what I'm talking about is a spectrum, if you like.So it's more like,it's not like a switch that's on and off of one or the other.It's more like a slider in which, you know,one hemisphere can be more.attended to or it can be more in use in our attention to the world than the other.And I think that what has happened is that it's not so much that our brains are any different.I mean, of course they're always different and evolving slowly over time as everything evolves.
18:49So it is true that our brains are probably subtly different from those of Achaean Greeks, you know,But if you put them into a scanner,if you did the thought experiment and put them into a scanner,you wouldn't expect to see their brains very different from ours.So it's not that the brain itself is the key here.It's how the brain is being used.I think the way to think of it is rather likeif you bought a new radio and you listen to a couple of stations
19:20that are your favorites, after a while you begin to listen only to one.I think that's more the way it is.Right, right. So very reductive. We shouldn't think of it in terms of left brain on or off.It's not a binary. It's not a binary. It's a spectrum. So what we're talking about is a slide to using maybe 70 or 80 percent of our left brain now and only 20 or 30 percent of the right brain.So it's much more nuanced than being binary.Yeah. And then there is the analogy of like tuning in to radio stations, which are set to specificfrequencies, right? So anyway, he kind of reduces it down from the spectrum into like a spectrumwhere there are, you know, I said a amount of stations. But anyway, yes, so he corrects. Like,
20:09no, no, no, not a binary. And I'm not clearly that brain has, you know, changed dramaticallyvia evolution. That's not the claimant. It's how people are using. So it's the same software,sorry, the same hardware being used in different manners, right? That's the idea. But,but he elaborates further.I should emphasize that I don't think that the great changes in cultural historythat I map out in the second half of the master's emistryin which I look at the West from the time of the ancient Greeks through to the present day.I look at the sort of great changes, moments of change in the history of ideas
20:50and in the rise and falls of the Greek, the Roman and, if you like, the modern civilization.And I'm not saying that the brain causes these changes, but what I'm saying, the causes of changes may be many, many things.They may be economic, they may be environmental changes, they may be wars, they may be political upheaval,there may be many things that cause people to change the way in which they live or think.But inevitably, their thinking is, if you like, molded by the brain through which it is brought to be articulated.So it's perfectly coherent to talk of a period during which you can say that most of the phenomena of that culture appear to,to be expressive of a more left hemisphere dominated take on the world or a more right hemispheretake. And that's really all that I'm saying when I'm talking about those things. And I do,
22:03to come back to your earlier point, I do definitely think that at the moment it's quite extraordinaryhow much this left hemisphere take dominates and that we are not any longer apparently awareof all the richness, the beauty, the complexity, the meaning that the right hemisphere gives to life.Yes, so there you have it.So we currently live in an age, Chris.It's a fallen age.Yeah.I feel like it's a third age of the Middle Earth.
22:36You know, Newman has fallen.There's goblins and in the mountains.It's bad times.And why?It's a bad on the east.Right.Indeed.Indeed. And why? Because we've become very technocratic. We've become very analytical. We've
22:53been carving things up. Secularization.Yeah. Science, bureaucracy, modernity, basically is not a great thing. But he's hinting.He's alluding to some earlier times, Chris, where things were much better, more right-brain times,which I'd tell us about those. Well, I will, but I'll just note that the, I do like thatstarts off with a disclaimer that suggests we're not here advocating a simple monocausalaccount, right? We're not saying it's only the brain that matters. There's things like historyand economics and, you know, wars and all these kind of things. It's not a simple monocausalaccount where it's just the group of brains. He says that. But then he goes on to say,
23:46but I do think it's completely coherent to focus on people adopting a left and right approach in general in circumstances,and that this explains the tendency and appearances in culture.So it's kind of funny because it's like it's got the thing of somebody recognizing all these other factorsand saying, I'm not proposing there's only one factor.But then going on to just ignore all the other factors and focus on the one thing that he says,So he is in fact really only interest in like a single thing, which is his explanatory framework.He never talks about these other factors that are important, right?Like they're not part of the story.
24:31Yeah, if I understand his model correctly, he's acknowledging that civilizations change,culture changes due to a broad number of unspecified economic, cultural, military, whatever,factors. But then these come to be reflected or somehow or influence the brain and the way inwhich thinking occurs, which then becomes the monocausal explanation for why things have changed.Like why things were good then and bad now, that kind of thing. But yeah, you're completely right.Even if you accept the premise of all of that, what role is his construct of this hemispheric brainplain because you don't actually need it. You could go straight from saying all the stuff,for instance, I don't know, to pick someone random, Gibbons' reasons that he gives for the
25:21decline of the Roman Empire. Why not just those? Why require an intermediate left-brainedthinking interposed between them and the decline of fall of the Roman Empire, right? You don'treally need it. Now, though, he'll probably say he's just describing the mechanism, right? Maybe thatis like his get out of jail tree guy. But I just, I think there's a familiar pattern where peoplewho are advocating a monocosal account to Pians to say, I'm not doing that, and then immediatelydo it. So I'm just flagging up that that is going to happen. And as you said, Matt, where do weneed to go? It's a fairly predictable set of prescriptions that he has for us. But let's hear them,nonetheless. But as you say, the difference between the hemisphere is not just in ways of thinking. It's in
26:11ways of being, which includes thinking and feeling and behaving and a way of approaching the world,a way of attending to it, a way of being in it. In other words, it affects every aspect of yourlife. It doesn't just stop with an articulation of a few paragraphs of rather simple propositions.It's a whole way of beingand a civilization can adopta way of being and a way of thinkingwhich it's hardly aware of aspeculiar because it's forgotten the alternative
26:52and that this can be very destructiveand I believe that's the world we live in nowwhere I think a lot of peopleare simply no longer awareof what the world can offerbecause we've disengaged ourselvesfrom all the ways in which we used to bemade aware of it.
27:10Number one, living in close proximityto the natural world, which until veryrecently, almost everybody in the world did.Living in a culture, which has evolvedover time and has evolved in such a wayas to help stabilize that cultureso that it can live in harmony with its environment,so that it can understand its experiences,
27:31worship of a divine or sacred realm.These are all the ways in whichwe can be reminded of things ofare bigger, more complex than we are.And we've lost a sense of wonder before the world.We've lost a sense of modesty about what it is we can know.In other words, we've become arrogant and simplistic in our thinking.Yeah, so he's pretty clear that we're in a dismal state of civilisation or decline at the moment.
27:59Things were better in the older days.He's not super specific, but at point C kind of applies, he's thinking of ancient Greece,ancient Rome, perhaps the Renaissance, that kind of thing.And yeah, so a strong streak of nostalgia there for a lost past.A better time, Chris.Yeah, well, and also this is just the predictable prescriptions of the sensemaker inclined.You could write them dying about listening to their conversation.They're going to say, we need to return to being like more religious attuned to the secret
28:35and probably engaging in rituals.This is something that they often say as well.You need to touch grass, Matt.You've got to be outside in nature, right, appreciating the beauty of the world.And like, you know, in general, scientific reductionism, all that kind of thing.It's been alienating for people and it's led to these atomistic lifestyles living in cities,not the way humans were meant to be.But, you know, one thing, Ma, I will just say,
29:05is that he talks about getting in touch with nature in order to have like senses of awe invoked, right?But actually cities like mega architecture and that kind of thing achieves the same effect in large partthe studies around this.But like, you know, being in a huge cityscape where there's massive skyscrapers around youor there's the Statue of Liberty or whatever, these are not natural things.that exist out in the environment, but they can invoke the same sort of sense of, you know,scale and appreciation for the wider society or like the history, you know, who built thoseskyscrapers. And so, you know, humans like to have natural vistas as their backdrops on their
29:54computers, but they also do like to go up to the top of skyscrapers and look at cityscapes at nightand this kind of thing. So I think he's very much lying.the Scottish heaths and this kind of approach.But my argument is for what he is talking about invoking a sense of scale and recognitionthat you are just a component of this wider world.Actually, modern cities and stuff do that quite a bit, like the Coliseum and all that, right?That's the product of civilization.The Library of Alexandria, Matt, again, not something that arose in the jungles.
30:34Yeah, so it's a common sentiment, right? And it's not just conservatives that tend to romanticize and valorize nature, but it is a strong stream of thought on the right at the moment and in the past, where, you know, you have, you know, there's an organic way of being connected with nature and the cycles of the year and the sun and so on. And yeah, you know, I think everyone has an appreciation for nature. As you said, though, Chris, it isn't the only source.of wonder and awe. Lots of popular science writers, whether they're writing about evolution or writingabout physics, writing about things like black holes like Stephen Hawking does or whatever,you know, people viewing the moon landing and stuff like that. I felt all when I was in New YorkCity. So yeah, certainly there are other sources that are not kind of at that organic human scale,though, you know, we're all evolved creatures, so we all like nice green fields and forestsand rivers and so on. But yeah, I guess, you know, this is all part of the mentallandscape in which McIlchrist inhabits. There's a very clear dichotomy in his mind, which is
31:47the artificial, the mechanistic on one hand, and that is the modern, essentially, and the pre-modernstuff is very great. And anyone who's been on the internet,or seen, as you said, listen to sense makers,will know that this is really, really familiar territory.It's why they call paleo-conservatism, paleo-conservatism, right?Yes.Because there is a big part of this return to nature,and there is also a big part of it,
32:16which is based on nostalgia and valorizing Roman society, for instance,or Greek society with all of the masculine virtues.There's not much mention about how they treated slaves or women or anything like that,But, you know, because there were some downsides to those periods that should be said.But, you know, regardless, it is a very common and popular trope to think that we are in a state of decline.Basically, the easy times have bred weak men and perhaps women as well.You know, back in the olden days, men were real men, women were real women, and small fairy creatures from Alpha Centuri were real small fairy creatures from Alpha Centurie.And like you said, Matt, you know, we've mentioned it before, but reading the book about the immune system and appreciating the incredible complexity that is there and the kind of like evolutionary history that goes into, you know, just your body reacting to a cut or an infection.
33:17It does give you a sense of wonder if you want at the kind of complexity of life.And, you know, Darwin famously said, I'll read it.is grandeur in this view of life,where it's several powers,having been originally breathed in the few forms or into one.And that,whilst this planet has gone cycling onaccording to the fixed law of gravity,
33:40from so simple a beginning,endless forms,most beautiful and most wonderful,have been and are being involved.There are an example of somebody.I think you and my goal,Chris,we'd probably claim Darwin as a right-brained type person.
33:56But, yeah.Yeah, although I think he wouldn't necessarily instinctively reach for a Darwin quote,because I think there's sort of two modes of appreciation.People like Richard Dawkins have often rattled on about how much there is to be amazedabout, just like you and I were about the immune system,how much there is to be amazed at evolution and just how it all worksand how all the species came to be.And from our perspective, this is wondrous and amazing and mind-blowing.
34:26and it doesn't diminish it at all to also have a scientific appreciation for how these things come to be.However, there's a different mode of appreciation for natural phenomena.A right-brained?Yes, there's a right-brained one, which is not bad or wrong.It's just, it's like poetic, right?It's about, you know, the feelings and, you know, hazy images, poetry, right?The humanities generally.And, you know, I think for a certain temperament, that kind of appreciation of nature is just much more appealing.
35:02And it's not one where you think about the how and the why.You kind of just lose yourself in the vibe of it all.And, you know, this is not a thing that's, you know, localized to conservatives, right?The humanities and the sort of expressive arts and creative arts and so on, famously very much a left-coded thing.So, yeah, I think there are different tastes.If not hemispheres, I will agree with Michael Christ said that there is people with a spectrum of tastes.Yes, yes.Well, let's hear a little bit about his approach to science and what it's doing or what it's robbing the world off in certain respects.
35:42So this is him talking about physics and biology.Let's go to physics.Let's go to the physics of atoms.We now know that atoms had nothing like little billion balls bumping into one another that we thought we were.We now know that the basis of matter is interchangeable with energy, first of all.Matter is interchangeable with energy if that's what E equals mc squared means.And what exists, and we call the basis of matter, is probabilistic form fields.And those things that we use to call particles have no existence.
36:22in the sense of like little tiny balls,you know, straight out of school, you might go around thinking.So forget all that.Spend a little time acquainting yourself with what physicists actually say.So physicists are much more, in my experience,philosophically sophisticated than biologists.Biologists have been subjected to a really thoroughly uninteresting,unethical, intellectually barren way of thinking, which physics jettisoned over 100 years ago.
37:01And I'm very relieved to say that biologists are beginning to realize they've got to jettison it as well.So just in the last 10 to 15 years, there have been enormous steps forward in biology, in which we nowrealize that organisms, living things, are nothing like machines.and that the machine model is an extraordinarily dangerous model to apply.It can help you solve small problems in a complex system.I don't know how much to go into this.I think some interesting rhetorical maneuvers there, Chris.I have thoughts, but would you care to comment?
37:39Well, the main thing for me is that he talks about the billiard ball view of physics, right?And he goes on to say, you know, physicists have moved beyond that and they're now.I think the physicists that he's talking about are the kind of ones that write speculative booksabout quantum mechanics and consciousness and so on.I think that's the physicist that he liked, which is not representative of the general physics field.But setting that aside, he mentions it as like, oh, this is kind of the thing that you would learn in school.but he seems to feel to recognize that always,it was understood that those are just models
38:21that are intended to help conceptualize things, right?It wasn't that people thought when they zoom in,they'll see these little circles visible under the microscope.I mean, in modern physics, I'm talking about.So those are just conceptual models,but he seems to present that, oh, well, now we knowthe conceptual models aren't actually,accurate because it's like and you're like no but and also that seems to be talking about the
38:51arrival of quantum physics right which hasn't been around for quite a while so those insightsof these kind of suggesting you know like you learned this in school but it's all wrong well actuallywhen those books were written people were already aware of it it's just that like some of thatis harder for school children to understand.So you start with the simplified modelsand it becomes more complex as you grow up.So, yeah, that was just something I noticed.Yeah, yeah.
39:23Yeah, well, you know, part of it is, of course, pedagogy,you know, using simpler models as abstractions to teach concepts.And but partly he's pointing to, you know,earlier, cruder scientific models,which have since been revised and made more sophisticated,right? So I think this is the interesting rhetorical maneuver because he'll make a bunch ofthese claims. Like now we know that evolution is not just about competition and survival of the fittest,it's more complicated than that. Now we know that atoms are not little billion balls and that
39:54organisms are not simply machines like tinketoy type things and the genome, the DNA is not the fullblueprint, the sense that everything you need for antigenesis. Actually, we now, we're, so,He's pointing to real revisions.Yeah.But what he wants to do is to show that, you know,science generally and cellular and developmental complexityand biology in particular exceed simple mechanistic pictures,which is left-brained.
40:26And actually, science is moving towards his view of sense-making.That's right.And that's right.So it's essentially, I think the rhetorical,flow is you present this straw man or a very crude or early, you know, historical version of ascientific theory, say, look, now even science agrees, that's completely wrong, then point at thatdelta and say that what's actually happening with science is science is converging to my non-reductionistkind of cosmic view, which we're going to get into later. But that's not true. That's not true at all.
41:08Yes, even before quantum mechanics, they knew that atoms were not billiard balls, right?They knew there was an electron and protons and a lot of it was empty.But that doesn't mean it was slowly converting towards Ian McGilchrist's religious cosmic views, which we'll talk about later.So, yeah, I think it's a rhetorical trick.And it actually is in keeping with his pattern, because if you remember, our critique of the neurophysiology was that he's leveraging the credibility and the authority.of scientific neurophysiologyto support his cosmic viewof how the brain works in relation to everything, right?
41:48So he's using the authority of scienceessentially against it,and he's doing it here tooby using these straw man examplesof where science is doing what it should do,which is revise and make more nuancedand create progressively more sophisticatedmodels of reality.
42:08Yeah, yeah. And like, his main objection, which you heard the come out and was the title of this episode was humans are not machines, right, where the brain is not like a computer. He objects to these kind of analogies or metaphors being used. And that is primarily what he's going to focus on in the next little bit. I feel that there's an overstatement to the degree to which.which people using the metaphor of computation mean that the brain functions exactly like a computer.But nonetheless, anyway, let's hear him spell that out a bit more.Humans are not like computers.Yeah, I want to get into it.I think it's interesting.What do you mean when you say the idea that humans are like machines or computers is totally wrong?Well, first of all, you can switch a computer off and come back 10 years later and switch it on.
43:07it'll probably work.You can't do that with a living organism.I mean, it's a simple point.It's an important one.Machines can't themselves in the process of making themselves write the instructionsthat are the instructions to make themselves.A machine can be made by another machine if the instructions are put into that machine,the first machine.
43:30It can make a second machine.But there is no machine that it's coming into being.It is capable of planning its own existence.I mean, I know that in the genome that was going to be the blueprint,there's almost no information.I mean, it's so vanishingly small.Yeah, that was like getting a bit lost.I think he got a bit lost there with what he's trying to say.
44:02Perhaps he clarifies things later, but.Well, he does.I've got another clip that builds on.it. But I will point out, Matt, that like his point here, the point that seemed to cause himto get a little bit, second what he was saying, was about, you know, it's a common point.Machines cannot be produced themselves without, like a set of instructions. He wants to makethe point that they're not, you know, unlike a human, right? Because humans come with theblueprints to produce other humans embedded in their genes. But he also says there's, you know,
44:37there's almost no information in those things.I mean, it also doesn't work because, you know,he also says that machines can make copies of themselves,but then he gets confused because he then needs to saythat people have a concept of themselves and themselves.And it's like, actually, no, people can actually get pregnant.Of course, I want to get pregnant without really understandinghow any of that stuff works.
44:59But put all of that aside, Chris, I can help you out here.I can help you out because where he's leading to,and you've probably got a clip here,is he's wanting to lead to an argument against materialism, right?Yes, of course he is.This is where he's going, people.And all of this stuff about organisms and machines is a way to get there.So this is the argument that he would like to make,
45:22which is, first of all, that organisms are complex and self-organizing,irreducibly complex.Yes.So they're different from machines, because machines are merely complicated,lots of moving parts, but complex systems are special.Now, all of this has some degree of truth in it, even a lot of truth in it.There are obviously important differences between machines and computer programs and organisms, right?But those are the points he sets up, and then he leaps to, therefore, materialism is false.
45:55And that's where I think it's just a complete non-secreteur.Well, let's hear him, roll through some of those points.So he does give an example, Matt.And you're right.Like essentially he wants to argue for a biological teleology, right,like that there's a purpose to biological systems,which is not there in machines except insofar as we insert it into them.And the key thing is the missing premise,
46:22which is implicit in his argument,is that materialism requires everything to be mechanical.Yeah, billiard balls, machines, you know, computer programs.in a clockwork kind of sense.But materialism doesn't require that.And I think that's the logical error he's making.Okay, but just to clarify,so when you say that, what do you mean?
46:49Like, because he wants to imply there's a willbehind those things, which is orientating them.And you're saying materialism doesn't require that there's no will?No, no.So he's building up an argument about this,fundamental distinction between organisms as complex systems that are not mechanical billiardballs, clockwork automata, right?Yes.
47:14So there's a fundamental difference there and therefore you cannot describe humans and inparticular what we do in terms of materialism.Because he equates materialism with this basically a bit of a straw man of a mechanicalautomata. It requiresreality to belike a mechanical automata orbilliard balls or whatever. That's the argumenthe's developing and it sort of feels
47:42approximately right on the surfacebut there's just a big missingpuzzle piece there which is thatit assumes that materialismas a sort of philosophicalepistemicrequires everything to be like thatand that's just not true. It's quite
47:58happy to encompass biological thingslike cells which are squishy and gooand don't behave like automata.Yeah, yeah.I see what you're saying.Okay.Yes, well, let's hear him flesh out those points with some examples, Ma.I mean, look at an nematode worm.
48:17You can cut its head off and it will regrow a new head.And in that head, it will have the memories that the old head had.Where do those memories come from?Yes.I mean, I don't know where to go.There's just so many things to say here.the human brain in uterodevelops on average
48:404,000 new neurons every second,4,000 new neurons every second.And when you look at the brainand you realize how complexly it is constructed,how important it is that different neuronsare in the areas they are.Where is the map for that?It's certainly not in the genome.
48:59So there you go, Mark,you chop the head of a worm and it can regenerate and we'll have the memory.So take that materialist.How do you explain that?Yes, I think you fact-checked this one as well.So the organism in question is plenary and flatworms, yeah, not nematodes.And he seems to be referring to an article by Shamrat and Levin, 2013.team. And the way he describes it goes way too far, because on one hand, like what they did
49:34is they did sever, they cut these flat worms in half or they cut their head off and then theyput them in another environment where after they sort of re-grew which they do, they then measuredwhat would happen to their feeding patterns into which involved repeated exposure to onedistinctive feeding area versus another, right? So the actual finding is based on some statisticsof rates of feeding, just doing their normal plenary and stuff, being slightly higher in afamiliar environment than an unfamiliar environment, even when the head was cut off. Have Ireflect, have I summarized that correctly? Yes, that's the research agenda. And probably worthmentioning that there were some extremely dramatic claims made in the 70s about this, which feel to be
50:22replicated, but then there were experiments, as you highlighted, that took part in the 2000s and2010s, which claimed that some of it may have been dismissed too readily. And then there isfurther complexity after that, which I might speak to. But yes, so as you describe, that's way toend. Yeah, there's absolutely not, it's not that there's nothing to it, but it's just not quite theway the dramatic thing that he's describing. So there were eight statistical tests that they did,six of the A test were statistically significant, but actually both the non-significant oneswere the most direct post-regeneration comparisons.So that's sort of one problem with the results.
51:03And the other issue is that the statistical comparisons were one-tailed, and you always lovethis, Chris, P values in the range of 0.027 for feeding latency and so on.So, you know, I mean, there may well be something there, but what we're talking about is slightlylowered latencies of feeding in these regenerated flatworms.So, you know, there are a bunch of plausible mechanisms here.Notably, they have very simple neurology, which may well be somewhat distributed, likewould be distributed throughout their bodies.So there could well be retention in terms of their behavioral characteristics from that.
51:43You know, so there's heaps of, heaps of things you could say about it.it's just that this is presented byNickilchrist in the context of sayingscience cannot explain thisthis is wondrous you cut the head off ofa flatworm and it still remembers everything that weit knew before and obviously we don't know whatflatworms know because we can't ask them
52:07what we do is we measure stuff like feeding latencywhich is not as mystical or as bafflingas it soundsYes, so I did look into this because this is the kind of thing where a direct claim is made and it's and it's a dramatic claim. So I was like, well, what's this? Right. And nearly every step of it is not representative of the way Mick Gilchrist has presented it. Because he's basically presented it that just completely removed the brain and the worm regrows it and it knows all the same stuff. But like when you think about that for a minute,it, you have to think, what do we know that a worm knows and how do you train it and so on,right? And so there's noisy stuff all along the way there. And, you know, you chop the head of a worm.So are you sure you removed all of the, you know, the brain or the equivalent biology in aworm, the neural tissue and so on? Like, it's not, it's not so simple as he presents it. Plus,
53:14the actual studies, even the positive ones, are very noisy,meaning that the effects are not large,they're not generally replicated reliably,and there's various potential confounds about the effect,if it exists, what could be causing it, right?So his explanation is that, you know,he wants to apply this to like a knowledge coming from outsidethe kind of biology, right?
53:43like an orientating principle that cannot be reduced to the biological material that's there.And no, none of the evidence actually supports that.Maybe slightly more so the claims made in the 70s, which were shown to be absolutely false.So it's just, this is the standard pattern with Dr. K or any of them, is that they are citing something which is real, often quite interesting ideas.but their presentation of it is just like a really inaccurate and rhetorically infused version of it.So you can't take anything that he says about studies at least value, just like with Scott Galloway or any of the other gurus.Yeah, yeah, it's decorative scholarship, your wonderful term there.And it again follows the pattern of leaning heavily on scientific studies, scientific evidence.
54:39to use as a cudgel to say, look, science cannot explain this.Which is kind of annoying, right?Especially when, as you say, it's just quite wrong.The way he represents it, that the decapitated animal simply regrows a headcontaining all the same stored memories that it had before.Therefore, it must be getting this knowledge or mind from elsewhere in the cosmos,totally misleading and wrong.and it's being used as, you know, I guess a scientific finding being used against science in general, right?
55:18Because where he wants to go with this is that scientists are baffled, standard orthodox scientific thinking cannot explain this stuff.We have to embrace anti-materialism and we'll hear about its force for you later.Yeah, yeah. Well, let's continue on.And you brought up the issue of like a complex versus complicated.This is the kind of thing since it goes.Absolutely love.Well, let's hear.But is the difference between a complex system and a complicated system.
55:50So a complicated system is one in which you just keep adding modules.And so, for example, a fighter jet engine and the whole jet plane is a very complicated system.But it's not a complex system.A complex system is a system in which there are,whole ranges of processes going on that interact with one another in ways that we can hardly describe,in which bits of one cascade will then link into another cascade.And we couldn't plan this even for one second in a single cell organism.We couldn't map it.
56:27There are in that single cell in a second millions of interactive processes going on,including feedback loops.So the process that is coming out of one of these processes,it's feeding into another process.It's just nothing like a machine.Machines are not like this.The parts of machines are not changing as a machine is moving.But an organism's parts are changing,
56:50rebuilding and reconfiguring all the time.So if I might say so,a living being and a machine are almost as different.In fact, I can't think of any two more different thingsin the entire cosmos.And what's more, I would say that there is nothing in the cosmosthat is like a machine,except a few million lumps of metal that we created in the last few centuries.
57:16So, you know, that speaks to the point you made, Matt, that, you know, he really wants toemphasize, you know, physical machines like a jet fighter engine, built out of metal,put together complex, right, static in comparison to the fluid and dynamic biological world.But as he's talking about this, since he brought up computers, I kept thinking,okay, so like, you know, if you want to argue, jet fighter systems are like that.I think the claim that there isn't complex interactive things going on in an engine might bedebatable. But okay, let's accept. It's still a lot less complex than a digestive system,for example. But in that description, when you...
58:06add in computer programs and the way that they operate, the potential feedback mechanismsand all this kind of thing, I think it becomes a little less of a clear thing. Now, maybe hecarves that out at the end by saying, you know, the million lumps of metal that we producedthat, they do that. But like, machine learning and various other things, they have interactivefeedback processes and stuff going on. So we absolutely, we absolutely kind of wrap our headsaround what's going on in those layers of a large language model, Chris.So it must be magic.I mean, the issue here is that, you know, like I remember just before he described
58:46this materialist way of thinking that biologists have accepted and which physics hasapparently jettisoned is totally barren, right?Intellectually uninteresting, unethical, everything.And he relies heavily on this distinction between machines, which are comprehensive.and the marvelousness of life, which isn't.And as you said, there's some problems with thatbecause there are things going on, even in a jet engine,there are things going on with LLMs that are difficult to explain.
59:20Even a simpler example, right, weather, weather is far too complex to explain precisely,but nobody thinks that it isn't fundamentally based on physical lawsaround air pressure and moisture and temperature and so on.So our inability to fully model it doesn't make it spiritual or ineffable.And so, you know, in order for this argument to work, he's got to paint a caricature of science,which looks more similar to that vitalism era, like Descart and his clockwork animal type of metaphors,has to rely on that a fair bit.But the big problem there, which I think everybody should know, is that contemporary materialism,
01:00:04which science is largely based on, accepts emergence and self-organization and multiple explanatorylevels. We talked about it, right? The different ways in which you can describe things. All that stuffwhen we were talking about the bits of the brain, that's operating on a pretty high levelof description, right? You can go far deeper. So all of that stuff, you know, nonlinear dynamics,chaos theory, complexity science, all that, they are all a part of physics and they are nota refutation of physics. They are not like a wedge or an open crack where you can funnel inineffable mysticism. So systems biology studies exactly the kinds of properties thatMidgilchrist likes to highlight, again, never with invoking non-physical causes.
01:00:53Yeah, yeah. Well, so let's hear Alex is going to raise some of thesepoints to him and well kind of and we'll hear his response so this is you know Alex trying to getclarification about like what point specifically he's making about the dissension heredidn't say that Alex because somebody could reply well I can make a machine that I can leavealone and I can program it will make more machines that's not the point the point is no one machinecan write its own program in the process of coming into being right and it'sAnd what I'm asking is that's definitely a distinction of principle.That's not just a case of like, you know, machines being a couple of hundred years old, as you say,
01:01:40and biological organisms being literally billions of years old.And so having much more time to develop complexity and abilities that machines haven't sort of...In other words, I'm trying to preempt what somebody listening to this might say in objection,which is that, yeah, of course, machines are totally different from organisms,but, you know, give machines four billion years to sort of evolve and communicate with each otherand artificial general intelligence and all of this kind of stuff,and eventually you'll end up with something that looks just like an organism.The interviewer, they're definitely applying the Amiga rule in trying to find the most reasonable
01:02:18nugget to expand on there, Chris.Yeah, what do you think?Well, you know, there's just that point, you know, we've been.brought it up about the reproduction thing. But like, I feel like McGilchrist needs to think thisvery better because he's saying, you know, there's no machine that if it just came intoexistence on its own that could produce all the machines. You're like, there's no humanthat can do that either. You have to be in a evolutionary chain where information from yourparents have come to you and you have to interact with another separate person, right? In order to
01:02:52reproduce. So his view that like a human could just come down, beam down,Like it doesn't work, right?Because they would have genetic material from their parents as well.But he's actually even more confused than that because earlier on he said, oh, yes, but of coursemachines can create copies of themselves.But he sort of waffled, drips a little bit, but they don't intend it or they don't do theact of creation.I don't know.
01:03:14So it's all very confused the argument that he's wanting to make there.But I think the problem is that they are both getting caught up in the details.And the details is where it all falls apart.It works well if you stay in the realm of allegory and metaphor and broad intuitive concepts.Because at that level, I'm sure people who have read his book will have found this.It can feel very compelling as long as you don't actually analyze what's being said.The point that I think that a lot of people will agree with and which is probably not controversial is like presently we don't have.We don't have machines, even versions of AIs, that have their own independent set of desires and wants and so on.
01:04:04You know, they have to be set by the software engineer or the programmer what the priorities are.And like they're not an inherent property of the system.Whereas life and biology does seem to have, you know, like self-organizing and,like principles that guide towards reproduction and so on, right?Like through the processes of evolution, which are understood.But Alex is correct to flag up.Is this actually a like a golden barrier that can never be crossed?Or is this purely that, you know, this will be just something that is crossed in like 10 years?
01:04:46We are declaring that it could never happen because it requires a biological substrate.Yeah, it's got to be said. It's a very weak argument against materialism to be saying,oh, look, look how different machines and living organisms are. There's something ineffableand mysterious that must explain this difference. Therefore, anti-materialism.There are better arguments you could go down, right? I don't want to open any cans of worms,Chris, but you were getting at intentionality. Yes. And, you know, there's also what the philosopherscalled the hard problem of consciousness, which we've discussed before and we don't ever need todiscuss again.
01:05:26And or you could, you know, talk about, you know, accessing abstract truths and mathematical knowledgeand I'm aware of there being arguments against materialism, which I don't actually acceptpersonally.But there are stronger ones out there.I just want to point out that the Gilchrist's resting his on, frankly, a pretty primitiveone.Well, Matt, you wanted them to bring up consciousness.Your wish is my command.
01:05:52Here you go.Well, there are two separate points here.Is it legitimate to make an organism more comprehensible, you think, by comparing it to a machine?The machine is the only machine to be known and have.And the answer is definitely no.So the other point you're making is a quite separate one, which is, again, a promise-free run.I mean, nobody knows what in millions of years.There won't be machines.
01:06:20in millions of yearsbecause we'll have destroyed ourselves on the planet.But let's just suppose that machines could evolve.It's really a bit of a cheat to say,I say now that if they're given millions of years,they will come to this.Because we didn't, life didn't start in machines at all.People say, oh, well, they could become conscious.
01:06:43But how do we know that they could become conscious?Where does that idea itself come?from makes you think makes you think um there you go well what's what's the problem that doesn't thatthere you go there's some of the the more higher level issues that you wanted brought in i didn't wantthe brought in no yeah look i don't think they were joined it there about you know what about you knowwhat if machines could evolve for billions of years like people how would we know like that'sit doesn't identify the biggest problems with nilkiss's point of view i think um so it's beside thepoint, I think. You don't want to provide, like, what the bigger problems are, no?
01:07:24I think the major problem there is that he's jumping from, oh, look, these two things seemvery different. Maybe a clockwork mechanistic model of organisms isn't the most useful one.Therefore, you cannot adopt a materialist approach to understanding organisms. That just doesn'tfollow. That actually will take us smart to. You maymentioned irreducible complexity, right, which raises the specter of intelligent design.And you might be hearing in some of these points the ghost of intelligent design, haunting thesentiments. And that is raised and addressed by Ian and Alex. So let's hear.I mean, the other thing that's quite interesting, just because people will say, oh, nonsense,
01:08:14evolution is completelyhas no purpose.I'm not going into intelligent design.I'm not saying, I'm talking about intelligent design.I'm referring to things that we do actually know.So what we know, and Barbara McClintockwon a Nobel Prize in the 80s, I think, of the last centuryfor her discovery that cells can,
01:08:43first of all, a part of a cell can respond to another remote part of the cell in an intelligent waywhen that cell needs something from that other part of the cell in ways that we don't understand.But it can also very rapidly invent a way of dealing with a threat that it has neither been prepared for by its genes or by its heredity or by its own experience.So in other words, it is intelligent.I say that a good criterion of intelligence is if this organism can see a new way of tackling a problem very quickly that it has not been prepared for in any way.There is no antecedent for it.So you find that, for example, a particular change needs to happen in an organism.a metabolic change needs to happen very rapidly.
01:09:44And it's not one that it has any known mechanism for achieving.Sometimes within as little as two or three days,it will have made a change that helps that organism persist in being.And it doesn't have to wait for the two billion yearsthat that change would have taken to happen randomly.So biologists are realizing that very little is random in that way.there needs to be a degree of order and a degree of disorder.Okay, all right.
01:10:16A bunch of words there.Can you summarize that for us, Chris?Well, he's basically suggesting that through work like Barbara McClintock's1983 Nobel Prize about genetic transposition.That these support the notion that there is kind of other forcesacting in evolution and genetics that insert a kind of intelligence where it's basicallya bit like lineage theory in Brett's approach, right, that like there's a storehouse of knowledgethat the species or maybe even pound species are tapping into that allow them to come up
01:11:01to novel solutions to environmental issues or environmental resource issues, right?that they otherwise could not solve through brute, genetic, you know, evolutionary processes.So there are these kind of deeper, if you like, processes which we know about and which arechallenging the productive approach.Yeah.Yeah.So he's doing the, I have to say, decorative scholarship thing again, or rather just overselling,over-egging a legitimate scientific discovery, which, as you mentioned, McClintock did find
01:11:43genetic mobility activated under conditions of stress, transposable elements becoming more active,producing genetic variation, that kind of thing, right? So important and interesting workthat he's alluding to. The problem is the over-egging, right? Because he moves from thatto stating that cells intelligently invent these novel responses to things that can't be explained.Also, that it happens in two or three days.That's not, that's not.Yeah, that's completely...That's not true.
01:12:18And then pointing out, this would take two billion years to happen randomly, right?Which misrepresents how evolution works.And, you know, a good example of why this is a misrepresentation is the immune system,your favorite thing in the world, Chris, yeah?That can also respond to stresses and promote reactions and, you know, generate novelty,if you like, in terms of antigens and so on within a relatively quick period of time.It doesn't make it a mystery.It doesn't make it a mystery.
01:12:48So, you know, where he's going with this, and it's really just a matter of it,forming a little decorative flourish in the broader and more speculative argument that he wantsto work towards, which is after saying that he's not, you know, he's not interested in talkingabout intelligent design, that he's perhaps not, you know, endorsing an overtly teleological view ofthings. Actually, he is, right? I think that's where he was to get to. Yeah, that is a, so likereference a real scientific discovery misrepresented to endorse like much more extreme claims. Andand then attach it to like his religious and mystical,colorological interpretation of the results.
01:13:38And it's those other steps, not the first one,the one about the biological discovery and the Nobel Prizeand interesting discoveries around the processes of evolution.That is the non-controversial part.It's the second part that makes it controversial.And that is the part that is like very weakand also not supported by the first part, right?So, like, the first part is in large part just there
01:14:06in order to provide...Because, like, if you ask Barbara McClintock,if her research supports this kind of teleological interpretation,I strongly suspect that she would not be endorsing that.No, no, that doesn't stop these fellows from citing them.Yeah, so we're getting pretty familiar with the McGilchrist Two-Step.at this point. Beautiful mechanism that that is being alluded to, but fully explicable within evolutionarybiology. It doesn't require explanation via some kind of ineffable cellular intelligence or
01:14:44directed evolution or any kind of designing mind behind nature. So it does not in fact supportwhere he wants to go. Yes. So let's hear him then move on a little bit more. Still on the intelligent designquestion. So he's disavowed, you know, the embarrassing form of intelligent design, at least explicitly.But let's see how much that holds up. There's another thing you mentioned, which is that you said,I'm not doing intelligent design here. I'm not talking about God. Given the nature of my channel,we're very interested in religion and philosophy of religion, I have to ask the question,does this not all point when you talk about sort of non-randomness and complexity and the impossibility ofof biological matter just sort of springing up out of nowhere randomly by chance.
01:15:31It sort of sounds a lot like many conversations I've had with theists.And, you know, I'm not going to ask you if you don't want to say it.It's in many ways a personal question whether you personally believe in God.But do you think that this is pointing to some kind of intelligent design?Well, to answer your difficult question, I think the answer is yes.But of course, rather like all the difficult questions that comes the writer,it does depend what you mean.And what I don't mean by God is an engineer in the sky.
01:16:03And it's that kind of idea of intelligent design that I would not accept.In fact, I think that's a very left-hemispheric idea.It's the left hemisphere's way of flattering itself is to say,well, yes, of course, it could be a God.It really has a kind of intelligence we have and simply is applying iton a large scale to a cosmic machine.What instead I am suggesting is that the ground of being,which is another way of saying,
01:16:35the God that is the source of being in the cosmos,is not chaotic, is not random,but is beautiful and has purpose,in other words, has direction.When you look at the cosmos,I mean, one thing you can say is thatthe movements, both inanimate and animate in it,certainly seem to have direction to them.
01:17:03They don't just go in any old direction.They do tend to have consistent tendencies.And those consistent tendencies are, if you like,either attractions, which I prefer to the idea of drives,but it may be more comprehensible to be to say those are drives in the cosmos.Yes, right.So there we have it.he's not an intelligent design person.
01:17:28That would be a left brain.It would be so reductionist to put him into that category.And it's also fair to say that he's not quite that, right?I think it's called, what is it called?Process philosophy or something.But basically, yeah, he concedes that he's not an intelligent designer,but his position is that the cosmos isn't random,but it actually has a direction and kind of a response to,
01:17:54attractive forces. So there is this apparent purposefulness in nature, but it doesn't implya cosmic engineer, but rather it is dressed up in this process theology language. So I thinkthere's a real distinction there if you want to get into the philosophy of these things, which I'm notinterested in doing between vanilla creationist, intelligent design people and this philosophicalposition, whatever it is. But still, it largely does.endorse much of the things that intelligent designers endorse, which is that there is an inherentdirection, there is an inherent purpose, and that things are drawn to move in a certain way.And yeah, so I think from the same point of view, right, like, there are more sophisticated
01:18:44versions, basically, of intelligent design, where an intelligent designer might say thatGod is there and he's intervening directly in history, whereas a process.Theologist would say, no, there's not like personal intervention, but the cosmos is inherentlydirectional. It has this kind of stuff baked into it. A creationist might...A verticality, if you will. Yes, that's right. A vanilla creationist would say that the specieswere created by God, right? Just like that. But rather a more sophisticated process theologistwould say, no, no, evolution is real, but the directionality and the impulse towards theseends is operates through it, right? Yeah. So, you know, it's slightly more sophisticated. If,
01:19:29you know, I don't know. Like, I don't respect that kind of sophistication, frankly, but that's mytaste. But yeah, that's, I think, a fair description of where he's, where is at. Yeah, and you heard himreference God as the groin of being, right, which is a, a frees associated with Paul Tillick.I don't know how to pronounce it as aPilich, Paul Pillich,who was aChristian existential philosopher.And sounds to me quite similar to
01:20:00Thomas Aquinas kind of things, right,arguing thattalking about God as a thingor like an agent,right, is making a mistakebecause he is, or it isthe necessary foundation on which all thingsexist, right? So it's
01:20:18philosophers and theologians like this kind of discussion quite a lot.And actually, you're going to hear more of it here.So the future is not foreclosed, but it doesn't mean that it could be random.It has directions, exactly what they will lead to.I don't think even the divine source knows.I argue strongly that if there is a God, that God is not omniscient and not omnipotent,but is also not not omniscient and not omnipotent.What do I mean by that?
01:20:47if you think of these things in a very left hemispheric way,the omniscience would mean that God knows everything that ever has been,ever will be,and all the possibilities.And therefore,the future is known,everything is closed.And the whole business of us leading out our lives is really a sorry charade
01:21:06because we have no freedom.And as it were,the cosmos is not achieving anything creative.It's just unfolding something that's already there.And omnipotence can be,of a similar kind,that it means that God can just do anything,can make two equal five or whatever.
01:21:23I don't believe that God is of this nature,but I don't think that you can say,well, God is not on their sins or not omnipotent.You can only say he's not, not on this into,and not not omnipotent.Well, there you go.I mean, I left brain thinking like me,might have problems with untangling,
01:21:44not being able to say it is,God is or isn't omnipotent, but only that it is not, not.I've already lost the thread.Yeah, this is a thing that philosophers in general have a lot of fun with.Nagajuna is like a Buddhist philosopher that had a similar discussion about emptiness, I think.But it's like, I mean, this is a little bit mean, but it's a little bit like Jordan Peterson saying,I'm not saying that it's true, but it might not not be wrong.I think it's like a simple rhetorical trick where if you put enough negatives,
01:22:27if you layer them up, then people's brains just can't follow it and go, well, that sounds deep.But I do, just on the side, Chris, but I do like on one hand, you know, throughout he talks about left-brained peopleas being arrogant, being arrogant, you know, arrogant,dismissive and basically all those bad things.But he constantly refers to left brain thinkingjust with such disdain.Like it's such a simple-minded, reductive kind of thing.Any time there's any opinion that he doesn't agree with,
01:23:05he like, first, that's like left-brain thinking, right?Like he said, you know, the embarrassing, intelligent design people,they're Lafrey and thesetheologians who havedeemed to respond to a reductionistcritique bytreating God as a thingthey are also
01:23:24like Lafrey is rightIt just bears repeating that this is justidentical to Ken Wilber'sintegral theorywhere all of the potentialrejoinders or disputes withhis philosophy are all symptoms of thelower colors, lower state.
01:23:44Non-integrative thinking.Exactly.Yeah, that's the way it is.Just before we proceed,I just, maybe this is a pointto just point out whathe's saying and why I think there'smajor problems with it, right? Because it's fine, right?
01:23:58If you want to be a processtheologian, if you wantto assert these things and say you believe them,then fine, right? Believe whatever youlike. But it's just worth pointingout here, right? Thatthe way the McGilchrist deploys it therehas got serious problems, right?
01:24:13Because he asserts this idea of a directionand of attractive forces that are going on there.And it's doing incredible metaphysical work.But it's just asserted.It's not even defined, let alone having any evidencefor it being true or even being testable.And making that inference from, oh, that things are non-random,that there is some direction to things,
01:24:38to implying that there's a purpose,implying intent,That's not established at all, right?Like water flowing downhill and forming a lake or whatever, you know, it has a direction and so on,and there are forces acting on it.It doesn't imply intent or a plan.So, yeah, like I think this theological move where they do like to dissociate themselvesfrom literal creationists and very, you know, fundamentalist literalists in religion
01:25:06because that's very unsophisticated and crude.But what they do is they retreat to.these elaborate and abstract formulations with undefined and unmeasurable things likedirectionality that is structured to resist falsification.Like his idea of a limited god that isn't omnipotent, but kind of is, we're unclearabout that.Whether he's not not omnipotent or not.But, you know, this is the kind of limited God that kind of persuades and attracts and evolves,
01:25:37you know, but that doesn't make any specific predictions.There's no way to prove or disprove such a thing.It's just a bold assertion.And I don't respect it anymore than the literal creationists.In fact, I kind of respect them a little bit more because they have the courage of their convictions.Their metaphysics are stupid, but they just stick to their guns because they have faith.And they're much more upfront about it.I kind of prefer those people.
01:26:03I'm not sure I'm on board with that set of it.But nonetheless, I do agree that there's a lot of that going on.To be honest, Matt, it just sounds like with your falsifications and predictions and all that's just very left, Brian, to be honest.Yeah.You're approaching it.But let's hear a bit more right brain descriptions about old God up there.Those terms don't really apply.It's like, if you ask me, well, is God green?
01:26:31And I said, well, no, no, God's not green.But, you know, he's not not green either.I mean, it's just that it's the wrong kind of time.Yeah.So it's like asking it if God is even.And it's like, no, he's not even.Yes.But he's not odd either.
01:26:44You know, it's just like the wrong terminology.I mean, famously, Thomas Aquinas is famed for pointing out that all religious language is analogical.That is, God is not omnipotent, God is not loving, God is not powerful.God is none of these things because these are human terms to sort of approximate the kind of thing that God might be like.And maybe the only way that we really have.the authority to use these as analogies is because we have like scripture using these terms.So we know they must be accurate at some level.But we have to keep in mind that God is not any of these things.
01:27:20These are just essentially metaphors.Well, there you go.As you say, well, as I said, unfalsifiable.There's nothing that can be said about God.But, you know, it kind of is in the...You have to use human language.Yeah, yeah, I have to use human language.And we're all limited by that.
01:27:40And Alex, I do like that Alex in general is able to just quite directly articulate what is being said and referenced, right?Like, I think it's because his background is in theology, but he also previously was somebody more critical of these kind of sensory-key type approaches.So, like, he is correctly outlining there that, you know, this is similar to Thomas Aquinas saying, well,all of the things that you may say or not say about Godor not actually quite correct anyway, right?Yeah.Because you're expressing them in like human languageand with human thought,
01:28:22which cannot comprehend the nature of God.I got that impression too that he,you know, he's doing the excruciatingly polite kind of interview formatwhere you don't actually overtly challenge anyone ever on anything.But the way he does frame it is kind of subtly.undermining a lot of the time by pointing out that, well, everything is all just a metaphor or analogy,though, isn't it? So maybe we can't be too definite. Well, let's hear Alex invoking the potentialaudience reaction to this. Though with his audience, I think it's not going to be entirely
01:29:01like this. But anyway, when you first start talking in those terms, well, it's not that he'somnipotent, it's that he's not not omnipotent. People are probably going to be a bit sort ofbefuddled by that, but if I'm understanding you correctly, you're meaning something a bit likethat? I am meaning exactly something like that. I'm meaning that you're asking a question,which is the question you could ask of something that is already a creation, a machine or an object.But God is not a machine or an object. God is the terms as it were on which there can be anything.So God is not the first cause in the sense of a first actor who temporarily started a process,but God is the prime cause in the sense that the without which there can be nothing.
01:29:52So the basis on which there can be something.And the questions you can ask of that are different questions.So if you want to get into the debate, you have to accept there can't be any debate at Ravard first recogniz.that God is the source of it.Yes.And you have to reject all the binary thinking,all the binary thinking about it being omnipotent or not omnipotent.It's both and neither.
01:30:18Very, very sense-making.And it is the thing.I guess, like, it sounds very sophisticated,escaping binary logic and, you know.Does it?Yeah, well, not to me.But, you know, it obviously has the purpose of making these theological claimsimmune to rational evaluation.
01:30:38Like you literally can't do it.They are quite clear about that.As soon as you start trying to do that,then you're doing left brain reductive binary thinking.And it's very reminiscent of Jordan Peterson.Yes, very reminiscent.Then there's two clips I have, Matt,that I think speak to fundamentally what Imigal Christ is about.
01:30:57And the first one is that he wants to make clear his precise position in these kind ofto be it. So listen to this.And the first thing one has to say is one's bound to be ignorant in talking about these things,including people who say there isn't one. I mean, it's just one of those areas.My idea, my hunch, my intuition, what speaks to me is the idea of a cause, a god,an ontological cause, a source of being, the ground of being.that, as I say, neither has determined everything,but nor is completely absent.
01:31:44He's not that sort of God that has, you know,disappeared off somewhere and is not at the least bit interested.I believe that God is himself in evolution.I'm an evolutionary, a process philosopher.If I'm a theology theology at all, I'm a process theologian.So I believe that the.divine essence is in process all the time.And some people like Rowan Williams, to whom I've often talked, doesn't like this.
01:32:14He agrees with me about almost everything.I think I can say that I have written on these topics, but he's very cautious abouteven if not about process theology.Yeah.Most theists or whatever they are generally have this concept of God as being singularand perfect in some way.So if God's always evolving and changing, maybe improving over time, then that is somethingin contradiction, right?
01:32:45Yeah, well, I don't know the specifics of why Rowan Williams disagrees with the specific versionof process theology that Ima Gilchrist has.But I think the point for me is that this is what he's actually interested.is debating out the intricacies of his ontological model of God with the Archbishop of Canterbury,right, or the ex-arch bishop of Canterbury.Like, that's what it's about.And his, you know, kind of discussion about, I think of God is kind of like this,but he's not that kind of God, right?
01:33:25He's this kind of God and so on it.And really all this stuff about biology and all that kind of thing.It's just window dressing for he wants to.talk about, you know, this view of God that he has, which is a specific God trace backlike these theological debates around processes and all that kind of thing. But it's nothing to dowith the like the brain hemispheres or any of that kind of thing. It's just like Ian McGilchrist'sintuitions about the nature of the universe. And for me, it should be treated as such.Right. Like if you want to hear his thoughts about the nature of God, you know, you should listen to stuff like this. But if you're expecting to hear a thing which is linked to science and biology in a legitimate way, it's not. Right. None of this is related to any of the stuff that we talked about on the last podcast, really.
01:34:25Yeah. I mean, this is the fundamental tension, right? If your point of view that all of this is metaphor and analogy,or, you know, you can't make these binary claims of truth or falsity.It's both than neither.And if you are operating on this incredibly abstract, theistic level, then why are you makingclaims about the left and the right hemisphere of the brain?Why are you citing these scientific pieces of evidence that purportedly support your wayof doing things?Surely all of that is irrelevant, right?
01:35:01This, you know, planarian flatworms both do and do not retain their memoriesafter they cut their heads off.And same with the, all of the stuff.Like, he's got hundreds and hundreds of citations in his book to, you know, cherry-pickedneurophysiology in his book.So, but why do all that if it's frankly irrelevant?Later on, at one point, he does say, look, if it's all just a metaphor,I won't be particularly surprised if the whole left brain, right-bring thing is just a metaphor and actually has no grounds in reality.
01:35:37The important thing is the metaphor.Then why bother?Why bother with all of the scientific winged addressing?Yeah, but we know the reason why.It's the reason that they introduce them focusing on those credentials and stuff.Without that, it's just like these kind of, you know, theological claim.that I think are much less compelling.And so that is why.
01:36:04But we will get to that.We'll get to the whole metaphor's thing.But you brought up Jordan Peterson, right?And like Jordan Peterson, he has a particular preference for Christianity, right?Because of course he does.If Christianity is true, its strength is to be able to say that God can be both transcendentand imminent in his creation.I think that is an extraordinarily powerful idea that is best expressed through the Christian mythos.
01:36:35And I use the word mythos without any sense that I'm talking about something true or not true.I'm just saying it is a very powerful mythos and may very well be true.But if that's the case, then God can be both in one sense, that transcendent being that is beyond and beyond all change and knows everything and so on.But the God that interests me is the God that is in communion with this world and is, in fact, changing in response to it.So Whitehead, A.N. Whitehead had this vision that the divine cause and the creation were evolving in tandem, responding to one another.And I actually believe that the reason there is life at all is to have something that can respond to that divine source of being.because again, as Whitehead pointed out, the business of life is a puzzle.There you go.
01:37:36Some even broader and more sweeping theological claims.I'm at a loss.I don't really have a response to that, do you?Isn't it useful to have a version where you can retreat to, like,I'm not saying that God is a false.thing that is in the universe. I'm saying it is the ground for which existence can even be,right? It is the nature. So talking about like, does it do this or does it not? And also,a God that is very interested in the processes of evolution and guiding them and interacting
01:38:13in the world in a specific way, right, to orientate things. So suddenly it is no longer theabstract completely, it doesn't make sense to use human language to discuss anymore. Now it is somethingwhich actually has to be understood and have a will acting on evolutionary processes or you cannotat all understand what is going on in the biological world and with life. So it's like God is exactlyas nebulous as he needs to be to escape any like criticism.of a directional claim or something like that.I just think he really likes the abstract God when it suits its purposes,and he likes the more tinkerer-type God,
01:39:05which he said that he doesn't like when it sounds good in his argument.So, yeah.And he likes making concrete theological claims.Well, maybe not concrete, but strong.Like concrete is the wrong word.Yeah, concrete is the wrong word.word. Strong is the right word. When it suits him. But then when it suits him, you can retreat to,well, it both is and is not true and it's reductionist to you. Yeah. And you can't even use human
01:39:32language to describe this kind of thing. So well, look, McGilchrist likes metaphors and analogies. And I knowyou like them too, Chris. So here's my, here's my visual metaphor of what's going on withMcGilchrist. So he's created like a pagoda. Like imagine a pyramid. Okay. Built out of science,scientific factsscientific bits of credibilityand he takes these stepsup the pyramid till he gets to the tippy topand then he fastens
01:40:00a bunch of balloons to himselfinvolve some of these thingslike the metaphor is the most important thingand actual the facts don't matterbinary thinking in terms of truth and falsethat he can't be done human languageto describe important stuff like Godisn't really real
01:40:17and then he kicks awaythe little pyramid, which turned out to be just scaffolding, and floats away to where he wants to go,which is up in the sky, doing a process theology up amongst the clouds where nothing can touch him.This is the mental model.Wow, that's a hell of a metaphor, especially because it only was a pagoda for one sentence,and then it morphed into a pyramid, and then it was kicked away.You can't kick a pyramid.It's both a pyramid and a pagoda.
01:40:49This is so left brain to view to try to hold me to one.That's true.And it can be both kicked down a scaffolding and be building.Yeah.So a perfect example,illustration of that approach and style of thinking, I think.But yeah, so, you know, as is the case, my mind,it's all very complex.
01:41:11There's a lot of very fine green theological stuff that goes into it.But ultimately, as is also.in the case in Sensemaker, well, it comes back to Christianity.Christianity is the most powerful instantiation of the mythos, and it has an appeal.God knows why.Why could it be that all these middle-aged people from Christian countries raised inenvironments with that being the dominant religious system?Why would they turn to that as the thing that appeals them?
01:41:42Who knows?Who knows?It could be any number of reasons.reasons. But yeah, so there we go. He thinks he likes the Christian mythos, right? And he doesn't meanwe're mythos disparagingly. Yes, I know that. And he thinks very important to carve out whatparticular type of Christian theologian he is. If you're into Christian theological discussion,I'm sure this is great and exciting. He does, however, bring up a topic which is close to yourheart, Matt, which is panpsychism. And I know that you,
01:42:17like to discuss the intricacies of plant-s psychic approaches. You've said it's a very, you know,coherent and beautiful system. So that's here. His version. Maybe this will get your juices flowing more.I mean, we came there earlier when talking about Dawkins. But of course, this is right. And this is apoint that is, I mean, no doubt some people will think, well, that's just a sort of get out clause andso 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 can either accept that or not.
01:42:53In a way, you have to live with your choiceabout whether you do accept that or not.But I would recommend opening your mindand reading more philosophyand seeing that there's more going onthan just mechanical, certifiable factsthat can be put into a textbookand verified by an experiment.
01:43:12Indeed, indeed.So, yes, all very much in linewith his anti-materialism.There's different ways of knowing, Chris.Some of them can't really be articulated.They're beyond true and false.You can't put them in a textbook.You either accept it or you don't.
01:43:28So kind of, yeah.He kind of also assumes that if you read more philosophy,if you have an open mind,that fundamentally you'll come to agree with him,which again is slightly putting the cart before the horsein terms of things.Is it possible for someone to be well informedon philosophy and theology and not agree with Ian McGilchrist.
01:43:53And I'm doing just like minor disagreements about the details, but like fundamentaldisagreement.Is that possible in his model?I wonder.Well, I think it is impossible because, you know, this epistemic that he likes,which is very Jordan Peterson-esque, relies on metaphor, relies on allegory and,It's something you grok.You feel in your heart and you either see it or you don't and you have to be able to hold
01:44:23mutually contradictory things in your mind at the same time.It's basically immune to being demonstrated wrong either empirically but also logically.Yeah.So it's logically impossible to prove it wrong.So kind of as he says, you either accept it or you don't.Well, you might admit the schoolboy era of assuming he's a pan psychic like you.He's not.And there is important differences in his point of view from your bulk standard,
01:44:57Matthew Brown type pan psychic.You need to stop calling me a pan psychic.They're very literal people out there that have come to believe this about me.Sorry, that's right.I forgot you have some bespoke terminology that you're in group likes.Whatever you call yourself, but we accept you here at the goal.that goes. But let's hear, he's not like you and your rubble. He's a bit, you know, a little bit more bespoke.But this is, life goes to a whole other level. What life produces is creatures that can respond almost infinitely faster and respond to many more things that are in consciousness.
01:45:39So I believe that this ground of being is conscious.and that all things that we call material are manifestations of consciousness.Now, that is not quite the same as panpsychism in the sense that I believe that a rock has consciousness.If it does, and I couldn't rule it out, any more than I can rule out that one day in the future a machine might become conscious, or I doubt it.I can't rule out that a rock has consciousness, but that's not my meaning.My meaning is that all things are in consciousness.This is like a distinction between pantheism and panentheism.So panentheism, pantheism is simply the idea that God is simply the sum of everything.
01:46:31But panentheism, as I imagine you know, is the belief that God is in everything and that everything is in God.And my belief about consciousness is like that.I don't believe that consciousness is just, as it were, literally in a teaspoon or something,at least if it is, it's not the consciousness I can recognize.But I believe that all the things that we encounter in our consciousness are manifestations of consciousness.And matter is one way in which consciousness can manifest.Yeah.He's actually being very clear there.
01:47:06He's delineated exactly what intersection of philosophical.slash theological beliefs he holds, I think.Yeah, panentheism.Panentheism and idealism.It's a bit of both.So the idealism part is that all things that we call materialare manifestations of consciousness.Yes.
01:47:30So this is quite a radical point of viewand completely the opposite of materialism.Dr. K.Obviously.Yeah?It's like Dr. K.Well, Dr. Kay thinks the fundamental unit is like consciousness, right?Right.
01:47:44Yeah.And so Jordan Peterson, obviously, is in the same sort of mold.And like Jordan Peterson, he's not just an idealist like that.He's this panentheist.So that is, it's not just consciousness, it's God.So the underlying substrate of reality is consciousness,and the material stuff is kind of ephemeral and manifested by.consciousness and it's not pan-psychism quite right there Chris it's God is in
01:48:15everything everything is in God God is evolving that's a particular kind ofidealism I guess where the primary consciousness is divine if I'm sorry yes have Imade any mistakes there I think I've done it very well the the amount ofthe angels that are dancing on this pen has been nailed down specifically andVery specifically.It's very sophisticated.It's very nuanced.But it's also just radical, you know.
01:48:43I mean, that's the thing.I mean, he's free to believe.Everyone's free to believe, whatever they like and tell other people.But it's not a, you know, like it's no actual evidence for it.There's obviously no evidence for it.Like, they actually can't be by definition because he's already established that, right?It's not amenable to normal standards of logic or evidence.So it's just a very bespoke form.
01:49:07of faith, really.Yep, yep.I mean, this is the kind of stuff that phylogians really enjoy discussing and more power to them.When they're not claiming that it's supported by scientific evidence and based on thestructure of the brains, I don't have any issue with it.But sadly for us, that's not what Ian McGilchrist does.And just to be clear, Matt, he does, and this is in a lot conversation.he has with a neuroscientist called Anilsef.
01:49:42And they're talking about their different perspectives.It's another word panel room and a lofty discussion being chaired, right?And in that, he talks about consciousness and how he understands it to interact with the human brain.Now, it probably won't surprise you that he doesn't think that the brain can explain consciousness.It's just hard.but I think he does a good job here of outlining what he specifically believes.Yes.I mean, essentially, I think there are three possible things that the brain can be doing with consciousness.
01:50:19It can be emitting it, it can be transmitting it, or it can be permitting it.And I don't think there is any compelling description of a mechanism whereby matter,if it has nothing to do with consciousness,can of itself give rise to consciousness.So I can't believe it emits it.I don't think it just transmits it,but I think it permits it.In other words, I think it shapes it.
01:50:49And in this, I think a useful image is that of water falling on a landscape,and that water goes into streams,and the streams have banks.Now, are the banks the water or the streams?No. Do the banks explain away the water? Not at all. But they do contain and shape the waterfor the time that the water is flowing through that river. And I think that consciousness can bethought of in this sense as a probably indefinitely large volume or area of consciousnessthat is normally for us restricted to your consciousness,
01:51:37my consciousness, whatever.And that makes it possible for us to lead independent lives.But I don't think that it's ever completely cut offfrom a bigger field of consciousness.I think it's simply an isolated area in a field of consciousness.Yeah, yeah.So it's a beautiful metaphor there, the river, the banks.I guess our brains are the banks containing the,
01:52:00the stream of consciousness that's flowing through us and eventually it reaches the sea, Chris,and the sea, of course, is the divine consciousness where we all unite. So it's a nice thought.It's actually much more radical, I've realized, his brand of idealism than panpsychism.So you often mock panpsychism, Chris. We know your feelings.And he's very weird.I'm defensive panpsychism. I do always come in. Go ahead.But he frames his version of it as more nuanced and subtle.But it's actually, it's not a more modest position than panpsychism.
01:52:38It's actually much more radical because panpsychists wouldn't say that matter is not real and fundamental.Right.And whereas for McGilchrist, matter just is a manifestation of consciousness.Right.So basically consciousness for him is everything.think, it's ontologically primary.And so just like Jordan Peterson, who's got the word and the ephemera of the materialworld is really not important compared to that substrate.
01:53:09So Panpsychists think, there are some people, right, or dualists or whatever, I don'tknow what to call them, but some people think that Matta can't explain consciousness, right?He thinks so too, but his position's even more radical because he's saying that consciousnessactually explains matter, right? So it's beyond that. And as you pointed out, that's all fine.You can say all these things and he expresses them well. But this is a massive explanatory burden therethat is not picked up. There's no evidence for any of this and none of these questions are answered.Like, how does consciousness produce the appearance of matter? How does that happen? Is that everybodyexpect. You know, for
01:53:54reductive materialists like me, Matt,whenever he says, you know, this relationship betweenconsciousness and matter, like, it's impossiblethrough bridge. It doesn't make any sense. So obviously it's notbeing emitter. I'm like, what?Like, I don't concede any of that. I don't agreethat the brain cannot produce consciousness. Allexisting evidence indicates of Bruns is very important
01:54:18for experiencing consciousness. And there's notNothing without brains that we are rough.Has any conscious awareness?So like he very quickly sweeps that away.It's like, well, that's obviously a completely, you know, that, that just doesn't hook up.And you're like, no, that is a perfectly legitimate point of view.And then he's off on the races, right?Because whenever he's talking about, you know, it's like a river and the banks and the thing.
01:54:43The problem that he has there is that we understand water and banks and how they interact.and the physical things that are interacting there, right?And nobody's debating about the relationship between the two of them.So his metaphor is like that, but for substances that we can't seeand we don't have evidence for beyond like religious intuition.So it's always the power of the metaphor or the analogy that is doing the work.And then, you know, we will hear as you've flagged that he thinks that's fine.That's the way, you know, you need the reason.
01:55:23But actually, metaphors can add.Metaphor is not, yeah, metaphor is not evidence, right?Like metaphors are good.I like metaphors.But how you use metaphors is to help explain something that has other independent evidence for it, right?It's a visualization tool.It's a mental thing.What does Dan Dennett call it?
01:55:44It's an intuition pump.You know, it's a way to wrap your head around something.But it isn't a nice metaphor.isn't of itself evidence for something.And that's the thing we continually see with our gurus.Jordan Peterson thinks this too,which is that if you can imagine a nice metaphor,then that serves as a form of evidence
01:56:04that your position is true.And it's really not true.And there's so many,like it raises so many questions,his theory of the world.Like if consciousness was the primary thing,then whydoes the complexity
01:56:21of our nervous systemslike why is it even neededlike why is it so coupledlike why do you only see consciousnessin humanswhy does brain damagereduce consciousnesswhat is anesthesia
01:56:35you know like we can see lots of examplesof the mentalof the physical oneinterfering with your consciousnessyou've got a problem therethat's seeI've got the answer for youit's because
01:56:47this is the receiver.If you damage a radio,you're going to pick up the signallike in a garbled thing,but the signal itself underneath itis still crystal clear and pure, right?The waves are still transmitting.So if you damage the receiving equipment,
01:57:03you would make the mystic and thing of saying,oh, you've damaged, you know, consciousness.But no, Matt, that is...I get it.I get it.I get it.So our brains and all the neuronsand their neural firing
01:57:17and the neurotransmitters, everything that's going on in there.It's not actually producing consciousness.It's a very complicated receiver.All of that.It just happens to turn out that the proper functioningof everything in your nervous systemhas to be doing just what it's doing,otherwise it won't receive the consciousness properly.
01:57:42I see.Yes, that's it.Now, where that goes, by the way,And not in this conversation, because this is with Alex O'Connor, right?So he doesn't go this far.But, you know, Mima, I'm a thorough person.I go and listen to many other conversations,which you don't subject yourself to, generally.
01:57:58So he had a conversation with our favorite orthodox woodcarver,Jonathan Pajot, okay, about AI, consciousness, demons, various other things.Right, and it does really, I promise you.So they're talking about AI.and he's going to make a comparison here talking about intelligence in the brain and that kind of thing.But this is in the context of them trying to puzzle out what's going on with AI.Okay, so listen to this.The brain is not intelligent.
01:58:33It's a very complex structure.But the brain itself is not intelligent.What is intelligent is your consciousness, my consciousness, using that brain.And I think that the way to think about AI is that it will never achieve intelligence,but it may act as a gateway for an intelligence.And I think that's where I would agree with the idea of an alien intelligence,in the sense that we don't know what forms of consciousness exist in the cosmos,and we don't know how they can come to express themselves.
01:59:12But one of the ways this has been traditionally thought of is that there are forces for destruction or forces for evil that can ingress into a situation and derail it, take it over, use it for their own means, towards their own end.And I think that that is a reasonable idea.I don't, nothing but a dogmatic belief that everything is nothing other than mechanical,which has no longer any basis in science,could lead people to think that we shouldn't take the idea of consciousnessand drives within consciousness seriously.I might you laugh there.What was funny?
02:00:07Only the most dogmatic.believer in the now discredited materialist versions of intelligence and consciousness wouldthink that actually brains are doing anything, but rather our brains are connecting to thisdeep ocean of consciousness that exists out there in the cosmos. And by extension,AIs too are never going to be doing anything intelligent either. But what they can do, and I have towith my own in a way for this because he is being logically consistent. Just like our brains,they can connect to the cosmic conscious forces that are out there. But there's a, there's asting in the tail of this because not all of those consciousnesses are good. There are evil.
02:01:00There's evil out there that could be entering through the gateway of AI. Wow. That's pretty,That's getting pretty spicy now.Getting pretty spicy.And I think this actually is, to be honest,what the Imacris is actually about having this kind of big idea discussion with someonelike Jonathan Peugeot.That's more what the whole left hemisphere, right hemisphere is in need of, right?Getting into these big discussions.
02:01:30And just to be clear, by the way, Matt,Jonathan Peugeot's response to this makes some points that, you know,a dogmatic reductive materialistmight take some issue with,but he does have an answer to it.So let's just hear, you know,where that conversation goes there.Yeah, and I mean,
02:01:47I think for people that when they hearthis idea of disembodied intelligence,that would want something,you know, they get freaked outand they start to think,oh, this is just woo.A good way, I think, of understanding itis to understand it at a more local,
02:02:04at a more local,like the image that I mentioned,for example, this idea of spycraft and the notion that a nation or a group can be manipulatedfrom the outside by someone who has a lot of, who's very tricky and is able to influence peoplein a direction that isn't towards their good. And so anybody can understand that. Like,that's not, I don't think that that's something that is weird or contentious. Like, this is somethingthat you've seen happen, that you can notice that happening in different groups and it canhappen in yourself too. That's when you become a, you know, when you, when you, I don't know,
02:02:47when you become addicted to gambling, that's what's happening to you is that you're literallybeing, there's a will that is colonizing you and it's taking certain weaknesses that you haveinside you and it is leading you in a direction that is to your own destruction, but that isto the service is something else. There's something that is benefiting.from your actions. It's just not you. It's something else.And so I think that that can maybe help the more, let's say the more materialist thinkersto see what it is or lower examples of what it is we're talking about.Yeah, you know, a reductionist materialist, his fix and simple terms won't go,
02:03:29hey, wait, this sounds a bit like Wu, that there's, that there's an oceanof consciousness out there and evil forces within that might be invading us through our brainsand taking control of us and influencing us for their own ends.They might be skeptical about that.Yeah, they might be skeptical about that.That's true.But then you point out, well, hold on, but addiction, Matt, or intelligence agencies, don't thesethings operate in the world and like intelligence agencies. Nobody says that intelligence agencies on
02:04:11organizing campaigns and stuff in secret and exerting the worlds of nations. And I mean, the addiction,people do talk about, you know, they're being controlled by the like, you know, the drug or thehunger for the drug or whatever. And, you know, gambling, there's the gambling industry, which ishijacking psychology. So in what sense is any of that different than what they're proposing?It's quite interesting because Peugeot, there is another good example of their thinking in terms of analogies and metaphors.So, you know, like imagine addiction.Doesn't it feel as though an external force is taking control of you and forcing you, guiding your activities?And so when a spy agency infiltrates another one, you know, that thing happens too.
02:05:00So therefore, it's the same thing that's going on with the cosmic consciousness and demons.Like, I think you genuinely, and they both would genuinely see that, oh, they've thought of an analogy here.They've thought of an evocative metaphor that feels, that feels right.Therefore, they're establishing the plausibility of what they're claiming.No, arch materialist that I am, I can actually pop that spiritual bubble for the,which is that a lot people talk about their consciousness being colonizedor them being victims to external forces, the demon drink, right?You know, these kind of things.
02:05:43What mainstream psychology and science would say is that that is all you.Like the same way, you want to eat the cakeand you want to have the summer bod for the beachand the two things can coexist in the same being, right?it doesn't require that there's an external cake-eating monster that is taking control of meand making me concerned the cake.No, human psychology is just not the thing that there's a, like a single homunculus theredoesn't control of every single thing.
02:06:16We have conflicting drives.Some of them are selfish.Some of them are short-sighted and so on.So actually, materialist science and psychology can deal with the fact that we are complex entitieswith conflicting drives and motivesand sometimes our physiologicalor psychological abictions can actagainst our better interest in health or life,
02:06:38but they can't.They are attributing that to supernatural forcesand they don't want to defendthe existence of those supernatural forces.So they say, well, it's just the sameas all these materialist thingsthat we acknowledge existence.Like, no, it's not to see them.
02:06:56That's why there's a,question around it. And you know what, just to make it clear as well, so just to finish Peugeot'spoint there, there is a lovecraftian aspect to the way Peugeot talks, because, you know, he invoked,you know, there's malign consciousnesses out there that mean us harm. And they go quite oldand they go quite deep. While understanding that, you know, that maybe it's bigger than you think,you know, that maybe that there are some wills that are ancient, ancient, ancient,and that have been even, you know, when we think of the way that ancients would worship certain godsto get certain behaviors to land in their, and if you worship the god of war,
02:07:45then you are submitting yourself to a certain pattern of being that wants something.Okay.Unfair of me there.Unfair of me because, well, that's Peugeot.We all know he's a metaphysical mediac, right?Who sees symbols and everything he looks at around him.It's all religious symbols.Ian McGilchrist, a more serious, scientific-minded person,
02:08:09as he says, a skeptic amongst believers and the believer amongst skeptics.So when he hears that, he does respond by saying, oh, well, okay, that's a provocativeof thesis and you've raised a lot of points there. I don't know that I would quite agree thataddiction is necessarily caused by these external factors. Well, yes, yes. Gosh, yeah, there's a lot there.I mean, I think that on the question of addiction, I probably wouldn't see it quite that way.What I would take from the lesson of addiction is that your conscious will can be suburbation.borne by other processes which may be going on in your brain.And I'm not sure that they represent another, I think they could represent another will
02:09:03acting.And you think, oh, good.Okay.But he does go on.So what he goes on to explain is that, you know, he was a psychiatrist and he had todeal with people with things like schizophrenia and, you know, addiction and other suchthings.Right.
02:09:23There are conditions quite common ones, like forms of psychosis, where I'm not sure that it is wrong to think, at least to entertain the possibility of something happening here that has harm as its goal.Because let me just give you a very striking but very, very common scenario, which every psychiatrist,interest in the world will have seen.Some parents bring a young man, as it usually is a young man,to see me, and they say just recently he's been locking himselfin his room, he doesn't show any interest in anything.He says some very odd things from time to time,and sometimes he seems to be preoccupied with something that we can't hear.
02:10:16And so I take a history.I suggest that he's a story.that he's developing schizophrenia or a psychotic illness.And I say, well, there are various ways to treat this,but certainly at this stage,the really important thing is to take some medication.And he would treat them with medication,not the psychotic medication usually,
02:10:41and it would help the people, right?The voices that they heard in their head would go away.So I discussed the medication,and I, I, I, I,I say there are certain side effects and so on, so you must be honest with me and let me know if you don't like them.And so I, because such medication can act very quickly, often within 24 to 48 hours to remove an acute psychosis.So I usually review that person in a week's time.And in a week, the chap comes in again with his parents, who are useful to hear the story from their perspective.
02:11:21And I can see already that he's more himself.He seems more natural.He seems more open.He's more expressive.Not, you know, not perfectly right, but still there's been a change for good.And so I say to him, how are you feeling?And he said, well, you know, I think better.And I say, we talked about voices you were hearing.
02:11:46Are they still there?He gives a non-committal kind of answer.And then this goes on for a few weeks.So so far, this sounds pretty good.A psychiatrist saying, hold on.Let me just use my clinical experience to talk about medications that work.And then he goes a slightly different route.So this is him talking, you know, he's done the treatment,
02:12:12but the patient, unfortunately, sometimes stops taking the medication or they crash.And what is the cause of that?And let's hear what the cause of it.that is sometimes.So, but this crash usually happens.It's, I think it's very unusual that it doesn't at some stage.And, you know, when you talk about a voice, in the past, people would have said, well, there'sa little goblin or a demon or something.
02:12:38It's sitting on my shoulder and it's speaking into my ear and it's saying, you're worthless,you're a piece of shit.Why don't you go and jump off that building?And that is what they're hearing.Now, I mean, of course, I've treated loads and loads of patients with all sorts of diagnoses,and I have always treated them in the way that conventionally doctors would,and it's been mainly rather successful.So I'm not saying that the medications are not working, or therapies are not working,
02:13:08but they might be working because they're pushing back against and making more difficult for some influenceto be getting into an unusual brain.So if you think of it like this, if you think of a brain,as being a sort of beautifully crafted building where all the doors are sort of usable but secure.And you think of another building which has a sort of different structure and because of its differentstructure it opens portals for something else to get in.And that structure may allow that thing in and what you've really been doing is making surethe doors are properly defended.
02:13:50And this is not as wacky as it sounds.There are, I've been to a talk at the Royal College of Psychiatristsby a therapist that many psychiatrists in the room had used,who does actually think that some mental illnesses are caused by a kind of possession.And he talks to the spirit, and I've never attended one of his sessions,but says that he doesn't so much antagonize it,but has explained to it that it's in the wrong place,and it needs to go somewhere else.
02:14:23Amazingly, this seems to happen extraordinarily frequently.So that is an interesting sidelight on mental illness.And now everybody says, oh, McGilchist is completely mad.He thinks that psychiatric illness is caused by demons.But I'm just asking for an openness to the idea that there are psychic influences,some of which may not be benign.Oh, that's fine.You know, those people who will say, he's suggesting there's demons like causing the list.
02:14:55No, no, no.He's talking about psychic influence from external sources that are not necessarily benign and can be treated.If you imagine that your mind is a kind of palace where evil entities may enter and take control.I'm certainly glad that he's talking to schizophrenic patients.You know, he isn't anymore.But my God, Matt.Yeah, it's very much, I'm not saying it's aliens.But it's aliens.
02:15:24Like, that kind of disclaimer just carries no weight whatsoeverbecause he is articulating the extension of what he's talked aboutjust previously.We played the clips.That this is his worldview.There is a broad ocean of cosmic consciousness out there in the universe.It's full of forces, powers, some of which are good, presumably.some of which are evil and wishes harm.
02:15:50And our minds are like receivers that can tap into this ocean of consciousness.And they're banging in the doors and sometimes they get in.And you can treat it by explaining to them that they're not welcome and sort of push them out again.But it's not demons.Don't call it.I mean, it is very much the Pajouian and the Agrigores and stuff.Like I'm not saying literal demons, but also actually demons.Yeah, no, he is saying it's not demons, right?
02:16:19I mean, he is talking about Joe who's perfectly on board with demons.But immediately after that thing, right, where he said, you know,oh, people will say immigrant request is saying demons exist.This is literally the next paragraph, okay?Let's go play with you where he goes from there.And it does seem to sort of undercut his disclaimer.And can I just segue from there to,you're aware as I am that the church, I think the Anglican Church actually,
02:16:52but the Catholic Church, certainly, and probably every church, has its exorcists.And, you know, you might think these people are crazy and dramatic,but actually they're very down to earth, rational, reasonable people.And they work with psychiatrists and make sure that they're not doing somethingthat the psychiatrists wouldn't recommend.So in a way, they're the end of the road when whatever psychiatric intervention hasn't worked.And it can be assumed that this really is a kind of a possession that is resistant to change.And they do have a very high track record of success.
02:17:32But one of the things that really shocked me was reading that one of the Vatican most honored exorcists,most respected exorcist, was engaged in such an exorcism,involving a young woman and he was casting out a spirit.And apparently, I can only believe what I'm told here,but apparently her mobile phone started to receive messagesthat said, we are greater than you,you will never triumph over us.I mean, if it's true, and I don't have reason to doubt it,
02:18:10it is extraordinary, but it would be exactly what I'd expect.if AI opened up the door to such a thing. I mean, until you've got AI and until you've got mobilephones and things, there isn't a way in which a maligned spirit can easily speak to me unless,indeed, I develop a psychotic illness. But it can now speak to all of us through our machineryif we offer it pathways to do so. Well, it's a good thing he offered that strategic disclaimer justearlier about the demons, because it sounds an awful lot like you don't.I mean, it sounds a lot like there's demons here text messages.I mean, Matt, why there's no reason to doubt it, right?
02:18:54Why would you doubt that?I mean, if you heard that story, if somebody told you that they were getting text messagesfrom demons, what reason would you have to doubt that?I agree.Only an arch-dagmatic materialist.We'd have any skepticism around those claims.And, you know, quite interesting to discover that before we had technology, like,and their eyes. The demons couldn't really get in unless you had a mental illness. Like I guess,
02:19:20you know, typewriters were they able to invest those? I'm not sure. Oh, oh, Ouija boards.Ouija boards. Oh, yeah. Well, Ouija boards are brought up as an example. Of course,they are as an example of like a technology through which demon influence previously traveled, right?now that we're building this massive, massive machine.You know, I think of a Ouija board is also a good example.You know, when you're using a Ouija board,everybody puts their hand on the thing,and nobody's moving it, but there's something moving it.
02:19:58And maybe it's actually the unconscious will of someone in the groupthat's actually moving it.But you can't really know that,and then you're basically yielding your behavior to an intelligencethat you don't understand,and it surprisingly will bring about types of coherence, you know.And so all of that can help people understand the difficulty of what we're doingbecause we don't seem to have the wisdom to see what it is we're submitting this machine to,
02:20:27except for maybe greed like you mentioned a little earlier.And look, I'm playing these because, you know, in this conversation,we've been primarily listening to with Alex O'Connor.Of course, it doesn't go to this extremist.he's going with Pajot.But this is the same in McGilchrist,and this is the quality of his thought, okay?This is what it leads to,
02:20:51that kind of approach that he's takingwhere he heard a story about an exorcistwho exercises.Apparently, they're very successful.They've got a great track record.Now, of course, we don't need to get into how the numbers are crunchedor anything like that.Now, it's very successful.
02:21:09And of course, they do.do everything aligned with psychiatrists, only best practices for exorcists around the world.Like, oh my God, come on. So I just, I want to point out that like for all this deeptheological and philosophical sophistication, at the end of the day, it's demons and malign entitiessending you text messages after you've cast them out with an exorcist. That is what E. McGilchristis interred. Exactly. And that's why I said before.in some ways I have more respect for your bullet-headed fundamentalist,who is a literal creationist, et cetera,
02:21:48because they don't put on airs,they don't hide behind complicated layers of philosophybecause they believe the same things, right?They believe in demons being a force on earthand literal God and all of that stuff,but they don't feel the need to dissemble.So I've never felt any inclination to dedicate much mental,energy into digging into theology, Chris, for exactly this reason.
02:22:17And I think now is probably a good of time as any to just mention Chris, that, as you said,like this is the same McGilchrist who previously citing scientific studies,supposedly building up a careful and well-researched case for his model of the neurobiologyof the brain.So I'll just want to read out this quote.If it could eventually be shown that the two major ways, not just of thinking, but of beingin the world, are not related to the two cerebral hemispheres, I would be surprised, but notunhappy if it turns out to be just a metaphor.
02:22:54I will be content.I have a high regard for metaphor.So this is a similar admission, I think.Like it reveals that the thousands of citations in his book are, to see, to see,optional decoration for, I mean, what he is really about, and this is the point you've been making,is this, it's this conversation he's having with Pajot, this left-brain, right-brain thingis really just a prop for the right-brain thing encapsulating everything that he feels is goodand true and beautiful and right about the world, including our communion with God.
02:23:33So all of the scientific stuff and all of the references to evidence and studies and so on, it's merely window dressing.Yeah.Now, Matt, just after we've heard all of that, I also want this to contextualize how Alex O'Connor is treating what Ian is talking about.Because listen to this.This is him framing what their discussion is covering.And of course he didn't hear all the stuff about the demon typewriters.with one of it. But, you know, he's been having a much more enjoyable. I'm not a pan-psychic. I'm a pan-antheist, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, so listen to this. It's a, it's a far cry fromthe way that people will have been talking about God at a popular level, you know, 10, 20 years ago at the height of
02:24:22new atheism and their debates with evangelicals. That was all very, I suppose, left-brained. It was all syllogisms. It was alldebates about premises and and technicalities and fallacies.This is like a totally different approach to the question which makes it difficult.Like suppose that we were sort of pitted in some kind of debate about God's existence.And I'm the atheist and I'm here to criticize what you've just said.There's this kind of, it would be a very difficult thing to do because what you're doing is sort of telling a story about the nature of human beings rather than sort ofa syllogized argument. And I think that that's an approach to the question, which I'vebegun to find much more interesting. Yeah. Stories and metaphors are interesting, aren't they?
02:25:12Like, it's very appealing. Like his story, a bit like integral theory, is a story of everything.Like, it's a story of everything. It's a story of our minds, our consciousness, God, and all ofhistory, all of history is encapsulated within it, and culture and art, and why thingssome things are good and other things are bad.It's a theory of everything and it has that grand narrative.And, you know, people who have read things by Jared Diamond or other kinds of popularscience books that often do that same kind of thing and you kind of see why it's verysatisfying.
02:25:46Some writer has attempted to draw this broad, breathstrokes narrative over it and it feelssatisfying because it appears to do so much.But just like integral theory, I'd say.say McGilchrist's theory, it has just got the feeling of being satisfied without explaining anythingor being even correct in basic fact. Yeah. And, you know, for me, Matt, this speaks to. Alex O'Connorreally enjoys, you know, this kind of sense maker approach. So it's a feature for him that they can escapethrough abstraction and not deal with concrete claims or this kind of thing. And actually, you know, you brought up the topicof metaphor. So here's Imegovicris talking about that.
02:26:34There are certain things that cannot be approached in this way. But let me take it just a bitfurther. Because I don't want people to get away with the idea that there's something softgoing on here in a dismissive way. And this is to do with something you said aboutthe only way you can approach God is metaphorical. And I think that is true,up to a point. I'm not even sure you can do that. I thinkI think the only way you can speak in prose about God is by saying things that God is not.In other words, following the so-called via negativa or the apathetic path towards truth.And interestingly, science is like this.
02:27:15Science can never assert a truth.It can only say that certain alternatives look to it to be untrue on the basis of the evidence so far.So it's not such a different process.But neither is metaphor.Metaphor is behind all our language, including.very much the language of philosophy, of mainstream analytical philosophy, and of science.So, as I sometimes point out, even the words like abstract and immaterial are themselves entirely metaphorical.The word abstract comes from Latin roots, meaning to be dragged away from somewhere.
02:27:50In other words, taken out of its context and physically dragged somewhere else.That is what it comes from.Immaterial comes from a root originally, Marta, meaning mother.and going on from there to mean woodand as a symbol of things that are material and so forth.So all our thinking, we couldn't get to first base without metaphors.All our thinking is based on metaphor.And you probably know that that is a highly recognized
02:28:19and respected stream in mainstream philosophy.Yeah.He obviously loves metaphor like Jordan Peterson,and uses it a lot and is very explicit, to his credit, about that that is the, it's a bit likeconsciousness is the foundation of the world, right, and the material stuff is ephemeral.For him, metaphor is fundamental. And this stuff about, you know, logic and facts and being, you know,analytical type wordplay is really, you know, not very good. It's very derivative. It's like matter.It's metaphor and symbolism that is key.
02:29:01And that's the sort of justification for his methodology.And that's why it's not possible to actually disagree with his worldview, his conclusions,because he will say that, you know, you are using the limited tools for the job, right?You can only approach important things like what he's talking about through these very kindsof metaphors that they've been using.Yeah, and actually he kind of says in a clip immediately after,it's a feature to be vague.Right.
02:29:37So listen to this.And I think you should be as clear as the subject matter allows,but no clearer than that.And if you try to make it clearer,you are now moving into error.You're moving away from truth,towards falsehood.And the really big questions are of this nature,
02:29:56that they can't be clarified.in that way and they can't be made consistentwith the law of the excludedmiddle. That all startedwith, of course, Aristotle.And it hashad an unfortunate effect that peopleare unwilling
02:30:12to see that a thing in its oppositemay often obtain.I mean, you can say that the law ofnon-contradict, sorry, the law of the excluded middleis that any propositionP must be true or false.It can't be both. It can't be neither.Yes.
02:30:27And I'm saying that sometimes not only can it be neither, but it might be both.And here again, we have to say the stuff that deals with the everyday is not a good way of dealing with the rarefied area we're going into of consciousness of God and so forth.Of course, it doesn't apply to left, right brain thinking, though.No, no, you can be very concrete and specific about that when it's.sense you. But at least when now he's being a bit more honest and straightforward. And, you know,he's often, he often talks like this. He talks about his hunches, his intuitions aboutGod and stuff. He's interested in the shape of things. You know, and so there's, he's got anepistemological theory that's implicit in everything he does, right? There are certain things
02:31:20that give real important knowledge. It's obviously all right brain stuff, Chris. So your aestheticresponses to nature, reverential experiences, and that sort of sense of gestalt coherence and so on,you know, the residence of a good story, a good narrative, a good liturgy or a good metaphor.So that's where truth is to be found.Yes.You are not going to find it in any kind of propositional arguments or logic or any kind ofamyetic kind of thinking.You're certainly not going to find it in empirical.
02:31:55measurements or experiments.No.And in fact, even analytical clarity, even being very clear and definite about whatit is you're saying is actually misleading, as is it just there.So he does adhere to a epistemic worldview that is, it basically exists in its own universe.Like, there is no, I think if you're fully committed to that, then you live in,a world with, you know, art and unicorns and vibes and feelings that you're getting from differentthings. You don't live in a world where science and logic actually matters. Can prove or
02:32:40disprove things. No, and demons are not responsible for AI. Yes, you don't know. I'm not goingto concede art to him. I understand what you mean, Matt, that like that is part, that can be partthat realm, right? But, but not like a reductive science approach. But I'm just sensitive to the factthat I know he wants to claim that the, the scientists simply can't, you know, can't appreciateart, don't have love because of this reductive approach. So just to be clear, I'm just clarified.For our metaphor, I like to be clearer that, yes, arts is in there in literature and so on,and he's fine with that. We also have it on the other side, right? Yes. Yes. Yes.That's right. We're allowed to appreciate art as well. I have lots of art books on my shelves and I'm still allowed to appreciate art and have feelings for that matter, Chris.
02:33:31Well, so you're clear. So you're clear. But, you know, there's just a few clips left, Matt. But two of them make it very clear the parallels with Jordan Peterson. And you know, Alex O'Connor famously managed to get Jordan Peterson to admit that he does believe in the resurrection. It required a big long finger by the camcorder. And all that.But what McIlchrist has just outlined here is a, you know,a defense of a Jordan Peterson style of religiosity.Right.And the funny thing is that Alex O'Connor talks as if somebody else did that,you know, would be very reductive if somebody asked about the camera and all.But it was you, Alex.You are the one that asked Peterson that.
02:34:11And yeah, it's just a useful framing thing where imagine those reductive people talking like that.But he does ask McGilchrist about the resurrection.and that kind of thing.So let's see how he responds to that.I think you can guess, but yeah.So does that mean that it's inappropriateto approach those questions at allwith sort of an empirical,
02:34:35material, worldly approach?That is the approach of the new atheistsof the Richard Dawkins who say,and suppose they agreed with you that,of course, there's a sense in which religion is a subject,God as a being is a being of the right,brain, of the right hemisphere, is a being of narrative and story and these are the kind of thingsthat can be true and false at the same time. But, however, you know, the question of, I don't
02:35:03know, causation in the universe or the question of the question of specific claims about Jesusdying on a cross, being born of a version, though these are scientific questions that can beanswered with specificity and empiricism. Is it totally inappropriate to, to, to,discuss this subject of religion with the sort of left brain approach?Well, you have to understand the way in which,I don't want to repeat myself, and we haven't got time to repeat myself,but this distinction between mythos,you see, mythos is not what we mean by myth is a lie.
02:35:44A mythos may contain truth.And when one talks about God being born in this way and suffering and dying,there is a truth in that, which I don't,which is not equal by any other story, any other revelation,any other idea about the nature of the creation,the nature of the cosmos that I know.And people understand things in different ways.And that's not just so it's all untrue.
02:36:17No, it may be very true, actually, that God does suffer.I don't know.I can't limit this being.I can't limit this being and say he couldn't actually be in,I think there's something divine in all of us,and indeed Christ himself thought that there was.The sayings of Christ are very difficult to arrive atbecause it was all written down a long time after the fact and so on.
02:36:41Well, there's the start of the answer, Matt.It's going to go a little bit further.But did that clarify things for you?Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.That's exactly what I would have expected him to say.Yeah, you know, it's just not, it's not fair to ask these yes or no factual questions about things that are in the realm of mythos.And the resurrection of the Christ and his divinity and the spark of divinity and all of us falls into that class of truths that are deeper and actually the deepest form of truth that exists.So you're just kind of not allowed to do left brain thinking on right brain topics.
02:37:19No, I actually think here that Imacrochus has picked up a technique from Jordan Peterson.I don't know.Maybe there's evidence that he used to do this before Peterson.But you know the way Peterson will do exactly what he just did there, right?That it's more complicated than true or false.And anyway, you know, again, there's the Christian exceptionalism.It's the most, the best version of the story that I've ever heard and all this kind of thing.But still, that's very much like in the sense of, you know, a narrative and story and influence.
02:37:55It's not asserting the reality of it in a physical material.It's saying that that is like kind of reductive and useless.But then, as you know, Peterson also when asked, so you're saying like, but the physical thing doesn't matter.He will say, well, we don't know what, you know, a fully actionized person could do.So like he wants the insert, right?the magic and supernatural thing.That's right. And he wanted to say it doesn't matter.Again, like Gilchrist, he doesn't want to say that the brain and the neurophysiology of
02:38:25the brain doesn't matter. It's a subordinate to the metaphysical truth that he's interestedin, right? Yes. So now listen, I think you'll hear the exact same thing here about theresurrection.I would sort of say about the story. I can't rule out that.very odd things do seem to happen at times, that the laws, the ordinary laws of the way things areare not necessarily universal in experience. And I couldn't rule out that somebody who had indeedbeen dead could, in fact, come back to life. We don't really know what happens when peopledie, actually. And people can be brain dead and have completely flat EEG traces for considerable
02:39:12period and come back and not only come back, but come back with memories of what happenedduring that period. Now, you know, you can argue about this, and there are people who havebeen never convinced, and there will be people who will, whose conviction cannot be shaken.As in most of these things, I tend to be a skeptic amongst believers and a believer amongskeptics. I tend to think that it's important to bear both possibilities in mind and notnecessary to have to collapse them to one or the other. That's the left hemisphereagain. It's got to be a very narrow, simple truth like this. It's got to be this.If there's a camera there and so on, I don't know. I'm not saying that that camera might not
02:39:51have recorded. I just don't know. And frankly, I don't care because the truth of thismythos is what is enacted in, in extraordinary services of worship, in rituals, in ceremoniesthat are ancient and that bring one into contact with something,laugh at it who may, that is profoundly real and important.So what are we to make of that?We should set aside these very simple-minded, almost adolescent ideasthat it's got to be this, it's got to be that, and I need to know.As I get older, I realize that there are fewer and fewer certainties,
02:40:32and there are very few certainties in science.Yeah.You're not like to ask it by,you know, like, solike he's actually a bit worsethan Peterson because at least Petersonsticks out that he thinks, you know,you would see someone come out of the tomb.
02:40:48But whereas his case, he's like,would I say there's someone,I don't, like I don't even care.Like if it was on the camera,it wouldn't matter.But he at the start was like,people could rise from the dead.And he gives near deaf experiences,
02:41:03which I looked in that literature.It is a crook of,it's terrible.And he presents.that, you know, saying both positions could be true or not true.No, he wants to endorse the near-death experience sideand argue that the materialist reductions are wrong,but he presents it as he's being open-minded,
02:41:21but no, you're not.You're like arguing we need to draw conclusionsfrom near-deaf experiences and the, like, layered interpretations.But he doesn't have the, like, strength or convictionto actually just outright state that he believes that,but we know from like the conversation with Peugeot and stuff.that is the kind of thing that he believes in.Yeah, I mean, this seems like now the standard motorist operandi for the sense makers,
02:41:46for Jordan Peterson and not so much Peugeot, who's more straightforward about his.But even him, even him, he does, you know, bubble between metaphor.Yeah, like if you've got him talking about demons, he, you know, throws up a lot of dustin terms of their tangibility, their reality versus non-reality.These are all adolescent questions asked by an immature mind, Chris.Dogmatic minds, left brain minds, like that.Dogmatic and immature.That's the kind of person that might want to know those sorts of things.
02:42:20Just don't ask.You know, the important thing is that it's ancient, that it's beautiful, right?That it resonates with your soul.That's the important thing.So I do view, like, all of this blather as apology for Christianity.Yeah.Yeah, so religion and Christianity.in particular, just because it happened to be concentrated in Western countries, you know,
02:42:42it's under, it's under stress, right? It's under, it's under, it's, it's underst attack. Secularist attack,modernity in general. And it is responding in multiple ways. One way to respond is the kindof fundamentalist, no nothing, you know, simple-minded creationism that you might see incertain places in America and Australia. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's a, you know, and in aamongst a certain milieu, but for people like McGilchrist and for Jordan Peters for that matter,they cater to an audience that likes to think of themselves as much more sophisticated, right?Yes.And therefore their language and their apologetics for Christianity takes this tone.
02:43:27So McGilchrist is a perfect topic for Dakota New Guers.It is absolutely religious talk or rather religious sentiments.and arguments dressed up in a secular talk, right?Scientific garb, yes.And the other bit that tends to ignore me about these conversations is how much all theparticipants declare themselves, the most modest, the most humble, their opponents,dogmatic, ideologically captured, and so on.And then they just did every step disparage their opponents.
02:44:03You know, notice at no point have re-suggested that, like, E. McGilchrist,doesn't have a rich inner life and friendshipor the ability to appreciate art or whatever.Our argument is like he's bad at representing scienceand that's not what he's primarily interested in.If you look at his output, right, and what he says,and that's not what he allows to us or to Richard Dawkins, right?He presents us as like soulless husks
02:44:30who are incapable of appreciating artor feeling deep emotions and so onbecause we're too left.brain thinkers. So I've got a clip that comes towards the end of the podcast of them doing that,but let's see if you detect any of the other set of it here, Matt.But actually, everybody needs to have a pretty open mind about things that they're not soclever that they can close their minds. See, that's really all I'm saying is thatthere is almost nothing of which we can be certain. I'm not interested in certainty anymore.
02:45:03I'm interested in the shape of things that speaks to me as real.And there are many things that speak to me as real.The friendships that I have had, the love I have experienced,the beauty of the natural world,the astonishing richness of what science has revealed to meabout the scale and the size of the universe,about the miracle of biology.All these things are things we cannot,
02:45:33grasp fully. And we need to get back to a place where we have more modesty and humilityabout what the human brain can do. It would be, you see, it's irrational. This is my point.It's irrational to suppose that we can rationally achieve answers to the big questions.There's a completely irrational assumption. It's a leap of faith, but not an accurate one inmy view, not a good move. We need to get back to a degree of humility.we are evolving creatures.If we evolve for millions of years from now,we could be capable of all kinds of things
02:46:10and know things we can't know now.Why suppose that at this moment,I, Richard Dawkins, or whoever may be,can know the answers to all these questions,at least potentially.I may be very willing to saythere's an infinite number of thingsI don't know the answer to,
02:46:25but I'm not prepared to accept that, you know,I can't find them by doing scienceand following a logical path.I mean, what's interesting,is that most scientific discoverieswere simply not made by the scientific method anyway.They were made by imaginative leaves.And I discuss a lot of these,
02:46:44both mathematical and scientific discoveries,in the matter of his things.Yeah, I mean, he's very clear about his worldview.I feel like I have a good understandingof his likes and his dislikes and his aesthetic feelings.There's no uncertainty about what he likes,and dislikes and, like, which is good.If you want to live a good life and have one that is full of poetry and beauty and
02:47:15appreciation of the natural world, you ultimately agree with McGilchrist.And if you don't, you'll end up, you know, like Richard Dawkins, that's your true.Which way Weston?And yeah, I do, you know, there he says, like I'm not really concerned anymore about.like what's true, just like what appeals to me.And the myth that gets me, Matt, is like all this appealed to humility and stuff.He doesn't really sound that humble when he's talking about, you know, the things thatall the people are getting wrong and the specific type of pan-entheism that he endorses
02:47:54and the way the universe is structured.Yes, he throws out a couple of the steamers.Now, I'm not saying that's definitely true.But he definitely is clear that materialism.is absolutely at that end.There's no reasonable person that can do that.And he really respects science, except the scientific method.That's the bit.
02:48:12I think it's pretty, you know, you can do with art.Yeah, yeah.I mean, you know, in all fairness, he may not respect empiricism and materialism andrationality.But for my part, I don't respect his epistemics either.So that's, that's, you know, in fairness.It's shared disrespect.Share disrespect.
02:48:36He's allowed to.But you're not claiming to have mastered feality.Well, I don't, well, I don't think there's anything to master.So I am arrogant in the same way he is.But what I will say is this, Chris, is that, like, humility, I think,if you're approaching something like how the brain works,humility on a personal level is to go and read the literatureand understand it properly
02:49:02and then represent it accuratelyand not...Well or not it accords with your model.Exactly.Whether or not it accords with my pre-existing preconceptionsand what I would like to see,what would be our againis to sort of sit in your leather armchair
02:49:19and go, I've worked it out.I think I know what the two hemispheres areand then either ignore the literature or cherry picketso as to fit it into the way that you believethat the brain fundamentally works. And then when pressed, becoming aware that actually doesn'tfit the evidence at all, say that actually the evidence doesn't matter at all because my ownthoughts about this in my armchair is actually the real truth. And in fact, the way I'm doing itwith metaphor and so on, that's the only way to access the real truth. That is, I think that's pretty
02:49:57arrogant. That's pretty arrogant. That's pretty arrogant to me. Andat the very end of the interview,he's asked about like things thathe thinks of that,you know, his work has achievedthat he's proud of or this kind of thing, right?And he gets to talking, Matt,about, you know, what happens
02:50:14when left brain peopleencounter his ideas. Sothis could be our future.Let's see her.But one quite commonone is I alwayshave been looking back on ita very left hemisphere person. I didn't
02:50:30realize why people valued certain things. But after reading you, you've opened my eyes to something.I now kind of suddenly aware of things that I hadn't understood. And as a result, my life is richer,my partner is happier with me. I seem to be doing better at work and so on. So I never thoughtthat I was doing, you know, that kind of work by writing these books. But I think the first thing is tosee what it is you're missing. You can't know something until you have some idea of what it isthat you're missing.But what I try to do in my writingis open people's eyes
02:51:03of what it is that they have lostbecause they believe methey have lost an enormous amount.The kind of ways in which people talk,the limited kinds of visionsthey have of the worldare so sad these daysbecause they rule out
02:51:16all the greatnessthat humanity has actually achieved.I think McGilchris could be missingas you.Nats and bolts.No, that's not possible.I mean,but just like
02:51:29So if you accept his ideas, your life will become better.Your partner will be happier with you.You'll do better work.You'll appreciate the beauty of the sunrise.You'll, you'll, your six lives will improve.You'll lose five pounds.It's so, it's so funny.So this leads me to my final big thought on McElchrist, right, which is that it's very simple.
02:51:57That I think his model is not as complex.as he lets on. You've highlighted that a lot of what he's doing, is decorative scholarship,and he's citing studies and so on. He's cherry picking or he's overstating them. And that's wherethe majority of his authority rests. It is on the neuroscience mastery. It is on the backgroundand psychiatry and so on. But what he's actually outlining is a metaphysical, religiousworldview, which is fine insofar as each person is allowed to build whatever,kind of philosophical and religious system that appeals to them, you know, that's fine. But he thenconnects that with the neuroscience and psychiatry stuff and says, well, first of all, you have a
02:52:43left and brain hemispheric split. And this is very well documented. And this explains most of whatgoes on. And most of what goes on in the brain on the left side. It's necessary, but it's kind ofvery limited. And like if you lean too much into it, you'll be a very inhuman human. The right side ofthe brain is like the better side and it's capable of all the higher things that humans value.And then by extension, I and the things I like are all associated with the right side of thebrain.And when society values those more and agrees with me that conservative values are good andreligion is good and so on, then society flourishes.
02:53:23And if it at all shows preference for lefty things, which is science.reductionism or anything like that, then it goes bad. So everything good in the world is associatedwith the right hemisphere. And that is the things that me and my friends like and promote. Andalso there are demons and gods. And if you don't believe in them, you're like a fool who'snot really appreciating the complexity of things. That's like, it's a really simple binarymodel of right is good, left as bad. Everything on the right is everything the glycris likes,everything on the left is what he doesn't like.And there's no greater complexity to it,
02:54:03but the impressive thing is he is lauded as this incredibly deep thinkerwith valuable insights by a whole swarf of people out there in Discourse Land.And, well, yeah, I mean, each to their own, I guess.But that's my take on with Gilchrist.The Emperor's New Clothes is never a more fitting metaphor.with him.Yeah, yeah.So I done my research on Gilchrist,
02:54:35but I hadn't come across those clips you played towards the endwhen him and Peugeot were talking about demons,demons out there in the cosmos.Not demons, but let's be careful of malign psychic energies.Sorry, maligned psychic entities that can enter your brain or text to you.But need to be exercised.But let's not call him D.It doesn't matter whether the David's not done.
02:55:02Yeah, so I think that is illustrative of, you know, that the kinds of, the kind of rigor, I guess he has.And really quite a, quite a radical point of view.I mean, he was quite explicit about his sort of philosophical and epistemic point of view.And it is really quite a radical one, you know, like I said, you're free to accept it,that consciousness underlies everything can matter as kind of,created by consciousness and that the only way to access truths that matter is through metaphorand this sort of intuitive right brain thinking. And I think in terms of the structure of histheory, we really can't emphasize enough that it's very, very similar to Ken Wilder's integral theory,
02:55:49which is that your right hemisphere, it must be a huge place, the right side of the brain,because it holds everything, right?Everything that McGilchrist likes, all the good culture,ability to communicate with God, all of these things.It's all in there.But the important thing is that in order to have a proper understandingof the universe, the world we live in and the human experience,you have to use right brain thinking,
02:56:19which is his thinking, which counts as inadmissible,annoying stuff like evidence or logic or even analytic coherence and specificity.These things are sort of debarred.So it's very similar to Ken Wilber's thing, which is that basically, unless you're the rightcolour, unless you've ascended to Ken Wilbur's colour, then...In his schema.In his schema.That's good colour.
02:56:48Yeah, that's right.His schema.then really all like all of the arguments against his theory are just symptoms of lower order thinking.So the theory becomes self-sealing like that.So it has that structural property that is incredibly similar to conspiracy theories.Conspiracy theories famously have the same kind of insulating, well, they're hermetically sealedthat they can accommodate any kinds of criticism by essentially ruling it out, treating it as inadmissible.which makes it so difficult to get anyone out of that kind of thinking.
02:57:24In other respects, I think he's just like Jordan Peterson in terms of his temperament.A good replacement, actually.Yeah, good replacement, actually.Like, certainly much more psychologically well.So he's got that going.But he seems like a happy person.Yeah, I mean, as happy as a like, you know, aristocratic English guy can be.I bet that's pretty happy.
02:57:46I could I be happy on a heath.I'd like to be on a Heath.So, yeah, no, I agree with what you said, and I said, I think we covered everything.Yeah, an interesting, an interesting case.An interesting case.I agree with him.Yeah, I did enjoy, is one word for it.The covering him.
02:58:05And actually, I'm going to finish, you know, just before we go to a Patreon shoutouts with a final clip, which is from him,which comes at the end of the competition as a disdemeer for everything that you've heard before.And it's one of these things that the gurus constantly do that I'm just impressed at workswhere they basically say, you know, now, like in his case, you're going to hear him say,it may have seemed like I just outlined wishy-washy things and did special pleading,but I didn't.Right.I'm like, can you just say that?
02:58:41Because, you know, it does sound an awful lot like you did that.But I guess you've said that you didn't.So you didn't.So anyway, let's hearat this to Steve Aet at the end.So at the end of the day,I just want to make it very clearthat there is nothing smart,
02:58:57there is nothing cleverabout being dogmatic about these things.And I'm not pleading for a kind ofinherentlywishy-washy position.As I say, I believe in being lucid and clear.People sometimes say to me,writing is very clear. You make very difficult ideas accessible, to which I say thank you.
02:59:22It costs me enormous pains and a great deal of time to do that. I believe in trying to make mythinking as clear as I can. I haven't done a good job today. I'm sorry. I'm just speakingoff the cuff of my mind's not at the right place. But I do do that. And I value lucidity andclarity, but only as far as they can be applied to the question that there is there.Okay, yes.Yep.So in case you disagreed with stuff that he was saying there,but it didn't sound like it fully hung together.
02:59:54Keep in mind, he is actually very, very clear.Many people say so.Yeah, he's actually as clear as the question deserves.Like he's like a wizard.He's never more as clear than they intend to be,even if it appears that he didn't be.But, you know, I think he's just feeling a little bit self-conscious that he has give some waffly answers.Yeah, we've all been there.
03:00:23We've all been there.Yeah, we've all been there.Maybe him more so than most other people.But that's who can say my, I don't know, right?I don't know.I'm just keeping my mind over to both possibilities, right?We wouldn't want to collapse it into a single master paradigm.Well, I think the beautiful thing is that Miguel Christ and us sort of live in not overlapping magisteria, you know,
03:00:46He lives in his world and he has no respect for things in our world.And I think the converse is true too.I genuinely don't have, I don't respect theology really that much.Oh dear.Oh, dear.Well, okay.Do you?Are you a big theology?
03:01:07I probably respect it more than you.But I will say that the interesting thing for me is that I will listen.to you, McGilchrist and Jennifer Pajot,and I will listen to the sense makers.I know what their arguments are,and I can represent them.From what I've heard of McGilchrist discussing other people's ideasthat he disagrees with,
03:01:32he doesn't seem very good at that.And I doubt that he would waste his time listening to peopleengage in such a materialist endeavor as what we've done.Well, this is a common trait among our gurus, I have to say,This is a common trait.They do not.It is a common trait.To be clear, we're not talking about ourselves that they do not tend to listen to competing theories or ideas or criticisms of any kind.
03:01:59The disinterest in such things is profound.People would point out to me in response to that, well, but didn't he have a conversation with Anil Seif?And yes, he did, but I listened to that conversation.And to me, it's very clear that Anil is giving much more credit.to Ian McGilchrist than vice versa, right?Like Ian doesn't seem that interested in Arnold's perspective.And I do have examples.Like we could illustrate that, but I'm not going to play them.
03:02:27We've heard enough.Okay, Matt.Now, the final thing, Pietron shoutouts.We have a little housekeeping to do.Would you object?Would you mind if I just quickly shouted them out?I would not object.In fact, the whole two-hour marathon,
03:02:42the two-part series has been working up to this.Patron shout-outs.This is where it's at.This is going to be a three-hour episode, but fine.Yes, that's right.That's right.But, okay, so Ma, we have revolutionary geniuses and galaxy green gurus to thank.Which would you like me to find first?
03:03:01Dealer's choice.Galaxy brain gurus.Okay.That's a good choice.Let the top be first.So there we have Chris, Michael, John, Chad Bigcock, spelledbig cock but pronounced big com.That is the name that they put on.
03:03:22What?Pietrian sucks.Lucas Jones.Seth Armstrong,Louise Jones, Sylvia,and Ippy Donatello.He has returned the practical son.I don't think we should feel compelled to read our names that are beyond as the
03:03:40rude.Rude.Yeah.Well, I wouldn't normally,but they actually went to the baller.of getting an email address.Their email address is chad.bidcock at scent.com.All right.
03:03:55You have to respect the commitment to it.You can't respect it.They work.They're pretty good to that.You know, that's it.We did also have a request that somebodywould like their name read outas the official Israel X Destiny Fund.
03:04:11So there we go.You know, the secret.Oh, yes.the conspiracy about our funders.So there you go.I have done that, done that.No, no, I'm out.Oh yeah, they get a clip, don't they?
03:04:24And here it is.Hello there, you awakening wonders.You may not be aware that your entire reality is being manipulated.Become part of our community or free speakers.We are still allowed to say stuff like this.Science is failing.It's failing right in front of our eyes and no one's doing anything about it.I'm a shell for no one.
03:04:45more than that I just simply refuse to be caught in any one single echo chamber in the end like many of us must I walk aloneI like it's there's always a couple of week gap before I hear the super cuts and they just they never it never fails to spark joy it's so funnyI think we can make another one with Russell Brown's recent appearance on Pierce Morgan but yeah yeah sono I'm at the uh the revolutionary geniushere. Contributors,Contributors, one and all, and we appreciate them for it.And they include, I'll read them quickly, because there's more of them.Wing Digan, Ian Oberleague, John Townsend, Sebastian Caruna,
03:05:33James Onsley, Josh Wilkinson, Mikhail Glavlin, James Errington, Radislaw, Majeslaw,Giesk, Michael Hutchison, Jason Worley, Clay Cobb, Mash, Book,Duckman, Louise Stanley, Isabelsi, Avery, Tom Stern, Bernhard, Joel Anderson, Daniel Greak,Luke Dove, Steve Lundy, Alexander Bennett, Julian Rottenberg, Matz, Jacob Mills, Daniel Neely,Miguel Corkill, Antoni, Rob Dennis, Samarcella, Luke Ryan, Lance, Dupont, Col Watts, Joshua and Legatus.Those are our revolutionary geniuses.Great. And no obscenity in the names at all.Well, well done. Well, then everyone.
03:06:16At least not in tongues we understand.Here's your little clip through. Thank you.I'm usually running, I don't know, 70 or 90 distinct paradigms simultaneously all the time.And the idea is not to try to collapse them down to a single master paradigm.I'm someone who's a true polymath. I'm all over the place.But my main claim to fame, if you'd like in academia, is that I founded the field of evolutionary consumption.Now, that's just a guess.And it could easily be wrong.
03:06:46But it also could not be wrong.The fact that it's even plausible is stunning.That actually, that clip speaks to the theme we covered, right?Which is sort of, you know, like I said,Jonah Peterson saying that could be right or it could be wrong,but it could also like not be wrong.Yeah.Yeah.
03:07:06And yeah, that's a profound statement.Like, yeah.Yeah.It's the third category of truth beyond journey.true and false.Yeah, yeah.A better form of truth, I might say.A better form of truth.
03:07:23Yeah, and we're going to be of the sense speakers for a little while.You know, we get a blast of them.Ian McGilchrist is firmly in Sense Speaker territory.We need to recover now from the high-level ideas.And we will return to the sense-speakers.We've discovered Ian McGrath, Jordan Hall and John Verviki.time to discuss, not the meaning crisis, but the meta crisis. So that's something. Yeah.We did to get ready for. Yes, you've heard of the polycrisis, the metacrisis, the meaning crisis.
03:08:00There's so many crises going on. We live in fraught times. Crisis and masculinity. Crisis in masculinity,that's what I've heard about. Yep, yeah. We'll let you talk about any of them, though. But they seem to do a fine enough job.talking about them.There's a lot of talking sense making territory about them.But yeah, so we'll be back.But maybe not immediately.We've got a couple more cultish gurus to take off the box map.Just a couple more fish to fry.
03:08:31A couple more cults to handle then.We're done with the cults.Penguin-shaped cult leaders might even be on the docket.Just a little teaser.A little hint.A little hint for people.Yeah.Well, good night.
03:08:46God bless.Quite an experience all the right-brained wonders that are there,and get out of your goddamn reductive left-brain hellhole.It's just all little atoms pointing around like billiards.Experience love, man, will you?I will.I will.I'm going to go tramp on the heath and open my soul to the infinite.
03:09:05Yeah, not too open.Not with your technology.God knows what gets in there.Oh, yeah, that's right.I'll be giving obscene text messes from demons.Don't want that.Not a demon, a psychic advocate being up.Very psychic evidence.
03:09:18All right, bye-bye.Bye-bye.Go.
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