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It has become customary to talk about consciousness as the great unsolved problem of our age. I argue that consciousness itself is not the problem; the problem is our customary mode of thinking. I will outline the thesis of a new book, The Matter with Things, in which I suggest that, because of our allegiance to a certain model of the world, demonstrably associated with the left hemisphere of the brain, we misunderstand the fundamental nature of the world, and as a result run into predictable problems in trying to make sense of it.
These problems are in evidence all around us in the modern West. For the purposes of this talk I will focus on the relationship between matter and consciousness, and ask: are they two things or one? Are they things at all? If they are different in what way? How necessary are brains to consciousness? And why do we have consciousness at all?
Dr Iain McGilchrist is a Psychiatrist and Writer, who lives on the Isle of Skye, off the coast of North West Scotland. He is committed to the idea that the mind and brain can be understood only by seeing them in the broadest possible context, that of the whole of our physical and spiritual existence, and of the wider human culture in which they arise – the culture which helps to mould, and in turn is moulded by, our minds and brains. He was formerly a Consultant Psychiatrist of the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley NHS Trust in London, where he was Clinical Director of their southern sector Acute Mental Health Services.
Dr McGilchrist has published original research and contributed chapters to books on a wide range of subjects, as well as original articles in papers and journals, including the British Journal of Psychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry, The Wall Street Journal, The Sunday Telegraph and The Sunday Times. He has taken part in many radio and TV programmes, documentaries, and numerous podcasts, and interviews on YouTube, among them dialogues with Jordan Peterson, David Fuller of Rebel Wisdom, and philosopher Tim Freke. His books include Against Criticism, The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning, and Ways of Attending. He is currently working on his latest book: The Matter With Things, a book of epistemology and metaphysics, to be published by Penguin/Random House. You can keep up to date with his work at www.iainmcgilchrist.com.
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Sounds exactly like Bernardo Kastrup's theory on analytical idealism. He has a PhD in computer science and more recently one in philosophy.
I just made a playlist of around 25 interviews with Mr Mcgilchrist. Recent, older, & of varying lengths. Because his info is amazing.
Your video is the only one on my list having more than 3 advertisements.
Yours has over 20 ads.
Which prompted me to not watch it and remove it from my playlist.
Just saying. ✌
It's becoming clearer that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with primary consciousness will probably have to come first. The extended TNGS is a materialist theory. I believe the physical world is objectively real because I can't ignore the physical suffering in the world. I don't believe it is the only reality, however. I believe physical reality, and all other realities, manifest from the one fundamental reality of spiritual love. But even though the physical world is a manifestation of this deeper reality, I still believe it is real. It makes more sense to me that a manifestation of something real would also be real.
I find it strange that scientist at this level still use the wrong terminology . One does thing either consciously or sub consciously Because It's impossible to do something 'unconsciously' . 'Unconsciousness 'is not the same as' subconsciousness '. It's unconscious, subconscious , or conscious . Someone who is unconscious is 'knocked out'
i just want to know where is metter? there is no such thing
He is a sniveling good guy. He seems very erudite.
No progress regarding the so-called hard problem Iain you have not been paying attention the Computer scientist and philosopher Bernardo Kastrup has dealt with it please get up to speed. You also need to look into the research of the late neuroscientist Dr John Lorber his research proves that consciousness is not an epiphenomenon of the brain:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnKVwKGuL7w
In the first 11 minutes there are 3 sets of adverts. The lecture is interesting but having to keep rushing over to the computer to skip ads at this rate is annoying. I understand people have to get paid but this comes no where near an acceptable rate of disturbance, especially when you have to concentrate and don't really want your train of thought continually interupted.
What of moods and feelings? They are controlled by the release of chemicals (dopamine, serotonin etc.) in the brain and other parts of the body (adrenaline), so presumably that would mean the source consciousness would lack moods and feelings, at least in the way that we experience them via our brain 🤔
at 1:14:35 is one of the best quotes I've ever heard anyone say and really made me laugh!
What is the consciousness of? well I say its exactly conscious of what it seems. its not a projection on an internal screen, in a home cinema inside my head, viewed by a homunculus sitting on a cerebral sofa!
Slime molds are actually single cell organisms which is even more incredible.
Philosophy should be at the heart of all learning and the first of all subjects.
Sooo much to take in there.
What a talk. He is amazing.
What he is saying, once felt, will resonate strongly and shape our future in a different direction.
Belief and hope in relationship btwn humanity, nature, energy has to be the one outcome from the many possibilities.
Wow… awesome lecture. So much to process and integrate..
It appears that “Reality” is an ever-changing, interdependent co-emergent play between unique individual and collective perceptive experience and energetic phases of form manifestation.
I want to hear more about your new book Dr McGilchrist!
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Wonderful presentation, thank you. For me it resonates as a description of Dialectic monism – the Yin and Yang symbol. Scientific parsimony.
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17:00 I don't fully understand the rebuttal of emergence. There are computer programs that are very simple to create that produce a wide and complex set out of outcomes when executed. Conway's Game of Life for example. The lack of finding these rules is easily explained by the lack of understanding biology, and as such doesn't really solve the problem. Iain also spends the majority of this talk listing examples of nature as fuel for expanding a new idea in the listener's mind which is arguably a similar process, in conversation form.
36:00 Iain discusses a scale, a black mass of ants, individual ants and the atoms that make them up. If I understand Iain correctly, he is using the word scale to describe quantity (length, distance, mass, ect). The problem is that their is no mention of hierarchy, despite that being meant. For every quantity of ant, from massive ball to tiny atom, they are all apart of the same spine of whole object, an ant. Each level of analysis is verterbraes on a spine called ant (or hyper-ant or whatever) and the difference in quantity along vertebrae, is in part what gives reality to each level along the spine. Likely similar to the explicit order Iain was discussing all along at 1:21:00.
The problem is this explicit whole that is created from a unfolded, differentiated nothing, still depends on the laws of nature to exist in reality. If an ant were to lose it's legs or be moved out of it's quantity grouping by a flood, it would exist as a part outside it's correct position on the whole, and lose it's classified unity with the implied structure of a hyperant. If you scatter enough of the ants into disarray you start to lose connection with the hidden structure entirely and you quickly have disassociated atoms. No amount of consciousness can change the disconnection of the injured ant from it's previous connection to the hyper-ant spine, bar moving into the natural world with it's own life or death worlds and repairing the injured ant.
There's also a problem with the primacy of consciousness and matter as consciousness. The big bang must have been created by a higher consciousness, which gives rise to an unknowable God who has domain over objective matter our own consciousnesses can control, thus keeping the window for nature as matter outside our own minds open. You also bring back revelation to things outside our light and dark consciousness again, as discovery of a higher god's matter would be unknown to our own panpsychic field, assuming that were not a stand-in for a sort of mt. olympus.
There is a problem with prioritizing ontological firsts. A hierarchy of time really depends on which property you are measuring, which has been presupposed by the conscious viewer.
We live in a world with infinite implied spines that describe natural material that which expresses itself as a process across time. You can only ever consciously visit the knowledge that a spine ('whole above whole') exists. Matter and time are the closest hints we have to describing the shape of the spine, which remains a golden bough. A described spine would collapse both matter and time into one beautiful uniform structure that allows infinite computing power and material to form endless replications of the same miraculous form at every level of vertebrae like a fractal or a Star trek replicator.
I absolutely adore him and his brilliant ideas. I don’t know if he is aware that the ads are interrupting ad nauseam. Seriously, I’ve never heard so many ads in one podcast. Every few minutes. Is it just me getting all of these ads?
The first Kybalion principle:
Mentalism: “THE ALL is MIND; The Universe is Mental.”
[…]
Principle 4 – Polarity: “Everything is Dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.”
All seven principles has been written hundreds if not thousends year ago…
The man is a genius ..the Muhammad Ali of thinkers
It will be nice to confront Dr. Iain's concepts with Eric Weinstein's concept about 14-dimensional universe 🙂
Sounds a little like Dr, Mcgilchrist needs some hot honey and lemon…Talisker optional.
Brilliant
Good lecture
Here is my theory of consciousness:
Mind body has cells. Cells made of atoms. Atoms have subatomic particles. Change pattern of brain structure and it’s connections, our thinking and mind status changes! Self consciousness is the result of a specific patterned subatomic particles chatter/dance !!! It arises from subatomic particles dance 💃🏻 in the brain 🧠 matter arranged in particular pattern. This is how subjective sensations comes from objective body!! Any change in chemical pattern of brain changes consciousness status. Thinking imagination emotions of mind are result of that chemically unseen pattern complex of subatomic particles and consciousness is that beyond thinking and imagination and emotions. Subatomic particles when grouped in a unique pattern Emerges ‘awareness’ ; that is why we can feel awareness and be self consciousness but we cannot see touch it as a matter. Feel subatomic dance!
Bravo! As always your presentation is thought provoking and insightful. Your questioners were mostly annoying and seem to have been mentally absent during your presentation.
why bother to listen philosophers? that´s a waste of time and energy