Breaking the Boundaries of Consciousness: Psychiatrist Reveals All

Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist, writer, and former Oxford literary scholar exploring the limits of reason, science, logic, and schizophrenia. Iain McGilchrist came to prominence after the publication of his book The Master and His Emissary, subtitled The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.

Iain McGilchrist’s website: https://channelmcgilchrist.com
Master and His Emissary: https://www.amazon.com/The-Master-and-His-Emissary-audiobook/dp/B07ZJQ4QG7/ [not affiliate link]

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EDITED BY: Antonio Pastore

00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:59 Conspectus of “Master and his Emissary” (Iain’s Weltanschauung)
00:09:59 What is meaning?
00:12:44 On writing a 1,000 page book, and developing your own worldview
00:16:19 Why is God sometimes associated with “becoming” and not “being”?
00:17:46 How does the mind “bring the world about” rather than observe it?
00:21:44 Existence needs resistance
00:25:07 Nietzschean story of the Emissary, and the left-brain being contemptuous of the right
00:29:46 Not wanting a master, speaking to oneself, and evil
00:32:42 On “boredom” and the realness of time (“even God cannot exist without time”)
00:36:21 Why the “arrow of time” in physics? (some thoughts on Bergson)
00:40:18 On Henri Bergson and flow vs slices of time
00:43:52 Language is like money (the “meaning” of language)
00:47:26 Music / painting / the arts be made explicit in language
00:49:49 “Metaphor is a cure by language for the ills entailed by language”
00:52:24 Reason is related to embodiment
00:56:43 Is “logic” universal? Would aliens develop them in the same manner?
00:59:05 Fantasy vs Imagination: “Original” isn’t newness, but going back to the “origin”
01:03:02 The more we’re authentic, the more we’re the same
01:04:10 How can something both “be” and “not be” simultaneously
01:05:33 Wissen vs Kennen (knowledge)
01:06:52 On schizophrenia
01:17:55 Non-rhythmic music (right brained) vs rhythmic music (left brain)
01:23:04 Longing vs wanting (unification vs division)
01:26:52 Should you engage with the world or disengage?
01:31:20 The meaning of having “no self”
01:33:28 Identifying psychological structures neurologically (ego = left hemisphere?)
01:35:52 Utilitarianism, objective morals, and the left-hemisphere
01:39:43 On Daniel Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained”
01:42:39 Writing a book about the right-brain, using your left-brain
01:46:22 Mindfulness is similarly “objective” like the schizophrenic mind?
01:50:03 Mixing the left and the right brain (coherent but incompatible)
01:54:15 Does consciousness reside in the left or right hemisphere
01:59:30 The world is not made out of “things”
02:03:26 Solving the “never step in the same river twice” paradox, with “being”
02:05:18 Reason / rationality in their extremes demonstrate their own limitations
02:11:56 Measuring intelligence via inhibitory neurons, rather than encephalization
02:12:47 Jung and McGilchrist [Sam Ford]
02:18:42 “Substitution effect” and its impact to the imbalance between right / left brain in the West [Joanne Dong]
02:20:57 The left / right distinction is a left phenomenon? [Ciaran Dudley]
02:26:34 Left / right hemispheres mapping onto the left / right political spectrum?
02:30:17 Reason vs rationality
02:32:10 The right brain should be paramount, according to Jesus?
02:34:01 How can something be more important than reason? Isn’t that self defeating?
02:37:05 How can we “transcend utility”? On the hierarchy of goals / needs
02:40:15 On Chomsky and Objective Truth [Diego J. Pinto]
02:47:58 On Douglas Hofstadter’s analogy book “Surfaces and Essences”
02:52:05 Thinking of time as a resource is a destructive idea (eg. “time is wasted”)