About Brain Lateralisation

Challenging the symbolic Left-Brain Right-Brain Dichotomy

I have been linked to this post discussing the McGilchrist worldview. The main thrust is opposing static reductionist rational left-brain thinking with holistic fluid emotional right-brain thinking.

Unfortunately, the full worldview is explained in 2 books totalling 2000 pages. This makes it de-facto too long for me to carefully read. So you should take whatever I say here to be musings inspired by quotes from McGilchrist rather than an accurate assessment of his worldview.

Two Hemispheres

I do not buy the claim of the two hemispheres.

I do not buy it on a neurological level. I do not think the left hemisphere is dedicated to logic and that the right hemisphere is dedicated to emotions. That seems much too strange for me. I expect some specialisation. But I expect such specialisation to come with logical processing and emotional functions localised to both hemispheres.

More importantly, I do not buy the claim of the two hemispheres at a symbolic level. I do not think it hits something deeply true and general about human experience. I do not believe that "logical, rational thinking" differs much from "creative artistic thinking".

Let's follow the thinking I outlined in The Source of Happiness. My conclusion would land around "even the most emotional matters are mediated by world-model beliefs-based thinking" and "even the most rational courses of actions must be motivated by in-the-moment emotional desires and momentum, or else they are just dropped".

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Certainly, some thinking is analogue and fuzzy, while other thoughts are more formal and binary.

Yet, analogue thinking can emulate formal thinking. For instance, mental calculation is about performing formal thinking (calculations) using analogue thinking tools: heuristics, vibes, guesses, etc.

Conversely, formal thinking can emulate analogue thinking. This is a huge chunk of our work in machine learning and neural networks.

In general, formal thinking mostly happens outside of human brains. It happens on paper, on whiteboards or on computers. Formal thinking is less like a human mode of cognition and more like an external tool. This external tool makes it easier to perform calculations and build simplified vocabularies around which we can easily coordinate.

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I believe there's a more meaningful distinction based on where the thinking happens.

Thinking can happen within the mind. This is what we usually mean when we say "think". We mean a single individual having thoughts within their brain. They can be structured or not, sharp or fuzzy, etc.

Thinking can happen within the body. A lot of thinking is done within the body. Almost all of movement and interactions with the physical world.

Thinking can happen within external tools. The most obvious example is artificial intelligence, but mere pen and paper is enough. Anyone can compile a grocery list that would not fit within their mind.

Thinking can happen across people. Groups can have thoughts that no individual has. They can hold knowledge or follow lines of reasoning that would be impossible for a single individual to entirely follow. Sometimes, this thinking is mediated through tools and dependent on language. Other times, group thoughts can be much more memetic and based on egregores.

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I have seen the starkest logical-emotional gap of my life when I met people…

• Really bad at STEMs because they were not smart enough. They made up for it with some other more emotional-coded skills.

• With too little self-control to follow abstract rules that did not immediately make sense to them. They made up for it with anti-social behaviour and lies.

• Extremely deficient in psychology, body awareness or social awareness. They made up for it with money from STEM endeavours.

I could leave it at that. Such examples are shocking. For instance, people love stories about autistic savants.

Let's take a step back, though. Most people I have seen who were really bad at STEM did not have great emotional-coded skills. Most people I have seen with too little self-control could not make it work, even with anti-social behaviour. Finally, most people I have seen were extremely deficient in psychology, body awareness, and social awareness and did not make bank with STEMs.

They just suffered more and experienced worse lives.

I think this is an illusion on the same level as "pretty people must be stupid". Being ugly does not make one smarter, and being dumb does not make one prettier.

Being ugly or dumb just sucks. It is possible to compensate for it and even thrive despite it, but it takes more resources. Resources like time, energy, motivation, money, people supporting you, natural dispositions, skills, and so on.

Conversely, if one wants to do so and have what it takes, they can be both pretty and smart. Or they can learn to be well attuned to left-brain-coded logical and right-brain-coded social patterns.

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Possibly, I am just thinking of different people.

McGilchrist might be thinking about totalitarian communism with its repression of religion? In that case, yeah, I can buy that some institutions are more logic- or intuition-coded.

I do not believe that this says something deeply true about reality or human cognition. I believe this is more a matter of identity and tribalism.

In which case, I think the left-right brain rings much less true.

Some identities and tribes could be completely founded around authority and not care for neither logic or intuition.

Conversely, some institutions could try to welcome both, like how academia tries to integrate the best of both worlds.

Mere Reality

McGilchrist's claim is that in modernity the West has "systematically misunderstood the nature of reality" (TMWT Introduction p.3) as a result of succumbing to "the reductionist view that we are – nature is – the earth is – 'nothing but' a bundle of senseless particles, pointlessly, helplessly, mindlessly, colliding in a predictable fashion, whose existence is purely material, and whose only value is utility." (TMWTIntroduction p.5). McGilchrist nicknames this reductionism "nothing buttery".

It is hard to express how much I disagree with this viewpoint.

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Meaninglessness comes from the person experiencing it, not reductionism. Not being able to find meaning in mere physical existence is a personal failure.

Learning more about the physical nature of music should make one appreciate it more, not less.

Learning more about colour theory should make one appreciate drawing and painting more, not less.

Learning more about the structure of maths and erasing its mysterious components should make one appreciate it more, not less.

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A great share of my compassion comes from the world being mechanistic.

I understand how mechanical we humans are.

I understand how, until upstream causes are affected, we are physically bound to repeat the same situations and make the same mistakes. No amount of free-will discussions is going to change that.

I understand that to change the physical world; we must invest in physical work and manipulate information to affect upstream causes.

I understand how we have a limited budget for such physical resources. This is why we then turn to economics. We do so to find the best way to invest our limited resources. That way, we can help most people escape their equilibria and cycles of suffering and death, and we can do so as fast as possible.

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It feels extremely wrong to me when to feel meaning, someone needs anti-reductionism, anti-materialism, magic, or mystery. When something is mysterious, it is usually not intrinsically inscrutable; instead, we are just ignorant.

In other words, their meaning depends on being ignorant.

This feels wrong to me. I know there is something behind it. I do not mean that it offends my aesthetics and morals. I mean that I expect that there is some deep knot, suffering or trauma underneath. Something like an active fear of knowing.

Extreme Scientism

Obviously, some reductionists contend that what they personally haven't figured out represents the limits of human knowledge. They contend that what anyone else has learnt through methods different from theirs is necessarily invalid or worthless.

This is hubris. But hubris has nothing to do with reductionism. It is merely hubris. I have seen similar hubris from people who felt free to deny any scientific result they did not personally understand.

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The world as created by the left hemisphere becomes a totalising narrative, a metaverse, from which broader reality (especially those aspects which cannot be reduced to language, measured or manipulated are excluded

Things have gone wrong because the left hemisphere believes that its comprehension of the part is total.

It is wrong to believe that reductionists are necessarily totalising. And it is cope to focus on those who are.

Science is powerful.

Science is our best tool for acquiring more knowledge at scale and for doing so in a coordinated way.

It is certainly not our only tool. It can be improved. It is not perfect or universal.

We should be able to easily agree upon that much.

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In practice, I have seen scientists describe the limits of their personal knowledge and of scientific knowledge much more than I have seen scientists contend that the scientific method from every field is our best way to get knowledge.

For instance, if they expected that the scientific method was universally the best method, they would expect it would triumph in competitive disciplines, too. They would expect that the best competitors are all pursuing a training regimen described in some paper or that their training regimen is 100% the result of scientific thinking as opposed to what felt good to them and traditions that they picked up from their coaches and fellow athletes.

Entry into academia itself is built around some type of apprenticeship. The PhD is a structure where the advisor can communicate much non-scientific experiential knowledge to the student.

In general, I have seen people and scientists question and actively explore the limits of scientific methods much more than I have seen people question their own intuitions.

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I myself believe in quite a strong version of scientism. Namely, I believe that if we do our best, we will be able to scientifically study what is currently understood to be purely spiritual.

This is not to say that we will always be able to scientifically study everything.

Some phenomena and dynamics are intractable and can not be studied. There are entire fields of science revolving around studying this instead. My personal favourite such fields, given my computer science background, are computability and complexity theory.

Having investigated the question a bit, what we currently understand as spiritual is far from this type of stuff. It appears to me that it can eminently be studied scientifically. The problem is just that we suck at science too much right now.

For instance, I do not see our methodological failures in psychology as a failure of reductionism and a sign that we intrinsically can not study the human mind. It just appears to me that we suck at scientifically studying psychology.

Similarly, I do not see our failures to come up with modern constitutions featuring modern technologies as a sign that we are bad at science. I believe that science can effectively study coordination, constitution design, political philosophy and moral philosophy. Unfortunately, here, it is not even that we suck at science in those fields; it is more that we are not trying nearly hard enough.

More Points

Many more points are mentioned in the post. But many of them feel like abstract words to me.

Consider this quote:

1. Relationships are ontologically primary, foundational; and 'things' a secondary, emergent property of relationships.

2. Matter is an aspect of consciousness, not consciousness an emanation from matter.

3. Individuation is a natural process, whose aim is to enrich rather than to disrupt wholeness.

4. Apparent opposites are not as far as possible removed from one another but tend to coincide.

5. Change and motion are the universal norm, but do not disrupt stability and duration.

6. Nothing is wholly determined, though there are constraints, and nothing is wholly random, though chance plays an important creative role.

7. The whole cosmos is creative; it drives towards the realisation of an infinite potential.

8. Nature is our specific home in the cosmos from which we come and to which in time we return.

9. The world absolutely cannot be properly understood or appreciated without imagination and intuition, as well as reason and science: each plays a vitally important role.

10. The world is neither purposeless nor unintelligent, but simply beyond our full comprehension. The world is more a dance than an equation.

11. At the core of the world is something we call the divine, which is itself forever coming into being along with the world that it forms, and by which, in turn, it too is formed.

I am unsure how believing in them would lead to different feelings, actions and expectations.

For instance, what happens if you consider things to be ontologically primitive instead of relationships? Isn't it just taking a metaphorical graph dual and now making the relationships the new fundamental things?

I don't immediately see what the symbolic meaning is here. I am just too confused about the content to have any meaningful comment. And I will likely not read the 2000 pages from the two original books.

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Some of the other points are already addressed in my comments above. I also plan to address other points later. For instance, I want to write a lot about #10 and how I see the world as deeply harsh and uncaring.

Conclusion

I am still learning to calibrate the time to write my posts responding to others. I am not good enough at sizing them yet.

Writing it took me less time, but I missed too much content to my taste.

Oh well, it was still a nice prompt :)

Cheers, and have a nice day!