In November the RSA in London held a workshop to discuss Iain McGilchrist's book The Master and his Emissary. The RSA has now published Divided Brain Divided World, a report of that workshop, together with a long conversation between McGilchrist and Jonathan Rowson, Director of the RSA's Social Brain Centre.
McGilchrist's book deals with the social, political and philosophical implications of the lateralisation of the brain, that is, its division into two hemispheres, left and right. The difference between the two hemispheres is not, McGilchrist suggests, as much pop psychology would have it, that the left hemisphere primarily processes language, and the right visual imagery and spacial representation. The difference, for McGilchrist, lies in the manner in which each hemisphere analyses the world, rather than in what it analyses.
'For us as human beings', McGilchirst argues, 'there are two fundamentally opposed realities, two different modes of experience; that each is of ultimate importance in bringing about the recognizably human world; and that their difference is rooted in the bihemispheric structure of the brain'. What opposed realities or modes of existence? 'The left-hemisphere tends to deal more with pieces of information in isolation, and the right hemisphere with the entity as a whole, the so-called Gestalt':
The right hemisphere… is vigilant for whatever it is that exists 'out there', it alone can bring us something other than what we already know. The left hemisphere deals with what it knows, and therefore prioritises the expected – its process is predictive… The right hemisphere is, in other words, more capable of a frame shift…
The right hemisphere sees the whole before whatever it is gets broken up into parts in our attempt to 'know' it.
The right hemisphere takes whatever is said within its entire context. It is specialized in pragmatics, the art of contextual understanding of meaning, and in using metaphor… The left hemisphere, because its thinking is decontextualised, tends towards a slavish following of the internal logic of the situation, even if this is in contravention of everything experience tells us… The left hemisphere is the hemisphere of abstraction, which, as the word itself tells us, is the process of wresting things from their context… Where the left hemisphere is more concerned with abstract categories and types, the right hemisphere is more concerned with the uniqueness and individuality of each existing thing or being.
In the West, however, McGilchrist argues, the left hemisphere of the brain is gradually colonising our experience. The left hemisphere is dependant upon the right, 'an "emissary" of the right hemisphere, valuable for taking on a role that the right hemisphere – the "Master" – cannot itself afford to undertake'. The emissary is, however, not only unaware of its dependence on the Master, but has 'has his own will, and secretly believes himself to be superior to the Master'. And 'he has the means to betray him. What he doesn't realize is that in doing so he will also betray himself'.
A world in which the left hemisphere suppressed the right, McGilchrist argues, is one in which:
There would be a loss of the broader picture, a substitution of a more narrowly focussed, restricted but detailed view of the world, making it perhaps difficult to maintain a coherent worldview… In general the 'bits' of anything, the parts into which it could be disassembled, would come to seem more important, more likely to lead to knowledge and the understanding, than the whole, which would come to be seen as no more than the sum of the parts… This in turn would promote the substitution of information, and information gathering, for knowledge, which comes through experience. Knowledge, in its turn, would seem more 'real' than what one might call wisdom, which would seem too nebulous, something never to be grasped.
This, McGilcrist argues, 'is what the world would look like if the emissary betrayed the Master. It's hard to resist the conclusion that his goal is within sight'.
McGilchrist's argument has won considerable support and praise, not least from the participants at the RSA workshop. The workshop opened, however, with a critical review of the argument from Ray Tallis. Tallis' full talk is in the RSA document, but here is a flavour of his argument. McGilchrist's thesis, a thesis that is 'highly systematising, linguistic, explicit etc' and is built upon 'massive quantities of painstakingly acquired, precise data, 2,500 sources', looks, Tallis suggests, 'rather left hemisphere according to his own characterisation'. The left hemisphere, according to McGilchirst, is 'out of touch with reality'. 'Doesn't this make it rather odd', Tallis asks, 'that he relies on the neurological data presumably gathered by that hemisphere to support his extraordinarily ambitious account of 'reality', a reality that encompasses the history of mankind?'
'It may be', Tallis suggests, 'that my own left hemisphere has atrophied but I would hesitate' to make the kind of 'sweeping generalisations' that McGilchrist does, such as 'his assertion that 'the left hemisphere's purpose is to use the world. It sees everything – education, art, morality, the natural world – in terms of a utilitarian calculus only'. Similarly, Tallis argues, 'I wouldn't be at all certain of the truth of such massive claims as that "Far Easterners attend to the world in ways typical of both the left and right hemispheres, and draw on strategies of either hemisphere more or less equally, while we in the West are heavily skewed towards the attentive viewpoint and strategies of the left hemisphere alone"'.
Consider, Tallis asks, McGilchrist's assertion that 'since the Industrial Revolution we have constructed an image of the world externally that is an image of the left hemisphere internally':
Who are 'we'? What 'image' of the world (as if there were only one image and one world) are we talking about? And what would an 'image of the left hemisphere' be?
'Such gigantic generalisations', Tallis observes, 'overlook the teaming ocean of particulars that make up our shared world, and overfly the infinite variety of the lives of billions of people and the countless cultures and micro-cultures in which they live'. Finally, Tallis asks,
From what hemisphere is [McGilchrist] able to observe the two hemispheres, pass judgement on them, and see their rivalry as the motor of the unfolding of human cultures? Does he have a third hemisphere? Or does he have something that is not a hemisphere at all? In short, is he talking from a standpoint that transcends his hemispheres?
I suspect he is; it is the standpoint from which we all speak when
we speak about pretty well everything: namely the shared, extracranial human world woven over the millennia out of a zillion human (whole person) interactions. And it is this that he seems to by-pass when he argues that the outcome of the rivalry or balance between the two hemispheres plays a major role in determining the predominant characteristics of cultures, civilisations or epochs. And I would argue that this extracranial viewpoint is the one we adopt when we comment on our own and others' brains and cultures. This is more relevant than neural circuitry. It is the community of human minds, the human world, which has gradually built up at least over the hundreds and thousands of years, since hominids emerged.
It is here, and not in the intracranial darkness, that we should look for the motors of history, of cultural change and the evolution of civilizations. Histories, cultures, societies, institutions, have their own internal dynamic… that cannot be usefully captured in neural terms.
The irony of Tallis' criticism is that he adopts what McGilchrist would undoubtedly label a 'right brain' posture. Tallis' long-standing hostility towards what he calls 'neuromania' is precisely a critique of a decontextualised understanding of the human condition, and of the growing tendency to locate social, political and philosophical issues in the brain.
I have considerable sympathy with Tallis' skepticism. (I was invited to take part in the workshop but unfortunately was unable to. I may well do a proper response in time). There are three fundamental questions we can ask of McGilchrist's argument. First, is McGilchrist's characterisation of brain lateralisation, and of its consequences, correct? Second, is his understanding of the social and philosophical poblems that Western societies face, and of the history of those problems, plausible? Third, if his characterisation of brain lateralisation and his understanding of the social and philosophical problems that Western societies face both make sense, does it also make sense to link the two in cause and effect terms; that is, does it make sense to view the social and philosophical problems in terms of neurological processes?
McGilchrist's is a sophisticated account of the consequences of brain lateralisation, underpinned by a mountain of data. The trouble is, there is considerable cherry-picking and idiosyncrasy in the presentation of that data. As Owen Flanagan, professor of philosophy and neurobiology at Duke University, put it in a review in New Scientist, 'McGilchrist promises to avoid glib pop theorising about right-brain/left-brain dichotomies… But the expressed caution is all pretence.' In truth, Flanagan pointed out, 'Hemispheric differences are not well understood' and certainly not well enough to make the kinds of claims that McGilchrist does. For instance, McGilchrist insists that 'The left's hemisphere's world is ultimately narcissistic'. It is 'driven forward by a desire for power and control'. It has a tendency for 'dangerously unwarranted optimism'. It 'sees itself as the passive victim of whatever it is not conscious of having willed'. It 'misunderstands altruism as a version of self-interest' and sees it as 'a threat to its power'. The left hemisphere 'must conceive of society as an aggregate of individuals, seen as equal, but inert, units. The right hemisphere alone can understand that individuals are unique and reciprocally bound in a network, based on a host of things that could never be rationalised, creating something much greater than the sum of its parts, a society'. The left hemisphere is responsible for 'the destruction and despoliation of the natural world and the erosion of established cultures'. It has 'set about neutralising or neutering the power of art'. The left hemisphere, whose 'version of liberty is a mere concept, not the freedom which can be experienced only through belonging' was apparently responsible for 'the mayhem and carnage of the French Revolution'. Democracy, as the American Revolutionaries saw it, on the other hand, which apparently was 'essentially local, agrarian, communitarian, organic' was 'in harmony with the ideals of the right hemisphere'. And so on. After a while one almost begins to pine for the days in which the left hemisphere was merely 'logical', the right 'creative'.
I have some sympathy with McGilchrist's claim that there is a growing tendency to decontextualise knowledge, to think of the parts as more important than the whole, which is often regarded as no more than the sum of the parts, to substitute information for knowledge. But this is only one side of the story. Another trend, equally important, is the downgrading of reason, the celebration of tradition, intuition and myth, the glorification of the holistic, the organic and the local. If we are forced to use McGilchrist's terminology and imagery, we might say that the problem is not that the left hemisphere has control over the right but that there has been a tendency to develop both 'left hemispheric thinking' and 'right hemispheric thinking' in isolation and that both are, in isolation, equally troublesome. Or to put it anther way, the problem is increasingly that reason has become mechanistic, contextualisation anti-rational.
McGilchrist seems unable to see this because he is primarily in tune with what he would call 'right hemisphere thinking'. He dismisses the idea, for instance, that a 'greater capacity to control and manipulate the world for our benefit' is a good. He is dismayed with 'urbanization, globalization and the destruction of local cultures' because these developments have 'led to a rise in the prevalence of mental illness'. The fact that 'over history intuition has lost ground to rationality' seems like an indication of progress only because 'we have already fallen for the left hemisphere's propaganda.' He bemoans 'the left hemisphere's attack on religion' arguing that 'when we decide not to worship divinity, we do not stop worshipping: we merely find something else less worthy to worship'. In other words, even though McGilchrist insists that what he desires is a proper balance between the two hemispheres, what is clearly drawn to is the holistic, organic, local forms of 'right hemispheric thinking'. The very praise showered upon The Master and his Emissary suggests that he is not alone in this.
Finally, even if I am wrong, and McGilchrist right, both about the consequences of brain lateralisation and about the character of contemporary intellectual problems, does it make sense to see these problems in neurological terms?
The left hemisphere usurping the right, the emissary betraying the master – these are striking metaphors. But if these are metaphors then all that McGilchrist would be saying is that a particular form of thinking, which we can metaphorically label 'left hemisphere thinking', has squeezed out another form of thinking, metaphorically 'right hemisphere thinking', to our detriment. Whatever the merits of that argument, it has no neurological significance.
But McGilchirst insists that the Master and Emissary, and the idea of the one usurping the other, are more than simply metaphors. What could this mean? It could mean that because we live in a world which has decontextualised knowledge, fetishised reductive thinking, elevated information over knowledge, etc, and because these are forms of thinking embodied in different hemispheres, so we are increasingly relying on one hemisphere to do our thinking for us. There are all sorts of problems with such a claim, but it is nevertheless a plausible argument to make. It is also an argument in which the neurology, interesting though it may be, has little to say about the social and intellectual problems we face. To put it another way: If we want to ensure, say, that we always think contextually, or if we want to elevate the importance of knowledge over information, we could do so without any understanding of brain lateralisation; and having an understanding of brain lateralisation would not give us better insights into how to make thinking more contextual, or how to elevate knowledge over information.
So clearly McGilchrist is saying more than simply that we are over-relying on one hemisphere. He is suggesting that the way the two hemispheres operate has somehow allowed the emissary to usurp the Master, the left hemisphere to usurp the right, and to colonize our experience. And it has done so independently of our desires or needs or wishes. For only then would the neuroscience be relevant to the social issues that McGilchrist raises. But in what way is it operating independently? Presumably, McGilchrist is not suggesting that the hemispheres are agents in their own right. So what is he suggesting? He does not say. And as Ray Tallis asks, 'From what hemisphere is he able to observe the two hemispheres, pass judgement on them, and see their rivalry as the motor of the unfolding of human cultures?'
A final point: In a previous post on Oriental Enlightenment I mentioned briefly the tendency to think about East and West as 'opposed ways of thinking', to insist on what the Indian historian Raghavan Iyer has called 'the dubious notion of an eternal East-West conflict, the extravagant assumption of a basic dichotomy in modes and thoughts and ways of life', to create the self-serving distinction between, in the words of another Indian historian Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the West's 'rationalistic' and 'positivistic' mind and 'the Eastern mind [which] is more inclined to inward life and intuitive thinking'.
McGilchrist takes this trope, reverses the value assumptions (placing greater store on what are traditionally seen as 'Eastern' ways of thinking) and transfers the schism to the brain. Indeed, at the end of the book, McGilchrist suggests that his critique of left-hemispheric thinking 'would be more intuitively understandable within an Oriental culture'. According to McGilchrist, 'The pattern of psychological differences between Oriental people and Westerners suggests the possibility of a different relationship between the hemispheres'. Orientals' 'experience of the world is still effectively grounded in that of the right hemisphere'. They have 'a more holistic approach'. The 'differences between the way in which Westerners and East Asians see the world' are to 'do with the balance of the hemispheres'. In other words, McGilchrist writes, 'the emissary appears to work in harmony with the Master in the east, but is the process of usurping him in the West'. McGilchrist has taken a long-standing dubious argument about cultural differences and modernized it by locating it in the brain. Doing so has not made a dubious argument any less dubious.
Update: Iain McGilchrist has written a long response to this, which I have published as a separate post(together with my own reply).
split brain, split views – debating iain mcgilchrist
Iain McGilchrist has written a response to my post about his book The Master and his Emissary and about the RSA workshop that discussed it. Since it is a long reply, Iain asked me whether I could publish it as a post, rather than as a comment, which I am happy to do. I have appended my own response at the end. (And just to avoid any confusion, while I have set up the discussion in the form of two open letters, Iain's piece was written as a straightforward essay, not in letter form.) I am slightly puzzled, as I observe in my reply, by the tone of Iain's piece. He seems to suggest in places that my original was written in bad faith and that I seem not to have not read his book or the RSA document. Whether I have adequately understood either is, of course, a matter for debate. But my post was written in good faith, and while critical of Iain's thesis was also, in my eyes at least, respectful of his work. I wrote it to engage in the kind of debate for which I had hoped that Iain himself had written his book, and the RSA had held its workshop. I am publishing Iain's essay in the spirit of such debate, I have written my response to it in that spirit, and I hope that people will engage in that spirit with both sets of arguments.
Dear Kenan…
When Jonathan [Rowson, Director of the RSA's Social Brain Centre] and I agreed to attempt this short publication we did so with a degree of foreboding. We knew that the attempt to abbreviate an argument that is, for the most part, carefully articulated, and already somewhat compressed, in its original 350,000 word form, was inviting difficulties. One such difficulty was that in further compression much would be lost: subtlety, nuance, complexity of argument, qualification of expression, and that I would be taken as saying something cruder than I am. Another was that the casual reader might be lead to think that they could substitute an acquaintance with the paper for a careful reading of the book. Yet we were encouraged by the advice of many readers from many academic disciplines and from many walks of life to think that it was worth risking such casualties in order to engage readers who otherwise might not have come across it at all, trusting that, at least before passing judgment, they would be led to do the book justice by reading it for themselves.
But perhaps even the RSA document is too long for today's reader. Our fears would appear to have been more than justified. It is a little dispiriting that most, if not all, the comments and objections that KM raises are addressed, sometimes at considerable length, in the course of the document. Of course, those responses might still not satisfy KM, but at least if he had read them the debate would be at a higher level.
I am sure that, as a scientist, KM would agree that science involves acquainting oneself with the facts, keeping an open mind, and trying to maintain balance in considering the whole picture.
On that last matter, it is interesting, and not a little sad, that KM refers to the contribution of only one participant at the RSA workshop, probably the only one out of the 20 or so present who appeared largely unconvinced, Ray Tallis. Dissenters to any proposition are to be expected. And indeed Ray and I are nowhere near as far apart as this might suggest: our standpoints on all the big issues involved here are almost identical, and it is in fact only by attributing beliefs to me that I do not hold that he could find targets to criticise. You would not think from KM's account that I had in fact responded, as did several others, to every one of the points that Ray is quoted as making. Similarly the only review KM refers to, that of Owen Flanagan, is also the only truly negative review the book has received out of about 50 or so published reviews or commentaries, most of which have been to say the least, positive. It is also the weakest review – of course I would say that, wouldn't I? But anyone who has read my book and reads that review will realise what a shameful piece of writing it is. The review appeared the same week that the book came out, and so one could hardly expect the author to have read it (most thoughtful readers say that it takes about two or three months to get properly to grips with). But ignorance doesn't make a promising basis for an informative review. You can see how well Flanagan understood his subject by the fact that he does not seriously engage with anything in it – not the science, the philosophy, the cultural history or anything else, manages to misunderstand the primary metaphor of the book by getting the Master and the Emissary the wrong way round (you only have to get to p 14 to get that right), accuses me of wanting us all to 'sit on the beach and sing Kumbaya', and thinks I want to reduce human history to brain events. A cursory read would have saved him such howlers. The entire drift of the book is against such reduction of human phenomena to brain events. It would not be the first time that shoddy invective made up for lack of care and ignorance of one's subject, but one might have expected better of a journal with Science in the title. In fact Professors Alwyn Lishman and Mary Midgley wrote to take issue with such a travesty, but the New Scientist, which clearly does not like to be exposed, was apparently not able to find space for such distinguished writers to attempt objectivity.
On the hypothesis of The Master and his Emissary, balance in treating this tertiary evidence – what people generally say about the book and its hypothesis – would have been one way KM could have displayed an open mind. Another would have been balance in treating the secondary evidence – reading the book and being fair to its arguments. I get no sense that KM has read my book, but if he has, he would appear not to have understood it. I am very definitely not a critic of reason. Quite the opposite. I am a critic of what has in our time come to take the place of reason, a mindless rationality which neglects judgment and experience. In most languages other than English, certainly in German, Greek and Latin, there are different words for these kinds of reason (eg Vernunft versus Verstand, nous versus logos/dianoia, intellectus versus ratio). As Mary Midgley pointed out in her Guardian review, it is not about thinking versus feeling, but about two kinds of thinking. The difference is similar to that made by Aristotle between phronesis and techne: I have never heard Aristotle accused of being a New Ager. Just because I believe that certain questions do not have answers that could ever be proved to be true does not mean that I think anything goes, and that we are condemned to the realm of the purely subjective. Absolutely not. I could not have made this point clearer in my writings. On all these matters I am KM's ally. I am also a defender of the proper use of language in an age where both reason and language are too often travestied. But, in turn, it would be sloppy thinking to assume that that meant that there were no limits to what language can precisely express.
Analysis itself shows the limits of analysis, reason shows the limits to reason. As Pascal said, 'the ultimate achievement of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it. It is indeed feeble if it can't get as far as understanding that.' This famous mathematician also wrote: 'Plenty of things that are certain are mutually contradictory; plenty of things that are false contain no inconsistency. Contradiction is not a sign of falsehood, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.' He also wrote: 'it is equally excessive to shut reason out and to let nothing else in'. The mistake that some readers make is to think that I see no place for reason if I argue the case for carefully nurtured intuition (people who reason well have better intuitions, people who have good intuitions reason better) in a world that has ceased to respect it. We need both. One hemisphere difference KM would read about in my book is that this black and white, either/or, 'if it isn't this, it must be that' attitude is characteristic of the left hemisphere's exclusive, precision-directed outlook, when compared with the ability of the relatively inclusive right hemisphere to see more than one option and to hold them together.
But what about balance in treating the primary evidence – the scientific data? I don't know how well KM knows the literature on hemisphere asymmetry. I say that merely because there are not many people these days who really know it well, partly because of the very prejudice which has led scientists to neglect the issue for the last approximately 30 years. He does say with an air of authority that I have 'cherry-picked data', so maybe he is well-versed in it (although I suspect he may have borrowed this idea from the insightful Flanagan). In my case, it took 20 years to familiarise myself with this literature, in so far as I can say I have. I did not speak about hemisphere asymmetry, nor write about it except in the context of a few technical papers reporting research data, until I had spent two decades pondering the material and being fairly sure I was not misrepresenting it. (Incidentally, it would be quite counterproductive for me to attempt misrepresentation, since my only interest is in finding out what is actually the case. That is all that has kept me going: not having a large budget or the likelihood of a prestigious chair to pursue, there have been no temptations in my path.) It is a rather too simple dismissive comment to say 'he's cherry-picked the data'. In reality most people can't have that kind of knowledge of the area. I quote from about 2,500 papers, and I am not sure how many more would have satisfied. I didn't pin my argument on a handful of unrepresentative findings. It's also somewhat underhand, if I may say so, to talk of cherry-picking, because it involves the critic in no work, can't be answered except by silence or indignation, depending on one's mood, and casts aspersions which cannot easily be dispelled, while giving the impression that the critic is far more knowledgeable than his critical object. Quite a reward for little effort! Unless the critic is willing to demonstrate a knowledge of the asymmetry literature and show me what he is talking about in the context of the whole, it is not a remark that should be made. And, by the way, a study or even a brace of studies, that do not chime will not in themselves do. Nothing in the biological sciences yields entirely consonant data. One must see the whole. A finding can be perfectly valid, and even of the greatest significance overall, and yet admit of contrary findings. The average temperatures in Iceland and Indonesia are clearly very different, which goes a long way to explain the wholly different characteristics of the vegetation, animal life, landscape, culture and economy of these two regions, as well as no doubt much else that differentiates their 'feel' and the ways of life there. But it is still true that the lowest average annual temperature in Indonesia is lower than the highest average annual temperature in Iceland – and of course the average temperature varies considerably from month to month, as well as, less predictably, from day to day, and indeed from place to place within each region. The nature of generalisations is that they are approximate, but they are nonetheless of critical importance for understanding what is going on. A misplaced need for certainty may stop the process altogether. I know that that means that the critic would have to address the whole of the data, not just pick off bits, but that is the price of fairness and objectivity.
Having said all of that, it is not as though I do not refer to contrary data. Originally I did so in the body of the text, but my editor, I think wisely, suggested that all such excursus should be put in the notes, in order not to lose the thread of an often complex argument. So KM should read the footnotes too, I am afraid. I might add that many who do really know this literature – Colwyn Trevarthen and James Wright, both of whom researched split brains with Roger Sperry at Cal Tech, Jaak Panksepp, VS Ramachandran, Michael Trimble, Alwyn Lishman, Jurg Kesselring, Todd Feinberg and others – think I represent it well enough.
Let me just remind the reader that the brain is not only profoundly divided, but profoundly asymmetrical. There are clear, subtle but significant, observable differences at every level. The two hemispheres are different sizes, shapes, and weights (the right hemisphere is bigger and heavier in all social mammals); have different gyral conformations on the surface, and in places different cytoarchitecture – that is to say the arrangement of the cells; different proportions of grey matter to white, different sensitivity to neuroendocrine influences, and rely on different preponderances of neurotransmitters. And in psychometric testing they consistently yield different results, which is in keeping with something any clinician could tell you: when there is damage to one hemisphere or the other, through injury, tumour or stroke, there are consistent differences in what happens to the subject and his world depending on which hemisphere suffers the lesion.
So before we move on to look at specifics, let me ask KM some questions.
1) Given that the brain consists in a mass of connections, whose power depends on the number and complexity of those connections, why is it divided? Or is that just random, and we should give up trying to find a pattern which make sense in terms of evolutionary advantage? (Animal ethologists have already found that asymmetry is an evolutionary advantage, and some of the reasons why – I take those into account in the book.)
2) Is it logical or just a prejudice to dismiss the idea that there are significant hemisphere differences?
3) If it is logical, why? If it is not logical, should we not all be interested in what sort of difference this might be?
4) If not, why not? If so, what sort of difference would he himself suggest?
5) Failing any suggestion of his own, why is he opposed to others making suggestions?
6) Since it is in the nature of a general question that the answer will be general, what sort of criticism is it that an answer that has been offered is general in nature (though highly specific in its unfolding of the many aspects of cerebral function involved, of the implications for the phenomenological world, and in the data that are adduced)?
7) It is in the nature of generalisations that they are general. It is also almost always the case that there will be exceptions. Does that mean that no generalisations should ever be attempted for fear of being called generalisations or because there are exceptions?
8) I have never tried to hide the difficulties surrounding generalisations. My book is replete with caveats, qualifications, and admonitions to the reader. Does either KM or Ray Tallis think they have said anything substantial by calling a generalisation 'sweeping'? What kind of generalisation is not, other than one that is qualified?
Turning to specifics, KM quotes Ray Tallis as follows.
McGilchrist's thesis, a thesis that is 'highly systematising, linguistic, explicit etc' and is built upon 'massive quantities of painstakingly acquired, precise data, 2,500 sources', looks, Tallis suggests, 'rather left hemisphere according to his own characterisation'. The left hemisphere, according to McGilchirst [sic], is 'out of touch with reality'. 'Doesn't this make it rather odd', Tallis asks, 'that he relies on the neurological data presumably gathered by that hemisphere to support his extraordinarily ambitious account of 'reality', a reality that encompasses the history of mankind?
There are a number of points to make here.
First, I have no quarrel with using the left hemisphere. We all use the left hemisphere all the time! Civilizations, as I again constantly remind people, are founded on it. It is the same old basic mistake to suppose I am arguing against the usefulness of the left hemisphere. I myself rely on the world as revealed by the left hemisphere very substantially, as Tallis says. My quarrel is not with the left hemisphere per se. It is with a lack of balance between left and right. My suggestion is that the left hemisphere is not aware of its own limitations – this is a neurological as much as metaphorical truth. Sometimes people say, 'you've depicted the world according to the left hemisphere – what would the right hemisphere world look like, then?' To which I answer, 'very balanced'. Because the right hemisphere is more aware that it needs the left hemisphere than the left hemisphere is aware that it needs the right. This idea is embodied in the parable of the master and his emissary.
Second, reliance on data and evidence is at least as much in keeping with the right hemisphere's take on the world – with what is actually the case, rather than with what accepted opinion tells us is the case, which tends to be more typical of the left hemisphere's stance.
Third, the left hemisphere is only out of touch with reality when it fails to work in partnership with the right. Tallis's point is, once again, illogical, since I use strategies of the left hemisphere – yes – and of the right, to convey the complexities of the world as the right hemisphere is aware of it – a difficult thing to achieve because the language that is available naturally construes things in the left hemisphere sense, but necessary because it is no use expressing the right hemisphere's perceptions only in right hemisphere ways – implicit, rather than explicit ways – if you want to reach people who are currently, for cultural reasons, over-reliant on the left hemisphere's take on the world. If you, then, as I have done, make heroic efforts to speak to the left-hemisphere culture in terms it will understand, you are accused of using left hemisphere strategies … not an accusation I feel at all concerned about.
Fourth, I am not trying to give a comprehensive account of 'reality', or of the history of mankind – which would be an overambitious undertaking for a team of scholars working for centuries. I am trying to do something much more modest. I am pointing to differences in the ways our cerebral hemispheres attend to the world, to the differences this makes to the way we construe the world, and to how reconciling these conflicting, but nonetheless both necessary, 'versions' of the world might be expected to be reflected in the history of ideas. I deal with the history of the West, true, but only in that one respect – whether we see something new or thought-provoking emerge when we look at each of the great epochs of the history of ideas in the light of what we know about the cerebral hemispheres.
I have commented on the problem of what seem to be 'sweeping' generalisations. Personally, I love the unique and particular, and if KM were to read my book, he would find it contains many examples of both. But in a short document one can only speak shortly. To talk of the left hemisphere 'using' the world is shorthand, which makes more sense to those who have read why I reach that conclusion. It refers to a point argued at some length that the left hemisphere's narrowly focussed attention has evolved in response to an evolutionary need, manipulation of the external environment (which is incidentally why the right hand, which it controls is the tool-utilising hand, and why its contributions to language are the parts which enable us to 'grasp' something (cognates of 'grasp' exist in almost all languages). There is a mass of (to me at least) fascinating data about this which fleshes out the picture: for example, the current mainstream hypothesis that speech evolved from bodily gestures, in particular hand gestures (located in the same part of the left frontal cortex near Broca's area).
Equally the point about Far Easterners in comparison with Westerners is a shorthand for the exposition of a fair number of studies over the last 20 years that suggest that we differ not only in the ways in which we think, but even in what we perceive (which is what one would expect from the fact that there are attentional differences). This is dealt with at greater length in the book. In relation to this, it is not accurate to say that 'McGilchrist has taken a long-standing dubious argument about cultural differences and modernized it by locating it in the brain'. First, the old cliché was that the West was 'left-hemisphered', and the East was 'right-hemisphered'. What the data suggest is more interesting: that people in the Far East use strategies of both left and right hemisphere equally, whereas Western responses have become strongly skewed towards the left hemisphere point of view only. It's not a point about some oddity of Easterners, but yet another sign, if such a sign be needed, that our culture has become less balanced in its outlook. Second, I report studies which show such differences in experimental situations. Does KM dispute the studies? Only if so, can I see the problem here. If he does, on what basis does he dispute them? Does he think they do not really demonstrate any difference?
One point KM makes is, however, quite legitimate. 'But McGilchirst [sic] insists that the Master and Emissary, and the idea of the one usurping the other, are more than simply metaphors. What could this mean? … clearly McGilchrist is saying more than simply that we are over-relying on one hemisphere. He is suggesting that the way the two hemispheres operate has somehow allowed the emissary to usurp the Master, the left hemisphere to usurp the right, and to colonize our experience. And it has done so independently of our desires or needs or wishes. For only then would the neuroscience be relevant to the social issues that McGilchrist raises. But in what way is it operating independently? Presumably, McGilchrist is not suggesting that the hemispheres are agents in their own right. So what is he suggesting? He does not say.'
In fact I do, and many others have helped articulate it. I would draw KM's attention especially to the response of John Wakefield, included in the RSA report, which KM would seem not to have read along with much else. The point is a difficult one to convey because we think – I would say 'in left-hemisphere fashion' – only in terms of linear causation. Either the brain must 'cause' events in the phenomenological world, or the phenomenological world 'causes' the brain to be the way it is. A constant theme of my book is the importance of the hermeneutic circle. Indeed it is a primary point of understanding for the whole hemisphere hypothesis that there is not a naively realist, objective world that exists apart from our knowing it, but also that there is not a naively idealist, subjective world, equally omnipotent and impotent, post-modern fashion. Brain and the world – each shapes the other, and various worlds with different characteristics come into being as a result of the nature of the attention we pay to whatever it is that exists apart from ourselves. There is a constant dialogue between brain and environment, which is traceable, if one wishes to do so, at the level of the synapse, but is also traceable at the phenomenological level. Each helps to mould the other. And so the answer to the left hemisphere question 'which causes which?' is – right hemisphere fashion, 'both and neither'. But out of that relationship everything that we know, or can know, ultimately comes.
You can find JW's subtle and rewarding piece on pp 71-76 of the RSA document.
Iain McGilchrist
Dear Iain…
I am sorry that you should seem so irritated by my post, and somewhat puzzled as to why you should be so. The original post was written in good faith and while it is critical of your argument, it is also, it seems to me, respectful of it and of your work. I had assumed that it was precisely this kind of debate that you wanted to generate with your book. Perhaps I was wrong.
A couple of minor points before I answer some of your questions. First, you suggest more than once that I have not read The Master and his Emissary. Given that I quote at length from the book (and you must know that all the quotes from you in the post were taken from The Master and his Emissary, apart from one which came from your website), it is difficult to see how I could not have read the book. It is striking that you seem to think that only those who agree with your argument have actually read the book properly. That is perhaps an understandable sentiment (I feel the same way sometimes about criticisms of my books). All I would say is that it is quite possible to have read the book thoroughly and still disagree with your argument.
Second, you suggest that 'it is interesting, and not a little sad, that KM refers to the contribution of only one participant at the RSA workshop, probably the only one out of the 20 or so present who appeared largely unconvinced, Ray Tallis'. What I actually wrote was that
McGilchrist's argument has won considerable support and praise, not least from the participants at the RSA workshop. The workshop opened, however, with a critical review of the argument from Ray Tallis.
I acknowledged, in other words, the support your thesis has won (elsewhere I mentioned 'the praise showered upon The Master and his Emissary') but sought deliberately to pick up on Tallis' criticisms. Why? Because, first, it was the key response at the RSA workshop and in the RSA document itself; and, second, because it chimed with concerns I have with your argument. I was writing a blog post, not a comprehensive review of all the responses to the book or the thesis.
So, what of that thesis? You ask a series of eight questions. In order to keep this response to a moderate length, let me collapse those eight into two key sets of questions:
Is it logical or just a prejudice to dismiss the idea that there are significant hemisphere differences?
If it is logical, why? If it is not logical, should we not all be interested in what sort of difference this might be?
I am not sure where I might have suggested that there are no significant differences between the hemispheres, or that we should not be interested in such differences. All I did was to query the kinds of labels you hung on the two hemispheres – for instance that one is 'narcissistic' and 'driven forward by a desire for power and control', while the other possesses 'ideals' consonant with an outlook that is 'essentially local, agrarian, communitarian, organic'. These, it seems to me, are labels that belong to the whole person in a social context, not things that one can attribute to an isolated hemisphere.
It is in the nature of generalisations that they are general. It is also almost always the case that there will be exceptions. Does that mean that no generalisations should ever be attempted for fear of being called generalisations or because there are exceptions?
Does either KM or Ray Tallis think they have said anything substantial by calling a generalisation 'sweeping'? What kind of generalisation is not, other than one that is qualified?
We all make generalisations. But it is nature of the generalisations in your book that I was questioning. When someone suggests that the distinction between the ideas animating the French and American Revolutions can be understood in terms of hemispheric differences, then I get queasy. Similarly when you suggest that early Jeffersonian democracy was 'in harmony with the ideals of the right hemisphere' but that later democracy 'came to be swept away by the large-scale, rootless mechanical forces of capitalism, a left-hemisphere product of the Enlightenment'. The ideological differences between the French and American Revolutions, or the changing character of democracy, are immensely complex issues; to reduce them to the left hemisphere-right hemisphere distinction seems to me to be, to say the least, unwarranted and unhelpful.
I have no doubt, even though my first degree was in neurobiology, that you have a vastly superior knowledge of brain lateralization. That does not mean, however, that I cannot criticize either your use of data or, more pertinently, your interpretations of that data, and the generalisations you draw from them. I am sorry if my line about 'cherry-picking and idiosyncrasy in the presentation of [the] data' upset you. I was not trying to question your knowledge or impugn your integrity. I was simply pointing out that the kinds of unwarranted generalisations to which I have just alluded requires one to be highly selective and idiosyncratic in one's interpretation of the data.
In any case, my key criticism was not about the data on lateralization. It was, rather, about the link you make between the neuroscience, on the one hand, and, on the other, the social and philosophical problems you raise, and your insistence that the first is an explanation of the second.
You seem to think that you (and John Wakefield) have answered this criticism. And not for the first time you insist that I disagree with you only because I 'seem not to have read [the RSA report] along with much else'. Let me say again: It is quite possible to have read your book and the report thoroughly and still disagree with you. Since you flag up John Wakefield's comments as addressing my points, let me say a few words about those comments. According to JW
[McGilchrist] insists that his book provides no 'causal explanation' of what may be going on in the world. He says that when asked what the book tells us about the world that could not be discovered by other forms of human inquiry his answer is: 'Nothing'.
If this was the case then we would, indeed, have nothing to debate. But this is not how I understand your argument. As you put it your book, 'I believe [the hemispheres] are in fact involved in a sort of power struggle, and that this explains many aspects of contemporary Western culture' [p3]. If the 'power struggle' between the hemispheres 'explains many aspects of contemporary Western culture', then clearly you are providing a 'causal explanation' and suggesting, if not insisting, that 'what the book tells us about the world… could not be discovered by other forms of human inquiry'.
JW continues:
What exasperates Iain is that Ray [Tallis] is saying nothing (Iain claims) that he has not himself said in the book.
Your critique of Tallis (and of me) is, in fact, more than simply that we repeat what you have already said. It is that we are mistaken in many of our claims.
JW also suggests:
[McGilchrist] is telling us that in inhabiting the world we inhabit we are increasingly in thrall to the left hemisphere's 'take' and that this is radically affecting our behaviour and, as a consequence, the very substance of the actual world we are living in.
If this means that we are increasingly in thrall to a decontextualized, mechanistic culture, or that we are over-relying on one hemisphere, then, as I wrote in the post, I partly agree. But, as I suggested above, you seem to mean much more. You seem to want to provide a causal explanation, to insist that the left hemisphere's 'power struggle' with the right, the emissary's usurpation of the Master's role, is somehowdriving the social and intellectual changes. That is where I disagree.
Finally, JW suggests:
Iain's thesis provides us with 'an understanding' that is metaphoric and that may (or may not) one day come to be regarded as literal.
Insofar as the thesis is metaphoric, I do not have a quarrel with it as such (though I would question both the over-generalisations and some aspects of the presentation of the intellectual history). But I was, in my post, pointing out some of the conceptual problems in thinking about your thesis as providing a 'literal' account. For instance, you write in your post, in response to Ray Tallis' criticisms:
My suggestion is that the left hemisphere is not aware of its own limitations – this is a neurological as much as metaphorical truth.
What does it mean to say that the 'left hemisphere is not aware of its own limitations'? It is, after all, not an agent in its own right. It is not aware of anything. It is only the person who is aware.
I am not, of course, suggesting that the structure of the brain has no impact on the character of our perception or understanding. Clearly it does. What I am suggesting is that part of the conceptual problem in your argument is the constant elision between brain (or hemisphere) and person, an elision that allows you to attribute agency to a hemisphere while denying that you are doing so. If what you mean by the sentence above is that 'the person embodying the left hemisphere is not aware of that hemisphere's limitations' in the sense that he or she is unaware of the limitations of 'left hemisphere kind of thinking', then I would agree with you, but it would seem to be a truism. But if what you mean is that the left hemisphere 'is unaware of its own limitations' as an agent in its own right, independently of the person embodying it, then it becomes far more than a truism. But it also becomes a highly implausible account of agency, consciousness and personhood. Your thesis, it seems to me, rests to a large degree upon this ambiguity in the understanding of agency.
