Mike Todd
Forum Replies Created
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Could you clarify how these people with “an over reliance on LH” present?
I ask because the literature examining the relationship between mental health disorders and hemispheric (im)balance, while bedevilled by inconsistent terminology, nevertheless consistently affirms the following relationships, some of which Dr. McGilchrist similarly affirms:
1) Depression appears correlated with a relatively overactive right anterior lobe and relatively underactive right posterior and left anterior lobes.
2) Mania appears, with respect to hemispheric imbalance, more or less the mirror opposite of depression.
3) Schizophrenia, ADHD and ASD all appear correlated with a relatively underactive RH and a relatively overactive LH.
4) OCD appears correlated with a relatively overactive RH and a relatively underactive LH.Should I therefore take your observation as implying that, among other things, schizophrenia, ADHD and ASD appear on the rise, while depression and OCD appear less prevalent? Or is there a more nebulous, diagnosis-independent, criterion behind your ascription?
I myself have attended a number of therapists, been medicated, and on one occasion hospitalised, for symptoms consistent with bipolar disorder. (I say “symptoms consistent with” because I’ve yet to be given a formal diagnosis.) I’d love to hear your thoughts on how hemispheric dynamics plays out in relation to bipolar disorder. I’d also like to add that I’ve been pretty much symptom-free since I started meditating daily last year.
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I found the following article an accessible gateway to a more nuanced contemplation of some of the ways in which different aspects of reality integrate.
https://zenstudiespodcast.com/sandokai-1/
Reality is undeniably multidimensional, whichever metaphysic one favours. My own view allows that the relative dimension of reality, as the article calls it, may itself be multidimensional, comprising at least one dimension amenable to perception, and at least one further dimension transcending perception though tangentially amenable to other modes of cognition; I consider the absolute dimension of reality, on the other hand, to be unconditionally one – and approachable only through contemplative oractices – which I feel lends it a qualified primacy congruent with the primacy afforded the RH by Dr. McGilchrist.
The left and right hemispheres, in my own experience and as evidenced in the words of more seasoned meditators, appear equally necessary, though perhaps not equally ancillary, to meditation. Mindfulness-based meditation, for instance, as the following video suggests, appears to require, at the very least, a combination of focussed attention (LH) and sustained attention (RH), to use Dr. McGilchrist’s terms.
https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/benefits-science-meditation-mindfulness/
Finally, the link below suggests that meditation may entail a spectrum of hemispheric involvement, from predominantly LH (“close focus to our breath or a sensation” – sustained, focussed attention), through an equilibrium of LH and RH (“a breath, a pain in our legs, a thought about dinner, a feeling of sadness” – sustained, focussed and divided attention), to predominantly RH (“experience the mind’s awareness as open, boundless and vast” – broad, vigilant attention, as Dr. McGilchrist calls it, or if you prefer, pure sustained attention).
https://www.lionsroar.com/a-mind-like-sky/
Despite demurring otherwise, the author tacitly elevates predominantly RH involvement. (After all, the article’s title and the obligatory Buddha quote both allude to it.) This left-to-right progression (and implicit promotion) is also evident in a method for developing increasingly effectual meditation expounded by B. Alan Wallace in his excellent book, The Attention Revolution. (Yes, that was a plug.)
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You may find this article and associated video helpful in clarifying some of the definitions and ideas I sketched in the initial comment you quoted. Naturally, the author has his own idiolect, so there’s an inevitable divergence of terms, yet at the same time, I feel, there’s an agreeable convergence of ideas. In particular, he offers insights into the thing-in-irself, which I referred to as noumenal reality, as well as a complementary perspective on my assertion that consciousness is more fruitfully contemplated in terms of process than in terms of substance (in the section “There is no such thing as consciousness”). And salient to the discussion in which my comment originally appeared, he provides a cogent outline of the distinction between consciousness and its contents (in the section “The faculty and the forms of consciousness”).
SAND articles require registration but no down payment unless you feel so inclined.
https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/article/the-reality-of-consciousness
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Hi Don,<div>
</div><div>I hope you’ll accept a brief overview for now; I’ll return in a few days to address specific observations you’ve made.</div><div>
</div><div>Let me preface all this by saying that the following definitions and views are, as ever, my own, although, as far as establishing context, they align with more broadly-accepted views within mainstream science and philosophy.</div><div>
</div><div>Phenomenal reality is the world of phenomena, of observable events. Don’t let the word “events” fool you, however: observable events are nothing if not mundane – for the greatest part. Examples of observable events are: a black cat crossing ahead, the sound of a bell carried on the wind, the fragrance of a rose garden, the taste of tiramisu, the touch of a plush throw. These examples make clear that observable events, phenomena, are what we would informally refer to as perceptions, or, formally and collectively, the perceptual content of individuated consciousness or awareness.</div><div>
</div><div>Phenomena appear to us as possessing qualities, and I don’t believe this appearance is false – quality inheres at all levels of reality, on my view. However, the perceptual qualities apparent in individuated consciousness or awareness are undoubtedly categorically distinct from the qualities that exist apart from it: the qualities we perceive, sometimes referred to as qualia, do not exist outside of perception at any level of reality other than the phenomenal. These qualities are aspects of our perceptual system, viz., a (categorical) reframing of qualities that exist apart from it.</div><div>
</div><div>Yet as much as they are an aspect of individuation, these qualities are far from individual or arbitrary. Rather, there is an overwhelming degree of regularity in their manifestation. Consequently, they are amenable to analysis in the form of quantification – measurement – the assignment of numerical value: the colour(s) of a cat may be assigned value(s); so, too, the sound(s) of a bell; the regularities of rose fragrance and tiramisu taste may also be subjected to analysis and assigned values, albeit of a subtly different tang than those of colour and sound; and at the level of fabric or lower, the regularities of plushness may also yield to the strictures of number.</div><div>
</div><div>So it is that phenomenal reality may be said to possess both quality and quantity. Nearly all laypersons and most so-called experts would agree on this much. Disagreement arises, most pointedly, on the question of the extent to which quality and quantity may be considered real, or as I would prefer to say, at which levels of reality they inhere – bearing in mind that any levels one might postulate are themselves an arbitrary imposition. My view is that quality, of categorically distinct types, inheres at all levels of reality; quantity, on the other hand, inheres only at levels within which regularities manifest. On my view, then, quantity inheres only at the levels of noumenal and phenomenal reality, and it may therefore be considered, in a sense, less real than quality. (This begs the rather thorny question of whether numbers, and mathematics in general, may be said to exist at deeper levels of reality. I confess to having no answer, much as I admire Lakoff’s theory of embodied mathematics.)</div><div>
</div><div>So what can be done with quantity? Quite a lot, I would say. Our capacity to recognise regularities and to derive quantities thereof is the fulcrum by which mathematics and physics, and all other disciplines reliant upon quantification, achieve leverage. The proviso here is that what these disciplines describe may be no more (or less) than the reality manifest within our (possibly species-specific) perceptual and conceptual frameworks. Great swathes of philosophers and scientists will throw their arms up in horror at this suggestion, but, as much as I have enormous respect for, and great confidence in the findings of, science as a whole, as well as being grounded in it academically, it’s how I see things. Nevertheless, for all that my take entails a rather limited purview for science – in the words of Robert Frost, a “diminished thing” – I still consider it one of our farthest-reaching roads into reality, a path piercing the deep heart of the woods, although, admittedly, stopping just short of the other side.</div>-
There’s an error: “our (possibly species-specific) perceptual and conceptual frameworks” should more simply read “our (species-specific) perceptual framework”. I’d edit it, but at present the site won’t let me.
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Hi Lucy,
I was alerted to your comment by Don’s well-considered reply. Regarding the connection between the RH and spiritual awareness, I take the view, which I believe Dr. McGilchrist advocates, that the RH is necessary though not sufficient to spiritual awareness (which, of course, entails the corollary that the LH is also necessary though not sufficient). As Dr. McGilchrist has variously repeated, we need both hemispheres, albeit in different ways and to different degrees.
I hope you won’t mind if I share a snippet of a recent conversation I had with my best friend, which may provide some raw materials enabling you to answer your own questions.
“My view, which I’ve pressed on you many times now, is that consciousness is fundamental and that it comprises “that which experiences” along with “that which is experienced”.
There are many ways of looking at this life which reify “that which is experienced”, including scientific materialism on one side of the cultural divide and fundamentalist religion on the other. As polarised as these views are, they are nevertheless aligned in promoting division over unity, and this aspect of their nature can be seen in the dispositions of their adherents towards those with opposing views (think, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, the Taliban and the Republican Party).
However, there are also views which reify “that which experiences”, including Advaita Vedanta and some schools of Buddhism. While it’s almost always the case that their adherents, in contrast to those of divisory world views, embrace rather than attack those who disagree with them, there is nevertheless a very real danger of renunciation, whereby adherents go the way of the ascetic, effectively devaluing all that appears material, including their own bodies and even the natural world.
The following article, which may be of interest further down the road, describes this latter danger:
While I accept that “that which experiences” (consciousness in itself) has primacy over “that which is experienced” (the world, others, the self, and anything else that comes to mind), that primacy is akin to the primacy of soil over flower: it’s a mistake to value one over the other; they must both be seen and valued for what they are, as versified in “Hyla Brook”, an attitude redolent in the title of another poem I recently shared: “The Harmony of Difference and Equality”, which has been more formally referred to as “the unity of division and unity”.
One outcome of this view and corresponding attitude is that our reality may (fortuitously) come to be seen as a never-ending cycle of evolution, comprising nascence, unfolding and enfolding (RH, LH, RH), or in the language of flowers, germination, flowering and decay – bearing in mind that the third arc of the flower’s cycle serves to enrich that which nurtured its nature. This cycle repeats endlessly, as, within and between lives. This is the essence of the most fruitful world views (in my opinion): philosophical Daoism and Soto Zen. Advaita Vedanta, because it counters the majority inclination towards reifying either the material world or the immaterial self, is also a fruitful world view (once again, in my opinion): it affirms the reality and primacy of foundational consciousness, and, provided that one avoids interpreting this as a call to renounce the world as it appears to us, it also affirms that the immanent is no less sacred than the transcendent. (After all, Advaita Vedanta unequivocally states that all is Brahman).
Nightmares…
There are two prevailing responses to nightmares and nightmare situations: the first response is escape, which I believe is embodied, in quite different ways, in the world views of scientific materialism and fundamentalist religion (more on that later); the second response is confrontation, which I believe is embodied, again in quite different ways, in the approaches of postmodernism and certain spiritual traditions (more on that later, too).
Before I get into all that, it may be helpful to provide some framing. The hemispheric hypothesis put forward by Dr. McGilchrist is based on an evolutionary theory which posits that the way in which the left hemisphere (LH) attends to the world is an adaptation conducive to acquiring food, whereas the way in which the right hemisphere (RH) attends to the world is, among other things, an adaptation conducive to not being acquired as food: both are necessary for survival. The LH way of paying attention facilitates honing in on food, taking hold of it and appropriately taking it apart; the RH way of paying attention facilitates detecting and escaping from whatever sees *you* as food – and much more.
These two ways have been labelled, respectively, “approach” and “avoidance” – terms used, with an intriguing degree of overlap, in both biology and psychology. It’s tempting to equate “approach” with “confrontation” and “avoidance” with “escape” – it certainly looks that way prima facie – but I believe the truth is more nuanced.
Scientific materialism and fundamentalist religion both see divided aspects of reality, the material world and the immaterial self, respectively, as manifestations of ultimate truth. In effect, they take one side of the coin and say, “this is the whole coin”. Each is a form of escape, a turning away from the flip side of the coin. But it’s more than just a turning away. This is evident in the scorn scientific materialists pour on religion, spirituality and any talk of consciousness that questions its basis in a material brain; and equally in the demeaning, prudish and ultimately destructive views of the hyper-religious on “brute nature” and the human body.Clearly, then, escape of this sort isn’t merely avoidance, since it involves also approaching what has been avoided in order to attack it and take it apart. In fact, the rabidity of those on either side of the cultural divide suggests that a desire to attack is their overriding motivation, to which avoidance is merely ancillary. As such, this kind of escape is indicative of RH (avoidance) subservient to LH (approach/attack/divide), which is, according to Dr. McGilchrist, and I concur, a back-to-front, inside-out, topsy-turvy way of thinking, feeling and living.
Postmodernism and certain spiritual traditions accept that we must account for the realities of both sides of the coin, which upon reflection turn out to be the realities of the outer and inner worlds, including but not limited to, the apparent meaninglessness of an outer world composed of insentient matter and the apparent meaningfulness of an inner world composed of sentient mind: biology vs. psychology, if you will – admittedly, an oversimplification.Postmodernism confronts this dichotomy, often but not always, by denying the meaningfulness of the inner world, and this can be seen in the writings of many modern continental and American thinkers and in movements such as Dadaism, absurdism and nihilism. Undermining meaningfulness, I would suggest, is not only tantamount to reifying “that which is experienced” (of which the escapists are guilty), it’s also potentially self-destructive, as borne out in the sadly shortened lives of Woolf, Plath and others like them.
Rather than reverting to denial, certain spiritual traditions confront this dichotomy, through introspection and contemplation of the inner world, by affirming the meaningfulness of the outer world. As you probably know, this is my approach, and I believe it is unparalleled, because the inner world – according to both contemporary science and ancient tradition – actually contains the outer world (“that which is experienced”) as well as something available only to introspection and contemplation: “that which experiences”. This luminous centre of contemplation is, as I see it, the body of the coin, hiding, as nature is wont, behind its outer faces, which are, in effect, undulations of the body impressed upon itself.
Confrontation of the postmodern and spiritual kinds embodies what Frost had in mind when he said, “the best way out is through”. However, a further consideration is appropriate in order to understand the essential difference between the postmodern approach and that of certain spiritual traditions. Saying “the best way out is through” invites a question: “through what?” – or more pointedly: “where are we?”. The answer to this question reflects how we perceive reality: in the case of postmodernism, we are in a world composed of dead, insentient particles, out of which the living, sentient complexity of outer and inner worlds somehow emerges; in the case of certain spiritual traditions, we are in a world that is fundamentally alive, sentient and whole, which somehow self-divides (like a cell), unfolds (like a flower) and individuates (like a mind) – only to eventually enfold back into the whole – again, RH, LH, RH.
Both postmodern and spiritual confrontations of reality can be seen as LH (approach) subservient to RH (embrace, another RH “function”) – the natural order, at least according to the hemispheric hypothesis, contrasting with the escapist approach. However, the postmodern approach ultimately embraces “nothing” – and that way madness lies – whereas the approach of certain spiritual traditions embraces “everything”, which promotes sanity and, consequently, liberation from nightmares and nightmare situations.
Frost addressed the question “where are we?” with characteristic ambiguity in The Wood-Pile, which, in a clear nod to the outer/inner dichotomy mentioned above, begins: “Out walking in”.
The Wood-Pile
Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day,
I paused and said, ‘I will turn back from here.
No, I will go on farther—and we shall see.’
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went through. The view was all in lines
Straight up and down of tall slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a place by
So as to say for certain I was here
Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.
A small bird flew before me. He was careful
To put a tree between us when he lighted,
And say no word to tell me who he was
Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.
He thought that I was after him for a feather—
The white one in his tail; like one who takes
Everything said as personal to himself.
One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.
And then there was a pile of wood for which
I forgot him and let his little fear
Carry him off the way I might have gone,
Without so much as wishing him good-night.
He went behind it to make his last stand.
It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And piled—and measured, four by four by eight.
And not another like it could I see.
No runner tracks in this year’s snow looped near it.
And it was older sure than this year’s cutting,
Or even last year’s or the year’s before.
The wood was gray and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.
What held it though on one side was a tree
Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
These latter about to fall. I thought that only
Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
Could so forget his handiwork on which
He spent himself, the labor of his ax,
And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.”
academia.edu
The Dualism of Nondualism: Advaita Vedanta and the Irrelevance of Nature
The Dualism of Nondualism: Advaita Vedanta and the Irrelevance of Nature
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Hi Nic,
I appreciate the thumbs up, many thanks. It would be fair to say, I’m sold on meditation, for a variety of reasons.
Re. exploration and wonderment, I don’t believe it’s reductionist merely to identify relationships; if anything, it’s the opposite. More to the point, correlation allows at most that a relationship may be (asymmetrically) bidirectional, which reflects a healthy openness. As such, research of the kind to which I referred is, I believe, something which may be fruitfully integrated with the insights into hemispheric dynamics that Dr. McGilchrist and others have shared.
But, of course, I accept that many, perhaps most, people tend to look for easy answers that reduce the inherent complexity of mental health considerations, and correlation is quite amenable to such subversion. The right tools often end up in the wrong hands.
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Thanks, Whit.
I appreciate your attention to important, and rather elementary, details I overlooked. I’ll see if there’s supplementary information out there – perhaps other research by the authors – that resolves the imprecisions you highlighted.
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Hi Sjahari,
You could use the word “soul”, of course, but I wouldn’t, because one meaning of “soul” (which appears to be its assumed meaning) is “immortal self”, and this entails that individuation has some ontological purchase. I don’t believe that individuation has any ontological purchase: I don’t believe I am an immortal self but rather a timeless Self that has also been referred to as “Essence or Impersonal Real”:
https://www.davidgodman.org/bhagavans-self-realisation/
Also:
“Questioning ‘Who am I?’ within one’s mind, when one reaches the Heart, the individual ‘I’ sinks crestfallen, and at once reality manifests itself as ‘I-I’. Though it reveals itself thus, it is not the ego ‘I’ but the perfect being the Self Absolute.”
https://www.davidgodman.org/i-and-i-i-a-readers-query/
I consider “I-I” synonymous with awareness of awareness, i.e. foundational consciousness. I believe that this foundational impersonal consciousness individuates into higher-order personal consciousness which untimely returns to the ground, perhaps – and this is highly-speculative – in order to know itself better (Gnothi seauton): the whole divides – differentiates, to be precise – in the process of becoming more whole; Dr. McGilchrist describes an individuated analogue to this process, the right-left-right hemispheric cycle, in his books
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What if “soul stuff” and “primal stuff” are the “same stuff” – in the way that waves and the ocean are the same stuff? And what if that same stuff isn’t really stuff at all – more like water currents than water per se? Maybe the RH and LH are also made of the same stuff through which the same stuff flows, like intricate ice caves constellated by a filigree of eddies and pools – and, of course, shaped by them?
Just a few thoughts.
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I certainly don’t write for children, it’s true. But then, I don’t believe I need to. Children have an intuitive grasp of the whole that most adults have somehow lost. As Wordsworth observed:<div>
</div>My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.<div>
</div><div>Enjoy your weekend!</div> -
Thanks, Paul. For what it’s worth, I use a Fire Tablet (Android, 2021) and Chrome. I’ve given up trying to write and post using the PS4. I’ve messaged support, so for now at least, I’ll bear with tenacious tags.
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Thanks so much, Rodney. Wonderful Wilczek quotes and anecdotes have been appearing on my Feed for a while now, and I’ve been meaning to find out more. Now I know a good place to start.<div>
</div><div>I don’t practice any public religion, but if I had to signpost my private religion, it would be something like “church of the coincidentia oppositorum”. (The Latin lends an air of authority.) My view, to put it more formally, is that the ground is, among other things, an infinity of opposites in posse, and these (and other marks of the ground) find expression in esse in phenomenal reality – I sometimes say, half poetically, that the everyday world carries echoes or rumours of the divine.</div> -
Hi Don,<div>
</div><div>I’ll get back to you tomorrow with what I hope will appear a well-considered response, but for now let me bullet-point where I’ll be coming from and where I’ll be going.</div><div>
</div><div>- Fundamental reality or the ground is unquantifiable quality. Quantification is made possible by the existence of regularities, and regularities are, in every sense, wholly unmanifested in the ground as I have defined it.
- I believe that regularities exist in noumenal reality as I have defined it, and that these regularities, in some ineffable way, prefigure and substantiate those of phenomenal reality, but as they remain unobservable (to us), they also remain unquantifiable (by us), and I cannot conceive – or perhaps that should be perceive – any taxonomy of possible attributes.
- No one, I hope, would deny that regularities exist in phenomenal reality, and since these are by definition observable, they are also quantifiable, and the attributes made available to us for quantification are those inherent to the spatiotemporal framework of our human perceptual system. I borrow from Donald Hoffman here in positing that phenomenal reality, since its nature is defined by the (perceptual) framework within which it manifests, may be species-specific. Nagel may have been onto something when he asked, What Is It Like to Be a Bat?
</div><div>I also hope to say something worthwhile about philosophical phenomenology and its relationship to phenomenal and physical reality, the latter of which I consider a subset of the former. And, of course, I’ll make reference to the nature of quantity and quality as aspects of phenomenal reality, and in particular, to their differences and similarities.</div>
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Thanks, Don, that’s very generous. I mostly just wing it. I look forward to the new group; it sounds intriguing.