Speaker 1: There is a kind of thinking that we have prioritized
Speaker 1: over all other kinds of thinking because I believe of
Speaker 1: one simple thing, it helps us manipulate the world, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily help us understand it. I usually say
Speaker 1: the right hemisphere helps us understand the world, the left
Speaker 1: only to manipulate.
Speaker 2: Today, we welcome psychiatrist and author Ian McGilchrist to the show. Wow.
Speaker 2: What an episode. I've greatly enjoyed going down the rabbit
Speaker 2: hole of reading doctor McGilchrist's work and was pleased to
Speaker 2: see just how many areas of overlap we have in
Speaker 2: regards to our fascinations, including our attempts to understand the
Speaker 2: nature of intelligence, creativity, and even sacred and transcendent experiences.
Speaker 2: This conversation is very rich and meaningful, and I think
Speaker 2: brings quarity to some important issues in the fields of
Speaker 2: psychology and cognitive neuroscience. So, without further ado, I'll bring
Speaker 2: you doctor Ian McGilchrist. Ian McGilchrist, Wow, So such an
Speaker 2: honor to have you on the Psychology podcast Wall.
Speaker 1: It's a delight to be here. Thank you for asking me.
Speaker 2: We have so many areas of mutual interest. As I
Speaker 2: realize more and more as I go down the rabbit
Speaker 2: hole that is your large body of work. I think
Speaker 2: to myself, Wow, I want to talk to him about that. Well,
Speaker 2: I want to talk about that while I want to
Speaker 2: talk about that, But I always like to find out
Speaker 2: the genesis of people's work and their ideas. And I
Speaker 2: did kind of gown a rabbit hole of your life.
Speaker 2: And you really are hard to fit into any particular box.
Speaker 2: That is very true. You've said that before, and that
Speaker 2: is true. Yes, you start off in literature and the humanities,
Speaker 2: is that correct?
Speaker 1: Yes, I've always been equally attracted to science and the humanities,
Speaker 1: And at school I started in science and specialized later
Speaker 1: in humanities. Then I went to Oxford to do philosophy
Speaker 1: and theology, ended up reading literally studies English literature mainly,
Speaker 1: and and then I got a fellowship which allowed me
Speaker 1: to range back into philosophy, which has always been my
Speaker 1: big interest.
Speaker 2: And so how were you in your life in nineteen
Speaker 2: e two when you published your book Against Criticism, which
Speaker 2: I read, by the way, Yeah, preparation for this, yes,
Speaker 2: because I see lots of linkages with your current work.
Speaker 1: That's unbelievable. That's so I don't think any of my
Speaker 1: interviewers has ever done that?
Speaker 2: No, I bet they have not. For anything I wanted
Speaker 2: to step up. I wanted to step up, Apart for
Speaker 2: anything else.
Speaker 1: It's extremely difficult to find a copy of the book anymore,
Speaker 1: and people say, why don't you republish it? And I
Speaker 1: guess one day I will, but I just didn't want
Speaker 1: it to come out. And then people go, have you
Speaker 1: seen the latest thing? Ian Miguilchrisfritten. It's something I wrote
Speaker 1: in my twenties. So I wrote twenty the ages twenty
Speaker 1: two to twenty seven or something like that, and I
Speaker 1: was twenty eight twenty nine when the book came out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can help, but notice linkages between things you
Speaker 2: wrote in there and things you wrote even in your
Speaker 2: most recent book, you know, going up to the matter
Speaker 2: with things you say in Against I'm calling you from
Speaker 2: against Criticism in nineteen eighty two. Are you ready for this? Okay,
Speaker 2: you might not remember this. You might not remember this.
Speaker 2: You say, the understanding of any one thing requires an
Speaker 2: understanding of the whole of which it is a part.
Speaker 2: Now that seems to capture a lot of your interest
Speaker 2: in the left and right brain sort of asymmetry.
Speaker 1: Right, it does I mean it led there by a
Speaker 1: very you know, security stuff. But then I believe that
Speaker 1: somewhere I use this image of you know, climbing the mountain.
Speaker 1: You have to go round and round before you get
Speaker 1: to the top. You can't just go straight up. And
Speaker 1: I just see this as being a very important issue
Speaker 1: throughout and at school, I already thought, you know, somehow
Speaker 1: the whole is not the same as the sum of
Speaker 1: the parts. And you know, wise guys would say to me, okay,
Speaker 1: so watch this extra something land that you put in,
Speaker 1: and I didn't think of saying, then, it's not that
Speaker 1: something needs to be put in, it's that something has
Speaker 1: been taken out in the process of disassembling it. If
Speaker 1: you disassemble anything, it's lost its structure. And the structure
Speaker 1: of the form may be the meaning in a piece
Speaker 1: of music, it's very obvious, but also in poetry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I love that you bring in gestalt psychology.
Speaker 2: That was a major principle of gestalt psychology is the
Speaker 2: idea that the perception perception is greater than the sum
Speaker 2: of the parts. And you know, while we have this
Speaker 2: divided brain, we do have the corpus colossum that tries
Speaker 2: to give us some sort of gestalt perception.
Speaker 1: Right, Yes, yes, I mean you can imagine one of
Speaker 1: the things that I had to deal with early on
Speaker 1: when I found more and more interesting themes that had
Speaker 1: been my interest before I studied medicine, because I came
Speaker 1: to medicine started studying at the age of twenty eight.
Speaker 1: So and in this country, that's unusual. That's like ten
Speaker 1: years too old. And my colleagues are, you know, fresh
Speaker 1: out of school. Got oh, I was so brave of
Speaker 1: you to do this, like, you know, one foot in
Speaker 1: the grave. But I knew what they meant. It's a very,
Speaker 1: very long haul and took me fourteen years to get
Speaker 1: to be a consultant psychiatrist. So yeah, why am I
Speaker 1: telling you that? I mean just that when I got
Speaker 1: interested in hemisphere difference and in my medical training, I
Speaker 1: started asking myself questions and these were often prompted by
Speaker 1: clinical phenomena. The thing I had to face down was
Speaker 1: that everybody said, don't touch this topic. Everybody knows it's
Speaker 1: been debunked, it's just pop psychology, it's all et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Now, the fact is that, yes, almost everything
Speaker 1: that was said back in the day was wrong, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that there is no difference. And I
Speaker 1: wanted to know what that difference was. The sure as
Speaker 1: hell is difference, and it's just knowing what that difference is.
Speaker 1: So I get frustrated. And this is how we first met.
Speaker 1: Was that you publish a piece saying, you know right
Speaker 1: and left hemisphere, this is all you know junk? Which
Speaker 1: is which is true? The old the old stuff.
Speaker 2: I didn't say that. I didn't say that, but it's junk.
Speaker 1: Well okay, but roughly I paraphrase. But but I wanted
Speaker 1: to to. I just so want people to get beyond
Speaker 1: this because there's such an interesting, I believe, path to
Speaker 1: learn about about genuine differences between the two hemispheres.
Speaker 2: Absolutely well, let's double click there a second, and how
Speaker 2: our paths crossed, so that our audience can understand. I
Speaker 2: was putting an arena to the beat when I didn't
Speaker 2: sign up for it. I was, I was. I was tricked.
Speaker 2: I was tricked to go in in in a boxing ring.
Speaker 2: In my original article ten years ago, ten years ago
Speaker 2: in Scientific American did not mention your name whatsoever, and
Speaker 2: it was not directed at you whatsoever. It was directed
Speaker 2: at pop crap you know, yeah, yeah, and then and
Speaker 2: then they put it as though like Ian responds to me.
Speaker 2: It's like, wait a minute. I never was saying anything
Speaker 2: about Ian. I love his work. So it's a it's
Speaker 2: as fascinating how these things happen. But here we are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, to be honest, I was set up in
Speaker 1: just the same way. It was like, but Scott says,
Speaker 1: this about what you're writing, about what you think you know.
Speaker 1: So anyway, there we are. The great thing is, as
Speaker 1: so often something you don't think is good at least
Speaker 1: to something that is. And this is an example.
Speaker 2: It isn't It really is an example. It really gave
Speaker 2: me a great opportunity to go down this very deep
Speaker 2: rabbit hole. This is your work in life and I
Speaker 2: I spent my whole vacation in Santa Barbara reading your work.
Speaker 2: That was my vacation. Yeah, but but it but I
Speaker 2: must say it's very, very rich. It's very uh at moments,
Speaker 2: profound and and in line with a lot of my
Speaker 2: own sort of deep interest in in intuition and imagination
Speaker 2: and intelligence. So these these are three words we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about a lot today. Let's just let's just uh,
Speaker 2: you know, let's have like a conversation, not like a
Speaker 2: formal interview, but you know, conversation just like stepping back
Speaker 2: a moment for our listeners who haven't read all the
Speaker 2: million pages you've written, like all I have, no I'm doing.
Speaker 2: I haven't read a million, all a million? But can
Speaker 2: you just explain to our listeners, I've read a lot,
Speaker 2: but it's it is a lot. Can you explain to
Speaker 2: our listeners a little bit how you see the major
Speaker 2: characteristic differences between left hemisphere and right hemisphere?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Sure, I think the fundamental difference is And people
Speaker 1: have puzzled about why the brain should be divided. You know,
Speaker 1: it seems like, when you think about it, a strange
Speaker 1: thing that an organ that it exists to make connections
Speaker 1: and derives its power from making connections, should be divided.
Speaker 1: Why should it be asymmetrical? You know, if you just
Speaker 1: needed more space, why didn't it expand symmetrically? And why
Speaker 1: is the corpus collosum involved in a great deal of
Speaker 1: inhibition of information as well as facilitation of information? So
Speaker 1: you know, these are unanswered questions, and one way of
Speaker 1: approaching this is through what I believe is the most
Speaker 1: coherent evolutionary explanation of why this should be. It's because
Speaker 1: all living creatures have to solve the problem of how
Speaker 1: to eat without being eaten in order to get stuff,
Speaker 1: either food or a tool or a twig to build
Speaker 1: a nest or whatever it is to manipulate the world.
Speaker 1: To help us survive, we need to be able to
Speaker 1: pay a minutely scrupulous attention to a detail of something
Speaker 1: so that we can quickly and precisely get it. But
Speaker 1: if it's the only kind of attention you pay, you
Speaker 1: don't survive because you also need, at the same time,
Speaker 1: which is a very difficult trick to play, to pay
Speaker 1: a completely different kind of attention to the world, which
Speaker 1: is wide open and sustained and broad and cohesive and
Speaker 1: integrating and vigilant. And the only way that actually you
Speaker 1: can do this is by having too sufficiently separate neuronal
Speaker 1: masses that they can attend to the world in two
Speaker 1: different ways at the same time. And what these two
Speaker 1: kinds of attention, the very narrowly focused, targeted attention something
Speaker 1: you already know you want to get grab and the
Speaker 1: broad open attention that is agnostic about what it may
Speaker 1: find is interesting to see what there is going on
Speaker 1: around the difference is that they create two phenomenological worlds.
Speaker 1: I just want to say, I don't think you'll find
Speaker 1: a neurologist anywhere who would deny that the hemispheres attend
Speaker 1: in different ways. This is fundamental, you know, And you
Speaker 1: see it when somebody has a right hemisphere stroke, they
Speaker 1: get this pathological narrowing of the window of attention. But equally,
Speaker 1: attention is pretty important. And it took me a while
Speaker 1: to see this that attention isn't just another cognitive function.
Speaker 1: Attention is how we construct the world. We experience the
Speaker 1: phenomenological world. How we attend and what we attend to
Speaker 1: or choose not to changes what we see the world
Speaker 1: to be and what we find there.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 1: What these two worlds look like in a very brief
Speaker 1: sketch is the world of the left hemisphere and consists
Speaker 1: of little pieces of stuff that we already know what
Speaker 1: it is. It's familiar, it's isolated, it's static so that
Speaker 1: we can quickly grab it and pick it up. It's
Speaker 1: taken out of context, it's explicit, it's abstract, it's general
Speaker 1: in nature and effectively inanimate. And the right hemisphere is
Speaker 1: see is a quite different world, and it's nothing is
Speaker 1: ultimately certain things have degrees of familiarity, But as Ramachandran says,
Speaker 1: it's the anomaly detector and the devil's advocate. It's the
Speaker 1: one that goes it could be something else. So it
Speaker 1: never sees anything as finally certain or finally separate from
Speaker 1: anything else. Everything is connected, nor is it static. It's
Speaker 1: flowing and changing all the time. It takes in the
Speaker 1: implicit That means that in terms of human psychology, it
Speaker 1: is the right hemisphere more than the less that enables
Speaker 1: us to read between the lines, to see the meaning
Speaker 1: of what is not being said as well as what
Speaker 1: is being said, to realize the implicit meaning in things
Speaker 1: like metaphors, poetry, irony, which can completely reverse the meaning
Speaker 1: of a statement or sarcasm, but also you know, poetry, drama,
Speaker 1: narrative music, all these things. So all that relies on
Speaker 1: a meaning that cannot necessarily be simply put into words
Speaker 1: that you know, make the sort of sense that you
Speaker 1: get from reading a science textbook. And this world is
Speaker 1: basically an animate world. And you know, people think I'm
Speaker 1: just saying that in some kind of metaphorical way, but
Speaker 1: I'm not. If you're using TMS. If you suppress the
Speaker 1: right hamisphere, people will see things and people that they
Speaker 1: would normally consider to be alive as no longer alive.
Speaker 1: They would see them as mechanical or zombie like, Whereas
Speaker 1: if you suppress the left hemisphere, they may see things
Speaker 1: that ordinarily they would think of as inanimate as having animals,
Speaker 1: like the sun moving across the sky. So it is
Speaker 1: very interesting these differences. And there are two I've just
Speaker 1: sign off these two little things that separate the way
Speaker 1: the two hemispheres work. One is that one of these hemispheres,
Speaker 1: namely the right, is involved in producing the very presence
Speaker 1: of something, and it's so quickly in our minds becomes
Speaker 1: a representation of that thing that we often are not
Speaker 1: aware of this. It's only when we begin meditating or
Speaker 1: doing mindfulness, or are lost in sort in front of
Speaker 1: a work of art or a beautiful landscape or whatever,
Speaker 1: that we notice something that is actually kind of really there,
Speaker 1: the sense of being there, not being off in your
Speaker 1: head commenting on it and turning it in. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: i've got it. It's a picturesque landscape. I know about those,
Speaker 1: but instead actually just being there and feeling the landscape.
Speaker 1: So in the right hemisphere you've got what Hidiger would
Speaker 1: call presencing of the world. In the left you've got
Speaker 1: representation of the world. And the other thing, which is
Speaker 1: just fun is that the left hemisphere is ridiculously over optimistic.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so in denial about anything bad that
Speaker 1: a person with a right hemisphere's stroke who's got to
Speaker 1: paralyze left side of the body will completely deny there's
Speaker 1: anything wrong with it, even though they can't move it.
Speaker 1: They'll say, there, I just moved it. I mean, it
Speaker 1: is so bad, Whereas the right hemisphere is slightly on
Speaker 1: the downside about itself. Whether left hemisphere has extreme high
Speaker 1: self esteem, the right hemisphere has sort of kind of
Speaker 1: slightly lower self esteem. But it's more realistic, it's closer
Speaker 1: to reality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, will they say depressed people are more realistic than
Speaker 2: not depressed. Exactly exactly. Now, you said so many things
Speaker 2: that I want to respond to. Let me start with
Speaker 2: the last thing. You see, the last thing you mentioned. Now,
Speaker 2: there is this really fascinating work by Richard Davidson in
Speaker 2: colleagues showing that the left heemisphere is the suit of happiness,
Speaker 2: you know, to put in pop language. But this relates
Speaker 2: very much to what you're talking about right now. It
Speaker 2: seems to be that there is a correlation between left
Speaker 2: temis for activation and happiness or feeling a general sense
Speaker 2: of well being and things of that nature. Do you
Speaker 2: think that contributes to a richer, sort of more fully
Speaker 2: alive experience, even if it's not necessarily happier.
Speaker 1: It's a very good question, and I think the answer
Speaker 1: is yes. So I think one has to distinguish between
Speaker 1: the sort of cheerfulness and the sort of brute happiness
Speaker 1: which almost anybody can have if they just don't think
Speaker 1: too much or feel too much, and the kind of
Speaker 1: connectivity that comes from leading, you know, leading a fulfilling
Speaker 1: life in which one is inevitably involved in the suffering
Speaker 1: of the world and in existential questions. But there's no
Speaker 1: doubt that to be involved in that, although superficially it
Speaker 1: seems to be something negative, is actually the way in
Speaker 1: which we grow, I think, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. So
Speaker 1: the answer to your question is basically yes.
Speaker 2: You know, I agree, and I feel like I want
Speaker 2: to map let's try to map our both of our
Speaker 2: research programs, because I think they're very consistent, not at
Speaker 2: all like it was presented in that fake debate. No, no, no,
Speaker 2: it's actually it's actually our work is actually really consistent,
Speaker 2: really consistent. We should co author an article together for
Speaker 2: them and really shocked them.
Speaker 1: That would be great, That would be great, It would.
Speaker 2: Really shock them. But because I'm obsessed with the default
Speaker 2: mode brain network, because I think that network offers us
Speaker 2: the core of human experience of what it means to
Speaker 2: be really human, And I think you're obsessed with the
Speaker 2: right hemisphere because of the same for the same reason.
Speaker 2: I could be wrong, I could be wrong, but I
Speaker 2: think that. So I went in and I looked deeper
Speaker 2: into our pub our for instance, our Nature paper, looking
Speaker 2: at the different brain networks across creative time, and I looked,
Speaker 2: I re examined it, and I noticed that there were preferential,
Speaker 2: preferential right hemisphere activations and the default mode network. When
Speaker 2: we talked about the default mode network, it was right
Speaker 2: hemisphere preferentially. Now, we didn't originally sit out to test that,
Speaker 2: so don't quote me on that as a statistically significant effect,
Speaker 2: because that wasn't our you know, we didn't have the
Speaker 2: methodology to specifically, but I noticed a trend. So I
Speaker 2: think that in a lot of ways, just at a
Speaker 2: more higher level, conceptual level. I think me and you
Speaker 2: really feel as though a lot of our discussions about
Speaker 2: human cognition and the brain really focuses on this kind
Speaker 2: of abstract and intelligence and leaves out the experiential what
Speaker 2: it means to really be and feel human, the quality
Speaker 2: of humanity and the richness of humanity. So I'm going
Speaker 2: to take a pause there, But do you do, generally,
Speaker 2: in the main, agree with it that both of us
Speaker 2: are actually quite aligned in that way.
Speaker 1: I'm sure the thing is that there is a kind
Speaker 1: of thinking that we have prioritized over all other kinds
Speaker 1: of thinking because I believe one simple thing, it helps
Speaker 1: us manipulate the world, but it doesn't necessarily help us
Speaker 1: understand it. And if you want a kind of crude SoundBite,
Speaker 1: I usually say, the right hemisphere helps us understand the world,
Speaker 1: the left only to manipulate it. And I suppose what
Speaker 1: we're both trying to do is to say that there's
Speaker 1: far far more going on in our brains than the
Speaker 1: bit that we're aware of. And you know, somebody somewhere
Speaker 1: and you know, I quote it largely because it's so
Speaker 1: hilarious with deadpan precisions. Says ninety nine point four four
Speaker 1: percent of all that we are at some level aware
Speaker 1: of is not in our center of our consciousness. And
Speaker 1: so you know, it's that other bit that is so fascinating.
Speaker 1: And I think intuition, imagination, these things are very very important.
Speaker 1: But I would also say that doesn't for me, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure it doesn't for you. Mean any disk spects
Speaker 1: a science or reason. My work is based very largely
Speaker 1: on both, particularly on being able to reason, I hope,
Speaker 1: But it's just that they can't deal with everything. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are certain things that are not irrational, but they're
Speaker 1: just not rational. Like music, it's super irrational. It's beyond
Speaker 1: the reach of reason. And so forl yeah, oh boy,
Speaker 1: this might be a big stretch. But in your nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two book Against Criticism, you actually the main point.
Speaker 2: Of that book is that you disparage analytical criticism, so
Speaker 2: any form of criticism that's based on absolutes, and you
Speaker 2: have a quote where you say the only application of
Speaker 2: abstraction there is the rejection of abstraction. You actually reject
Speaker 2: abstract intelligence as the predominant view of criticism in that book,
Speaker 2: it just seems so linked. It just seems so linked
Speaker 2: to your modern day thinking. Is that too much of
Speaker 2: a stretch? Am I being crazy here? Connection?
Speaker 1: Not at all? No, I mean I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, what it doesn't mean is that
Speaker 1: I think there's no value in analysis. And in fact,
Speaker 1: oddly enough, I use analysis p example, in the part
Speaker 1: of the book where I discuss words with I do
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff based on the frequency of certain
Speaker 1: expressions and soon, which is analytic. But I suppose I'm
Speaker 1: always worried by a process that ends in analysis, because
Speaker 1: it's just taken everything apart, and it's just lost the structure,
Speaker 1: the form, the implicit. And what I realized about works
Speaker 1: of art is that they must remain implicit, in just
Speaker 1: the way that a joke must remain implicit. Once you've
Speaker 1: explained it, it no longer has any power. It just
Speaker 1: falls completely flat. And the difficulty is that you paraphrase
Speaker 1: a poem. There's only so many things that people are
Speaker 1: going to write poems about, you know, the tragedy of love,
Speaker 1: you know, the awareness of mortality, whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: And if you do this process of just analyzing what
Speaker 1: they're you come up with the same, you know, handful
Speaker 1: of dust. Basically, you've just destroyed something that could, you know,
Speaker 1: move you more than anything you've ever read and speak
Speaker 1: to you deeply in your soul, and you've just turned
Speaker 1: it into a heap of trite. And so what I
Speaker 1: was really saying is it's the decontextualizing and the making
Speaker 1: explicit of what needs to remain implicit. That it is
Speaker 1: the danger, and that so much depends on context. Context
Speaker 1: changes everything.
Speaker 2: Let's take a step back second, can we can we
Speaker 2: talk about actually not to take a step back, Let's
Speaker 2: jump into the fray of the field of human intelligence
Speaker 2: for a moment, because this is this is where I
Speaker 2: started my career. Do you have you heard of the
Speaker 2: psychometrician at Cambridge Nicholas Macintosh. Does that mean ring a bell?
Speaker 1: Yes she does.
Speaker 2: He was my mentor studying IQ and intelligence and in
Speaker 2: fact you and him if I close my eyes, he's
Speaker 2: from Scotland. If I close my eyes, you actually sound
Speaker 2: you guys sound so. But anyway that might be like
Speaker 2: or something something now, even the cadence of speaking. He's
Speaker 2: very careful and deliberate about the way he speaks. I
Speaker 2: always appreciated that. I appreciate that about you. So if
Speaker 2: we look at the rich research on intelligence and IQ,
Speaker 2: A big part of my dissertation was my annoyance at
Speaker 2: our and even the field of psychology's obsessive focus on
Speaker 2: abstract intelligence as measured by like Raven's advanced progressive matrices test.
Speaker 2: So I thought to myself, and this is my theory
Speaker 2: of dual process intelligence. So I developed a theory of
Speaker 2: dual process intelligence that argues we should just call that
Speaker 2: explicit intelligence, but we have a whole, rich, vibrant implicit
Speaker 2: intelligence and found a zero correlation between that capacity and
Speaker 2: IQ capacity.
Speaker 1: Well that's interesting, Yeah, I mean, obviously you know far
Speaker 1: more about this than I do. Although I wrote about
Speaker 1: I have a chapter on each of emotional and social
Speaker 1: intelligence and progressive intelligence speaking IQ. Yeah, but I would
Speaker 1: have thought, or what I have found from my researchers
Speaker 1: in the area. But correct me if I'm wrong. Is
Speaker 1: that a lot of the important intelligence of scientists and
Speaker 1: mathematicians as much as artists, comes from an intuitive ability
Speaker 1: that if they don't if they lack the intuitive ability,
Speaker 1: they can plod on in science, you know, holding down
Speaker 1: a good job and being respected and so on, but
Speaker 1: they're not going to really be those high flying ones
Speaker 1: that make the important breakthroughs. And when you come to
Speaker 1: look at their experience, and I take a lot of
Speaker 1: them in the book in the Matter with Things, and
Speaker 1: look at their storage, I mean, there's just so many
Speaker 1: times in which it becomes clear that they are guided
Speaker 1: by insurition, by gestalt forms, by even the sense of
Speaker 1: the beauty of what they're discovering, more than they are
Speaker 1: by simply following a sort of analytic procedural way of thinking.
Speaker 1: So I think it's I would have thought that it
Speaker 1: was a sign of high intelligence. Whichever way you work
Speaker 1: that people who I mean, I often say that people
Speaker 1: who use their insuritions well are people who know how
Speaker 1: to reason well, and people who reason well are people
Speaker 1: who have good insuritions, So I think you need them both.
Speaker 1: I'm rather sorry to hear that you found that intuitive intelligence,
Speaker 1: if that's really what we're talking about, was not related
Speaker 1: to intelligence, because my strong hunch is that it is,
Speaker 1: and I think I quote some quote some research that
Speaker 1: suggest that it is.
Speaker 2: In fact, Yeah, yeah, no, no, there's a point five correlation,
Speaker 2: for short between the personality demean openness to experience and
Speaker 2: IQ tests. So that is true in the main, but
Speaker 2: that is only a point five correlation. And what you
Speaker 2: find is these things can break break out off in
Speaker 2: various fascinating ways. When you do you know, regression, you
Speaker 2: control for one for the other, you know, so you're
Speaker 2: you're right, we're talking about different levels of analysis. But
Speaker 2: also we didn't have any Einstein's in our sample. And
Speaker 2: I think it's interesting to think through, and I think
Speaker 2: that's the point you're making. You you argue this in
Speaker 2: your chapter, your very long chapter on creativity. You argue
Speaker 2: there might be something really fundamentally and qualitatively different between
Speaker 2: not just quantitatively, but quality between those who are fundamentally
Speaker 2: reorganizing a whole domain, a whole field of knowledge, and
Speaker 2: they might bring their intuition more to bear than you know,
Speaker 2: when we talk about creative achievement in the general population
Speaker 2: is all I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: So that's interesting, Yes, absolutely right. I mean what I
Speaker 1: wanted to draw attention to is that when you come
Speaker 1: to look at creativity research carefully, and what you find
Speaker 1: is that different patterns of activation are associated with different
Speaker 1: two things, different levels of creativity. So they're very highly
Speaker 1: creative use their brains differently from the only moderately creative
Speaker 1: or the not very creative at all. And the other
Speaker 1: thing is that the patterns you're looking for must be
Speaker 1: tested for by something that is truly creative. And often
Speaker 1: in research, because it's so hard to set up a
Speaker 1: situation in which people are going to be creative, and
Speaker 1: because it's easier to measure lots of other proxies for it,
Speaker 1: what you often end up with is not really asking
Speaker 1: them to do a profoundly creative thing, but instead to
Speaker 1: do something rather more pedestrian. And this muddies the waters,
Speaker 1: I think, because what seems to be clear is that
Speaker 1: when the task is highly creative, and when the person
Speaker 1: is highly creative, there is this very strong effect of
Speaker 1: right hemisphere preponderance. But it can become reverse as you
Speaker 1: go down, so that people who are not so creatively
Speaker 1: gifted tend to use a sort of second best mode,
Speaker 1: which is a more analytic approach to do it with
Speaker 1: a sort of rationalistic thing. Well let's try this, and
Speaker 1: so on. And I've quote annas Fad, who's a mathematician,
Speaker 1: on her research on mathematicians. She interviewed many mathematicians and
Speaker 1: also tested children that were either mathematic gifted or not,
Speaker 1: and she noticed that they approached problems in two different ways.
Speaker 1: The real mathematicians. The gifted mathematicians described always this sense
Speaker 1: of not knowing until an AHA moment came, and then
Speaker 1: they and those Aha moments were more right than the
Speaker 1: less gifted, who plodded along an analytic path and felt
Speaker 1: a different thing, that they were getting closer and warmer
Speaker 1: as they went along the path, but unfortunately often the
Speaker 1: conclusions they came to were not as good as those
Speaker 1: who had been able to do this in a more
Speaker 1: intuitive way.
Speaker 2: So I think one maybe useful way of approaching this
Speaker 2: is to realize, you know, so the personality, the main
Speaker 2: openness to experience, has various components to it. You have
Speaker 2: intellectual curiosity, which we found out predicted IQ when it
Speaker 2: came to creative achievements. So I'm not saying the intellect
Speaker 2: was not important, but it was important distinguish between IQ
Speaker 2: test performance and intellectual curiosity. Those two things were only
Speaker 2: correlated point five zero. So there could be people who
Speaker 2: ace i Q tests but don't have a shred of
Speaker 2: intellectual curiosity or intellectual openness and UH and that's possible,
Speaker 2: and then vice versa, It's possible to have very low
Speaker 2: IQ and be very intellectually curious. So that was one
Speaker 2: important distinction we wanted to make. But in the openness
Speaker 2: to mean you also have openness to fantasy and imagination,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, there are plenty people who score
Speaker 2: sky high and IQ tests but aren't particularly imaginative or
Speaker 2: have a proneness to imagination or even care about it
Speaker 2: or day. They're not big daydreamers. And then there's openness
Speaker 2: to aesthetics, which is like openness to beauty and the arts.
Speaker 2: And then there's openness to emotions, you know, which is
Speaker 2: a real deep openness to your emotional world. So I
Speaker 2: think these it's important in this discussion to to kind
Speaker 2: of break. You can have a latent construct at the top,
Speaker 2: but I think these these civic sub factors can break
Speaker 2: apart in very interesting ways. Maybe the shall we say
Speaker 2: true geniuses, I don't know, that's a terrible phrase. It
Speaker 2: sounds like a controversial phrase to say there are true
Speaker 2: geniuses and they are faker geniuses. But maybe the extraordinarily creative.
Speaker 2: Let's say that humans of our species, I would have
Speaker 2: thought they are really good at integrating all these various
Speaker 2: ways of being, or even if not integrating, experimenting with them.
Speaker 2: So let me step back and see what you think
Speaker 2: of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, I mean immediately thinking of this from a
Speaker 1: perspective of hemisphere theory, one of the distinctions between the
Speaker 1: hemispheres is that the right hemisphere seems to be able
Speaker 1: to use what the left hemisphere knows as well and
Speaker 1: take it into account, but the left hemisphere doesn't seem
Speaker 1: equivalently capable of taking into account what the right hemisphere knows.
Speaker 1: And it's also possible for the right hemisphere, under certain circumstances,
Speaker 1: to apply local attention just as effectively as the left hemisphere,
Speaker 1: but it's not possible for the right, sorry the left
Speaker 1: hemisphere to apply global attention as effectively as the right,
Speaker 1: and I talk about that in the book. So in
Speaker 1: the sense of bringing these things together, it probably is
Speaker 1: going to be the right hemisphere that's better at doing them.
Speaker 1: But I also found, to cut a very long story short,
Speaker 1: that emotional and social intelligence, no surprise, is more associated
Speaker 1: with right hemisphere function. And that's pretty much non controversial.
Speaker 1: But what is controversial is my discovery, quite contrary to
Speaker 1: anything I had previously assumed that the right hemisphere is
Speaker 1: also more important for IQ, and I'm not really surprised
Speaker 1: because a lot of it is to do with things
Speaker 1: like pattern recognition. I mean, it's a long time since
Speaker 1: I did an IQ test. I don't think I've done
Speaker 1: one since I was eleven, But I think there were
Speaker 1: things where you had to see what a series implied
Speaker 1: by looking at shapes and seeing which one was the
Speaker 1: odd one out or what was coming next, and so
Speaker 1: one that seems to me very gestalton right hemisphere sort
Speaker 1: of orientated. I might be wrong.
Speaker 2: Can I push back on that for a second, Yes,
Speaker 2: because all the most recent data I've seen on general
Speaker 2: intelligence when you look at the common variance across various subtests,
Speaker 2: because if you do look at IQ subtests that are
Speaker 2: more visually loaded than verbal loaded, yes you do find
Speaker 2: more right hemisphere activation. But actually the common variance general
Speaker 2: intelligence is more left brain activated, and I think there's
Speaker 2: that's replicated among enough studies now where actually IQ test
Speaker 2: performance in terms of the common variants, you know, generalizing
Speaker 2: across content does tend to be left brain oriented because
Speaker 2: it isn't involved in abstraction and really involved in that
Speaker 2: kind of logical reasoning. That's what the most recent research
Speaker 2: does show.
Speaker 1: Actually, well, I'd be interested in that, but I wonder
Speaker 1: if it might I don't know how it was determined,
Speaker 1: but there are problems. As I point out that when
Speaker 1: you look at what's active in a brain when it's say,
Speaker 1: doing an IQ test or something, it's probably going to
Speaker 1: be loaded towards the left hemisphere, partly because the only
Speaker 1: way that one can often test things is going to
Speaker 1: involve some degree of articulation or verbalizing, and that is
Speaker 1: going to automatically bring in the left hemisphere, but also
Speaker 1: that one is looking at any kind of faculty. I
Speaker 1: like to bring together measurements in intact humans with what
Speaker 1: we know about bits of the brain that are insulted
Speaker 1: as a tumor an injury. And what is really really
Speaker 1: striking is that when you compare people who prayer to
Speaker 1: one of these events, had an IQ measured, and after
Speaker 1: the event, their IQ was measured again where there are
Speaker 1: substantial drops, the injury was almost always in the right hemisphere,
Speaker 1: not in the left. I mean that's based on the
Speaker 1: study of one hundred and fifty six individuals who had
Speaker 1: that data and had an intervening injury. Now, I know
Speaker 1: you can argue the pros and cons of deficit literature,
Speaker 1: but you can also argue the pros and cons of
Speaker 1: every kind of imaging literture. And I think that bringing
Speaker 1: into the picture the deficit literature is quite.
Speaker 2: I agree we can bring in the deficit literature and
Speaker 2: give you and give a complete counter example to what
Speaker 2: you just said, though, and that's within the savant literature.
Speaker 2: I have been deep friends with a man called Darryl Treffort,
Speaker 2: who may he rest in peace, passed away recently. He
Speaker 2: was the scientific advisor to the movie rain Man, and
Speaker 2: he spent his whole life studying savants. And what you
Speaker 2: find with savants is that they tend to have very
Speaker 2: low IQs. So this is actually a counter example to
Speaker 2: what you're talking about. They tend to have very low IQs,
Speaker 2: but they tend to display an extraordinary talent or ability
Speaker 2: that seems to become unlocked when you are more right
Speaker 2: hemisphere focused. Again, I think suggesting an important distinction between
Speaker 2: the kind of left hemisphere IQ logical abstractive performance necessary
Speaker 2: to score high in IQ tests and the type of
Speaker 2: intelligence that is unlocked by the right hemis. I just
Speaker 2: think it's important to recognize that the intelligence of the
Speaker 2: construct seems to be richer and deeper than just IQ
Speaker 2: test kind of Raven's kind of performance.
Speaker 1: I of course agree with that, but I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that I would accept that that somehow contradicts what I
Speaker 1: was saying, because one of the other things I'm well
Speaker 1: aware of is that most cases of Savon syndrome come
Speaker 1: on after some I mean, they can sometimes congenital, but
Speaker 1: in the cases where the blow of the injury is
Speaker 1: often to the left hemisphere, and that releases the right
Speaker 1: hemisphere to be, as it were, more intelligent in certain ways.
Speaker 1: And so I'm not sure that is a counterexample. And
Speaker 1: I'd just like to mention the research done by Snyder is.
Speaker 2: Alan Snyder Alan Snider problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the nine art problem. And you know this
Speaker 1: is amazing because I know you know all of this.
Speaker 1: But what his research appears to show, which is the
Speaker 1: nine dot problem, which is extremely difficult for anyone in
Speaker 1: the normal circumstances to be able to solve within the
Speaker 1: time of the test lotted. It was unsolvable by people
Speaker 1: who had their left hemisphere activity augmented and their right
Speaker 1: hemisphere activity suppressed. But was solved by staggering forty of
Speaker 1: those who had their right hemisphere active if you augmented
Speaker 1: and their left hemisphere activity suppressed. This is of course
Speaker 1: using transcranial magnetic simulation. So anyway, I'll just throw that
Speaker 1: into the pot.
Speaker 2: No, it's great, it's great you're saying, and I agree
Speaker 2: with it. And what your example show is that a
Speaker 2: lot of IQ test batteries they miss out on creative insights.
Speaker 2: That's not what they're measuring, you know. No, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of cognitive processes relating to creativity and imagination and
Speaker 2: insight and metaphor and frame shifting that the right hemisphere
Speaker 2: contributes to that is not tapped into by measures of
Speaker 2: general intelligence.
Speaker 1: Well it is, And you know, one of the things
Speaker 1: that we need drastically in this world is to stop
Speaker 1: mistrusting our intuitions. All over the place. There are armies
Speaker 1: of psychologists making a fat living out or going around
Speaker 1: telling organizations that they shouldn't trust their intuitions. But actually
Speaker 1: a lot of the mess we're in now is because
Speaker 1: we've consistently failed to honor our intuitions for rather long time.
Speaker 1: And if we actually did respect our intuitions, they're fallible,
Speaker 1: of course, but then so is merely looking at the
Speaker 1: world logically infallible at times, but it's not a reason
Speaker 1: for not using it, because intuition you can bring together
Speaker 1: subtly various strands of thought and reason and experience and
Speaker 1: so on and come to a conclusion which is subtler
Speaker 1: than anything that would happen if you linearly argue.
Speaker 2: I love that. Yeah, I'm right there with you. And
Speaker 2: there is a tyranny of language. You know that the
Speaker 2: left hemisphere contributes to with creative thinking, because I've seen
Speaker 2: some really cool research showing that the right hemisphere is
Speaker 2: important for accessing non dominant meanings of words and unusual
Speaker 2: associations and the whole idea of the whole idea of
Speaker 2: remote associations. There's a test called the remote association's test,
Speaker 2: and the left hemisphere gets in the way of that
Speaker 2: because when I say how many uses are of a brick?
Speaker 2: Or there, if I say, you know, how many what's
Speaker 2: the use of a table? You know, your left hemisphere
Speaker 2: wants to give you kind of the most obvious answer,
Speaker 2: you know, And if you can just get rid of that,
Speaker 2: then you can access a whole depth of unusual associations.
Speaker 1: Well, we're remote associations are certainly a part of creativite,
Speaker 1: they're not obviously the full story. And and as you know,
Speaker 1: the right hemmish is much better at making these imaginatively
Speaker 1: remote associations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so, you know, mapping on the network approach
Speaker 2: to the left brain right brain approach. It's You've got
Speaker 2: me thinking about it in a such a deeper way
Speaker 2: than I ever have before. How these these two different
Speaker 2: they're just different levels of analysis. They're not They're both
Speaker 2: probably saying the same thing. There's just different levels of analysis.
Speaker 2: You know. I've been I've been arguing against the tyranny
Speaker 2: of the executive attention network, where you've been arguing against
Speaker 2: the tyranny of the left hemisphere. But conceptually, I feel
Speaker 2: like we're both bothered by the same thing.
Speaker 1: I think that that's right. Yeah, No, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of over left.
Speaker 2: Here we go. You ready for this question? What is truth?
Speaker 1: What is true?
Speaker 2: No? No, but and that's a cheeky question, but you know,
Speaker 2: I think that you kind of your work really he
Speaker 2: does raise a lot of metaphysical questions about the nature
Speaker 2: of reality and which half of the brain is really
Speaker 2: seeing reality clearer than the other.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, the what is truth question, which was first
Speaker 1: famously asked by Ponscious Pilot how we go in the book?
Speaker 1: Because I raised a lot of metaphysical questions, and of
Speaker 1: course I don't claim to have answered I'm only a
Speaker 1: fool would do that, but I do at least address them,
Speaker 1: and I do actually have I'm bold enough to have
Speaker 1: a chapter called what is Truth? And what I suggest
Speaker 1: is that, like everything else, and this is differently seen
Speaker 1: in the two hemispheres, that the left hemispheres prefers a
Speaker 1: vision of truth and acts as though truth is to
Speaker 1: be found by seeing it as a thing that is
Speaker 1: at the end of a pass, that if you take
Speaker 1: the steps to it, you will eventually reach it, and
Speaker 1: that that truth is single and pure and will be
Speaker 1: the same for everybody when they get that. And while
Speaker 1: I'm very very much opposed to the postmodern position that
Speaker 1: there are no trues, They're just whatever we choose to believe.
Speaker 1: No no, no, no no. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I think the other vision that truth is just pure
Speaker 1: and simple and clear and out there is also wrong.
Speaker 1: And what I suggest is that it comes out of
Speaker 1: an encounter and that what we experience is always something
Speaker 1: that is partly given to us and partly us giving
Speaker 1: to it, and in this encounter there is always a
Speaker 1: two way process that alters both us and what it
Speaker 1: is we're encountering. So there is a truth which is
Speaker 1: more like being true to something, being true to an ideal,
Speaker 1: being true to a person, being true to your wife,
Speaker 1: your husband, your partner, whatever. These are another way of
Speaker 1: thinking about truth that is an allegiance where you cannot
Speaker 1: prove it, but you can get very close knowing that
Speaker 1: this is really more right than whatever the alternative to
Speaker 1: this might might be.
Speaker 2: Well, well, I love that and link it to roll
Speaker 2: Me's work on human existence as an encounter with the
Speaker 2: world and creativity as an act of putting something into
Speaker 2: existence that has never existed before. You know. There is reality,
Speaker 2: but there's also creation, you know, like of something that
Speaker 2: didn't exist a moment before you know, and you can
Speaker 2: do that. You can do that.
Speaker 1: We all do it all the time, all the time,
Speaker 1: all the time. And this brings us to your imagination.
Speaker 1: I make it a distinction which is not original to
Speaker 1: me at all, between fantasy and imagination. Fantasy is something
Speaker 1: that is like dressing up reality in a way that's cute.
Speaker 1: It's like you haven't really transformed it. You've just taken
Speaker 1: something and you've put on a pretty dress. You've taken
Speaker 1: an hour aristocrat and you dressed him in a shepherd's
Speaker 1: cloak and giving him a crook, and he plays for
Speaker 1: an hour or so, And that is fantasy. But imagination
Speaker 1: is quite quite different. It's looking at something that you
Speaker 1: think you already know until it's strangeness appears to you
Speaker 1: and you enter into it with your whole imaginative faculty,
Speaker 1: which is your brings parts of your emotional life, your
Speaker 1: intellectual life and so on into it. In words, but
Speaker 1: you know, describe being in the presence of a mountain
Speaker 1: or just a rock or a waterfall or whatever, and
Speaker 1: sort of seeing it for the first time, and that
Speaker 1: is the power of the imagination. Now, what Coleridge did
Speaker 1: in Brief was to make a distinction, which when I
Speaker 1: was studying him in my twenties I thought was pedantic
Speaker 1: and slightly forgettable, but I now realize it's just profound
Speaker 1: between what he calls primary imagination and secondary imagination. Secondary
Speaker 1: imagination is what we've been talking about with artists and
Speaker 1: creativity and that very you know, clear sense. But primary imagination,
Speaker 1: which was before it, and you know, supportive of secondary imagination,
Speaker 1: was the business we do all the time in bringing
Speaker 1: into being the phenomenogical world. So all the time, second
Speaker 1: by second, I am in dialogue with whatever it is
Speaker 1: that exists apart from me, and out of that dialogue
Speaker 1: comes something that partly I created. But it only works
Speaker 1: if I am true to the thing that I'm really
Speaker 1: truly trying to see. So it is this encounter that
Speaker 1: gets closer to truth, and it is brought about by imagination.
Speaker 1: So where fantasy leads us into falsehood, imagination is the
Speaker 1: only path in the truth and it's something we're doing
Speaker 1: all the time.
Speaker 2: Wow, So fantasy is putting lipstick on a pig, is
Speaker 2: what you're saying. In essence, that's what you're saying. But okay,
Speaker 2: so you know, let's talk about the link between mental
Speaker 2: illness and creativity for a second, because there is an
Speaker 2: interesting there is an interesting connection here, and you have
Speaker 2: a very interesting take on schizophrenia as essentially you can't
Speaker 2: do anything but engage your rationality to make sense of
Speaker 2: the world. In a sense, that's that's the almost kind
Speaker 2: of an opposite of how a lot of people think
Speaker 2: of schizophrenia as being totally in the realm of delusion.
Speaker 1: Yes, but it is. It is in the realm of delusion.
Speaker 1: But but just using using reason only for approach life
Speaker 1: will lead you to delusion. As gkhss I said, you
Speaker 1: know the madmen, there's not the person who has lost
Speaker 1: his reason, but the person who's lost everything but his reason.
Speaker 1: You know, because think about it. You know, if I'm
Speaker 1: sitting in this room and I hear a voice, I
Speaker 1: look around the room and I can't see anybody, but
Speaker 1: the voice is there. I think, Okay, so it must
Speaker 1: be the next door neighbor putting a trumpet up to
Speaker 1: the wall and sending the messages, or is coming through
Speaker 1: that socket on the wall over there. This is how
Speaker 1: they think because it's a kind of reasoning, but it's
Speaker 1: reasoning on a basis of completely misunderstanding the world. And
Speaker 1: this is what happens when the left hemisphere goes off
Speaker 1: on one and suppresses what the right hemisphere can see.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm trying to map on the way I've been
Speaker 2: thinking about it, whether you're thinking about it, you know,
Speaker 2: I think of it from a network perspective. You tend
Speaker 2: to find that. I often joke in my talks about this.
Speaker 2: I say, when you look at the brains of schizophrenic
Speaker 2: patients and you look at the brains of highly creative people,
Speaker 2: you notice no difference between the brains, And I say,
Speaker 2: just kidding. Then the audience laughs. But anyway, but you
Speaker 2: actually do notice some similarities, and that's in the default
Speaker 2: mode network functioning. When you compare the brains of schizophrenic
Speaker 2: patients for creative, highly creative people, you do notice that
Speaker 2: they have a very overactive de fault mode network. But
Speaker 2: the difference between the two populations is that there is
Speaker 2: higher executive functioning among the highly creative people than the
Speaker 2: ones we put in a mental institution. But I think
Speaker 2: that that I think a lot of people we put
Speaker 2: in a men's stituition have a lot of potential for
Speaker 2: men's creativity. I say, it's important to be able to
Speaker 2: be daring enough to dip your toes into the sea
Speaker 2: of madness, but you must be tethered to a rope
Speaker 2: that can pull you back to the shore of reality.
Speaker 1: Very that's very good. I like that. And you know,
Speaker 1: my next book book one if I'm Spared.
Speaker 2: I thought you said this one was at last book
Speaker 2: in the matter of things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, if I'm spared or if you're
Speaker 1: all spared, it is a book on the art of
Speaker 1: schizophrenic subjects. I have had a fascination with this going
Speaker 1: back thirty years because I was a consultant at the
Speaker 1: Bethlman Maudsley Hospital in London, which the old Bethlum goes
Speaker 1: back to the fourteenth century at least, and it has
Speaker 1: a museum of amazing works about done by patients. Particularly
Speaker 1: interesting are the ones by schizophrenic subjects. And I've you know,
Speaker 1: I've collected ones of my own patients and studied it.
Speaker 1: But you're dead right, they have this capacity, particularly for
Speaker 1: that kind of creativity. Some of it is just bizarre.
Speaker 1: I don't know that any of it is profound. Actually,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's really the point. But what it is,
Speaker 1: it's often very telling. It tells you something about their world,
Speaker 1: and I think it's just fascinating getting into that world.
Speaker 2: So fascinating, you know. And yeah, a lot of it
Speaker 2: is are word salads and and things, but a lot
Speaker 2: of our most creative thoughts, you know, arise from that
Speaker 2: unconscious world. You know, bizarre dream like state. Right. I
Speaker 2: actually sent a portion of your book to my colleague,
Speaker 2: Colin de Young, who had argued and he had had
Speaker 2: a he had a theory that during sleep we have
Speaker 2: dopamine production to the default mode network that causes us
Speaker 2: to have a rich imagination. But then I saw your work.
Speaker 2: I saw what you you cited that the right that
Speaker 2: while we're sleeping, the right hemisphere is more active. And
Speaker 2: he argued that dopamine is projected to the right hemisphere
Speaker 2: during sleep, is what he argued. And anyway, I linked
Speaker 2: to that to what you were arguing about in sleep,
Speaker 2: a sleep like state, and it makes me think that,
Speaker 2: you know, really creative people during their wakeful hours are
Speaker 2: able to enter more of a dreamlike state with consciousness
Speaker 2: there as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, And you know, coming back to what you've
Speaker 1: just said a minute or though, it's about being tethered enough,
Speaker 1: you know, the trouble is that most of the time
Speaker 1: it is really word salad and it's not poetry. But
Speaker 1: if you take the example of Blake, I mean, Blake
Speaker 1: was almost certainly I mean nowadays he would be diagnosable,
Speaker 1: poor man, and he'd be on I don't know, a
Speaker 1: lands of Pene or something. But the thing is that
Speaker 1: he saw, you know, an angel in a tree in
Speaker 1: peckham Rye. He saw God looking in at the window,
Speaker 1: the landing window in his house. He saw the ghost
Speaker 1: of a flea. So he was clearly in another realm,
Speaker 1: but he was also very tethered in his humanity. And
Speaker 1: so what happens is you get this utterly amazing poetry,
Speaker 1: which is well, you know, one of the great achievements
Speaker 1: of English issue. And some of it is a little dotty,
Speaker 1: I agree, but some of it is just outright genius,
Speaker 1: no question. And it's interesting that Christopher Smut, who was
Speaker 1: an eighteenth century poet who was very clearly skisphrinting. He
Speaker 1: did write some very interesting poets. It's some of it
Speaker 1: was set to music by Benjamin Britton. But anyway, sorry,
Speaker 1: off the point there, but not off the point. Maybe
Speaker 1: nothing's off the point.
Speaker 2: No, No, that's the point. That's the point. That's the
Speaker 2: point that you just summarized. You just summarized everything by
Speaker 2: saying nothing's off the point. You know, the people people
Speaker 2: who have low Ladent inhibition, meaning they are able to
Speaker 2: entertain associations between things that don't seem obviously relevant to
Speaker 2: a goal, tend to be higher and creative achievement. They're
Speaker 2: able to even entertain things that So that's part of
Speaker 2: your genius, sir, that's part of your genius bringing together,
Speaker 2: you know, all these different areas of your life that
Speaker 2: you've been interested.
Speaker 1: When it comes of being pulled many different directions, and
Speaker 1: I just have seen patterns that cohere, and that's all
Speaker 1: I've tried to articulate.
Speaker 2: Let's send this interview talking about the sacred. The right
Speaker 2: hemisphere seems to be able to see the interconnectedness of
Speaker 2: all things in a way that left hemisphere kind of inhibits.
Speaker 2: And that really does get us into the realm of
Speaker 2: the sacred and into the realm of peak experiences and profound,
Speaker 2: the most profound experiences of human existence, which you don't
Speaker 2: need to be on drugs to see. But drugs help
Speaker 2: sort of, drugs help with that.
Speaker 1: Well, no, I got that they do help some people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I had grave misgivings about writing a chapter
Speaker 1: on the sense of the sacred, but it is actually
Speaker 1: the longest chapter in the book, in the last substance
Speaker 1: of chapter, and it's been pointed out to me by
Speaker 1: many people that it also could be a book on
Speaker 1: its OAF. But it costs me a lot of concern
Speaker 1: and hard work and tearing my hair and revising because
Speaker 1: I wanted to be I wanted above all to do
Speaker 1: justice to something I think is very deep and that
Speaker 1: I think we're in danger of losing the sense of
Speaker 1: the sacred and I think it's very, very important that
Speaker 1: we rediscover it. I mean, people might say, well, we've
Speaker 1: got more pressing things to do, like you know, what
Speaker 1: we do about climate change, and of course these are
Speaker 1: infinitely important, but actually we could solve these problems and
Speaker 1: not be a whit better if we remained the I
Speaker 1: think spiritually desolate people that we've become selfish, obsessed with
Speaker 1: power and wealth and neglectful of the things that really
Speaker 1: really matter, which are one us with others, one ess
Speaker 1: with nature and wonder us with the sacred vine, or
Speaker 1: whatever you'd like to call it. So yes, I did
Speaker 1: stick my neck out and write about that. But in
Speaker 1: terms of hemisphere is what it occurred to me is
Speaker 1: that the dominance of the left hemisphere, both as an
Speaker 1: actual measurable thing in the EEG, that in the normal
Speaker 1: waking state, most people are just slightly more predominantly active
Speaker 1: in the left hemisphere and the right, and of course
Speaker 1: the left hemisphere tends to dominate the right when given
Speaker 1: a chance to do so. But not only that, but
Speaker 1: in our culture, as I argue in the second half
Speaker 1: of The Master and His Hemisphere, we've moved towards a
Speaker 1: culture which has seems to have lost whatever it is
Speaker 1: the right hemisphere can put us in touch with. But
Speaker 1: if you think about it, the left hemisphere wants something
Speaker 1: that is certain, that is out there and known, that
Speaker 1: is familiar. And what we're talking about here is the
Speaker 1: exact opered it, something that is never fully known. But
Speaker 1: it's no bull in the sense that you can deeply
Speaker 1: sense something. It's like a work of art. You can
Speaker 1: never fully know it, but you were attracted by it
Speaker 1: and you know that something real there and you know.
Speaker 1: So it's quite different, and it's asking you to suspend judgment,
Speaker 1: suspend the need for proof, the need for certainty, because
Speaker 1: they just are things that are not susceptible to this analysis.
Speaker 1: And if you don't understand that, then in a way
Speaker 1: I can't really help you. But it just seems the
Speaker 1: right hemisphere is much more able to attune itself to
Speaker 1: these things on the left, and for what it's worth,
Speaker 1: the nearer imaging suggests that most of the things that
Speaker 1: open us to that kind of a world, including mindfulness, meditation,
Speaker 1: and so on, these things have effects in both hemispheres
Speaker 1: that you can't just reduce it in one thing, but
Speaker 1: overall the preponderance of the effects to be served by
Speaker 1: and to nourish the right hemisphere more than the left.
Speaker 2: I think it's important to note that that the both
Speaker 2: the left hemisphere functions the right hemisphere functions they have
Speaker 2: there both have their benefits and disadvantages. I wouldn't want
Speaker 2: to live I wouldn't want to live twenty four to
Speaker 2: seven in either hemisphere. The exclusion of the other.
Speaker 1: No, I mean the left hemisphere is essential. But as
Speaker 1: a as a servant, that's the important thing. If asked
Speaker 1: to do a job, it can do it. But if
Speaker 1: it thinks it knows everything, which he doesn't, then it
Speaker 1: becomes a problem.
Speaker 2: No, that's right. The point, the point you're making is
Speaker 2: that there's there are some things that some of those
Speaker 2: profound human experiences can only come through direct experience and
Speaker 2: opening and opening to an encounter with with the world.
Speaker 1: That's it, and it's you know that that quote of Einstein's.
Speaker 1: Whether he ever said if or what, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but the rational mind is a use servant. The intuitive
Speaker 1: mind is a precious gift. We live in a world
Speaker 1: which honors the servant that has forgotten the gift. Whether
Speaker 1: or not he put it in those words, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but it certainly is in keeping with many things he
Speaker 1: said about his own creative experiences in science.
Speaker 2: I'm going to end this whole interview today by quoting
Speaker 2: the famous Ian McGilchrist. Okay, are you ready? Are you ready?
Speaker 2: And I hope I got I hope I get this
Speaker 2: quote right. I hope I get this quote right. Our
Speaker 2: talent for division, for seeing the parts is of staggering importance,
Speaker 2: second only to our capacity to transcend it in order
Speaker 2: to see the whole. And it was a real profound
Speaker 2: experience having this conversation with you today, Ian, And I
Speaker 2: hope I think that that the people that force us
Speaker 2: to debate. I told them we're going to have a
Speaker 2: podcast chat, and I think they're going to publish our
Speaker 2: podcast chat. So I'm happy with that.
Speaker 1: I think so correct. So yeah, No, it's been lovely
Speaker 1: being here and talking with you. I feel we could
Speaker 1: go on for hours and hours, but sometimes a little
Speaker 1: is as good as a lot, and it's been nice.
Speaker 1: I feel I've made an intellectual friend here, so that's
Speaker 1: thanks very much.
Speaker 2: Likewise, well let's just say to be continued then, Okay,
Speaker 2: very good,