Iain McGilchrist’s Naturalized Metaphysics

[Philosophy Now]

Rogério Severo looks at the brain to see the world anew.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/164/Iain_McGilchrists_Naturalized_Metaphysics

[seeds]

Rogério Severo looks at the brain to see the world anew.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/164/Ia ... etaphysics

The author of the article - Rogério Severo - wrote that according to psychiatrist and neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist (bolding mine):

A materialist or physicalist metaphysics says that the world is made up purely of physical objects devoid of intrinsic value or purpose, and that all we know about value, beauty, or spirituality reduces to the interaction of particles and forces. According to McGilchrist, such a metaphysics only makes sense to someone whose right hemisphere has been positively muffled. That view might be useful for particular purposes. However, the purpose for which it is useful can only be comprehended in terms that cannot itself be reduced to physicalism. In individuals whose brain hemispheres cooperate in a healthy and asymmetric manner – that is, in whom the right hemisphere plays the role of the ‘master’ – there always seems something nonsensical about a materialist metaphysics when it’s not viewed as merely useful for certain purposes, but taken to be about what there ultimately is.

I can think of a few members of this forum whose right hemisphere seems to be severely "muffled." Can you?
_______

[puto]

Reality and the brain injured persons, and their mental life interact? What is exactly the revenant state or the coma? Some brain injured persons suffer from seizures? Does the book answer these questions by looking at the index?

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Bloke on the bus 'ere. My two penn'orth. Severo was very kind to McGilchrist. Whom I regard as severely suspect until proven otherwise. You can easily project arrogance on to his picture. But I did like Severo's article and the updated hemispheric asymmetry. Jaynes came to mind, and I'm with young Dickie on that, 'Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion (2006) wrote of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind: "It is one of those books that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius; Nothing in between! Probably the former, but I'm hedging my bets."' (wiki) except I'm not hedging my bets. Jaynes is not as credible as McGilchrist's science. And McGilchrist ceases to be credible in The Master and His Emissary, as The Economist said, 'the book resorted to "generalisations of breathtaking sweep" and that the second part of the book "has plainly become untethered from its moorings in brain science."' The sequel, The Matter With Things, seems to be the same on steroids. It's the genius paradox. Grandiosity.

Wot I fink is that the missing dimension is emergence. seeds said, 'A materialist or physicalist metaphysics says that the world is made up purely of physical objects devoid of intrinsic value or purpose, and that all we know about value, beauty, or spirituality reduces to the interaction of particles and forces.' Reduction is meaningless; you cannot go down from existence to non-existence, chemistry to elementary particles, life to chemistry, mind to biology. The natural emergence at every level the other way isn't computable. What we know about value, beauty, or spirituality is what we make up. They are in the realm, have connotations, of qualia. To me. Wrongly I'm sure. Which don't reduce to neurons. And don't necessitate nonsense like quantum consciousness. We're so up ourselves. There is no absolute purpose to any of it. No absolute value. I am blessed with Stendhal's syndrome and can be overwhelmed, stop breathing, weep (soundlessly of course, I am British), in front of art and the beauty of nature. And? So? Two months ago I watched Mercury for the first time for 20 minutes with the naked eye. Bucket list @ 70. I can see it now in my mind's eye, hope I do when I cease to be. Value, beauty and spirituality finally emerge in the natural chain of emergence. An' that. It's all totally deterministic. And all winks out to not even black.

Sorry for the disconnected stream of consciousness, but there you go.