Left hemisphere - Right hemisphere
Centre - Periphery
Narrow - Broad
Short term - Long term
Abstract - Concrete
Certain - Uncertain
Strong - Weak
Closed - Open
Quick - Slow
Known - Unknown
Centre / Periphery
If it is the right hemisphere that is vigilant for whatever it is that exists 'out there', it alone can bring us something other than what we already know.
The left hemisphere deals with what it knows, and therefore prioritises the expected - its process is predictive. It positively prefers what it knows. This makes it more efficient where things are predictable, but less efficient than the right wherever the initial assumptions have to be revised [...]
[...] the right hemisphere presents an array of possible solutions, which remain live while alternatives are explored. The left hemisphere, by contrast, takes the single solution that seems best to fit what it already knows and latches onto it.
[There is] a tendency for the left hemisphere to deny discrepancies that do not fit its already generated schema of things. The right hemisphere, by contrast, is actively watching for discrepancies, more like a devil's advocate.
[...] the right hemisphere alone attends to the peripheral field of vision from which new experience tends to come [...]
The more flexible style of the right hemisphere is evidenced not just in its own preferences, but also at the 'meta' level, in the fact that it can also use the left hemisphere's preferred style, whereas the left hemisphere cannot use the right hemisphere's.
The range of the right hemisphere is further increased by the fact that it has a longer working memory, and so is able both to access more information and hold it together at any one time for longer [...]
This broader field of attention, open to whatever may be, and coupled with greater integration over time and space, is what makes possible the recognition of broad or complex patterns, the perception of the 'thing as a whole', seeing the wood for the trees.
In short the left hemisphere takes a local short-term view, whereas the right hemisphere sees the bigger picture.
Abstract / concrete
The left hemisphere is the hemisphere of abstraction, which, as the word itself tells us, is the process of wresting things from their context.
Abstraction is necessary if the left hemisphere is to re-present the world [...] The right hemisphere presents individual, unique instances of things and individual, familiar, objects, whereas the left hemisphere re-presents categories of things, and generic, non-specific objects.
It is with the right hemisphere that we distinguish individuals of all kinds, places as well as faces. In fact it is precisely its capacity for holistic processing that enables the right hemisphere to recognise individuals. Individuals are, after all, Gestalt wholes: that face, that voice, that gait, that sheer 'quiddity' of the person or thing, defying analysis into parts.
The right hemisphere deals preferentially with actually existing things, as they are encountered in the real world. Because its language roots things in the context of the world, it is concerned with the relations between things.
Solid / liquid
If one had to encapsulate the principal difference in the experience mediated by the two hemispheres, their two modes of being, one could put it like this.
The world of the left hemisphere, dependent on denotive language and abstraction yields clarity and power to manipulate things that are known, fixed, static, isolated, decontextualized, explicit, disembodied, general in nature but ultimately lifeless.
The right hemisphere, by contrast, yelled a world of individual, changing, evolving, interconnected, implicit, incarnate, living beings within the context of the lived world, but in the nature of things never fully graspable, always imperfectly known — and to this world it exists in a relationship of care.
The knowledge that is mediated by the left hemisphere is knowledge within a closed system.
It has the advantage of perfection, but such perfection is bought ultimately at the price of emptiness, of self-reference. It can mediate knowledge only in terms of a mechanical rearrangement of other things already known. It can never really ‘break out’ to know anything new, because its knowledge is of its own re-presentations only.
Where the thing itself is ‘present’ to the right hemisphere, it is only ‘re-presented’ by the left hemisphere, now become an idea of a thing. Where the right hemisphere is conscious of the Other, whatever it may be, the left hemisphere's consciousness is of itself.
[Iain McGilchrist]
The Master and his Emissary, p. 40-1, 43, 50-1, 174-5
Our propensity to impose meaning and concepts blocks our awareness of the details making up the concept.
However, if you zap people’s left hemispheres, they become more realistic - they can draw better and with more verisimilitude. Their minds become better at seeing the objects themselves, cleared of theories, narratives, and prejudice.
[Nassim Nicholas Taleb]
The Black Swan, p. 66
Related posts:
Closed - Open
Quick - Slow
Known - Unknown
Centre / Periphery
If it is the right hemisphere that is vigilant for whatever it is that exists 'out there', it alone can bring us something other than what we already know.
The left hemisphere deals with what it knows, and therefore prioritises the expected - its process is predictive. It positively prefers what it knows. This makes it more efficient where things are predictable, but less efficient than the right wherever the initial assumptions have to be revised [...]
[...] the right hemisphere presents an array of possible solutions, which remain live while alternatives are explored. The left hemisphere, by contrast, takes the single solution that seems best to fit what it already knows and latches onto it.
[There is] a tendency for the left hemisphere to deny discrepancies that do not fit its already generated schema of things. The right hemisphere, by contrast, is actively watching for discrepancies, more like a devil's advocate.
[...] the right hemisphere alone attends to the peripheral field of vision from which new experience tends to come [...]
The more flexible style of the right hemisphere is evidenced not just in its own preferences, but also at the 'meta' level, in the fact that it can also use the left hemisphere's preferred style, whereas the left hemisphere cannot use the right hemisphere's.
The range of the right hemisphere is further increased by the fact that it has a longer working memory, and so is able both to access more information and hold it together at any one time for longer [...]
This broader field of attention, open to whatever may be, and coupled with greater integration over time and space, is what makes possible the recognition of broad or complex patterns, the perception of the 'thing as a whole', seeing the wood for the trees.
In short the left hemisphere takes a local short-term view, whereas the right hemisphere sees the bigger picture.
Abstract / concrete
The left hemisphere is the hemisphere of abstraction, which, as the word itself tells us, is the process of wresting things from their context.
Abstraction is necessary if the left hemisphere is to re-present the world [...] The right hemisphere presents individual, unique instances of things and individual, familiar, objects, whereas the left hemisphere re-presents categories of things, and generic, non-specific objects.
It is with the right hemisphere that we distinguish individuals of all kinds, places as well as faces. In fact it is precisely its capacity for holistic processing that enables the right hemisphere to recognise individuals. Individuals are, after all, Gestalt wholes: that face, that voice, that gait, that sheer 'quiddity' of the person or thing, defying analysis into parts.
The right hemisphere deals preferentially with actually existing things, as they are encountered in the real world. Because its language roots things in the context of the world, it is concerned with the relations between things.
Solid / liquid
If one had to encapsulate the principal difference in the experience mediated by the two hemispheres, their two modes of being, one could put it like this.
The world of the left hemisphere, dependent on denotive language and abstraction yields clarity and power to manipulate things that are known, fixed, static, isolated, decontextualized, explicit, disembodied, general in nature but ultimately lifeless.
The right hemisphere, by contrast, yelled a world of individual, changing, evolving, interconnected, implicit, incarnate, living beings within the context of the lived world, but in the nature of things never fully graspable, always imperfectly known — and to this world it exists in a relationship of care.
The knowledge that is mediated by the left hemisphere is knowledge within a closed system.
It has the advantage of perfection, but such perfection is bought ultimately at the price of emptiness, of self-reference. It can mediate knowledge only in terms of a mechanical rearrangement of other things already known. It can never really ‘break out’ to know anything new, because its knowledge is of its own re-presentations only.
Where the thing itself is ‘present’ to the right hemisphere, it is only ‘re-presented’ by the left hemisphere, now become an idea of a thing. Where the right hemisphere is conscious of the Other, whatever it may be, the left hemisphere's consciousness is of itself.
[Iain McGilchrist]
The Master and his Emissary, p. 40-1, 43, 50-1, 174-5
Our propensity to impose meaning and concepts blocks our awareness of the details making up the concept.
However, if you zap people’s left hemispheres, they become more realistic - they can draw better and with more verisimilitude. Their minds become better at seeing the objects themselves, cleared of theories, narratives, and prejudice.
[Nassim Nicholas Taleb]
The Black Swan, p. 66
The new psychological constitution of the modern character had been developing since the high Middle Ages, had conspicuously emerged in the Renaissance, was sharply clarified and empowered by the Scientific Revolution, then extended and solidified in the course of the Enlightenment.
By the nineteenth century, in the wake of the democratic and industrial revolutions, it had achieved mature form.
The direction and quality of that character reflected a gradual but finally radical shift of psychological allegiance from God to man, from dependence to independence, from otherworldliness to this world, from the transcendent to the empirical, from myth and belief to reason and fact, from universals to particulars, from a supernaturally determined static cosmos to a naturally determined evolving cosmos, and from a fallen humanity to an advancing one.
[Richard Tarnas]
The Passion of the Western Mind, p. 319
After Hume, the implicative relationship between premises and conclusion thus became what counts as explanation tout court. Deductive reasoning […] came to be seen as the only legitimate form of rational thought.
Explaining an event came to be identified with predicting it […]
Explanations in terms of lawful regularities subsequently replaced ontological pronouncements about causal processes. The ability to explain by deducing would be taken as the feature that not only distinguishes the hard natural sciences from the soft human sciences but also (since strict laws are apparently not forthcoming in the latter) discredits them.
The upshot? The ancient concept of practical wisdom slowly disappeared from mainstream - and academic - philosophy, as freshmen students note to their dismay.
[Alicia Juarrero]
Dynamics in Action, p. 49
Schore discovered that the right hemisphere of the brain plays a dominant role in the formation of attachment relationships and that its maturation is at significant risk in conditions of suboptimal infant-care practices.
[Sharna Olfman]
'Reclaiming Humanity at the Dawn of Posthumanism: Conversation with Darcia Narvaez'
In Australia the Aboriginal peoples speak of The Dreaming, a reality in which the Ancestors walked on the land and special resting points created certain features. Some Ancestors turned into rocks. But this does not mean that the Ancestor stopped being and metamorphosed into an inanimate rock.
Rather, the Ancestor still exists, for Dream Time is different from our linear arrow of time, in which the past is gone forever. Dream Time coexists and interpenetrates the here and now - the Ancestor and the rock enfold one another.
Rather than being an example of "illogical thinking," the idea that rocks can teach and act as parents is a direct experience within Indigenous reality. Instead of speaking of people having access to "alternative" or "nonnormal" realities, it is probably more accurate to simply say that Indigenous people live their lives in a wider reality.
Pam Colorado said to me, "You know, David, we all have weak minds." Her perception of Westerners was that their minds are hard, logical, and forceful; and that they confine themselves to what they consider to be the practical, concrete reality.
It is difficult to shake such a mind and move it from its predetermined path, for it immediately rejects all experience that appears out of the ordinary. Only under conditions of extreme stress may such a person begin to see beyond the limits of "daily reality."
For Pam Colorado, however, the Native mind needs to be weak, for it does not erect barriers to an extended reality.
[F. David Peat]
Blackfoot Physics, p.287-8
Schore discovered that the right hemisphere of the brain plays a dominant role in the formation of attachment relationships and that its maturation is at significant risk in conditions of suboptimal infant-care practices.
[Sharna Olfman]
'Reclaiming Humanity at the Dawn of Posthumanism: Conversation with Darcia Narvaez'
In Australia the Aboriginal peoples speak of The Dreaming, a reality in which the Ancestors walked on the land and special resting points created certain features. Some Ancestors turned into rocks. But this does not mean that the Ancestor stopped being and metamorphosed into an inanimate rock.
Rather, the Ancestor still exists, for Dream Time is different from our linear arrow of time, in which the past is gone forever. Dream Time coexists and interpenetrates the here and now - the Ancestor and the rock enfold one another.
Rather than being an example of "illogical thinking," the idea that rocks can teach and act as parents is a direct experience within Indigenous reality. Instead of speaking of people having access to "alternative" or "nonnormal" realities, it is probably more accurate to simply say that Indigenous people live their lives in a wider reality.
Pam Colorado said to me, "You know, David, we all have weak minds." Her perception of Westerners was that their minds are hard, logical, and forceful; and that they confine themselves to what they consider to be the practical, concrete reality.
It is difficult to shake such a mind and move it from its predetermined path, for it immediately rejects all experience that appears out of the ordinary. Only under conditions of extreme stress may such a person begin to see beyond the limits of "daily reality."
For Pam Colorado, however, the Native mind needs to be weak, for it does not erect barriers to an extended reality.
[F. David Peat]
Blackfoot Physics, p.287-8
