Retrospective 2024-40

This is a retrospective of week 40, 2024 (2024-09-30–2024-10-06).

This is the fourth week I’ve immersed myself in the work if Iain McGilchrist. Again, some of what McGilchrist says resonates wonderfully with me, some of it doesn’t. I’ve also listen to a conversation with Christopher Bache on the philosophical implications of non-ordinary states of consciousness.

My critique of McGilchrist is twofold:

1. He mistakes the map for the territory? What if he imposes his deep metaphysical assumptions on the anatomy of the numan brain? The hemisphere hypothesis might be a caricature of what’s going on in the intact brain. I’d suggest that the dynamic plasticity of the brain is so great that one has to be very careful not to draw too far-reaching conclusions from split-brain subjects and people with brain lesions.
2. He doesn’t walk the talk? He admires the Christian mythos very much, but refuses, as it were, to ‘come out’ as a Christian.¹ He emphasizes the importance of vital tension,² but doesn’t stay with it when receiving critique.³ He points to the generative power of opposites, i.e., the coincidence of opposites,⁴ but either ignores an opposite view or talks against it.⁵ Or, alternatively, accuses people to start sledgehammering, while wedging the sledgehammer himself.⁶

Update 2024-10-17: Text italicized and shortened.

Notes:
1. Iain McGilchrist at the Realisation Festival 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUiBzmYpt68&t=4450
2. Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things.
3. Iain McGilchrist claimed that Rupert Read “exactly” described his position and then said something against it. Read didn’t seem to agree. Neither do I. See Iain McGilchrist & Ruper Read in Conversation: Are We in a War Against Life? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= WvZ9-Y8MR0o&t=1980
4. Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things, Chapter 20. The coincidentia oppositorum.
5. Ruth Kastner said, as both a physicist and a philosopher of physics (PhD), that she totally disagrees with Niels Bohr at the Metaphyscis and The Matter With Things conference, Session 2 – Physics & Biology. This means that Kastner is in total opposition to Iain McGilhcrist who uses Bohr in support of the coincidentia oppositorum. See also Iain McGilchrist’s interaction with Ruth Kastner at the Metaphysics and The Matter With Things conference, Session 3.1 – Saturday Closing Dialogue.
6. Iain McGilchrist’s interaction with Thandeka at the Metaphysics and Matter With Things conference, Session 3.1 – Saturday Closing Dialogue.

Related posts:
A Critique of Iain McGilchrist
Retrospective 2024-39
Retrospective 2024-38
Retrospective 2024-37