Short review of the books by Iain McGilchrist, a renowned British neuropsychiatrist who has long offered profound reflections between neuroscience, consciousness, and God.

 

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Iain McGilchrist is one of the most important and influential British neuropsychiatrists in the world.

It is no coincidence that the prestigious Oxford University Press entrusted him with addressing the relationship between the humanities and sciences.

We discussed (in Italian) this last January, recalling his international bestseller The Master and his Emissary (Yale University Press 2009), in which he demonstrated that each cerebral hemisphere provides a radically different “vision” of the world.

He then used this insight to analyze some major facts of Western civilization.

McGilchrist once again captured our attention with the second volume (or rather, volumes) “The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World” (Perspectiva Press 2021).

In its 1,500 pages, the neuropsychiatrist develops the philosophical and metaphysical implications of the hemispheric thesis.

 

Iain McGilchrist, the books on brain hemispheres

The well-known neuroscientist identifies the left hemisphere as the emissary, logical and analytical, while the right is the intuitive master.

These insights were shaped thanks to patients who suffered damage to the right or left hemisphere of the brain and through studies in which the functioning of one hemisphere was temporarily inhibited.

He thus believes that humanity has become “enslaved” to the left hemisphere, which tells only part of reality. It prioritizes propositional thinking and distrusts intuition and other methods of knowledge.

The left hemisphere has no direct access to the phenomenological world but gets all its information from the right hemisphere. The latter, instead, deals with the big picture, connecting a wide variety of perceptions, ideas, and possibilities often in conflict with one another.

Simply put, the left cerebral hemisphere receives information from the right, organizes it into simple but rigid categories, and provides the words and logical processes needed to formulate a clear idea or theory. In practice, «it builds an image of reality through a linear and logical process», writes Iain McGilchrist.

However, the left hemisphere is highly resistant to alternative possibilities, reasons through rigid categories, and is radically self-referential. The right, on the other hand, has more awareness of reality, is less rigid, and lacks the ability to break reality into small pieces. It deals with the whole.

Patients with damaged right hemispheres have difficulty recognizing human faces and are disturbed by metaphors and products of poetic imagination. According to Iain McGilchrist, this happens because the right hemisphere experiences the world in relation to others; it is the center of empathy.

McGilchrist does not argue that one hemisphere is bad and the other good, but simply that they must work in harmony without the dominance of one over the other.

 

The hemispheric thesis applied to history

Very interesting is when he touches on the theme of truth, to which, explains Iain McGilchrist, one does not arrive through demonstration or discussion (left hemisphere), but it must be experienced firsthand. If something is true, he writes, «it emerges only through commitment and experience» (right hemisphere).

This strongly recalls the “come and see”, that is, the method of verifying Christianity born from the response that Jesus of Nazareth gave to John and Andrew when they first asked who he was (Jn 1:39).

In The Matter With Things, Iain McGilchrist expands on this thesis and applies it to history.

For example, he sees the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution as historical periods of tyranny of the left hemisphere.

The renowned British psychiatrist, however, greatly appreciates the Christian tradition provided it does not exclude other religions from truth. If it does, he argues, it too falls prisoner to the left hemisphere. The right hemisphere, on the other hand, holds no certainties: it rejoices with those who rejoice and weeps with those who weep.

Religion, says McGilchrist, is not about being “right” but about living with love the teaching of Jesus. If one wants to “prove” it to be true, the left hemisphere will dominate; if instead the right dominates, the “proofs” will dissolve into wonder.

 

McGilchrist between God, consciousness, and neuroscience

On our new YouTube channel we have published a very interesting dialogue between Iain McGilchrist and Christian theologian and neuroscientist Sharon Dirckx.

The two discuss what science teaches about the mind/brain connection and what this can tell us about the great questions of life.

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Below the video with Iain McGilchrist
(published on our YouTube channel)

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Against materialist reductionism

In the dialogue, McGilchrist calls “incoherent” the position of those who relegate the reality of consciousness to illusion. In fact, he ironically states, «for there to be an illusion, there must exist a consciousness that is being deceived».

He criticizes materialist reductionism, which has simplistic and Manichean views on religion, highly attractive especially to young people.

Toward the end of the video, the eminent psychiatrist is asked whether or not, for him, there is a divine entity behind the mind.

The response of Iain McGilchrist is that «after a lifetime of reflections» he perceives a «something very powerful, of ultimate importance, of great beauty, and that it is the source of life and creativity behind this cosmos».

He thus expresses support for panentheism, «because I believe the cosmos is conscious» and «God is not separable from any part of what we live and experience».

In the end, the neuropsychiatrist lets himself go to an intimate and important confession: «I feel that God speaks. I think that in daily life, God speaks to me through the things that happen».

 

Despite the difference of views (between Christianity and panentheism), we consider Iain McGilchrist a truly interesting figure, capable, thanks to his fame and public relevance, of offering an innovative and valuable contribution in the neuroscientific and neuropsychiatric field.

Certainly new oxygen breaking into the reductionist stagnation in which many of his colleagues float.