The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World

by Iain McGilchrist

Induction relies on the familiar remaining unchanged. This kind of reasoning is particularly associated with the left hemisphere, which makes sense if we realise that the left hemisphere needs to be able to predict, since its main concern is a plan of action.

Inductive reasoning lies behind the so-called Einstellung effect. This is the tendency to get fixed in one’s method of approach, so that one fails to see other, better, ways of seeing a situation, or of tackling a problem. Once one has mastered a way of doing something that works well enough in one situation, one tends to carry on applying the same method to situations or problems in which it is inferior or inappropriate.

Deduction, by contrast, is seeing that something is implied by what one knows, and is latent or implicit in it – though not yet explicitly stated.

Deduction is about uncovering and integrating latent meaning so long as it makes sense, and rejecting it if it is discrepant – but not just because it is unfamiliar, or necessitates a recasting of one’s thinking. If such a recasting seems reasonable, an advance in understanding has been achieved.

The right hemisphere plays a bigger part in deduction than induction, though in both the left hemisphere generally plays the leading role – with some important exceptions, to which we now turn.

It has long been well-known that we do better at reasoning tasks when the logical conclusion is consistent with our beliefs about the world: when it is not, we make more mistakes.

Where there is a conflict between our beliefs and the logical inference, we need to inhibit the dominant (‘quick and dirty’) response associated with our belief bias, and engage more formal reasoning processes.

There is a distinction to be drawn between two kinds of false conclusion: one drawn correctly but from false premisses, and one drawn incorrectly but from true premisses.

Perhaps, to the extent that rationalising is a function of the left hemisphere, Mercier and Sperber are right that rationality is not about seeking the truth – more about finding reasons that enable one to win an argument.

More generally, as I have tried to convey, it is the right hemisphere that helps us to get beyond our familiar simulacrum of the world, with its self-reinforcing tendency – what I have dubbed the hall of mirrors – to a more authentic, ‘in touch’, actuality.

Elsewhere he says: ‘the left hemisphere’s job is to create a model and maintain it at all costs’.

‘The left hemisphere seems to suppress sensory information that conflicts with its idea of what the world should be like’, writes John Whitfield: ‘the right sees the world how it really is.’272

But, unlike the left hemisphere, the right hemisphere can operate with several types of uncertainties: inexactness, incompleteness, probabilities, fuzziness, observer error, and so on.

This is pattern recognition, at which the right hemisphere excels. It is also the basis of all scientific thought.

The left hemisphere is very good at carrying out procedures (calculation), less good at understanding the real-world meaning of the procedure.

My model, says the left hemisphere, is better than your reality: in the canonical, theoretical world of general abstractions, things should work out according to my plan. But then reality, with all its messy complexities and differences, gets in the way and spoils the story.

The left hemisphere is more likely to act on its theory as though it represented reality. A very important aspect of the real world is that in it nothing happens in isolation. Everything exists only in relation to an indescribably rich and complex nexus of other things, some of which modify whatever happens to be the ‘target’ of our attention by their very presence.

In other words there is never a truth without a context with which it interacts: there is a context for everything in the real world. In the theory that gets left out.

The left side of the body serves more as the place of receptivity and action for whatever is other than ourselves, the right side serves more those active life expressions that emerge from one’s individual self. The polarity of individual and cosmos has its counterpart in the polarity of right and left; that is the meaning we believe we can see in the structure of the body.

Indeed it is widely thought that language developed, in part, from gesture. This speech area has been found to be activated even by grasp and manipulation, and is constantly involved in the production of meaningful gestures.3 Equally, restricting hand movements impairs verbal fluency.

In left hemisphere damage, the two most serious consequences are motor impairments, particularly of the right arm and hand; and language impairments.

Here we see a radical distinction between the hemispheres: in the right hemisphere, exploring the world, on a level with it; versus seizing hold, and taking control, of the world, in the left.

My own view is that formal language was required, possibly as an effect of the increasing size of social groups, only when I–Thou relationships ceded gradually to I–It relationships. It enabled ‘me’ to communicate with ‘you’ not just about ‘us’, but about an object or third party, ‘over there’ or currently not present, on which, or on whom, we might have designs.

But another way of thinking suggests that language may not be about communication, primarily, at all. It may instead be a way of mapping the world – a system of symbols that reflects the world.

In other words, tokens or symbols cannot escape being part of the real world in the right hemisphere, and the real world cannot escape becoming tokens or symbols in the left hemisphere.

According to the narrow view and the short-term view that characterises the approach of the left hemisphere, money appears to have value in itself, to be an end in itself. But from the broader, long-term view that characterises the approach of the right hemisphere, this is clearly a mistake.

The meaning of language begins and ends in the body – where it ‘cashes out’ in experience.

There are three aspects of language that especially tether language to the lived world and to the body: metaphor, ‘prosody’ (the music of the voice, its inflection and intonation) and ‘pragmatics’ (the understanding of an utterance as a whole in its real-world context).

Rather the left hemisphere’s superiority for language stems from its being the hemisphere of representation, in which signs are substituted for experience.

It will be remembered that, though the left hemisphere does not have a good sense of the body as an integrated entity, it does have dominion over the body as an assemblage of parts.

This is just more evidence that human hemisphere difference could be seen as that between the experienced world (right hemisphere) and the virtual world (left hemisphere).

The left hemisphere’s strength in humans, because of the development of the frontal lobes, has become this: given data, it can manipulate it in certain ways highly efficiently.

Anyone who wants to be all head is as much a monster as one who wants to be all heart.

Here is evidence to suggest that abnormal electrical activity intensifies the experience associated with the cortex.

In turn, a capacity for sadness and empathy together is necessary in order to experience the socially vital feelings of guilt, shame and responsibility.

At the most primal level, the empathically connected right hemisphere prefers to keep what it guards to its left:

If I imagine myself in pain, I use both hemispheres, but your pain is in my right hemisphere.

Essentially, the left hemisphere is good at understanding the what of motor actions such as grasping a fork, picking up a cup, or flicking a switch, but not good at understanding the why.

Understanding the motivations of an action means understanding what it is to be a living human being, and working out what makes sense in a context as wide as our lived experience – and it comes by virtue of the right hemisphere.

the right hemisphere is engaged in social bonding and empathy, the left hemisphere in social rivalry and self-regard.

Once more we see the left hemisphere’s difficulty in telling fantasy from reality, theory from fact.

The right hemisphere therefore plays an important part in the understanding of all linguistic utterance – but, nonetheless, does not favour language as a way of expressing its perceptions of the world.

Distinguishing between true metaphor and cliché is of paramount importance: according to my understanding of hemisphere difference, the live metaphor should be appreciated by the right hemisphere, while the dead metaphor, the well-worn idea, should be available to the unaided left hemisphere.

The right hemisphere, in effect, becomes crucially involved whenever the question involves meaning that is not revealed by simply following the rules.

Bear in mind that intelligence is about understanding, which is not the left hemisphere’s forte: its strong suit is following familiar procedures.

As mentioned earlier, there are one or two physiological measures that have been found consistently to parallel IQ closely, and to be free from any possible training effect: reaction time and colour acuity.

pure logic cannot tell us anything about facts; only experience can.

Creativity is not a purely human prerogative. The ability to invent, to respond in a way that is not programmed, is essential to survival.

I just want to draw attention to the fact that a creative person is a microcosm of the process of creativity itself: drawing together at once factors not commonly combined.

What divergent thinking covers is not just being able to make up new ideas at random – most of which would be worthless – but perceiving connexions and shapes or forms that guide thinking by analogy: to broaden a field that has become too narrow, or to find alternative ways of visualising something that has become too familiar.