As before, I spent many hours carefully rereading Chapter 12 before I viewed this conversation. The reading and then, viewing of the video has triggered a potent transformation of the way in which I inhabit the cosmos. Let me explain. (It goes without saying that I am interested in connecting with anyone who is also experiencing major shifts in the way in which they inhabit the world.) My Father was a dentist and a dominating character in my life such that I ended up going to dental school and having a successful 42 year career as a dentist in a small Iowa city on the Mississippi river. Dental school involved training in many aspects of human biology all with a parts/machine orientation; for example, we dissected a human body into dead parts in Gross Anatomy and memorized the parts/mechanisms of the cells in Histology. The clinical aspects of dentistry were all oriented to the machine model as we repaired broken parts of the machine, the teeth. Without belaboring the point, we are talking about a lifetime of inhabiting a machine like world, in many ways, devoid of flow, business/money oriented with a static image of self and culture. Many of the necessities of life were served in that I made a living, was able to alleviate the bodily troubles of many suffering human beings… none of which could have happened without a machine/parts view. How many of you have read Jorges Borges”s story “The Aleph”? The Aleph was a point in which the Gestalt, flow, process of the entire Cosmos was experienced in the moment…. So imagine if you can, a dentist of 42 years making a living and inhabiting a machine like, money/business world, conditioned by years of scientific training that saw the human being as a machine with parts that could be fixed for a good fee, all of sudden gazing at the Aleph… Currently, when I encounter Dr. McGilchrist either through reading or these videos, it is as if he is saying to me, with the most beautiful, wise, scholarly, humble, humorous fashion, “I understand, Joe, what it might have been like to have the wholeness of your life encrusted with the machine-like, lifeless conditionings of the “Emissary”… but here, take a look at the Aleph… and I am…

I love how it's called Channel McGilchrist. So perfect. Most people would just use their names but this fits for some reason.

Such a great dialogue with you two! I'm enjoying every installment. I will dive into the chapters myself, after I finish the Master and his emissary. What gifts these are to humankind! Especially in this anxiety producing time in the world.

Great discussion thank you. I have been following arguments in the medical press about the "scandal" that medical research results cannot be replicated. It only now occurs to me to ask, "Why would we expect them to, we are not machines."

Alex mentions Michael Levin - incredible scientist. His work showing the spontaneous agency of the xenopus frog cells when 'randomly' grouped together is absolutely incredible. People should google him if they get the chance, has done some great interviews and talks.

An open exchange between McGilchrist and Rupert Sheldrake could be very interesting

What a great discussion. Get's to the heart of the problem of radical materialism when seeking an understanding of Life processes. I am just finishing Iain's book The Master and His Emissary. Looking forward to reading The Matter With Things. Thank you Iain and Alex for this series of illuminating talks.

Thank you Dr. McGilchrist, these are such brilliant ideas and so well researched. And, the books are beautiful. Life affirming! Edit: That Alex can engage with Iain so effectively as a younger peer is impressive.

Never enough of Ian . Thank you

My favourite chapter so far: full of miracles!

Thank you! Beautiful discussion. 💜

Fabulous conversation. Thank you. These copies of the transcript are to be transferred to my Ipad : - barbara mcclintock who won a nobel 14:32 prize in the 80s for her work in psychogenetics and she talks i mean she uses metaphors 14:37 in order to not not the sense is not that she's 14:43 come on from somewhere and overshot and is including a bit too much liveliness but she's actually striving to find 14:49 language to describe something that she could see clearly is happening and the only language she can do is to 14:56 talk about a cell or an organism sensing certain things um sensing a danger um 15:03 alerting other parts of the organism having knowledge or and indeed responding in a thoughtful manner that's 15:10 what she says so these are words that are used knowingly by highly intelligent

This insight came to me after watching a Hegel lecture on becoming (process of). I believe Hegel's yo-yo-ing between sensing and reasoning may be a mirrored metaphor for the hopscotching between hemispheres, and that both may explain intuition: A Counterintuitive Insight on Intuition: The greatest fallacy concerning human knowing is the trichotomy between the origins of conclusions via reason, sensory, and intuition. Intuition has been thought of as an “instant knowing divorced of reason,” but it just may be that intuition is “an instantaneous unfolding of knowing that has already achieved a cross referencing in the mental faculties between stored information, or memories, of previously experienced similar events and the presently sensed environment. Intuition, then, is not a premonition as such of ongoings or nature thereof, but an instantaneous “pre-recollection” of what has already been perceived and analyzed.

I am enjoying these discussions and learning so much. I hope to read the book at some point but I have to finish The Master and his Emissary first.

Fabulous conversation. Thank you. These copies of the transcript are to be transferred to my Ipad : - 23:32 lewanton says that um the dna is one of the most inactive of 23:37 all proteins that it's actually there as a storehouse on which the cell can draw in 23:44 order to achieve certain ends so the the cell as shapiro says is intelligent 23:52 every organism has a degree of intelligence and understanding and this is what mcclintock was seeing this is 23:58 what we can all see when an organism is aware that in some other 24:03 part of the organism there's something that needs to be repaired and we don't know how this awareness is achieved but 24:09 it then can take action for which it could not be programmed i mean that's that but that's 24:14 a very interesting point the cells single cells but also organisms can 24:21 respond to events that can be artificially inflicted on them that they could not be 24:28 prepared for by anything in their heredity in their lineage or in their structure and make intelligent responses 24:36 to it and that is because that's almost the definition of intelligence it's not just rote 24:42 learning or just churning out or something that's automatic but being able to see that something new needs to 24:47 happen here and being able to do that

Fabulous conversation. Thank you. These copies of the transcript are to be transferred to my Ipad : - what do i mean when i talk about 9:22 references to actively coordinated processes we get talk of coordinating functions 9:29 processes developments elements that are said to regulate control guide induce impose order on and 9:37 at times disorder arrange restructure themselves develop adapt respond attempt stimulate inhibit 9:44 suppress transmit none of this goes on in describing what happens with minerals for example 9:50 and it suggests a world in which something is happening that has a direction and involves the coordination 9:57 of a whole which is reflected in language such as the rhythm and harmony of 10:05 processes in an organism the way in which they modify themselves 10:13 coordinated organized unified integrated 10:18 um interpreted in a context and that this language is overlaid with 10:25 with value so it's not just that there is a process and it might be good or not 10:30 there are normative terms so there is proper development there is erroneous 10:36 development there are injuries there are things that need healing or correcting 10:43 repairing and things can be done in a timely fashion or not um so we're 10:49 talking here already about an organism or something that has health and can suffer disease or error 10:57 which again is not not the way in which we talk about inanimate things 11:03 and then i talk about the way in which this is more familiar from the talk about 11:08 genetics but the recognizing and interpreting of signals the 11:14 distinguishing of relevant from irrelevant information um the way in which things are adopted 11:20 erased extracted from a code the ability to communicate exhibit intentions 11:25 respond and so on so all of this and then there is the idea of the purpose in 11:31 this organism that has targets that may recruit other molecules for a certain 11:37 end um things that assist in processes aim at certain outcomes 11:42 have goals and achieve tasks so we we've got here an idea of something 11:48 that is highly coordinated holistic and full of value-laden 11:54 ideas now you could argue that this is just an accident but first of all the 12:00 extent of it is such that it can't really be swept aside as just a kind of way of expressing oneself i i let 12:06 something slip there which i shouldn't have done it absolutely pervades the whole of the discussion of life has done 12:15 since it started since the process began and it is present in in the descriptions 12:22 that are given by those who would think of themselves as mechanistic scientists yes it's a a reign of heavy freudian 12:29 slips that one cannot prevent right and of course often the defense is 12:36 well well we're just using words but we really know what we mean this is a typical one when when when one brings 12:42 this to the fore and and asks for a discussion so you're saying this so do you really mean that and then often the 12:49 answer is well not really and then it's a good moment to say well i'm just using a metaphor especially 12:55 when talking about evolution for instance right we we have all of us great trouble in talking of evolution as 13:02 as an agent because there's there's some concepts that seem forbidden and you speak about purpose and 13:08 teleology much later in this chapter nevertheless when we express them we 13:13 need to express them in this teleological and active way and so we caught ourselves wanting to say 13:19 something but that realizing maybe it's not allowed to say it in this way figuring out alternative ways but at the 13:25 end of the day we are talking that's funny at least to me like 13:31 biologists have trouble talking about the systems they study as if they were alive

Fabulous conversation. Thank you. These copies of the transcript are to be transferred to my Ipad : - "biologists are talking about things as a machines they use a different kind of 8:29 language that would not be permissible in physics or chemistry 8:34 to talk about these organisms language which suggests that there are 8:39 a number of things going on here which are not typical of the inanimate world for example 8:45 actively coordinated processes uh expressing a sense of 8:51 um wholeness um in the organism which you don't see and you don't find 8:57 permitted in the talking about the inanimate world this is inextricably linked with values 9:03 with a sense of meaning and purpose and each of these leading separately on to um a 9:10 a picture of an organism as a self-realizing entity

At some point in this conversation, I recall the assertion that the "left brain" wants to take some time to "cogitate" over a question, whereas the right hemisphere answer is apt to be very quick. This resonates with me, concerning what we refer to as "intuition". However, with regard to speed, I have a sense that the right hemisphere is either very fast, or on the other hand much slower than the left side would ever tolerate. I view left-brain thinking as situated within a relatively narrow temporal window, before exhaustion, and a more wholistic comprehension of the world as very fast or indeed very slow. I do seem to perceive my quotidian, utilitarian consciousness as rounded on both sides by this paradoxical "binarity".

Humans have built particle accelerators and many other machines (tools) , but we still cannot make a blade of grass, or a fish. Thanks for the great videos. The dance goes on.

A great discussion, thank you! I find machine imagery everywhere now that I look for it, even in spiritual descriptions, e.g. "circuitry" or Adam Gopnik:" consciousness is not the ghost in the machine, it is the hum of the machinery" It may be that we come by our faith in technology honestly, from millenia of every new stone tool method or weaponry innovation saving us from extinction, and we haven't yet been able, despite nuclear weapons, to forgo that faith. What model or image do we replace the machine model with? Are we oscillating fields? The left hemisphere wants to know lol. "Perhaps flowers are our last human stage" Helene Cixous

Thank you very much. I have wondered when Colin Wilson is going to get a mention. Is not what he describes as the robot the same as the left hemisphere?

i'm really asking is for us to think slightly more broadly yes 53:59 even it could be electromagnetic fields like the word of michael levine who you cite right again 54:06 doesn't need to be something spooky to show that genes are not sometimes are not the main players or 54:12 the players are all that there's some information that's um stored somehow in a different 54:18 physical form that's informing in that case the development of the creature

Thank you for the very insightful discussion. My comment is that it is impossible to conceptualize any form of reality, including what life is or what is a living thing, without appropriate reference to space and time. Such would amount to utter nullity! Science of life, indeed, has evolved from classical mechanistic understanding to quantum organic discourse which takes account of the interaction between internal and external environment; in an evolving electromagnetic space-matter relationship which enables the development and perpetuation of programming and reprogramming activities via the central dogma in living things. For instance, a virus is a living thing because of its ability to replicate itself despite not having the cellular (regular cytoplasmic) mechanism or infrastructure of its own. It is able to mutate and respond to its physical or biological environment and sometimes exist as inactive crystalline structure to be later reactivated. I like the analogies involving part and whole in relation to the "machine" model of living things. A part is never and can not be greater than the whole. Everything is the totality of what was but has ceased to be, what is being or has been and what is but yet to be. Everything was nothing before it became something and even nothing is something...! Yes, the nature and workings of living things is beyond their physical form or existence but transcends their interaction with the environment which may be metaphysical or simply say, within the realm of quantum science. Therefore, in order not to make the science of life more confusing, the "machine" model remains convenient but with a caveat that the machine is a machines-in-machine capable to diagnose and alter its own form according to the demands of space and time based on its initial programming which can only be explained as an electromagnetic space-matter enabled infrastructure transcending the physical universe...

One of your metaphors for consciousness was air moving through the vocal cords and how sound wouldn’t exist without both the flowing air or chords. Applying the metaphor to the brain, I imagine the vocal cords as like the physical structures of the brain, the moving air to be the electrical signals of the brain, the the sound that is produced is like the consciousness quality that is produced. I find it interesting that one of the reasons you assign to why the Holocaust occurred was that it may have been due to pervasive culture of viewing humans as machines. One of the main reasons I assign as to why the Nazis perpetrated the Holocaust was that it may have been their fascination in the occult and their consideration of religious myths which could have resulted in them trying to prevent the apocalypse in the book of revelations. I can’t help but wonder if the reasons we assign to why things occur potentially reveal more about us individually than it may the subject.

The beating heart of "the matter."

How many chapters are there in total?

Does anybody know the studies which talk about flies regrowing their eyes after a couple of generations? This sounds unbelievable; I want to fact check it. Thank you!

34:49

25:19 there's nothing like enough um information in the in the genetic code i mean we we this heroic thing of being 25:26 able to crack the g and sequence the human genome but now we're we're looking at it and 25:32 thinking about where where's all the information i mean it's worth just 25:37 reflecting a little on that um first of all 25:42 um the human genome is not particularly large um 25:48 it's thought to have 26 to 30 000 genes and an aside there why is the figure not 25:55 the precise because the definition of a gene is not as clear cut as a lot of people think 27:55 keeping and hammering the idea of a genetic program when we don't really know what genes are and 28:01 it turns out they're not programs at all well it calls for a lot of undoing and 28:07 re-explaining the real the real processes that are taking place

No sound here

Great talk. Science should be an adventure but, sadly, competition for funding and devotion to ideology have turned it into something more akin to a protection racket, with an accompanying mindset often referred to as scient-ism.

Needless to say this is the Holy Grail and at the moment underexposed. But not for too much longer imo

1. a machine can only produce what it is programmed to produce 2. a human can recognize that s/he has been programmed to produce (education, religion, politics, culture, commerce) 3. in this self-consciousness of her/his own self-consciousness s/he can choose to do other than what s/he has been programmed to do 4. life is not a machine since it can recognize itself as other than a machine, and transcend its contrived programming 5. self-consciousness of one's self-consciousness is then what makes one sentient, the negation of its own machine-likeness 6. human Ludites start Marxist revolutions when they recognize and reject their machine-likeness, their alienation, robots do not 7. this is why Hegel and Marx were both materialists and idealists, or both were neither, or only a mirrored reversal of the dialectic Hegel and Marx fought for the sentient being. Iian and Alex continue the sacred quest. I'll pitch in what I can!