Map Makers: When systems and surfaces obtrude

John 18:38 at Sagrada Familia

I had several conversations with Robert Ellis, the most recent of which was prompted by a post to which Bayo Akomolafe responded. These allowed me to both understand some criticisms of McGilchrist (from Ellis), and to improve my own understanding of McGilchrist through them. I'll lay out a few of the interesting viewpoints we looked at together. And I'll try to use Jonathan Rowson's question to help frame the discussion: "What's at stake here?" using a few possible subheadings. The entire discussion is excerpted from a comment thread to a publicly accessible post.

 

This is a wide ranging discussion that began in July (sections two through four), everything following that (beginning with my post commenting on something Akomolafe said) occurred within the last several weeks.. So at places it circles back around and revisits the same topics a second or third time. I haven't had the time to properly edit all this for length, so I'm mostly sharing it unedited, with some of my more recent bracketed reflections. ...Some people will find this extremely pedantic and LH in orientation. I offer my apologies in advance. For those who might find something of interest here, read on.

TL;DR version: What did I learn? I guess the takeaway is that it is easier for some people to solve a difficult problem by pretending it isn't there (surface orientation), or otherwise suggest it cannot be addressed even if it is (system orientation), rather than try to relate to it according to the ways in which it becomes present to us (presentation orientation). And it is the "ways" of approaching these topics (the "how") that McGilchrist outlines, in other words, the phenomenology of the RH in its entirety (not selectively) that I've found very helpful. If we are not aware of this (Akomolafe seems enmeshed within the flat ontology of postmodernism), or if we accept some aspects but reject others (Ellis accepts some forms of meaning, but rejects paradox as this cannot be explained within his system), then the world of the RH may appear somewhat unintelligible. ...Indeed, when systems and surfaces obtrude, the "McGilchrist compass" will likely give a faulty reading, if any at all.

 

First topic: Meaning

 

One of the main criticisms Ellis has regarding McGilchrist's presentation centers around the distinction between two different kinds of meaning: 'embodied and associative meaning' (per Lakoff and Johnson) and 'representational meaning'. These two forms of meaning roughly correlate with the right and left hemispheres. The underlying meaning prior to our representations is the RH based 'embodied and associative meaning'. Our LH representations are at a more remote and abstracted level that is dependent on that meaning. In his review of TMWT Ellis writes:

 

"The ways in which meaning mediated by the right hemisphere can operate without dependence on representation in the left has been thoroughly charted by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, the pioneers of embodied meaning theory since the 1980’s. In brief, the meaning of our language (like that of all other symbols) is associative, dependent on the links made when we interact with objects or schemas in experience. We then develop this basic schematic language through metaphor so as to develop increasingly complex meaning-associations. McGilchrist makes reference to this work. As he writes, for instance: "There the motor, affective and cognitive elements are inextricable linked in ways that have human meaning, and do not need to be ‘combined’ or assembled mechanically by any higher process." Yet it is precisely this mechanical assemblage at a higher level that he remains engaged in for most of the rest of the book – somehow convinced that representations of how things really are are the key to understanding the world in a new and helpful way."

 

Ellis is very cautious not to attribute any truth value to representational assemblages, which for him can easily lead to the slippery slope of essentialist, Platonic, absolutizing, metaphysical claims of truth - the scourge of humanity that has led to "dogma, repression, and conflict". Which is why McGilchrist's apparent equivocation on the distinction between the two kinds of meaning is unacceptable to him. While discussing this with Ellis, though I can see his reasons for saying so, I suggested several possible explanations for this apparent equivocation. Briefly these involved the paradoxical transparency of metaphor that brings together surface and depth. In other words, I suggest that neither the bankruptcy of representational meaning nor the challenge of equivocation can be avoided with better linguistic tools, since it is an inescapable feature of that mode of thinking. Instead we need a shift in our mode of attention so we can "see through" representations and the 'groundlessness' that gives rise to their equivocation, and 'presence' to the world via that embodied and associative meaning.

 

Second topic: The "McGilchrist Compass"

 

Back in early July I tried to lay out how McGilchrist described what he considers to be one of his main contributions:

 

“When faced with two differing accounts of the world, we can tell from the characteristic ‘imprint’ of either hemisphere on each account which is more likely to be reliable. Without, of course, wishing to discount either of them altogether, we can make a shrewd assessment of which we ought to prefer. …If I am right, this is a genuine advance in philosophy.”

 

This is often repeated by him because it’s an important point. One might be tempted to say “Well you know one school of philosophy says this, another school of philosophy says that, take your pick”. This is the extreme relativism of postmodernism, favored for its absolute symmetry of bias. But in actual practice this symmetry produces ‘axiological nihilism’: the value of any choice is morally equivalent to any other choice we might make, and thus effectively meaningless. ...When the RH is captured by the LH we have difficulty understanding questions of value. If we have been captured by the LH, and thus are unable to recognize value asymmetry. 

 

McGilchrist claims he has something to add: “I can see the hallmark of the left hemisphere at work, and I can see the hallmark of the right hemisphere’s broader vision, and if we have to make decisions about which way we're going to lean, then I think it's wise to lean towards the one that tends to be more veridical.” His contribution, in other words, is to enable us to see axiological asymmetry.

 

This moves us from either/or ‘exclusive symmetry’ to a sort of both/and ‘inclusive asymmetry’ in how we relate to these choices for action. From the viewpoint of the LH one would tend to view alternatives as an ‘either/or’ completely relative choice, and exclude the lesser choice after having made a selection (absolutist). However from the viewpoint of the RH, we “make a shrewd assessment of which we ought to prefer” without “wishing to discount either of them altogether” (thus neither absolutist nor relativist, but provisional or paradoxical). The asymmetric "both both/and and either/or" approach thus recapitulates the hemispheric asymmetry (further elaborated in the subsection of TMWT titled "The asymmetry of the coincidentia oppositorum".) This anchors McGilchrist's speculations concerning veridical paths. 

 

"There's usually something to be said on both sides of the argument, which the right hemisphere is much better able to see. A lot of what it has to say could seem contradictory. You need to hold two points of view. Each of them has something to be said for it, but they aren't strictly speaking to be fused into one. That is a more difficult task to do" McGilchrist points out. The RH is capable of recognizing a more nuanced and complex prioritization of tasks according to asymmetric qualities, and this impels us not to exclude the lesser choice, but rather to prioritize one over the other. [I describe this methodology again below.] This broader understanding is much more sensitive to the actual limitations of embodied context, and thus can help to shift the individual and society from a misaligned and diseased state to one more consistent with the qualities of flourishing.

 

Third topic: Metaphysics

 

McGilchrist tells us that whereas TMHE was about how “the two halves of the brain pay different kinds of attention and the way in which this has played out in the history of Western Europe, TMWT is about the most basic questions: Who are we? What is the world? and What is our relationship with the cosmos?” Attempting to answer these more metaphysical questions is a job widely viewed with deep suspicion, but it directly follows from what McGilchrist believes to be his main contribution. Not only is he providing a methodology for making judgements and decisions, but he actually thinks that, from the perspective of a brain whose hemispheres are in ‘right relation’ to one another, we can say something meaningful about the world in which we live, even though such efforts may only produce what appear to be paradoxes where opposites "give rise to and fulfil one another". This is important, because we need to be able to perceive the asymmetries within the world (esp. in terms of values). 

Robert Ellis, however, wants to suggest that we cannot make any metaphysical claims. Ellis comments: "In his conversation with Rupert Read McGilchrist stated "I have never said that the right hemisphere has access to ultimate truths. What I'm suggesting is that it's more likely to reach them than the left hemisphere." I think there's a basic philosophical error there in trying to apply probability to ultimates. As Popper pointed out, any division of infinity is still infinity. Ultimate claims have infinite scope and still remain ultimate when you try to probabilize them, unless you equivocate and temporarily forget they are ultimate. There can be no probability of either hemisphere 'knowing the truth'. There is just uncertainty, and ways in which the right hemisphere helps us adapt to it that we have neglected. [...] understanding the value of each hemisphere in terms of the projected 'truth', and working backwards from there, [is] an approach that privileges the absolute left hemisphere perspective as the starting point. There is another approach which better fits the working of the right hemisphere in my view: you start with the basic awareness of uncertainty to avoid any absolute claims, and then weigh up the best available incrementally justified possible beliefs for practical judgement. That's how I'd describe the practice of provisionality as an element of the Middle Way. It's an approach that starts with a recognition of the imperfect, and stays in it, rather than just paying lip service to uncertainty but nevertheless still making deductions down from our absolute ideas of 'the truth'." 

Ellis seems to be applying Zeno's paradox to metaphysics. This may be related to his apparent difficulty in consistently applying the concept of the 'unity of surface and depth' (more on this below). Furthermore, if we have access to 'embodied and associative' meaning, as he earlier stated, and this in turn is in some sense 'ontologically primitive', and if that is the meaning to which McGilchrist encourages us to presence through our RH, then this is the sort of 'truth' that we are more likely to access via the RH. In other words, McGilchrist is just restating what I've called here the 'McGilchrist compass' (the idea I earlier referred to as a "key"). It is entirely possible to rephrase 'more likely to reach ultimate truth' as 'best available with reference to embodied meaning' since embodied meaning is ontologically primitive truth. We cannot differentiate absolutely between truth and falsehood via representational meaning, but via embodied meaning we can presence to which paths are more veridical. Had McGilchrist said "more veridical" in his response to Rupert Read above, Ellis' would have had no dispute with him here. 

Fourth topic: Transparency

 

McGilchrist describes how radical the phenomenological asymmetry between the hemispheres is:

 

"Most of us live in a world that is semi-transparent, or, as one might say, ‘translucent’, in the sense that the eye rests temporarily on the surface, but does not stay there, instead passing through and beyond to something deeper and broader beneath, the nexus in which it is embedded, which gives it meaning. But in schizophrenia, the plane of focus has changed: the gaze stops short, the surface obtrudes and becomes opaque."

 

Crucially, to those for whom the world is translucent, opacity is understood as well. "We see it all right, and yet through it to something beyond." But for those to whom it is only opaque, transparency is much harder to understand. The practical effect of the hemisphere hypothesis is to enable us to recognize if we have been captured by the left hemisphere, if the world appears 'opaque'. And from this recognition to begin to understand transparency. Attention "is a profoundly moral act" we are told, and so we have a moral obligation to understand this difference, and to understand the implications for how we prioritize actions when we have more than one option.

 

We are not limited to prioritizing a merely instrumental ‘choice optionality’ and maximizing power or pleasure over the short term, while procrastinating on doing what that 'still small voice' says is ‘the right thing to do’. There is the possibility to invert this, if this is indeed the sort of position we find ourselves. We can recognize a broader understanding of virtue. So it’s not just a simple inversion, it’s an inclusive asymmetry, one that reflects the embodied paradox of living in a translucent world."

 

Intermission: Bayo Akomolafe, Postmodernism, and Value

 

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst, Are filled with passionate intensity."  - Yeats, W.B.: 'The Second Coming'

 

In the comment section of one of his posts Bayo Akomolafe wrote: "Perhaps the most importunate instance of the stickiness of human-centred thought is the presumption that... morality has a stable goal; that justice is culture-free and universally intuited... [because] there are no Archimedean points... by which we might situate what's 'better than', except within immanent relations and sociomaterial practices that condition bodies in their co-becoming." 

 

This is a very seductive viewpoint, but it may reflect a tendency to take the relativism of postmodernism too far. And I think that may in part be because it channels the reactive psychology of victimhood. We are all the victims of something. We all know what it has been like to have been told we were wrong by some person or some system that has unjustly abused its authority and power. So we all recognize the truth in this perspective. But this can easily lead us astray. Nietzsche, the father of postmodernism, would probably agree with Akomolafe's statement. He would say that value is entirely subjective. My values are no better or no worse than yours. So don't judge. Who's going to decide? Your 'wrong' is my 'right' and there is no one who can say otherwise. But I'd ask: Where has this gotten us today? 

 

The qualification that our value judgments are always contextualized by culture, and that none of us has access to an 'Archimedean point' (or 'God's eye view') does not excuse us from our responsibility to recognize and respond to value and make ethical judgments. It is a dereliction of responsibility to suggest that it does. The fact is that, in spite of all of our differences, we recognize more values in common, even cross culturally, than we do not. That is the real mystery. (Whether we act on them is another story.) And it has been our failure to engage in a larger, more substantive discussion concerning value that is currently undermining our efforts across almost every domain in which we seek change. 

 

Now all that said, this may be an unfair representation of what Akomolafe actually believes. I think that in this instance he's just repeating a common, and most unfortunate, tenet of postmodern thought. But so long as the ethical relativism of the postmodern worldview holds sway among us, the 'value revolution' that Merz et al hope for will be stillborn. 

 

But it's not only for that reason we should reject postmodern relativism. Having thrown out the baby with the bathwater, our contemporary postmodern culture is no less blind to value than the colonial cultures it critiques. And perhaps more significantly, because of this it has made itself vulnerable to repeated victimization by them. Can you see the cycle here? 

 

[The postmodern response is generally that no theory of transcendent value is needed, merely a pragmatic theory that can solve the "interpersonal utility comparison problem". So we can accept Elinor Ostrom or Donella Meadows perhaps, but only some parts of Zak Stein or Daniel Schmachtenberger, because the latter two have described value as transcendent in some sense. The postmodern only needs a better understanding of those "immanent relations and sociomaterial practices", which is perhaps one reason why there is nothing in postmodernism and posthumanism (or Akomolafe's 'postactivism') that would preclude techno-optimism and TESCREALism, or anything else for that matter.]

 

Akomolafe read my post and responded: "In my new book-to-come, presently being written, I note that moral relativism is an unexpected, quite surprising reiteration of moral absolutism. Briefly, this is so because it seems to retain (by negation) the Archimedean point so intrinsic to modern/Kantian formulations of responsibility and morality. Absolutism universalizes specific moral codes; relativism makes them fully particular. However, both begin from moral codes. You may have misread a process-oriented view (which sees morality as immanent material-discursive relations, not transcendent codes) as postmodern relativism - when my articulation tries to problematize their shared transcendentalism, while seeing morality as this utterly creative thing that exceeds perceptions of right and wrong.

 

I think of morality as the codificatory potential of bodies in coalition. That is, morality has no inherent predetermined meaning or goal. It is what comes to matter within an assemblage of relations - a measuring in and a measuring out. This is what I mean by the utter, violent creativity of morality - in keeping with a process-oriented view. I think of ethics as the entropy of morality. If one thinks of morality as a coping mechanism, a minor gesture, ethics is the virtuality that taunts the seeming stability of the moral."

[For Akomolafe ethics and moral codes align with 'representational meaning' (socially constructed, as Foucault would say), Morality might align with 'embodied and associative meaning', however he prefers to eliminate inherent meaning from this and is thus left with the 'violent creativity' of an immanent, flat ontology that has no deeper meaning. This contrasts with the importance of meaning, value, and purpose for McGilchrist, which are all consequences of the ability to perceive depth. McGilchrist wrote "One driving force behind the emphasis on surfaces has, since Nietzsche, been an affirmation of phenomenal experience, as against the view that phenomena merely obscure an ideal Kantian ‘reality’ hidden behind them."]

I responded: "I think what might be artificially constraining this discussion is the context of a rather flat ontology, in which I assume (perhaps wrongly) that you are working through these ideas. I would suggest that as long as that is the premise with which you begin, values will remain somewhat epiphenomenal. Maybe intentionally so. But there might be more to the story if we explore alternative ontologies. Can we permit that which is considered to be transcendent (i.e. meaning, value, and purpose) without thereby derogating the immanent? It seems impossible, but writers like McGilchrist suggest such a paradox:

 

“…we do not come to understand or experience the infinite, or, for that matter, the eternal, by attempting somehow to transcend the finite or the temporal, but by immersing ourselves in them, in such a way as to pass into the infinite, manifest there where they are. The path to the infinite and eternal lies in, not away from – not even to one side of – the finite and the temporal.” (TMWT)

 

“Body and soul, metaphor and sense, myth and reality, the work of art and its meaning – in fact the whole phenomenological world, is just what it is and no more, not one thing hiding another; and yet the hard thing is the seemingly easy business, just ‘seeing what it is’. The reality is not behind the work of art: to believe so would be, as Goethe put it in an image I referred to earlier, like children going round the back of the mirror. We see it in – through – the mirror. Similarly, he says, we experience the universal in, or through, the particular, the timeless in, or through, the temporal.” (TMHE)

 

To be sure, this might not be the way most people think of an ontology where there is “no discernible line between surface and depth”, but it suggests to me that value is deeply misunderstood today. It may turn out to be the water in which we swim. If that is so, then we cannot do anything other than respond to value and make ethical judgments. I mean "we" in the broadest possible sense, inclusive of the other-than-human world."

 

Akomolafe replied: "I had a lively personal conversation with Iain about this when we met in Bristol - in front of a live audience. The tensions between our ideas animated the room - without descending into an untoward divergence. We were exploring consciousness and value. Where I think of value as immanent - and that the transcendent might be configured as an "outside-within" - Iain seems hesitant to think through these Deleuzian tensions. At the moment, I have received exciting news and I feel suddenly hungry. But I would love to continue this conversation where possible, brother. I accidentally happened upon it, and immediately loved the texture of your disagreement. I love beautiful disagreement and sensuous agreements. I love when disagreement is humble. I just couldn't stop myself from replying - though I rarely do. We travel together, brother. Talk soon."

 

Third commenter added: "Bayo does, however, characterize his points in enigmas in order to not ruffle peoples feathers. He's very good at actually speaking deep truths, while disguising them as not being offensive to the people he intends them for. This is common amongst most speakers who get along with everybody, and have to speak in riddles in order to plant seeds in those consciousnesses impervious to novel thought. I see it as a dialectic and discursive tool."

 

I responded: "I think he speaks deep truths, but in our contemporary postmodern culture I would suggest that this sort of message simply feeds into the prevailing zeitgeist. I believe it offers the illusion of change [with the freedom of 'violent creativity'] while being incapable of producing change [due to a flat ontology without any reference to depth]. It's not the first time we've seen this by any means. So unless we first recover that "feel for the whole" that we've lost, and recognize the contours of our upside world, 'thrashing about' will only tighten the snare we are caught in.

 

To clarify, it's mostly when he tries to incorporate the postmodern/ posthuman legacy that his messaging begins to suffer and ends up at cross-purposes. Now I do think there is a way to do that. Postermodernism is not all wrong. But I don't think he's figured that out yet. Because I get the impression he likes the style without really understanding the substance (not uncommon in this area). Among the deep truths of postmodern/ posthumanism there are a lot of "empty calories", and for those who can't tell the difference, guess which parts they will preferentially consume? It ends up undoing and blunting the effect of the sections, like below, where (I think) he is at his best. 

 

On the recent fighting:

"...this conflict has never been an issue between Palestinians and Israeli... a simple humanistic analysis (and ‘solution’) that focuses squarely on bad actors and their usurpation of territory risks oversimplifying... all the ways we are held within vast assemblages and machines that produce us. All the ways we only show up in part and not in wholes." https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/post/the-lines-that-whisper-us-rethinking-agency-and-accountability-in-the-middle-east-through-the-more-than-human

 

And from a recent conversation:

“Consider the American Constitution declaring “the pursuit of happiness” as a principle. I wish it also made space for “the pursuit of grief”. But no, it's just the pursuit of happiness. The problem is, when you push out the entanglements of grief and hopelessness, you demonize one side and fetishize the other. You end up with ‘fetishized joy’ materializing as absolute consumerism, extractivism, and white colonialism. You end up with dispossession, suffering, and pain. But if we give back space for grief, we can then taste the textures of joy.”

https://youtu.be/JIxymPgLk8s

 

On Mandala, Bayo wrote:

"Mandela was a memory of a future we once lived and flourished in. His legacy transcends the dialectics of black politics or white dominance; he was something a lot deeper than our denominational intuitions allow. He taught us that forgiveness is not so much about how much we are willing to let the other go free, it is about how much we recognize ourselves in the other. It is about changing our language to allow for new gestalts to emerge..."

https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/post/i-am-madiba

 

This is profound and beautiful. ...Anyway, just my opinions.

 

Robert Ellis commented on the Akomolafe thread: "The Middle Way here needs a more thorough reframe than the 'subjective' v 'objective' argument about ethics suggests. I agree with what you quote Akomolafe saying at the top about there being no Archimedean point, but I disagree with your assumption that this implies relativism. If we understand relativism in practical terms, the damaging aspect of it is the assumption that no given judgement is better than another, which undermines the value of practical moral discernment. However, the value of some moral judgements over others does not have to rest on a God's eye view or be defeated by its absence. Rather, moral normativity is justified by the quality of the judgement applied, and of the awareness of options that it incorporates in its consideration. That awareness (the basis of provisionality) in turn depends generally on our degree of psychological integration. The importance of the right hemisphere is not, as McGilchrist mistakenly thinks, to give us an alternative hotline to the absolute morality we have lost, but to help us improve our moral judgement by more adequate connection with the left, which opens up more options at the point of judgement."

 

[Yes, "the value of some moral judgements over others does not have to rest on a God's eye view or be defeated by its absence". However what does he mean suggesting that for McGilchrist it rests on "an alternative hotline to the absolute morality". Is this the "embodied and associative" meaning he referenced in his review of TMWT? The next question might be what does "embodied meaning" or "immanent relations" (Akomolafe) refer to? This gets us into the ontological or metaphysical talk about which we can only speak figuratively. Figurative language, by incorporating the depth of transparency, avoids the absolute literalism of representational meaning. More on that below.]

Fifth topic: Paradox

 

I responded: "I'm glad to see everyone here distancing themselves from postmodern relativism. It really is a caricature. But because it is tacitly accepted by many, one cannot avoid bringing it up. Once we move past this the issue becomes more complex. For McGilchrist: "The polarity between the 'objective' and 'subjective' points of view is a creation of the left hemisphere's analytic disposition." (TMHE) What does this mean? If we cannot talk about values as being (in mutually exclusive categories of) either objectively absolute or subjectively relative, then absolute Archimedean points may be a misleading "category error" so to speak, with no bearing.

 

Are we resigned to apophatic descriptions and double negatives? It is "not this" and it is not "not this". That is a frustrating thought for anyone attempting to conceptually and linguistically nail it down. So, finding that task impossible, the eliminativist might respond by trying a different categorical distinction: the immanent and the transcendent. At which point they will then usually place what is not amenable to description in the latter category for eventual elimination (there is no inherent meaning), and/or redefine it using the more tractable terms of the first (it's really a different meaning). It is in this way that the "map" has come to replace the "terrain" according to McGilchrist and others. ...All that said, it cannot be argued that these aren't beautiful maps. Some are very elaborate.

 

The tensions between subjective/ objective, relative/ absolute, immanent/ transcendent, map/ terrain, left/ right, and so on, are mutually entailed. And for McGilchrist, these are alive to us via the analytic left hemisphere. To be sure, a predisposition for conceptual division, fragmentation, and analysis is a very useful thing, but it can enter into a positive feedback loop that may lead to denial and neglect - the eliminativist perspective, a process whose first casualty is the transcendent - if it is not counterbalanced by a right hemisphere that is able to hold the tensions together and "stay with the trouble". So there is a kind of asymmetry to this relationship. Unfortunately for us, both paradox and asymmetry are for the most part incoherent to contemporary thought. We are instead biased toward consistency and symmetry. This impoverishes the values discussion immensely, and often prevents it from even starting."

[Not only would no absolute Archimedean points be possible, but no absolute relativity as well. Whereas this union may lead a postmodern to a flat ontology, for McGilchrist the paradox of division within union prevents the ontology from collapsing and becoming flat! Paradox is a key feature.]

Robert Ellis: "I don't think it's the elaboration of the map that gives it its value, but how well it helps us find our way through the terrain. For example (to continue the metaphor), some maps are on too large a scale and others on too small a scale, whilst others mark things symbolically that are not of practical interest, whilst omitting the things that are practically important. All we can do is continue to work on improving the practicality of the map."

 

I responded: "While we should improve the practicality of the maps, we must also attend to the terrain that is being mapped. There's many ways to say this of course. For example, when Daniel Schmachtenberger describes the importance of "wisdom binding intelligence" he's referring to the primacy of the terrain over any of the maps that we make. It is the terrain that should guide our maps, models, and "manipulation of parts, i.e. technology," and not the other way around." 

 

Robert Ellis: "Ah, well there I disagree. Not being God, I don't think we can have any access to the terrain-in-itself, so it can hardly have 'primacy'. All the 'reality' talk can be easily substituted by awareness of and adjustment for our biases, which are features of experience and don't require metaphysics. Recognition of uncertainty comes first."

 

[This is revealing some equivocation about what we are referring to when we use terms like 'access' to the terrain, or 'presencing' to the world. It gets back to the two types of meaning. Ellis had earlier noted that we have access to embodied and associative meaning, but not representational meaning, so he's forcing a conflict here by assuming that Schmachtenberger (and by implication McGilchrist) is not referring to this form of meaning. That isn't the case. This forced conflict leads to more problems later, as you'll see below. Unfortunately I didn't make this point at the time. ...If we do confuse our representational biases for reality, it can lead to conflict and repression. I think 'inclusive asymmetry', the paradoxical union of division and union, can prevent this sort of false confidence that can take us to exclusive 'true or false' dichotomized absolutization and help to 'calibrate the moral compass' as we engage in the 'dance of the hemispheres' (aka McGilchrist manoeuvre).]

 

I responded: “That sounds like a very pragmatic and parsimonious explanation, and there was a time when I would’ve agreed. But I now prefer the paradoxical explanation, which I’ve found to be far richer, and critically, more revealing. “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” A paradox holds tension, and it is tension that must be explained. In this case, the tension is between a familiar map, and an unknowable terrain which is fundamentally not amenable to description. Feng Youlan wrote “One needs thought in order to be conscious of the unthinkable, just as sometimes one needs sound in order to be conscious of silence. One must think about the unthinkable, yet as soon as one tries to do so, it immediately slips away.” We cannot dismiss it on account of such difficulties. But then again, many do.”

 

[McGilchrist uses many examples of paradox in his book and his conversations that might've been helpful to have brought up. The apple pie metaphor: You need tart apples and sweet honey to make an apple pie. Likewise, we need both RH and LH, or associative and representational meaning. Matt Segall recently pointed out that Whitehead's two elementary categories are "actual occasions" and "eternal objects" which presuppose one another. He wrote: "the polarity between them is what throws the world into process". The question is, in Schmachtenberger's terms, how does wisdom "bind" intelligence? Ellis suggests reducing equivocation is important to this end. I suggest depth perception allows us to see through inherently equivicatory representations altogether.

 

(Earlier I had remarked to Ellis: "Paradox and opponent processing appears to be a fundamental feature of our world. I was completely confused why anyone would find any comfort in paradox at all, as at first it only vexed me. Considerably so. Only more recently has that changed. But that was by no means a foregone conclusion and of course for many people it never does cease to be vexing."

Ellis responded : "I would say I've taken the opposite journey, from being intrigued by paradox in earlier life to feeling that it's unhelpful now. That change has followed a growing recognition of the need to always prioritize practical judgement, which for me had its roots in Buddhist practice.")]

 

Robert Ellis: “It's not a question of dismissal for me, nor does parsimony appeal to me much. It's rather a matter of distinguishing the helpful meaning of metaphysical speculations (which is often archetypal) from their damaging dogmatic application as belief. Much more a matter of winnowing. Part of that winnowing process is recognizing that there are some things that we don't need to explain to find helpful ways forward. Our ideas about them may be inspirational, but they are ideas, not bases of belief.”

 

["Winnowing" is a metaphor that Ellis used in his review of TMWT as well. His extremely pragmatic focus is the logic behind his approach to the "Middle Way" philosophy he developed. Winnowing implies that which is winnowed, and anything he associates with absolutizations (aka metaphysical talk) has become the primary target of that action. So his criticisms of McGilchrist in this regard are not personal, they are simply the consequence of his philosophical system. However, I think this system and it's eagerness to winnow is also inherently antagonistic to the paradoxical "both/and" asymmetric inclusivity of McGilchrist, through which we can view any topic without the need to "winnow" it away. It is possible to appreciate the terminological clarity that motivates Ellis, while also suggesting that he's "missing the depth of the forest for the trees". An important contrast might be made: to the extent that the motivating logic for Ellis is perceptual accuracy concerning representational thought and thus the elimination of metaphysical talk as incommensurate with that, then the motivation for McGilchrist is perceptual accuracy via inherently figurative 'presentational thought' and thus the reincorporation of metaphysical awareness as intrinsic to that, to put it roughly.]

 

I responded: “Suppose someone uses the language of meaning, value, and purpose. As you pointed out, we do need to distinguish between the helpful and harmful application of these ideas. When such descriptions are literal and dogmatic they can be very harmful. We definitely don’t want that. But if they are figurative or archetypal, then they might point to something helpful. Which brings up McGilchrist’s use of the notion of translucency or transparency. Unlike opacity, translucency is able to integrate surface with depth [or representamen and object, in Peircean terms, or perhaps we might say, the caricatures of Nietzsche and Kant]. Any approach that makes no allowance for depth is missing something. McGilchrist restated a very old insight when he wrote: 

 

“...opposites not only co-exist, but give rise to and fulfil one another (‘sunt complementa’), and are conjoined (like the poles of a magnet) without any intervening boundary, while nonetheless remaining distinct as opposites. And indeed the more intimately they are united, the more, not the less, they are differentiated." 

 

If we fail to perceive that paradoxical union between surface and depth, then we become vulnerable to the dogmatic application of metaphysics and axiology. Or in other words, despite our best efforts, it's hard to escape cycles of victimization when we don't understand the form of thinking associated with exploitation. How we attend is "the difference that makes the difference”. And so to avoid dogmatism, rather than just seeking out some midpoint on a flat ontology, it may be at least as important to shift our attention so we can see into that extra dimension of depth, and begin to learn how to talk about that.”

 

[Like Zak Stein and McGilchrist, I suspect that axiological considerations like value, etc are "ontological primitives" that we can recognize if we perceive "depth" (most people perceive depth in meaning, time, and telic depth, without any prompting). But contemporary culture is for the most part either blind or, more likely, negligent in this regard, and engaged in a reinforcing feedback cycle that increases our negligence. Which suggests we have quite a bit of room for improvement.]

 

Robert Ellis: "In the quote you've given above, I just see Iain taking metaphorical constructions over-literally. The 'opposites' are features of our way of categorizing the world, not of the world itself, and thus they cannot be 'conjoined' in themselves (that's metaphysical talk). The insight he may be trying to get at is a psychological one - that apparently opposing positions are addressing different conditions, so we can learn more about conditions by reframing and integrating what they seem to be telling us. But that's an entirely practical point that needs to be approached practically, not an excuse for more metaphysics.

 

We experience 'opposites' in various senses in such things as oil and water not mixing, or magnets repelling each other, but conflicting opposites are entirely human projections that reflect what does or does not fit our purposes. The thinking 'associated with exploitation' is metaphysics - i.e. beliefs that cannot be modified in the light of experience, and that thus form easy shortcuts to bind groups quickly. So the 'difference that makes a difference' is whether we can in practice find a point between opposing absolutes that addresses conditions better - nothing to do with 'some midpoint on a flat ontology', as there's no ontology involved.

 

'Surface' and 'depth' are also metaphors that are developed from the experience of feelings or intuitions being deep in our bodies or not, and 'translucency' from an experience of seeing: it is not helpful to literalize and rigidify these metaphors by turning them into metaphysics, but we can readily appreciate their relationship to embodied experience, and use that to help us gain an appreciative but critical perspective on constructions using them."

[Ellis is restating his initial point here, that he finds paradox unhelpful. The notion of surface, depth, and translucency is intimately connected to how we see through representations to the deeper presentation. We need the harmony between surface and depth, which is another way of saying we need harmony between LH and RH, between the emissary and the master (syzygy). ...In early July Ellis had remarked "The stuff about opacity is also well put". But alas, at this point in the conversation he seems to be pursuing a path away from consilience, and so now "it is not helpful to literalize and rigidify these metaphors", assuming that were the intent to begin with.]

 

Sixth Topic: Metaphor, interpretation, exegesis

 

I responded: "It may be that some of this can be chalked up to terminological differences, in that it concerns how we use these terms. Or rather, it may be attributed to an attentional difference concerning how we see the purported phenomena to which they refer. The implication of McGilchrist's thesis is that, assuming it is possible to describe at least two very different views upon any subject, then as important as 'what' we see is 'how' we see it. Applying that here, it may be possible to see metaphysics as, on the one hand, abstract and literal representations, or on the other hand, as inherently metaphorical language. In other words, perhaps it is only the abstract and literal definition which you associate with metaphysics, whereas McGilchrist may be suggesting a definition which is capable of accommodating more than one perspective. 

 

In connection, it may be worth noting that if we "literalize and rigidify metaphors" we have not changed 'what' we see, rather we have only changed 'how' we see it, insofar as a descriptive approach reflects an attentional stance. That could make a big difference. So we may come nearest to an understanding of value (or anything else) by using the metaphorical or 'gestural' approach. This may be a ‘repugnant conclusion’ for the more literal-minded among us. It might be justifiably objected that definitions neither should change, nor do change, regardless of attention. And it may be objected that the phenomena in question is illusory, or at least inaccessible. Nonetheless, our ability to see phenomena is affected by our quality of attention. In other words, how we attend has global implications, which may extend all the way to the meaning of terms, how they are used, and the way in which they are described."

 

[The importance of metaphor and analogical thinking has been remarked upon by many, both in its foundational and inescapable aspects. Metaphor may not seem to bear any relevance to metaphysics, or meaning, value, and purpose. It might seem incoherent, illogical, and of course unnecessary. But the etymology of words reveals their origin in metaphor and analogy for embodied and associative meanings. (Star Trek fans will recall the episode "Darmok".) The suggestion that analogy is crucially important is not unique of course; Robert Rosen, author of Life Itself, and Douglas Hofstadter, author of Surfaces and Essences (from which this post title is partly inspired) also agreed. What McGilchrist is describing eludes exhaustive description, and that presents a difficulty. We certainly could read his statements as rigid and literal metaphysics. However, given the context of his thesis, and that they are coming from a psychiatrist and literary scholar, the safer explanation might be that they should be read metaphorically. 

 

The context of McGilchrist's work is of course a comparative exercise wherein one form of attention is contrasted with another to bring to light the asymmetry between them in regard to our experience of the world. And by means of recognizing this asymmetry it is supposed that those "helpful ways forward" stand forth a bit clearer. If we are overly explicit we often obscure an implied meaning, but if we use analogy and metaphor we can risk misunderstanding, for numerous reasons. Is there some optimal balance or combination of the explicit and implicit? What is the most helpful way forward for any given author or audience? Metaphysical misunderstandings and confusion may not be something we can entirely prevent, on the part of either an author or their audience. But that also lays the groundwork for what can become a productive dialogue.]

 

Robert Ellis: "The idea of multiple perspectives on metaphysics takes us to the equivocation problem. Ambiguity isn't a problem when it just helps us appreciate complexity and soften up our rigidity, but when used in any kind of practical argument it really is. If we use terms that are most commonly used absolutely in relative senses, that provides a ready field for confusion and rationalisation, ad hoc arguments, motte and bailey fallacies, and so on. McGilchrist illustrates this by falling into these when he assumes, for instance that Platonic style metaphysics is necessary for a sense of life-meaning. He justifies metaphysics using relative arguments and then uses it to justify absolute claims. Terminology is highly adaptable, but we need a coherent practical strategy underlying how we choose to use it, which takes account both of its current use and how we wish it to be used.

 

I agree entirely about the need to emphasise how we pay attention to things: but that also applies to the way we think and the way we use concepts. Absolutized thinking such as metaphysics is distinctive in the ways that it forces our attention into a dichotomy of either accepting or rejecting a given representational claim. One of the major problems with trying to use such terminology in non-absolute ways is that it's impossible to change that basic dichotomization in the way we use it: a given claim is either true or not, and to say it's 'half-true' is another way of saying it's not true, or not the way things 'actually are' beyond our experience. Using it in relative ways is like trying to use a hammer to screw in a screw, once one widens one's attention to the wider issues of the practical uses of terms."

 

I responded: "If the equivocation is in regard to the definition of the terms that are used to represent phenomena, then greater specificity will be our friend. But if it is due to an attentional or perspectival difference concerning how we see the purported phenomena, as is the case here, then additional detail might not help. More to the point, greater specificity could actually engage and reinforce the very perspective that opposes the one from which we would've been able to come nearer to the phenomena, thereby only obscuring the implied meaning. Likewise, the "basic dichotomization" in the way we use terminology is, per McGilchrist, "a creation of the left hemisphere's analytic disposition". So if we insist upon adherence to these modes of thinking from the outset, we may actually prevent the possibility of recognizing phenomena that might have otherwise been revealed had we taken the less appealing approach of metaphor. We also know that the desire for explicit language is correlated to a tendency to deny that which cannot be contained by it. Which leads us to the ironic conclusion that some of the steps we take to minimize misunderstanding may operate at cross-purposes to genuine understanding. So while analogy and metaphor may lack clarity and risk misunderstanding, there are inherent risks to both approaches. 

 

I don't know if there can ever be a "coherent practical strategy" for how to induce a leap of perspective from a literal to a more figurative mode of thought, or allow us to recognize when one has occurred. The explicit and quantitative are ill suited to account for the implicit and qualitative. Where one person may infer absolute metaphysical claims of necessity that are themselves either true or not true, and which expose numerous logical fallacies, another may see analogical thinking and implied metaphor that is not intended to state 'the way things actually are', but rather to 'gesture toward' them. Sometimes analogies announce themselves, like your hammer and screw analogy, which is itself an excellent example of the capacity to convey deeper meaning, but the majority of metaphors do not betray their form without access to a broader contextual understanding, without access to that nebulous 'feel for the whole' which we are incapable of incepting into another person. 

 

We are often faced with a choice between at least two different ways to read or understand anything. If there are any reasons to doubt which we should prefer it would probably be best to consider both. Then we won't miss the opportunity to critically appraise the use of metaphor qua metaphor. Which is especially important given the asymmetry here. If we mistake the literal for the figurative we have not lost as much as if we mistake the figurative for the literal. Because whereas the former risks imputing an aspect of depth or additional meaning not otherwise intended, the latter risks falling short of and missing the target altogether."

 

[McGilchrist: "The problem is that the very brain mechanisms which succeed in simplifying the world so as to subject it to our control militate against a true understanding of it." A very significant paradox. Recall the phrase 'Less is more.' Ellis' winnowing is intended to remove the possibility of metaphor; this isn't the sort of 'less is more' that is helpful. However metaphor, by being less specific allows the mind to see what cannot be captured. This is the kind of 'less is more' that is helpful. And it is in that sense that the paradoxical sentiment applies here. Ellis' reviews of TMHE and TMWT both reflect his willingness to gladly follow McGilchrist insofar as he writes unambiguously. However in TMWT McGilchrist switches his approach and begins to indulge the use of figurative language to a much greater extent, which is common to his literary background and speculative philosophy inclinations. For reasons described here, this allows him to better pursue the elusive subject of metaphysics. Ellis either ignores or fails to notice this change, and he continues to preferentially interpret and evaluate McGilchrist literally and, by all appearances, devastatingly. But due to his misapprehension of metaphor, I think this is a significant mistake. Ellis' review ends up becoming a sustained attack on a strawman that for the most part only serves to confirm his own biases, and this may be because he is either unwilling (or unable) to accept McGilchrist's work in the spirit in which it is presented. It is as oddly triumphal in its denunciation as it is blind. The set of concepts he struggles to understand, or avoids mention of, include paradox, translucency, and perhaps most significantly, metaphor, all of which defy a simple account by the LH mode of thinking. (A video clip of Bruce Lee in "Enter the Dragon" explaining the “Finger pointing to the moon” comes to mind.)]

 

Robert Ellis: "I have no problem at all with the figurative appealing to the RH to give us a feel for a situation. The issue is the metaphysical interpretation of metaphor that appropriates it and turns it into rigid LH representational belief. We can't miraculously make a LH representation into a RH one to create a 'leap of perspective': when we think we're doing that, we're still in the LH perspective and are digging it in more deeply. The LH and RH have different functions that we need to accept: the LH helps us to solve problems in practical terms, but it deceives us when it thinks it's telling us how the world ultimately is instead, and the RH provides new meaning resources and alerts us to new information that the LH can then investigate. To try to use the RH for an entirely LH function - verbal description of how things are for a specific purpose - is self-deception. The vagueness of the RH is good and important, as long as we recognize it as providing meaning, not 'truth'."

 

I responded: "Right, each has its respective role, and though they are united they must be kept divided; these are necessarily separate modes of attention. And I agree that what is associated with figurative thinking can be misappropriated and attended to in the manner of literal thinking, and that in general this should not be done. The converse of this is the possibility that what is associated with literal thinking can be attended to and taken up by figurative thinking. However you seem to suggest this may not be possible: "We can't miraculously make a [literal] LH representation into a [figurative] RH one to create a 'leap of perspective'".  Now, I would understand the desire to obviate this possibility, given your assumptions, which seem to include (1) the inability of the RH to 'presence to' the terrain or anything like value, meaning, and purpose, and (2) the perception that the only possible way of thinking about them is literal, by definition. Under these starting assumptions the RH cannot access nor offer anything at all. The conclusion is: 'We can't, and furthermore we wouldn't want to if we could.' But of course I would question these assumptions by suggesting that there may be a misunderstanding concerning what that "miraculous" leap of perspective consists in. We might reconsider the capacity of the RH to reveal the world to us, and also its unifying and integrating capacity. (Jonathan Rowson partially described this as the "McGilchrist Manoeuvre".) 

 

I'll set that aside for the moment and return to the transition of the figurative to literal, about which we do agree. Here we see a draining away of meaning as 'style' becomes elevated above 'substance'. And we are left with hollow representations, like an empty container that can be easily, and all too often, appropriated by predatory opportunists for ill purposes. The danger of dogma is not just literal thinking. Rather than imputing meaning that isn't there, it coincides with a diminution of the capacity to see meaning behind representations. And so the relative importance of signifier and signified is inverted. This is analogous to the case studies of RH damage, which display a profound loss and impoverishment of the quality of experience. So yes, we might say that "meaning resources" provided by the RH most definitely do help the LH "to solve problems in practical terms", and can even help prevent them from emerging in the first place. It is through the loss of meaning, and the loss of value, that we become more vulnerable. (Zak Stein has a considerable body of work addressing some of this.)

 

An objection one may raise is that all these metaphors are actually confusing the issue with a profusion of empty and misleading signifiers, the unfortunate legacy of Platonic or Kantian metaphysics. And it would be better if those were altogether avoided. On the one hand I might agree, because if no loss or separation had occurred, and our experience were whole, then what possible use could we have for any of these representations? However on the other hand, to describe what is lost one cannot avoid the use of signifiers. Now the significance of exchanging one group for another can be a lively terminological dispute, but if all one sees are words, definitions, and paragraphs with more text, then it would all be for naught anyway. It wouldn't matter whether we use Greek, German, or Gaelic terms, or none at all. However if one can figuratively 'see through' the words and connect them to aspects of phenomenal experience, then perhaps they might evoke an echo of something we can recognize, something whose loss or fragmentation may be keenly felt. Style will always detract from substance if that is as far as our plane of focus extends. 

 

In short, to talk about whatever it may be that terms like 'values' are referring to, or for that matter any other signifier for something whose absence has been felt, we have to be able to see past the lines between our terms, and to some extent, even between the lines separating cultures. Take for example the (perhaps less controversial) subject of fairies in Scottish mythology. There is some highly regarded scholarship that delves into the psychology of this folklore.* Though it would be easy to summarily dismiss entire fields of investigation such as this, cultural folklore often contains a lot of wisdom that is capable of opening our eyes to things we wouldn't otherwise be aware of. In the same way, we might view all of philosophy as the cultural folklore that we provisionally use, replete with figurative language about life, all while knowing full well that we continuously supplement and/or replace vast portions of this interdependent network of linguistic tools with oftentimes still more richly patterned figurative representations. But we are resigned to talking about the fairies and other wood folk that dwell in the garden. Now overhearing our conversation many people might laugh and say we are stupid and foolish, but those who know we aren't really talking about fairies will understand. As it is only accessible through the indirect approach of metaphor, meaning is often seen through and embedded within a contextualizing mythos. 

 

*Reference: According to Alastair McIntosh, in the Gaelic world 'fairy' is understood as a metaphor for, or being about ways of 'seeing into' and talking about, the imagination. Scottish scholarship takes this symbolic way of speaking very seriously, and one might even say it is an indigenous way of talking about the RH. The book "Scottish Fairy Belief" was written by Lizanne Henderson and Edward Cowan, the late professor of Scottish history at Glasgow University."

 

[Ellis' pragmatic description, wherein the function of the RH is primarily just to "provide new meaning resources and alerts us to new information that the LH can then investigate", ignores the capacity of the RH to connect us to the terrain of life and living, that "presencing" aspect. This leans toward a somewhat utilitarian understanding of the hemisphere hypothesis. Recall earlier Ellis had said "I don't think we can have any access to the terrain-in-itself", this seemed to back away from his earlier statement about the two kinds of meaning and our access to embodied and associative meaning. However below he reconfirms his earlier statement by noting it was only representational meaning (aka propositional revelations) that we don't have access to.]

 

Robert Ellis: "I think you're still misunderstanding my assumptions, which are only fully fleshed out in my books. I may not have understood your summary of the first: "(1) the inability of the RH to 'presence to' the terrain or anything like value, meaning, and purpose": if by 'presence to' you mean 'offer propositional revelations about', then I agree it's unable, but the RH nevertheless offers all the sources of value, meaning and purpose from experience. So does 'presence' as a verb mean experience, or the representation of that experience in propositions? "(2) the perception that the only possible way of thinking about them is literal, by definition" is definitely *not* what I think - I think the opposite, in fact. We can think about things in ways that are appreciative of meaning without believing in them, and that's exactly where, indeed, philosophy can play the same role as folklore (I agree with you there). We can explore metaphorical constructions in all the arts and in religion. We can also talk about possible beliefs hypothetically, and about beliefs we do hold but provisionally. Then of course we can hold beliefs absolutely or metaphysically. Only the last of these is completely 'literal' in the sense of entirely representational, but provisional belief occurs in a representational frame that is contextualized by an awareness of alternative possibilities other than the mere acceptance or negation of the 'literal' belief.

 

"To describe what is lost one cannot avoid the use of signifiers" I agree, but those signifiers can (and need to be) used provisionally: that is, with a wider contextualization of the meaning of what is discussed in awareness. That's what I meant by the practical necessity of using the LH. Perhaps this is also what you mean by 'seeing through'. I also agree that the imagination has a vital role - one of providing meaning resources to maintain provisionality, and also one of inspiration.

 

Coming back to the end of your first paragraph, though, the implication of this is not at all that "the RH cannot access nor offer anything at all". On the contrary, the RH offers us everything that is worth anything, that is not just hollow verbiage and evil manipulation. The problem isn't about what the RH offers us, nor about its "unifying and integrating capacity", but of how we communicate about what we think it is offering us, and whether we try to do so in the absolute terms that are the hallmark of the over-dominant LH. When we talk about the RH 'revealing' things, in the position McGilchrist has reached, this seems to merely be a way of creating absolute claims out of it. Absolute metaphysical claims, once produced, are so deep in the LH that they are immune to the RH perspective - we cannot modify them or contextualize them, or use them provisionally or 'see through' them as you put it, but have to merely accept them or reject them. Do you really not see how sad and ironic a reversal that is?"

[This puts the finger on figurative thinking, about which there is a clear difference between us. Whereas Ellis states "we have to accept or reject" metaphysics, I am suggesting metaphysics is inherently figurative when viewed from the RH, and it is inherently literal when viewed from the LH. In other words, it's the 'how' not the 'what'. Whereas Ellis is saying that some 'whats', such as metaphysics in this case, are able to override any 'how' by which they are approached. ...Seeing no consilience here, I returned to and restated the "McGilchrist compass" as the point of agreeement between us.]

Seventh Topic: McGilchrist Compass (redux), and conclusion

 

I replied: "Thanks for the clarifications. It might be helpful to describe a sort of practice, the results arrived at through its application, and what can be said concerning them. We might say that, to the extent McGilchrist is promoting any metaphysical claims, these are supposedly derived from his metatheory (the hemisphere hypothesis). This 'theory about theories' suggests that you can see the signature (hallmark, imprint, etc.) of a certain hemisphere in any theory or worldview. It follows that "without wishing to discount [any] of them altogether, we can make a shrewd assessment of which we ought to prefer" (TMWT). In other words, "we can make weighted decisions about which, of any two paths, is likely to prove in the long run more veridical, more helpful".

 

So rather than suggesting "a way of creating absolute claims" out of what the RH reveals, it may be more accurate to say he is suggesting a method for recognizing differences between opposing claims that are provisionally held, differences that correspond to hemispheric asymmetries. It's a comparative, possibly 'incremental', exercise for contextualizing and evaluating new propositions, as well as claims already on offer. The second half of TMWT is a sustained exercise (hubristic to be sure) wherein he tries to apply this and mediate between the vast array of scientific and philosophical claims. Clearly not everyone will agree with the results, which are inevitably going to be bound by the limitations of the individual and the context in which the exercise is carried out. The method itself is insightful, but the more hands it is placed in, the more reliable the results will be. 

 

Thomas Ellison's charitable critique was "the author has blindspots that might otherwise be made visible and repaired if he were to open up parts of his thinking that have not yet come to fully accept his own conclusions." Now, one of those conclusion is that "relations precede relata". That would suggest that a sustained application of this 'McGilchrist compass' would elevate associative meaning over the essential meaning of conventional Platonic metaphysics [McGilchrist's caveat: "Without, of course, wishing to discount either of them altogether."] as associative relations are (somewhat paradoxically) that which is "essential to the phenomenon". Surely many similar implications could be drawn out."

 

Robert Ellis: “"To the extent that McGilchrist is promoting any metaphysical claims..."?!!! Hm, well, let me quote you the recent summary of all the metaphysical claims in TMWT by David McIlroy that was recently circulated by Perspectiva (perhaps you saw this). So, this is not my interpretation or my summary, but a mainstream view of what McGilchrist is saying that is being actively promoted by his publishers:

 

1. Relationships are ontologically primary, foundational; and ‘things’ a secondary, emergent property of relationships.

2. Matter is an aspect of consciousness, not consciousness an emanation from matter.

3. Individuation is a natural process, whose aim is to enrich rather than to disrupt wholeness.

4. Apparent opposites are not as far as possible removed from one another but tend to coincide.

5. Change and motion are the universal norm, but do not disrupt stability and duration.

6. Nothing is wholly determined, though there are constraints, and nothing is wholly random, though chance plays an important creative role.

7. The whole cosmos is creative; it drives towards the realisation of an infinite potential.

8. Nature is our specific home in the cosmos from which we come and to which in time we return.

9. The world absolutely cannot be properly understood or appreciated without imagination and intuition, as well as reason and science: each plays a vitally important role.

10. The world is neither purposeless nor unintelligent, but simply beyond our full comprehension. The world is more a dance than an equation.

11. At the core of the world is something we call the divine, which is itself forever coming into being along with the world that it forms, and by which, in turn, it too is formed.

 

Of course, if you really want to, it's possible to bend over backwards to make a highly charitable reading, and pretend that he isn't really saying any of these things. But we're not just dealing with a personal conversation with him here: this is big public stuff, influencing a lot of people, and already having political influence as well as steering the wider intellectual climate. It's what he's taken to be saying that's most important in the long run. There's a point where one needs to stand up in clear opposition to serious and influential errors, rather than obfuscating or merely being nice.”

 

I replied: "Yeah, I wasn't overly impressed with McIlroy's denatured "distillation" of TMWT either. And to further support your point, not everyone will view his list within the larger context of his article. It can easily become "copypasta". Interpretation and contextualization are very important. Taking McGilchrist's lead, there may be something to say for advancing simultaneously along at least two separate tracks: one more charitable and the other more critical, so long as each is sufficiently contextualized. Another reason why I think your perspective is valuable. There is the potential for, and actual instances of, misappropriation to consider, including by his own hands. Yes, "one needs to stand up in clear opposition to serious and influential errors''. 

 

My similar perception, in regard to Akomolafe, is what motivated the original post. But there is also a lot of potential there. Those who can 'move the needle', by introducing a new paradigm, or holding up a new lens through which to view our contemporary predicament, or more fundamentally, by simply reminding us that we already have a compass by which to orient, are thinkers to attend to, engage with, and criticize."

 

[It's not so much 'what' that metaphorical compass reveals as 'how' it reveals, though what it reveals is of course very important too. From McIlroy's article: "Our dependence on metaphors reveals our need for myths and for metaphysics. “Just as there is no option to think without metaphor, there is no such thing as not having a myth” (TMWT Epilogue p.1330). “[U]ltimate meaning will always lie beyond what reason can conceive or everyday language express.” (TMWT, ch.14 p.569)." I alluded to an elision of metaphor and metaphysics above in my comparison of fairies, folklore, and philosophy. However, whereas figurative thinking helps us compare and contextualize to see past the words, the denaturing process of metaphysics (as absolute claims) means that this sort of thinking will be of no help unless it is re-contextualized. However this is, as mentioned, categorically impossible for Ellis. Like any other abstract LH representation, metaphysics must be recontextualized via the interhemispheric dialectic.

 

Much of what we talked about could be applied to religious exegesis, as I'm sure you can see. For Ellis, one might say that there will be no metaphysical fairy talk, or more charitably, at least no ambiguity when it does happen. Ellis seems to strive for a high degree of specificity in what cannot be avoided, and for the elimination of what can be avoided. Like Akomolafe, he has an admirable allegiance to embodied and associative meaning, but a collapsed ontology that lacks a metaphorical language for depth. In contrast, McGilchrist wants to walk with us "on the hills and the mountains" of the terrain so we can see "new vantage points continually open around us". His literary and mythopoetic background supplies the metaphorical virtuosity (with depth of significance and meaning) that allows him to advocate for the world of the RH, without collapsing it entirely (Akomolafe) or suggesting access to depth is practically unintelligible (Ellis).]

Bonus eighth topic: Truth

See "The Roots of Postmodernism: Schelling, Process Philosophy and Poststructuralism" by Arran Gare:

"Whitehead accepted that there is more to the world than will ever be grasped by language, criticised the tendency to take abstractions for reality (the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness”), and accorded a primary role to metaphors in thought, language, philosophy and science... [He] called for the production of a diversity of metaphysical schemes. While 'we cannot produce that final adjustment of well-defined generalities which constitute a complete metaphysics... we can produce a variety of partial systems of limited generality.' The resulting rival schemes, inconsistent with each other, but each with its own merits and its own failures, will then warn us of the limitations within which our intuitions are hedged. This simultaneously opposes the quest for absolute truth while allowing that understanding can be advanced." 

The question "What is truth?" is at the heart of much of this. At his recent lecture "Dominus Illuminatio Mea: Our Brains, Our Delusions, & the Future of the University", McGilchrist noted: 

"First, to clear away a misconception. In speaking of truth, I want to distance myself equally from two popular false alternatives. On the one hand ‘naive realism’, that there just is a world 'out there' that it's our duty to record passively as if we were Geiger counters or photographic plates, and 'naive idealism', the view that we 'make up' reality and are therefore free to do so in any way we wish. Each of these travesties misses the important perception that truth is an encounter. There is then no one absolute truth about the world that results from every encounter alike. But there are certainly truths - some things we believe to be truer than others. In the humanities we should be used to the idea that truth is of this nature. We speak of a musical performance as truer to its subject than another, a critical interpretation of a work giving a truer account than another, and we expect at least a degree of consensus on the matter among those who know enough to recognize a good interpretation when they hear one. There are very clearly better and worse interpretations. As a critic of Hamlet, no one account is exclusively correct. I could get it indisputably wrong, for example by claiming the play is really an account of peasant life in Azerbaijan in the 10th Century. There being no single fixed truth absolutely does not mean there is no truth. Without truth we would have no reason to do or say anything at all. Even the statement that 'There is no truth' is a truth statement... https://youtu.be/OpCIHhw4i8g?t=1270

If nothing is allowed to correct a theory we're doomed to live by lies. What at first sight may seem paradoxical is that science is threatened both by inappropriate subjectivity on the one hand and by an unsustainable belief in a kind of objectivity that modern physics has long discredited on the other, the kind that assumes that the the knower plays no part whatever in knowledge. Truth is never objective in this artificially limited sense. But important as it is to recognize that fact, it's every bit as important to validate science's attempt to respond fairly and fully to the reality with which it engages. That is where true objectivity lies. https://youtu.be/OpCIHhw4i8g?t=2014

What is Truth

Zak Stein: "If we've been brought to a place where our civilization is about to self-destruct, then how do we learn to perceive what's actually valuable again? Because we're clearly very confused about value. One of the central risks that people don't see, in terms of catastrophic risk, is the collapse of culture, truth, and value." ...So "What is truth?" I tried to succinctly paraphrase that chapter from The Matter with Things:

Truth is a process, not a thing to be possessed but a path to follow. It is intrinsically incomplete and uncertain. Many things – most of the really important things in our lives – can never be proved, but they are nonetheless far from being a matter of individual whim where ‘anything goes’. The ‘antifragile’ idea of proof recognizes that it derives its value from the context, and so can never be absolute or immune from evolution. The brittle, ‘fragile’ idea of truth as independent of us, immutable and certain, is a relatively recent invention. We need to regain the strengths of the former, and lose the weaknesses of the later.
 

Agreement, common ground, can be reached because experience of the world is not random. The pursuit of truth summons a disciplined attentiveness and an open and active receptivity to the task. It is incapable of being encountered except through embodied being, engaged in the world. When one speaks truth, one hopes that people will agree, but they can always find reasons not to agree if they are determined enough not to hear. ‘That’s just your opinion’, people say, with the implication that ‘my opinion is as good as yours’. And, undoubtedly, it may be – or it may not.

That is the point: there is still a structure of better and worse, even where better or worse cannot be finally demonstrated so as to avoid dissent. It is a never-finished seeking after, and evolving of, something that is disclosed by the very process which the ‘game’ of life continues. The predominant views in public debate today – naïve positivism and naïve deconstructionism – are devoid of any sense of a 'continuous process of connection' with the world. The ‘betweenness’, of a web of relationships in which fidelity can operate, has been lost, and with it the configuration of the Gestalt.

Recall the recent Darwin College lecture, where McGilchrist said "the beginning of true knowing is when we recognize how little that we know". But here he's saying "truth is not a free-for-all or matter of individual whim; there is still a structure of better and worse." These two statements seem logically incompatible. If we know very little, then how do we know there is this structure? But I think it is our capacity to hold these apparently opposing insights together that enables "a sense of awe and wonder about the extraordinary, complex, and beautiful cosmos". We should not blind ourselves to the structure of the cosmos on account of our limited understanding (willing ignorance), rather we we must stand in awe before something we can only begin to comprehend (true knowing).

“It is possible to construe both truth and falsehood as having meaning only in relation to assertions in language, but that is to miss their depth" writes McGilchrist in The Matter with Things. Stephen Wolfram recently echoed this problem, "There are axioms at the foundations of mathematics. And given these axioms, you can derive things. And you can say, 'Is this actually true?' Well, if you change the axioms, you might be able to derive it, or you might not be able to derive it. But we're concentrating on what can be derived. You don't have to force yourself into this kind of question of 'What's the logic?', so to speak, because there isn't a logic. It's just, 'What can exist in the world?'" (It's supralogical.)

 

If we only take truth to be a matter of language and logic, then we have already consigned ourselves to a fictional world untethered to reality. "The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space. It was thus that Plato left the world of the senses", wrote Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason. On the other hand, if we only "pose questions with a hammer" as Nietzsche advised in Twilight of the Idols, then we have limited ourselves to viewing the world through a narrow aperture. Yes, truth is constrained, but it is not constrained by our tools, whether held in the mind or in the hand. So while “we are capable of greater things than we know”, as McGilchrist concluded his Darwin College Lecture, we are not capable of anything whatsoever. We routinely deceive ourselves in such ways however, particularly when we ignore relationships: 

 

"In David Mermin’s model there are only correlations – no correlata. He quotes Christopher Fuchs, Professor of Physics at Boston, as suggesting that the distinction between the ‘many worlds interpretation’ and the ‘correlations without correlata’ position of Mermin is ‘most succinctly expressed by characterizing many worlds as correlata without correlations’ (Mermin 1998). In other words, all betweenness, or configuration of the Gestalt, with no entities to be fixed, in the first case; and all fixed entities, but no betweenness, or Gestalt, arising in the second. This too reflects the difference between right hemisphere and left hemisphere takes on reality, respectively.”

 

It may be obvious that the MWI is an impoverished perspective. Today the erosion of a relational understanding of the world extends into many other areas of life. It is foremost evident in a pervasive denial of limitation. However if we are to realize the promise of "greater things than we know" then we need to have a keen awareness and understanding of limits. Opposing tendencies such as these must be held together, like an alchemical syzygy where “the more intimately they are united, the more, not the less, they are differentiated." Or like an enigmatic koan. When taken together, opposing views can frustrate our narrow logical reasoning and reveal more about what can exist in the world than any internally consistent system of thought ever has. 

 

Robert Ellis objects, noting that, nonetheless, many people still view truth as absolute in structure, in some sense, and nothing like this at all. It's true. But it's also worth noting: that is by no means a necessary nor universally held perspective (CS Peirce being one example). There are several ways we might try to address this. We could try to clearly define all our terms according to some system (a system orientation). Or, we could try to distinguish between phenomenological perspectives upon that to which the terms refer (a presentation orientation). The latter approach is the one being used here. Audre Lorde wrote "Master's Tools Will Never Take Down the Master's House". Or in Heidegger's words "The evil and thus keenest danger is thinking itself. It must think against itself, which it can only seldom do." Otherwise stated by Buckminster Fuller as “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” Donella Meadows in her "Leverage Points" article says the same thing. And of course, McGilchrist is making his case for an opposing "mode of attention" as well. What lesson should we draw from all this? Don't pick up the same tools without first addressing the higher level dynamics. In this case, that is the phenomenology. Then can we travel downstream to the language, at which point it will have already taken on a different cast of meaning: from thing to process, from absolute to provisional, from more literal to more figurative. But if the higher dynamics remain unchanged, if we don't step outside of those, then the existing regime will inevitably reassert itself and reinforce the same patterns as before, washing away any temporary gains that can be made by lower level reforms to the system of words. "Truth" would remain precisely what those naïve deconstructionists suspected all along: a mere instrument for concentrating power and control.