Margulis-McGilchrist Paradigm

"Buddha and Māra were a couple of friends who need each other — like day and night, like flowers and garbage. We have "flowerness" in us; we have "garbageness" in us also. They look like enemies, but they can support each other. If you have understanding and wisdom, you will know how to handle both the flower and the garbage in you. The Buddha needs Māra in order to grow beautifully as a flower, and also Māra needs the Buddha, because Māra has a certain role to play ...Mara didn’t understand. Ananda also didn’t understand. But the Buddha, he understood." - Thich Nhat Hanh, "Māra and the Buddha"

This article begins with a review of a paper whose topic is that of two minds, from a Buddhist perspective. One of these is a mind that reifies personal selfhood, the sense of being a controlling agent, someone who should receive special care and deserves to flourish far beyond the status quo. Without any moderating influences, this can metastasize into a wish for "universal possession." The other mind is that of the Bodhisattva, concerned with care and transformation. There are many parallels here with McGilchrist's work on the neurological instantiation of two qualitatively asymmetric orientations to the world. The paper purses a highly inclusive line of thought with implications for diverse (artificial) intelligences in an animate cosmos. In this way it challenges prevailing ideas of carbon chauvinism. The notion of this minimal binary opposition is then expanded, and we find it present in the work of Lynn Margulis as well. The article ends with an exploration of how the work of Margulis and McGilchrist is mutually supporting and potentially transformative.

First some background...

The magical realism of animism and AI has been described by successive waves of techno-optimists. Preceding the current wave were writers like Kevin Kelly. Today's wave includes Anil Seth, who loved Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, and Michael Levin, who has written letters to our future AI progeny, recalling predecessors like Marvin Minsky and Hans Moravec. After reading the papers described here (which Levin tipped me off to) I was reminded of a sci-fi character, a “space whale” named Gomtuu, who shares an emotionally rich symbiotic relationship in order to truly flourish (like myrmecophytes, but for people). I must admit that when it comes to these highly speculative futures, one could describe as many that are optimistic as those that are more pessimistic. For another example, see David Grinspoon’s "Intelligence as a planetary scale process." These find lyrical expression in Richard Brautigan's poem "All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace," for perhaps, as Lovecraft wrote, "we live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity." The history of scholarship on this topic is very extensive, and has been recounted elsewhere, so I won't linger on it here. Suffice to say, it goes back before the origin of AI development. 

In posthumanist circles this topic is everpresent (see N. Katherine Hayles, Donna Haraway, Bayo Akomolafe, etc.). However, although not always or even widely recognized, there are at least two significantly different views upon these topics. And the reason these views are not often recognized is that they are usually conflated, and the specific distinctions with reference to AI are left ambiguous. Very recently, Jonathan Rowson wrote about a conversation between Dougald Hine and Vanessa Andreotti regarding these same themes. And again, insufficient attention was given to that distinction. The paper described below appears to be among the more substantive attempts at disambiguation, running parallel to the hemispheric analysis of Iain McGilchrist. This offers, for at least the first time that I’m aware of, a way to clearly articulate a “right hemispheric path” for AI development in contrast to the "blind by design" path it is currently on, and following upon that distinction, integrate it into a “whole brain” approach to artificial life in general. 

Biology, Buddhism, and AI

The main paper discussed here is Doctor et al.'s "Biology, Buddhism, and AI: Care as the Driver of Intelligence" (2022) in which the authors "review relevant concepts in basal cognition and Buddhist thought," and in the process incorporate the central concerns of axiology. 

First the authors define care as a quality of attention that can be distinguished from a physical description, a distinction "between the goal-defined light cone and a mere behavioral space light cone. While the latter merely defines the space of possible states in which an agent can find itself (defined by its position, speed, temperature, etc.), the [goal-defined] light cone... rather characterizes the maximum extent of the goals and aspirations of an agent, or in other words, its capacity for Care. ...The central concept in this new frontier is Care: what do these systems [networks that process information in morphospace] spend energy to try to achieve—what do they care about?"

The authors then redefine agency in terms of "care," an orientation to the world. The utility of this becomes more clear later, when we consider cases in which caring is absent or prevented. The first implication they draw out is the inclusion of non-organic agencies. This is made explicit: "How do we relate to “artificial” beings? It seems clear that such decisions cannot be based on what the putative person is made of or how they came to exist. What can they be based on? One suggestion is that they can be based on Care. What we should be looking for, in terms of gauging what kind of relationship we can have with, and moral duty we need to exert toward, any being is the degree of Care they can exhibit, either at present or as a latent potential, with respect to the other beings around them." They write "intelligence can be understood in terms of Care and the remedying of stress. Our discussion can, in this regard, be seen as resonant with the enactivist tradition, which describes selves as precarious centers of concern, as patterned variations of different forms of experienced selfhood, ranging from the notions of minimal self to embodied, affective, and socially extended/participatory forms of situated selfhood." In a subsequent paper they add "AI can be seen to display care of its own, and is hence not a mere tool for the expression of human care. In this way, neither AIs nor humans should be considered autonomous and self-sufficient loops in the world. Instead, AI can be better understood as a companion for humans—a constituent participant in the continuous, collective dance..." This would conform to the panpsychist perspective of all matter as having "agentic thrust" or some minimal intelligence.

The second implication of a caring orientation is the Buddhist awareness "that there is no singular and enduring individual that must survive and prevail [which] serves to undermine self-seeking action at the expense of others and their environment. Therefore, the evolving of intelligence that is aware of no-self — or if we want, intelligence that is no-self-aware — is also held to be intrinsically wholesome and associated with concern for the happiness and well-being of others. This claim—that simply understanding the irreality of enduring, singular agents can be a catalyst for ethically informed intelligence—is especially noticeable in Great Vehicle (Skt. Mahāyāna) currents of Buddhist view and practice that develop the idea of the Bodhisattva. ...the drive of a Bodhisattva is two-fold: as affectionate care... and as insight into things as they are... care and insight, are seen as standing in a dynamic relationship and are not separate in essence. Hence, as a model of intelligence, the Bodhisattva principle may be subsumed under the slogan, “intelligence as care”. In this way the authors establish that care is bound up with an awareness of impermanence and depends upon having insight into reality.

Having understood agency as care, which is in turn predicated upon an awareness of an ever-changing cosmos, we now know that earlier definitions of agency such as "the ability to control causal chains that lead to the achievement of predefined goals" are incomplete. And "the individual that may be assumed to exist as a singular, enduring, and controlling self" is fundamentally illusory. These are the sort of representation that McGilchrist's emissary is captivated by. They are described as "dream images, mirages, and other such traditional examples of illusion." What are the implications of holding such illusions? "From the perspective of a mind that in this way reifies personal selfhood, the very sense of being a subject of experience and a controlling agent of actions naturally and unquestionably implies that one is thus also someone who should receive special care and deserves to flourish far beyond the status quo."

We can now describe the implications of this contrasting orientation toward the world, which is based upon delusional premises such as these, where caring is absent or prevented. The authors write "The paths and end states of the wish for universal destruction or universal possession are easy to conceive of when compared to the Bodhisattva’s endless path of endless discoveries... If the Māra drive is in that way pure and all-encompassing evil, the Bodhisattva state is then universal benevolent engagement. How to compare such a pair of intelligences, both other-dependent and other-directed rather than “selfish” in the usual sense? Is one more powerful than the other, or do they scale up the same way in terms of the light cone model? Let us at this point simply note that the Māra drive seems reducible to a wish to maintain the status quo (“sentient beings suffer, and they shall keep doing so!”) whereas the Bodhisattva is committed to infinite transformation. If that is correct, the intelligence of the Bodhisattva’s care should again display decidedly superior features according to the light cone model, because a static wish to maintain what is—even if it is on a universal scale—entails far less measurement and modification than an open-ended pursuit of transformation wherever its potential is encountered."

McGilchrist's hemisphere hypothesis also posits two opposing orientations to the world that are qualitatively asymmetric. But it goes a step further in describing what a healthy relationship between them would look like (this has been explored by Buddhists as well, as noted above). The authors then speculate on what implications all this may have for the future of axiological design and diverse intelligences. Can we "create only beings with large, outward-facing compassion capacity, and at the same time enlarge our own agency and intelligence by acting on the Bodhisattva vow? ...Strategies that focus on implementing the Bodhisattva vow are a path for enabling a profound shift from the [explicit] scope of current AIs and their many limitations [to a] commitment to seemingly unachievable goals [of care]... However, progress along this path is as essential for our personal efforts toward personal growth as for the development of synthetic beings that will exert life-positive effects on society and the biosphere." In their subsequent paper they write "a natural way for humans to build technology must involve the development of a caring relationship with technology."

This concludes the main points of the paper. However there is also a discussion of some of the finer points. For example, why do "cognitive systems emerge according to this formalism from a hypothesized drive to reduce stress?" Where does the stress come from that there should be a drive to reduce it in the first place? This may be an ontological primitive, a coincidentia oppositorum of illusion/awakening, or Mara/Bodhi, each being part of a cosmic dance, in the same way that the Kabbalistic myth of the creation of the world posits a cosmic cycle of fracture/repair, and the Christian concept of kenosis does the same. All these cosmodicies point to a metaphysics of qualitatively asymmetric coinciding opposites. And cognitive divisions of the sort described here merely recapitulate them. The authors write "salient features of light cone formalism align well with traditional features ascribed to Bodhisattva cognition, so an attempt at delineating the latter in terms of the former seems both possible and potentially illuminating." To which I would only add that this extension also aligns well with McGilchrist's work in neurology. 

Symbiogenesis: Mutualism-Parasitism Continuum

Agency: raw power or responsible care (homo economicus or ens amans)?

"What is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the west?" -  The Gateless Gate, case no. 37
"For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required." - Luke 12:48
"Love is a pure attention to the existence of the Other." - Louis Lavelle

Hannah Arendt wrote of what she called ‘the future man’ that he seemed possessed by ‘a rebellion against human existence as it has been given, a free gift from nowhere (secularly speaking), which he wishes to exchange, as it were, for something he has made himself’. Her observation prompts the question: Why would someone want to exchange what is given for what is made and can be controlled? Is this a consequence of an inversion in our preferred ways of attending and thinking? The answer becomes clear when we consider how we tend to respond when Plotinus asks us "But we - who are we?" Often enough today, a response that one may encounter is that we, as individuals that display "agency", derive this agency from our "ability to control causal chains that lead to the achievement of predefined goals." This appears to favor the mode of attention of the left hemisphere. In contrast to this response, one could provide a different view of agency, as being the capacity to care about that which cannot be explicitly controlled, involving an outward orientation to the world that focuses on our relationship with others. This is the opposing mode of attention foregrounded here. That connection between who we imagine ourselves to be, how we attend to the world as it is revealed to us, and the sort of lives we live is very profound.

Religious avatars/ archetypal figures, be they Jesus or Buddha, Mary or Guanyin, may be analogous to the way in which both mind and matter could be described as two "phases" of the same underlying prima materia. Atman is Brahman. Tat Tvam Asi. The contemporary postmodern understanding is only willing to go as far as this simple statement of equivalence. But there is much more going on here. And we must follow and go there. Importantly, these figures highlight an axiological or qualitative asymmetry, a moral and ethical component, such that they display love before hate, truth before lies, and compassion before neglect, denial, and indifference. They exhibit a courage of conviction, a very deep responsibility for their actions, a responsiveness to this sense of value and purpose, all the way to the extent that they come to embody these relational values at any and all cost to themselves and their transitory identities. This exceptional commitment to the hard work of ethical engagement with the world, without any recourse, is what characterizes their agency. As Bhikkhu Bodhi, one of Buddhism’s leading activists and scholars, wrote: "I’m not a moral absolutist. I don’t believe that anyone is perfect, that any position is flawless, but I do believe we have to draw clear moral distinctions, that we do have to reject the kind of limp ethical non-dualism favored by many Western Buddhists in favor of a clear ethical discernment that can grasp the moral dimensions embedded in a particular situation: the ability to see which side tends toward goodness and which side means danger." 

We would be driven mad if we tried to conform our lives to the standard set by these avatars. But conformation isn't the point. Rather, we must recognize the difference that they draw our attention to... That much we can do. In broad strokes, these are the hemispheric differences highlighted by McGilchrist. And though the correspondence isn't complete, there's another comparision that can highlight what is being gestured to here. In Jungian terms, if Buddha is the "persona," then Mara is the "shadow" that we must neither fully indulge, nor completely ignore, an ever present companion within us. It seems to be that the heterodox philosophies and religions of today, the “minor” interpretations, are those that emphasize this best. Thich Nhat Hanh told of how the Buddha embraced Mara. In the Book of Job, Satan is in the presence of God in heaven, even participating in a heavenly council. And recall that John Arthur Gibson, former chief of the Seneca nation of the North American Iroquois confederation, told of how Taronhiawagon (He Grasps The Sky With Both Hands) never lets Tawiscara (Flint) drift too far from his awareness. There is no finalism, no resolution, but a fragile peace where the definite and infinite coincide... "He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars." (Blake) "The stars throw well. One can help them." (Eiseley)

There is that important question to consider regarding the relationship between the light cone of possible states and the light cone of care: do these display the characteristics of a paradoxically coinciding, mutually entailing asymmetry? According to McGilchrist's "neural parallax theory", they would need to do so in order to sustain a generative Hericlitean tension. We could modify Loren Eiseley's short story The Star Thrower to illustrate a three part pattern of oscillation involving presence, static re-presentation, and dynamic asymmetric integration: 

"The stars," the Buddha said, "throw well. One can help them."
"I do not collect," Māra said uncomfortably, the wind beating at his garments. "Neither the living nor the dead. I gave it up a long time ago. Death is the only successful collector."
Later, on a point of land, a bodhisattva found the star thrower... and spoke once briefly. "I understand. Call me another thrower."

In the 2019 edition of The Master and His Emissary, McGilchrist wrote "We have created a world around us which... reflects the LH's priorities and its vision." Some people (or broadly speaking, agents) are going to be more easily caught within the positive feedback loops constructed between the left hemisphere and environments that mirror its priorities and vision, overwhelmed by this "Māra drive." And some will find it easier to remain within "Bodhisattva cognition," engaged in caring for others and an "expanding circle of empathy", as Peter Singer called it, which is a "light cone of care" by any other name. Buddhists speak of compassion or loving-kindness. Christians speak of love and other "fruit of the spirit." These are ontologically primitive values, that is to say, unexplainable in any other terms, and wholly outside of any utilitarian or consequentialist context. Some meditative practices, such as tonglen, are designed to expand our "circle of compassion" to encompass all beings. For another example, "helper theory" or the "helper therapy principle" is a well known phenomenon, particularly present in support groups like AA, whereby helping others helps oneself. This can produce a positive feedback loop for Bodhisattva cognition. It is notable that those engaged in this way are not primarily concerned with distinctions between self and no-self, or any labels, categories, or other identifiers. Such things are subsidiary to the much greater concern for providing care to others. With this orientation to the world firmly established, the left hemisphere is then able to get to work in its proper role as the servant of care, love, and an altruistic regard for others. 

If expanding our circle of empathy and engaging in ethical, caring relationships with others is the goal here, then this brings me to a criticism: Why do so many spiritual gurus (at least in the West) become embroiled in scandals of sexual impropriety? Only the other day did someone recommend reading Culadasa's The Mind Illumined, and it wasn't long before I found out that he "admitted to being involved in a pattern of sexual misconduct." He apparently died about three years after this went public (I've noted that, apparently the social and psychological stress involved in these scandals does tend to hasten one's demise). So the question I'm wondering is, why would an expert on the "illumined mind" engage in unethical behavior? Could it be that the illumined mind Culadasa describes wasn't really Bodhisattva cognition, but rather a manipulative Māra drive in the guise of a Bodhisattva? What does Culadasa really have to say about care and compassion? Or for that matter, what do any of these other gurus say about it? Setting these scandals aside for the moment, if our capacity for care really is the central feature we should be addressing, then I think any program seeking to apply the hemisphere hypothesis would need to place that axiological consideration of care, empathy, or love (by any other name) at the core. If anything else, such as pragmatism (or illumination, though in truth I do not know to what that refers) is centered instead then it would be misguided. 

"In what distant deeps or skies burnt the fire of [Galadriel's] eyes?"

And it may be the case that, given the importance of axiological design for supporting Bodhisattva cognition, that is to say, given the vulnerability of some people to becoming caught within the positive feedback loops between "Māra drive" and "Māra reinforcing environments," the rationalist notion of information hazards (a subset of existential risks) leading to evolutionary traps, and even becoming weaponized, may be worth revisiting. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil being the first of these, and the contemporary proliferation of supernormal stimuli within our blind attention economy being the most recent. (A narrower term, "attention hazard," may be more apropos.) In other words, if you can reasonably assume that some action you may take, or information you may acquire, by the very act of doing, attending to, or pursuing the knowledge of it, is likely to reduce a Bodhisattva's ability to be responsible and caring, then are we not obliged to avoid it? It may not be anything intrinsic to the action or information that sets it apart as a hazard, so much as that in some contexts it is, while in others it may not be. And knowing the difference between these, and supporting ways of engaging with the world that reflect these contextual distinctions, could then be very important. 

What all this may suggest is that there are "twin attractors." On the one hand, the bodhisattva cognition is drawn toward expansive, compassionate care, which is perhaps best expressed through helping the minute particulars of life. Truly, this is the "infinite in the definite". But on the other hand, we must be keenly aware that such a beneficent motivation can be misappropriated by the Māra drive, and directed toward other ends, through contextual manipulation and post hoc rationalization. And thereby, despite our initial intentions, the fragile balance of these two asymmetric modes of attention, which accords priority to one distinct disposition over another, may be catastrophically inverted. So, if one is to be preserved whole (at least during our allotted time in the world) and be able to effectively respond to value and telos, then one must exercise some due caution in regard to attention hazards, as we navigate the contours of our cultural psychomachia. Regarding the misbehavior of gurus, I think that, like Icarus, those who would fly too close to the sun, and aspire to be bodhisattvas, are to that same degree vulnerable to temptation. The siren song of great goodness and great depravity is to some extent proportional. And that may place such people at increased risk if they fail to appreciate their true situation. And note the asymmetry here owing to a qualitative difference: while those who are good are keenly aware of and tempted by evil, those who are evil are by their nature blind to goodness and therefore, I believe, incapable of experiencing a corresponding temptation operating in the opposite direction. This awareness of possibility and the need for restraint is what makes virtuous behavior difficult to sustain. And perhaps by tempering our ambitions, whether that be by accident or design (wu wei), one might, counterintuitively, better achieve them. 

The birds and the bees

“Let me tell ya 'bout the birds and the bees…” - Jewel Akens (1964)
“Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage… you can't have one without the other.” - Frank Sinatra (1955)

McGilchrist has often explained the evolutionary origin of brain lateralization to be a consequence of predator and prey dynamics, where half of our neuroanatomy seeks out food while the other half is on the lookout so as not to become food: acquire and protect. But in light of the preceding discussion, I think we can suggest a different evolutionary story for lateralization. It may be a consequence of the polarity between eros and agape, create and care, "carnal desires" and "filial piety," or in the jargon of popular evolutionary terminology, between "sexual selection" and "parental care," though only if we understand each of these in a much broader sense. (One may also compare it to the "I-It" and an "I-Thou" relationship in Martin Buber's terms, though this is unhelpfully abstracted away from the evolutionary context. And this isn't just a recapitulation of the self/ nonself ontological dichotomy, but a phenomenological difference of precisely the form described by the hemisphere hypothesis. Yunkaporta's notion of a "custodial species" verges on the deontological.) These are both extremely important for the continuation of a species, but each involves different cognitive processes with corresponding strengths and weaknesses. Complimentary, but also pulling in separate directions. While carnal desires are metaphorically very similar to the predatory form of attention, and thus should require no further elaboration, the conceptual substitution of "parental care" for "prey" within the formulation provided by McGilchrist will require some explanation. As he proposed predator-prey trophic dynamics, I am proposing sexual selection-parental care dynamics as the twin attractors (or motivating teloi) of evolution.

Parental care is displayed to some extent by nearly all organisms. The name itself is something of a misnomer as affection may be bi-directional, extending from child to parent as well as parent to child, and across generations (see grandmother hypothesis). It unifies very broad, deep and enduring processes of investment, which are therefore layered and rich. This contrasts sharply with the immediate, intense, demanding nature of carnal desires. It is far easier to "hack" the cognitive processes associated with carnal desire using supernormal stimuli that "demand our attention." The unfortunate poster child for this is the beetle species Julodimorpha bakewelli. (I shall literally share an illustration of this, as pictures can be far better at conveying these sharply contrasting orientations.) Lastly, like predator and prey, carnal and filial are modes of attention that do need to operate simultaneously, with priority given to filial virtues in most cases if a conflict between them arises. Many animals would rather sacrifice themselves than fail to provide for their young. But in general, a species must be able to both procreate and secure the material means for reproduction, and also protect the very progeny thus produced. Consistent with the earlier explanation McGilchrist provides, these are sufficiently qualitatively different cognitive processes that they would benefit from neurological differentiation to support them in parallel. Evolutionary biologists such as Robert Trivers have tried to articulate some of the complex dynamics that this can give rise to (see "parent-offspring conflict"). It may seem almost cliché to say so, but in our contemporary culture, shallow carnal desires are overshadowing deep filial care, in so many words, because "sex sells."

It is best to think of this more as a refinement and conceptual expansion, than a replacement for the explanation provided by McGilchrist. It meshes better with the view from a "Third Way" (Denis Noble) or the Expanded Evolutionary Synthesis perspective. What do I mean by this? A "sexual/ carnal orienation" encompasess the more narrowly defined need to eat, but it also expands the idea to include all forms of resource acquisition, including the genetic or otherwise novel structural resources to realize the transformative potential of reproduction (which can also include theories of a fecund universe, such as the "meduso-anthropic principle" of Louis Crane). A "parental/ filial orientation" encompasses more than a need to preserve my own bodily integrity, but that of my offspring, my species, and potentially higher levels (to include ecosystems, or even the cosmos itself). The point here is to get to the heart of this, and while centering the narrative around trophic dynamics, as McGilchrist has, is conceptually simple, it is incomplete and needs to be "unfolded." (Interestingly, the Japanese terms 性淘汰 (sei sentaku) and 動物の子育て (dobutsu no kosodate) somewhat recall the dual pair "exclusive/ inclusive," and the corresponding hemispheric attributes of "either/or versus both/and" thinking.) There are many possible objections to my reformulation here. Firstly, while we all must eat and avoid being eaten or any other source of mortal injury, we are clearly not all parents. But here I would rejoin that these orientations are part of our biological inheritance, and subject to processes of evolutionary exaptation. In a highly social species, we are all alloparents. There's a very rich literature on the ethics of care to draw upon. And the dynamics of supernormal stimuli, which are particularly relevant in the context of sexual selection, offer similarly rich explanations. One may also note at this point that sexual selection is a particular instance of the more general "signal selection" (per Amotz Zahavi), which has long since superseded natural selection in importance, at least among humans, which could help explain "how we got stuck" (per Graeber and Wengrow) in a LH captured society. Synthesizing all this into a simple portable idea is very possible, as it can be united under the metatheoretical framework of the hemisphere hypothesis.

McGilchrist: “Nobody has put forward a better explanation of why these two neuronal masses should be what all creatures with brains seem to have. I think it's for a very important evolutionary reason: every creature has to solve the conundrum of how to eat and how to stay alive. Now that might not sound difficult, but actually if you're eating you have to catch something. While you're watching that, and totally focused on it, you're not seeing everything else. While you're busy getting what you want, there could be somebody else getting you! So you have to have another part of the brain that is ‘seeing the whole picture.’ That’s the right hemisphere. But not only does it see the broad picture, it even sees the stuff that the left hemisphere sees in detail… One aspect of survival is simply grabbing and getting, amassing stuff, utility, power. But the right hemisphere is looking out for everything else, offspring, mate, conspecifics, all these things, and looking for predators as well. So it sees this big picture. And the two kinds of attention produced two kinds of a world… A culture is an organism. A society is an organism. And it's not surprising that it reflects the ways of thinking of those who are the individuals in that society. Which explains why one can speak of a civilization having a tendency towards left hemisphere thinking at the expense of right hemisphere thinking.” 

If we take a step back, this may be about the means-ends distinction. In the instance of "getting what you want" we may really be talking about a means. And the nearest evolutionary process that involves an analogous mode of cognition is “signaling theory.” A well known example of this is sexual selection, such as the tail of a peacock. In the case of avoiding "somebody else getting you" we may really be talking about ends using the language of means (infinite in the definite) because avoiding death raises existential questions about life. An evolutionary process that addresses this is parental care, such as the egg brooding of an octopus. Now, one may object that “care” is only a means. But that ignores the subjective experience of the caregiver, for whom providing care (that is appropriate and effective, whatever form that may take) is very often their raison d'etre. "The journey is the destination." And so the means-ends distinction, provided here with reference to several well known examples from sexual selection and parental care, may provide a better explanation for the initial bifurcation of the two neuronal masses. Now, were I to omit these or any other examples, this wouldn’t mean anything. Means and ends don't exist in and of themselves. They are abstractions. But what is real are the qualitatively different forms of attention that find unique expression within an evolutionary context. And we need a rich understanding of the ways in which all this manifests if we are to understand the broad implications for living systems.

Symbiogenesis: Mutualism-Parasitism Continuum

The evolutionary origin of brain lateralization has often been explained by McGilchrist to be a consequence of predator and prey dynamics, where half of our neuroanatomy seeks out food while the other half is on the lookout so as not to become food. This was recently laid out again in a conversation with Eric Metaxas. But if we take a further step back, this may be about the “means-ends” distinction. In the instance of solving the conundrum of “how to eat” we may really be talking about a means. And in the case of “staying alive” we may really be talking about ends, because avoiding death raises existential questions about life. I'd suggest that these could be thought of as manifesting in the polarities of “carnal desire" and "filial piety,” or more abstractly, eros and agape. In the jargon of popular evolutionary terminology, we can also point to examples such as "sexual selection" and "parental care," if understood in a broad sense. These dynamics are extremely important for the continuation of a species, but each involves different cognitive processes with corresponding strengths and weaknesses. Complimentary, but also pulling in separate directions. It may seem almost cliché to say so, but in our contemporary culture, shallow carnal desires (attention hazards) are overshadowing deep filial care (helper therapy principle), in so many words, which could help explain "how we got stuck" in a LH captured, devitalized society of deceptive semiosis. That's also the motivating question of Graeber and Wengrow's book The Dawn of Everything. Today we tell people what to attend to, and let others tell us what to attend to, but we could ask how we can help others, and ask others for help. And all this can be handily united under the metatheoretical framework of the hemisphere hypothesis. 

A Psychomachia of Binary Oppositions:
Left & Right (neurobiological)
Means & Ends (abstract philosophical)
Māra & Bodhisattva (religious and mythic)
Possess/Control & Care/Compassion (agentic virtues)
Eros/Carnal & Agape/Filial (psychological virtues)
Sexual Selection & Parental Care (evolved behavior traits)

Attention Hazard & Helper Theory (attentional dispositions)

Parasitic/Deceptive/Coercive & Mutualistic/Translucent/Permissive (semioethics of symbiosis)

One of the potential disadvantages of McGilchrist's evolutionary explanation is that it could be interpreted as a recapitulation of "survival of the fittest," a phrase that was of course introduced by Herbert Spencer, not Charles Darwin. Unfortunately, as Brian Hare noted, "In the public mind, survival of the fittest means competition, and that the big and strong are the ones that win. That’s a misconstrual. That’s not what survival of the fittest means in science and biology. What it means is you’re able to effectively reproduce and survive as a species. And one of the, if not the most successful strategy, is through friendliness that leads to new forms of cooperation." Without taking sufficient pains for clarification such as this, one could inadvertently reinforce a popular misconception. This brings us to the bigger problem with suggesting that the unity of 'prey detection' and 'predator avoidance' (or parasitism and anti-parasitism) is a sufficient 'minimal model' for how neurological lateralization evolved - it is an apophatic description of the right hemisphere. While such negative descriptions can be very useful, there are clear benefits to a more cataphatic, or 'positive description' of this hypothesized 'predator avoidance system.' Thankfully an idea already present with the field of evolutionary biology is able to provide this, and that is the 'Mutualism-Parasitism Continuum.' One could call this a 'cooperation-competition continuum,' although that is an unnecessarily simplified and abstract description of what are actually highly complex and embodied coevolutionary relationships (which, as we have discovered, are capable of leading to entirely new biological lineages, a process known as symbiogenesis).

So let's turn our attention to the last binary opposition described above: parasitism and mutualism. In Japanese this is 寄生 (kisei) and 相利共生 (sorikyosei). As another possible explanation for lateralization this may seem abstract, and other popular uses of the terms may not immediately recommend them for our use here, but if we set these concerns aside for the moment and relax our preconceptions slightly I believe several advantages come into view. One might say that there are aspects of our nature that are parasitic on others, whether that is the more obvious ways in which we gather our food, as heterotrophic animals dependent upon the bodies of others, or the way in which we manipulate others to benefit from the fruit of their labors (cluster B spectrum traits). This is an unavoidable aspect of our material embodiment, and to the extent that others may be unwilling to part with their lives or labor (or we, unwilling to remunerate them for doing so), this may involve deception or coercion. As for mutualism, we can certainly benefit others with the free gift our our time, labor, and even our bodies in some cases (cell division, gestation and lactation, etc). At this point it should be clear that the psychological use of these terms is distinct from their ecological use, in the sense that irrespective of whether we classify an organism as a parasite or mutualist, so long as it has neurological lateralization it would have the psychological capacity for both parasitic and mutualistic modes of attention (and the continuum view supports this as well).  

To suppose a brain might differentiate to serve these modalities in parallel, allowing us to simultaneously exploit some while benefiting others, and for qualitatively different reasons, would not require a stretch of the imagination. Consider the lioness, who will catch the antelope in one minute (animal as food) and the very next allow her cubs (animal as family) to devour it. Humans likewise psychologically relate to farm animals and family pets in very different ways. Now technically, a parasite lives on or in its host for a comparatively long time while feeding upon its body. That would rule out a lion, strictly speaking. But this distinction is a fluid one. Zoom out and we might just as well say that a pride of lions is parasitic upon a herd of antelope - they live on the same land and mingle freely among them, culling the herd, but the herd lives despite this. Among humans however, parasitism has become a much bigger problem. And we may be more vulnerable to deception today than at any other point in our history, with the proliferation of novel artificial methods for hacking into our evolved biology. But there is room for hope. A possible insight from the union of symbiogenesis theory with hemisphere theory (the Margulis-McGilchrist paradigm) is that, in the full course of time, these relationships may evolve to become more mutualistic, and a new renaissance may yet be born, that is, if the process of cultural evolution has the resources within it to revive the right hemisphere and its world. A ridiculously simple practice one might adopt is to simply begin each day, and every action, with a mutualistic mindset (the genius behind the helper therapy principle). This can be quite a shock if one has spent the majority of their time operating within a more parasitic social paradigm. 

 

"We have done well separating ourselves from and exploiting other organisms, but it seems unlikely such a situation can last. The reality and recurrence of symbiosis in evolution suggests we are still in an invasive, "parasitic" stage and that we must slow down, share, and reunite ourselves with other beings if we are to achieve evolutionary longevity." (Margulis and Sagan 1997, 195-196).

Margulis-McGilchrist Paradigm

 

There are compelling parallels between Lynn Margulis and Iain McGilchrist, in the content of their work and its controversial nature. Each may justifiably be said to have brought a line of thinking to its apotheosis, by drawing out some of the more surprising implications. These are first and foremost process relational thinkers who describe the genesis of 'new forms' through a kind of 'Heraclitean tension' and subsequent 'integration,' whether that is ecological or psychological, or perhaps even religious/ metaphysical (McGilchrist's later speculations). The Margulis-McGilchrist Paradigm, as I would conceive it, identifies the broad consilience between symbiogenesis theory (Margulis) and hemisphere theory (McGilchrist) as manifestations of the same process relational phenomenon. Formerly these have been analyzed and evaluated independently, but I think they should be viewed as deeply consistent from a metatheoretical perspective. And by uniting them under a single umbrella new insights are possible. 

 

In short, this is about the embodied processes and structures of life and mind. Specifically, with the Mutualism-Parasitism Continuum we can draw comparisons between brain lateralization and function, and binary oppositions in ecological relationships, identifying many shared features (synergy of opponent processing, directionality in development and evolution, qualitative differences, asymmetric relations, gestalt effects). Microorganism symbioses famously include the origin of mitochondria, and may involve multiple partners (Mixotricha paradoxa), and a minimal dyadic relation can be represented as either 'zero sum' or 'positive sum.' Often, relationships that are initially exploitative or competitive can evolve to become commensal and cooperative, which are possibilities of human societies as well. Explaining how this occurs, however, may be easier if we expand our scope with a broader paradigm, as proposed here. (The symbioses of larger organisms include the parasitic butterfly (Niphanda fusca) and parasitic plants (Rafflesiaceae), or the mutualistic frog-tarantula and shrimp-goby interactions, among others.)

 

This could certainly be interpreted in a reductive way. However as I'm approaching it here, it is helpful to think of the labels 'parasitism' and 'mutualism' as a sort of metaphorical evolutionary 'common denominator' between the work of Margulis and McGilchrist that points us to their unfolded theoretical corpora. In other words, take it as a label, which is a (necessarily reduced) starting point, but only a starting point. Seen in this way, mutualism is a pointer to the more fully unfolded world of the right hemisphere. Why might it be appropriate as a label? Because unless we were to suppose that the gedanken experiment of 'LUCA,' or the Last Universal Common Ancestor from which all life on Earth is thought to have descended, burst onto the scene with the same motives and questions as humans, then we need a developmental theory that explains how these later concerns may have an origin in simpler processes, such as the minimal ecological interactions of parasitism and mutualism. Precisely how complex goals like friendship, confidence, creativity, and morality (not to mention meaning) would later develop and be supported by the bifurcation of neural processes, which I suspect recapitulate the sort of synergies we see in basal symbiotic processes, is part of the story that we are still unfolding.

 

The MMP could be described as a sort of "existential animism," as it centers our psychological lives and meaning making attempts around agentic interactions (primarily organic, but per Doctor et al. not necessarily so). Accordingly, one might create a 'typology of parasitism' that includes both biological and psychological 'kinds' that narcissistically extract either physical or attentional resources from a host via a primordial parasitic drive or "light cone." Within such a typology there would be a place for both the cuckoo bird, corporate advertising, and market managerialism with the imposition of 'clock time' and the notion of a 'deadline' by which certain labor products are extorted in exchange for continued existence. Also the enabling technologies and design languages that support parasitic processes. A laptop or smartphone, while connecting people and providing them with a platform to allow their voice to be heard, may also predispose them to a particular mode of interaction making the possibilities adjacent to that design language more salient, while increasingly alienating us from the possibility of richer forms of engagement that are discordant with that same tech and "pattern language." All these things could potentially be explored within the MMP. 

 

The converse, a 'typology of mutualism' could be explored as well, and to a generally more salubrius effect, though the complementary, mutually sustaining interdependencies between both typologies are critical to the paradigm. For one hypothetical example, what might aid the shrimp and goby cooperative mutualism? Or for another, what would aid the parasitic flatworm Leucochloridium paradoxum to attract the birds that are it's primary host? The ability to appear very attractive and enticing to them. The beetle species Julodimorpha bakewelli has suffered for a similar reason, but if that beetle were in a cooperative mutualism with the goby, not only would it suffer but so would the goby as well. Characterizing a similar domino effect, as to how/ when/ and why parasites are able to 'overpower' mutualists, but within our contemporary culture and society, is a significant challenge we face. This is our psychomachia and why McGilchrist's 'naturalized metaphysics' can assist us here in strengthening our 'immune response' to rapidly evolving threats. The biological and philosophical work is mutually supporting. We may promote and reinforce a mutualist dynamic by asking: Who can I benefit besides myself? Am I thinking in a zero sum or a positive sum way? With what values do my actions resonate most? All three questions are intended to break us out of our 'narcissistic enclosure' (SC Hickman). These are not the quantitative questions of consequentialism, but relational questions. I mentioned above the importance of having a "mutualistic mindset." Now we must turn to what that means. 

 

Those whose calls for help we respond to, by virtue of their genuine request for our help, pull us out of our enclosure and thereby teach us far more than we can appreciate while we are in the midst of those moments that we are called to help (and perhaps reluctant to respond). Only in hindsight can we (as mutualists) begin to see how we were fortunate to be able to help. The reverse is the case with parasitism: we as hedonists (or parasites) anticipate immense gratification, but in hindsight we all too often regret indulging our desires. That is a strange asymmetry, which if it consistently holds, only a sort of intentionally conscious awareness or unconscious habitual automatic response to parasitism that foregrounds the later regret, or a response to mutualism that foregrounds the later gratitude, would allow us to address our situation. This will call for awareness first, not only of this situation, but of how and why we were vulnerable in the first place (and why, though not yet explored here, some small measure of vulnerability to parasitism may actually be required for sustainability as well). Against such obstacles, how did mutualism even emerge to begin with? To what values was it, in itself, a response? 

I suspect that it came about in an environment where alternative pathways did not derail its fragile first steps, and that it may be exceedingly rare for us to encounter. And for which reasons mutualism is something to be cherished greatly, and will always be in danger of collapse. "Many are called, but few respond." (Matthew 22:14) And of those who do respond, in the course of time many forget and fall to the side. Who can respond without fail? Alexander Pope said "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing," which, I think, gestures at how easily we may be deluded and fall victim to parasitic processes given the uncertainty involved in an authentic and responsive mutualism. Why would any two otherwise sane, risk averse people expose themselves naked and vulnerable to greater threats of harm by leaping into the unknown together, committing to a long term relationship of mutual care? There is an evolutionary and psychological drive toward the qualities of mutualism, care, and love (1 Corinthians 13:4-8). Feng Youlan suggested, in so many words, that if mutualism is to be possible, in spite of the risk of harm (and in life harm can never truly be avoided) then we must become comfortable with "no knowledge" and accept a humble disposition (1 Corinthians 13:12). The mutualistic mindset is then the awareness that life is so precious and full of joy precisely because mutualism is characterized by radical uncertainty and difficulty with a high failure rate. It is fundamentally outside of our control. It is always a few steps from collapse. These truths are hard to accept, and that can lead to neglect, denial, and delay. As Timothy Pychyl wrote, when it comes to procrastination, "it's all about emotion." But simple, irrefutable solutions don't exist. Parasitism is relatively more predictable and simple, requires less investment, and offers solutions that rely only on one's own guile and wit, and cynically assumes that mistrust and deception are the rule in all relationships. Can't break a heart if you keep it hidden (trust is essential). Lower expectations means less chances of disappointment. And for all these reasons, parasitism is far more alluring to the left hemisphere. But as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained. And though the risk is great, so are the rewards. Returning to the conversation with Eric Metaxas, a few of these points were addressed by McGilchrist: 

"Goodness is about a cast of mind in which you see yourself in a relatively humble relationship to other people, and that they are part of you and you are part of them. You owe things to them and they owe things to you. And you can't just do whatever you like, which won't actually make you either free or happy. I'm a psychiatrist. I've seen lots of people who tried. It was never successful. It's hubris. We're back to the belief that we know everything or we can know everything. Just a couple more experiments and we'll have it. 

 

From the point of view of a belief that the cosmos comes into being because the creative ground of being, or whatever you like to call it, wanted to explore the potential that is stored within it, one way of doing this is to have an 'other' that can respond to it, and the two can grow together as though in a dance. If you think about whatever the ground of being is, in almost every culture it's said to be a creative force, but also to have the nature of love. And love is a relation, and a relation requires another party to relate to. As it were God is continually coming into being. God is continually finding out what the capabilities within it are by seeing what happens in the cosmos. From a purely theological point of view I'd like to qualify this and say that it is possible for God to be single, eternal, and static. But also temporal, interactive, and processual. And I believe, with AN Whitehead, that God is the whole cosmos in process. But that doesn't rule out that God can also be seen from a different perspective as eternal and unchanging."

 

References

Doctor T, Witkowski O, Solomonova E, Duane B, Levin M. Biology, Buddhism, and AI: Care as the Driver of Intelligence. Entropy. 2022; 24(5):710.
Witkowski O, Doctor T, Solomonova E, Duane B, Levin M. Toward an ethics of autopoietic technology: stress, care, and intelligence. Biosystems. 2023; 231, Article 104964

Value Capture

McGilchrist’s most fully articulated description of why cultural shifts in the direction of left hemispheric thinking (sometimes referred to as LH 'capture' or 'insurrection') can be found in his Preface to the 2019 edition of The Master and his Emissary:

1. 1. "The LH view is designed to aid you in grabbing stuff."
   2. "The LH view offers simple answers."
   3. "The LH's world view is easier to articulate."
   4. "We have created a world around us which... reflects the LH's priorities and its vision."
   5. "The hemispheres... have a different take on everything - including on their own relationship."
   6. "A culture that exemplifies the qualities of the LH's world attracts to itself, in positions of influence and authority, those whose natural outlook is similar."
   7. "Though the 'takes' of the two hemispheres are made to work together below the level of conscious awareness, they are not strictly compatible." 

Speaking with Rich Archer, McGilchrist noted that empires try “to administer too much, take on and influence too many things, and thereby overreach themselves. And the only way they can do this is by a sort of very bureaucratic take: everything is rolled out the same, everything is procedural, everything is categorical, all the fineness, the individuality, the responsiveness goes and everything becomes very cut and dry.”

Or as McGilchrist put it while on The Nocturnists podcast: “If you try to express the right hemisphere's point of view, you have a very difficult task. It’s much more subtle. Many nuances have to be conveyed, and a lot of what it has to say could seem contradictory. The messages that the right hemisphere would have given are fainter. In our modern society, the very ways in which they would have come to us in the past have been neutralized or minimized or almost dismissed." ...As our culture moves more in the direction of the LH’s priorities and vision, a reinforcing positive feedback cycle has taken over that is very difficult to break free from. 

In other words, in larger societies the logic of power and control (the raison d'etre of the LH) tends to overwhelm an awareness of reality (typically mediated by the RH). The implications of LH capture, and the substitution of its priorities, vision, and values, are further explored in C. Thi Nguyen's paper Value Capture. As he writes, in cases of value capture “we no longer adjust our values and their articulations in light of our own rich particular and context-sensitive experience of the world.” I’ll quote extensively from Nguyen’s paper below. According to him, value capture happens when:

1. 1. An agent has values that are rich, subtle, or inchoate (or they are in the process of developing such values).
   2. That agent is immersed in some larger context (often an institutional context) that presents an explicit expression of some value (which is typically simplified, standardized, and/or quantified).
   3. This explicit expression of value, in unmodified form, comes to dominate the entity’s practical reasoning and deliberative process in the relevant domain.

"This looks like: people who pursue step counts even when it hurts their knees and exhausts their spirit; academics who pursue publications in the highest-ranked journals even when their work feels boring and meaningless; universities that pursue high rankings in the USNWR over richer understandings of education; newspapers that pursue clicks and pageviews over their own sense of newsworthiness and social importance. And, as I have noted: the empirical work indicates that this sort of robust value capture is actually quite common."

How does this process occur?:

"We take values as provided by some large-scale institution and live under them as given. Those values will have been formulated to take deeply into account various institutional interests: like the ability to be counted in a reliable way across a large institution and the ability to be readily aggregated in an institutional bureaucracy. They will not have been formulated in light of the rich feedback of how our particular lives have gone when we live under these values. In value capture, we adopt values that have been formulated in a way that is insensitive to and therefore less able to support our rich, subtle, and personal emotional experiences.

The problem with internalizing institutional metrics is not simply that we are getting our values from the outside. It is that such metrics are subject to the demand for a certain kind of stability and institutional usability. These institutional demands push our metrics away from the subtle, the dynamic, the sensitive—and toward what can easily be measured at scale, propagated across institutional units, and recorded in institutional memory. When we take on such metrics as our values—when we internalize them—we are imposing a narrowed filter on our values. We are letting the logic of institutions play a determining role in the articulation of our values… the narrowness of the metric creates a narrowness of institutional vision. Institutions can only see, process, and act on parts of the world that are counted by their metrics. Anything that does not impinge on those metrics is invisible at an institutional level.

In value capture, we internalize those narrowed metrics, thus narrowing our values. And insofar as our values drive our attention, then the value captured will be subject to an analogous effect to narrowed institutional vision. It is not that we literally do not see things that fall outside our narrowed values, but we will not devote much energy to them or dismiss them as unimportant. Think here of the businessperson who thinks that only money matters and who immediately dismisses from mind any unprofitable ventures—like art or philosophy. [In a footnote, Nguyen adds:] The value captured agent can be wholehearted (think of the capitalist all-in for money), fully identified with their work, energized, and motivated. They are not divided against themselves; rather, they are simplified, where that simplification has been guided along institutional lines.

Qualitative ways of knowing are nuanced and context-sensitive. But qualitative information is difficult to manage en masse and difficult to transfer across contexts. Qualitative evaluations usually require significant shared background knowledge to adequately interpret. When we transform information from a qualitative to a quantitative format, we strip off much of the nuance, texture, and context-sensitivity. By doing so, we create a portable package of information, which can be easily sent across contexts and understood by people with little shared background… For this reason, quantitative methods are preferred by large-scale institutions, which must pass information across many levels of hierarchy—between distant administrators with low shared context. In other words, quantifications are preferred in large-scale institutions precisely because of their narrowness and their context-invariant stability."

What can we do in response?:

"What this suggests is that we should want value federalism. Some values are perhaps best pursued at the largest-scale level, some at smaller community levels, and some individually. And the upshot here is not that we should reject all large-scale values. It is that we should maintain a variety of differently-scaled values. There are many cases in which it might be useful to participate in a larger collective effort and so to accept, as part of that collective effort, less finely tailored goals. But, at the same time, we can confine those large-scale, standardized goals to our life inside those collectives and not let them swamp the rest of our values. The problem occurs when we exhibit an excess preference for the largest-scale values and let the largest-scale values swamp too many of our smaller-scale values. The problem comes when we let the demand for large-scale legibility intrude into every aspect of our lives, even the most intimate ones."

Podcaster David Pizarro, in conversation with cohost Tamler Sommers, reviewed this paper (I highly recommended listening to this for a very accessible introduction) and summed up one of the conclusions in this way: “Standardization is necessary the more complex society gets, and the bigger institutions get, because you need to ‘boil down’ information into a form that lots of people can understand; it’s unsustainable to have experts making all of those decisions.” This makes sense in light of the evidence. Nguyen provided a thorough description of the risks involved in that process, and perhaps unbeknownst to him, elaborated an idea key to McGilchrist's thesis concerning "The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western world." A related concept is that of "surrogation."