our Twitter (X) feedView our Youtube channelView our Instagram feedView our Substack feedView our Spotify feed We’ve learned that even single-celled organisms can make intelligent decisions. What else can you expect from consciousness? Neuropsychiatrist Iain McGilchrist explains.
Iain McGilchrist is a former Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a Fellow of[…] Iain McGilchrist is a former Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a Fellow of[…] Neuropsychiatrist Iain McGilchrist turns to one of philosophy's oldest questions: what is consciousness, and where does it come from? He argues the brain doesn't create consciousness — it shapes it, the way a larynx shapes air into a voice, filtering a larger field of consciousness into something distinctly yours. From there he builds toward panpsychism, the idea that consciousness pervades everything, from single-cell organisms to mountains.
Along the way, he uses the image of a whirlpool in a stream to explain how a stable "self" can exist within constant flow, and makes the case that matter itself is simply a phase of consciousness. IAIN MCGILCHRIST:We have a misconception that the way we make great discoveries is by great rigor, the famous scientific method, and we'll get to an answer. But actually what we know from accounts by great scientists and great mathematicians, when they saw that great discovery, it came as an aha moment, it came as a visitation.
My belief is the cosmos is a conscious cosmos. And how I understand individual consciousness is that it is not separate from the large field of consciousness which pervades the universe. But individual consciousness at times gives evidence, like the great visitations that come to musicians, to great painters, and to poets, that we are part of the whole.
My name's Iain McGilchrist, and I've spent the best part of 35 years studying how consciousness is structured by the brain. Logically speaking, consciousness seems to have something to do with the brain. That's pretty much undeniable.
Alter the brain, you alter consciousness. There are only three possible ways in which there can be a relationship between the brain and consciousness. It can either emit consciousness, or it can transmit consciousness in the way that a radio set transmits a radio program.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
