Oliver Trace [00:00:00]
The book itself. The Master and His Emissary. Could you give us that story?
Iain McGilchrist [00:00:04]
The idea behind it is the idea of the Sorcerer's Apprentice, which is that it's possible for somebody who knows just a little, but not enough to think that they know everything. The story goes as I tell it, that there was a wise spiritual master who looked after a small community and it flourished and grew. And after a while he realised that he couldn't actually look after all the business of this community himself. Not only could he not, but he must not get involved with certain things because if he did, he'd lose the overall view on which the wisdom of his custody of this community was based. And so he appointed his brightest and best to be his Emissary and go about on his behalf doing his business. The trouble is that this Emissary, bright as he was, wasn't bright enough to know what it was that he didn't know. And he thought he knew everything and that he was doing all the hard work and the heavy lifting, and that Master back there was contributing nothing. He was just sitting there smiling seraphically. And so the Emissary started to pretend that he was the Master, adopted the Master's cloak. And unfortunately, because he didn't know what he was doing, things rapidly fell into ruin and ended with the destruction of the community, the Emissary and the Master.
Oliver Trace [00:01:26]
And it relates to the hemispheres.
Iain McGilchrist [00:01:29]
It does. In my image there, the emissary is the left hemisphere. The master is the right hemisphere.
Oliver Trace [00:01:37]
And it's a story of betrayal.
Iain McGilchrist [00:01:39]
Betrayal.
Oliver Trace [00:01:39]
And a story of hubris.
Iain McGilchrist [00:01:43]
Exactly. Understanding is not a process of acquiring information. Information does not give you understanding. That's important in itself because we live in an era in which there's an enormous focus on acquiring information. Without realizing that it is not only useless but actually dangerous to have information which gives you power, if you don't have any wisdom about how to use that power. It's rather like putting machine guns in the hands of three year olds. It's not even knowledge, because knowing has many meanings. There's a kind of knowing which is a kind of factual knowing, that Stockholm is the capital of Sweden. But there is also a kind of knowing that is a process that gets deeper as you get deeper in knowing something. And that is the kind of knowing that applies to everything important in life, including our friends, our place in the world, the places we love, the poems we like, everything that matters to us. We get to know more deeply through experience, and it's a never ending process. There isn't a moment at which we say, I now know this. In that sense, that is closer to understanding.
Oliver Trace [00:02:57]
Yes, certainly when meeting someone there is a knowing that’s instinctive, and beyond language. But then we would look to language to try and explain what meeting that person was like. So we might say they have brown hair and they have blue eyes and what have you, and that would be one type of knowing, but that is not knowing in the sense of the intuitive. And then you end up having to go, right, you've got to meet this person because otherwise I can't do it justice.
Iain McGilchrist [00:03:37]
Yes. And also, it might be worth pointing out that we are particularly hamstrung in English because we have only this one word, know, but in most languages they make a distinction. So, for example, in French there's a distinction between savoir and connaitre, savoir being the sort of more external knowledge and connaitre being the inside knowledge of acquaintance. And the same distinction exists in German between wissen and cannon.
Oliver Trace [00:04:01]
One of the points you make in your book, which I found important, was how you said when we… on the one hand, you've got these two different types of knowing. And then beyond that, we're trying to talk about what it means to know the hemispheres, which means what it means to know consciousness. But how can we know consciousness when it's consciousness we're using to know it? Could you unpack that idea?
Iain McGilchrist [00:04:27]
There are a few things one could say, one would be that what it means to know what consciousness is would be different as interpreted by the taker, by the hemisphere. So to know what consciousness is could be viewed rather externally, or it could be viewed through, as it were, more the eye of experience. Rather oddly nowadays there is a small but influential school of people who believe that rather as behaviouralists or behaviourists, I should say, who are largely now an extinct breed, I'm glad to say, in psychology, but who used to think that there was nothing going on inside, as it were, an animal, that all there was was behaviour. As Galen Strawson, a philosopher, says, one of the most absurd things that intelligent people ever thought. But just as absurd, in my view, is the view of eliminative materialists who believe that consciousness is an illusion. I mean, this begs a lot of questions. If it's an illusion, in whose mind is it an illusion? Who's being deceived here? And if it's an illusion, what does the real thing look like? You know, how would the real business of consciousness differ from this, what you call counterfeit of consciousness? So there are lots of problems with it.
Oliver Trace [00:05:52]
Presumably if it's an illusion, you're using an illusion, to prove that it's an illusion.
Iain McGilchrist [00:05:57]
First of all, the stuff emanating from what I would call your consciousness has to be an illusion as well. That's true. But more to the point is that for anyone to be deceived or eluded, there has to be a consciousness there already to be deceived or eluded. So it begs the question it's trying to answer because if there was no consciousness, there could be no such thing as a deceit or a lie or an anything else. There would be nothing meaningful about that. They only come into meaning because of consciousness.
Oliver Trace [00:06:33]
There are some and I'm going to struggle to express this idea, but there are some who... Elon Musk made the idea possible, popular, I should say.
Iain McGilchrist [00:06:43]
Sorry who?
Oliver Trace [00:06:44]
Elon Musk?
Iain McGilchrist [00:06:45]
Not known at this address I'm afraid.
Oliver Trace [00:06:48]
He's a Silicon Valley American man. Who is famous for having set up PayPal. If you use PayPal? He's also famous because when he sold PayPal for £200 million, apparently he then put 100 million into Tesla, which is a company that is trying to make cars that are energy neutral. And the other 100 million into SpaceX, which is a private run company that is attempting to put people on Mars. And he then had to ask his friends for money to pay for his rent. That's his story in a nutshell. On top of that, he has made popular the idea that if you look at the progression of computer games, the way that in 1970 or whenever the first Pac-Man was made, it was incredibly basic, but it's now a lot closer to human life. And if that trend continues, then eventually there will be a point at which it is the same as human life. And if that's the case, then the likelihood is that we are already a computer simulation that is now aspiring to create another computer simulation which follows that you then get an infinite series of computer simulations with potentially Escher's hands, again, where there's no beginning and no end.
Iain McGilchrist [00:08:29]
The sort of mess you describe is the sort of mess you get into when you find a hall of mirrors in which things are just reflecting back on themselves. There is no way of anchoring this in anything outside. I think there are a number of problems with that projection. Obviously, one being there is a difference between, I mean, it could be argued that there isn't, but I believe strongly there is a difference between something that looks very like something and that is something. So, for example, there already are robots in Japan that look rather like young women and can sit at a table and make facial expressions and answer if programmed, certain questions in a certain way. It doesn't mean that they're conscious. It doesn't mean that they're living. It just means that they're very clever products of a techie bloke in Japan, you know, having a bit of fun. So I would say however far you take that you will always be faced with this problem, that it can get terribly to look very like it, but it isn't the thing. But I think also there is a very grave risk whenever something becomes or is projected to become like something else, that what happens in the process is never static on one side and in motion on the other. When two things approximate, each is in motion towards the other. And the worrying side of this idea is that it could only even begin to come about if we actually diminished ourselves in some way to be as close to machines as possible.
Iain McGilchrist [00:10:05]
And that is already happening. That's the thing we should be worrying about. It's happening because people now have to interface on a daily base with a computer. I find this, I mean, in a very basic way in order to do something like deal with the bank or fill in a form or book a whatever, you have to go through an algorithmic procedure and answer certain questions. And it's no good sort of saying, well, I haven't got an answer to this question, because it will just go does not compute. So what you have to do is start thinking like this computer and answer it, even if it's untruthful in ways that will keep the computer happy. Now that is not a cost free process. What that means is that you are beginning to think algorithmically. And the more we think algorithmically, the less human we become. For example, you end up like autistic philosophers for whom there are rather a lot. One was a very nice, kind man, Derek Parfit, who was a colleague of mine at All Souls, and who got, in my view, completely lost in a kind of calculus of morality, the kind of thing that trolley experiments... I mean, he wasn't particularly big on trolley experiments himself, but you know what I mean when I talk about trolley experiments, you get into a ridiculous...
Oliver Trace [00:11:21]
Let's set up, just for the sake of the audience, let's just set up the basic problem, as I understand it.
Iain McGilchrist [00:11:28]
There are many, many versions. They involve being able to deflect a runaway truck and that if you're driving the truck, there are two... the lines diverge. On one, you can see three people are working and on the other you can see five people are working, you know, and should you flip the point so that you go and kill them or whatever. But the trouble is that this completely ignores the nature of morality, that it isn't about making calculations of this kind. As Roger Scruton rather wonderfully points out, if one had in a great novel to justify… many novels are about people being faced with very difficult decisions, but we wouldn't think better of them if they made a sort of calculus on the back of an envelope: letting down my husband; disappointing my children; pleasing my lover. That comes out at one and a third to one in favor of taking this particular path; there's no way you can do that calculation. And indeed, you can't ask a doctor. I mean, another way in which this thing is sometimes put is, a doctor can save five people, but to do so, he needs to have the organs, fresh organs of various kinds that all happen to be available in a human person in front of him at the time.
Iain McGilchrist [00:12:47]
Now, if he were to kill this person, he could then save five lives by using those organs that otherwise he won't be able to get to save the five lives. Now, according to this kind of logic, the moral doctor is the person who kills the patient. I mean, I know that philosophers will say, well, not actually we don't really mean that, but this is where the thing is tending. And it's interesting because it's based on a philosophy of utilitarianism. Which in other words, outcomes are all that matter. And it might fascinate people to know that when people have right hemisphere brain damage, and particularly when they have frontal lobe damage in either hemisphere, they tend to become utilitarian in ethics. They tend to think that the answer to questions is something that can be calculated, not something that has to be a much more complex thing about norms of behaviour and things we expect and values we expect of a human being. So that in itself is interesting. More striking even than that perhaps, is the experiment that was done by two philosophers who are rather big in the utilitarian philosophy realm where they asked people to consider the following two scenarios:
Iain McGilchrist [00:14:09]
A woman is having a cup of coffee with a friend and she puts what she thinks is sugar in her friend's coffee, but it is in fact poison and her friend dies. The other scenario is the woman is having coffee with her friend and she puts what she thinks is poison in her friend's coffee. But in fact, it's sugar. And the friend lives. In which case was the person acting more immorally? And you can ask this of a non brain damaged person in the normal situation. And of course, they say, well, the morally worse situation was where she intended to kill, but she didn't actually succeed. But if you disable the right hemisphere in the region of the right temporal parietal junction, which you can do using something called transcranial magnetic stimulation, you can temporarily disable it and you ask people to solve problems. They answer in the way that only brain damaged people and utilitarian philosophers would, which is that it's worse because the outcome was that the person died in the case where in fact her mind was innocent. So that's the problems you end up with when you look at outcomes.
Oliver Trace [00:15:29]
Yeah, that is fascinating. That's when there's too much emphasis on outcomes as opposed to taking the whole.
Iain McGilchrist [00:15:35]
It's all part of this this same mechanistic externally viewed kind of thing.
Oliver Trace [00:15:41]
It's also this idea of principles. I think most of us are wedded to the idea of being principled. But of course, you know, principles don't hold up to reality. And there's a brilliant line in Oscar Wilde. He takes it so far that it gets laughed at because it is funny. But the point he's making is important. And it's Lord Henry in “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, who says, I like persons better than principles and I like persons with no principles better than anything in the world.
Iain McGilchrist [00:16:19]
Well, yes, I mean, because you could say that some of the most tyrannical people in history have been people with very strong principles who were inflexible in carrying them out. The problem is the inflexibility. Nothing wrong with having principles, but you must be aware from the outset that principles will always conflict. It's very obvious, isn't it? I mean, we don't need to give examples, but there are obviously things you may say, Well, I would never do this, but then there will be circumstances in which you'd say, Well, under those circumstances I guess I would have to do it, even though it's the lesser of two evils, as we say. So I mean, clearly principles are not something you can stick to rigidly, but it's the sticking to rigidly, not the necessarily having them. I mean, you might think that it's absolutely right not to cause harm to others, to cause unnecessary suffering, to cause damage to the environment or whatever it might be, or to nature, as I would prefer to put it. But those things may not all of them always be possible to be followed at once.
Oliver Trace [00:17:16]
Isiah Berlin talks about something similar when he says that you can't have a utopia because the principle of equality - you wouldn't argue with that - the principle of freedom - you wouldn't argue with that - but try and bring the two together and it's impossible. And it follows in his view that therefore we can't have utopias.
Iain McGilchrist [00:17:41]
Of course, and attempts to produce them have been the most incredibly destructive experiments in human history.
Oliver Trace [00:17:49]
Okay, so I still haven't missed it on chapter one.
Iain McGilchrist [00:17:54]
I don't think this should matter too much because I think that the substance of chapters 1 to 4 is where all the meat of the book is.
Oliver Trace [00:18:02]
Yeah I'm very happy with how it's going so far. I'm just amused that I'm still on page one.
Iain McGilchrist [00:18:09]
Well, I'm not surprised. If you want me to shout out, though, just go...
Oliver Trace [00:18:11]
Me neither. But it does relate to what you were saying earlier when you were struggling with the book and you had started many times. And then eventually you wrote the book. And perhaps that was the solution to your struggles. And for me, when I was trying to work out how this conversation was going to run, I was continually trying to see the whole and I couldn't see it, obviously, because you're an aspect of that whole and it's happening right now and there's no way for me to have seen what was going to happen prior to beginning. And in fact, now it's running, it's okay. And it reminds me of a line that I really, really love, which I only truly understood once I'd started pursuing animation and then Sentio Space and now eventually here, which is, I'll try and quote it, it goes: There's one fundamental truth, the ignorance of which kills countless splendid ideas and plans, which is that once you begin, Providence follows. All sorts of events and occurrences happen that you could never previously have intended. And I can't remember who wrote that passage, but he then ends it by saying it's through an appreciation of that truth that I understand what Goethe was getting at when he says, Whatever dream you have, begin. Boldness has genius and magic within. It's a really lovely passage.
Iain McGilchrist [00:19:50]
Very, very true. In fact, you only find out about things in the process of doing them. Hegel has a rather nice, amusing aside that many philosophers are like the character he calls Simplicius, who was very keen to learn to swim but was not prepared to get into the water until he'd fully mastered it.
Oliver Trace [00:20:11]
That's a good example. That's a good example. Or if you try and look at some piano music, you try and understand what it is to play before playing the piece, it's an impossibility. You have to act in order to understand.
Iain McGilchrist [00:20:29]
Incidentally, do you want me to switch the clock off? Is that going to cause a problem?
Oliver Trace [00:20:32]
Well, it's going to go off every hour, isn't it?
Iain McGilchrist [00:20:34]
It does yes.
Oliver Trace [00:20:35]
It adds a certain charm to it.
Iain McGilchrist [00:20:37]
Ok, as long as you're happy with it.
Oliver Trace [00:20:37]
If it were going off every five minutes then perhaps.
Iain McGilchrist [00:20:41]
I'm used to people saying, Can we stop the clock?
Oliver Trace [00:20:43]
Do you have to wind the clock?
Iain McGilchrist [00:20:44]
I do.
Oliver Trace [00:20:45]
You do? You do wind the clock?
Iain McGilchrist [00:20:46]
Yes. I don't mind stopping it, but if you're happy with it, I'm happy with it.
Oliver Trace [00:20:50]
Because I can't... I wish I could remember the name of the series, I was watching the other day. Some chap spends thousands of pounds on an antique clock and then it arrives and the guy who's installing it says, Well, you need to wind it up each day or else it loses time. He goes, You must be joking. I spent thousands of pounds on that clock.
Iain McGilchrist [00:21:12]
I have five clocks that need winding and I wind them every Saturday.
Oliver Trace [00:21:16]
Yes. And it gives you a relationship with the clock.
Iain McGilchrist [00:21:20]
It does, and it's another of those paradoxical things that the peaceful ticking of a clock intensifies the sense of timelessness. In fact, slight sounds intensify the sense of silence. If you're doing a film and you want to give the impression of a very still, hot day, you don't just have a blank soundtrack. You have the very distant sound of an insect passing.