What is this?

Beauty, Value & Purpose | Iain McGilchrist with Maitreyabandhu 2,722

• interested in is all the stuff you talk about later matter consciousness space time values the sacred why don't we just
• foundational to even cosmic consciousness not my consciousness even yes yes
• even cosmic consciousness not my consciousness even yes yes um
• the only terrible position is that consciousness is an ontological primitive it is in other words something

Reflections on Iain McGilchrist’s The Matter with Things 2,606

• time flow and movement space and matter matter and consciousness value purpose life and the nature of the cosmos and
• also there's something about you say that consciousness is not in space but it is in time and that seems to be a
• rather crucial point for grasping what consciousness is it's not in space but it is in time
• and then you go on um into you know theory of consciousness and then you get to value purpose of the
• matter have a chapter together and matter and consciousness less surprising
• resistance you get into a theory of consciousness which is a kind of pan psychism other
• somewhere around the end of the consciousness chapter where you describe um i think if i'm right i've got written
• realizing there's something fundamental about consciousness and pervasive intelligence in the universe
• hypothesis um and consciousness in particular is that if you uh speaking to a hardened
• and then and one question for the consciousness is also always for me what role has consciousness in our dreams as
• consciousness is also always for me what role has consciousness in our dreams as a during sleep
• or less uh bright consciousness i think i am the same person and i'm
• that it does play a part in our consciousness and when i was in medical school not only did i hear almost
• experience between hearing you play your cello and my mind and my consciousness and my memories and so on so there are
• to answer that particular question but the consciousness is not simply the brain and one observation made by the
• of course your your three perspectives the brain emits consciousness the brain transmits consciousness and the brain
• the brain emits consciousness the brain transmits consciousness and the brain permits consciousness i found to be a
• transmits consciousness and the brain permits consciousness i found to be a helpful
• of the divine and how that ties into how we think about consciousness and um i suppose my question to you is
• inordinately different levels of consciousness that we see in humans compared with the rest of the animal
• know we were talking about the different levels of consciousness that can be experienced by a human being or whether
• you were talking about the different levels of consciousness as one looks through the animal world and the in the
• i'm trying to come to your point is that our consciousness is more able to respond than other creatures i think
• at the end of the chapter and matter and consciousness which is not out yet and so towards the very end of the chapter
• you quote stuart sutherland who wrote referring to consciousness that nothing worth reading has been written on it
• these as we were discussing chapter 25 but lateral consciousness and you said something that when you finished and
• with any of these things and you're talking about consciousness but also about the sense of the sacred and so on

"The Matter with Things" - Dr Iain McGilchrist on epistemology and metaphysics 2,552

• who are we what is the nature of reality where is our consciousness from what is our relationship with time and space how
• space motions matter consciousness purpose value and divinity it offers a new perspective of humanity
• you mentioned such as the nature of time space consciousness matter and and so on and our values including the sense of
• flow um matter in consciousness values purpose and the sense of the
• i i saw you with john cleese interview you the talk on consciousness and creativity two bridges like i got
• realize that you cannot vanish consciousness from the physical world a hundred years ago but it's taking
• relationship between the whole i.e the consciousness and matter have created it by our senses and how perceive the
• long chapter on this it's a short book length on matter and consciousness in their relationship and spoiler alert
• their relationship and spoiler alert i believe that consciousness is is is is um an ontological primitive in other
• hold that matter is a different phase of consciousness in the same way that ice is a different phase from water and
• can actually and i see mata as the element in consciousness that provides necessary resistance coming back to the
• um and it also connects so conscious of what is consciousness consciousness is always a relation it's directed towards
• in the same thing at a higher level so in my consciousness there is me and there is something i'm conscious of my
• exclude that as i say at a higher level when they say that all consciousness is one i don't want to go into that now but
• one i don't want to go into that now but what i'm saying is that consciousness is directed it has a it has an object it's
• interconnection of matter and consciousness thank you very much my question is quite direct you know
• of our speakers and he talked about the fundamental basis of consciousness have arising from the stem cells of the
• brain from where the primitive consciousness emerges that's what you know the brain stem yes yes
• monism as a key idea to understand philosophically what consciousness is so you know he was coming from these two
• sides of things yes you understand consciousness how do you see in your understanding that sort of and you know
• a great cleft between matter and consciousness but mata is a way in which consciousness manifests at times
• consciousness but mata is a way in which consciousness manifests at times and so in other words it does have
• aspects in fact i believe that value is another aspect of consciousness so dual or even multi aspect monism is i
• um but i may be wrong but i believe that he is of the view that consciousness arises out of the brain stem
• very important for the maintenance of consciousness as we know it so that in a human being somebody who has damaged the
• reticular activating system may lose consciousness that is certainly true but i think that's different from the claim
• holding onto that it actually originates consciousness and as i say i can't dispute what he says because i haven't
• professional lifetime is that consciousness cannot be said to emerge from anything else that it is it is as i
• most interested in i took the view that consciousness was um as i say an ontological primitive
• artificial intelligence to artificial consciousness and so my question here is this is the triumph of this narrow
• just mechanisms machines whereas in fact our consciousness is embodied our bodies our emotions our soul may i dare to say

Parts and Whole, Science and Intuition, Left Brain and Right Brain with Dr. Iain McGilchrist 2,257

• dualistic perspective of on one side consciousness and the other side matter and that dualism is there and so when
• generator is it matter that creates consciousness or is it consciousness that is primary and creates matter is of
• describe one of them as matter and another as conscience consciousness but we don't need somehow to unify two
• thing and our language is not good because by consciousness we already think we've excluded matter and by
• matter we already think we've excluded consciousness but the way i sometimes put it is that it's like water
• that they have found is elements within their consciousness that have qualities that they call material
• which is that i know that i know mata only because i have consciousness but i don't know that i i know consciousness
• only because i have consciousness but i don't know that i i know consciousness because of matter it might be so or it
• i think that the idea that the brain generates consciousness is a complete non-starter it's not logical at all
• the idea that um mata that had no consciousness in it at all could suddenly step over to being subjective
• matter is something we know much less than consciousness because it is through consciousness that we apprehend things
• than consciousness because it is through consciousness that we apprehend things through consciousness that we feel
• consciousness that we apprehend things through consciousness that we feel things we experience things we we can
• the sense that it is there and it is you know our podcast is called consciousness is all there is and i have written about
• is all there is and i have written about how actually a field of consciousness manifests uh uh and and interacts with
• holistic it's more spread out more consciousness more feared like then this is where we should
• have devoted a lot of my work on and time on is technologies of consciousness now we don't want to talk about
• of what we are doing being aware where we're going and by raising consciousness and improving awareness in a thick in a
• technology of the mind technology of consciousness yes
• speculation but but um when it comes to um consciousness then i think it may be that parts of the brain act in
• is in fact a filter so it's not making consciousness nor is it simply passively like a radio set
• it simply passively like a radio set transmitting consciousness but it's sculpting molding filtering
• sculpting molding filtering consciousness william james had this wonderful image
• that our relationships to one another are like this that consciousness is single ultimately but a very single
• in the theory i present in my book one unbounded ocean of consciousness uh in motion the ability to actually

Analogy Is the Basic Mechanism of Understanding | Dr. Iain McGilchrist & Jonathan Pageau 2,206

• been able to bring about the the primacy of consciousness and the the embedded experience as being

Matter and Spirit. Andrew Briggs and Iain McGilchrist in conversation 2,163

• um in the matter with things i argue that consciousness is an ontological primitive in other words it can't be
• um consciousness is simultaneously as you say basic to
• matter is just as mysterious as consciousness and indeed i believe that they are not wholly separate from one
• they are not wholly separate from one another that consciousness permeates the material universe and that matter is if
• i can use such an expression a phase of consciousness in the sense that ice and steam are phrases of water they have
• that are like this when you say that consciousness is something that we find very difficult to
• by grasp to grasp it from the outside it's very difficult but consciousness is the one thing of which we have a hundred
• even say this without having consciousness you couldn't understand it without having consciousness we know
• consciousness you couldn't understand it without having consciousness we know that
• matter through our consciousness but we don't know that we understand and experience
• know that we understand and experience consciousness through the material brain that is possible
• hold it while in this world our consciousness is mediated in some way by the brain it is not actually
• um whether there was something specific about human consciousness that gave you this sense of an arrow of
• eddington asks whether it's something of special about human consciousness what these experiments we did confirmed is
• arguments about the nature of consciousness and free will is to think about what the left hemisphere would be

Unpacking Iain McGilchrist and The Matter with Things! 1,473

• flow and movement space and matter matter and consciousness uh value and then we get into the last

Our Divided Nature & Reasons for Hope: A Conversation with Dr Iain McGilchrist 975

• also had a question about what you exactly meant by consciousness and matter are distinct but inseparable
• phases could you explain that maybe and also describe to us where consciousness begins
• science unfortunately still is that somehow the brain can emit consciousness nobody has the slightest clue how this
• and it seems to me there are three possibilities about consciousness either the brain emits it which i think is the
• permitting because of its shaping consciousness our consciousness so there's a lovely saying in william james
• voice to what i believe is that individual consciousnesses are as it were rather like that business of the
• larynx they are shaped out of general consciousness and to cut a very long story short i believe we can't explain
• story short i believe we can't explain consciousness as a rising out of matter if we view mata and that's a big if as
• if we view mata and that's a big if as having nothing like consciousness about it now i happen to think that matter
• it now i happen to think that matter already has much of consciousness in it and that the gap is not so great i
• and that the gap is not so great i believe that consciousness is foundational it's what philosophers
• cannot get behind or beyond and that matter is a form of consciousness and you might say well it doesn't look
• and you might say well it doesn't look like consciousness i mean what do you mean but i might say well yes but it's a
• mean but i might say well yes but it's a phase of consciousness and think about water you know that in physical
• they're really they're all forms of water and so consciousness is what we do know is that we only know matter because
• know is that we only know matter because we have consciousness the one thing we can be sure of is we have consciousness
• we have consciousness the one thing we can be sure of is we have consciousness and matter is something we experience
• and matter is something we experience because we have consciousness we don't know that consciousness is something we
• because we have consciousness we don't know that consciousness is something we experience because we have matter like a
• everything including our experiences are coming together of my consciousness your consciousness with something else
• coming together of my consciousness your consciousness with something else outside of that consciousness and it's
• consciousness with something else outside of that consciousness and it's in that encounter that what we

The role of consciousness in nature: An interview with Dr. Iain McGilchrist, Part 1 916

• outside experience but of course experience is consciousness so we can't stand outside it
• things these very large subjects like consciousness and value and purpose and god which are
• so the first thing i would say about consciousness is that it's a mistake to think of it as a thing
• with and in truth and consciousness is like this it's an aspect of our experience we do things
• consciously or unconsciously what actually consciousness is as a noun may be a mistake as a question
• for essentia i made that point that i see consciousness as foundational to all it is that we can't
• everything that we know the idea that somehow consciousness at one time didn't exist
• a much more reasonable idea is that consciousness is present as an element in the cosmos
• very mainstream neuroscientists concluded that consciousness may just be we have to accept that it may just be
• that in in this case in talking about consciousness as in talking about any kind of reality we have to
• for me consciousness is neither atomistic
• so in essence my consciousness your consciousness
• my consciousness your consciousness are
• frameworks that then even there your consciousness and mind are not completely distinct and i'd be quite
• but at the end there is not just a sum of all these consciousnesses but they're part of one single sea of consciousness
• of all these consciousnesses but they're part of one single sea of consciousness or stream of consciousness when it comes
• part of one single sea of consciousness or stream of consciousness when it comes back to the image of water
• had finally decided what they thought consciousness was and we all agreed with them we wouldn't have anything to talk
• although we are distinguishable and that is the process of consciousness and the process of life
• we are the ways in which consciousness and life and probably many other things such as
• the relationship between matter and consciousness yes and what i do say about that is that
• i would say it is a phase of consciousness phase not as in time but phase as in an
• and matter is a name for a kind of consciousness and what i mean by that is it is a way in which our consciousness
• consciousness and what i mean by that is it is a way in which our consciousness manifests something to us so
• we should necessarily think of um consciousness as primary to matter is an arguable point
• experience water it is through consciousness and only through consciousness that i
• it is through consciousness and only through consciousness that i have any concept of matter at all
• matter because of having consciousness but i can't be certain that i only know consciousness
• of having consciousness but i can't be certain that i only know consciousness because of having matter a brain
• that there is some capacity for whatever it is that we call consciousness not to be wholly limited by the brain
• i have a chapter on consciousness and its relationship to mata
• drugs affect the brain and they affect consciousness epilepsy affects the brain and affects consciousness and
• consciousness epilepsy affects the brain and affects consciousness and and so on and that um
• a head injury can an injury to the brain will affect the consciousness of course this is absolutely indisputable but when
• putting it simply we can think of the relationship between consciousness and the brain as
• an emission in other words the consciousness is something emitted by the brain
• in other words that it acts as a receiver for consciousness that doesn't it's not confined to the brain but is
• reason for us to believe that consciousness can be emitted from a brain
• you're not you're not demonstrating that consciousness comes from the brain you're saying that what we have to argue
• if we're keen on this idea that consciousness is an emanation of matter is that it must come from unconscious
• matter which is entirely unconscious and suddenly there is consciousness in it this is completely illogical and
• the part of our brain that sustains consciousness the cerebrum however only accounts for
• contains four times as many neurons but it can't sustain consciousness somebody might say well
• the arising of consciousness it's it's like
• unconscious and then after this somehow consciousness comes you've really just black boxed
• the whole business of how that consciousness comes by using the word complexity but it
• i take the view that consciousness for most of us most of the time is tied
• panzerkiss position in other words the consciousness is everywhere in the cosmos
• so certainly single cells would appear to show consciousness and very simple organisms such as slime
• then you say well what about the consciousness in all the things around us and i think we have to conceive
• us and i think we have to conceive consciousness as present in their makeup but not as active in the form of
• a state of affairs in which there simply is no particle of consciousness the one in which there is
• as going from unconsciousness to consciousness it's perfectly legitimate to think that there is
• words like consciousness things that we can't get behind and attribute to something
• they they their nature is relational like consciousness it is relational this is the point that we need to be
• is the point that we need to be discussing consciousness is a relationship
• that love so in the unfolding of consciousness and the unfolding of the world not the
• the cosmos things like consciousness life and values

The Attack On Life and Understanding Our Times. A conversation with Iain McGilchrist and Mark Vernon 794

• develop that are part of our one consciousness i don't know whether that yeah makes some