That was "Iain McGilchrist on how Attention Creates Your Environment" on YouTube
Iain's take:
Attention creates our subjective reality. How? Iain explains his perspective. Maybe Iain is on to something. Mark attempts to make sense of it.
Hi dear reader,
In one of Ian's books, specifically page 1120, Vol. II, "The Matter With Things" (2021), subtitled "Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World" ... Iain says something that interesred me.
On page 1120, end of Chapter 25
Ian quotes William James, Galen Strawsman, and others, saying:
...
"Language is no match for the topic. And reason cannot reach the depths of experience, either. 'We have to confess,' writes James,
'...that the part of [mental life] of which rationalism can give an account is relatively superficial. It is the part that has the prestige undoubtedly, for it has the loquacity, it can challenge you for proofs and chop logic and put you down with words. But it will fail to convince or convert you all the same ... if you have intuitions at all, they come from a deeper level of your nature than the locatious level which rationalism inhabits.'
Strawson would probably agree: 'descursive thought is not adequate to the nature of reality: we can see that it doesn't get things right although we can't help persisting with it ... the nature of reality is in fundamental respects beyond discursive grasp.' Marcelo Glaser puts it with Panache: 'Unless you are intellectually numb, you can't escape the awe-inspiring feeling that the essence of reality is unknowable.'
Rather famously the psychologist Stuart Sutherland wrote in the International Dictionary of Psychology: 'Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon; it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written on it.' I cannot hope to have been an exception to this rule.
...
[loquacity = talkativeness]
My take:
Knowledge about anything in objective reality is never absolutely certain. All I can ever hope to do is guess. Some guesses are probably better than others, I guess. Some worse.
As I make various guesses, I contrast them with each other, some better, some worse, and I hold on to what is seemingly the best, the most trustworthy, the most helpful, the most consistently predictive.
Speakable
For the sake of convenience, I will call the most consistent guesses facts. I will speak of knowing. I will speak of knowkedge. Yet I remember that none of my knowledge is absolute.
Value
I value truth. I claim to seek truth. Yet I will never claim to have finished this quest.
Ian's take:
p 1121
Chapter 26, "Value"
...
'Truth, outlasts the Sun --'
-Emily Dickinson
...
"...what life brings, I would maintain, is not consciousness, then -- which, as I have argued, is present from the beginning -- but the coming into being of the capacity for value: thus, a mountain cannot value, though it can have value for creatures, like ourselves, who value. And it is not just we, but all living creatures, that for the first time are able to recognize value. Life vastly enhances the degree of responsiveness of, to and within the world.
...that values are not invented but discovered..."
...
My take:
As I undetstand it, Iain is saying that we humans value things and experiences. And I assume, that like bamboo shoots, there are tall ones, and there are other ones that don't quite measure up to the tall ones. In other words, we can value some experiences much more than others. This is a fitting and appropriate disposition.
As I consider the divided brain system we use, and Iain's theories about it, I'm inclined to agree with many of his ideas. At this point, I believe most of his theories to be a good way of understanding my living context, the wholistic objective reality of what's going on in the world around me and within me, including what is beyond my subjective observation.
Others
I believe our best wholistic understanding blossoms when we consider the words of others, including people who lived long before we were born. I believe such education will not come to me of its own accord but must be sought and taken.
I intuit my education. I science it. I reason it. I imagine it. I seek it. I take it. I educate myself.
Background
In 1966, in Mrs. McGuinn's 3rd grade class in the private schoolhouse mansion at Rutger's Prep, 9-year-old Mark read "101 Ekephant Jokes" and Sarah read "Charlotte's Web." Sarah was appropriately praised for her choice, I was not.
A few years later, in public school, even with my advanced reading group placement, I was still not reading whole stories. Mom took me to a public library, as recommended by my 5th grade reading teacher, Ms. Raven.
When the librarian asked what I was interested in I told her I wanted a book about consciousness. They didn't have any such book, so for the most part I didn't read books.
By 1986, graduating Magna Cum. Laude from San Diego State Univercity, I began collecting books without reading most of them cover to cover.
Now, age 67, 2025, as a reader, I'm crippled, like a person who can't run, can only walk a few steps at a time. My wheelchair is audio books and podcasts. I do quite well by listening and taking notes.
I'm a pretty good note taker. Now I have interesting things to say about conscuousness and history and geopolitics and philosophy and music and liberal education and such. Rarely do any of my face-to-face friends understand much about the interesting things I have to say. Most of them are not interested, some are even disturbed by my opinions.
Sometimes when people don't want to hear my opinions they label me as some kind of radical thinker, maybe a "conspiracy theorist," ir even as someone "brain-washed."
So do I think I have more to learn? Yes, absolutely. And do I think I have more to say? Even from my intellectual wheelchair? Yes, most definitely.
.
https://youtube.com/shorts/xsRi8dN-ziU?si=KAGT4nFEFJbD6iiU
That was "Iain McGilchrist on how Attention Creates Your Environment" on YouTube
Iain's take:
Attention creates our subjective reality. How? Iain explains his perspective. Maybe Iain is on to something. Mark attempts to make sense of it.
Hi dear reader,
In one of Ian's books, specifically page 1120, Vol. II, "The Matter With Things" (2021), subtitled "Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World" ... Iain says something that interesred me.
On page 1120, end of Chapter 25
Ian quotes William James, Galen Strawsman, and others, saying:
...
"Language is no match for the topic. And reason cannot reach the depths of experience, either. 'We have to confess,' writes James,
'...that the part of [mental life] of which rationalism can give an account is relatively superficial. It is the part that has the prestige undoubtedly, for it has the loquacity, it can challenge you for proofs and chop logic and put you down with words. But it will fail to convince or convert you all the same ... if you have intuitions at all, they come from a deeper level of your nature than the locatious level which rationalism inhabits.'
Strawson would probably agree: 'descursive thought is not adequate to the nature of reality: we can see that it doesn't get things right although we can't help persisting with it ... the nature of reality is in fundamental respects beyond discursive grasp.' Marcelo Glaser puts it with Panache: 'Unless you are intellectually numb, you can't escape the awe-inspiring feeling that the essence of reality is unknowable.'
Rather famously the psychologist Stuart Sutherland wrote in the International Dictionary of Psychology: 'Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon; it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written on it.' I cannot hope to have been an exception to this rule.
...
[loquacity = talkativeness]
My take:
Knowledge about anything in objective reality is never absolutely certain. All I can ever hope to do is guess. Some guesses are probably better than others, I guess. Some worse.
As I make various guesses, I contrast them with each other, some better, some worse, and I hold on to what is seemingly the best, the most trustworthy, the most helpful, the most consistently predictive.
Speakable
For the sake of convenience, I will call the most consistent guesses facts. I will speak of knowing. I will speak of knowkedge. Yet I remember that none of my knowledge is absolute.
Value
I value truth. I claim to seek truth. Yet I will never claim to have finished this quest.
Ian's take:
p 1121
Chapter 26, "Value"
...
'Truth, outlasts the Sun --'
-Emily Dickinson
...
"...what life brings, I would maintain, is not consciousness, then -- which, as I have argued, is present from the beginning -- but the coming into being of the capacity for value: thus, a mountain cannot value, though it can have value for creatures, like ourselves, who value. And it is not just we, but all living creatures, that for the first time are able to recognize value. Life vastly enhances the degree of responsiveness of, to and within the world.
...that values are not invented but discovered..."
...
My take:
As I undetstand it, Iain is saying that we humans value things and experiences. And I assume, that like bamboo shoots, there are tall ones, and there are other ones that don't quite measure up to the tall ones. In other words, we can value some experiences much more than others. This is a fitting and appropriate disposition.
As I consider the divided brain system we use, and Iain's theories about it, I'm inclined to agree with many of his ideas. At this point, I believe most of his theories to be a good way of understanding my living context, the wholistic objective reality of what's going on in the world around me and within me, including what is beyond my subjective observation.
Others
I believe our best wholistic understanding blossoms when we consider the words of others, including people who lived long before we were born. I believe such education will not come to me of its own accord but must be sought and taken.
I intuit my education. I science it. I reason it. I imagine it. I seek it. I take it. I educate myself.
Background
In 1966, in Mrs. McGuinn's 3rd grade class in the private schoolhouse mansion at Rutger's Prep, 9-year-old Mark read "101 Ekephant Jokes" and Sarah read "Charlotte's Web." Sarah was appropriately praised for her choice, I was not.
A few years later, in public school, even with my advanced reading group placement, I was still not reading whole stories. Mom took me to a public library, as recommended by my 5th grade reading teacher, Ms. Raven.
When the librarian asked what I was interested in I told her I wanted a book about consciousness. They didn't have any such book, so for the most part I didn't read books.
By 1986, graduating Magna Cum. Laude from San Diego State Univercity, I began collecting books without reading most of them cover to cover.
Now, age 67, 2025, as a reader, I'm crippled, like a person who can't run, can only walk a few steps at a time. My wheelchair is audio books and podcasts. I do quite well by listening and taking notes.
I'm a pretty good note taker. Now I have interesting things to say about conscuousness and history and geopolitics and philosophy and music and liberal education and such. Rarely do any of my face-to-face friends understand much about the interesting things I have to say. Most of them are not interested, some are even disturbed by my opinions.
Sometimes when people don't want to hear my opinions they label me as some kind of radical thinker, maybe a "conspiracy theorist," ir even as someone "brain-washed."
So do I think I have more to learn? Yes, absolutely. And do I think I have more to say? Even from my intellectual wheelchair? Yes, most definitely.
mark spark
.
.
At some point, I have no words...
(L) I emote anger, get frustrated. "What!?! No words!?!"
(R) I giggle. I intuit this situation as appropriately funny.
(L)/(R) Mirrors happen. With a purposeful pause, the bully calms down. I can both laugh and show up to go to work.
Sanity might be nurtured by embracing craziness as OK, OK to try on for a spell.
.