Understanding The Matter with Things Dialogues Episode 16: Chapter 16 Logical paradox

This series of dialogues between Iain McGilchrist and Alex Gomez-Marin explores Iain's latest book The Matter with Things. In Episode 16 Iain and Alex discuss Chapter 16, Logical paradox: a further study in left hemisphere capture

To purchase The Matter with Things

Dr Àlex Gómez-Marín is a Spanish physicist turned neuroscientist. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics and a Masters in biophysics from the University of Barcelona. He was a research fellow at the EMBL-CRG Centre for Genomic Regulation and at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon. His research spans from the origins of the arrow of time to the neurobiology of action-perception in flies, worms, mice, humans and robots. Since 2016 he is the head of the Behavior of Organisms Laboratory at the Instituto de Neurociencias in Alicante, where he is an Associate Professor of the Spanish Research Council. Combining high-resolution experiments, computational and theoretical biology, and continental philosophy, his latest research concentrates on real-life cognition and consciousness.

[rebeccacampbell]

Iain McGilchrist speaks with the authority of a thoughtful, well read, educated man. His ability to organize and recall vast amounts of information simply amazes me. His style of speaking and his vocabulary are absolutely beautiful. He has challenged me to think and to rethink which is a gift of great enjoyment and value to me. Thank you. Alex is a joy. His enthusiasm is contagious. His contributions to the conversations are appreciated. His youth gives me hope for a more right brained future. Thank you both for modeling how a conversation should be conducted. You both listen to one another and treat one another with politeness and respect. Let’s hope we, your audience, are able to do the same in our own conversations. Thanks to you both.

[oakbellUK]

My favorite 'unity of opposites' is:
"I cry because my Mother doesn't live me."
"My mother doesn't love me because I cry."

I also like the idea that, to really understand something, you take the two things which seem opposite and hold them in your mind until they no longer seem opposite.

[maritadewet]

Thank you for the discussions, Iain and Alex, really helpful in understanding the book, couldn’t make sense of some difficult ideas without the light you shine on it.

[SamuelJFord]

This was one of my favourite chapters in The Matter with Things. In The Master and His Emissary my 'aha' moment was when Iain wrote about Zeno's paradox, and how that way of thinking may have something to do with the problems of the left hemisphere. Chapter 16 in TMWT really expanded on that and I think enabled me to have a much better sense of when I was being led astray by my own logic.

There is a feeling of tension when you consider some of the paradoxes in this chapter, a sense of constant spiralling but never towards a solution. I found that I used to feel this same sensation when thinking about the 'problem' in evolutionary biology of the 'unit of selection' (gene vs individual vs group vs species etc). Clearly there is no one right answer to this question which is independent of reference frame, but the left hemisphere insists it MUST be the gene...

[thebasis]

Would it be possible to upload these talks to Spotify or somewhere we can listen in podcast form? Would be GREAT. Anyway, love the work, thank you!

[shanokapadia]

Incredible beyond imagination. Can’t thank you enough… much appreciated to share your knowledge. Thank you again.🙏🙏

[nonserviam]

"The incongruity between the concept and reality soon shows itself, as the former never descends to the particular case, and its universality and rigid definiteness can never accurately apply to reality's fine shades of difference and its innumerable modifications."

Arthur Schopenhauer, WW&R

[jefflanahan]

Yes, a spiral looks like a circle when viewed directly from above. That's good. One must consider the "context", that is, the "set of (meaning there are several) conditions from which a viewpoint can be derived. Interestingly the word "derive" comes from the idea of one thing "flowing out" (to descend) from one thing into another. And the word "context" use to mean "to weave together". Both invoke a kind of wave-like imagery where movement forward involves both a pushing away, and a pulling together. Perhaps a logical paradox is like a failure to "realize" the true nature of the spiral. To see it from above, you have to actually go there. And to discover from where you'd have to be in order that it appear as like a ladder, you have to actually walk around it to find out, all the while obtaining more and more viewpoints to consider as part of the "context".

[Boylieboyle]

I don't comment in capitals - ever - but THANK YOU for facilitating Iain McGilchrist

[marksheridan]

Just want to say thanks for doing these precis-teasers of each chapter! I bought the book, but it makes for more rewarding reading to listen to you guys tee up the key points of what I'm about to read.

[maxsterling]

Just wow ! Towards the end in ways of thinking about truth and insightful questions for Iain prior to, the insight Dr. McGilchrist, gave us ( at least for me ) was fantastic. Just a wonderful progression of the conversation I absolutely was embodied with and found very helpful thank you gentlemen.

[hamletwinston]

It would be useful if these videos were added to the playlist on the channel

[mehdibaghbadran]

We should all believe each other’s, if some individuals giving the ball ⚽️ to another one, and play as a good team, then no matter who’s making the goals, the reality is your team is the winner of the games, because each player has he’s own technical strategies, which is absolutely natural, and even we are going to writing a history about a great individual player, we’ll bring all the capability and ability of that player into consideration,

[andrewroddy]

Is the excluded middle not the core default of our experience?

[mmnuances]

Greetings Alex and Ian, If the fundamental insight we are pursuing has to do with freeing attention from its imprisonment by the machinations of the left hemispheric mode of inhabiting the Cosmos, then I think that freedom likely comes with the "leap" that you mention and is not gradual... there is no gradual release from our perceptual prison, we are either in it or we are not, don't you think? The leap also requires a release. Consider this ancient Sufi tale. In our discussions and attempts to understand, are we falling over and over again into a trap that returns us to the attentional prison from which we are trying to leap? To free itself, the monkey would need to free it's attention from focusing only on the cherry, and "leap" into the undivided wholeness of flowing movement.


How to Catch Monkeys 

Once upon a time there was a monkey who was very fond of cherries. One day he saw a delicious-looking cherry, and came down from his tree to get it. But the fruit turned out to be in a clear glass bottle. After some experimentation, the monkey found that he could get hold of the cherry by putting his hand into the bottle by way of the neck. As soon as he had done so, he closed his hand over the cherry; but then he found that he could not withdraw his fist holding the cherry, because it was larger than the internal dimension of the neck.
Now all this was deliberate, because the cherry in the bottle was a trap laid by a monkey-hunter who knew how monkeys think.
The hunter, hearing the monkey’s whimperings, came along and the monkey tried to run away. But, because his hand was, as he thought, stuck in the bottle, he could not move fast enough to escape.
But, as he thought, he still had hold of the cherry. The hunter picked him up. A moment later he tapped the monkey sharply on the elbow, making him suddenly relax his hold on the fruit.
The monkey was free, but he was captured. The hunter had used the cherry and the bottle, but he still had them.

[mehdibaghbadran]

Everything in the world which comes forward from long time’s ago, weather right or wrong, doesn’t goes away, suddenly! and of course take time’s, if we know what we should do and what changes we should work on it, another words, we can’t act against nature’s laws and moves with truth, if we planted a true then we growing truth, and same to hate, war’s, and forgiveness, and etc….

[noonesflower]

''When it comes to the verry deep stuff it is''....This is incorrect. The law of non-contradiction is supreme

[LucaJDLee]

The promise of eternal life in the Bible does not mean that the Faithful will live through an incessant continuation of time. As IM suggests, eternity is not an addition of infinite number of time. There is a leap to a wholly different dimension, or quality. "And this is eternal life, that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." (Jn 17:3). Those who seek to know God in Christ, that is, the ultimate expression of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, have made a leap to that realm, albeit incompletely but really. Rather than pursuing Immortality of Soul, we should aim at the highest possible order here and now: Speak truth, Do good, and Adore beauty.

[oakbellUK]

Oh dear, Oh dear! This chapter seems completely separate from reality! the only examples are those which have been concocted and taught to generations of philosophy students.
Not a single example from everyday life.
Very disappointing.

[jayhillrubis]

Dr Joe Dispenza, epigenetics. lol
💖🙏🌻