Understanding The Matter with Things Dialogues Episode 27: Ch 27 Purpose, life, nature of the cosmos

This series of dialogues between Iain McGilchrist and Alex Gomez-Marin explores Iain's latest book The Matter with Things. In Episode 27 Iain and Alex discuss Chapter 27, Purpose, life and the nature of the cosmos

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.

[garymackelprang]

I have read Dr. McGilchrist's books and they have changed me. I have listened to his lectures with Dr. Gomez-Marin and they have changed me. I am so grateful that these insightful men are willing to share their insights and their wisdom with the world. Dr. McGilchrist, although I will probably never have the opportunity to meet (or even personally see) him, has made a huge difference in my life and the life of others with whom I associate. As we approach the last video discussion, I am filled with gratitude and appreciation for these great men who have helped open my eyes. Thank you.

[dogbitefoot]

Listening to you Dr Gilchrist is like listening to a beautiful piece of orchestral music. There is a resonance and deep swoon experienced...thank you...🙏🏽💜

[maryjo]

What will I do when these dialogues are over? I feel like I sometimes do when I am getting close to the end of a particularly good book and I read one page and put it down. Dr. McGilchrist and Alex Gomez-Marin have such good rapport and chemistry. They have made me laugh as well as think seriously about the way our left brain world is going. Many thanks to both of you. I will miss these dialogues.

[tombsandtemples]

I really really enjoy this format. I love listening to this man

[skipper.mindplayers]

Thank you both so much again. Deepest wisdom presented extremely informed and yet lightly and consumable.🙏

[druidjuicer]

An utterly wonderful and thought-provoking discussion. Is anyone else totally blown away by Alex's questioning? He both asks the questions I would ask and many I wouldn't have thought of. Honestly, what an articulate intelligence. I can't get enough of these conversations.

[seanpenfold]

Another excellent discussion, I've enjoyed this series very much. Thank you for all your work Ian.

[cheri]

I bought this book of 2 volumes. Futhernore, I received it a few days ago and have been listening on Perspectiva.
With the deepest appreciation and respect for this wisdom.

[dianecurran]

Wonderful! Thank you both. Maybe allow yourselves the luxury of talking about Chapter 28 in two episodes instead of one. Relieve the pressure of trying to talk about everything in Chapter 28 in one-fell-swoop.

[HeronMarkBlade]

also - I wonder if Iain's position can be empirically tested? So, observing an overarching plan unfold (implicate to explicate) across numerous generations that is provably not mechanistic/random mutation orientated. is purpose testable, or merely an intuition about metaphysics (which may indeed be true....).

[timm]

I just started volume II, so will need to wait listening to this video. However, I'm very curious what will follow.. I've been growing and using psychedelics (Psilocybe Subtropicalis) on very high doses and felt that sense of oneness with all that is when the self is not.. the love that rushes over you like waves.. and sense that which lies beyond all time and thought. This made me curious to explore consciousness and read this book.. maybe Ian has something to say about psychedelics... I wonder if he ever tried a heroic dose and felt what it's when the 'I' dissolves..

[RickDelmonico]

We are not naming things, we are naming behaviors.

[RickDelmonico]

Some constraints are enabling constraints.

[HeronMarkBlade]

so if we're substrated in "inorganic" matter (this whole category needs rethinking, right), and purpose goes all the way down, and up - I wonder if there is anything which is substrated in...us (perhaps in the way the intelligence/consciousness(?) of an ants nest is held in some collective sense). Is there something which looks at us and wonders about our metaphysical or moral status?

[jbrown]

Such a great mind... but Jude Currivan? She's nuts. I can't reconcile the two of them, it's disturbing me...

[naturelover]

the interviewers audio quality subtracts from the conversation

[harryanderson]

Consider this...

"In the whole vast dome of living nature there reigns an open violence. A kind of prescriptive fury which arms all the creatures to their common doom: as soon as you leave the inanimate kingdom you find the decree of violent death inscribed on the very frontiers of life. You feel it already in the vegetable kingdom: from the great catalpa to the humblest herb, how many plants die and how many are killed; but, from the moment you enter the animal kingdom, this law is suddenly in the most dreadful evidence. A Power, a violence, at once hidden and palpable. . . has in each species appointed a certain number of animals to devour the others. . . And who [in this general carnage] exterminates him who will exterminate all others? Himself. It is man who is charged with the slaughter of man. . . The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death.”
-Joseph de Maistre

If this world is truly a reflection of something infinitely greater in scope and powers as the Hermetici axiom "As above, then so below" would have it then what shall we make of God's grand design? What ultimate purpose might we say Consciousness is in service to when it can be rightfully said that this world is nothing more than a spherical slaughterhouse orbiting around a monstrous thermo-nuclear all-devouring holocaust at our solar system's center? What shall we say then of God's purpose for us when we look at human history as one long merciless march towards inevitable extinction at the hands of our fellow men? What type of god must this world then be a reflection of?

If we are to judge God based on the belief that all that is is of Him it would seem then that the Gnostics were quite right in their denunciation of Him as an abortive demonic demiurge based on the observable fruits of his creation.

[mikegregory]

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂iam won waiting on a relationship to move... Crazy i feel so broken.. Dead man.. pretending... Sew howL!!!! AGG N NN M3!! Humpty needs to DuMP!! Much love❤❤❤

[jaredbothwell]

A good microphone can make or break these type of interviews. Ian has a decent one. Alex does not.

[SerendipityInTheSky]

I’m no expert but it seems like these two are often talking tantra