Metastatic Cancer of the Logos

I think a good way to summarize yesterday's post on judgment is that the RH is a BS detector -- even in the case of LH damage -- whereas the LH is a BS generator, which only becomes heightened in the presence of RH damage. 

Again, although the hemispheres are obviously complementary and mutually self-regulating, it seems the LH needs the RH more than the RH needs the LH. 

Before reading this book I might have guessed otherwise, since RH connoted "creativity," so LH damage would presumably result in an unhinged imagination. Doesn't work that way at all. Schizophrenics, for example, have a hyperactive LH and hypoactive RH, the latter being the one that anchors us in the real world.

I probably would have imagined that gender delusions are rooted in the RH, but this too must be the other way around: an LH insistence that reality isn't real. 

That's just a guess, of course, nor do I know if McGilchrist delves into the subject, since no one want to get cancelled by a delusional mob of LH brainiacs. Unlike me, he has a career to think about. But 

My model, says the LH, is better than your reality...

And

The LH is more likely to act on its theory as though it represented reality.

Now, that first sentence in particular makes me think the RH must specialize in transcendence: certainly it is able to view LH antics from "above" and put the kibosh on them. 

But at the same time, it is more "immanent" in the world than the LH, the latter specializing in abstractions and maps of the world. Just a thought. We still have 1,300 pages to go, and McGilchrist may well touch on this later.

Another example comes to mind: when I was being tested in the hospital, I told the nurse exactly how much insulin I needed, and how my body would react to food, fasting, and exercise. 

But they had to ignore my real world experience and utilize their own strict algorithm. Which, of course, proved incorrect. But they had to yield to their abstract algorithm despite every nurse and doctor commenting that they had never encountered a type I diabetic with better glucose control.

I'm not blaming them for having guidelines, only making the point that this is analogous to LH abstractions overruling RH comprehension of the real world. 

The next chapter, on Apprehension, is a short one, but this is my short morning. 

Basically, if the LH is good at apprehending, the RH is better at comprehending, the former having more to do with carrying out actions in the world, the latter with understanding the world. 

Recall that the LH controls the right hand. In cases of LH damage, the right hand can take on a life of its own, grabbing things and even people at random. One wonders: was Brandon's stroke in the LH?

On the other hand, RH damage results in the sort of dead and flat speech uttered by Brandon, so lacking in musical qualities such as prosody, rhythm, and intonation. Siri sounds more alive. You've also noticed the inappropriate bursts of emotionality he randomly injects in his speeches, as if he is trying to imitate a functioning RH.

So, is Brandon's brain damage more on the right or left?

The power of and.

Set myself up for that one. 

Later in the chapter McGilchrist touches on the insanity of deconstruction, although he's far more polite about it than we are. But it sure looks to me like it's a kind of cancer of the LH -- not a physical cancer, but worse, an immaterial one. Cancer of the logos?

In the LH's world words are seen as arbitrary signs: in the RH's world they are seen as to some extent fused with the aspect of the world they represent. 

No one with a functioning RH could insist that we are confined to a closed system of linguistic symbols that have no anchor in the real world -- or even deny there is a real world. Nevertheless,

According to a view which has been much promulgated in recent years, language is just a system of signs, in which words refer endlessly to one another (a typical LH view).

But in reality -- in a metaphor I myself have used in the past -- language is analogous to money, which is also a symbol for an underlying reality. Or at least it was before Brandon got here. Both language and money must ultimately be fungible to the First Bank of Reality.

Coincidentally, I've been reading this other book by David Berlinski called Human Nature, which contains an epic and highly insultaining takedown of deconstruction. Maybe I have time to pull out some choice extracts before this crock runs dry.

Berlinski describes what happens in the case of a consistent denial of essentialism (and affirmation of relativism). You would think literally nothing could happen, and you would be correct, except this doesn't stop them. 

I suppose it would stop them if they were in a room of intelligent people, but they are of course in room of arrested adolescents with skulls full of mush. And not just in the faculty lounge.

A curious fact: why is it that the same people who insist words are just arbitrary symbols are the same people who want to deny our freedom of speech, and will punish us if we use them in the wrong way -- say, "misgendering" someone, or saying "colored people" instead of "people of color"? 

Between a career and its cancelation is that little preposition, of, which seems pretty real to me.

The power of of.