#234 — The Divided Mind

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 29.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2021

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Iain McGilchrist about the differences between the right and left hemispheres of the human brain. They discuss the evolutionary history of the divided brain, research on surgically divided brains, popular misconceptions about the differences between the hemispheres, the left hemisphere's propensity for confabulation, the prospect that consciousness might be partitioned in an intact brain, the difference between consciousness and attention, the boundary between the conscious and unconscious mind, how face-to-face encounters differ between the hemispheres, the unique deficits resulting from damage to the left and right hemispheres, the ascendancy of the left-hemisphere in modern culture, the possibility that the brain is a mere receiver of mind, the prospect of surviving death, and other topics.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.
0:09.1	This is Sam Harris.
0:11.3	Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you are not currently on our subscriber
0:14.8	feed and will only be hearing the first part of this conversation.
0:18.6	In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense Podcast, you'll need to subscribe
0:22.5	at samharis.org.
0:24.5	There you'll find our private RSS feed to add to your favorite pod catcher, along with
0:28.3	other subscriber-only content.
0:30.7	We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support
0:34.7	of our subscribers.
0:35.7	So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.
0:39.8	As always, I never want money to be the reason why someone can't get access to the podcast.
0:44.0	So if you can't afford a subscription, there's an option at samharis.org to request a free
0:48.1	account.
0:49.1	And we grant 100% of those requests.
0:51.5	And no questions asked.
0:59.2	Okay.
1:00.2	Well, so now I'm speaking with Ian McGill-Christ.
1:04.0	Ian is a fellow of All Souls College at Oxford and a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists,
1:11.2	also a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
1:14.0	And he was a research fellow in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins.
1:18.0	And most importantly for our purposes, he's the author of the book The Master and his
	...

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