427 - Dr. Iain McGilchrist - Artificial Intelligence, Possession, and Mental Illness
The Symbolic World
Jonathan Pageau
4.8 • 933 Ratings
🗓️ 18 December 2025
⏱️ 74 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Original YouTube version: https://youtu.be/DRtpKyKJcss
Get Dr. McGilchrist’s books: https://channelmcgilchrist.com/home/
APPLICATIONS OPEN: Ralston seeks 25 students with the curiosity and courage to find light in the darkness. Our one-year MA in the Humanities begins with two months learning Ancient and Modern Greek in Greece, before moving to beautiful Savannah, GA. Full and partial scholarships are available. The deadline for priority consideration is December 18, 2025. Visit https://www.ralston.ac/humanities-ma
NEW COURSE: The Quest for the Holy Grail with Dr. Martin Shaw
In the dark heart of January, when the nights are long and the world draws close, Dr. Martin Shaw returns to Symbolic World Courses for an intensive week-long journey to tell one of the greatest stories of the Medieval imagination: Parzival and the Holy Grail.
Catch the early bird sale of 15% off if you register before midnight December 19: https://www.thesymbolicworld.com/courses/the-quest-for-the-holy-grail
Cost: $160 USD
Dates of live course: January 12-16, 2026
Time: 12 PM-2 PM EST, except for Lecture 3 (January 14) which will be at 4PM-6PM EST
Timestamps:
00:00 Coming up
00:43 Intro music
01:07 Introduction to Ralston College and Its Mission
10:57 The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Society
21:02 Intelligence and Consciousness
30:57 The Dangers of Alien Intelligence
39:17 Understanding Addiction and Mental Illness
46:04 Possession and Mental Health: A New Perspective
52:11 The Left Hemisphere and Its Malign Influence
01:03:37 AI: The Modern Sorcerer's Apprentice
01:11:11 All We Can Do
💻 Website and blog: http://www.thesymbolicworld.com
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My intro was arranged and recorded by Matthew Wilkinson: https://matthewwilkinson.net/
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
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| 0:27.6 | The Home of Homes. |
| 0:29.6 | Think of it like this. The brain is not intelligent. |
| 0:33.6 | It's a very complex structure, but the brain itself is not intelligent. |
| 0:38.3 | What is intelligent is your consciousness, my consciousness, using that brain. |
| 0:46.3 | And I think that the way to think about AI is that it will never achieve intelligence, |
| 0:53.3 | but it may act as a gateway for an intelligence. |
| 0:59.0 | And I think that's where I would agree with the idea |
| 1:02.0 | of an alien intelligence, in the sense that we don't know |
| 1:06.0 | what forms of consciousness exist in the cosmos, |
| 1:10.0 | and we don't know how they can come to express themselves. |
| 1:13.6 | This is Jonathan Pejot-Wel. |
| 1:26.6 | Welcome to the symbolic world. |
| 1:28.3 | Hello, I am here with Dr. Ian McGilchrist. |
| 1:45.0 | Everyone who watches my channel knows who he is. |
| 1:48.0 | But a wonderful, interesting new development in his life |
| 1:53.0 | is that he is now the Chancellor of Ralston College. |
| 1:56.0 | I'm really excited about that. |
... |
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