I found this interview when searching for videos with the psychiatrist, philosopher and literary scholar Iain McGilchrist. I was initially put off by the fact Jordan Peterson was the interviewer, as I suspect many readers of my blog will be, but this is a genuinely fascinating interview.
McGilchrist conceives of the two hemispheres of the brain as following different logics below the level of conscious awareness: exploring and grasping, opening and closing, connecting and isolating. The right hemisphere is orientated towards the detection of anomalies, creating two possibilities for responses: establishing it’s not an anomaly so things can continue as ‘normal’ or exploring the implications of anomalies for necessary changes within your conceptual scheme. Peterson cites Jung’s ideas about the accumulation of these anomalies being played in out the logic of dreams, leading to a sense of the sand shifting in our lives. As we recognise patterns in these anomalies, a counter-hypothesis begins to form which can lead to a dramatic transition in the structure of the personality. He frames this in Kuhnian terms as a ‘descent into chaos’ which precedes the articulation of a new conceptual scheme. But there’s epistemic progress because the new scheme incorporates the old scheme, as well as the anomalies.
McGilchrist describes being in the “slightly unstable position” between what Peterson terms chaos and order. Peterson suggests this is a matter of “encountering as much uncertainty as you can voluntarily tolerate”. The point they’re both driving at is finding a dynamic equilibrium between these hemispheric impulses towards identifying and rejecting anomalies, isolating aspects of your experience and connecting them, exploring the context and grasping at elements within it. Peterson makes the plausible suggestion this is the core insight of Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development: the constructive space in which we are challenging ourselves within the limits of our latent capabilities. He suggests meaning emerges at this point of balance where you are simultaneously mastering your domain but expanding the scope of that domain.
Mark Carrigan 