The hierarchy of attention

In this section McGilchrist explains the temporal hierarchy of attention that is evidenced by the right to left to right progression of attention that lies at the foundation of experience and is a theme of the book. The right hemisphere’s global attention comes first not just in time, but also in precedence. This is illustrated with diagrams and discussion of the drawings of split-brain patients, or patients with right or left hemisphere strokes. For example, studies of split-brain patients enable us to see that the right hemisphere attends to the entire visual field, but the left hemisphere only to the right.

The whole vs the part

The right hemisphere sees the whole, before whatever it is gets broken up into parts in our attempt to ‘know it’ (p.46). It’s understanding is based on complex pattern recognition. McGilchrist again draws on illustrations from split-brain and stroke victims to show that loss of the right hemisphere results in loss of overall coherence and integrity. Loss of the left hemisphere results in drawings with loss of detail. The right and left hemispheres also understand what they experience differently. In this section McGilchrist criticises the work of Gazzaniga and LeDoux, who regarded the right hemisphere as the ‘minor’ hemisphere.

Context vs abstraction   Contextual understanding depends on the right hemisphere. This is important in relation to language. The right hemisphere understands metaphor, humour, the relations between things and indirect contextual clues. The left hemisphere identifies by labels rather than context. It is the hemisphere of abstraction. The left hemisphere can only re-present; but the right hemisphere, for its part, can only give again what ‘presences’. This is close to the core of what differentiates the hemispheres. (p.50)   Individuals vs categories   Both hemispheres are involved in recognition, but the left hemisphere’s tendency is to classify, where the right hemisphere’s is to identify individuals, of all kinds, places as well as faces. The left hemisphere is concerned with abstract categories and types. The right hemisphere is concerned with uniqueness and individuality.

The differences in sameness

McGilchrist again uses case studies from his patients to illustrate this point, i.e. that the right hemisphere deals with individual entities which it sees as belonging in a contextual whole, whereas the left hemisphere sees parts which belong to a category. Each hemisphere attends to the world differently.

Continue to: Hemisphere Differences (3) The personal vs the impersonal; The Living vs the non-living; Empathy and theory of mind

Links

Link to: Chapter 2 Commentary

Link to: Image Credits

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