Reason vs rationality
There are different kinds of reasoning. More explicit reasoning is underwritten by the left hemisphere, less explicit reasoning, deductive reasoning and insight by the right. McGilchrist points out that a study of maths requires both. Numbers can either signify absolutes (quantifiable) or relations.
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The twin bodies
The right and left hemispheres see the body in different ways. For the right, I am my body, for the left I have a body. The right hemisphere is deeply connected to the self as embodied.
The left hemisphere sees the body as an assemblage of parts. McGilchrist illustrates this with case studies from patients who have suffered right and left hemisphere strokes.
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Meaning and the implicit
The left hemisphere is less concerned with meaning than the right hemisphere. Although the left hemisphere’s great contribution to meaning is language, symbol manipulation, it is the hemisphere of representation, in which signs are substituted for experience.
Both hemisphere’s play a vital role in language, but the right hemisphere’s role is to understand meaning as a whole, in context. It specialises in non-verbal, non-literal communication – subtle clues, irony, humour, inference, metaphor and implicit meanings. Because of this a right hemisphere stroke is more disabling than a left-hemisphere stroke. A right hemisphere stroke victim loses the capacity positively to empathise. Meaning is more than words.
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Music and time
Music is largely, though not exclusively a right hemisphere phenomenon. It is the relation between things. It is in the whole that the notes and gaps between them (the silence) make together. It is the natural language of the right hemisphere and physically affects us through our emotions. It can recall our emotions and evoke emotion.
The ability to appreciate, understand or perform music may be lost with right hemisphere damage, whereas left hemisphere damage can result in an increased ability. In amateur musicians, the right hemisphere is more sensitive to melody, tone, pitch-processing, harmony, discriminating rhythmic patterns and intonation, but in professional or highly-trained musicians the left hemisphere is used to a much greater extent.
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Music unfolds in time. Appreciation of past, present and future, and understanding of narrative are dependent on the right hemisphere. Sequencing in the sense of momentary interruptions of temporal flow are dependent on the left hemisphere. But time is essentially an undivided flow.
There is a lack of capacity for perception of temporal flow in the left hemisphere. ‘… the right hemisphere has an advantage where there is fluency of motion, or flow over time, but the left hemisphere an advantage where there is stasis, or focus on a point in time.’ (p.77) Music can engage both.
For the right hemisphere ‘opposites’ are not incompatible.
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Continue to: Hemisphere Differences (6) Depth; Certainty
Links
Link to: Chapter 2 Commentary
Link to: Image Credits
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