The Master and His Emissary Conversations

‘HowTheLightGetsIn’ HAY 2023

‘HowTheLightGetsIn’ HAY 2023

26th May 2023 to 29th May 2023 Event description. Debate is the beating heart of HowTheLightGetsIn Hay 2023. From Nobel Laureates to Pulitzer Prize winners, HowTheLightGetsIn is home to world-leading thinkers pushing their disciplines forward. Explore our wide-ranging...

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What Happens with the Mind when the Brain Dies? by Alex Gomez-Marin

What Happens with the Mind when the Brain Dies? by Alex Gomez-Marin

Abstract: A neuroscientist reflects on his near-death experience to ponder the nature of the human mind and the survival of consciousness after death. Ancient traditions, manifold personal experiences, nuanced philosophical views, and recent scientific evidence, all point to the brain as a filter (or receiver) of consciousness rather than its fanciful producer. No doubt, good-old-fashioned materialists —nowadays rebranded as physicalists, crypto-dualists, or illusionists wearing virtual reality goggles— insist that minds are “nothing but” what brains do. Nevertheless, a trans-materialist science can expand the scope and depth of the answers (and the questions) that really matter not only to science but also to human flourishing.

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“The Matter With Things” by Matt Segal

“The Matter With Things” by Matt Segal

“I’ve just finished reading The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World (2021), Iain McGilchrist’s two volume follow-up to The Master and His Emissary (2009). Volume 1 of TMWT focuses on “the ways to truth,” revisiting the hemisphere hypothesis and unpacking the respective roles of the left and right hemispheres in attention, perception, judgment, apprehension, emotion, creativity, science, reason, imagination, and intuition. Volume 2 then explores the implications of the hemisphere hypothesis for what is likely to be true about the universe itself, including deep inquiries into time, motion, space, matter, consciousness, value, and the sacred…”

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