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Why not both? Left neocortex hemisphere handles discrete, right handles continuous. Iain McGilchrist makes a convincing argument for that in his book The Master
by no_identd 8y ago
Why not both? Left neocortex hemisphere handles discrete, right handles continuous. Iain McGilchrist makes a convincing argument for that in his book The Master and His Emissary.
Also, the main difference between 'hardware' and 'wetware' arises as a consequence of a very simple cybernetic principle, to quote Wikipedia:
"Also in 1960, [Manfred Clynes] discovered a biologic law, "Unidirectional Rate Sensitivity," the subject, in 1967, of a two-day symposium held by the New York Academy of Science. This law, related to biologic communication channels of control and information, is basically the consequence of the fact, realized by Clynes, that molecules can only arrive in positive numbers, unlike engineering electric signals, which can be positive or negative. This fact imposes radical limitations on the methods of control that biology can use. It cannot, for example, simply cancel a signal by sending a signal of opposite polarity, since there is no simple opposite polarity. To cancel, a second channel involving other, different molecules (chemicals) is required. This law explains, among other things, why the sensations of hot and cold need to operate through two separate sensing channels in the body, why we do not actively sense the disappearance of a smell, and why we continue to feel shocked after a near-miss accident."
See also here:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/19/NYT3.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/19/NYT3.jpg
Also, fun fact about the Macy conferences that a friend of mine pointed out to me recently:
According to Hayles, neither the term nor the word “reflexivity” exists anywhere in the Macy foundation transcripts, which means no one introduced it to cybernetics from 1946-1953.
- dopu 8y ago> Why not both? Left neocortex hemisphere handles discrete, right handles continuous. Iain McGilchrist makes a convincing argument for that in his book The Master and His Emissary. I haven't read the book, but this sounds totally absurd. What kind of evidence is there for this?
- no_identd 8y agoThat question has a very complex and complicated answer, hence why McGilchrist devoted the entire first half of the book to it, I can hardly summarize it here. You might want to watch the RSA Animated talk by McGilchrist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFs9WO2B8uI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFs9WO2B8uI If this reminds you of Julian Jaynes, then yes, there exists some similarity, but, to quote Wikipedia: "McGilchrist, while accepting Jayne's intention, felt that Jayne's hypothesis was "the precise inverse of what happened" and that rather than a shift from bicameralism there evolved a separation of the hemispheres." In my opinion, it seems like a better question to ask then consists of asking if what McGilchrist describes holds 'all the way down', and I lack an answer to that.