I had a dream the other night. A very lucid one. In the dream I was having coffee with a man I recognized but didn’t know. I could only remember his name being Gordon. Dreams are like that. Gordon surprised me with a question once I had seated myself down at the table where he was seated. His legs were crossed. I had a small paper cup of coffee in my hand. Gordon looked quite comfortable, like he’d been there for a while.
Just wanted to let you know I have been reading “The Actor”. I’ve got about 100 more pages to go before I complete it, but I am enjoying it. I promise to leave a review when I finish. Wishing you the best on all your endeavors. Happy writing!
Hi. Thank you for your message, for reading "The Actor" and "Coffee in a Teacup," and for taking the time to write to me. I appreciate the review and I wish you well in your endeavors too. Take care.
I also wonder a lot about free will and consider this one of the most interesting and fundamental questions there is. I describe myself as agnostic about it's existence, but I think it’s improbable and I had never questioned myself about how I feel about this. I find it hard to describe, so my unconscious did the best it could sending me a memory that resembles this wordless experience.
Our brain’s hemispheres are separate, each one controls one side of the body, and they are connected only through the corpus callosum. It works this way: the left hemisphere controls the right side, and the right hemisphere controls the left side.
Some neuroscientists study split brain patients, which have this connection cut. So, for these patients, each hemisphere processes information independently. That means that only the right hemisphere is aware of what the left eye sees, and the experiments explore this disconnection.
Usually the left hemisphere is the verbal one, so the right hemisphere cannot explain why it does what it does. But that doesn’t stop the verbal side from coming up with some alternative explanation about the decision to do it. Since the patients experience and hold that rationalisation as the truth, some neuroscientists raise interesting questions about consciousness and free will. But, even being aware of the outcome of the experiments, the patients say that they experience a single consciousness, not a split one. They feel unified.
Hi Raquel. Thank for your note and taking the time to reach out with such a fascinating comment. I was quite interested in your description of what happens when the corpus callosum is disconnected in a person’s brain. How does this happen? Injury? Or can one be born with this or it be disconnected through disease? The right hemisphere is receiver for what the left eye sees and despite the disconnect, the left side still answers for what the left eye sees? So when the corpus callosum is cut, the left side verbalizes what the right side is doing. If I have this part correct, what questions to neuroscientists raise about consciousness and freewill? I’m quite interested. With the left side of the brain verbalizing what is happening with the right side, it would seem to me that that would be what a patient would experience, and likewise a single consciousness. I do believe freewill is connected with the unconscious with potential answers (if we’re even able to understand answers). My most recent novel (that is in my agents hands) touches on this subject and the power of our imagination to live in a world we create in your heads. Both The Actor and The Musician--my first two novels--explore this in fiction. I feel like there is so much more to understand here. Thanks again for your comments. Douglas Gardham
Hi! Thank you for replying 😊 It’s been a while since I’ve read Gazzanigga’s book “who’s in charge”, and I don’t have it here with me at the moment. I’m afraid i won’t do him justice, but I’ll try my best! Sorry for the lengthy reply, it’s hard to explain in a way that it makes sense, and I’m very detail oriented 🫣
Since English is not my native language, I’ll stick to the terms “the right brain” and “the left brain” to avoid making it more confusing.
The corpus callosum might not develop, or it can be injured or cut by accident. It also used to be cut in extreme cases as a treatment option for patients with seizures. That procedure was meant to prevent seizures from migrating from one hemisphere to the other.
We perceive the world through our senses (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching). Our eyes only pick up light and the brain translates it into images. We can only see what the brain translates. When we hurt a finger, the finger doesn’t feel pain, the brain does. The injury information travels all the way through the nervous system to be processed into pain by the brain.
Now imagine a line dividing your body in half (left and right). Each hemisphere of your brain has access to only one half of the body. So each hemisphere can only send signals (control) or receive signals (5 senses) from “their half of the body”.
The corpus callosum works as the only bridge that allows information to be shared by both sides to complete this puzzle. Without it, if you close 1 eye and see something, only half the brain knows about it’s existence. To the other half, the information doesn’t exist, so it never happened.
In an experiment, the scientist shows images only to the man’s right brain, and he has to react to them. The image shows a hand waving. The man waves “the right brain hand”. But here’s the catch: the scientist then asks him “why did you wave your hand?”.
The right brain doesn’t “use words”, so it can’t say to the scientist “because of the image you showed me”. Instead, “the left brain” takes over and the man says: “because i thought i saw someone i knew going past“.
As I understand it at this moment, free will means that, when we are presented with options, we make our own decisions. We know why we did something because we considered our options and made that decision ourselves.
But, although that man was adamant that he himself made the decision to wave, he didn’t actually decide to wave. At best, he decided to comply (if this was a decision at all). But he wasn’t even aware that he was complying. In his perception, he came up with the idea to wave independently, it sprouted from his own mind and had nothing to do with the experiment. But actually he was complying to a stimulus that “the right brain” couldn’t put into words.
The left brain became aware of the other hand waving only during the action, not before, and it didn’t receive any info to work with. So, to make sense of it’s own reality, the brain created a rationalisation after it realised what the body did. And that happens constantly. Gazzanigga refers to that part somewhere in the brain as “the interpreter”.
To the right brain, the hand wave was a response to the image. To the left brain, the hand wave was meant for someone he saw. Each hemisphere had it’s own “reason”, it’s own “reality”, and they couldn’t communicate to reach a consensus. They are each doing their own things.
So, expanding this experiment to his life in general... If he has 2 different understandings of reality coexisting in his body and formulating his experience independently, does that mean that he has 2 minds (a dual consciousness)? Why doesn’t the man feel split? Why does he feel whole and unified, and has a single understanding of his own existence? And, since he wasn’t aware of the real reason why he waved, are we actually aware of the real reasons why we do what we do? Or are our own brains creating a single narrative to make sense of our own realities after we act?
Hi. Back again. If I understand what you've written. The right brain cause the man to wave from the image he was presented with. His left brain only saw the motion of his hand caused by the right brain. On seeing his motion the left brain then put an explanation together of why he'd waved.
I think this leads to your questions of whether we're aware of the real reasons why we do what we do or are we creating an explanation to rationalize the reality of our actions.
They're interesting questions.
I wonder whether the connection our brains have to the unconscious that seems separate from our conscious brain and our awareness of reality, in some way plays into this, that we have either not learned to use or forgotten. The Cormac McCarthy article, "The Kekule Problem," which I wrote about in "... And Then There Were Three," started me thinking about how language descended on us. Now with you saying the "left brain" is the part that uses words, I'm thinking about this again. Is there potential that the "left brain" and words, language, is our way farther into the unconscious, if indeed language descended on us to help us understand the unconscious.
I'll be returning to this in a later piece in my series, "A Changing Frame of Reference."
Thanks again for taking the time to explain this and the YouTube video with Dr. Gazzanigga. It's all very fascinating.
Just wanted to let you know I have been reading “The Actor”. I’ve got about 100 more pages to go before I complete it, but I am enjoying it. I promise to leave a review when I finish. Wishing you the best on all your endeavors. Happy writing!
Hi. Thank you for your message, for reading "The Actor" and "Coffee in a Teacup," and for taking the time to write to me. I appreciate the review and I wish you well in your endeavors too. Take care.
I also wonder a lot about free will and consider this one of the most interesting and fundamental questions there is. I describe myself as agnostic about it's existence, but I think it’s improbable and I had never questioned myself about how I feel about this. I find it hard to describe, so my unconscious did the best it could sending me a memory that resembles this wordless experience.
Our brain’s hemispheres are separate, each one controls one side of the body, and they are connected only through the corpus callosum. It works this way: the left hemisphere controls the right side, and the right hemisphere controls the left side.
Some neuroscientists study split brain patients, which have this connection cut. So, for these patients, each hemisphere processes information independently. That means that only the right hemisphere is aware of what the left eye sees, and the experiments explore this disconnection.
Usually the left hemisphere is the verbal one, so the right hemisphere cannot explain why it does what it does. But that doesn’t stop the verbal side from coming up with some alternative explanation about the decision to do it. Since the patients experience and hold that rationalisation as the truth, some neuroscientists raise interesting questions about consciousness and free will. But, even being aware of the outcome of the experiments, the patients say that they experience a single consciousness, not a split one. They feel unified.
That’s how I feel about free will.
But that doesn’t make it any less fascinating.
Hi Raquel. Thank for your note and taking the time to reach out with such a fascinating comment. I was quite interested in your description of what happens when the corpus callosum is disconnected in a person’s brain. How does this happen? Injury? Or can one be born with this or it be disconnected through disease? The right hemisphere is receiver for what the left eye sees and despite the disconnect, the left side still answers for what the left eye sees? So when the corpus callosum is cut, the left side verbalizes what the right side is doing. If I have this part correct, what questions to neuroscientists raise about consciousness and freewill? I’m quite interested. With the left side of the brain verbalizing what is happening with the right side, it would seem to me that that would be what a patient would experience, and likewise a single consciousness. I do believe freewill is connected with the unconscious with potential answers (if we’re even able to understand answers). My most recent novel (that is in my agents hands) touches on this subject and the power of our imagination to live in a world we create in your heads. Both The Actor and The Musician--my first two novels--explore this in fiction. I feel like there is so much more to understand here. Thanks again for your comments. Douglas Gardham
Hi! Thank you for replying 😊 It’s been a while since I’ve read Gazzanigga’s book “who’s in charge”, and I don’t have it here with me at the moment. I’m afraid i won’t do him justice, but I’ll try my best! Sorry for the lengthy reply, it’s hard to explain in a way that it makes sense, and I’m very detail oriented 🫣
Since English is not my native language, I’ll stick to the terms “the right brain” and “the left brain” to avoid making it more confusing.
The corpus callosum might not develop, or it can be injured or cut by accident. It also used to be cut in extreme cases as a treatment option for patients with seizures. That procedure was meant to prevent seizures from migrating from one hemisphere to the other.
We perceive the world through our senses (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching). Our eyes only pick up light and the brain translates it into images. We can only see what the brain translates. When we hurt a finger, the finger doesn’t feel pain, the brain does. The injury information travels all the way through the nervous system to be processed into pain by the brain.
Now imagine a line dividing your body in half (left and right). Each hemisphere of your brain has access to only one half of the body. So each hemisphere can only send signals (control) or receive signals (5 senses) from “their half of the body”.
The corpus callosum works as the only bridge that allows information to be shared by both sides to complete this puzzle. Without it, if you close 1 eye and see something, only half the brain knows about it’s existence. To the other half, the information doesn’t exist, so it never happened.
In an experiment, the scientist shows images only to the man’s right brain, and he has to react to them. The image shows a hand waving. The man waves “the right brain hand”. But here’s the catch: the scientist then asks him “why did you wave your hand?”.
The right brain doesn’t “use words”, so it can’t say to the scientist “because of the image you showed me”. Instead, “the left brain” takes over and the man says: “because i thought i saw someone i knew going past“.
As I understand it at this moment, free will means that, when we are presented with options, we make our own decisions. We know why we did something because we considered our options and made that decision ourselves.
But, although that man was adamant that he himself made the decision to wave, he didn’t actually decide to wave. At best, he decided to comply (if this was a decision at all). But he wasn’t even aware that he was complying. In his perception, he came up with the idea to wave independently, it sprouted from his own mind and had nothing to do with the experiment. But actually he was complying to a stimulus that “the right brain” couldn’t put into words.
The left brain became aware of the other hand waving only during the action, not before, and it didn’t receive any info to work with. So, to make sense of it’s own reality, the brain created a rationalisation after it realised what the body did. And that happens constantly. Gazzanigga refers to that part somewhere in the brain as “the interpreter”.
To the right brain, the hand wave was a response to the image. To the left brain, the hand wave was meant for someone he saw. Each hemisphere had it’s own “reason”, it’s own “reality”, and they couldn’t communicate to reach a consensus. They are each doing their own things.
So, expanding this experiment to his life in general... If he has 2 different understandings of reality coexisting in his body and formulating his experience independently, does that mean that he has 2 minds (a dual consciousness)? Why doesn’t the man feel split? Why does he feel whole and unified, and has a single understanding of his own existence? And, since he wasn’t aware of the real reason why he waved, are we actually aware of the real reasons why we do what we do? Or are our own brains creating a single narrative to make sense of our own realities after we act?
Hi. Back again. If I understand what you've written. The right brain cause the man to wave from the image he was presented with. His left brain only saw the motion of his hand caused by the right brain. On seeing his motion the left brain then put an explanation together of why he'd waved.
I think this leads to your questions of whether we're aware of the real reasons why we do what we do or are we creating an explanation to rationalize the reality of our actions.
They're interesting questions.
I wonder whether the connection our brains have to the unconscious that seems separate from our conscious brain and our awareness of reality, in some way plays into this, that we have either not learned to use or forgotten. The Cormac McCarthy article, "The Kekule Problem," which I wrote about in "... And Then There Were Three," started me thinking about how language descended on us. Now with you saying the "left brain" is the part that uses words, I'm thinking about this again. Is there potential that the "left brain" and words, language, is our way farther into the unconscious, if indeed language descended on us to help us understand the unconscious.
I'll be returning to this in a later piece in my series, "A Changing Frame of Reference."
Thanks again for taking the time to explain this and the YouTube video with Dr. Gazzanigga. It's all very fascinating.