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Divine Understanding and the Divided Brain

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Handbook of Neuroethics

Abstract

Interaction with the world requires the right hemisphere’s broad attention, which is inclusive and opens up into possibility, coupled with the left hemisphere’s narrow attention, which collapses the world we experience into specificity. If the left hemisphere collapses the world too quickly into what is specific, however, it precludes the possibility of knowledge that transcends what is already familiar, notably purported knowledge of the divine. By contrast, the right hemisphere is more sensitive to image, metaphor, and narratives by which theological knowledge may be capable of expression that would be ambiguous or apparently contradictory if expressed simply as a set of propositions. The reciprocal organization of the cerebral hemispheres therefore suggests that any proposed theology that is articulated simply in terms of a set of specific propositions about the divine risks betraying, distorting, and misrepresenting its subject matter. Furthermore, this organization of brain structure and function suggests that images, metaphors, and narratives are not poor substitutes or intermediate steps in theological knowledge, but indispensable to it.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospital, London, UK

    Iain McGilchrist

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  1. Iain McGilchrist
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Correspondence to Iain McGilchrist .

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  1. Institute for Ethics and History of Medicine, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Jens Clausen

  2. The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia

    Neil Levy

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McGilchrist, I. (2015). Divine Understanding and the Divided Brain. In: Clausen, J., Levy, N. (eds) Handbook of Neuroethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4707-4_99

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