[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-seo-155517-105":3,"doc-detail-155517-en":81,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":97},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"ok",{"site_id":7,"language":8,"slug":9,"title":10,"keywords":11,"description":12,"schema_data":13,"social_meta":74,"head_meta":76,"extra_data":78,"updated_unix":80},105,"en","brain-laterality-and-religious-awareness","Brain-laterality-and-religious-awareness","","The paper examines Iain McGilchrist’s distinction between two ways of relating to the world: a “connected” mode and an “abstracted” mode. It raises three central questions: how the distinction depends on neuroscientific findings about brain laterality, what follows for philosophy—especially philosophy of religion—and what this implies for the role of religious thought and practice in the modern scientific age.",{"@graph":14,"@context":73},[15,34,56],{"@type":16,"itemListElement":17},"BreadcrumbList",[18,23,27,31],{"item":19,"name":20,"@type":21,"position":22},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",1,{"item":24,"name":25,"@type":21,"position":26},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":28,"name":29,"@type":21,"position":30},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/","Research & Report",3,{"item":32,"name":10,"@type":21,"position":33},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/brain-laterality-and-religious-awareness/155517/",4,{"url":32,"name":10,"@type":35,"image":36,"author":41,"headline":10,"publisher":44,"fileFormat":47,"inLanguage":8,"description":12,"dateModified":48,"datePublished":49,"encodingFormat":47,"isAccessibleForFree":50,"interactionStatistic":51},"DigitalDocument",{"url":37,"@type":38,"width":39,"height":40},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/brain-laterality-and-religious-awareness/155517.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":42,"@type":43},"Mason","Person",{"url":19,"name":45,"@type":46},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-09","2026-08-28",true,{"@type":52,"interactionType":53,"userInteractionCount":55},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":54},"ViewAction",6,{"@type":57,"mainEntity":58},"FAQPage",[59,65,69],{"name":60,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":62},"What are the two ways of relating to the world discussed in the paper?","Question",{"text":63,"@type":64},"The paper presents McGilchrist’s “connected” mode and “abstracted” mode, differing in the manner of engagement with the world rather than in discrete functions of each hemisphere.","Answer",{"name":66,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":67},"How does the paper question the role of brain science in McGilchrist’s thesis?",{"text":68,"@type":64},"It asks how far the connected/abstracted distinction truly depends on neurophysiological and experimental findings, and whether the insights could stand as humanistic reflections without the science.",{"name":70,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":71},"What philosophical implications are explored for religion?",{"text":72,"@type":64},"The paper considers implications for current philosophy in general and philosophy of religion in particular, focusing on how modern scientific culture affects the status of religious thought and practice.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":32,"og:type":75,"og:title":10,"og:site_name":45,"og:description":12},"article",{"robots":77,"canonical":32},"index,follow",{"doc_id":79,"site_id":7},155517,1787914032,{"code":4,"msg":82,"data":83},"success",{"doc_id":79,"user_id":84,"nickname":42,"user_avatar":85,"doc_module":4,"category_id":86,"category_name":29,"doc_title":10,"doc_description":12,"doc_content":87,"file_id":88,"file_url":89,"file_type":90,"file_size":91,"view_count":55,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":22,"is_downloadable":22,"audit_status":22,"page_count":55,"language":92,"language_code":8,"site_id":7,"html_lang":8,"table_of_contents":93,"faqs":94,"seo_title":95,"seo_description":12,"update_tm":80,"read_time":96},5909887256941,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_9964176cb1d06d4a9deccf72a44ae3dc",8,"Brain laterality and religious awareness􀀍  \nJOHN COTTINGHAM  \nAbstract: Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary makes an important distinction between two different human ways of relating to the world, which may be described respectively as a ‘connected’mode, and an ‘abstracted’mode. In this paper, three questions are raised about this. First, how far does the distinction really depend on the scientific findings about brain laterality that McGilchrist invokes? Second, what are its implications for the current practice of philosophy in general and philosophy of religion in particular, especially in the anglophone world? And third, what lessons can be drawn about the status of religious thought and practice in the modern scientific age?  \nKeywords: brain science; hemisphere; meaning; phenomenology; religious experience.  \n1. Two ways of relating to the world  \nOne of philosophy’s traditional goals is that of helping us to achieve a better self-understanding, and in his remarkable study The Master and His Emissary Iain McGilchrist significantly furthers this goal by exploring two distinctive ways in which human beings become aware of the reality around them. He introduces the distinction by drawing on recent research in neurophysiology and psychology as evidence that the left hemisphere of the brain plays a major role in the exercise of our logical and conceptual abilities, while the right hemisphere is associated with more intuitive, imaginative, and holistic forms of awareness.  \nIn his subsequent paper ‘Cerebral lateralization and religion’, 1 McGilchrist makes it clear that the relevant distinction should be construed, as it were, as an adverbial one rather than a functional one: ‘the differences are not in what “functions” the two hemispheres carry out, since both are clearly involved in every brain process, but in the manner in which they each engage with the world.2 Moreover, to forestall any critics who might be inclined to suspect that his way of talking commits the ‘homunculus’ fallacy (that of attributing to part of the brain what is properly an attribute of the whole person) , McGilchrist also makes it clear that in using sentences where the left or right hemisphere appears as the subject of a mentalistic verb he is merely employing a convenient shorthand: ‘[Such] formulations should be understood as avoiding the repetition of such cumbersome locutions as ‘a subject relying on the cognitive faculties of the left [or right] hemisphere believes   etc.’3  \nWith these clarifications and caveats in place, the reader is well placed to appreciate the importance of the central distinction made in The Master and His Emissary between two characteristic ways in which we humans relate to the world. There is what might be called a connected mode, where things are ‘allowed to be present to us in all their embodied particularity, with all their   their interconnectedness’; and an abstracted mode, where the world is seen as‘compartmentalized, fragmented…essentially lifeless’, and in relation to which we feel ‘detached ’and ‘powerful’.4 There is a clear implicit warning here for our contemporary culture about allowing  \n􀀍 This is a typescript the definitive version of which was published in Religion, Brain and Behavior, Vol. 9, no 4 (2019), pp. 362-368.  \n1 Iain McGilchrist, ‘Cerebral lateralization and religion: a phenomenological approach’, Religion, Brain & Behavior, Special Issue on Neuroscience, Spiritual Practice and Cultural Meaning, 2017.  \n2 McGilchrist, ‘Cerebral lateralization’, penultimate paragraph (tenses changed and emphasis supplied) .  \n3 McGilchrist, ‘Cerebral lateralization’, section b, paragraph 5.  \n4 Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 93.  \nthe manipulative, analytic, ‘left-brain’modes of cognition to become over-dominant, with the associated risk of losing an important part of what makes us disti","cbCaifGoNlYBN7aY","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaifGoNlYBN7aY","pdf",234913,"English","# Two ways of relating to the world\n## How much hinges on the brain science?","[{\"question\":\"What are the two ways of relating to the world discussed in the paper?\",\"answer\":\"The paper presents McGilchrist’s “connected” mode and “abstracted” mode, differing in the manner of engagement with the world rather than in discrete functions of each hemisphere.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the paper question the role of brain science in McGilchrist’s thesis?\",\"answer\":\"It asks how far the connected/abstracted distinction truly depends on neurophysiological and experimental findings, and whether the insights could stand as humanistic reflections without the science.\"},{\"question\":\"What philosophical implications are explored for religion?\",\"answer\":\"The paper considers implications for current philosophy in general and philosophy of religion in particular, focusing on how modern scientific culture affects the status of religious thought and practice.\"}]","Brain-laterality-and-religious-awareness | PDF",15,{"code":4,"msg":82,"data":98},[99,103,107,111,116,120,125,128,133,136,140],{"id":22,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":100,"show_sort_weight":101,"slug":102},"Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":26,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":104,"show_sort_weight":105,"slug":106},"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":33,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":108,"show_sort_weight":109,"slug":110},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":112,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":113,"show_sort_weight":114,"slug":115},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":55,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":117,"show_sort_weight":118,"slug":119},"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":121,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":122,"show_sort_weight":123,"slug":124},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":86,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":29,"show_sort_weight":126,"slug":127},30,"research-report",{"id":129,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":130,"show_sort_weight":131,"slug":132},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":131,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":134,"show_sort_weight":131,"slug":135},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":137,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":138,"show_sort_weight":137,"slug":139},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":141,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":142,"show_sort_weight":112,"slug":143},19,"General","general"]