Or so say the combined input from Robin Hanson and Julian Jaynes:
Left and right brains are highly connected internally, but only modestly connected to each other. Does the left brain manage a coherent set of overt opinions, while the right brain manages a coherent set of covert opinions? Consider:
- In all vertebrates left brains tend to control routine behavior (e.g. feeding) while right brains tend to respond to unusual events (e.g. fight/flight).
- Left brains tend to initiate actions, via positive feelings, while right brains tend to inhibit actions, via negative feelings.
- Compared to other primates, left vs. right human brains differ a lot more in function.
- The left human brain manages language’s literal quotably-overt syntax, vocabulary, and semantics, while the right brain handles language’s less-socially-verifiable tone, accent, metaphor, allegory, and ambiguity.
- Split brain patients show that left brains are adept at making up respectable explanations for arbitrary right brain behavior.
- Right brains tend to be used more in crafting lies, and they can read subtle emotion clues better.
- Left brain damage tends to distort behavior in more obvious and understandable ways.
- Left brains emphasize decision-making, fact retrieval, numbers, and careful sequenced acts like throwing, while right brains emphasize art, music, spatial manipulation, and recognizing of shapes, patterns, and faces.
This is Robin Hanson explaining his near-far homo hypocritus with regard to brain architecture. It maps eerily well to Jaynes. What other forms of evolutionary psychology might Jaynes’ theory predict? There is also, apparently, a follow-up to the Origins of Consciousness that I did not know about. It’s going on the Amazon wish list.
