Cassiopaea Forum Reading Workshops - Public

[Arwenn]

I will be able to join tomorrow. Just wanted to make sure that the meeting time is the same and there was no time change.

No time change at our end and look forward to seeing you then.

 

[placematt]

No time change at our end and look forward to seeing you then.

Hi Arwenn.
I am working today. Im not sure if I will be back for reading workshop as I have to stay until the job is done. Hoping to be back just unsure. Wanted to let you know.

thanks

 

[Arwenn]

Hi everyone,

Here’s the meeting ID for the Au-Asia-Am meeting. We will start in 60 minutes.

Join our Cloud HD Video Meeting
Meeting ID: 835 8687 7275
Passcode: 4nuFri

See you soon!

 

[987baz]

running a little late, I'll be on in about 10

 

[Arwenn]

Hi everyone,

Here are the links for the recent Aus-Asia-Am group discussions on Laura's Substack article:
The Quest for Truth: The Tangled Web of Epistemology

Here's the video of the last meeting
The audio
And the folder

We will read this Substack article by Laura for our next workshop at 7pm Sydney ADEST time (GMT+11).

See you all then!

___________________________________________________________________________________________
Below are the links for the workshop discussion points:

Origin of the word 'hysterical', which comes from the Greek word 'hystera' meaning uterus or womb:

Hysteria originates from the Greek word hystera, meaning "uterus" or "womb". Rooted in ancient Greek medicine and earlier Egyptian beliefs (circa 1900 BCE), it was defined as a "wandering womb"—a physical ailment where the uterus moved throughout the body, causing erratic behavior and physical symptoms.

Key Historical & Linguistic Aspects:

• Wandering Womb Theory: Ancient physicians (e.g., Hippocrates) believed the uterus was a living creature that could travel through the body, causing various ailments, which led to the term hysterikos ("suffering in the womb").
• Treatment:Early treatments for this "wandering" involved strong-smelling substances applied to the vulva to entice the uterus back into place, or marrying and becoming pregnant'
• Evolution of Meaning: The term shifted from a physical, gynecological diagnosis to a psychological one, often used to describe emotional or irrational behavior, particularly in women.
• Removal from Medical Lexicon: The term was used to label women as "hysterical" or "erratic" for centuries until it was finally removed from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980.

The word reflects a long history of medicalizing women's behaviors and attributing their distress to a malfunctioning reproductive organ.

Hysterectomy and the origins of it as a form of treatment for hysteria

Does the word "hysterical" come from hysterectomy?

Because the uterus was blamed for hysteria, the treatment was to remove it. This procedure was called a hysterectomy. Sadly, many women had their healthy uterus unnecessarily removed and most died. The word “hysteria” did originally came from the ancient Greek word for uterus, “hystera”.

Cs Session 28 March 2010 on raising children and the womb:

Q: (L) Okay, this next question is weird. It's written in a really weird way. “Is co-sleeping recommended?”

A: In some cases for limited periods. Keep in mind that if you lay down the pattern early in a secure and loving way, the child is not overly traumatized when faced with reality. If the child is born and then lives in an external "womb", he has not really been born now has he?

Q: (L) Next question: What are the negative consequences of co-sleeping?

A: That should be obvious from the previous responses.

Q: (L) But certainly co-sleeping on occasion, like if the child is upset or sick, is okay?

A: Of course!!! [...]
(L) Next question is: Is it really the case that "all is sealed" (our view of the Universe), so to speak, during the first weeks, months, or years of life?

A: More or less. Recall the discussion on imprinting. The infant needs to know that the universe is a place of creativity and abundance. That impression is formed in the first six months. For six months, the parent must respond instantly, or even anticipate the infant's needs; even the need for not being alone.

John Money and his role in Gender transition and gender ideology

Candace Owens on John Money and his abusing children involved in his gender studies:

Using AI to map the Greek philosophers to McGilchrist's hemisphere theory (take this with a grain of salt):

[*]Right hemisphere (RH): holistic, contextual, embodied, tolerant of ambiguity, open to experience, attentive to lived reality and relationship.
[*]Left hemisphere (LH): analytic, abstracting, categorizing, decontextualizing, focused on certainty, system-building, explicit logic and manipulation of representations.
[/LIST]
McGilchrist repeatedly argues that Western intellectual history shows a progressive shift toward LH dominance, especially in modern analytic philosophy and scientism. Below is a comparative classification of the philosophers in your excerpt, based on how their epistemology aligns with McGilchrist’s hemispheric tendencies. This is interpretive rather than absolute (McGilchrist stresses that both hemispheres are always involved).

1. Pre-Socratic Foundations​

Heraclitus​

• Emphasized flux, becoming, paradox, and unity of opposites.
• RH resonance: reality is dynamic, relational, and processual, resisting fixed conceptual capture.
• McGilchrist often treats such perspectives as closer to lived experience than abstract metaphysical systems.

Parmenides​

• Argued reason overrides sensory experience; reality is unchanging and logically necessary.
• Represents the LH impulse toward logical certainty and abstract metaphysical deduction.

2. Classical Greek Philosophy​

Socrates​

• Dialogical method, awareness of ignorance.
• RH elements: humility toward knowledge, relational inquiry, embodied conversation.
• LH elements: logical questioning.

Plato​

• Eternal Forms accessible through pure reason.
• Distrust of sensory world (Allegory of the Cave).
• McGilchrist often identifies Platonism as an early shift toward abstraction over lived reality.

Aristotle​

• Empirical observation + logical classification.
• RH: engagement with natural phenomena and embodied observation.
• LH: systematic categorization and logic.
• McGilchrist often treats Aristotle as less abstractly dualistic than Plato.

3. Ancient Skepticism​

Pyrrho​

Sextus Empiricus​

• Suspension of judgment (epoché).
• Acceptance of uncertainty and perspectival limits.
• RH aligns with epistemic humility and tolerance of ambiguity.

4. Late Antiquity and Medieval Thought​

Augustine of Hippo​

• Emphasized inner experience and illumination.
• RH: inwardness, experiential faith.
• LH: theological system building.

Al-Farabi​

• Strong Aristotelian rational system.

Avicenna​

• Highly structured metaphysical rationalism.

Averroes​

• Rational demonstration as highest knowledge.

Thomas Aquinas​

• Empirical experience + theological reasoning.
• McGilchrist sometimes views medieval synthesis as less reductively analytic than modernity.

William of Ockham​

• Nominalism and reduction of universals.
• Conceptual economy (“Ockham’s razor”).
• Moves philosophy toward analytic reductionism.

5. Early Modern Epistemology​

René Descartes​

• Radical doubt + certainty via abstract reason.
• Mind–body dualism.
• McGilchrist often treats Cartesianism as a defining LH turn in Western thought.

John Locke​

• Empiricism but still analytical and mechanistic model of mind.

David Hume​

• LH: analytic skepticism.
• RH: recognition that reason cannot ground lived reality (habit, experience).

Immanuel Kant​

• Mind structures reality via categories.
• RH insight: knowledge involves interaction between mind and world.
• LH tendency: rigid conceptual architecture.

6. German Idealism​

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel​

• Historical and dynamic view of knowledge.
• Dialectical unfolding of consciousness.
• RH: process, development, relational totality.

7. 19th-Century Empiricism and Pragmatism​

John Stuart Mill​

• Inductive logic and scientific method.

Charles Sanders Peirce​

• Fallibilism and inquiry as communal process.

William James​

• Truth as lived and experiential.
• Radical empiricism emphasizes direct experience and pluralism.

8. Analytic Philosophy​

Bertrand Russell​

• Logical atomism, analytic clarity.

G. E. Moore​

• Conceptual analysis.

Ludwig Wittgenstein​

• Early work: logical structure of language (LH).
• Later work: meaning in forms of life and context (RH).

9. Logical Positivism and Philosophy of Science​

Moritz Schlick​

Rudolf Carnap​

• Verificationism and elimination of metaphysics.
• Language reduced to logical structure.

Karl Popper​

• Logical structure of scientific method (falsifiability).
• But recognizes open-ended inquiry, which adds some RH elements.

10. Contemporary Epistemology​

Edmund Gettier​

• Analytical thought experiments targeting definitions.

Timothy Williamson​

• Highly formal analytic epistemology.

11. Post-Structural and Social Epistemology​

Michel Foucault​

• Knowledge embedded in power relations and historical context.

Thomas Kuhn​

• Paradigm shifts and scientific revolutions emphasize historical and social context.

Sandra Harding​

• Knowledge situated in social position.

12. Overall Pattern (McGilchrist’s Interpretation)​

Right-hemisphere traditions

• Heraclitus
• Socrates
• Pyrrho / Sextus Empiricus
• Augustine (partly)
• Hegel
• William James
• Peirce (partly)
• Kuhn
• Foucault
• Harding

Balanced traditions

• Aristotle
• Aquinas
• Hume
• Kant
• Peirce

Left-hemisphere dominant traditions

• Parmenides
• Plato
• Avicenna / Averroes
• Ockham
• Descartes
• Locke
• Mill
• Russell / Moore
• Vienna Circle
• Popper (methodological)
• Gettier / Williamson
• most modern analytic epistemology

---

Key McGilchrist insight

Western philosophy progressively shifted from RH-balanced perspectives toward LH abstraction, culminating in:

• analytic philosophy
• logical positivism
• technocratic epistemology

This mirrors his broader thesis that modern culture increasingly privileges the left hemisphere’s model of reality over the right hemisphere’s richer experiential understanding.

Key Pattern McGilchrist Argues​

According to Iain McGilchrist:

1. Early philosophy balanced lived experience and reason.
2. Platonism and rationalism strengthened abstract thinking.
3. Descartes triggered a major epistemological shift toward disembodied certainty.
4. Analytic philosophy and logical positivism represent the peak of left-hemisphere abstraction, focusing on:
   • formal logic
   • linguistic analysis
   • reduction of meaning to verifiability

Meanwhile, countercurrents (James, Kuhn, phenomenology, hermeneutics, etc.) periodically restore right-hemisphere awareness of context, history, and lived experience.
One of McGilchrist’s most important observations:
The hemispheres are not about intelligence but about style of attention.
Philosophical traditions reflect different ways of attending to reality:

• RH → reality encountered
• LH → reality represented

Modern epistemology increasingly studies representations rather than the world itself.

Two different words for knowledge in other languages such as German and Spanish for example;

Iain McGilchrist argues that different European languages encode two fundamentally different senses of “knowledge.” He connects this linguistic distinction to his broader thesis about the different styles of attention of the brain’s hemispheres, especially in his book The Master and His Emissary.

Below is the core idea, focusing on German and Spanish.

1. Two kinds of knowing​

McGilchrist emphasizes that English often collapses multiple meanings into the single word “knowledge.”
But some languages keep them distinct, revealing two different cognitive attitudes toward the world:

1. Propositional / factual knowledge
   • Knowledge about something
   • Abstract, explicit, conceptual
   • Often expressible in statements
2. Experiential / participatory knowledge
   • Knowledge through familiarity or experience
   • Practical, embodied, relational
   • Often gained through living or doing

He links these roughly to different attentional styles:

• The left hemisphere tends toward explicit, conceptual knowledge.
• The right hemisphere tends toward lived, contextual understanding.

German distinctions​

German separates these meanings very clearly.

1. Wissen - Means factual or propositional knowledge​

• Knowing that something is true. Examples:
  Ich weiß, dass Paris in Frankreich liegt. (“I know that Paris is in France.”)
  Characteristics: Information, Facts, Learnable from books or instruction

2. Kennen- Means knowing through acquaintance or familiarity​

• Knowing a person, place, or practice. Examples: Ich kenne Maria. (“I know Maria.”)// Ich kenne diese Stadt gut. (“I know this city well.”)

Characteristics: Relationship or familiarity, Direct experience, Not reducible to facts

Why McGilchrist finds this important​

For him, the distinction shows that knowledge is not purely informational.
Example:

• You can wissen about a city (population, history).
• But you only kennen it after living there.

He argues modern culture often overvalues Wissen while neglecting Kennen, mirroring an overemphasis on analytic abstraction.

Spanish distinctions​

Spanish also preserves a similar split.

1. Saber- Used for facts, skills, knowing how or knowing that​

Examples:

• Sé que viene mañana.
  (“I know that he comes tomorrow.”)
• Sé nadar.
  (“I know how to swim.”)

It includes both propositional knowledge and learned skills.

2. Conocer- Used for Familiarity with people, places, or things, direct encounter​

Examples:

• Conozco a María.
  (“I know María.”)
• Conozco Madrid.
  (“I know Madrid.”)

Like German kennen, it implies lived acquaintance.

McGilchrist’s broader philosophical point​

He uses these linguistic examples to illustrate a deeper claim:

The modern West treats knowledge mainly as information.​

But historically and cross-culturally, knowledge also includes:

• familiarity
• participation
• embodied experience
• relationship

Languages like German and Spanish preserve this distinction structurally, whereas English tends to blur it.