A Scanner Darkly

“Well, I guess I’d notice that.”

“It used to be believed the right hemisphere had no linguistic faculties at all, but that was before so many people had screwed up their left hemispheres with drugs and gave it—the right—a chance to come on. To fill the vacuum.”

“I’ll certainly keep my eyes open for that,” Fred said, and heard the mere mechanical quality of his voice, like that of a dutiful child in school. Agreeing to obey whatever dull order was imposed on him by those in authority. Those taller than he was, and in a position to impose their strength and will on him, whether it was reasonable on not.

Just agree, he thought. And do what you’re told.

“What do you see in this second picture?”

“A sheep,” Fred said.

“Show me the sheep.” The seated deputy leaned forward and rotated the picture. “An impairment in set-background discrimination gets you into a heap of trouble—instead of perceiving no forms you perceive faulty forms.”

Like dog shit, Fred thought. Dog shit certainly would be considered a faulty form. By any standard. He …

The data indicate that the mute, minor hemisphere is specialized for Gestalt perception, being primarily a synthesist in dealing with information input. The speaking, major hemisphere, in contrast, seems to operate in a more logical, analytic, computerlike fashion and the findings suggest that a possible reason for cerebral lateralization in man is basic incompatibility of language functions on the one hand and synthetic perceptual functions on the other.

… felt ill and depressed, almost as much as he had during his Lions Club speech. “There’s no sheep there, is there?” he said. “But was I close?”

“This is not a Rorschach test,” the seated deputy said, “where a muddled blot can be interpreted many ways by many subjects. In this, one specific object, as such, has been delineated and one only. In this case it’s a dog.”

“A what?” Fred said.

“A dog.”

“How can you tell it’s a dog?” He saw no dog. “Show me.” The deputy …

This conclusion finds its experimental proof in the split-brain animal whose two hemispheres can be trained to perceive, consider, and act independently. In the human, where propositional thought is typically lateralized in one hemisphere, the other hemisphere evidently specializes in a different mode of thought, which may be called appositional. The rules or methods by which propositional thought is elaborated on “this” side of the brain (the side which speaks, reads, and writes) have been subjected to analyses of syntax, semantics, mathematical logic, etc. for many years. The rules by which appositional thought is elaborated on the other side of the brain will need study for many years to come.

… turned the card over; on the back the formal stark simple outline of a DOG had been inscribed, and now Fred recognized it as the shape drawn within the lines on the front side. In fact it was a specific type of dog: a greyhound, with drawn-in gut.

“What’s that mean,” he said, “that I saw a sheep instead?”

“Probably just a psychological block,” the standing deputy said, shifting his weight about. “Only when the whole set of cards is nun, and then we have the several other tests—”

“Why this is a superior test to the Rorschach,” the seated deputy interrupted, producing the next drawing, “is that it is not interpretive; there are as many wrongs as you can think up, but only one right. The right object that the U.S. Department of Psych-Graphics drew into it and certified for it, for each card; that’s what’s right, because it is handed down from Washington. You either get it or you don’t, and if you show a run of not getting it, then we have a fix on a functional impairment in perception and we dry you out for a while, until you test okay later on.”

“A federal clinic?” Fred said.