Roger Wolcott Sperry: Right

“It seems important that the social value factor be more generally recognized as a powerful causal agent in its own right and something to be dealt with directly as such.”

Roger Wolcott Sperry

Source: Science and the Problem of Values (1972), p. 119
Context: It seems important that the social value factor be more generally recognized as a powerful causal agent in its own right and something to be dealt with directly as such. No more critical task can be projected for the 1970s than that of seeking for civilized society a new, elevated set of value guidelines more suited to man's expanded numbers and new powers over nature, a frame of reference for value priorities that will act to secure and conserve our world instead of destroying it.

“When the brain is whole, the unified consciousness of the left and right hemispheres adds up to more than the individual properties of the separate hemispheres.”

Roger Wolcott Sperry

New Mindset on Consciousness (1987)

“With few exceptions, the bulk of the collected lesion evidence up through the 1950s into the early '60s converged to support the picture of a leading, more highly evolved and intellectual left hemisphere and a relatively retarded right hemisphere that by contrast, in the typical righthander brain, is not only mute and agraphic but also dyslexic, word-deaf and apraxic, and lacking generally in higher cognitive function.”

Roger Wolcott Sperry

Nobel lecture (1981)

Support

“The grand design of nature perceived broadly in four dimensions, including the forces that move the universe and created man, with special focus on evolution in our own biosphere, is something intrinsically good that it is right to preserve and enhance, and wrong to destroy and degrade.”

Roger Wolcott Sperry

Source: Science and the Problem of Values (1972), p. 127

Nature , Universe

“Earlier contentions that the right hemisphere is not even conscious largely gave way by the mid seventies to an intermediate position conceding that the mute hemisphere may be conscious at some lower elemental levels, but claiming that it lacks the higher, reflective, self-conscious kind of inner awareness that is special to the human mind and is needed, so it is said, to qualify the right conscious system as a "self' or "person". Self awareness in particular is reported, on the basis of mirror tests mainly, to be a predominantly human attribute and is rated by developmental as well as by evolutionary standards to be a highly advanced phase of conscious awareness.”

Roger Wolcott Sperry

Nobel lecture (1981)

Way , Personality