The left-brain interpreter (Gazzaniga)

Split-brain patients (corpus callosum severed for epilepsy) allow information to reach one hemisphere only: left visual field → right hemisphere (mute in most), right visual field → left hemisphere (language). (Gazzaniga's split-brain program, post-Sperry; clinical confabulation literature.)

The chicken-claw scene: chicken claw shown to the left hemisphere, snow scene to the right. Left hand (right hemisphere) picks a shovel; right hand picks a chicken. Asked why the shovel — the SPEAKING hemisphere never saw the snow — the patient answers without hesitation: "the chicken claw goes with the chicken, and you need a shovel to clean out the shed." Fluent, confident, fabricated, and — crucially — with no felt difference from a real reason. Same shape: command "walk" flashed to the right hemisphere, patient stands; asked where to: "I want a Coke."

The generalization: a left-hemisphere INTERPRETER module runs continuously, weaving behavior, mood, and visceral state — whatever it can see, whatever their true causes — into one coherent first-person narrative. The felt experience of "why I did that" is the press office's release, issued after the fact.

Clinical overdrive: Korsakoff confabulation; anosognosia patients denying their own paralysis ("I'm just tired today") — the same engine running on worse inputs.

Evidence grade, honestly: split-brain N is single digits worldwide, and 2017 re-examinations (Pinto et al.) complicate the "two consciousnesses" reading; but the interpreter PHENOMENON — post-hoc reason-weaving — stands on broad non-split evidence and is the load-bearing part here.

Kin: telling-more-than-we-can-know (the inaccessibility this module papers over) · choice-blindness · abduction.