Notes on: Bergson, H (2002) The Creative
Mind. An introduction to metaphysics.
New York: Citadel Press
Dave Harris.
Introduction one. Retrograde
movement of the true growth of truth.
Philosophies are not precisely fitted to
reality. They are normally too general and
abstract, but we require 'one which fits the
object only and to which alone the object lends
itself' (11), as in science. Spencer seemed
to fit the bill at first. The point is to
see how philosophies treat real time. In
real time, there is a flow so that 'not one of its
parts is still there when another part comes
along'. This makes measurement, which
involves a superposition of one scheme on another,
difficult: any superposition implies non duration
[more on this below]. The usual way of
measuring duration is to take a body in motion but
impose on it an immobile line. Measurements
of time like this involve a series of moments,
'virtual halts in time'(12). Moments can
also be seen as simultaneities. Between
these moments, 'anything you like may happen'
(13), and although mathematicians might ignore
this, there could be major differences for
consciousness, as we see when the same interval
can take on quite different subjective
implications.
Science can ignore these effects of waiting, since
it focuses on that which can be repeated and
calculated, which is not 'in a state of
flow'. It conforms to common sense from
which it springs. Both think of the
measurement of duration instead of duration
itself. The big question was whether this
duration could be grasped after all in
consciousness.
This led first to some investigations of
psychology and critiques of the dominant
conceptions there [in Matter
and Memory], including
associationism. Rejection of the usual
conceptions led to a notion of real duration,
'continuity which was neither unity nor
multiplicity' (14) and which did not fit
conventional categories. Returning to
Spencer, it was clear that his notion of evolution
did not express duration, but rather a spatialized
notion of time. Science pursues this idea
for good reasons, but metaphysics should've been
different. Language seemed to blame in that
'the terms which designate time are borrowed from
the language of space'. Again, common sense
and language might require a particular form of
time, one which masks duration.
Transition between the immobile points is the
issue. Both science and common sense attempt
to deal with it by interposing more and more
immobile points. Action requires that
we halt a mobile process, and then link it with a
simultaneous halt of time. Instead, we
should try to get to movement directly, perhaps by
studying the real movements which we produce
ourselves [the old example of the movement of an
arm which should be seen as a piece]: common sense
would think that the movement has been made to fit
exactly onto a particular space, traveling along
points of a line, breaking duration up into
moments again. These are only snapshots, however,
practical substitutes for movement which conform
to conventional language. Similarly, we
normally understand change as progression of
different states, but this ignores the changes
going on within each state, as a matter of
constant flow rather than in an increasingly small
number of states. Change is real, and it is
indivisible, but we normally try to grasp it 'as a
series of adjacent states'(17). This
produces an artificial [quantitative, spatialized]
multiplicity with an artificial unity.
Lots of early metaphysics produced and amplified
these errors. The difficulties of grasping
movement and change was a challenge for the early
classical philosophers, and they solved it by
producing the notion of 'the reality of things
above time, beyond what moves and what changes,
and consequently outside what our senses and
consciousness perceive'—the origins of
metaphysics. However, this could only be
represented by 'a more or less artificial
arrangement of concepts'. It was this
abstract system that was studied rather than full
experience. If we return to experience and
its fluidity, we can dispose of many of the
problems of classic philosophy. We will
replace metaphysics with experience, and see that
duration is 'unceasing creation, the uninterrupted
upsurge of novelty' (18).
The normal representation of movement and change
is a cinematographic one, with a fixed sequence of
images. We could vary the speed at which we
project the film, and the sequence would not
change. Therefore 'succession thus
understood... adds nothing' to our
understanding, and prevents us grasping movement
properly. We see time confused with space
again, with images occupying points on a line,
making it impossible to grasp them 'in a single
perception'. We have added an obstacle to
understanding duration.
The positive attributes of time have been
classically neglected in this approach, and this
has prevented philosophers from 'conceiving the
radically new and unforeseeable'. Instead,
the future must be regulated by the present,
either by a strict determinism, or by a notion of
free will as simply a choice between two possible
alternatives. In either account, 'everything
is given' (19) already. It is impossible to
think of an entirely new act, which is what a free
act is. It's difficult to realize this in
normal consciousness, but if we think of a future
act, we can realize that it can never be known
fully in the present, 'because your state tomorrow
would include all the life you will have lived up
until that moment, with whatever that particular
moment is to add to it'. Psychological life
cannot be shortened [transitions between points
ignored], any more than can a melody without
altering its nature. If you could pin down
all the events that will take place between now
and the future, it would not be a future activity
but a present one, and not an act of free will
either.
We can see these alternatives at work in theories
of evolution, one of which sees evolution as
internal growth and unfurling, where parts
juxtapose. However, 'a real evolution...is
entirely modified within... Its content and
its duration are one and the same thing'
(20). There are material systems in science
which are calculable and where possibilities are
already known, but science is wrong to extend this
understanding to everything. The development of
human consciousness is crucial as an element in
the material world [and then a rather strange
argument that given that films can be projected at
any speed, it is necessary to make their speed
conform to a 'duration of our inner life', and
this shows how the unrolling film is 'therefore in
all probability attached to consciousness which
has duration and which regulates its
movement'. This is where the example of
waiting for a glass water to dissolve the sugar
appears—the necessity for waiting means that
systems which include human beings cannot be
ignored unless we are to get a reduced
universe. In practice, the universe is
'inorganic but interwoven with organic beings'
(21) and this means that 'we should see it
ceaselessly taking on forms as new, as original,
as unforeseeable as our states of consciousness'—I
must say I don't find this terribly plausible.
Useful against scientism, of course].
So really evolution involves not just a
rearrangement of the pre existing, but something
radically new, like the difference between
creation and choice. In duration, we see
'perpetual creation of possibility and not only of
reality'. We have to investigate what's
meant by possibility here. Things might be
possible in principle, but a more positive use of
the turn raises problems if it means that
'everything which occurs could have been
foreseen'. This ignores [emergence] the real
development of something like a work of art, which
may or may not be seen as possible in principle by
the artist. The existence of conscious and
living beings in the universe also adds novelty
and radical unforeseeability. [Made me think of
Deleuze on the multiplicity again, and how its
actualizations differenCiate themselves overtime
{see Diff and Rep}
- -this would solve the problem of assuming
that all possibilities are already contained in
the multiplicity? This would restore becoming to
more than an unfurling?]
We still tend to think of possibilities as
involving something existing before realization,
but this is an illusion, developed [post hoc].
We can see it after the event that something has
ocurred, but because we think in terms of eternal
truths, we think that it must have existed by
right before the existing in fact: if our judgment
is true now, it must always have been so.
This is the retroactive effect or retrograde
movement (22). In practice, that judgment
could not have pre existed the emergence of the
components. In reality, the thing and the
idea of the thing are both 'created at one stroke
when a truly new form, invented by art or nature,
is concerned'. [Getting close to Barad here on
entanglement!]
Nevertheless, the retrospective character of
judgement persists. When something is
accomplished, we can detect a 'shadow' extending
into the past, and we call this a possible.
This is integral to the whole business of
predicting the future in terms of a predictable
evolution. In practice, 'an entirely
different reality (not just any reality,
it is true)'(23) could have produced the
circumstances and events in question. Could
we add these in as further possibilities?
The problem again is that we can only do this once
something has actually materialized and revealed
its aspects, and only when the attention selects
and cuts out its forms: in this sense, it is
impossible to get at the totality of circumstances
[THIS is the heart of the measurement problems in
quantum physics?]. Aspects of the past can
have no more reality than is apparent in the
present [the analogy is with purely imagined
symphonies]. Thus we can identify aspects of
classicism as containing elements that were to
lead to romanticism, but this is only because we
have decided that these aspects feature a material
reality, we have focused on 'a certain aspect'of
classical work, a slice or cut [an example goes on
to consider identifying early signs of democracy
in classical civilizations]. In this way,
analysis of the present can 'create its own
prefiguration in the past'(24) [so really a
denunciation of post hoc ergo propter hoc].
It is similarly difficult to identify something in
the present which will be of interest in the
future: what is interesting in the future will be
affected by duration. [Another example
ensues, debating whether the original
classifications of colors represent something that
has always been there in nature, page 26].
Again, habitual logic is to blame and its
inability to grasp something that has genuinely
been created as new, as a result of the passage of
time.
[This is why we tend to see multiplicity as a
quantitative matter] 'multiplicity resolves itself
into a definite number of unities...
[Instead of being able to grasp.].. The idea
of an indistinct and even undivided multiplicity,
purely intensive or qualitative, which, while
remaining what it is, will comprise an
indefinitely increasing number of elements, as the
new points of view for considering it appear in
the world' [looks definitely phenomenological
here].
Pursuing these questions into the area of liberty,
it seemed that novelists and moralists have got
further than philosophers, even if they have had
not operated systematically [Proust gets a
mention!]. However, the interest in liberty
can be seen as emerging from the earlier
publications, advocating 'direct, immediate
observation of oneself by oneself' (27), taking
care to control the affects of habits which
confuse duration with extension. Other
pseudo problems were identified too, as in the
discussion of moods and intensities [in the book on the origins
of religion?], where just because language
is fixed and discontinuous, so we imagine the
states we attach them to as being the same.
We have to realize the origins of this state of
common sense and its spatiality, and its need to
communicate socially.
Associationism has to be overturned, but so does
Kantianism, especially its notion that the thing
itself cannot be understood: the argument was that
at least our own person could be, even though it
was a part of nature [actually
'reality'(28)]. We can grasp ourselves just
as we are, so that it might be possible to do this
for other realities too, so that apparent
relativity is just another habit of intelligence
adjusted to practical life [the inaccessibility of
the material at the time?]. In practice, we
can undo these conceptions of reality and go
ahead, investigating inner life then life in
general and noting how the artificial concepts had
arisen. The aim was to develop greater
precision, especially not including things into
too broad a category, often induced by using
pre existing words and 'readymade concepts'.
Instead we have to attempt a direct vision of
reality complete with its own subdivisions, and
then new concepts will arise that are adequate to
the object: we must take care not to extend those
concepts to other objects in the form of
unwarranted generalization, but to study them in
themselves.
Introduction two. The stating of problems.
[A big issue for Deleuze, and good on the methods
of intuition]
Thinking about duration led to the notion of
intuition as a philosophical method. Earlier
versions of that term saw intuition as something
beyond intelligence, something outside of space
and time, but that is because they did not see
that intellectual activity is necessarily tied to
scientific notions of space and time. We are
already outside of time. For earlier
philosophers, intuition meant projecting ourselves
into the eternal, but they still retained concepts
from the intelligence: normally, a single concept
was posited that included all the empirical
ones—'Substance, Ego, Idea, Will'(31). We
could then explain everything as deductions from
these general concepts to get back to the real,
but this would be too abstract, and need not
particular reflect this world at all. By
contrast, 'a truly intuitive metaphysics...would
follow the undulations of the real', being
adequate to each thing, without starting with some
apparent systematic unity of the world.
Proceeding in this way might well produce a notion
of the unity of reality at the end of its
enquiries, but it would be 'rich, full' rather
than abstract and empty. In particular, 'no
solution will be geometrically deduced from
another. No important truth will be achieved
by the prolongation of an already acquired truth'
(32). [transcendental empiricism?]
A proper intuition would grasp internal duration,
succession, growth, 'the uninterrupted
prolongation of the past into a present which is
already blending into
the future'. It depends on immediate
consciousness, 'a vision which is scarcely
distinguishable from the object seen, and
knowledge which is contact and even
coincidence'. We extend this consciousness,
and when we do, we will also encounter the
unconscious, which constantly gives way and
regains itself. Is this to argue that, we
can only have intuition of ourselves? There
is a problem with dealing with other bodies which
are separated from us by space, but possibly there
is 'psychological endosmosis' [and we know that he argued that
telepathy and all those other powers might be
real]. By pursuing intuition still further,
we might see that life itself exists in duration,
as a cause of the organization of matter, 'the
vital impetus within us' (33). Here there's
something behind the systems of organized matter,
'the material universe in its entirety' which
'keeps our consciousness waiting'. It may
endure itself, or it might be connected to our
duration 'by its function', but intuition is the
only way to find out. Such an intuition lay
behind earlier attempts to acknowledge difference
and flux. In any event, 'real duration is a
thing spiritual or impregnated with spirituality',
and intuition helps us grasp this spirit or
participation in spirituality. We will not
use the term divine because there is clearly a
strong human element involved as well, necessary
for intuitional effort.
There is no 'simple and geometrical definition of
intuition' (34), since there are several
autonomous meanings. It grasps something
'which has not been cut out of the whole of
reality' by conventional understandings in common
sense or language. Philosophers like Spinoza
have explored some of its meanings. This
complexity of the whole guarantees that it cannot
be delivered by some mathematical essence or
formula. The fundamental meaning relates to
being in duration and not starting with the
immobile: it starts with movement which it sees as
reality itself. Change is essential.
The static object is only 'a cutting which is been
made out of the becoming', which our intelligence
sees as a substitute for the whole.
Normally, the new is only 'an arrangement of pre
existing elements'(35), but intuitions sees 'an
uninterrupted continuity of unforeseeable
novelty', impregnated with spirituality, creation
itself. Intuition is difficult to prolong,
however, because it is forced to use ordinary
language and to reduce itself to concepts,
including duration or multiplicity.
The ideas in intuition are customarily
obscure. But there are two kinds of
clarity. One relates to conventional ideas
of order and the new, and amounts to 'finding only
the old in the new', which it takes for
understanding. We are usually grateful for
such clarity. The other kind involves the
radically new and 'absolutely simple idea' which
just catches on. It cannot be
reconstructed. It can only be understood
with effort to recompose the new. Although
difficult to accept at first, it will eventually
dissipate obscurities by rethinking the problems
which have appeared insoluble. It will
benefit from solving these problems, by becoming
at least partly intellectualized and therefore
applicable to new problems. However, we
should not reject those ideas that begin in
obscurity, lit only locally, before they are able
to project and reflect on to more and more
problems.
This requires time, and it is tempting to precede
with conventional ideas instead. These ideas
have cut out reality in order to operate on it
effectively, and have tended to group together
objects and facts in accordance with the interest
in action. If we can react identically to
different perceptions, we can conclude that we see
objects of the same kind, and if our actions are
different, we can claim that we have found
opposite kinds. [So a further notion of
useful action means being able to generate useful
generalizations]. Anything which does not
proceed in this way tends to be seen as
obscure. Positivists normally seem to offer
better answers than speculative philosophers.
We need to focus metaphysics on spirit and
intuition, and leave science to a separate
area. Both are of equal value, both will
grasp reality [so we have both dualism and
monism!]. Positive science has proceeded
with systematic observation generalized by
intelligence, drawing upon mathematics and
extending itself to more and more domains.
It still tends to see the living objects in
biology with less ease, and with a possibly
reductionist stance. It struggles to
understand the mind, however: it can see it as a
form of matter, but as it gets closer to mind, it
is forced to use metaphor. This shows the
origins of science in human senses and in needing
to take an instrumental approach towards matter
[as before]. That still guides even the most
speculative science [still? Lyotard would say that
performativity has now been abandoned in some
areas at least]. This means we can be
confident about science already.
Philosophy is different and soon meets 'insoluble
difficulties' (39) for conventional intelligence,
such as contradictions. There is much more
of a symmetry and agreement between intellect and
matter. We see this best with the precision
of mathematical forms of the sciences, which is
also an area where the intellect can 'function
with an absolute precision'. Mathematics
offers difficulties at first because it works with
particular symbols, but once we have achieved a
facility with them, the notion of evidence, for
example, becomes immediately graspable. In
any other field, thought must mature, and this
means that it also 'essentially fills up
duration', proceeding beyond superficial
impression, revealing inner structure. This
also conforms to the way in which our intellect
works. There is no reason why 'the science
of matter should not reach an absolute' (40), and
it is happy to take appearance for reality as long
as it is not demonstrably illusory. [Bergson
has no time for those who insist that science is
relative, or that in some way it deforms or
constructs it object].
The flexibility of the intellect also fits our
understandings of matter, and our minds do reveal
certain 'superficial adaptations of matter', which
take the form of sensations. The mind must
also 'descend...toward matter' when it acts on the
body. So certain aspects of our internal
life can be revealed, but we should not extend
these efforts into a physics of the mind—a
metaphysics which offers a complete system of
reality. This must ignore the spiritual in
the mind. It must apply intellectual forms
used in studying matter which can only study
'superficial phenomena of the soul'(41). The
resulting knowledge will be necessarily 'almost
empty and in any case vague', superficial when it
comes to mental life, and inferior to science when
it comes to matter.
We need to set metaphysics side by side with
science, leave science to its work, and focus on
mind. We may have to depart from natural
forms of learning. A 'certain ignorance of
self' has actually been helpful in the past to
permit action: it is even a 'necessity of
life'. Acting effectively requires
intellectual understanding, with only a glancing
reference to our inner selves. 'Thus nature
turns mind away from mind, turns mind toward
matter' (42). We must extend our vision away
from this spatialised form of intellect and from
materiality, to achieve a 'direct vision of
the mind by the mind' - intuition.
Intuition can only be communicated by the
intelligence, however. Its ideas will always
'retain an outer fringe of images': we normally
use metaphors to increase our powers of
expression. This is still more profitable
than an abstract scientific language, which would
reduce mind to matter. Imagery in language
can already express meaning, while abstract
knowledge can sometimes proceed only figuratively.
Science based on experience can eventually
grasp reality absolutely. But this is
only a part of reality. Knowledge of 'the
other half of reality'(43) also starts from
experience and can also attain the absolute, and
this is metaphysics properly speaking. It is
equal to, not superior to science.
Metaphysics can never produce relative sciences
based on particular positions, because metaphysics
is always 'hypothetical and vague'.
Metaphysics can be equally precise and addresses
reality as well. It is only a convention to
call one approach science and the other
metaphysics. They should act with 'mutual
aid and reciprocal verification'(44). They
have different objects, matter and mind: but just
as matter and mind are joined, so will science and
metaphysics be brought into contact. They
will influence each other. Metaphysics as
much a science will embrace reality, and not
speculate about all possible worlds, for example.
Both will attempt to make more rigorous concepts
and words. Classical philosophy was limited
by having to use ordinary language concepts like
'low 'and 'high'. The turn toward
observation of actual things still remained
limited by having to connect them with these
privileged concepts. However, proper
metaphysics must start to question language and
its concepts, since inner experience is
different. It must still use ordinary
language, but can enlarge concepts and make them
more flexible. It can also indicate that
concepts do not contain the whole of experience.
This sort of metaphysics will not be able to
produce 'simple conclusions or radical
solutions'(45), because it is not just a game
played with concepts. Focusing on experience
will mean it is necessarily incomplete and
provisional, possibly achieving increasing
probability. As an example, traditional
metaphysics addressed questions such as whether
the soul survived the body and provided answers
based on definitions [for Plato, that the soul is
defined by being part of the body but is
immaterial and therefore immortal]. Bergson
prefers to work from experience and experiments
that reveal that the brain produces only a small
part of conscious life, so conscious life can
persist even if the brain is suppressed. At
least this is testable, he thinks, but it is
incomplete, and would need to be supplemented by
some sort of reasons drawn from religion.
But at least we have moved from speculation and
definition to probability.
We need to clear away a lot of arguments to get to
experience. We all possess the faculty of
intuition, although it is often minimized in favor
of action. Classical philosophers worked
only with these minimal products, 'on concepts
already fixed in language' which seemed
absolute. More modern philosophy tends to
see metaphysics as a kind of mathematics, content
to operate with 'geometrical unity and
simplicity'(47), which set soluble problems.
There is a dogmatism implied in both
approaches. Classical metaphysicians saw the
origin of absolute concepts in divinity and
justified their judgements in terms of revelation
[as a consequence of needing to develop a
universal concept]. Aristotle in particular
wanted to fuse all the concepts into a single
one, '"thought of thought"', [and thus began
the connection of metaphysics and science].
However, a god which wanted to intervene in human
suffering, but whose workings remain obscure leads
to the confusion between 'an explanatory idea and
an active principle'. There's also an
unexplained dualism between concrete concepts
found in language, which are openly utilitarian
and convenient, and abstract principles to
describe the otherworldly. This necessarily
limits meanings as soon as the absolute concept
gets applied [discussing Schopenhauer]—if Will is
everywhere, it must be vague because there is
nothing to define it against, and it is both
everywhere and nowhere: everything is identically
the product of Will. We do not understand
the absolute simply by giving it a name,
especially one which is separated from its own
definite meaning. The more we extend a
concept, the less it explains, and 'when finally
the word arrives at the point where it designate
everything that exists, it means no more than
existence'(49). However, associating general
concepts with the god of religion is also
'the source of the dogmatism of modern
philosophy'.
Experience is the only thing that can contact
existence. When it relates to the mind it
can be called intuition. It can proceed
gradually. Some of the great mystics have
extended metaphysical experience to such an extent
that they have grasped the truth, but this is not
necessary to demonstrate the value of
intuition. It helps us dispel speculation
for example, and to sort out the correct
application of concepts, many of which arise from
ordinary language which is not suitable. The
real is articulated into that which is cut out by
action and that which is cut out by
intuition. Philosophy is wrong to favor the
first cut. It implies that there is nothing
more to be discovered and that philosophy is only
a game.
The role of philosophy is to find the problem in
the first place, to posit it correctly.
Doing so will already solve many speculative
problems. For many of those, it is a matter
of uncovering the hidden solution. When we
state the problem properly we invent one. We
very often state the solution as well. In a
mundane example, we might consider an old
philosophical issue about pleasure, and whether it
is happiness or not. Usually, the discussion
simply assumes the ordinary meaning of these
terms, and it becomes a question of vocabulary or
use. Clarifying definitions like this can be
helpful, but they have not grasped reality.
Ordinary terms are probably artificial. If
we examined actual states they may have something
in common or not, and some might've been
classified as pleasure because they had a
practical interest. Proceeding to analysis
like this shows where the solution lies, and a new
problems are set out, including where general
ideas come from. No doubt this will also
involve discussion of whether human activity can
be seen as a natural category or not. [sociology
of knowledge?] However, 'this
disarticulation of the real according to its own
tendencies'(52) is the real issue. [I
think]. The question of the origin and value of
ideas haunts any philosophical problem [see
Bourdieu on Kant!]. A particular solution is
required in each case. Sometimes there are
general discussions, but again we can be skeptical
about whether these 'do really constitute a
genus'. Again the issue is to know what the
reasons are for grouping particular items, and how
this corresponds to a 'structure of the
real'.
[we are nearly doing sociology here, but at the
last minute we veer off into psychology]. It
is biological need that governs the working of
consciousness that, among other things, perceives
generalities. They started as something
necessary to life. Psychological categories
are not eternal. One way to see this is to
look at living beings other than humans. All
living beings generalize and classify, if only in
the sense that they know what counts as
food. They experience abstraction and
generalization rather than thinking them, but lead
to develop representations of a kind. Human
beings also have these animal forms that help them
droll resemblance is between differing objects,
classifications, general ideas. These are
'automatically extracted'(54) as well. These
automatic generalities are still found in the more
conscious and reflective kinds, which feature not
only abstractions but a range of 'tendencies,
habits, gestures and attitudes... complexes
of movements'(55). Human interest was first
based in the need to survive. The ideas
generated like this will appear in general
abstract ideas as well. Words have a role
here to 'furnish a representation with a frame in
which it can fit'. In many ways, we need to
remember that 'generalization [is] originally
little else than habit'.
We still have to see how the general ideas of pure
thought emerge. Experience presents us with
resemblance is and some are fundamental.
These will produce general ideas which can be
detached relatively from individual action to
become 'a more or less approximate vision of some
aspects of reality' (56). These will be
few. They will also generate simplifications
and deformations, but there will be a fundamental
resemblance or objective generality as their
origin.
Resemblances are of three kinds:
(1) biological, showing how life would work
according to its structural plans, as if it had
some purpose;
(2) inert matter also has some qualities which
will produce general resemblances. Some of
them can be understood as identity [the example is
the wavelength of particular colors or
sounds]. Resemblance is more partial.
We can add that's identity is 'something
geometrical and resemblance something vital' (58),
to do with measure or art or some aesthetic grasp
of similarity respectively. We can think of
identities as necessarily produced. As signs
progress is, it will be able to measure, quantify,
existing distinctions of quality, and thus expand
the category of identity. We might still
wish to inquire why human perception tends to
notice particular things like frequencies, and the
uncertainty is that it relates to their powers to
act, including virtual action: this is how humans
'condense' the trillions of events taking place
into useful information [discussed in terms of
differences of tension again, as in Matter and
Memory]. This is what prevents humans
from being completely determined. If the
emergence of human life 'is the raison d'être of
life on our planet' (59), all categories of
perception, in humans and non humans can be graded
in terms of how far they exhibit this
condensation. [The example also illustrates
that some condensation is essential for human life
to prevent them being overwhelmed by the immensity
of the universe. It follows that all life
results from being able to condense to some extent
in order to permit action]
(3) general ideas created by human speculation and
action, inventions, based on human
intelligence. There's always a model,
however, based in reality, and these gain an
objectivity that has provided the basis for all
human civilizations. Intelligence can then
elaborate away from ideas that have the most
immediate utility, but 'the immense majority of
general ideas, it is the interest of society with
that of individuals, it is the exigencies of
conversation and action, which preside at their
birth' (61) [a kind of Primitive
Classifications?]
Intuition requires that we go beyond such
conceptual thought, going behind the social forces
involved, 'in the direction of the divine'.
Most thought just accepts social dimensions, but
we need to go back to the 'vital impetus' that
generated social life [somehow sidestep those
social forces that have determined thought up to
date?]. If we do so, we can sidestep some
apparently insoluble problems, such as the origin
of being, why anything exists in the first place,
what caused existence, and so on. These
problems lead to the abyss. The same goes
with why we have order. The questions are
really addressed to 'what is not rather than to
what is' (62), and seems to be based on the idea
of an initial void [which is illogical, as
before]. A different point of view would see
that the 'divinely creative will or thought' would
be full of reality, unable to think of a void or
nothingness, any more than it could doubt its own
existence. Given this ever present force,
the issue of certainty also disappears as a false
problem [rendered in philosophy as being sure that
an intended action has actually been made,
63—doubt seems to be something negative that is
unnecessarily added again. Once we overcome
such doubt we realize that it is an illusion,
which can be banished by an act of will].
Intuition will help us perceive the true, and the
intellect can then precede to verify 'what has
been the object of a synthetic and super
intellectual vision'(64). There's no need to
warn of difficulties which will only reduce the
will. That purely negative consequences
might arise assumes that nothing can take the
place of something [in reality it will always be
another something]. Negative possibilities
are really to be understood as an indication of
something that lies outside our interest, all that
might inhibit our activity: 'it is our
disappointment being expressed'. The
negative and nothingness arise because we can
'pronounce words void of meaning'.
Philosophy sometimes erects these words into
abstract ideas, although they are practical in
origin.
We have to discard ideas that retard progress,
including Kantian philosophy, which only tried to
'explain how a particular order is super added to
supposedly incoherent materials'(65), but had the
consequence of leaving only science as legitimate,
with no independent access to reality. But
disorder does not precede order: Kant has
systematized this natural illusion. All the
great philosophical systems should be discarded,
especially if they include all that's possible or
impossible: 'Let us be content with the real, mind
and matter' (66), and to try and develop a theory
that embraces it closely and adequately.
This will help us perfect philosophy just as
science has been perfected.
This is not an attack on science. Nor is it
an unwarranted intrusion of pure philosophy into
science—the point was to fully acknowledge the
success of science and enable its progress
further, in a complementary relationship.
Science can actually attain an absolute, which is
more than even positivists claim. It should
not bother itself with metaphysics as in
scientism, which is only served to reject
intuition. This set of beliefs even
distorted obvious observations [and Bergson cites
his own interventions in scientific discussions of
aphasia, in Matter and Memory]. That
discussion already accepted a lot of scientific
practice.
Abstract speculation is easy, and 'metaphysical
construction is only a game' (67). Intuition
is more difficult and can be painful, and gives
limited results at first, but if we accept that
this is a method to be developed, we should
overcome obstacles and avoid 'subterfuge' [the
example is the dialectic, which provides only 'the
illusion of progress', 68]. There are no
guaranteed results. It might be necessary to
fall back on accepted habits or theories, but we
should commit to a long-term attempt to criticize
these, and 'become a student once more'.
Some acceptance of the ideas has taken place, but
any change away from habit is going to be
difficult, especially the habit that sees
immobility as natural with change as something
added. This is reflected in everyday logic
and judgement, which 'operates by the attribution
of a predicate to a subject', so the subject
becomes 'invariable' with change as simply a
diversity of states concerning it. This is
only natural because human beings are 'predestined
to social life and work', which require a stable
subject and world. Social traditions develop
which assume particular forms of knowledge and
interests. Even our perception works to cut
out elements that can be treated as invariable ;
any variability is explained in terms of a
succession of immobile states.
The need for action fits exactly the
characteristics of language and thought. We
can see this if we examine our own duration, which
gets condensed as a synthesis of many contemporary
oscillations, repeating events, the passage of
history. This is how we perceive objects
that seem invariable and immobile, at least while
we consider them, and persons in a similar
way. This is a highly successful way of
operating, even though it produces certain
philosophical problems in a backward state.
This led to the conclusion that our knowledge was
limited and relative, and that in turn explains
both positivism and Kantianism. Actually,
antinomies arose from 'an automatic transfer to
speculation of habits contracted in action' (71),
and some effort to undo intellectual habits like
this is required: 'for the human mind that would
be a liberation'.
A suitable example has to be chosen. For
human duration, the analogy of the melody is
useful, 'with a past enters into the present and
forms with it an undivided whole', no matter what
additions are made, we can grasp this intuitively,
but it is difficult to represent it intellectually
except as a series of states linked together by
something. Only intuition 'gives us the
thing' which has been represented like this.
When thinking of the duration of things and
matter, recent advances in physics have questioned
the issue of solidity and thingness of the
atom. Evolution similarly could not be seen
as some quality deducible from its fragments [as
in Creative Evolution].
The wave/particle debates have changed
perceptions. Further examples include the
work on the relation between the psychic and the
physiological, which emerged from studies of the
data of consciousness, and the tension between
free will and universal determinism. Freedom
was 'an undoubted fact', just assumed in Matter
and Memory [in the interval between action
and reaction and so on], but it had to be reshaped
so that 'certain facts upon which direct
observation could be based'(73) might be brought
to bear. That led to the issue of the
relation of mind and body, and in particular the
relation between brain and memory, in turn reduced
to the issue of maladies of memory including
aphasia.
The argument showed to his satisfaction that there
was a particular relation [discovered not
constructed a priori] between
consciousness and the organism, which is neither
parallelism nor epiphenomenalism. The brain
chose among memories those which would help
understand action in progress. The role of
the brain was to help focus on action, to avoid
'becoming lost in dream', to pay attention.
It was inward experience that endured and
constantly prolonged itself into the present,
while preserving the past that replaced the idea
of a physical preservation of memory. The
notion of duration would have saved a lot of
research. The argument did have some impact
on psychology, including the work on
schizophrenia, and the role of the past in Freud
(75).
The converging issues arising from these examples
are more metaphysical, addressing the issues of
mind and matter and replacing the conflict between
realism and idealism, subject and object.
The problem was restated. Analysis of
psychic phenomena had shown successive planes of
consciousness, from the dream plane, the most
extensive at the base of the pyramid, the whole
past of the person, to the perception of the
actual at the tip. Adding physiological data
challenged the view that the sensations were
recorded and then projected outwards [that notion
followed from cutting up reality in the
conventional way]. That old idea assumes
that reality was somehow represented in miniature
in the brain, rendered fluid somehow are to be
extended into consciousness, with an eventual
reconstruction of the external world. All
these are illusory, and common sense conceptions
triumph here -- objects do not only exist in the
mind -- but they are also not exhausted by,
and contain more qualities than particular
perceptions. This seems strange especially
for idealists, and for those whose realism is an
opposition to idealism. Such an opposition
built up habits of mind which seem to conclude
that we could divide the objective and subjective
in an agreed way. The attempt to undo these
habits [in M and M] appeared obscure,
although the conventional terms are now less
common.
Similarly, conventional intelligence is not being
attacked, except when it attains the form of 'a
dry rationalism made up for the most part of
negations' (77-8). Intelligence plays the
same role as instinct in animals. We use it
to master and utilize the material. It
undertakes fabrications which will lead eventually
to mechanics and to a particular pre scientific
language. That simple mechanics will
eventually yield mathematics. Intelligence
might be vague, but it is always a matter of
attention to the material. Problems arise
with the idea that intelligence can be applied to
the mind itself: the usual solution is to split
the intellect into two activities [the I and the
me?]. Better to call the second activity
intuition. That can also be developed until
eventually it produces 'a science of the mind':
this will be metaphysical and stress the positive
aspects of the mind. Nothing will be taken
from the intellect: in its right areas, it is
powerful, but there is another faculty.
Scholastic fields can develop between the two 'the
sciences of moral life, social life and even
organic life' showing different combinations of
intuition and intellect.
Critical approaches are less valuable. They
ignore the social roots of the use of words[ a
sociology of knowledge would lead to explaining
rather than criticising?] . We have to
replace instinct with constant invention, and even
though language is conventional at one level, it
is not just a cultural practice with no roots in
nature. Originally, language was developed
to facilitate cooperation, sometimes to require
immediate action, sometimes to inform industrial,
commercial or military activities. The terms
used in language have been cut out from reality by
human perception and intention. The way in
which we apply the same words to different objects
also implies an advantage to be gained.
Neither words nor ideas of these days are entirely
utilitarian, and we have developed a particular
interest in language with esprit de finesse
[apparently, says Wikipedia, the term used by
Pascal to describe a non-geometrical intuitionist
way of knowing]. It is this result of the
penetration of intuition that has led to poetry,
prose and the arts, moving from words which were
originally only signals [so a theory of signs in
here too?]. Early philosophy simply drew
terms from language adapted to the dialectic [in
the original sense, apparently both dialogue and
distribution, 81], so people could both agree on
things and classify them.
Science as it developed promised a complete
understanding of the material, but had to go
beyond ordinary language, to replace vagueness
with exactness [ordinary language is necessarily
vague because it needs to be adapted to a wide
range of material things]. Similarly, the
hope is that a philosophy will develop which will
also 'shake itself free from the word', but in the
opposite direction, emphasizing the
intuitive. Ordinary language will remain
between intuition and intelligence, even though it
is contaminated to some extent with both science
and philosophy, 'thought in common, which was at
first the whole of human thought'. [So we
have a theory of ideology here]. Language
cannot become too precise or too intuitive because
it needs stability, unlike philosophy. It is
normal to think of this conservative language as
reason itself, because it 'governs thought in
common' (82). Technically, we should see
this as applying only to 'things of the social
life'. Social life also needs fixity and
immobility [permitting change as the rearrangement
of elements]: 'Societies are just so many islands
consolidated here and there in the ocean of
becoming'.
The normal term 'intelligent' means that a person
has the facility to work with the 'ordinary
concepts' of everyday life. Authoritative
statements in science, however, require more
precision. However, such people are not told
to confine themselves to everyday life, and 'it is
agreed that the intelligent man is on this
[general] point a competent man. Against
this I protest most vigorously'(83) and it is not
enough to show 'cleverness...in talking about all
things with a show of truth'. However, the
normal notion of intelligence refers to someone
'clever in speaking, prompt to criticize'.
More effort is needed to penetrate both the social
and the natural domain, and when we do, we are
soon surprised [sic] and realize the inadequacy of
our a priori constructions.
Nevertheless, people are praised if they criticize
these efforts, comparing specific arguments with
current ideas, which are only 'the words which are
the repository of social thought'. The
assumption is that vague knowledge will do, so
that '"We know everything,"'. This rebuke is
directed particularly against philosophy, which
can appear to be unreasonable: 'He who really
seeks the truth should raise his voice in
protest', and show how this sort of criticism
involves denying the truth: the only proper
criticism involves new studies 'of the thing
itself'.
Even philosophers occasionally have to judge or
appreciate cases where ordinary reason is at
stake. It is tempting to adopt the 'common
illusion', or to resort to arguments from
authority. Knowledge is apparently gained as
a result of manipulating acceptable social
concepts, and mental superiority is claimed to be
demonstrated. Any sort of 'vision which
penetrates the veil of words' (84) is
denied. However these efforts should be as
estimable as those of science and technology.
'Old time methods of teaching' tended to perfect
the human being able to operate with ordinary
language. It is not that initiative of
students is discouraged, especially in France,
more that manual labour has an important role
which tends to be ignored: it is natural that we
should manipulate matter; our intellect will
profit from it. The child should try to
construct things. A 'bookish' learning alone
which suppresses activities hold back
inventiveness (85). It is not a matter of
drilling people, but developing rather a suitable
sense of touch with the material, informing the
manual with intelligence. Generally though,
teaching is 'too verbal', good only at producing
'a man of the world [who knows] how to converse on
various subjects'. Better to teach students
about scientific methods and allow them to
practice them. This would tap into the
inherent search for novelty, closeness to nature
of the child. The adult wants to reveal the
already required results, and lack of student
interest is often the result. Education
should 'cultivate a child's knowledge in the
child' (86) instead. The teaching of
literature also needs reform. It might be
necessary initially to appropriate authors, as in
'learning to read the text aloud with the proper
intonation and inflection', later adding shades of
meaning. What is more important is to
understand the 'structure and rhythm' of the work,
the relations in time between different sentences
and different paragraphs, treating books as music
[as before]. Overall, we have to encourage
people to reinvent as the only useful form of
understanding.
This is parallel to the philosopher trying to
develop intuition. It attempts to recapture
aspects of particular 'pages... from the
great book of the world' (87), in order to 'live
again creative evolution by being one with it in
sympathy'. We should abandon other habits of
mind, often found in schools, despite their
principles. We should not substitute
concepts of things, nor deal only with 'the
socialization of the truth': it's is no longer
required in non-primitive societies. 'It has
no business in the domain of pure knowledge,
science or philosophy'.
We should not go for the easy option but court
difficulty and effort. Thus intuition is not
just instinct or feeling, but reflection.
Seeing human attention as contracted in terms of
tension does not mean that we can simply relax our
minds. Nor is change always the same as
instability, and studying it is not the same is
recommending it: indeed seeing mobility everywhere
is a way of not having to recommend it, because it
is inevitable. The point is that we find
both stability and change, and permanence is
important and necessary. Social institutions
stabilize things, but the trick is not to ignore
'the constant flow of things' (89). Only the
steady evolution of institutions might be the main
role of the politician: after all, consciousness
already stabilizes things [contracts oscillations
and so on].
We are required to make 'for each new problem a
completely new effort' (89) [he then describes the
links between his own books, so that doing Matter
and Memory first permitted a better notion
of evolution in Creative Evolution, and a
better understanding of consciousness in Time
and Free Will. Only then could he come
to better conclusions about duration]. First
we should overthrow verbal solutions which still
dominate even in areas of experiment. We
should resist the understandable tendency to
extend our ordinary understandings to other areas:
that way lies philosophy only as dialectic,
metaphysics as an elaboration of 'rudimentary
knowledge'(90) found in language, especially when
it generalizes to claim to find general principles
applicable to everything. However, more work
remains to address specific questions [if he has
the time and strength—otherwise he thinks he has
done enough: 'One is never compelled to write a
book'].
Chapter three. The possible and
the real
[Quite a good summary of the arguments about
duration, with some implications for the notion of
the possible. Possibly a bit obscure
compared to earlier arguments about being and
nothingness in Matter
and Memory]
The universe seems to display 'the continuous
creation of unforeseeable novelty' (91). We
can experience this in everyday life where our
expectations or prior deliberations of events are
never completely fulfilled. However,
although inert matter seems predictable ,it also
shows this quality, partly because indeterminacy
is appearing in science. Anyway, the inert
world is an abstraction since concrete reality
always has living beings 'enframed in inorganic
matter' (92). All living things are
'conscious by right', although this consciousness
has 'fallen asleep' in some regions, like the
vegetable kingdom. Even there, there is
still evolution progress and aging. We tend
to wrongly prioritize the inert. Better to
think of some continuity of existence, 'a series
of infinitely rapid repetitions or quasi
repetitions which, when totaled, constitute
visible and pre visible changes'. Repetition
in the inorganic world follows a certain rhythm,
just like the rhythm of the pendulum marks the
unwinding of the spring, and these measure the
duration of conscious beings.
Living beings have duration, the continuous
elaboration of what is new, itself the result of
'searching' and 'groping'(93). Time is
hesitation. You can operate with an abstract
version of the world as a series of successive
states like images on a cinematographic film, but
the question still remains—why do these images
unroll, what does time do, 'why does reality
unfurl?'. Common sense tells us that time
prevents everything from being given at once, and
'must, therefore, be elaboration'. It
follows that there will be creation, choice and
indetermination revealed by time. It is hard
to see this because human intelligence operates
the other way around.
Our intelligence provides us with a view of
ourselves as active, things that create or
will. We work continually with material
furnished to us by the past and present to create
unique and original figures. We donot need
to analyze this very far, although sculptors [say]
have to develop techniques and they are aware that
the material has its own demands. Creative
ability is little analyzed, however 'for nature
desired action'(94), and it is difficult to push
thought 'back up the slope of nature'.
Usually, we are far more interested in technique,
itself based on recipes and rules, something
stable and regular. Perception acts to
contract large numbers of vibrations into
sensations. General ideas follow as
obstractions from varied and changing
things. Understanding extends to finding
connections and stable relations. All the
functions are found in the intellect. The
intellect can approach the absolute, but there is
another aspect of consciousness and the intellect
makes mistakes when it is applied to it.
This has resulted in badly stated problems that
have haunted metaphysics. They arise from
understanding creation as human fabrication.
In reality, we find 'global and undivided growth,
progressive invention, duration...
unexpected forms'(95--6), but these are grasped as
a rearrangement of parts which are already known,
stable elements which can be combined
differently. Similarly, extension is
misunderstood as concrete space, which is taken as
some receptacle, filled up somehow by
events.
The implied view that there is a movement from
emptiness to fullness has produced other pseudo
problems. [I think the earlier discussions
are clearer here—in Matter and Memory?]
The first one focuses on why there is being rather
than nothingness, however being is
conceived. This problem is insoluble, 'but
it should never have been raised' (97). The
problem is positing some nothingness, which is a
mere word without substantial meaning except in
terms of human fabrication and action. Here
it means the absence of what we're seeking or
desiring. 'In reality there is no vacuum'—it
is a matter of alternatives, where 'one thing
disappears only because another replaces
it'. When we posit nothingness, we are
turning our attention to an object which is now
absent, away from the one that replaces it.
What exists does not interest us as much.
However, if we think of creation in general,
suggesting nothingness leads to 'an absurdity'
(98): if everything were to be suppressed, our
understanding could not not grasp the nothingness
that remains [we would have to think of it is
not-matter, not-energy etc]. We can still
talk about nothingness just as we can talk of a
round square. In practice, we can
systematically subtract all the parts of the whole
we can think of, but by implication, we leave
those parts that have replaced them: the notion of
absolute emptiness really means universal fullness
[ a list of not-s, as above] . The idea of
nothing implies the idea of the All, supplemented
by a mental activity to systematically subtract
parts. The same points might be made of the
concept of disorder, connected to the problem of
knowledge. Again disorder has a concrete
meaning when we think in terms of human
fabrication, but when we think about creation it
simply means the order that we're not looking for
or expecting [ we see disorder if there is no
Parliamentary democracy etc] : as one order is
suppressed by thought, another must spring into
existence, one that we were not looking for.
Thus notions of will are coupled with those of
mechanism or of finalism, each appearing as
disorder from the point of view of the
others. Again there are two elements, the
order outside and the representation connected to
human interest, and these two cannot be divorced
to arrive at some absolute disorder without
contradiction. Working with some original
conception of absence of order and then adding
order to it is absurd in these circumstances [we
can never grasp complete disorder]
Both false problems assume that the empty is
somehow less than the full, whereas it's is the
other way around, since disorder requires more
intellectual content, several orders or several
existences, and a mental activity to operate with
them. The same sort of error applies when we
consider possibilities: the possible is seen as
something less than [but somehow as producing] the
real, so a possibility precedes actual
existence. Again the reality is [the other
way around] that we are working with something
real and adding some act of mind which 'throws its
image back into the past, once it has been
enacted' (100). [As an example he was once
asked to predict the future of drama, and noted
that this assumed there was some possible future
detectable from the present. At most, future
events can only be seen as something that 'will
have been possible'. We only know things are
possible if they actually become real, if some
dramatist produces a work in this case, that it
will have been possible today even if it does not
exist until the future]. {Deleuze discusses
these issues in the book on
Leibniz, I think]. As reality is created as
something genuinely new, 'its image is reflected
behind it into the indefinite past', and only then
do we realize that it must have been possible, at
that moment in the past. Possibilities do
not precede reality until the reality actually
appears: the possible is only 'the mirage of the
present in the past'. We misunderstand
because we think that the future will finally
constitute a present, and the present will become
the past, so there is something we can grasp in
the present to predict the future. But that
is illusion. To say something is possible [
in any more than an entirely theoretical sense]
implies that there must be some corresponding
reality: once that reality emerges, we add an
interpretation to it, tracing it back to the
past. It is not that the existence is to be
acquired—that would be like arguing that the
mirror image [is virtual is what he says -- gets
materialized into a real person], whereas the
mirror image requires both the reality and the
mirror.
[I think there might be some critical implications
for Deleuze on immanence here -- that does seem
like abstract possibility?]
However, possibility sometimes means something
more general, that there is no obvious obstacle to
its realization, something that is not impossible,
that has no barriers to its realization. But
this is not to say that a possibility is virtual,
pre existent, since defining impossibility does
not provide an indication of what will positively
happen. Specifying a state of no obstacles
is not the same as saying that there is some '"pre
existence under the form of an idea"' (102).
Sticking to the notion of no prior obstacles is
only a truism, but the second more positive notion
is an absurdity [and something reductive, implying
that some simple idea has produced a complex
reality, with all its implications fully thought
out—but then it would be reality!].
We have discussed human activity, but the work of
nature shows even more clearly that the future can
never be outlined fully in advance. Some
systems, once abstracted, do allow for a
predictable and calculable future, but the whole
does not. It is an error to try to explain
events in terms of 'an arbitrary choice of
antecedent events'[I think the argument here is
that fully specific events cannot be explained
like this, since we only know of the antecedent
events in general, enough to predict a range of
events but not specific ones]. We are always
selecting or remodeling the past when we make
these connections, including remodeling 'the cause
by the effect'.
With a different [positive and real] sense of the
possible, evolution becomes much more than just
the realization of a program, and 'freedom is
offered an unlimited field'. There is
indetermination, which is more than just a choice
of pre existing possibles. 'possibility [is]
created by freedom itself' (104). [Here, the
existence of the genuinely new, or freedom, is
assumed, and it is this that is taken as an
argument for indetermination. If the
genuinely new is allowed] 'it is the real which
makes itself possible and not the possible which
becomes real'. [new possibilities from emergence,
from differnetiaCation?]
This has always been resisted by conventional
philosophy. Platonists, for example proceed
with a notion of complete and perfect being, with
the real world as a degradation of it, showing
itself as a mere shadow of some eternal
Idea. 'Time... spoiled everything'
(105). Modern thought restricts time 'to a
simple appearance...the confused form of the
rational', whereby the real is subject to eternal
laws. The 'facts' argued differently—'that
there is effectively a flow of unforeseeable
novelty'.
If we think this way, we will gain a 'greater joy
and strength'. We will perceive reality in a
way which is open only to privileged artists at
the moment, that beyond fixity and monotony, there
is novelty, 'the moving originality of
things'. We shall feel we are participating
in creation, and the faculty for acting will
become 'intensified'. We shall no longer be slaves
to apparent natural necessities. In this
way, proper philosophy addressing the possible and
the real is not just a game but 'a preparation for
the art of living'(106).
Chapter four. Philosophical
intuition
[A basic and simple intuition lies at the heart of
organized philosophy, but it has to enter into
some sort of dialectic with formal concepts.
We need to try to focus on this intuition.
The example is the philosophy of Bishop Berkeley,
which I do not know, so I have had to skim.
Some good advice here about how to read
philosophy]
Philosophy should not just be a [scholastic]
matter of trying to synthesize existing
doctrines—it also has an 'essentially spontaneous
aspect' (107) which we should focus upon.
When we study philosophy it looks as if there are
complete systems that can deal with all problems,
and this gives some pleasure in managing
complexity. We can further analyze a
particular philosophy in terms of the questions
that were common at the time and how solutions
emerged from a number of sources, producing 'a
more or less original synthesis of the ideas among
which the philosopher lived'.
This might be a useful preliminary, but we risk
missing the original insight, which can often be
reduced to a simple point. Expressing this
point is not easy, and philosophers often have to
arrive at formulations, then correct them, then
correct those corrections, then add further
complications and so on. There is always an
'incommensurability'(109) between intuition and
the ways in which it has to be expressed.
We cannot access this intuition directly, but what
we can do is to construct 'a certain intermediary
image' between the intuition and the formal
abstractions in which it is expressed. When
we do this, we first see that a considerable
negation is involved, where some courses are
forbidden, certain currently accepted ideas are
rejected. Affirmation comes later, and
itself depends only on immanent negation.
This sometimes surfaces to question consequences
drawn by philosophers themselves using formal
logic: the experience can deliver a feeling that
philosophers are somehow exterior to
themselves. A return to the interior, to
intuition, produces 'zigzaggings' of the doctrine.
We need to get back to the original image of the
intuition. Of course, problems and solutions
themselves have an historical context, but the
systems that they form are only means of
expressing insights. Working with those
solutions to see how they fit together can be
satisfying, but it is only 'a pretty piece of
mosaic' (111). We soon encounter
inconsistencies or repetitions. Another
temptation is to see a new philosophical
expression as evolving from the past. This
is helpful in that 'the philosophy resembles an
organism rather than an assemblage', but we are
still assuming some continuity in the history of
thought and focusing on external form.
'A philosopher worthy of the name has never said
more than a single thing: and even then it is
something he has tried to say, rather than
actually said' (112). He has had a single
vision which produced an impulse and
movement. The movement could equally have
taken other forms, but usually it follows
readymade ideas.
[Then we get onto actual examples] Spinoza seems
to have built an overwhelming system of theorems,
corollaries and scholia, with crushing effect on
the reader, but there is also something else, an
intuition, turning upon a felt 'coincidence
between the act by which our mind knows truth
perfectly, and the operation by which God
engenders it', a single movement between thinking
away from divinity and then returning to it.
The actual expression of this insight is burdened
with Cartesian and Aristotelian concepts
however. [Berkeley is discussed in much more
detail. First there are four fundamental
theses, 114, and then the argument is that these
interpenetrate in such a way as to move away from
commonsense notions, such as ordinary
idealism. If we take the theses separately,
the whole approach seems impossible and difficult,
115 . Idealism is particularly well dealt with
116, and what it really means is that 'matter is
co extensive with our representation of it'.
Descartes is rebuked for moving away from the
perfectly unexceptionable linguistically valid
statement that 'I have a perception' to the much
more controversial 'this perception exists',
117. Similarly, general ideas should not be
taken as realities, but as groups or perceptions
'artificially constructed by us', so that any real
movement must be divine].
So we have clarified how the system works despite
apparent contradiction, but we still need to get
to the mediating image in Berkeley's approach—'an
image which is almost matter in that it still
allows itself to be seen, and almost mind in that
it no longer allows itself to be touched—a
phantom'(118). The image will show us which
point of view to take. It is possible that
the mediating image of the interpreter is not the
same as that of the actual writer, but this can
still be of value. Possibly, the writer
himself only saw one possible image, or did not
see it clearly. Bergson sees two images in
Berkeley, only one of which might be found in
Berkeley himself. This is the notion that
matter is 'a thin transparent film situated
between man and god' (119), transparent as long as
metaphysicians do not meddle with it by attempting
to conceptualize. Berkeley actually only
alludes vaguely to this image, but talks rather
more about an allied one—'matter is a language
which God speaks to us', and again addressing this
language excessively, conceptualizing about it,
prevents full understanding. These images
might only be derived from an original intuition,
but we still need to work with them.
Can intuition be recaptured? We know that
concepts are used to develop the system. We
have images that express the contraction of the
system, but to go beyond this image involves even
more general concepts, and this will almost
certainly make the original intuition 'insipid and
uninteresting' (120) [the example is some version
that says that the human soul is 'partially united
with God and partly independent']. We need
to enliven such banalities with ideas scattered
throughout the work, but we also need to return to
the image and try to construct some 'abstract
formula enlarged by its absorption of the image
and ideas'. We shall attempt to place all
the ideas in the doctrine in a contracted form, a
'center of force' from which springs the impulse
and intuition [it seems to be rather like the
exercise that Berkeley had to undertake to
incorporate contemporary ideas in his four theses:
Bergson thinks the theses themselves could equally
have been formulated differently while retaining
the same philosophy]
This is how we should understand the effects of
earlier and contemporary philosophical
conceptions. These are not just synthesized
or combined with another idea. Something
much simpler unites pre existing ideas, and
meaning, a movement of thought, 'less a movement
than a direction' (121). It is something
like the way in which an embryo develops under
some initial 'impulsion': thought takes more and
more complicated and specific forms, or the way in
which we eventually produce actual speech or
sentences from the thought, although other
sentences would equally be suitable.
Scientific knowledge available at the time is also
formative. Some philosophers still think
that the whole product of sciences should be
incorporated into philosophy. This is the
idea of the philosopher as someone who possesses a
'universal knowledge' (122). It still
persists even though the results of science could
not now be accumulated entirely. Some
philosophers also feel that they should generalize
from existing science, or condense it in order to
unify it. This is 'offensive to science',
and implies that philosophers will be able to
somehow complete science by thought alone.
There's nothing wrong with scientists themselves
pushing on into philosophy specific to their own
efforts, but this is still science.
Philosophy as unifying beyond the results of
science itself for will only open it to the
arbitrary or the hypothetical. Scientific
generalization stops at points which are suitable
already. Should philosophy speculate
further? Often what happens is that
philosophy offers a simpler version of the objects
of science. Their real relation is given by
the argument that there are two ways of knowing,
one which deals with matter which does repeat and
is predictable and measurable, operating with
'distinct multiplicity and spatiality' (124),
while the other tries to grasp pure duration
'refractory to law and measurement'. We have
experience of both in our consciousness, but the
first involves externalizing consciousness and the
second internalizing. It is not that we need
to investigate the depths of our own consciousness
in order to better understand matter or
reality—this would imply a limited role for
consciousness and limited experience of life,
'forces which work in all things'. The more
we investigate the depths of consciousness the
more we will be able to grasp surface phenomena
too.
Philosophical intuition does this. If we
follow its impulse we will regain contact with
science. We must do this or end in 'pure
fantasy' (125). However, generalizations
based on induction, obtained without philosophy
will not offer a suitable way forward: philosophy
does not arrive at unity but starts from it, at
least from a partial unity, like the unity of the
living being. Philosophy does not just
synthesize the results of positive science, but
operates rather in the way in which it reassembles
the fragments of earlier philosophies as
above. It offers therefore 'not a synthesis
but an analysis'.
Science is ultimately based on action which is
itself pragmatic. It turns phenomena into a
series of simultaneities, and neglects 'what
happens in the interval' between them, except by
providing still more simultaneities. It
works with the readymade and cannot 'follow the
moving reality, adopt the becoming which is the
life of things' (125-6). Philosophers have
to do that. Science has to treat nature as
an adversary, but philosophy treats it 'as a
comrade' (126). By being at one with nature,
we contact the philosophical spirit which lies
beneath subsequent complications.
Ultimately, 'the act of philosophizing is a simple
one'.
This will help bring philosophy closer to
life. Commonsense is more akin to science,
with less precision and range, and is forced
similarly to abstract things and movements,
immobility. But common sense can be turned
back toward philosophy. If the mind can
contact duration, it will 'be alive with
intuitive life and its knowledge of things will
already be philosophy' (127). It will
perceive the fluidity of time, seeing phenomena as
produced by 'one identical change which keeps ever
lengthening as in a melody'. To get to this
intuitive awareness we do not need to abandon the
normal senses and consciousness, as Kant
suggested. We can experience 'the change we
habitually have before us' (128), and we have to
realize how common sense and consciousness tends
to have 'reduced to dust' change and flow in order
to manage them in action. We have to undo
this process, get back to origins.
Everyday life will profit as well. The
commonsense world is dead and cold, marooned in a
constant present, and this is how we see
ourselves. We have to grasp ourselves
differently 'in a present which is thick, and
furthermore, elastic, which we can stretch
indefinitely backward by pushing the screen which
masks us from ourselves'. We will see the
world is it really is, in depth, with an active
past. This will awaken what is dormant, add
new life. We'll gain the satisfactions
usually available only through art and on rare
occasions. Philosophy will breathe life into
the 'phantoms which surround us', and give us joy
(129).
Chapter five. The perception of change
[two lectures given at Oxford, 1911. Lots of
summary and fairly clear argument as before]
The correct grasp of change is fundamental to his
entire philosophy. Grasping it will also
dissolve a number of philosophical difficulties,
and generally lead to a more joyful life.
Our understanding of the moment is buried under a
'whole veil of prejudices...some of them
artificial, created by philosophical speculation,
the others natural to common sense' (131).
We can start with points on which there is general
agreement. If we were able to grasp
everything through our senses and consciousness,
we would not need to conceive anything.
Conceiving is a makeshift in the absence of
perception, and reasoning just helps fill up the
gaps of perception or extend its scope.
Abstract and general ideas are valuable, but only
in representing particular perceptions, including
perceptions of order, truth or reality.
Conceptions are easily refuted by facts. The
inadequacies of perception have produced
philosophy. We see this in early Greek
thought where concepts are close to perceptions,
as in 'sensible elements' like earth and
water. It was the Eleatics who began the
drift from sense data toward a supra-sensible
world of ideas. For modern philosophy, there
are still essences but they appear as 'veritable
substances' (132) behind epiphenomena.
Perceptions were extended by abstraction,
generalization and reasoning.
These qualities mean there will be many
philosophies, based on individual perceptions of
philosophers. These individual perceptions
have been elaborated and generalized.
There's always something arbitrary in the choice
of these particular perceptions. While
science focuses on quantity as an
'incontestably common' property of different
things, philosophy chooses qualities, which are
inevitably heterogeneous, and individual cases
only represent general ones through a 'contestable
if not arbitrary decree'(133), and other decrees
can always be advanced instead.
We should therefore return to perception and
attempt to expand it. Working with concepts,
as somehow representative of perceptions or of
other concepts, only inevitably eliminates 'from
the real a great number of qualitative
differences' (134) which will inevitably reduce
our 'concrete version of the universe'. This
is why philosophies arise to correct the limits of
earlier ones. We need to get back to
perceptions and use our will to expand them.
This would avoid any substitution of one aspect of
the world to represent the rest. We would
also gain consensus in philosophy because nothing
will have been left out. Doctrine would be
unified, and differences reconciled 'in the same
perception' (135) which would simply be extended
by the efforts of new philosophers.
The best example of how this might be done is
provided by artists, who not only clarify, but
extend perception, and bring new things to our
senses and consciousness. When we read a
poem or novel, we perceive new emotions and
thoughts. The great painters have a new vision
which they can provide for all people. These
are products of their imagination, but also truth
[because everyone says so], a truth which we have
already half grasped, and which will henceforth
always affect our perception of reality.
Artists can do this because they are to some
extent detached from reality in the first place,
because reality intrudes, and the need for action
limits the field of vision. Most of our
perception is 'cut... from a wider
canvas'(137). Practicality also makes us
generalize. We tend to think that the whole
of our mental life is a matter of a combination of
simple elements, requiring nothing more than what
has been made available.
However, 'the facts' argue otherwise. Normal
psychological life shows a constant attempt to
limit horizons, to select from available 'virtual
knowledge', 'actual knowledge', which always turns
on our actions upon things. Understanding
the memory shows this too—we constantly push it
aside or select from it only that which is useful
in the present: our brain 'actualizes the useful
memories'. We are scarcely able to look at
the actual object before we have categorized
it. However 'by a lucky accident men arise
whose senses or whose consciousness are less
adherent to life' (138), who can perceive things
as they are beyond their usefulness. This
detachment produces artists. They produce 'a
much more direct vision of reality'.
Philosophy might imitate art by turning our
attention away from the practical.
Lots of philosophers have agreed that they needed
to be detached from activity in order to speculate
[the example is Plotinus]. However, this
detachment meant entering another world, not the
one we normally inhabit, requiring unusual
faculties of vision. This was to lead to Kant and
his belief and the need for some superior
intuition for metaphysics to be possible, while
ordinary vision would necessarily limit us.
He was to go on to argue that such superior
intuition was impossible, as did many
others. A fundamental belief about movement
underpinned this position. The argument was that
we could actually perceive change, but that sense
data and consciousness would produce 'insoluble
contradictions' in the way in which change was
grasped. This meant that contradiction 'was
inherent in change itself'(141), so we had to
progress to another sphere, above time itself, and
this will be impossible.
Zeno of Elea was also responsible in pointing to
the apparent absurdity of movement and change in
the actual world, and this led Plato and others to
argue that the fundamental reality must be eternal
and unchanging. For Kant, the problem lay in
the relativity of sense data and consciousness and
the difficulty of grasping what he thought of as
real time, persistent duration. However,
this notion of movement and change is
flawed. We do not have to get outside of
time, nor to free ourselves from it. Instead
we have to understand change and duration 'in
their original mobility'(142).
[second lecture]. The first step is to think
that all change and all movement is 'absolutely
indivisible'. If we move our arm, it is a
simple act. Stopping it will divide it into
two movements with an interval. Keeping it
as a continuous act means we 'must declare
it to be indivisible' (143). We can indeed
describe the interval of time that has elapsed in
terms of a sequence of particular points or
stages, but it is clearly not possible to see each
of these points as applied movement. Moving
objects pass through points, but if they stop at
them they are no longer moving in a single
movement. We imagine that movements can be
divided, because trajectories also take place in
space and space is divisible. There is a
tendency to focus on these points in space—'we
need immobility'. However even this
immobility is not real if it is just the absence
of movements. It is movement that is
reality. The apparent immobility is actually
produced like the one that is generated by two
trains moving at the same time in the same
direction on parallel tracks—each train is
immovable to the travelers. We need immobility
like this to act upon things – as when passengers
on the trains talk to each other. But this
notion only creates problems when we attempt to
philosophize about time.
If we take the example of Achilles and the
tortoise, the problem ends if we consider the
point of view of Achilles and ask him to comment
on the race. For him, his running will
occupy a single movement, with each step as 'a
series of indivisible acts'(145). His
movement can be seen as a number of normal steps,
but it cannot be arbitrarily broken up into weird
spaces which is what Zeno tries to do [the spaces
between Achilles and the tortoise at each stage,
ever smaller, which will mean that the tortoise is
always one stage ahead]: Zeno then attempts to
impose these units on the movement, 'making
movement and immobility coincide'.
This is very common—to see movement as a
succession of positions. If we do, we have
to add something else, to try and grasp the
passage itself, although this usually involves
imposing a series of positions again
indefinitely. Usually, speculation then
stops in favor of practical interests.
Thinking of movement itself looks insuperably
difficult. The same goes for change.
'All real change is an indivisible change'
(146). Action requires immobility both of
things and of ourselves, however. Subjective
perceptions condense changes [the example of color
again], in ourselves as well as in things—'our own
person is also mobility'. It is like the two
trains again. We have to distinguish
appearance from reality.
Change is self sufficient, requiring no support in
some underlying mobility or thing that
moves. We tend to think the opposite because
sight dominates our senses, and vision tends to
construct relatively invariable figures which do
not change form even when they change place.
Action also finds this very useful. Hearing
suggests another possibility, as when we listened
to a melody, which appears to change on its
own. True we can subdivide a melody into
different notes, but we usually do this in order
to perform some action like singing it, or because
of visual image of the score intrudes. The
ordinary visual configuration also affected
physical science, although it has been challenged
considerably there, with the detection of constant
mobility and vibration, and the decomposition of
apparently solid things. If we think out
visual perception we can arrive at a better notion
of mobility, since when we see a thing we are
actually seeing only a series of vibrations of
light, 'only a movement of movements'(148).
Our inner life provides the best examples,
however. There are psychological approaches
which see our inner life as a series of distinct
psychological states, supported by a similarly
invariable ego. But one or other of them
must demonstrate duration [as change or as the
invariability of the ego]. A better approach
is to see our inner life as displaying a
continuous melody, indivisible, and making up the
personality. If we think of it this way, we
will get to true duration, real duration which
expresses the passing of an indivisible
time. True, it often appears as a distinct
before and after, but this is not how it appears
originally. We can bring in spatial images
as notions of simultaneity, and this is our
ordinary sense of time. Universal mobility may
produce a certain dizziness, as apparently fixed
points disappear. But change itself is
substantial and durable.
It follows that we can see the past quite
differently. Usually it is seen as something
that no longer exists except with the help of the
present and the operation of the function of
memory. There is a notion that memories are
stored somewhere in a box. However, if we
think of what the present instant is, it is an
abstract point as before, incapable of producing a
line of time, raising problems of the passage from
the instant before it. The concept of the
present already involves duration, although
normally, our attention misunderstands this,
sometimes shortening it in the interests of
action. However, we can extend our attention
indefinitely into the past, and thus extend the
notion of the present. Our attention will
drop into the past when we cease to focus it in
our interests. As long as we maintain our
attention, the past is always present.
It is possible in principle to think of attending
to the whole past history of the person as
something continually present and moving, a
melody, a perpetual present, one which
endures. In exceptional cases, people can do
this, as when they are drowning and their life
flashes before them. It does not require a
special faculty of memory. The past is
always preserved even though we can abolish it
from our attention. It is this abolition
that becomes of interest. The brain itself
channels our attention to the present and the
future, and simplifies past experience in the form
of memory. The brain does not preserve
memories in some box. That conception
depends on particular aspects of psychology, but
it is mistaken: trying to preserve one visual
memory, for example, would involve somehow storing
thousands of images and perceptions, many of which
will be useless. Similarly, pathologies of
the memory can show, for example, that memories
are never permanently lost but can be recaptured.
These remarks extends not only to our own past but
also to 'the past of any change whatsoever', as
long as it is not compounded: we can never know
whether it is or not since we can never get inside
beings and things. However, seeing change as
constant means that lots of philosophical enigmas
disappear, those concerning substance and
change. If we persist with seeing change as
a multiplicity of states, we only have the problem
of explaining the continuity between the states
[and the immutability of the states]. Seeing
change is indivisible means that it simply is 'the
very substance of things'(156). Notions of
complete instability or complete immutability are
only abstractions. The classic problems of
movement and substance disappear.
We can also back to discuss the notion of free
will. If we are in a 'concrete duration',
there is no necessary determination, but a
combination of past and present to produce a new
possibilities. We can extend the notion of
the apparent immobility of the two trains to think
again of the relation between human beings and the
universe, the object and the subject [how human
subjects see objects as fixed?]. If we turn
to the notion of constant mobility, we will learn
about both object and subject. There were
also be the benefits for everyday life in the form
of satisfactions normally reserved for
artists. All things will acquire depth,
'something like a fourth dimension which permits
anterior perceptions to remain bound up with
present perceptions'(157). Reality will be
dynamic in its tendencies. Everything will
come to life—'a great impulse carries beings and
things along'. We conceive many
philosophical problems as produced by an
'artificial weakening' of this vitality. We
can experience more and more duration and get back
to the 'eternity of life' (158).
Chapter six. Introduction to
metaphysics.
[Usual resume of the differences between
science and metaphysics. Discussion of the
metaphysical concept as adequate to its object,
not to the need for generalization -- very D &
G. Also increasingly open to a Bourdieusian
critique -- intuition is only the certainty
produced by an elite aesthetic, established early,
rendered habitual, constantly reinforced by
present perceptions. THIS is the way memory
affects perceptions, but the origins of intuition
are of course never explored as with all
philosophy. The insistence on the uniqueness of
human duration also reminds me of deCerteau]
There's two basic distinctions at work concerning
how we know a thing – we either try to gather
characteristics of it, or we try to enter into
it. We can describe these two kinds of
knowledge as relative and absolute
respectively. The first approach would
involve, say, collecting different perceptions of
an object and trying out different expressions of
it using various symbols, including mathematical
symbols. This involves standing outside of
the object, which is what makes it relative.
Absolute understanding involves some notion of an
inner being, and an attempt to enter into harmony
with it. There is no problem with
representation because the attempt is to grasp the
original from within.
We can see this with the characters in a novel,
which can be described variously, although full
knowledge comes when we identify with the
characters, so that their actions seem to be
natural rather than accidental, and events would
be seen as manifestations of the characters
'essence'(160). An external view, relying on
symbols and points of view provide only what
characters have in common with others, the
relative again.
The absolute can also be described as the perfect,
not the same as a mere quantitative assemblage of
all possible points of view, say of photos of the
city or translations of a poem. In this
sense, the absolute is identical to the
infinite—once we try to express our absolute
knowledge, we find ourselves in infinite attempts
at expression. This external point of view
is also found in scientific accounts of movement
as before, with an infinite number of possible
immobile points [this also refers to the strange
analogy of the piece of gold which can never be
turned exactly into its monetary
components]. It follows that we only get to
absolutes through intuition, while relatives are
given through analysis. Intuition here is
like 'the sympathy by which one is
transported into the interior of an object' (161),
while analysis involves reducing the object to
elements which are 'already known, that is, common
to that object and to others' which really amounts
to 'expressing a thing in terms of what is not it'
(162) [you could say the same about the operation
of memory] . Analysis involves translation
into symbols, a cumulative representation of
points of view each of which makes certain
contacts between a new object and those which are
already known. It is never complete, but
intuition 'if it is possible, is a simple
act'. We can see that positivist science
operates with analysis, visible forms, elements,
comparisons between forms to produce a simple from
the complex. Metaphysics on the other hand
should aim at 'a means of possessing a reality
absolutely'.
We can at least grasp ourselves through intuition,
via 'inner regard of my consciousness'
(163). I can list all the perceptions from
the material world, grouped into objects.
Then I grasp memories which adhere to these
perceptions and help to interpret them—but these
are already drawn from somewhere else.
Finally, I can experience 'tendencies, motor
habits, a crowd of virtual actions', connected
variably to perceptions and memories.
These remarks might be seen to describe the
surface of a human subject, but we can also find
something else, 'a continuity of flow comparable
to no other flowing I have ever seen...a
succession of states each one of which announces
what follows and contains what precedes'.
They do not appear as multiple states at the time,
but as something possessing a common life, each
state dovetailed into the other, a continual
winding and unwinding. However these terms
are inadequate representations, implying some
sequential connections between the
stages. Instead, 'no two moments are
identical in a conscious being' (164), because
memory is always being added to present
consciousness. We experience a feeling of
flowing through 'a thousand shades', each of which
tints its neighbor. Even then we're trying
to understand them as something external occupying
space.
Instead, we might think of a small piece of
elastic, concentrated to a single point. We
can draw it out into a line, as part of an
indivisible action, although it would still lay
down some motionless line in space. Even
this metaphor is limited, because as duration
unrolls it can sometimes appear like a unified
movement which progresses, or as an original
multiplicity of states. Any metaphor tends
to favor one rather than the other, but the inner
life itself, which can be both, 'cannot be
represented by images'(165). Nor can it be
represented by concepts, abstract ideas.
Luckily, there is no need to try and express
duration—we experience it or not [which opens up
the whole thing to charges of elitism, of
course]. Philosopher should try to get
people to think beyond utilitarian habits of
everyday life, so images at least can assist by
staying in the concrete.
Perhaps thinking of many different images will
produce some convergence permitting consciousness
to develop an intuition, especially if the images
chosen are dissimilar but equally plausible.
We still require a suitable attitude to draw upon
this experience to develop intuition, and we must
take care that none of the images is taken as
adequate symbol. We need to stay alert to
avoid symbols that take parts for the whole
object, that draw out only what an object has
compared to other objects, resemblances.
An intellectual equivalent would be connecting
concepts to other concepts to faithfully represent
duration [and we are now going to discuss familiar
concepts such as unity, multiplicity, continuity,
divisibility]. Of these abstract ideas are
useful in analysis and scientific study, but they
cannot replace intuition. When combined they
offer only 'an artificial recomposition of the
object', a combination of its partial
aspects. Concepts run this risk
particularly, because when they symbolize, they
necessarily generalize, making a property common
to other things. And extension like this
'distorts this property' (167). Concepts
extracted from objects surpass the object itself,
in the form of larger circles drawn around the
object, 'not one of which fits it exactly'[this is
the test of adequacy for Bergson]. The
junction between concepts and properties of the
thing involves 'some artifice'. We have to
manipulate the concepts, so that our starting
point of unity necessarily means something
different from what we will find in duration, its
'multiple unity'. We have to give our
extracted concepts an arbitrary weight of their
own.
This will inevitably produce different systems of
explanation, as many as there are external
viewpoints or extended explanations.
Philosophy is divided in two different schools,
each with its arbitrary starting point, each
therefore serving as 'this game of ideas'.
The only way to get past this game is to turn to
intuition. Intuition will still need
concepts, but it must a 'transcend' them (168),
since concepts are usually inflexible and ready
made. However, there might be new concepts
available instead, 'flexible, mobile, almost fluid
representations' ready to draw upon 'the fleeting
forms of intuition' [pretty close to Deleuze and
Guattari here].
If we try to break the notion of duration into
parts, we might be able to see them as overlapping
parts, but even here, we are working not on
duration itself, but on the 'the fixed and memory
of the duration, on the immobile track' left
behind. The multiplicity of duration
'resembles no other'. But it is not a simple
unity either, certainly not an 'abstract unity,
empty and motionless' (169). Perhaps we
should see duration as both unity and
multiplicity—but even here will never get the same
sort of grasp of duration as is provided by simple
intuition: 'I perceive immediately how it is
unity, multiplicity and many other things
besides', so that conventional concepts are at
best only particular external points of view.
We can go further through intuition, and aim at
'an absolute internal knowledge of that duration
of the self'. Science will not need this,
however, and we need a division between it and
metaphysics. But social sciences, like
psychology, are still confused about their own
procedures. They sometimes adopt a
scientific approach through analysis, so that the
self can first a bull be resolved into separate
elements, 'psychological facts' which are taken to
be parts of the whole human personality.
However, psychological states are always connected
to the rest of the personality, including the
past. Yet the development of psychology is a
science requires such abstraction. This is
done by 'disregarding the person's special
correlation' (170) in favor of expression using a
'common and known terms'. This is obviously
selective. It is like an artist sketching
key features of a city, and reassembling them
under a comment title, the name of the city.
This 'substitutes for the real and the internal
organization of the thing an external and
schematic reconstitution'. No such
reconstitution can arrive at the insights provided
by the original intuition of the whole of the
artist. He can travel from intuition to
representations, but spectators cannot travel the
other way. The same goes with assembling
particular words extracted from poems: the words
are not just quantitative parts, but 'partial
expressions' of a whole. We can supply our
own plausible interpretations, using our own
intuition of the whole, but no one thinks we get
there just by quantitative operations on symbols.
Yet this is what philosophical psychology offers,
with that empiricist or rationalist. 'Both
take the partial notions for real parts'(172).
Empiricist argue that psychological states can be
uncovered by suitable analysis, and then
presuppose some unity in an overall ego—but at
best this term is a sign which helps us recall the
original intuition. It does not stand for
the object, and we cannot find a thing behind this
word directly. Some psychologists [including
JS Mill it seems] had to add some metaphysical
components to the objects that they claim to have
studied, and they did this through the odd
procedure of negation—it is something that is not
the same as the psychological states, something
that always remains elusive, and therefore
something that can be dismissed as
irrelevant. [Bergson points out that this
would never be done with a work of literature,
denying some overall meaning simply because it is
not found in counting words].
Philosophical empiricism in general operates like
this, confusing intuition with analysis, and
trying to get back to the original by working with
translations of properties of the
individual. The absent original is seen as a
negative, although it is really indicating that
'analysis is not intuition'(173). Science
usually actually starts with an intuitive grasp of
an object, but then proceeds to analysis: the many
points of view that are produced have to be
reconstituted to get back to the object, but this
is never attainable. Rationalism operates
with the same illusion, while attempting to
overcome the flaws of empiricism. It also
operates with psychological states as fragments of
an ego, and then tries to reconstitute the unity
of a person, but again this unity is
elusive. Instead of abandoning this notion
of unity as pointless, rationalism continues to
affirm it, this time as something of value,
showing the 'absence of all
determination'(174). Since the psychological
states are seen to be material, this unity can be
nothing other than 'a form without matter', even
more of a phantom, and even more distant from
living, actual selves. The unified ego
becomes more and more detached from concrete
humanity, and therefore something only for
humanity as a whole, for God, all for general
existence.
This is about the only area in which rationalism
differs from empiricism. There is even much
shared between empiricists and pantheists [I don't
know the examples]. Again the point is to
reason about the elements of the translation
assuming they are parts of the original, but there
is always an added metaphysics: empiricism
attempts to claim that it can contact the real,
but it has to go beyond the reasoning it has used,
or to use some particular readymade conception,
originally intended for daily action, such as
unity and multiplicity. A proper empiricism
would 'make an absolutely new effort for each new
object it studies [in order to produce] the
concept appropriate to the object alone, a concept
one can barely say is still a concept, since it
applies only to that one thing'(175). It
would aim at 'a simple, unique representation'
with no difficulty in locating in a larger frame
such as unity or multiplicity. It would not
be a matter of choosing different starting points
or schools: the correct unique intuition means we
can 'easily come down again to the various
concepts, because one has placed oneself above the
divisions of the schools'(176).
Personalities do indeed have unities, but the
problem is to explain the nature of this unity,
the person. Similarly, our self is multiple,
but it is a particular multiplicity. Dealing
with these particulars is the proper task of
philosophy—'what unity, what
multiplicity, what reality superior to the
abstract one(s)'. We require the intuition
of the self by the self as a kind of summit which
will then descend to the ordinary concepts—but the
reverse operation will never be fruitful. We
can see this with the example of the cone, with a
mathematical point at one end and an increasing
circle at the other: these two properties cannot
be combined to produce the idea of the cone.
There's a common practice to use concepts to
represent opposites, since it is easy to do this
with any aspect of concrete reality. We
might be able to see that the emergence of these
opposites from an object produces both opposition
and reconciliation, as long as we go from things
to concepts [not so if we take the dialectic as
some a priori method].
Ordinarily, we know things by taking readymade
concepts and attempting to arrive at a 'practical
equivalent of the real' (177), and this is driven
as usual by interests of various kinds.
Applying a concept is to suggest terms of
engagement with the thing, even in the most
complex cases. We can even pursue several
viewpoints, and a fully comprehensive knowledge of
the object is seen as produced by several concepts
[ nice forms of live and let live
relativism?]. But this is refraining from
philosophizing, or reducing it to competing
viewpoints internally in competition with each
other.
Normal concepts deal with immobile
characteristics, but in our inner life, there is
constant change, consciousness with memory which
adds to it. 'Inner duration is the
continuous life of the memory which prolongs the
past into the present' (179), sometimes in the
form of acquiring an 'increasingly heavy
burden'. Duration is implied in every
analysis of psychological states, if only through
the spreading of what looks like a homogeneous
state over time. In reality, psychological
states change and endure: 'The state, taken in
itself, is a perpetual becoming'.
Invariables are extracted from this state, but
they can therefore only be schematic. Inner
time or becoming can only flow by changing
quality. Static invariables help us to
compare the flowing of one duration to another,
but this is something detached from the enduring
ego, from the concrete: that act of detachment can
then easily become forgotten in the name of
analysis. The real, the concrete, the actual
always display variability, while elements are
invariable by definition, acting as schema or
symbols.
If we take movement in space, we can consider it
in terms of possible halts, but combining these
will not restore movement: the stationary points
'are so many views taken of [movement]; they are,
we say only halt suppositions' (181): the
points are not in movement or under it, but
projected by us as suppositions, views. We
deploy this approach whenever we try to reason
about movement and time, because the habit of
analysis is 'deeply rooted' in our mind. We
apply it by presupposing an infinite number of
points [isn't this what calculus does? But see
below]. We recompose movement by saying it
is something obscure added to these points, but
the obscurity has been produced by this form of
analysis. Is is just like recomposing
separated linguistic parts of the poem.
Purely empty and immobile space is never actually
perceived, but always conceived: these conceptions
arise from our need to act on the world, and are
more useful than the 'intuition of the thing
itself'. We go on to consider these useful
conceptions as the 'clearest' ones.
The problems of grasping movement in early thought
arose from this procedure. The parts of a
movement are not related [quantitatively] to
the whole of the movement. Instead we should
think of these connections as a result of 'the
diversity of possible viewpoints to the real
indivisibility of the object'(183). The same
flawed procedure affects any attempt to explain
qualitative change in terms of manipulations of
fixed qualities. In each case, the
conceptualizations of the quality should be seen
as 'stable visions of the instability of the
real'. Normal thinking involves taking one
or more of these static views, and this is
responsible for acceptable practical
knowledge. But when we use the same concepts
to try to get to 'the innermost nature of things'
we cannot use concepts that rely on
immobility. We have to reascend the slope of
normal thought and place ourselves immediately in
the thing we are studying, 'through a dilation of
the mind', seeing how the concepts follow.
It is not surprising that many philosophers see
this intuitive grasp of the thing as ever
receding.
Would this not involve just 'exclusive self
contemplation'(184)? Metaphysical intuition
is 'essentially active', at least in dispelling
obscurity is produced by analysis. Intuition
is 'an indefinite series of acts'. The Max
of analysis will lead to two opposing views of
'duration in general' which will then need to be
recombined, but as a multiplicity, not a diversity
of degrees or a variety of forms. The
components of this multiplicity will be bound
together by a unity. Duration is 'the
"synthesis" of this unity and multiplicity"', but
this is still a mysterious operation.
Analysis will offer the same flawed result as
analysis of movement into components, working with
an abstract multiplicity joined by some abstract
unity [the points and the movement
respectively]. Instead of analysis we must
install ourselves in duration through
intuition. When we do we will experience a
'a certain well defined tension' with
definite characteristics. This definiteness
marks it out, which in turn implies 'any number of
durations, all very different from one another'
(185) except that they all combine the multiple
and the one.
If duration is a multiplicity of moments, there
must be an infinite number of them, just as we can
always posit infinite numbers of mathematical
points on a line. If it is defined as a
unity binding the moments together, this implies
some direction for movement aimed at offering 'an
account of the multiplicity'(186), and the unity
in question will become some immobile substratum
or an immobile eternity. Opponents of the
term have worked with one or the other of these
approaches, stressing the multiple or the unified:
both are abstract and based on concepts.
Both have other problems too, so that if we
operate with either approach it is hard to explain
the indefinite multiplicity of moments and how
they arise, or how things coexist. The
principal problem is that a single duration is
being assumed here, a flowing river which is
subsequently rendered either as a solid sheet or
as 'an infinity of crystallized needles', always
involving an immobile thing.
Intuition gives different results. We will
not be able to find, logically, any reason for
suggesting multiple and diverse durations, or
indeed any other duration apart from our
own. We can only work with 'a presentiment'
(187) of there being a range, just as we assume
there is a range of colors even if we observe only
one. In this way, intuition effectively
'puts us in contact with the whole continuity of
durations' which we can follow 'downwardly or
upwardly', and thus dilate opurselves , transcend
ourselves. The downward path leads to a
scattered duration, the dilution of quality into
quantity, pure homogeneity and pure repetition, as
in the normal understanding of materiality.
The upward path involves greater and greater
intensity until we reach eternity, the eternity of
life, a moving eternity which will include our own
duration and would help us see all duration as
materiality 'in its dispersion' (188).
Intuition moves between these two possibilities.
More implications follow, but we can summarize by
spelling out certain principles, some of which
only have 'a beginning of proof':
(1) There is an external reality and it is given
immediately to our mind, as in common sense
(2) This reality is mobility, things in the
making, not states but continual flowing, just as
we discover with our own person. 'All
reality is, therefore, tendency, if we agreed to
call tendency a nascent change of direction'
(3) It is normal for our mind to imagine states
and things, including sensations and ideas which
arise from 'quasi instantaneous views of the
undivided mobility of the real'. This is how
it substitutes the continuous for the
discontinuous, stability for mobility, fixed
points in processes and so on. Common sense,
practical life and language necessarily produce
these effects, and positivist science depends on
them to some extent. Our intelligence
operates like this and goes on to express itself
in readymade concepts as snapshots. It is
not interested in the 'internal and metaphysical
knowledge of the real' (189), but is
utilitarian. In doing this, it allows the
real to escape.
(4) Applying this sort of intelligence and
procedure to metaphysics produces endless
difficulties and contradictions. We place
ourselves in something immobile to try and grasp
moving reality, instead of putting ourselves
straight into moving reality itself. We
attempt to reconstitute reality using 'percepts
and concepts' derived from common sense.
Although these concepts can be extracted from
mobile reality, they cannot reconstitute it,
except through dogmatism.
(5) Such metaphysics is bound to fail as a number
of critics have pointed out, especially those who
note the relativity of metaphysical
knowledge. Again there is a kind of
dogmatism involved in assuming that metaphysics
must start from rigidly defined concepts in the
first place.
(6) Our mind can grasp mobile reality intuitively
although this looks like doing itself
violence. It should arrive at 'fluid
concepts, capable of following reality' and
grasping 'the very movement of the inner life of
all things'. This will end futile disputes
between philosophical schools.
(7) Reversing intelligence in this way has never
been systematically practiced so far, although it
appears in certain great accomplishments in
sciences. 'Infinitesimal calculus was born
of that very reversal' (190), and much modern
mathematics focuses on becoming rather than the
readymade, 'the growth of magnitudes', movement
from within, tendencies to change. This
effort has not gone far enough, and it still has
to operate through the invention of symbols, which
comes to supplant the original intuition.
Metaphysics can avoid that fate since it is
'exempt from the obligation of arriving at results
useful from a practical standpoint' (191).
It will be less useful than science but will
extend the scope and range of thought. It
can proceed by realizing that mathematical
quantities can be understood instead as 'nascent
quality', with quantity as 'it's limiting
case'. It will realize the limits of
mathematics as it encounters 'objects less and
less translatable into symbols'. It will
have contacted continuity and mobility, the real,
and 'seen with a superior clarity' those processes
and procedures that mathematics grasps, in that
they will now be based on concrete reality, not
mathematical methods as such. Nevertheless,
metaphysics too will 'operate differentiations and
qualitative integrations'.
(8) Efforts in the past have been stalled by the
attempt to make intuition and thought a suitable
form of expression and application, or concepts,
already operative in our habits of thought.
This habit mistakes the strictness precision and
perfection of logic for the original 'generative
act of the method' (192), the intuition with which
much science began. All the discussion about
the relativity of scientific knowledge can be
resolved by remembering this original intuition,
which will attain the absolute, unlike knowledge
expressed in symbols and concepts. In this
way, science and metaphysics will 'meet in
intuition'. Metaphysics will make positive
sciences aware 'of their true bearing', and give
them an understanding of their activities 'which
is very often superior to what they
suppose'. It will also incorporate those
occasional mysterious strokes of genius that are
apparent in the history of science.
(9) The classical way of understanding the
relation between science and metaphysics implied
that 'variation can only express and develop
invariabilities'[so the eternal and absolute were
expressed in things like action and
duration—action is 'weakened contemplation',
duration a 'deceptive image of immobile eternity',
'the Soul the fall of the Idea']. The
immutable was seen as more important than the
mobile, and the unstable as something less than
the stable. Modern science was able to
generate a notion of mobility as independent, when
Galileo rolled the ball down the plane and saw the
movement as important, not the starting and ending
states as in Aristotle. We might see lots of
other discoveries as following the same path into
'pure duration'(193). However these initial
intuitions were rapidly solidified and congealed
into immobile concepts, as human understanding
always tries to achieve. The concepts have
then attracted the attention of scholars, and
their residual symbols: science became symbolic,
this was extended to confuse intuitive data and
the subsequent operation of analysis. This
led to relativity [I am not at all clear about
this. I assume Bergson is not discussing
relativism in terms of subjective relativism, but
rather in terms of an acknowledgement of the
partial nature of scientific approaches and the
need to add them together somehow, or at least
stop worrying about whether they fit into one
overall approach or not --and see below for a
particular Kantian take]. Why did so many
philosophers abandon their feelings about 'the
mobile continuity of the real'? (194).
It played more of a part in their work than they
thought. There might even be a kind of
'latent thought', a converging line of scientific
intuitions. However, the practical concerns
of life have continued to dominate, as a result of
'an invisible current'. [You need sociology
to investigate these invisible currents].
Metaphysics has also developed symbols, although
it should really be breaking with them, and again
the ordinary understanding has been at work, this
time to emphasize either relations or
things. Emphasizing relations leads to
relational concepts and scientific symbolism,
emphasizing things leads to metaphysical
symbolism, with both derived from utilitarian
intelligence, and with both leading to 'an
artificial arrangement of symbols' (195).
Neither approach grasps 'the moving river of
things'. Kant pursued particular lines of
criticism here, and pushed both metaphysics and
science to the 'utmost possible limit of
symbolism', where they were leading anyway, and
was able to show that science is relative and
metaphysics artificial, in both cases only by
abandoning the '"intellectual intuitions"'which
they claimed and which gave them some inner
plausibility. His criticisms are still
reverberating, and have led to the common view
that science is always relative, and metaphysics
only 'an empty speculation', although Kant was
really criticizing the classics. The
critique would be applicable if metaphysics was to
claim to provide us with 'a unique and
readymade system of things', to complement the
science which offered a 'a unique system
of relations' (196), or to be offering some
perfect architecture of concepts. This would
ignore all the efforts to go beyond actual ideas
and even beyond simple logic if that is confined
to verifying clear ideas, and remain with
conventional concepts and representations rather
than 'multiple and varied intuitions' which do not
always fit together neatly. The result is to
think of knowledge as 'purely relative to the
human understanding' [so a special knowledge of
relative here, not quite the one I had in mind
above].
Thus Kant saw science as a kind of universal
mathematics, with metaphysics still dominated by
Plato. Universal mathematics involves
accepting the detachment of concepts from
things. Kant attempted to lay down the
foundations for such a mathematics, rendering all
possible experience in terms of the existing
frameworks of our understanding. In this
way, understanding is seen as something that
organizes nature and is reflected by it, and this
in turn is seen as the justification for the
possibility of science. Metaphysics is left
with the 'phantoms of things', or tidying up the
structure of concepts provided by science.
The whole approach assumes that we can never do
anything with our thought except for 'pouring the
whole of possible experience into pre existing
molds' (197). The role for science is simply
to find the 'logic immanent in things';
metaphysics is left with a series of antinomies,
'irreducible oppositions' derived from 'two
opposed attitudes of mind toward all the great
problems'.
By contrast, 'modern science is neither one nor
simple'. Its ideas seem clear ultimately,
but this clarity arises from use, 'the facts and
applications to which they have led'(198), the
facility with which concepts can be
manipulated. All of them probably began as
obscure or absurd, even though science claims to
proceed through the 'regular nesting of concepts'
which fit neatly together. This shows that
they once made contact with currents of reality
which are not convergent. Compromise is
usually achieved 'by reciprocal
friction...makeshift'. Modern metaphysics by
contrast is not so haunted by irreducible
oppositions, especially if it places itself inside
reality and sees the outside as representing the
opposing views [the example is grasping the notion
of grey and then understanding it as composed of
opposites black and white]. Intuition will
escape inevitable antinomies, as long as we do not
congeal intuition in the first place. Again
the differences and oppositions arise from
subsequent work to develop philosophical schools,
and an outside critic can see what they have in
common beneath the surface. Disciples pursue
analysis, while masters can celebrate the 'simple
acts which sets analysis in motion and which hides
behind analysis' (199).
There is 'nothing mysterious' about
intuition. Literary composition shows it
very well and critics know that they have to grasp
the work by placing themselves in it, 'to seek as
deeply as possible an impulsion which, as soon as
found, 'carries one forward of itself', and this
impulse leads to the mind to further
understanding, seek further disclosures.
This impulsion is not grasped as a thing, because
it is 'an urge to movement' and 'simplicity
itself'. Metaphysical intuition is like
this, working on collections of observations and
experiences gathered by science and by reflection
on the human mind. These 'superficial
manifestations' (200) are important and they are
not just be assimilated but rather 'it is
necessary to accumulate and fuse' of them.
There is a need to neutralize earlier ideas which
have affected observations in order to get at 'the
raw material of the known facts'. This
extends even to attempts to contact oneself—it is
impossible without grasping 'a very great number
of psychological analyses'. The best
philosophers have always gathered the material
provided by science, and this provides
considerable difficulties these days because
science is scattered. Again it is not just a
summary or synthesis, not a generalization of
experience but something distinct, and like the
'motor impulsion' discussed above. As a
results, metaphysics ranges across the whole of
experience.
[The book then ends with appreciative essays on
Bernard, W Kames and Ravaisson. I summarize only
the one on James]
Chapter eight. On the pragmatism of
William James. Truth and reality
James is often misunderstood, because reality
is misunderstood as well, as 'a possible
unification of things' (209), built on one or two
simple principles. This is the work of
intelligence in simplifying and providing us with
'the exact minimum of elements and principles'
which we need to manage objects and events.
We should think instead about what is given to us
by experience. We would notice that, for
example, there is more put into the natural causes
than is strictly required as to produce an effect:
'nature's motto is More than is necessary'
(210). For James, reality was both redundant
and superabundant, and he saw the difference
between commonsense reality and actual reality as
like the difference between a play and full
everyday life, where a 'a multitude of useless
things are said... Nothing happens is simply
or is completely or as nicely as we should like;
the scenes overlap'.
Our experience does provide us not only with
things and facts but with relationships between
them, and these are as observable as things
themselves. However, there is far more
fluctuation and fluidity, unlike the dry and
rational universe constructed by most
philosophers. This is what he meant by
pluralism, that pure experience or '"radical
empiricism"' (211) offers a picture of reality
which is indefinite, not even infinite, flowing
but not necessarily in a single direction and in
the same way. Human reason is insufficient
to grasp this reality, although if we engage 'the
whole of man's will and sensibility', we will make
progress.
The universe 'extends infinitely beyond human
experience', while reason has to operate with
generalizing from a more limited set of data [as
in conception standing in for perception].
Extending our intellect also means reducing our
will, and reducing reality itself to aspects of
thought, pure ideas, with only a limited role
given to sensibility in general, feeling and
will. For James, it is important to 'accept
experience wholly' (212), including our
feelings.
Indeed, human beings as whole people create a
whole human world, sufficient for us [apparently,
James's dalliance with the notion of the earth as
an independent being was a way of symbolizing
this]. This human world has us as an
integral part, of its things, events, and also the
feelings which affect us, which are as real as any
other component. The spiritual currents
affect people differently, however, the mystical
people perhaps most of all. Mystics are not
just to be understood, but treated as inspiration,
routes to further experience. It is this
enhanced experience that plays a role in
pragmatism: 'those truths it is most important for
us to know, are truths which have been felt and
experienced before being thought'(213).
These include truths that are based on feeling as
well as reason, and truths that emerge as a
consequence of our will. All of them combine
to produce a general theory of truth.
If an affirmation agrees with reality, 'we say
that it is true'. The usual way of thinking
about this is to see a thought as like the
portrait or a model, something that copies
reality. However we can copy reality 'only
in rare and exceptional cases', because the real
is constantly changing. Our generalizations
assume stability on the part of an object.
Thus when we say something like heat expands
bodies, it might be based on copying a specific
body, but when it is generalized is applied to all
bodies, so nothing is actually copied in those
cases.
It is not surprising that the classic philosophers
assume that there was some world above time and
space which contained all possible truths, and
human truth meant copying those eternal
truths. Modern philosophy still sees truth
as something 'pre existent to our affirmations'
(214), something inherent in things and facts, to
be uncovered by science. Thus there is a law
that heat expands bodies which exists above facts,
or at least within them so that we can extract
it. Kant also insisted that scientific truth
is based on the activities of the human mind,
which is given in advance in human
experience. Science is an attempt to extract
the truth from 'the resisting envelope of the
facts'.
This is a natural conception of truth that
confirms with our need to see reality as coherent
and systematized, governed by logic. But
experience does not confirm this picture.
Instead it offers us a flow of phenomena. If
we can extract enough information to control or
predict phenomena which follow, 'we say of this
affirmation that it is true'. Noticing that
heat expands a particular body helps us predict
how other bodies will behave. We are guided
through moving reality, and given 'more favorable
conditions for acting' (215). In this, James
is defining the truth as involving something that
will happen, that is going to be. His
approach 'looks ahead'.
Usually, the truth is seen as something preceding
the deliberate acts of human beings who formulate
it. Something hides the truth, and
individuals can uncover it. For James,
reality is not totally dependent on us, but
nevertheless 'the truth, which can be attached
only to what we affirm about reality, is, for him,
created by our affirmation'. The truth is
invented to help us utilize reality. For
pragmatism, truth is an invention not a
discovery. It does not follow that truth is
arbitrary, since we are interested in increasing
our mastery, and not all affirmations help us do
this. Nevertheless, the truth involves the
creative efforts of an individual mind and did not
pre exist those efforts, any more than did the
phonograph pre existed Edison. That example
shows that inventions have to be based on reality,
in this case the properties of sound, but that
reality is only 'the ground in which that truth
grows, and other flowers could just as well have
grown there' (216).
The truth arises from the individual contributions
of large number of inventors, and a different
number of inventors would have produced a
different body of truths. Reality itself
would've stayed as it is, but we would have traced
different paths in it. This applies not only
to scientific truths, but to developments like
those in language, which contain their own general
definitions, and which produce upon things in
particular the status of being an independent
object, something invariable. It is
conceivable that we could have invented quite
different languages.
For pragmatists, the main idea is that 'the
structure of our mind is therefore to a great
extent of our work, or at least the work of some
of us' (217). In this, there's a continuity
with Kant, adding that the general structures of
the human mind are actually produced by 'the free
initiative of a certain number of individual
minds'. It is not that the truth depends on
each one of us, but that of the various kinds of
truth, scientific, commonsense, or other
intellectual kinds, the point is to coincide as
much as possible with the object. There are
notions of truth that could easily have been
different if we had oriented our attention in a
different way. However, some truths follow
the directions of reality itself, which
'correspond to currents of reality'. We are
free to go with these currents or oppose them, or
even sometimes divert them, but we did not create
the currents.
For pragmatists, the truths of feeling penetrate
most into reality. We can see how
James comes to elevate the truth of feeding, since
it has experienced one of those currents of
reality, feeling it even before it is being
conceived [and thereby reduced] , which makes it
'more capable of seizing and storing up reality
than truth merely thought' (218). However, if we
are to avoid the consequences of being forced to
argue that all truth is an invention, we will
have to establish a special status for
scientific truth. Science is also a human
invention, but it develops a whole 'artificial
mechanism' that harnesses forces and give them a
particular direction
This theory of reality is at the heart of
pragmatism. It has been condemned as a form
of skepticism, putting truth behind material
utility, and opposing disinterested scientific
research, but all of these reveal inadequate
reading of James. He sought the truth.
He pursued a number of studies including
scientific ones, and constantly 'observed,
experimented, meditated' (219).
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