Einstein's philosophy

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Regrettably, my ereader broke down after washing it, so I lost my notes… I will have to re-read his books for specific quotes, or recover the data on the ereader somehow.

My first impression was that Bergson was ‘losing on purpose’ from the perspective of a defense of concepts such as free will. Some of his logic was contradicting his own logic, providing evidence, from my perspective.

Your question is actually very interesting.

The reason why prominent philosophers like William James held Bergson in a high esteem is worthy of investigation, since the reason might not be solely found in literal texts or citations.

There are indications that Bergson’s fame was ‘given’ by William James as a sort of ‘thank you’.

In the case of James, Bergson had helped him to overcome a major intellectual problem that resulted in a win for James. Subsequently, Bergson was held in high esteem, potentially as a sort of ‘thank you’ for what otherwise might be considered a minor intellectual contribution, when considered by itself.

William James was enstrangled in a long-standing dispute between the rationalist and empiricist schools of philosophy, particularly around the nature of consciousness and the self.

On one side were the rationalists, who argued for a unified, stable conception of the self, while on the other side were the empiricists, who viewed the self as a collection of discrete sensations and perceptions.

James, as a pragmatist and empiricist, had found himself caught in the middle of this debate, struggling to reconcile his empiricist leanings with the apparent unity and continuity of conscious experience.

It was Bergson’s philosophical framework, with its emphasis on duration, intuition, and the lived experience of time, that provided James with the conceptual tools to break free from this philosophical impasse.

Bergson’s Global Fame Started With William James

William James was one of the first prominent philosophers to hold Henri Bergson in high esteem, and this resulted in a significant rise in Bergson’s status and influence.

In the early 20th century, when Bergson’s work was not yet widely known outside of France, James played a crucial role in introducing Bergson’s ideas to the English-speaking world.

Through his writings and lectures, James helped to popularize Bergson’s ideas and brought them to the attention of a wider audience. Bergson’s reputation and influence grew rapidly in the years following James’s championing of his ideas.

So it appears that Bergson’s intellectual contribution that would cause major interest in his philosophy in the English speaking world, might have been a solution that enabled William James to get out of an impasse that hindered his own philosophy. James profoundly invested in promoting Bergson, which might have been a sort of thank you.

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How is it so interesting to simply ask for an example of what a philosopher said? Which apparently would example his supposed superamazinggeniuseness?

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I find it more interesting that it seems so apparently difficult to do.

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I personally find it interesting, because it might contain clues and potential evidence with regard my suggested ‘self-enslavement of philosophy to scientism’ narrative.

Why did Bergson achieve global fame? The ‘interesting’ part, from my perspective, is that the intellectual contribution that caused global interest in Bergson might be considered minor, which would support a further ‘motivation’ on my end to question his philosophy more generally, in light of my impression that Bergson was ‘losing on purpose’.

With regard your criticism of the questioning the history and Bergson’s philosophy more generally. It seems that your vision would be more in line with that of philosophy professor Gregg Caruso (New York), who reflected on the modern developments in the field of academic philosophy, “let a thousand flowers bloom”.

(2023) Optimism about Philosophy
I think the future of philosophy is strong. There is more interesting and diverse work being done today in philosophy than perhaps ever before. In fact, I can barely keep up with all the excellent work being done in areas of philosophy that never previously existed.

The days of philosophy being dominated by one or two figures (or methodologies) at a time is over, and I think that’s a good thing. Let a thousand flowers bloom, as they say.

Why do you believe that it is ‘not interesting’ to question either Bergson’s intellectual contributions or related history?

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The reason these idiots become famous is beneath my concern. If you want to worry about that, ok then. I hope you find convincing validational evidence for what you already know.

As a poet once said, academia is a world wide circle-jerk. You may wish to start your investigations at that point, especially considering he is French.

“…the future of philosophy is strong.”… sillier words have never been spoken, certainly not when you consider they refer to modern philosophy. The entire world is suffering for want of truths, for the lack and FAILURE of philosophy and especially of modern philosophy. But some French dude in a funny hat comes along and proclaims we are indeed the best of the best, the pinnacle and peak of all philosophical investigation throughout history.

Yeap. Good luck with that one.

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I literally only asked you for examples of why he is so great. Such a profound genius. You know, stuff he actually said himself. And I am still waiting for those examples.

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I wonder how familiar you are with the appeal to authority fallacy?

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If you want examples of genius level philosophical writing, I can provide you with plenty.

Yet it strikes me as odd, you keep proclaiming this bergson dude such a peak level genius, but so far you haven’t been able to give any examples of his supposed genius writings or ideas.

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My answer revealed that ‘the why he is so great’ might have originated from a ‘minor intellectual contribution’ that enabled William James to get out of a major philosophical impasse that hindered his own philosophy. Further, I explained that my first impression was that he was ‘losing on purpose’ in the defense of concepts such as free will.

That argument does not appear to be applicable.

I cited the Einstein-Bergson debate in this topic, of which professor of history Jimena Canales wrote:

The “dialogue between the greatest philosopher and the greatest physicist of the 20th century” was dutifully written down. It was a script fit for the theater. The meeting, and the words they uttered, would be discussed for the rest of the century.

In the years that followed the debate, … the scientist’s views on time came to dominate. … For many, the philosopher’s defeat represented a victory of “rationality” against “intuition”. … Thus began “the story of the setback for philosophy”, … then began the period when the relevance of philosophy declined in the face of the rising influence of science.

So Bergson being ‘the greatest philosopher of all time’ is relative to this debate, that would cause ‘the great setback for philosophy’ and the rise of scientism.

  1. I personally had the impression, upon reading Bergson unbiased (actually with the assumption that he might provide strong logic), that he was ‘losing on purpose’
  2. A critical investigation of the Einstein-Bergson reveals that Bergson might have lost that debate on purpose

Einstein’s private notes revealed that Bergson ‘fully and correctly’ understood his theory of relativity. In public however, Einstein’s primary argument was that Bergson didn’t understand his theory, and Einstein would win the debate on that simple ground.

I wrote:

Einstein’s Contradiction

How can this have been an accident? Did Bergson fail to understand the theory of relativity? Even his students would leave Bergson for this failure, revealing the profound nature of his apparent ‘failure of intellect’ that would cause ‘the great setback for philosophy’.

I bumped this topic for the following:

The cited professor of history Jimena Canales who is specialized in the Einstein-Bergson debate, might be considered a female philosopher, which might be of interest as well for a part of the ongoing discussion. She is also specialized in the history of Einstein and is author of the book “Simply Einstein”.

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Her website: https://www.jimenacanales.org/

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I never claimed all that, but I’m sure you could Google at least the parts that have been exposed…to the light.

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Read:

Compare:

Revise?

Where I’m at… sort of…

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“The tensed nature of duration is also evident in Bergson’s remark that “each of us feels himself endure,” for contemporary philosophers working on problems of diachronic identity have delineated two quite different conceptions of persistence through time: endurance, according to which an object exists wholly at any time at which it exists, and perdurance, according to which persisting objects have (spatio-)temporal parts, the whole object being as really extended through time as it is through space.[8] Endurance entails, on pain of incoherence, a tensed theory of time, while perdurance is inherently a tenseless notion.[9] Real duration is thus tensed time, through which I endure as a self-conscious continuant.”

Endurance is within perdurance, not mutually exclusive from it, just like permissive will is within God’s perfect/absolute will, not mutually exclusive from it. Tensed experience is within a tenseless whole, and both require each other, rather than explaining (or needing to explain) each other away.

“The partisan of a tenseless or B-Theory of time must regard our tense perceptions as delusional.”

If that were true, everything shy of omniscience would be considered a delusion.

“Bergson’s strategy is to begin with the inner life of the mind and thence move to the external world,” seems different from, “these perceptions seem to us to involve at the same time ourselves and things. … our immediate material surroundings. …our duration is…just as well the duration of all things,” but Dr. Craig does later acknowledge the simultaneity.

“What they will discover is that relative to no frame of reference does one lie in the absolute future or absolute past of the other, that is to say, on or within the forward or backward lightcone structure at their respective spacetime locations, since if two events can be connected by a finite velocity signal, they cannot be simultaneous and, hence, both present.”

Information sharing between long distances is as possible within space as within time, God being omnitemporal.

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I quoted you incorrectly, my apologies. The promise was made by @MagsJ (Surya Loka).

I am still very interested to learn about it.

Albert Einstein was a theoretical physicist and in his time, this greatly overlapped with philosophy. In a sense, Einstein’s early work was philosophy to a large extent and Einstein specifically used thought experiments, which is a sort of hallmark of philosophy.

So if a women were to be responsible for 80% of his work, then she might be considered a female philosopher to some extent.

p.s. professor of history Jimena Canales who wrote a book about the Einstein-Bergson debate also wrote the book Simply Einstein, which might be of interest for people with an interest in the philosophy of Einstein.

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My critical investigation of the Einstein-Bergson debate has progressed a bit, and it is now fair to say, in my opinion, that the event concerned ‘corruption for dogmatic scientism’.

Albert Einstein versus Philosophy On The Nature of :three_o_clock: Time And Philosophy’s Great Setback For Scientism

https://cosmicphilosophy.org/einstein-vs-philosophy/

Henri Bergson had become world famous in part through his work Creative Evolution in 1907 which provided a philosophical counter voice for Charles Darwin’s evolution theory.

My first impression when reading Creative Evolution was that Bergson was “losing on purpose” and that Bergson intended to cater to both readers: admirers of Darwin’s evolution theory (scientists more generally) and believers in :butterfly: free will. As a result, the defense of free will was “weak” and in some cases I recognized a clear “intent” to lose on purpose.

Bergson apparently attempted to give “Darwinists” an underbelly feeling early on in the book, that they would come out as winners on the end of the book, by making an “obvious contradiction” in his logical arguments that fundamentally undermined his own reasoning.

My first idea was that Bergson was attempting to secure the success of his book from a general public perspective that had come to favor Charles Darwin’s evolution theory, explaining in part why Bergson had become world famous in a world dominated by “the rise of science”.

Bergson’s success was not dependent on a successful undermining of Darwin’s evolution theory. Rather the opposite: by “losing on purpose” for the strategic advancement of scientism.

“Losing On Purpose” For Scientism

Bergson was largely perceived to have lost the debate against Einstein and public sentiments had sided with Einstein. For many, Bergson’s defeat represented a victory of scientific “rationality” against metaphysical “intuition”.

Einstein had won the debate by publicly pointing out that Bergson didn’t understand the theory correctly. Einstein’s win of the debate represented a win for science.

Bergson is said to have made “obvious mistakes” in his philosophical critique Duration and Simultaneity (1922) and Einstein would officially win the debate by denouncing this in public.

In private however, Einstein simultaneously wrote that Bergson had “fully and correctly” understood the theory.

Einstein’s contradiction is suspicious and professor of history Jimena Canales who published a book on the debate, characterized Einstein’s contradicting behavior as “political”.

In the aftermath of Bergson’s defeat, some of Bergson’s students would leave him for his apparent “failure of intellect” which reveals the profundity of his supposed intellectual error that would cause the “great setback for philosophy”.

Confession

The chairman of the Nobel Committee confessed that an influence was at play that deviated from public sentiments and scientific consensus.

It will be no secret that the famous philosopher Bergson in Paris has challenged this theory.

Professor of history Jimena Canales wrote the following:

The Nobel Committee’s explanation that day surely reminded Einstein of [his dismissal of philosophy] in Paris that would spark a conflict with Bergson.

The Nobel Committee had no logical ground for rejecting Einstein’s Nobel Prize for relativity.

The revokation of Einstein’s Nobel Prize for relativity for “critique by “famous” philosopher Henri Bergson”, while public opinion had sided with Einstein, fueled a moral justification for science to break free from philosophy.

Einstein’s dramatic action to lecture relativity during the ceremony for his Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effect played into the public sentiments of the time and caused a moral loss for philosophy that had an effect that went much beyond an intellectual loss.

“Obvious Mistakes” And Einstein’s “Contradiction”

Did Bergson fail to understand Einstein’s theory of relativity?

The investigation reveals that Einstein’s private notes should be considered leading for a perspective on Bergson’s actual understanding of the theory, despite his apparent “obvious mistakes”, which implies that Bergson “lost on purpose” for the supposed “higher interests of science” (Darwinism and correlated scientism), a feature that was already visible in his work Creative Evolution in 1907.

Work in progress: https://cosmicphilosophy.org/einstein-vs-philosophy/

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Why don’t you & all whatever type you are join forces in shutting up unless it’s about the topic I slyly incepted on the periphery?

That’s you.

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Continuing on.

“Once these hypothetical observers are eliminated, what remains is “the impersonal time in which all things elapse.” There is thus a unity to time based upon the absolute present.”

What if, hypothetically of course, there is a) no such thing as removing every ‘observer’ (thinking of a particular nuance I’m not sure I need to spell out), and thus no such thing as ‘impersonal’ time, and (as mentioned above), b) long-distance information sharing is as possible in time as it is in space (wherencever you “go”—or goes to “you”—therencever … you are—or is present to you) because (tripersonal Trinity) God is omnitemporal (or… triunitemporal, if you like)?

“Therefore, if we believe that there are things in the world which co-exist, we must abandon a tensed view of time.”

Dr. Craig is presenting the view of those who argue for a spacetime whole, right? That in itself does not nullify tense. As said above, perfect/whole (absolute, tenseless, triunitemporal, perdurance, sustenance) subsumes permissive (tensed, temporal, endurance, simultaneous-concurrence)—rather than explaining (or needing to explain) each other away. Omnitemporality requires temporality (one is meaningless —alogos — sans the other), and vice versa [one reason: Love (quality/property/essence) is (noun) not love without demonstration (verb)]. To me this triggers such things as noise in out-of-signal-range communication. I don’t know enough about physics to know what sort of Triunisignal unites everything—has nothing out of its range and can damper its signal to reduce noise… until the time has come for noise.

“this is the physical interpretation of relativity championed by H. A. Lorentz and Henri Poincaré. A Lorentz-Poincaré theory of relativity postulates a privileged reference frame, and relativistic effects like clock retardation and rod contraction are the results of motion relative to this frame. Empirically equivalent to Einstein’s interpretation, this [Maryann/Ichthus77: RATHER THAN EINSTEIN’S… well, MINKOWSKI’s…wait…there’re two things going on here… let me get this squared] is the physical interpretation of relativity which Bergson should have adopted.”

I’m really glad this is a thing, but how is it relevant to triunitemporality and adjudicate between the A or B (or C) theories, considering what I’ve said above?

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Relevant:

Nevertheless, “common sense does not hesitate to extend it also to events as distant from each other as possible.”[36] Bergson thus makes it clear that he rejects the verificationist epistemology which underlay Einstein’s re-definitions of time and simultaneity.

I like how Dr. Craig concludes the article.

I’m going to let it blend flavors.

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The common sense ‘extension’ that you note, requires an a priori motivation or ‘will’ which might be available only in those willing to adopt a level of faith or belief.

I have been an early defender of free will since 2006 through a critical blog on psychiatry (the idea that the mind originates in the brain). So I’ve been engaged at the forefront of interaction with ‘Darwinists’ and I have been naturally inclined to read sources from various related perspectives relative to ‘strategic advancement’ of certain ideas.

Bergson received a Nobel prize not for philosophy, but for literature. His craft, as evident from that prize, was ‘writing’.

The apparent attempt to ‘cater to both readers’ that I noticed in Bergson’s Creative Evolution seemed to be strategically based on an abuse of the potential that causes believers in free will to read on while Darwinists and scientism believers would recognize a ‘sure loss’ and become happy as well.

From a critical philosophical perspective, Bergson fundamentally undermined his own reason, fueling a moral justification for Darwinism and scientism.

From a bigger perspective, the intent to cater to Darwinists to ‘become popular’ or to sell the book, is simply a root of corruption that might have culminated into the bigger “setback for philosophy” event of which your source writes:

Bergson’s grasp of Einstein’s theory was simply embarrassingly wrong and tended to bring disrepute upon Bergson’s views on time.

Einstein himself denounced Bergson’s failure in public while in private he wrote that Bergson had fully and correctly understood the theory. This contradiction is evidence that in fact corruption might have been at play.

p.s. thank you for the article by William Lane Craig. I had learned about him before through criticism by philosophy professors Alex Malpas and Wes Morriston who challenged the Kalam Cosmological argument in their paper Endless and Infinite.

I do not understand your reply. The idea of “joining forces” does not appear to be justified or substantiated. If relevant to this topic only, MagsJ wrote TBC relative to the notion that a woman might have been responsible for 80% of Einstein’s work.

I substantiated that in Einstein’s time his ‘work’ that a woman would have been responsible for, could be perceived as philosophy.

For the record: I have zero political, ideological or religious interests.

I am not an atheist and I am also not a believer. (in my view, atheism is a religion). My interest is primarily fundamental philosophy. While I have investigated cases of social injustice as part of a critical philosophical blog, I am actually not an activist and it was strategically a part of a philosophical investigation. The investigation of ‘corruption’ is not done for an idea of ‘good and wrong’ but simply because from a philosophical perspective, it could be seen as a flow of water.

In this case, potential corruption for “Darwinism” and scientism is interesting, not for an idea of good and wrong, but because it might provide insights for fundamental philosophical advancement, for example with regard “the nature of :three_o_clock: time”.

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I enjoyed reading this very much:

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Have you ever read “Mere Christianity“ by CS Lewis? Check out the last chapter on “the new men“ :slight_smile: Prescient & relevant.

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