Henri Bergson: one of the most underrated philosophers.
I’ve been looking into his work lately. Some major themes:
1.) His philosophy was set up against the overly mechanistic, Darwinian philosophy of Herbert Spencer.
2.) He believed that the conventional view of space/time was incorrect, that space/time was, ultimately, not diced up in discrete moments or events; but rather a continuous flow, which could only be experienced through what he termed ’ intuition ': a non-conceptual form of acquiring knowledge, essentially, akin to buddhist meditation.
3.) He believed that this continuous reality of space/time, what he called ’ duration ', allowed room for free-will; since there, ultimately, isn’t discrete or isolated events and moments ( E.g., A causes B — X leads to Y — mechanistic determinism ), free-will is possible, part of a creative life-force, which he famously called " Elan Vital ". This creative force is pro-active in the process of evolution — a contrary view to the mechanistic, reactionary, Darwinian position of many at the time and today.
4.) He believed that mechanistic conceptions of the world were valid, but not as ultimate truths; they are constructs of our minds meant to aid us in maneuvering through existence. Ultimate reality is ’ duration ', a continuous flow.
I’d like to dialogue with others who are familiar with him, so if you are, feel free to contribute to the thread.
I have read Bergson some time ago, Bergson and Philosophy: An Introduction by John Mullarkey , [I made sure I cover all reasonably known philosophers] and did a quick refresher.
Bergson leveraged his philosophy by countering Kant’s metaphysics and moral.
I don’t think he succeeded in countering Kant as his final stance on metaphysics is centered around pantheism, i.e. along the same line as Hegel’s absolute, Schopenhauer’s will, i.e. monism in general.
Along this line Bergson’s philosophy do not lead to the core principles of Buddhism but rather it would be similar to Vedanta’s Brahman.
As with the others Bergson gave in to the inherent tendency to grasp the transcendental illusion that Kant warned.
As for Kant’s moral, imo, he misread Kant’s morality and ethical system.
The above is a general outline view.
As usual I have to qualify I have not read Bergson in serious depth and rigorously thus would rate my views with a 75% confidence level.
Nonetheless there are positive ideas to be tapped from Bergson’s quite novel approach to philosophy.
If You understand the central concept of Élan Vital, or life force, You will understand the basis of the Christian ideal of redemption. No more elucidation needs to be done, Either it is believable or not. The aesthetic either or or representing Your most innermost intuitions.
According to some sources, he was one of the most famous philosophers in his time, during his professorship, and students were drawn to him.
William James was exceptionally fond of Bergson and showered him with praise on multiple occasions, and mentioned him in his books, the reason being that Bergson provided a solution to one of the most profound problems that James was entangled in, namely “intellectualism”, manifested in the form of a fierce debate that James managed to win after he discovered the work of Bergson.
Bergson’s philosophy provided James with a justification and framework for developing his own pragmatist approach (pragmatism) that could better account for the dynamic, fluid nature of reality.
Bergson was part of one of the most significant events in physics with regard the conception of time. During the famous 1922 debate between Einstein and Bergson at the Société Française de Philosophie, Einstein made the following blunt statement dismissing the philosophical notion of time:
“Il n’y a donc pas un temps des philosophes.”
Which translates to:
“The time of the philosophers does not exist.”
Bergon is said to have become furious.
A few months later, when Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize, Bergson got his revenge by casting doubt on Einstein’s theory of relativity, dissuading the committee from awarding the prize specifically for that work.
Bergson would respond intellectually with his 1922 work Duration and Simultaneity which is essentially a work in defence of philosophy, in the face of the evolution of physics and its corresponding deterministic and mechanistic world view.
Bergson suggests the traditional association between the models of space and time is incoherent. Unlike space, time is not objectively measurable but is fundamentally rooted in subjective experience and consciousness.
I started to read Bergson, because I was interested to learn how he would have succeeded to defend philosophy, more specifically from a position of a defence of free will.
While I haven’t started yet with Duration and Simultaneity, his ideas about time and duration are fundamentally based on intuition of which Bergson himself said that it is a tool that belongs to mysticism.
Here’s a quick critical note that I wrote recently:
Bergson closes his book Time and Free Will with the following:
Critique 1:
The use of the term ‘obvious’ reveals mystical intend. It is a reference to common sense grounded in intuition, a tool that belongs to mysticism, and that is defined as mystical by Bergson himself.
Critique 2:
Fact is scientific knowledge, not unquestionable truth. The idea that a fact has a qualitative nature or justification that is philosophically other than ‘grounded on belief’ (e.g. the idea that facts obtain independent of mind), is dogma, because there is no justification for it in time. The notion that Freedom is a fact therefore can be perceived as invalid.
Critique 3:
Freedom was never observed, even after reading his work Time and Free Will. Bergson has grounded the whole idea of freedom on the adoption of common sense ideas or ‘mystical intuition’ (which Bergson himself described as mysticism) and thus has forced ones view into a ‘mist of wonder’. All that potentially has been observed is wonder and the use of the term ‘fact’, a term that belongs to science or more generally, the ‘acquisition of knowledge from truth’, is therefore misplaced.
Critique 4:
Is the idea of “a language” to express the idea of freedom possible at all? If Bergson would answer no, what would that reveal about the intend of his closing? The use of ‘a language’ as opposed to ‘language’ suggests that there might be a language into which the idea is translatable. The reader is left exactly there: wondering whether such a language might exist, which might be misleading, and which creates a ‘mist’ in which the reader is left wondering (in this case even potentially being set on a false foot).
In his book Creative Evolution, Bergson often uses phrases like “infinite amount” and “unquestionable truth”, which are invalid concepts, in my opinion.
An example:
Bergson uses resolute terms like ‘impossible’, which must be true, and otherwise pose a blow to the credibility of his other statements. The reader, a determinist or Darwinist, need only a small hunch to feel good about themselves. Bergson then essentially strikes the blow to himself, by arguing that his previous claim would be invalid, when the change would be ‘infinitesimal’, which is similar to stating, in a given time in history, ‘to small for the eye to see’ or in this specific case ‘to complex for the human to understand’.
What is a determinist or darwinist to take of such a foundation for further arguments? Most logically, it will come across on them as a sure win, an enhancement of their viewpoint.
He then went on to say things like the following:
“Bergson cannot admit, like Darwin, unless mystery / a mystical component is added.”. The whole line of thought is being followed by the underbelly love of determinists and Darwinists, by having given himself a blow that makes them certain that they are safe and will with certainty win in the end.
Another example:
Here Bergson makes a reference to wonder as being a fundamental part of the mystical intuition that he uses to ground his philosophy.
Why wonder, a determinist might ask? Bergson uses a tone that would make it appear that the wonder that he describes is an unquestionable truth, a term that he uses often. For the determinist, it is only food for his/her peace of mind on the basis of the growing conviction that he/she will surely win. Because no-one can demand another to force ones view into a direction of indeterminate ground, and the determinist may ‘intuitively’ feel a win for his/her anti-religion interest, who attempt to do the same *(enforcing a view on others based on religious or mystical grounds). Considering the earlier apparent ‘self-blow’ incident, and the repeated use of terms like ‘unquestionable truth’, infinite amount, infinitely complex etc. Might Bergson have done that on purpose?
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So Bergson was set to defend philosophy more generally, after he supposedly became ‘furious’ after the statement made by Einstein in 1922 that the time of the philosophers, and philosophy’s work more generaly, had become a relic of the past, with science ‘taking over the show’.
I haven’t started with the 1922 book Duration and Simultaneity yet, and my above critique on the apparent ‘weakness’ of his defence of Free Will and the concepts ‘time’ and ‘Quality’ of philosophy more generally, were based on books dating late 1800 to 1907, so perhaps the book that followed the 1922 incident did contain a much stronger defense. My apologies when my critique is considered inappropiate, I have been reading primarily from the perspective of a defense of philosophy in the face of determinism and Darwinism. I am personally positioned to defend Free Will, thus I would be on the side of Bergson.
Perhaps the problems that Bergson addressed, that of a defense of Free Will and concepts such as Quality, will become increasingly important with today’s emergence of AI and questions about AI consciousness.
This is interesting from the point of view that entertains the idea that the ‘elan vital’ and the flow of conscious and unconscious elements coalesce into the function that has had ideologically synthetic assumptions at their base.
If this is unclear, as it is to me as well, I will/am try to enhance it structurally(the Will)
Can you please elaborate on that? Do you imply that Bergson’s elan vital and consciousness fundamentally have a function that is based on ideological synthetic assumptions?
I was listening to the Partially Examined Life podcast “Bergson on Metaphysics” in which the hosts were arguing, based on the book An Introduction to Metaphysics (1903), that Bergson did not come across as a mystic, while two hosts then said that he was considered a true mystic in his other works. Some of the hosts are a philosophy professor at Philosophy | St. John's University
This is interesting. ChatGPT is truly set to defend Bergson as not being a mystic, which implies something. The simple fact that Bergson himself argued that intuition is a tool that belongs to mysticism, enables to force the AI to reconsider, but it is pretty tough on defending Bergson against being a mystic, which is interesting by itself.
Episode 92: Henri Bergson on How to Do Metaphysics
Another one, for those interested, which is for paid members only:
Episode 57: Henri Bergson on Humor (Citizens Only)
In a way that I can only attribute from the above distinction between the Buddhic and Vedic sources, in addition to Heidegger’s brief mention of such analogical relationship which bases intuitive rather then a reductive process in a functionality ( attribution-my concept here) of forming an analogical correspondence described as a synthetic , formulation -again based on duration .
The difference between Buddhic and Vedic sources are in themselves non differential , in my also intuitive opinion. to describe the flow, as for instance Nichiren describes intuitively the same approach of temporality described here, (Lotus Sutra) - correspondingly, using the synthetic
functionality between the differing approaches.
I have reading to do for the analytical structural analysis of a quasi mystical equivolance of such function, for as is pointed to above, scholastic arguments conflict between arguing for and against the formulation. My feeling is certainly for the non analytical but synthetic a-priori apprehension of such structural functions.
Heidegger’s brief discussion of Bergson in Being and Time is geared toward explaining why he fails in his attempt.?
()
ref: The Origin of Time | State University of New York Press
This is a brief allusion shown that Heidegger uses here
What I noticed strongly in the work of Bergson, is that he seeks to establish the present in the form of an Absolute.
Henri Bergson strongly opposes the idea that the future can influence the past while today, through Quantum Mechanics, there is some evidence for the concept retrocausality, which breaks true causality and thus the idea of an ‘Absolute present’ in time.
Kant’s transcendental ideal does not shut the door on accessibility of a synthesis, because it is a-priori , apprehended intuitively, and as such similar to duration, for Bergson’s approach of duration is a flow of unlimited ‘pictures’ schematically connected, and the latter description of neuroplasticity creates a synthetic inclusion of elements so connected.
The downward movement, is more complex, as I see your comments, for it consists of a variability of ‘timeless’ attachments of variable structural connections, that may not resemble the transcendental hypothetical that classical physics constructed it’s structure. Namely quanta do not conform to such alogarythim, but can connect to newly formed structural changes , which result in uncertain temporal , spatial determinants. Kant retained the a priori synthetic as much as Hegel did, as spatially determined .
So as the quantum change in spatial, ‘pictorial’ representations come to the critical point where apparent or psychological time will delimit duration away from it’s internal sense of approximating time, the sense of foreward and backward time become more indeterminate,
That does not mean any sense of traveling back to a time before, not even to a temporal a-priori, only that duration becomes configured as more determined by a configuration of signs that represent certain differing points of reference(Einstein’s Special relativity , ?
The critiques of Kant , of pure and practical reason, do not dispose of the ideal structural basis it just conveys the sense of an a priori intuitive apprehension that can not be verified .
The dialectical function of synthetic apprehension may be in no way disqualifies its metaphysical transcendentall assumptions, just as Descartes’ doubt never really undermines Saint Anselm’s intuitive sustaining of an absolute reason inaccessible . So the function of the a priori synthetic is to uphold belief in the absolute , not to verify it by reasonable means.
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Spatial Time: The Unity of Two Kantian Forms of Intuition
The First Critique’s “Transcendental Aesthetic,” discussing the contribution of sensuous cognition to our knowledge, apparently distinguishes and separates the form of the internal sense, time, from the form of external sense, space. Both forms are of our intuition, the reception and order of data, which make a cognitive manifold. Nevertheless, time is the successive order of one perception after the other or of one perception before the other in a manifold structured in an irreversible order, whereas space orders its manifold one beside the other or one over or under the other, which is reversible. Yet, CrV B50, for instance, argues that all temporal relationships, except for the irreversibility or temporal arrow, can be expressed in spatial images. I show that besides the temporal schematism of the intellectual categories and in addition to it, the bridge between our temporal form of sensuous intuition and the categories of our intellect, there is a spatial schematism which functions in a similar way. Following Bergson, I, too, think that Kant’s image of time is spatial and the actual image of time that the “Transcendental Aesthetic” presents is a spatial one. Such an image has served natural sciences, and, therefore, Einstein considered time as the fourth dimension of space. There are also Kantian grounds concerning rational systematization and the unity of our reason that justify the variation, reconstruction, or revision that is named “spatial time.”
This description (yours) is way more elegant and shows a prepossessing of how I commented, and it is as obvious that my descriptions are far more intuitive in the analytical sense, while ‘synthetic’ may be assigned to the massive variability of impressions, that an ‘aesthetic’ may be permitted to participate in, where a will to do it, could also prescribe to , very liberally, an accordance with the sense that an ‘elan’ of juxtaposed images can be permitted., in the literal meaning of an impressionable freedom.(of the will, being both determined, or, not)
What about the idea that true infinity (for example Spinoza’s substance) is applicable on a fundamental level, as a meaningful (meaning-giving) precursor to reality?
If that would be the case, the future would be the origin of existence, as much as what one, through logic, supposes to be the ‘necessary’ historical origin of causality, e.g. a self-caused Being (Spinoza) or the unmoved mover (Aristotle).
When true infinity is the ‘first cause’, then it is also its purpose and thus ‘end’ in the same time, and thus, is the future within a meaningful perspective, qualitatively recognizable through the concept intentionality (Husserl) and attention.
The future is therefore logically a causal influence of the present, when perceiving reality from an empirical ‘present’ perspective, when (through quantum mechanics) being left wondering how the future ‘caused’ the past.
Some examples of how scientist today are left wondering within the scope of the idea ‘retrocausality’.
Bell’s Inequality Experiments
The famous experiments testing Bell’s inequality, which were awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, revealed strange correlations between entangled particles that cannot be explained by any local hidden variable theory.
Quantum Switch Experiments
In 2012, researchers performed an experiment where a quantum particle seemed to undergo two different transformations simultaneously, as if it existed in a superposition of two causal orders (future and past).
Ernst Mayr was one of the leading evolutionary biologists in the twentieth century and was influential in the development of the modern philosophy of biology. He particularly emphasised the importance of emergence and the limitations of reductionism. In his book, This is Biology: the Science of the Living World Mayr has the following paragraphs that are embarrassing to physicists.
Before turning to the organicist paradigm which replaced both vitalismand physicalism, we might note in passing a rather peculiar twentieth-century phenomenon-the development of vitalistic beliefs among physicists.Niels Bohr was apparently the first to suggest that special laws not found in inanimate nature might operate in organisms. He thought of these laws as analogous to the laws of physics except for their being restricted to organisms. Erwin Schrodinger and other physicists supported similar ideas. Francis Crick (1966) devoted a whole book to refuting the vitalistic ideas of the physicists Walter Elsasser and Eugene Wigner. It is curious that a form of vitalism survived in the minds of some reputable physicists long after it had become extinct in the minds of reputable biologists.
A further irony, however, is that many biologists in the post-1925 period believed that the newly discovered principles of physics, such as the relativity theory, Bohr’s complementarity principle, quantum mechanics, and Heisenberg’s indeterminacy principle, would offer new insight into biological processes. In fact, so far as I can judge, none of these principles of physics applies to biology. In spite of Bohr’s searching in biology for evidence of complementarity, and some desperate analogies to establish this, there really is no such thing in biology as that principle. The indeterminacy of Heisenberg is something quite different from any kind of indeterminacy encountered in biology. (pages 15-16)
Bohr’s speculative foray into biology was not isolated. He made many highly speculative statements about the implications of quantum theory to other disciplines (including politics and religion) that were accepted uncritically and used inappropriately by some postmodernists. Mara Beller, has chronicled these excesses in a provocative Physics Today article “The Sokal Hoax: At Whom Are We Laughing?”, and a book, Quantum Dialogue: the making of a revolution.
If you want someone to blame why quantum biology started as pseudoscience in the West don’t blame scientists, blame Deepak Chopra. Alexander Gurwitsch, a Russian-Jewish-Atheist scientist laid the framework for quantum biology but it could not have bee verified at the time due to technology and was not plausible by mid 20th century. Then it was challenging life as chemistry paradigm and continued being rejected. At the same time New Age movement and occult (in Russia) began to push for quantum biology which made it appear a pseudoscience in the eyes of respected scientists
And philosopher later. Then the idea than quantum processes deco here too quickly to play role in biological functions. Only in the 21st century it became to be introduced to science when they started to study photosynthesis and originally the quantum theories in biology were regarded fringe in science until recent few years due to evidence supporting them. If not for Deepak Chopra quantum biology would go from Gurwitsch to normal science without being branded pseudoscience in late 20th century
p.s. I am still waiting for your in-depth defence of the concept ‘free’ in the face of for example the mentioned book of David Chalmers in the topic Brain In A Vat.
BLUE The cowardly lion wanted courage. You feel COWARDly (aka guilty—that kind of cognitive dissonance) because something in you (your conscience) is telling you to DO (or stop doing… thinking, valuing) something, and you’re not listening. You feel dutiful when you listen.
YELLOW The scarecrow wanted a brain — you wouldn’t ask a question if you didn’t have it in you to find the answer.
RED The tin man wanted a heart - but look how beautiful his part of the movie is. Look what comes out of his mouth. He already had elan vital.
Restless Reason and Other Variations on Kantian Themes
Brain In A Vat.