Bergson, Time and Free Will, Chapter 1, §39 "In What Case Differences of Colour Might Be Interpreted as Differences of Magnitude"

by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Bergson, Entry Directory]
[Bergson Time and Free Will, Entry Directory]

[The following is summary; my commentary is in brackets.]

Bergson, Time and Free Will

(Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience)

Chapter I, "The Intensity of Psychic States"

Part XIII: "Sensation of Light"

§39 "In What Case Differences of Colour Might Be Interpreted as Differences of Magnitude"

Bergson has us consider a case where it is possible that there are quantitative differences of intensity between changes of luminosity. We imagine that whenever a light source increases its luminosity, a series of different colors are called up in our consciousness.

There is no doubt that these colours would then appear to us as so many notes of a gamut, as higher or lower degrees in a scale, in a word, as magnitudes

(57bc)

We could not really place the changes of light intensity in a series; for, it is continuous. However, because there are qualitative changes between colors, they appear to us discontinuously. Hence we could place the colors in a series.

So we consider now the shade that is evoke when seeing light at one level of luminosity, and then we consider the shade evoked at another luminosity. There is a fluid continuum of change between the luminosities, but a discontinuous chain of colors that are evoked while we pass through that continuum.

Now, if we go through a limited number of color-associations between luminosities A and B, then we may compare it with the number of color associations between luminosities B and C. If the number of associations between A and B equals that between B and C, then we could say that B is equally distant from A as it is from C [compare this with the entry on Delboeuf's ring experiment.]

However, this still does not allow us to say that there is a quantitative difference between our sensations of different luminosities. For, just because there are an equal number of color associations between the luminous differences, that does not mean there is a difference in magnitude between them, let alone equal magnitudes.

[Next entry in this series.]

[Site Topic Directory]

Images from the pages summarized above, in the English Translation [click on the image for an enlargement]:

Images from the pages summarized above, in the original French [click on the image for an enlargement]:

Bergson, Henri. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, Transl. F. L. Pogson, (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2001).

Available online at:

http://www.archive.org/details/timeandfreewill00pogsgoog

French text from:

Bergson, Henri. Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience. Originally published Paris: Les Presses universitaires de France, 1888.

http://www.archive.org/details/essaisurlesdonn00berguoft