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31 Dec 2008

Bergson Time and Free Will Entry Directory


by Corry Shores
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[Below is a list of links to the Bergson Time and Free Will entries.]



Research Directory for Time and Free Will



Henri Bergson

Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience
Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness


Selective Summary of §§1-36


Chapter I, "The Intensity of Psychic States"


Part I, "Intensity and Extensity"

§1 "Can There be Quantitative Differences in Conscious States?"

§2 "Such Differences Applicable to Magnitudes but not to Intensities"

§3 "Alleged Distinction between Two Kinds of Quantity: Extensive and Intensive Magnitude"

§4 "Attempt to Distinguish Intensities by Objective Causes. But We Judge of Intensity without Knowing Magnitude or Nature of the Cause"

§5 "Attempt to Distinguish Intensities by Atomic Movements. But It is the Sensation which is Given in Consciousness, and not the Movement"


Part II: "Deep-Seated Feelings"

§6 "Different Kinds of Intensities (I) Deep-Seated Psychic States (2) Muscular Effort. Intensity is More Easily Definable in the Former Case"

§7 "Take, for Example, the Progress of a Desire"

§8 "The Emotions of Joy and Sorrow. Their Successive Stages Correspond to Qualitative Changes in the Whole of Our Psychic States"


Part III: "The Aesthetic Feelings"

§9 "The Aesthetic Feelings. Their Increasing Intensities are Really Different Feelings"

Herbert Spencer's and Henri Bergson's Grace

§10 "The Feeling of Beauty: Art Puts to Sleep Our Active and Resistant Powers and Makes Us Responsive to Suggestion"

§11 "Stages in the Aesthetic Emotion"


Part IV: "The Moral Feelings"

§12 "The Moral Feelings. Pity. Its Increasing Intensity is a Qualitative Progress"


Part V: "Muscular Effort"

§13 "Conscious States Connected with External Causes or Involving Physical Symptoms"

§14 "Muscular Effort seems at First Sight to be Quantitative"

Tempestuous Intensities: Pent-Up Raging Winds of Aeolus in Bergson's Tense Body

Bergson's Bain: Psychic Forces of Muscular Motion

§15 "The Feeling of Effort. We are Conscious not of an Expenditure of Force but of the Resulting Muscular Movement"

Bergson with Ferrier's Finger on the Trigger: Extending Sensation Beyond Physical Forces

§16 "Intensity of Feeling of Effort Proportional to Extent of our Body Affected"

§17 "Our Consciousness of an Increase of Muscular Effort Consists in the Perception of (1) a Greater Number of Peripheral Sensations (2) a Qualitative change in Some of Them"


Part VI: "Attention and Tension"

§18 "The Same Definition of Intensity Applies to Superficial Efforts, Deep-Seated Feelings and States Intermediate between the Two"

§19 "The Intermediate States. Attention and Its Relation to Muscular Contraction"


Part VII: "Violent Emotions"

§20 "The Intensity of Violent Emotions"

The Bodily Rage of Darwin and James

§21 "Intensity and Reflex Movements"

Herbert Spencer's Trembling Terror and Darwin's Flush-Faced Love


Part VIII: "Affective Sensations"

§22 "Magnitude of Sensations. Affective and Representative Sensations"

§23 "Affective Sensations and Organic Disturbance"

§24 "Pleasure and Pain as Signs of the Future Reaction rather than Psychic Translations of the Past Stimulus"

§25 "Intensity of Affective Sensations would then be our Consciousness of the Involuntary Movements Tending to Follow the Stimulus"

§26 "Intensity of a Pain Estimated by Extent of Organism Affected"

Darwin's Teeth Gnashed Infernal: Inescapable Agony Expressed by Every Part of the Body

§27 "Pleasures Compared by Bodily Inclination"


Part IX: "Representative Sensations"

§28 "The Intensity of Representative Sensations"

§29 "The Purely Representative Sensations are Measured by their External Causes"


Part X: "Sensation of Sound"

§30 "The Sensations of Sound-Intensity Measured by Effort Necessary to Produce a Similar Sound"

§31 "Intensity and Pitch. The Part Played by Muscular Effort"



Part XI: "Sensation of Heat"


§32 "The Sensations of Heat and Cold. These Soon Become Affective and are Measured by Reactions Called forth"



Part XII: "Sensation of Weight"


§33 "The Sensations of Pressure and Weight Measured by Extent of Organism Affected"



Part XIII: "Sensation of Light"


§34 "The Sensation of Light. Qualitative Changes of Colour Interpreted as Quantitative Changes in Intensity of Luminous Source"

§35 "Does Experiment Prove that We can Measure Directly our Sensations of Light?

§36 "Photometric Experiments. We Perceive Different Shades and afterwards Interpret Them as Decreasing Intensities of White Light"

§37 "In Photometric Experiments the Physicist Compares, not Sensations, but Physical Effects"

§38 "The Psychophysicist Claims to Compare and Measure Sensations. Delboeuf's Experiments"

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

§40 "This is Just the Case with Differences of Intensity in Sensations of Light. Delboeuf's Underlying Postulate"


Part XIV: Psychophysics

§41 "Fechner's Psychophysics. Weber's Law."

Weber's Law

§42 "The Underlying Assumptions and the Process by which Fechner's Law is Reached"

Fechner's Law Simplified

§43 "Can Two Sensations Be Equal Without Being Identical?"

§44 "Fechner's Method of Minimum Differences"

§45 "Break-down of the Assumption that the Sensation is a Sum, and the Minimum Differences Quantities"

§46 "We Can Speak of 'Arithmetical Difference' Only in a Conventional Sense"

§47 "Delboeuf's Results Seem More Plausible, but, in the End, All Psychophysics Revolves in a Vicious Circle"

§48 "Psychophysics Merely Pushes to its Extreme Consequences the Fundamental but Natural Mistake of Regarding Sensations as Magnitudes"

§49 "Thus Intensity Judged (1) in Representative States by an Estimate of the Magnitude of the Cause (2) in Affective States by Multiplicity of Psychic Phenomena Involved"



Chapter II, "The Multiplicity of Conscious States," "The Idea of Duration"


Part XV: Numerical Multiplicity and Space


§50 "What is Number?"

§51 "The Units which Make up a Number Must be Identical"

§52 "But They Must Also be Distinct"

§53 "We Cannot Form an Image or Idea of Number without the Accompanying Intuition of Space"

§54 "All Unity is the Unity of a Simple Act of the Mind. Units Divisible Only Because Regarded as Extended in Space"

§55 "Number in Process of Formation is Discontinuous, but, When Formed, is Invested with the Continuity of Space"

§56 "It Follows that Number is Actually Thought of as a Juxtaposition in Space"

§57 "Two Kinds of Multiplicity: (1) Material Objects, Counted in Space; (2) Conscious States, not Countable Unless Symbolically Represented in Space"

§58 "The Impenetrability of Matter is not a Physical but a Logical Necessity"

§59 "Homogeneous Time as the Medium in which Conscious States Form Discrete Series. This Time is Nothing but Space, and Pure Duration is Something Different"


Part XVII: Space and Homogeneity

§60 "Does Space Exist Independently of Its Contents as Kant Held?"

Entry Directory, Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, The Transcendental Aesthetic

§61 "The Empiricists Really Agree with Kant, for Extensity Cannot Result from Synthesis of Unextended Sensations without an Act of the Mind"

§62 "This Act Consists in the Intuition of an Empty Homogeneous Medium: Perhaps Peculiar to Man and not Shared by Animals"

Lotze's Local Signs


Part XVIII: Homogeneous Time and Space

§63 "Time, in so far as It is a Homogeneous Medium, and not Concrete Duration, is Reducible to Space"


Part XIX: Duration, Succession and Space

§64 "Mistake of the Attempt to Derive Relations of Extensity from Those of Succession. The Conception of 'Pure Duration'"

§65 "Succession cannot be Symbolized as a Line without Introducing the Idea of Space of Three Dimensions"


Part XX: Pure Duration

§66 "Pure Duration is Wholly Qualitative. It cannot be Measured unless Symbolically Represented in Space"


Part XXI: Is Duration Measurable?

§67 "Time, as dealt with by the Astronomer and the Physicist, does indeed seem to be Measurable and therefore Homogeneous"

§68 "But What We Call Measuring Time is Nothing but Counting Simultaneities. The Clock Taken as an Illustration"


Part XXII: Is Motion Measurable?

§69 "Two Elements in Motion: (1) the Space Traversed, which is Homogeneous and Divisible; (2) the Act of Traversing, Indivisible and Real only for Consciousness"


Part XXIII: The Eleatic Paradox

§70 "The Common Confusion between Motion and the Space Traversed Gives Rise to the Paradoxes of the Eleatics"

Évellin, Infini et quantité, Chapitre 2, I: "Le lieu en soi ou le lieu réel"

Part XXIV: Duration and Simultaneity

§71 "Science has to Eliminate Duration from Time and Mobility before It can Deal with Them"


Part XXV: Velocity and Simultaneity

§72 "This is Seen in the Definition of Velocity"

§73 "Mechanics Deals with Equations, which Express Something Finished, and not Processes, such as Duration and Motion"

§74 "Conclusion: Space Alone is Homogeneous: Duration and Succession Belong not to the External World, but to the Conscious Mind"


Part XXVI: Two Kinds of Multiplicity

§75 "Two Kinds of Multiplicity: Two Senses of the Word 'Distinguish.' The One Qualitative and the Other Quantitative."


Part XXVII: Real Duration

§76 "Our Successive Sensations are Regarded as Mutually External, like their Objective Causes, and This Reacts on our Deeper Psychic Life"

§77 "Eliminate the Superficial Psychic States and We no longer Perceive a Homogeneous Time or Measure Duration, but Feel It as a Quality"


Part XXVIII: The Two Aspects of the Self
Les deux aspects de moi















Part LII
Real Duration and Prediction
"La durée réelle et la contingence"

§114 Is prediction of an act possible? Probable and infallible conclusions.

§115 To know completely the antecedents and conditions of an action is to be actually performing it.

§116 Hence meaningless to ask whether an act can be foreseen when all its antecedents are given.

§117 The two fallacies involved: (1) regarding intensity as a magnitude, not a quality; (2) substituting material symbol for dynamic process.

§118 Claiming to foresee an action always comes back to confusing time with space

§119 Confusion arising from prediction of astronomical phenomena

§120 Illustration from hypothetical acceleration of physical movement.

§121 Astronomical prophecy such an acceleration

§122 In dealing with states of consciousness we cannot vary their duration without altering their nature

§123 Difference between past and future duration in this respect



Conclusion


Part CXVI: No Duration in the External World


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