Bergson, Time and Free Will, Chapter 1,§22 "Magnitude of Sensations. Affective and Representative Sensations"

by Corry Shores
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[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 VIII: "Affective Sensations"

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

Up to this point, Bergson has analyzed sensations that do not depend entirely on external causes.

[Recall that for Hume, the human mind has two sorts of perceptions: impressions and ideas. They differ only in degree. Impressions press upon us with greater force and vivacity.]

Bergson will now distinguish between affective sensations and representative sensations. This will allow him to answer two question:

1) what determines the intensity of a sensation?

2) sensations are said to have an external cause. We may measure this cause, for the purpose of determining the sensation's intensity. But then we are converting something extensive (the external cause) with something inextensive (the internal sensation). So how do we make such a conversion from extensive to inextensive?

Just like Hume's impressions and ideas, affective and representative sensations "pass gradually from the one to the other." But just as that did not stop Hume from analyzing them separately, so too will Bergson examine each in its turn so to explain the intensity of sensation. (31-32)

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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