Bergson, Time and Free Will, Chapter 3, §119 Confusion arising from prediction of astronomical phenomena

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary. My commentary is in brackets.]

Henri Bergson

Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience

Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness

Chapter III. "The Organization of Conscious States. Free Will."

Chapitre III. "De l'organisation des états de conscience : la liberté."

Part LII: Real Duration and Prediction

"La durée réelle et la contingence"

§119 Confusion arising from prediction of astronomical phenomena

Peviously Bergson discussed a third fallacy that determinists commit. They argue we may predict the future-course of a person's mental-states and decisions, if we know everything about them up-to now. Bergson used his wavy line diagram to show that this involves a spatialization of time. But duration is not spatial at all.

Bergson now explains a possible reason we might think that we can make predictions. Astronomy does it all the time. They can foretell eclipses many centuries into the future. [See §71 for a previous discussion of astronomical prediction]. Although this is true, astronomers are not predicting someone's future voluntary actions. Bergson claims that "the future of the material universe, althought contemporaneous with the future of a conscious being, has no analogy to it" (193a). And there is something else that Bergson will explain later: the reasons why we are able to predict astronomical events are the same causes for why we cannot predict someone's future free choices.

Images from the English translation [click for an enlargement]:

Images from the original French [click 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.

Available online at:

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