Henri Bergson: my intuition, your duration. Your intuition, my duration. Let's just say our intuition of the entire duration.

So, we're starting to branch a little more into our studies to focus in on some philosophical views of time. This is because we have some story ideas dealing with the subject matter and hope to weave a bit of philosophy into our fiction. Some of these philosophers, like Henri Bergson can be called proponents of process philosophy. I like to think that I am a bit of a process author. The books are always in process, never quite reaching their end. Unfortunately most process philosophers believe that is because philosophy is itself the process with no end other than the process being the end itself. My books however have no end because I can't quite seem to finish. But, nonetheless A Cornish Mess & Other Stories Loosely Revolving Around The Notion of Time is in process.

Now, for all things that I am and hope to be, a mathematician is not one of them. My study of time is more concerned with how time is perceived and experienced rather than the equations that follow up those beliefs or are foundations to those beliefs. I take very seriously the axiom Know Thyself and know that I am insufficient in math with little hope of becoming sufficient. For that reason I cower in fear at any type of math that throws in more than a single Greek Letter. When the equations subsist mostly of such symbols I find myself wandering deep into some void in the time space continuum. It shall invariably be this way. But, defeatism aside I don't have such a great appetite for mathematics as I do philosophy or theology, so it works out. Forgive me if the math behind some of my philosophical meanderings leaves my equations unbalanced. And so we now digress to the subject matter at hand, the philosophy of Henri Bergson and specifically the notions of Duration and Intuition.

Bergson seems to have developed his theories on time because of a number of factors. First, he seems to have lost his religion in response to the growing scientific studies surrounding evolution, specifically Darwin's theories and the inadequacy of Herbert Spencer's philosophies. As an aside, I simply cannot comprehend the ongoing battle of Evolution and Religion. It seems so farcical that these be such necessary enemies. Evolution neither proves nor disproves Scripture and Scripture neither proves nor disproves Evolution. One is a science, an attempt to understand the physical nature of things. The paradigms of these will shift as science increasingly outdoes itself building upon and subtracting from earlier models. Scripture (religion) is the attempt to understand the other nature of things, the spiritual nature of things. While the spiritual nature and the physical nature of things are not mutually exclusive a revelation in one does not negate an aspect of the other. They may illuminate one another, but cannot eliminate one another. And this isn't a bad thing either. But, that is an entirely different discussion!

Bergson developed his theories based on a few experiences he had in his life. The first of which is the loss of his Jewish faith on account of the Darwinian theory of evolution. His adherence to the Darwinian notions of evolution and other's theories of evolution led him to reject some of Spencer's philosophical framework built upon Darwinian evolution. He also seems to have been completely unsatisfied with the Kantian notion of knowledge. Whereas Immanuel Kant felt that we can only know the object as it appeared to us, Bergson believed that we can know the object in and of itself. Whereas Kant felt that free will could only exist outside of the framework of time and space, Bergson defended the notion of free will by correcting some of Kant's reasoning. Another major vein of thought that comes out of Bergson is the continuity of life, the continuity of thought, the continuity of everything. In this he is building on the evolutionary theories and extending them to a number of other fields. This is why he is sometimes lumped in with process philosophers. Everything to him was a continuation of whatever was before it. But, he was very against the mechanistic and deterministic philosophies of his age and preceding ones. He wasn't strict on causality and he didn't feel that all of this process was working towards some end (teleology or finalism). Bergson's work proceeds then from a rejection of the Judaism of his youth, the rejection of Kantian rationalism, and from the rejection of mechanistic philosophies (his defense of free will) and the rejection of teleological necessity.

There's a lot of fascinating stuff in Bergson and a lot of stuff that probably goes above my intellectual comprehension, but what I'm focusing on is two primary things of his thought, intuition and duration.

Intuition is the experiencing of an object to grasp what is unique and ineffable about that object. In his intuition Bergson states we can know the object absolutely and thus rejecting Kant's knowledge of the thing as it appears to us. For Bergson, intuition was necessary to understanding the metaphysical nature of things, that is to understand the object itself in an absolute way, the way it is, not the way it appears to us. For Bergson, metaphysics has to dispense with symbols in order to grasp an absolute. Since words are in and of themselves symbols explaining things in their absolute sense is only partially possible. Because of this Bergson liked to use word pictures rather than concepts in his writings and would admit that even these are inadequate. For Bergson intuition then is only achievable through experience.

Intuition is crucial to duration. Duration is difficult to explain because it occurs through intuition. You and I experience duration because we are using intuition even if we don't realize it. But, explaining it is a bit dodgy because our experience of the same object is never the same. Even if I were to explain my experience to my younger self who had also experienced the same object through intuition our word pictures would inadequately describe them because both of us (I and myself) experienced the intuition from different vantage points. My older self had different memories going into the experience than my younger self going into the exact same experience. Now, what on earth does this have to do with the subject at hand, specifically time?

Time was for Bergson something that was impossible for mathematics and science to explain. This is because time, at its very essence is something that you must experience. We all experience time and we have the intuition of it because we are aging at every moment. We can look back at those moments and dissect them, but when we do we experience those moments differently because we have now gained other memories and experiences. Bergson rejected time as being something that is divisible and so got around Zeno's paradoxes. Time was not something that could be divided because it was a progression. Ok, so this is where Bergson comes to his climax.

Time is impossible for mathematics to explain because time is a progression and in order to explain time it must be divided into measurable parts. By taking the progression and making it a thing (in order to measure it in mathematical or scientific ways) we as philosopher's become confused. Hence we have Zeno's paradoxes, Kant's rejection of free will inside of time and the notion of determinism. But, the reality of the situation is that time is a progression that must be experienced whole - it is indivisible. As such there can be no determinism because causation cannot occur unless things must happen first to cause the second. Because determinism does not exist free will exists because if nothing is determined than everything is free will. The problems of Zeno's paradoxes and that of free will are only created when philosophers take something that is indivisible and the divide it up.

So, where is the story material? Not sure yet, but I like the idea of the younger self and the older self experiencing the same item simultaneously and then not being able to translate their experiences to one another because of the problems of symbols. Bergson's notion of the spools and the images of the colors should be incorporated in as well.