Books: The Misuse of Mind
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Karin Stephen >> The Misuse of Mind
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It is true that there is some correspondence between the actual facts
and the common sense world of solid tables and so on, and we usually
jump to the conclusion that this correspondence would not be possible
unless the facts had common qualities. There is no denying that facts
can be classified and it seems only natural to take it for granted
that whatever can be classified must share some quality with whatever
belongs to the same class, that, indeed, it is just on account of all
sharing the same common quality that facts can be classified as being
all of the same kind. Thus common sense takes it for granted that all
facts which can be classified as red, and so explained by all the
general laws which we know about the relation of red things to other
things, must share a common quality of redness. It seems only natural
to make this assumption because we are so used to making it, but if we
stop to examine the facts which we know directly we discover that they
do not bear it out, and we are gradually driven to the conclusion that
it is quite unwarranted. It is only bit by bit, as we gradually
accustom ourselves to doubting what we have been accustomed to take
for granted, that we realize how ill this assumption fits the facts.
CHAPTER II
FACT
COMMON sense starts out with the assumption that what we know directly
is such things as trees, grass, anger, hope and so on, and that these
things have qualities such as solidity, greenness, unpleasantness and
so on, which are also facts directly known. It is not very difficult
to show that, if we examine the facts which we know directly, we
cannot find in them any such things as trees, grass, or minds, over
and above the various qualities which we say belong to them. I see one
colour and you see another: both of them are colours belonging to the
grass but neither of us can find anything among the facts known to him
corresponding to this grass, regarded as something over and above its
various qualities, to which those qualities are supposed to belong.
This drives common sense back unto its second line of defence where it
takes up the much stronger position of asserting that, while trees,
grass, minds, etc., are not among the facts directly known, their
qualities of solidity, greenness, etc., are. It is usual to add that
these qualities are signs of real trees, grass, etc., which exist
independently but are only known to us through their qualities.
It is much harder to attack this position, but its weakness is best
exposed by considering change as we know it directly, and comparing
this with change as represented in terms of qualities. Change, when
represented in terms of qualities, forms a series in which different
qualities are strung together one after the other by the aid of
temporal relations of before and after. The change perceived when we
look at the spectrum would thus have to be described in terms of a
series of colours, red before orange, orange before yellow, yellow
before green, and so on. We might certainly go into greater detail
than this, distinguishing any number of shades in each of the colours
mentioned, but the description would still have to be given in the
same form, that of a series of different colours, or shades of colour,
strung together by relations of before and after. Now the fact which
we know directly does not change so: it forms a continuous becoming
which is not made up of any number, however great, of fixed stages.
When we want to represent this changing fact in terms of qualities we
have to put together a series of qualities, such as red, orange, etc.,
and then say that "the colour" changes from one of these to another.
We pretend that there is "a colour" which is not itself either red or
green or orange or blue, which changes into all these different
colours one after another. It is not very difficult to see that this
abstract colour which is neither red nor orange nor green nor blue is
not a fact but only an abstraction which is convenient for purposes of
description: it is not quite so easy to see that this criticism
applies equally to each of the separate colours, red, orange, etc.,
and yet a little attention shows that these also are really nothing
but abstractions. With reference to the whole changing fact which is
known directly through any period the change in respect of colour is
clearly an abstraction. But just as there is no "colour" over and
above the red, the orange, the green, etc., which we say we see, so
there is really no "red," "orange," "green," over and above the
changing process with which we are directly acquainted. Each of these,
the red, the orange, and so on, just like the abstract "colour," is
simply a fictitious stage in the process of changing which it is
convenient to abstract when we want to describe the process but which
does not itself occur as a distinct part in the actual fact.
Change, as we know it directly, does not go on between fixed points
such as these stages which we abstract, it goes on impartially, as it
were, through the supposed stages just as much as in between them. But
though fixed stages are not needed to enable change to occur, simply
as a fact, they are needed if we are to describe change and explain it
in terms of general laws. Qualities are assumptions required, not in
order that change may take place, but in order that we may describe,
explain, and so control it. Such particular qualities as red and green
are really no more facts directly known than such still more general,
and so more obviously fictitious notions as a colour which is of no
particular shade, or a table, or a mind, apart from its qualities or
states. All these fixed things are alike abstractions required for
explaining facts directly known but not occurring as actual parts of
those facts or stages in their change.
Thus it appears that the common sense world of things and qualities
and events is in the same position, with regard to the actual facts
directly known as scientific hypotheses such as forces, electrons, and
so on, in their various relations: none of these actually form parts
of the fact, all of them are abstractions from the fact itself which
are useful for explaining and so controlling it. Common sense stops
short at things and qualities and events; science carries the
abstraction further, that is all the difference: the aim in both cases
is the same, the practical one of explaining and so controlling facts
directly known. In both cases the method employed is the intellectual
method of abstraction which begins by discriminating within the whole
field directly known in favour of just so much as will enable us to
classify it and ignoring the rest, and then proceeds to confuse even
this selected amount of the actual fact with the abstract classes or
other symbols in terms of which it is explained. We have just seen how
the result, the worlds of common sense or science, differ from the
actual facts in the way in which they change: these worlds of
abstractions represent change as a series of fixed stages united by
temporal relations, while the actual fact forms a continuous process
of becoming which does not contain any such fixed points, as stages in
relations.
The more we shake ourselves free from the common sense and scientific
bias towards substituting explanations for actual facts the more
clearly we see that this continuous process of changing is the very
essence of what we know directly, and the more we realize how unlike
such a continuous process is to any series of stages in relation of
succession.
The unsatisfactoriness of such descriptions is no new discovery: the
logical difficulties connected with the attempt to describe change in
terms of series of successive things or events have been familiar
since the time when Zeno invented the famous dilemma of Achilles' race
with the tortoise. Mathematicians have been in the habit of telling us
that these difficulties depend simply on the fact that we imagine the
series of positions at which Achilles and the tortoise find themselves
from moment to moment as finite: the device of the infinite series,
they say, satisfies all the requirements needed for representing
change and solves all the logical difficulties which arise from it.
Bergson's difficulties, however, cannot be solved in this way for they
are not based upon the discovery of logical absurdities but upon the
discrepancy between the description and the fact. What he maintains is
that the description of change in terms of an infinite series of
stages leaves out the change altogether. Zeno's logical dilemma as to
how Achilles could ever catch up with the tortoise provided the
tortoise was given a start, however small, may be countered by the
ingenuity of the mathematicians' infinite series. Bergson's difficulty
turns on a question of fact, not of logic, and cannot be so met. He
solves the problem simply by denying that Achilles or the tortoise
ever are at particular points at particular moments. Such a
description of change, he says, leaves out the real changing. And the
introduction of the notion of an infinite series only makes the matter
worse. For stages do not change, and so, if there is to be any change,
it must, presumably, take place in between one stage and the next. But
in between any two stages of an infinite series there are supposed to
be an infinite number of other stages, so that to any given stage
there is no next stage. Change, therefore, cannot take place between
one stage and the next one, there being no next one, and since it is
equally impossible that it should take place at any one of the stages
themselves it follows that an infinite series of stages leaves out
change altogether. Similarly a series of instants before and after one
another leaves out of time just the element of passage, becoming,
which is its essence.
The truth, Bergson says, is that with fixed stages, no matter how many
you take, and no matter in what relation you arrange them, you cannot
reproduce the change and time which actually occur as facts directly
known. If Achilles or the tortoise are ever at different places at
different moments then neither of them really moves at all. Change and
time, as represented by abstractions, according to the intellectual
method, consist of stages in relations of succession, but the fact
does not happen by stages and is not held together by relations: if we
compare the representation with the fact we find that they differ
profoundly in their form.
According to Bergson this difference in form is one of the two
essential respects in which abstractions fail to represent facts and
in which, consequently, we are led into error as to the facts if we
fail to distinguish them from the abstractions in terms of which we
explain them, or take for granted that they correspond exactly with
our explanations.
Bergson gives the name "space" to the form which belongs to
abstractions but not to actual facts: abstractions, he says, are
"spatial," but facts are not. This use of the word "space" is peculiar
and perhaps unfortunate. Even as it is ordinarily used the word
"space" is ambiguous, it may mean either the pure space with which
higher mathematics is concerned, or the public space which contains
the common sense things and objects and their qualities which make up
the every day world, or the private space of sensible perception. When
Bergson speaks of "space," however, he does not mean either pure or
public or private space, he means an a priori form imposed by
intellectual activity upon its object. This resembles Kant's use of
the word, but Bergson's "space" is not, like Kant's, the a priori form
of sense acquaintance, but of thought, in other words logical form.
For Bergson "spatial" means "logical," and since so much
misunderstanding seems to have been caused by his using the word
"space" in this peculiar sense we shall perhaps do better in what
follows to use the word "logical" instead.
Now whatever is logical is characterised by consisting of distinct,
mutually exclusive terms in external relations: all schemes, for
instance, and diagrams, such as a series of dots one above the other,
or one below the other, or one behind, or in front of the other, or a
series of instants one after the other, or a series of numbers, or
again any arrangements of things or qualities according to their
relations, such as colours or sounds arranged according to their
resemblance or difference; in all these each dot or instant or number
or colour-shade or note, is quite distinct from all the others, and
the relations which join it to the others and give it its position in
the whole series are external to it in the sense that if you changed
its position or included it in quite another series it would
nevertheless still be just the same dot or instant or number or
quality as before.
These two logical characteristics of mutual distinction of terms and
externality of relations certainly do belong to the abstractions
employed in explanations, and we commonly suppose that they belong to
everything else besides. Bergson, however, believes that these logical
characteristics really only belong to abstractions and are not
discovered in facts but are imposed upon them by our intellectual
bias, in the sense that we take it for granted that the facts which we
know directly must have the same form as the abstractions which serve
to explain them.
This habit of taking it for granted that not only our abstractions but
also the actual facts have the logical characteristics of consisting
of mutually exclusive terms joined by external relations is, according
to Bergson, one of the two serious respects in which our intellectual
bias distorts our direct acquaintance with actual fact. He points out,
as we saw, that the facts with which we are acquainted are in constant
process of changing, and that, when we examine carefully what is
actually going on, we discover that this change does not really form a
series of distinct qualities or percepts or states, united by external
relations of time, resemblance, difference, and so on, but a
continuous process which has what we might call a qualitative flavour
but in which distinct qualities, states and so on do not occur.
"Considered in themselves" he says, "profound states of consciousness
have no relation to quantity: they are mingled in such a way that it
is impossible to say whether they are one or many, or indeed to
examine them from that point of view without distorting them." Now,
strictly speaking, of course, these "states of consciousness" ought
not to be referred to in the plural, it is, in fact, a contradiction
to speak of "states of consciousness" having "no relation to
quantity": a plurality must always form some quantity. This
contradiction is the natural consequence of attempting to put what is
non-logical into words. It would have been just as bad to have
referred to "the state of consciousness," in the singular, while at
the same time insisting that it contained resemblance and difference.
The fact is that plurality and unity, like distinct terms and external
relations, apply only to whatever has logical form, and Bergson's
whole point is to deny that the fact (or facts) directly known have
this form, and so that any of these notions apply to it (or them.)
This, of course, raises difficulties when we try to describe the facts
in words, since words stand for abstractions and carry their logical
implications. All descriptions in words of what is non-logical are
bound to be a mass of contradictions, for, having applied any word it
is necessary immediately to guard against its logical implications by
adding another which contradicts them. Thus we say our experience is
of facts, and must then hastily add that nevertheless they are not
plural, and we must further qualify this statement by adding that
neither are they singular. A description of what is non-logical can
only convey its meaning if we discount all the logical implications of
the words which, for want of a better medium of expression, we are
driven to employ. Our whole intellectual bias urges us towards
describing everything that comes within our experience, even if the
description is only for our own private benefit Unfortunately the
language in which these descriptions have to be expressed is so full
of logical implications that, unless we are constantly on our guard,
we are liable to be carried away by them, and then, at once, we lose
contact with the actual facts.
In order to get round this almost universal tendency to confuse
abstractions with facts Bergson sometimes tries to get us to see the
facts as they actually are by using metaphor instead of description in
terms of abstract general notions. He has been much criticised for
this but there is really a good deal to be said for attempting to
convey facts by substituting metaphors for them rather than by using
the ordinary intellectual method of substituting abstractions reached
by analysis. Those who have criticised the use of metaphor have for
the most part not realized how little removed such description is from
the ordinary intellectual method of analysis. They have supposed that
in analysis we stick to the fact itself, whereas in using metaphor we
substitute for the fact to be described some quite different fact
which is only connected with it by a more or less remote analogy. If
Bergson's view of the intellectual method is right, however, when we
describe in abstract terms arrived at by analysis we are not sticking
to the facts at all, we are substituting something else for them just
as much as if we were using an out and out metaphor. Qualities and all
abstract general notions are, indeed, nothing but marks of analogies
between a given fact and all the other facts belonging to the same
class: they may mark rather closer analogies than those brought out by
an ordinary metaphor, but on the other hand in a frank metaphor we at
least stick to the concrete, we substitute fact for 'fact and we are
in no danger of confusing the fact introduced by the metaphor with the
actual fact to which the metaphor applies. In description in terms of
abstract general notions such as common qualities we substitute for
fact something which is not fact at all, we lose touch with the
concrete and, moreover, we are strongly tempted to confuse fact with
abstraction and believe that the implications of the abstraction apply
to the fact, or even that the abstraction is itself a real part of the
fact.
Language plays a most important part in forming our habit of treating
all facts as material for generalisation, and it is largely to the
influence of the words which we use for describing facts that Bergson
attributes our readiness to take it for granted that facts have the
same logical form as abstractions. It is language again which makes it
so difficult to point out that this assumption is mistaken, because,
actually, the form of facts is non-logical, a continuous process and
not a series. The only way to point this out is by describing the
nature of the non-logical facts as contrasted with a logical series,
but the language in which our description of the non-logical facts has
to be conveyed is itself full of logical implications which contradict
the very point we are trying to bring out. Descriptions of non-logical
processes will only be intelligible if we discount the logical
implications inherent in the words employed, but in order to be
willing to discount these implications it is necessary first to be
convinced that there is anything non-logical to which such a
description could apply. And yet how can we be convinced without first
understanding the description? It appears to be a vicious circle, and
so it would be if our knowledge of change as a process really depended
upon our understanding anybody's description of it. According to
Bergson, however, we all do know such a process directly; in fact, if
he is right, we know nothing else directly at all. The use of
description is not to give us knowledge of the process, that we
already have, but only to remind us of what we really knew all along,
but had rather lost contact with and misinterpreted because of our
preoccupation with describing and explaining it. Bergson's criticism
of our intellectual methods turns simply upon a question of fact, to
be settled by direct introspection. If, when we have freed ourselves
from the preconceptions created by our normal common sense
intellectual point of view, we find that what we know directly is a
non-logical process of becoming, then we must admit that intellectual
thinking is altogether inappropriate and even mischievous as a method
of speculation.
It is one of Bergson's chief aims to induce us to regain contact with
our direct experience, and it is with this in view that he spends so
much effort in describing what the form of this experience actually
is, and how it compares with the logical form which belongs to
abstractions, that is with what he calls "space."
The form which belongs to facts but not to abstractions Bergson calls
"duration." Duration can be described negatively by saying that it is
non-logical, but when we attempt any positive description language
simply breaks down and we can do nothing but contradict ourselves.
Duration does not contain parts united by external relations: it does
not contain parts at all, for parts would constitute fixed stages,
whereas duration changes continuously.
But in order to describe duration at all we have logically only two
alternatives, either to speak of it as a plurality, and that implies
having parts, or else as a unity, and that by implication, excludes
change. Being particularly concerned to emphasise the changing nature
of what we know directly Bergson rejects the latter alternative: short
of simply giving up the attempt to describe it he has then no choice
but to treat this process which he calls duration as a plurality and
this drives him into speaking of it as if it had parts. To correct
this false impression he adds that these parts are united, not, like
logical parts, by external relations, but in quite a new way, by
"synthesis." "Parts" united by synthesis have not the logical
characteristics of mutual distinction and externality of relations,
they interpenetrate and modify one another. In a series which has
duration (such a thing is a contradiction in terms, but the fault lies
with the logical form of language which, in spite of its
unsatisfactoriness we are driven to employ if we want to describe at
all) the "later parts" are not distinct from the "earlier": "earlier
and" "later" are not mutually exclusive relations.
Bergson says, then, that the process of duration which we know
directly, if it is to be called a series at all, must be described as
a series whose "parts" interpenetrate, and this is the first important
respect in which non-logical duration differs from a logical series.
In "a series" which is used to describe duration not only are the
"parts" not distinct but "their relations" are not external in the
sense, previously explained, in which logical relations are external
to the terms which they relate. A logical term in a logical series can
change its position or enter into a wholly different series and still
remain the same term. But the terms in a series which has duration
(again this is absurd) are what they are just because of their
position in the whole stream of duration to which they belong: to
transfer them from one position in the series to another would be to
alter their whole flavour which depends upon having had just that
particular past and no other. As illustration we might take the last
bar of a tune. By itself, or following upon other sounds not belonging
to the tune, this last bar would not be itself, its particular quality
depends upon coming at the end of that particular tune. In a process
of duration, then, such as tune, the "later" bars are not related
externally to the "earlier" but depend for their character upon their
position in the whole tune. In actual fact, of course, the tune
progresses continuously, and not by stages, such as distinct notes or
bars, but if, for the sake of description, we speak of it as composed
of different bars, we must say that any bar we choose to distinguish
is modified by the whole of the tune which has gone before it: change
its position in the whole stream of sound to which it belongs and you
change its character absolutely.
This means that in change such as this, change, that is, which has
duration, repetition is out of the question. Take a song in which the
last line is sung twice over as a refrain: the notes, we say, are
repeated, but the second time the line occurs the actual effect
produced is different, and that, indeed, is the whole point of a
refrain. This illustrates the second important difference which
Bergson wants to bring out between the forms of change which belong
respectively to non-logical facts and to the logical abstractions by
which we describe them, that is between duration as contrasted with a
logical series of stages. The notes are abstractions assumed to
explain the effect produced, which is the actual fact directly known.
The notes are stages in a logical series of change, but their effects,
the actual fact, changes as a process of duration. From this
difference in their ways of changing there follows an important
difference between fact and abstraction, namely that, while the notes
can be repeated over again, the effect will never be the same as
before. This is because the notes, being abstractions, are not
affected by their relations which give them their position in the
logical series which they form, while their effect, being a changing
process, depends for its flavour upon its position in the whole
duration to which it belongs: this flavour grows out of the whole of
what has gone before, and since this whole is itself always growing by
the addition of more and more "later stages," the effect which it goes
to produce can never be the same twice over.
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