Books: The Misuse of Mind
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Karin Stephen >> The Misuse of Mind
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In order to describe and explain this fact, however, we have to make
use of abstractions. Bergson describes the fact known directly by
sensible perception as a contraction of a period of the duration of
matter in which the "past" states of matter are preserved along with
the "present" and form a single whole with it. It is memory which
makes this difference between matter and the actual facts by
preserving "past" matter and combining it with "the present." A single
perceived fact, however, does not contain memories as distinct from
present material: the distinction between "past" and "present" does
not hold inside facts whose duration forms a creative whole and not a
logical series. Of course it is incorrect to describe facts as
"containing past and present matter," but, as we have often pointed
out, misleading though their logical implications are, we are obliged
to replace facts by abstractions when we want to describe them.
An example may perhaps convey what is meant by saying that a fact is a
contraction of a period of the duration of matter. Consider red,
bearing in mind that, when we are speaking of the fact actually
perceived when we see red we must discount the logical implications of
our words. Science says that red, the material, is composed of
immensely rapid vibrations of ether: red, the fact, we know as a
simple colour. Bergson accepts the scientific abstractions in terms of
which to describe matter, making the reservation that, if we are to
talk of matter as composed of vibrations, we must not say that these
vibrations last through a period of time or change by themselves,
apart from any memory which retains and so preserves the "past"
vibrations. If matter is to be thought of at all as existing apart
from any memory it must be thought of as consisting of a single
vibration in a perpetual present with no past. We might alter the
description and say that this present moment of matter should be
thought of as being perpetually destroyed and recreated.
Now according to Bergson the red which we know directly is a period of
the vibrations of matter contracted by memory so as to produce an
actual perceived fact. As matter red does not change, it is absolutely
discrete and complex, in a word, logical: as fact it is non-logical
and forms a creative process of duration. The difference between
matter and the actual fact is made by the mental act which holds
matter as it were in tension through a period of duration, when a fact
is produced, but which would have had to be absent if there had been
no fact but simply present matter. Bergson calls this act memory:
memory, he says, turns matter into fact by preserving its past along
with its present. Without memory there would be no duration and so no
change and no time. Matter, apart from memory would have no duration
and it is just in this that it is distinguished from actual fact.
It is, however, of course, only by making abstractions that we can say
what things would be like if something were taken away which actually
is not taken away. Matter never really does exist without memory nor
memory without its content, matter: the actual fact can only be
described as a combination of the two elements, but this description
must not lead us into supposing that the abstractions, matter and
memory, actually have independent existence apart from the fact which
they explain. Only the actual fact exists and it is not really made up
of two elements, matter and memory, but only described in terms of
these two abstractions.
Bergson's account of perception differs from the account ordinarily
given in that perception is not described as a relation which is
supposed to hold between a subject and an object: for Bergson there is
no "I," distinct from what is perceived, standing to it in a relation
of perception. For an object, to be perceived consists, not in being
related to a perceiver, but in being combined in a new way with other
objects. If an object is combined by synthesis with other objects then
it is perceived and so becomes a fact. But there is no mind over and
above the objects which perceives them by being related to them, or
even by performing an act of synthesis upon them. To speak of "our"
perceiving objects is a mere fiction: when objects are combined by
synthesis they become perceptions, facts, and this is the same as
saying that they are minds. For Bergson a mind is nothing but a
synthesis of objects. This explains what he means by saying that in
direct knowledge the perceiver is the object perceived.
Actually he thinks such notions as the perceiver and the object and
the relation which unites them, or again matter and the act of
synthesis which turns matter into fact, are nothing but abstractions:
the only thing there really is is simply the fact itself. These
abstractions, however, do somehow apply to the actual facts, and this
brings us back to our problem as to how it is that the actual fact,
which is in creative duration, lends itself to classification: how it
is that general laws in terms of abstractions which can be repeated
over and over again, can apply to the actual fact which does not
contain repetitions?
Facts lend themselves to explanation when they are perceived as
familiar. In this perceived familiarity, which is the basis of all
abstraction, and so of all description and explanation, past as well
as present is involved, the present owing its familiarity to our
memory of past facts. The obvious explanation of perceived
familiarity, would be, of course, to say that it results from our
perceiving similar qualities shared by past and present facts, or
relations of similarity holding between them. But Bergson must find
some other explanation than this since he denies that there can be
repetition in actual facts directly known.
Whenever there is actual fact there is memory, and memory creates
duration which excludes repetition. Perceived familiarity depends upon
memory but memory, according to Bergson, does not work by preserving a
series of repetitions for future reference. If we say that memory
connects "the past" with "the present" we must add that it destroys
their logical distinctness. But of course this is putting it very
badly: there is really no "logical distinctness" in the actual fact
for memory to "destroy": our language suggests that first there was
matter, forming a logical series of distinct qualities recurring over
and over, and then memory occurred and telescoped the series,
squeezing "earlier" and "later" moments into one another to make a
creative duration. Such a view is suggested by our strong bias towards
regarding abstractions as having independent existence apart from the
real fact from which they have been abstracted: if we can overcome
this bias the description will do well enough.
According to Bergson, as we have just seen, every actual fact must
contain some memory otherwise it would not be a fact but simply
matter, since it is an act of memory that turns matter into perceived
fact. Our ordinary more or less familiar facts, however, contain much
more than this bare minimum. The facts of everyday life are perceived
as familiar and classified from a vast number of points of view. When
you look at a cherry you recognise its colour, shape, etc., you know
it is edible, what it would taste like, whether it is ripe, and much
more besides, all at a glance. All this knowledge depends on memory,
memory gives meaning to what we might call bare sensation (which is
the same thing as Bergson's present matter) as opposed to the full
familiar fact actually experienced. Now the meaning is ordinarily
contained in the actual fact along with the bare sensation not as a
multiplicity of memories distinct from the bare sensation, but, as we
put it, at a glance. This peculiar flavour of a familiar fact can be
analysed out as consisting of memories of this or that past
experience, if we choose to treat it in that way, just as a fact can
be analysed into qualities. According to Bergson this analysis of the
meaning of a familiar fact into memories would have the same drawbacks
as the analysis of a present fact into qualities: it would leave out
much of the meaning and distort the rest. Bergson holds that wherever
there is duration the past must be preserved since it is just the
preservation of the past, the creation of fact by a synthesis of what,
out of synthesis, would be past and present, which constitutes
duration. The essential point about mental life is just the performing
of this act of synthesis which makes duration: wherever there is
mental life there is duration and so wherever there is mental life the
past is preserved. "Above everything," Bergson says, "consciousness
signifies memory. At this moment as I discuss with you I pronounce the
word "discussion." It is clear that my consciousness grasps this word
altogether; if not it would not see it as a unique word and would not
make sense of it. And yet when I pronounce the last syllable of the
word the two first ones have already been pronounced; relatively to
this one, which must then be called present, they are past. But this
last syllable "sion" was not pronounced instantaneously; the time,
however short, during which I was saying it, can be split up into
parts and these parts are past, relatively to the last of them, and
this last one would be present if it were not that it too can be
further split up: so that, do what you will, you cannot draw any line
of demarcation between past and present, and so between memory and
consciousness. Indeed when I pronounce the word "discussion" I have
before my mind, not only the beginning, the middle and the end of the
word, but also the preceding words, also the whole of the sentence
which I have already spoken; if it were not so I should have lost the
thread of my speech. Now if the punctuation of the speech had been
different my sentence might have begun earlier; it might, for
instance, have contained the previous sentence and my "present" would
have been still further extended into the past. Let us push this
reasoning to its conclusion: let us suppose that my speech has lasted
for years, since the first awakening of my consciousness, that it has
consisted of a single sentence, and that my consciousness has been
sufficiently detached from the future, sufficiently disinterested to
occupy itself exclusively in taking in the meaning of the sentence: in
that case I should not look for any explanation of the total
conservation of this sentence any more than I look for one of the
survival of the first two syllables of the word "discussion" when I
pronounce the last one. Well, I think that our whole inner life is
like a single sentence, begun from the first awakening of
consciousness, a sentence scattered with commas, but nowhere broken by
a full stop. And so I think that our whole past is there,
subconsciousI mean present to us in such a way that our consciousness,
to become aware of it, need not go outside itself nor add anything
foreign: to perceive clearly all that it contains, or rather all that
it is, it has only to put aside an obstacle, to lift a veil."[3]*
* L'Energie Spirituelle--"L'Ame et le Corps," pages 59 and 60.
If this theory of memory be correct, the occurrence of any present
bare sensation itself suffices to recall, in some sense, the whole
past. But this is no use for practical purposes, just as the whole of
the fact given in present perception is useless for practical purposes
until it has been analysed into qualities. According to Bergson we
treat the material supplied by memory in much the same way as that
supplied by perception. The whole field of the past which the present
calls up is much wider than what we actually remember clearly: what we
actually remember is arrived at by ignoring all the past except such
scraps as appear to form useful precedents for behaviour in the
present situation in which we find ourselves. Perhaps this explains
why sometimes, at the point of death, when useful behaviour is no
longer possible, this selection breaks down and the whole of the past
floods back into memory. The brain, according to Bergson, is the organ
whose function it is to perform this necessary work of selection out
of the whole field of virtual memory of practically useful fragments,
and so long as the brain is in order, only these are allowed to come
through into consciousness as clear memories. The passage just quoted
goes on to speak of "the part played by the brain in memory." "The
brain does not serve to preserve the past but primarily to obscure it,
and then to let just so much as is practically useful slip through."
But the setting of the whole past, though it is ignored for
convenience, still makes itself felt in the peculiar qualitative
flavour which belongs to every present fact by reason of its past.
Even in the case of familiar facts this flavour is no mere repetition
but is perpetually modified as the familiarity increases, and it is
just in this progressively changing flavour that their familiarity
consists.
An inspection of what we know directly, then, does not bear out the
common sense theory that perceived familiarity, upon which abstraction
and all description and explanation are based, consists in the
perception of similar qualities shared by present matter and the
matter retained by memory. A familiar fact appears to be, not a
repetition, but a new fact. This new fact may be described as
containing present and past bare sensations, but it must be added that
these bare sensations do not remain distinct things but are
synthesised by the act of perception into a fresh whole which is not
the sum of the bare sensations which it may be described as
containing. Such a perceived whole will be familiar, and so lend
itself to abstraction and explanation, in so far as the present bare
sensation which it contains, taken as mere matter (that is apart from
the act of perception which turns it from mere matter into actual
fact), would have been a repetition of some of the past bare
sensations which go to form its meaning and combine with it to create
the fact actually known. For bare sensation now may be a repetition of
past bare sensation though the full fact will always be something
fresh, its flavour changing as it grows more and more familiar by
taking up into itself more and more bare sensation which, taken in
abstraction, apart from the act of synthesis which turns it into
actual fact, would be repetitions. To take the example which we have
already used of perceiving first a rose and then a strawberry ice
cream: let us suppose that the rose was the very first occasion on
which you saw pink. The perceived fact on that occasion would, like
all perceived facts, be a combination of / past and present bare
sensations. It would I not be familiar because the elements of present
bare sensation would not be repetitions of the elements of past bare
sensation (always assuming, as we must for purposes of explanation,
that past and present bare sensations ever could be isolated from the
actual fact and still both exist, which, however, is not possible).
But when you saw the strawberry ice cream the past perceived rose
would be among the memories added to this bare sensation which
constitute its meaning and, by forming a synthesis with it, turn it
from mere matter into fact. The pink would now be perceived as
familiar because the pink of the rose (which as bare sensation is
similar to the bare sensation of strawberry-ice-cream-pink) would be
included, along with the present bare sensation of pink, in the whole
fact of the perception of strawberry ice cream.
Perceived fact, then, combines meaning and present bare sensation to
form a whole with a qualitative flavour which is itself always unique,
but which lends itself to abstraction in so far as the bare
sensations, past and present, which go to produce it, would, as matter
in isolation, be repetitions.
This qualitative flavour, however, is, of course, not a quality in the
logical sense which implies distinctness and externality of relations.
Facts have logical qualities only if they are taken in abstraction
isolated from their context. This is not how fact actually occurs.
Every fact occurs in the course of the duration of some mental life
which itself changes as a process of duration and not as a logical
series. The mental life of an individual is, as it were, a
comprehensive fact which embraces all the facts directly known to that
individual in a single process of creative duration. Facts are to the
mental life of an individual what bare sensation is to the actual fact
directly known in perception: facts are, as it were, the matter of
mental life. Imagine a fact directly known, such as we have described
in discussing sensible perception, lasting on and on, perpetually
taking up new bare sensations and complicating them with meaning which
consists of all the past which it already contains so as to make out
of this combination of past and present fresh fact, that will give you
some idea of the way in which Bergson thinks that mental life is
created out of matter by memory. Only this description is still
unsatisfactory because it is obliged to speak of what is created
either in the plural or in the singular and so fails to convey either
the differentiation contained in mental life or else its unbroken
continuity as all one fact progressively modified by absorbing more
and more matter.
If Bergson's account of the way in which memory works is true there is
a sense in which the whole past of every individual is preserved in
memory and all unites with any present bare sensation to constitute
the fact directly known to him at any given moment. If the continuity
of duration is really unbroken there is no possibility of any of the
past being lost.
This is why Bergson maintains that the whole of our past is contained
in our virtual knowledge: what he means by our virtual knowledge is
simply everything which enters into the process of duration which
constitutes our whole mental life. Besides our whole past this virtual
knowledge must also contain much more of present bare sensation than
we are usually aware of.
We said that, for Bergson, actual fact directly known was the only
reality; this actual fact, however, does not mean merely what is
present to the perception of a given individual at any given moment,
but the whole of our virtual knowledge. The field of virtual knowledge
would cover much the same region as the subconscious, which plays such
an important part in modern psychology. The limits of this field are
impossible to determine. Once you give up limiting direct knowledge to
the fact actually present in perception at any given moment it is
difficult to draw the line anywhere. And yet to draw the line at the
present moment is impossible for "the present moment" is clearly an
abstract fiction. For practical purposes "the present" is what is
known as "the specious present," which covers a certain ill-defined
period of duration from which the instantaneous "present moment" is
recognised to be a mere abstraction. According to Bergson, however,
just as "the present moment" is only an abstraction from a wider
specious present so this specious present itself is an abstraction
from a continuous process of duration from which other abstractions,
days, weeks, years, can be made, but which is actually unbroken and
forms a single continuous changing whole. And just as facts are only
abstractions from the whole mental life of an individual so
individuals must be regarded as abstractions from some more
comprehensive mental whole and thus our virtual knowledge seems not
merely to extend over the whole of what is embraced by our individual
acts of perception and preserved by our individual memories but
overflows even these limits and must be regarded as co-extensive with
the duration of the whole of reality.
It may be open to question how much of this virtual knowledge of both
past and present we ever could know directly in any sense comparable
to the way in which we know the fact actually presented at some given
moment, however perfectly we might succeed in ridding ourselves with
our intellectual pre-occupation with explaining instead of knowing;
but, if reality forms an unbroken whole in duration, we cannot in
advance set any limits, short of the whole of reality, to the field of
virtual knowledge. And it does really seem as if our pre-occupation
with discovering repetitions in the interests of explanation had
something to do with the limited extent of the direct knowledge which
we ordinarily enjoy, so that, if we could overcome this bias, we might
know more than we do now, though how much more it is not possible, in
advance, to predict. For in the whole field of virtual knowledge,
which appears to be continuous with the little scrap of fact which is
all that we usually attend to, present bare sensation and such bare
sensations as resemble it, form very insignificant elements: for
purposes of abstraction and explanation, however, it is only these
insignificant elements that are of any use. So long, therefore, as we
are preoccupied with abstraction, we must bend all our energies
towards isolating these fragments from the context which extends out
and out over the whole field of virtual knowledge, rivetting our
attention on them and, as far as possible, ignoring all the rest. If
Bergson's theory of virtual knowledge is correct, then, it does seem
as if normally our efforts were directed towards shutting out most of
our knowledge rather than towards enjoying it, towards forgetting the
greater part of what memory contains rather than towards remembering
it.
If we really could reverse this effort and concentrate upon knowing
the whole field of past and present as fully as possible, instead of
classifying it, which involves selecting part of the field and
ignoring the rest, it is theoretically conceivable that we might
succeed in knowing directly the whole of the process of duration which
constitutes the individual mental life of each one of us. And it is
not even certain that our knowledge must necessarily be confined
within the limits of what we have called our individual mental life.
Particular facts, as we have seen, are not really distinct parts of a
single individual mental life: the notion of separateness applies only
to abstractions and it is only because we are much more pre-occupied
with abstractions than with actual facts that we come to suppose that
facts can ever really be separate from one another. When we shake off
our common sense assumptions and examine the actual facts which we
know directly we find that they form a process and not a logical
series of distinct facts one after the other. Now on analogy it seems
possible that what we call individual mental lives are, to the wider
process which contains and constitutes the whole of reality, as
particular facts are to the whole process which constitutes each
individual mental life. The whole of reality may contain individual
lives as these contain particular facts, not as separate distinct
units in logical relations, but as a process in which the line of
demarcation between "the parts" (if we must speak of "parts") is not
clear cut. If this analogy holds then it is impossible in advance to
set any limits to the field of direct knowledge which it may be in our
power to secure by reversing our usual mental attitude and devoting
our energies simply to knowing, instead of to classifying and
explaining.
But without going beyond the limits of our individual experience, and
even without coming to know directly the whole field of past and
present fact which that experience contains, it is still a
considerable gain to our direct knowledge if we realize what false
assumptions our preoccupation with classification leads us to make
even about the very limited facts to which our direct knowledge is
ordinarily confined. We then realize that, besides being considerably
less than what we probably have it in our power to know, these few
facts that we do know are themselves by no means what we commonly
suppose them to be.
The two fundamental errors into which common sense leads us about the
facts are the assumptions that they have the logical form, that is
contain mutually exclusive parts in external relations, and that these
parts can be repeated over and over again. These two false assumptions
are summed up in the common sense view that the fact which we know
directly actually consists of events, things, states, qualities.
Bergson tells us that when once we have realized that this is not the
case we have begun to be philosophers.
Having stripped the veil of common sense assumptions from what we know
directly our task will then be to hold this direct knowledge before us
so as to know as much as possible. The act by which we know directly
is the very same act by which we perceive and remember; these are all
simply acts of synthesis, efforts to turn matter into creative
duration. What we have to do is, as it were, to make a big act of
perception to embrace as wild a field as possible of past and present
as a single fact directly known. This act of synthesis Bergson calls
"intuition."
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