Abstract
An important epistemological convention for scientific research is to make a strict separation between subject and object, between the scientist and that which this scientist observes and experiments upon. This convention becomes problematic, however, when the object of scientific study is the human subject. The conventions within which subject and object are defined come under pressure as soon as the focus of attention shifts towards the study of human consciousness itself. After all, what appears within the scope of our experience is something different that our possibility for experience itself – at least, in most commonly established ontological positions. A key aspect of Bergson’s philosophy is what he refers to as immediate data of consciousness. That which is given in an immediate sense is more basic than either the world of phenomena6 (that which appears to us) or the world of the noumena (that which exists in itself, outside of our experience), but it is even more basic than the subject of knowledge itself (the us to which everything appears). The human mind may capture the intricate mechanism of how a seed grows. Subsequently, the way in which this process is perceived may be studied by studying how the brain registers the shape, scent, colour, etc. of plants. The human soul may be enriched by this experience and the human heart may be touched by the beauty of life, etc., but all these processes presuppose something more primary: the immediacy of experience as such.
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Notes
- 1.
In the case of the heart, things are different again. It is both an anatomical concept and part of a different vocabulary, associated the experienced with the sacred, with compassion, empathy and love. The concept of the soul functions within a religious context. It is taken to be that aspect of our being that stands in the face of eternity, carrying our whole being, but not something whose location can be anatomically determined.
- 2.
Descartes philosophy is often presented in a more simplistic way than it deserves.
- 3.
In Bergson’s view, metaphysics should not be understood as esoteric spiritualism but rather as the area of research that leans on intuition instead of analytic empiricism. As with other scientific domains that Bergson discussed, Bergson deemed this delimitation to be necessary to avoid a confusion between scientific statements and metaphysical claims. The latter concern, amongst others, claims about the presuppositions of science. But all too often, these are mistaken for the conclusions of scientific research.
- 4.
Bergson devoted his ‘Time and Free Will’, his doctoral thesis to the critique of Fechner’s viewpoints as they were expressed in the Law of Fechner, which defines the parallelism between the actual change in physical stimuli and the perceived changes thereof.
- 5.
The phrasing of ‘noumenon’ (Greek: νούμενον (noúmenon) originally means ‘that which is thought’, whilst it has come to refer to that which cannot be thought: that which is outside of the sphere of our perception of the world, the world as it exists outside of our grasp of it – as contrasted with phenomenon (Greek: φαινόμενον (phainómenon)), that which appears to us, reveals itself to us. The two extremes of things as they exist upon themselves and things as they appear to us, meet in our conception of ourselves as noumenon: we ourselves are the only ‘thing in itself’ to which we, at least in the conception thereof in Kantian epistemology, retain immediate access, but even then, not in an intellectual or cognitive sense. See also footnote 25.
- 6.
That which appears to us, that which is thus experienced within the limits of our sensory perception (also see footnote 25).
- 7.
That which, in classic philosophy, exists outside of human sensory experience – and in Plato’s universe, might be known, but in Kant’s universe is indefinitely postponed, behind the horizon of human sensory experience and thus can only be ‘thought’ (also see Chap. 2).
- 8.
The self, or the subject’s self-experience.
- 9.
Although Lombroso himself distanced himself from his phrenological works later in life, they continued to be influential until well into the twentieth century. His views still hold a cultural impact: take for example the monobrow and low forehead of Animal from the Muppet Show, or Lisa Simpson’s nemesis, the monobrowed baby from the animated series ‘The Simpsons’.
- 10.
In his approach to pragmatism, James abstains from a distanced and analytic type of empiricism. His empiricism is radical and is beyond the epistemological separation of the subjective and the objective. As Luis Borges phrased it in his discussion of James: “Pragmatism, in the Jamesian sense, does not want to restrict or to lessen the richness of the world; it wants to grow as the world.” (J. L. Borges, Nota preliminar, p. 12).
- 11.
Valentin was the first to describe the cell, nucleus and nucleolus of neurons.
- 12.
It is from this issue that Bergson’s negative assessment of cinema derives – a view that was challenged by Deleuze.
- 13.
Which, in a different guise, can also be found in the works of Derrida (the issue of the activity of differing, as différance, with an ‘a’, rather than the passivity of different states (as difference, with an ‘e’): see Chap. 7.
- 14.
The 1781 version is usually referred to as Kritik der reinen Vernunft A. The section referred to here can only be found in this first version of the Critique of Pure Reason.
- 15.
As stated in the introduction of this book, Parmenides was the Greek pre-Socratic philosopher who posited that all is fixed and no change or differentiation ultimately exists.
- 16.
It is at this point that it becomes questionable to what extent Bergson criticises Kant himself, or Kantian scholars’ interpretations of later generations whilst thinking he criticised Kant.
- 17.
Martin Heidegger was rather critical of Bergson’s work, but his reading of Bergson’s oeuvre is rather unfair and deficient at many points (see Massey 2015).
- 18.
The problem referred to in this chapter as ‘epi-epiphenomenalism’ is the same problem on the basis of which Edmund Husserl criticised several aspects of the neo-Kantian school in philosophy (see 4.1).
- 19.
- 20.
David Hume posed a causal link from object in reality to impression on sense organs to representation of reality in the mind.
- 21.
E.g. neo-Kantians like von Helmholtz, or more contemporary exponents of such causal materialist positions like Daniel Dennet or the Dutch neuroscientist Dick Swaab.
- 22.
Some demonstrate highly complex behaviour: jumping spiders perform complex ritual mating dances; they mimic prey to lure other species of spiders out of their hidings; they have hunting tactics superior to a cat.
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Landeweerd, L. (2021). Time, Life and Memory: Bergson and Neuroscience. In: Time, Life & Memory. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 38. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56853-5_5
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