Bergson's Holographic Theory - 42u - Panpsychism Arising (Updated version)

Part 42u (updated version)
Panpsychism Arising
*- Philip Goff and Russellian Monism
*- Part of the growing reaction to physicalism
*- Conscious particles, intrinsic consciousness everywhere
*- Some problems with Russell on Bergson
*- Still no understanding of the classic metaphysic beneath it all
*- Bergson's unique panpsychism

[faqtum]

Your series have driven me to the very source of Bergson published writings. Opening a fascinating panorama.
Thank you

[windsock]

I’ll repeat what I’ve said elsewhere in commenting on your series: This is an extraordinary labor of love. I continue to learn from your work and am grateful for the effort you put into it.

[S.G.Wallner]

@23:00 This really stopped me in my tracks again. "Why not this focus? How does the brain specify an image of qualitative aspects..."

[francescoangeli]

I see how you see Bergson's system as a form of panpsychism, based on that elementary awareness attributed to matter.

My personal opinion is that it can't really be fit neatly in any standard form of -ism (and in fact you do call it a "unique" form of panpsychism).

Bergson himself defines it as "frankly dualist" in Matter & Memory, and I see in what sense that is the case (as per the title of that book, he contrasts matter with what he describes as immaterial memory); at the same time I feel that perhaps it may also be said to be some kind of dual aspect monism (not a dual aspect substance monism, but rather a dual aspect process monism). I say this, for example, based on the following quote from Mind-Energy:

"On the one hand, there is matter, subject to necessity, devoid of memory, or at least with no more than suffices to form the bridge between two of its moments, each of which can be deduced from its antecedent, each of which adds nothing to what the world already contains. On the other hand, there is consciousness, memory with freedom, continuity of creation in a duration in which there is real growth ; — a duration which is drawn out, wherein the past is preserved indivisible; a duration which grows like a plant, but like the plant of a fairy tale transforms its leaves and flowers from moment to moment. We may surmise that these two realities, matter and consciousness, are derived from the same source.

If, as I have tried to show in a previous work (Creative Evolution), matter is the inverse of consciousness, if consciousness is action unceasingly creating and enriching itself, whilst matter is action continually unmaking itself or using itself up, then neither matter nor consciousness can be explained apart from one another. I will not return to this theme now, I will merely say that I see in the whole evolution of life on our planet a crossing of matter by a creative consciousness, and effort to set free, by force of ingenuity and invention, something which in the animal still remains imprisoned and is only finally released when we reach man."

Intensive consciousness and extensive matter are two sides of the same coin, or rather, one the inverse movement of the other, two contrasting tendencies that "lean of each other", so to speak: matter provides constraint and resistance to consciousness, which in turn individualizes itself thanks to such resistance (in a similar way as attrition is necessary to movement, I would say).

On the one hand, there's a movement of contraction, of tension (consciousness contracts multiple vibrations of reality into a single instant, a single intuition, hence a specific time scale of perception for each living being, depending on its level of consciousness).

On the other, there's an opposite movement of relaxation, of ex-tension (matter, which tends towards the extensive, with abstract space, pure geometry as ideal, but never actualized, limit).

But if the extensive is the direction of matter (juxtaposition of elements external to one another), the intensive is the direction of consciousness (interpenetration of elements, therefore, at its limit, lack of extension).

And as I say this I think about the harmony of the opposites as portrayed in Heraclitus, for example in the image of the lyre, whose music is enabled by the tension between the opposing pulls of the strings and the frame that holds them; or the analogous image of the bow, which again balances opposing pulls. In this sense Heraclitus says that conflict (tension, "polemos") is the "father of all things".

I also think about the Yin/Yang principle in the Chinese tradition.

However, again, I do see how it can also be said that Bergson's system is a form of panpsychism, if you stress the fact that even inert matter has a minimal "degree" of memory, because it has a minimal degree of duration (very close to but not equal to null).

And it is in the dialling up or down of duration that the separation between consciousness and matter is established (different rhythms of duration, different time scales), as stated in M&M:

"Questions relating to subject and object, to their distinction and their union, should be put in terms of time rather than space”.

"In reality there is no one rhythm of duration; it is possible to imagine many different rhythms which, slower or faster, measure the degree of tension or relaxation of different kinds of consciousness, and thereby fix their respective places in the scale of being".

This is why, at the end of the day, I feel he's not easily categorizable in any standard -isms.

[nonserviam]

Intertesting as usual. Are you familiar with contemporary philosopher Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes? His book's 'Modes of Sentience'; his is more Whiteheadian panexperientialism, with relation to World as Will of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, with influences of Bergson, C. D. Broad, Fechner, James, Humphry Davy, and others)

[cosmogang]

No offense, but I bet you could do an amazing Joe Biden impression 😂 🤣 btw after a long time, I'm still coming back to your work every so often, Bergson really has the most sound theories and you've done the world a great favor with all of this explication