Zeno

Chapter 4 of
Matter and Memory
: “On the delimiting and fixing of images”
John Protevi / LSU French Studies / Lecture notes: DO NOT CITE.
protevi@lsu.edu
http://www.protevi.com/john/Bergson/MM4lecture.pdf
1.
THE UNION OF SOUL AN
D BODY
.
In Chapter 4, Bergson sketches his method,
which he hopes will let him approach the “metaphysical problem” of the “union of
soul [
l ’ â m e
] and body.” Pure perception puts us in m
atter, while pure memory is a
“penetration” into spirit. Matter and spirit is a difference in kind, yet the same
“psychological observation” which attests to that difference
also attests to their
union.
2.
We’re at first blocked by a “
DOUBLE ANTITHESIS
” of
extended vs unextended and
quality vs quantity. It would seem that spirit would be the realm of inextension and
quality and matter the realm of extension and quantity.
But
pure perception
puts us in “material extensity,” which is not that of discontinuou
s
extensity we conceive, but the “undivided extension” we perceive. B thus wants us to
distinguish
extension
from both extended matter and inextended spirit.
Similarly,
pure memory allows us to see
tension
between quality and quantity.
In more detail: co
nsidering
pure memory allows us to split the difference between
heterogeneous qualities (matter as perceived) and homogeneous quantities (matter
as calculated by science). We don’t have to make a metaphysical postulation of pure
quantity; it’s enough that
we practically ignore the very tiny qualitative differences of
material cycles. In other words
(anticipating later discussion)
, there is a frequency, a
rhythm of repetition, of the light waves coming from an object.
There is thus the
same sort of qualitati
ve heterogeneity to that rhythm as there is in our internal
duration. BUT
FOR PRACTICAL PURPOS
ES
, we can ignore these very tiny
nuances of different quality when it comes to material things and just treat them in
terms of quantity. This means that
matter g
rasped in concrete perception is a
contraction into our perceptual duration of an “infinity of ‘pure perceptions’ that
succeed one another.” IOW,
perception is a “translation of rhythms”:
the contraction
of really fast material rhythms
performed by
tempora
l synthesis
into our relatively
slow perceptual rhythm,
is a reification, a thing
-
making, of an underlying event
-
reality
or process
-
reality.
Reification just means “slowing down a process for practical
purposes.”
3.
We now come to a discussion of the
METHOD
OF INTUITION
. The source of our
philosophical problems, the standoff between empiricism and “dogmatism”
(idealism), is that we break up the continuity of experienced duration under the
pressure of practical exigency and social life into objects and words.
We then try to
recreate a unity by adding together the broken apart pieces. (But you can’t recreate
an indivisible process by adding together the products of the process.)
What we need to do is to go “above the turn in experience.” IOW, we have to identi
fy
the natural habits of reification that we engage in for practical purposes. These are
fine to use for survival, but they don’t let us think reality. And thinking reality is what
philosophy is all about.
Here some adherence to classical dualism by B aris
es: it’s
our body that gets in the way.
B writes about “the impotence of an intellect
enslaved
to certain necessities of bodily life”
[
l’impuissance d’une intelligence asservie à
certaines nécessités de la vie corporelle
]” (MM4: 205 / 184).
This is not
classic Greek complaining about the weakness of the body. Rather, B is
complaining about the strength of the body.
At
Phaedo
99
, Socrates tells us of his “second voyage,” where, instead of risking
blindness by looking directly at things (which is like lo
oking directly at the sun), he
looks at
“ideas” as hypotheses, which is like looking at an eclipse via its
reflection in
water.
(There’s a fascinating problem here when we consider that in
Republic 6, the
cave story,
those who ascend to the surface, after
a period of acclimation, are
supposedly able to look at the sun / Idea of the Good
.
)
Or, in
NE 10, Aristotle says that bodily fatigue keeps us from remaining with
divine
nous for very long
–
there is a very long history here of the “active intellect” tha
t we
can’t go into.
Th
ese are not
an exact match, as
Plato and
Aristotle
are
talking about how the body
is too weak to incorporate the intensity of divine nous, whereas B
is talking about the
strength of the body
-
centered thought relative to philosophy o
r reality
-
centered
thought. B
has more of a Kantian angle: our bodily constitution
strongly inclines
us to
think in a certain way, or better installs certain
habits of thought
which are
unconsciously transferred from the practical realm to the speculative
realm.
The
difference is that B thinks we can think reality in itself. In other words, we wants to
rehabilitate metaphysics from its Kantian prison.
4.
THE TURN IN EXPERIEN
CE
.
So what are we to do? We have to find the “turn of
experience” and position ourse
lves there. There will be a “faint light” [
la naissante
lueur
= “dawning glow”
] which illuminates the “passage from the immediate to the
useful.” The “immediate” here = our intuitive contact with reality
–
that is, what I’m
going to call the “sympathy” of
our duration with durational reality. Or in other words,
the feeling, the pre
-
reflective awareness
,
that we are temporal beings
–
and that
everything else is too! “Useful” here = our spatializing habits of thought, useful for
survival.
Using that “faint
light” we have to “reconstitute” the “infinitely small elements which
we thus perceive of the real curve.”
This is what I mean by “sympathy”: our contact
with the “real curve” of experience is a perception of “infinitely small elements.” I
would say this m
eans we have to become aware of the way we condense fast
material rhythms into our relatively slow perceptual duration. We have to somehow
feel the difference between our rhythm and the rhythm of things: we have to feel the
contraction performed by our tem
poral synthesis in concrete perception.
In this way, the philosopher is like the mathematician who determines a function
from the differential: both perform the operation of
integration
.
5.
QUICK REVIEW OF CALC
ULUS CONCEPTS
. "Derivation" or "taking a deri
vative"
or finding “differential relation” = finding instantaneous rate of change [of position
relative to time] = process of acquiring a velocity from positions.
A velocity is computed by taking the difference between two positions and dividing
by the di
fference in time (dy / dx). The instantaneous rate of change is geometrically
represented as finding tangent to a curve.
T
he opposite procedure is "integration,” the process of obtaining the function from
the derivates, that is, determining the function w
hich relates two variables from
knowing the instantaneous rate of change of one variable relative to another. In this
way, for example, we can find the function that will allow us to calculate a position
from velocities (or a velocity from acceleration).
A position for a specific time is computed by summing all intermediate velocities to a
starting position. Integration is geometrically represented as finding the area under a
curve by addition of areas of ever smaller rectangles (“the method of exhaustion
” is
the name of an older method).
6.
BERGSON AND CALCULUS
AS MODEL FOR PHILOSO
PHY / METAPHYSICS
.
In
integration we take a curve and find the area under the curve by slicing the curve
into ever smaller rectangles. This is what our spatializing habits of tho
ught do with
movements. If we become aware that this is what we are doing, we get a glimpse of
the reality of indivisible movement that lies underneath this practice of ours.
In the “9 theses” section of
Introduction to Metaphysics
(1903), B returns to t
his
notion. Intuition is a “violent reversal” of our spatializing habit of thought. We
have a
hi
nt of this reversal in calculus, which is an a
ttempt to think becoming, to follow
growth of magnitudes
. Now it
is not yet philosophy, being only the science of
magnitudes via symbols
. But m
etaphysics can abstain from symbols and stay with
intuition
. To do this, it has to realize that the
“quantity
” created by slicing method of
integration
is always
a “
nascent quality
.
”
IOW, quantity is always the “
limit
” of quali
ty:
it is the ignoring of the qualitative differences in the rhythm of things in order to
create a practically useful quantity with which we can calculate. For example, there
are subtle shifts in rhythm or qualitative nuances in the light waves coming fro
m a
thing. But we can ignore them and constitute a specific and fixed frequency with
which we can calculate. But once we know we are doing this, we can go back to
those subtle shifts, those qualitative nuances, and pay attention to them as reality. In
this
way, m
etaphysics can extend “generative method” of calculus to all qualities
;
thus
metaphysics is to “operate differentiations and qualitative integrations
.
”
Chapter 4 of
Matter and Memory
: “On the delimiting and fixing of images”
2
nd
lecture
John Protevi / LSU French Studies / Lecture notes: DO NOT CITE.
1.
PREVIEW
. The heart of Ch 4 is some really great philosophy. B lays out a
consistent monism, a “plane of immanence,” in terms of durati
on. Duration =
memory = process = time = being = reality.
We can get in touch with this processual
reality via our own being as duration. But to do that we have to recognize and
surpass our spatializing habits of thought, which alienate us from our true durational
being.
This “getting in touch” is a matter of
intuition
. Deleuze insists intuition has a method:
(1) analyzed badly
-
formed problems (due to spatializing habits of thought); (2)
discover genuine differences in kind (vs. mere differences in degree); (3) think in
terms of time (we already feel in terms o
f time, so we have to raise our pre
-
reflective
self
-
awareness to verbal level, w/o succumbing to reification of language).
Last meeting we discussed how B presents his method in Ch 4 in terms of the “turn
in experience.”
B gives us four theses to exami
ne: (1) every movement is indivisible; (2) there are
real movements; (3) all division of matter into separate bodies is artificial; (4)
real
movement is transference of a state, not motion of a thing.
2.
EVERY MOVEMENT IS IN
DIVISIBLE
. These arguments should
be familiar from
TFW. The problem is the confusion of the space traversed, which is divisible, and
the motion, which is indivisible.
Motion = duration = process; the space traversed is
the “product” of this process.
From this confusion arise Zeno’s paradox
es. These are
tied in with the demands of biological and social existence, which incline us to
practica
l / uti
l
itarian
reification
.
3.
THERE ARE REAL MOVEM
ENTS
.
Bergson here distinguishes his treatment of
motion from that in mathematics and physics. Both ar
e tied to common sense’s
practical reification. Mathematics refers movement to distance from a reference
point; it thus only retains from any motion the “changes in length” of the space
traversed. Physics on the other hand does try to deal with motion as a
n “indisputable
reality,” but it still refers motion to space rather than thinking it in itself as durational
process.
B then enters a discussion concerning absolute vs relative motion. Do things move
in a container
-
like space which does not itself move?
This is the thesis of
relative
motion in an absolute space
.
Or is it that motion entails a change in “aspect” of the
whole? This possibility arises because from the purely scientific point of view, you
can’t say whether things move relative to a
fixed r
eference point, or whether the
reference point itself is moving relative to the “thing.” This is the thesis of
absolute
motion
, that is,
change
in aspect
of the whole
.
Recourse to the notion of “force” as distinguishing relative from absolute motion
won’
t do, B says. What we have to do is “draw out of the movement the mobility
which is its essence.
”
How do you do that?
Eventually, B will say we do so f
rom a
sort of
sympathetic identification
of our inner duration and the duration of things
.
But
we’re not
there yet. Here, he just asks us to notice that f
rom the inside, “I grasp the
reality of movement when it appears to me, within me, as a change of
state
or of
quality
” [B’s emphases].
But the sensible qualities of things change too as I perceive
them.
He
re we have “two ends of a chain”: inner muscular sensation [affection] and outer
perceptions, both of which entail changes in quality. Between them we have the
movements of external “bodies.” How can we tell when one of them is moving and
when it is at res
t ?
But the very structure of the question reveals a hidden
presupposition!
Namely, that there are separate bodies which move about in a
container
-
space, rather than a whole whose aspect changes.
This takes us to the 3
rd
thesis.
4.
ALL DIVISION OF MATT
ER INT
O INDEPENDENT BODIES
WITH ABSOLUTELY
DETERMINED OUTLINES
IS AN ARTIFICIAL DIV
ISION
. Now we’re getting
somewhere! All the way back, philosophy has always been all about upsetting our
common sense assumptions, and this one is deeply rooted.
B
’s
analysis re
sts on the continuity of the perceptual fields of vision and touch.
Instead of saying that things move around in a container
-
space, why not say that the
whole has changed, “as with the turning of a kaleidoscope”? If we really pay
attention to our immediate
consciousness
–
to things as they appear when we have
bracketed our common sense assumptions and turned off our spatializing / reifying
habits of thought
–
then we see “a moving continuity is given to us, in which
everything changes and yet remains.” The
problem comes when we dissociate
permanence and change, assigning perman
en
ce to things and
change to
“homogeneous movements” in
a container
-
space.
It’s no good appealing to science here, because
science and immediate cness are
coming to agree with each o
ther
.
This is a huge change from TFW!
Science is
beginning to show the “reciprocal action of all material points upon each other”
(221 /
197).
(Recall here the “perception” of “any material point whatsoever” from Ch 1.)
Why then do we experience an “irre
sistible tendency” to think in terms of a universe
of independent bodies that move relative to each other in a container
-
space which
allows for measurement of motions? The answer is the
necessit
y
of
living
. You have
to eat, and in order to eat, it’s useful
to identify this thing here
in front of me
as a
piece of food
w
hich is separate from me
–
for the time being
!
But as we should be able to anticipate by now, we get into philosophical trouble
when we translate our utilitarian reification into the specula
tive realm. Here again, B
appeals to modern physics, in which “the materiality of the atom dissolves more and
more” (223 / 199).
We might imagine the reciprocal action of all parts of matter as
bodies and threads of force, but this is just our biological n
eeds talking. What
science shows us is not a separation of bodies and forces as fixed ontological
registers but a convergence of them
:
“We see force more and more materialized, the
atom more and more idealized, the two terms converging toward a common limi
t and
the universe thus recovering its continuity” (224
-
225 / 200).
(Mili
č Čapek in his
Bergson and Modern Physics
(Boston: Riedel, 1971) lauds B on his prescience in
this passage and in all the analyses of Ch 4.)
IOW, the vision of modern physics is that reality is a field of matter
-
energy with
differing levels of energy = di
fferent frequencies of vibration. What we see as solid
bodies is just low
-
level energy: it’s the same “stuff” as light, it just moves slow,
congealing and resonating rather than dissipating. Or rather, its dissipation is too
slow for us to perceive it as a
n event or process, so we see it as a body. Bodies are
just the effect of our utility
-
driven and biologically evolved perception. Instead of
bodies, stuff, matter, things, science shows us “pervading concrete extensity,
modifications
,
perturbations
, change
s of
tension
or of
energy
and nothing else” (226
/ 201
; B’s emphases
).
The “and nothing else” should shock, amaze, and impress
you.
Bottom line:
there are no
things
;
there are
only
processes
.
5.
REAL MOVEMENT IS RAT
HER THE TRANSFERENCE
OF A STATE THAN OF A
THING
.
Here B creates what is to me a masterpiece of philosophy. He dives in and
tries to show that all things are durational, not just humans.
Remember that in TFW
he created a dualism between inner quality and outer quantity. But here he wants to
say tha
t there is outer quality as well, that the being of all things is that of qualitative
multiplicity, that the being of all things is unrolling, qualitatively differing, process.
He has then to distinguish between the inner quality of things and the outer
quantity
created by our utilitarian perception: “do real movements present merely differences
of quantity, or are they not quality itself, vibrating, so to speak, internally, and beating
time for its own existence through an often incalculable number of mo
vements?”
IOW, everything has a rhythm or characteristic modulation of its frequencies; our job
as philosophers is to think a universe in which such processes are the basic reality.
“These movements, regarded in themselves, are indivisibles which occupy du
ration,
involve a before and after, and link together the successive moments of time by a
thread of variable quality which cannot be without some likeness to the conintuity of
our own consciousness.” The “thread of variable quality” is the modulation of
fr
equency, the often subtle shifts in rhythm, as a process unrolls.
So things all beat at different frequencies; sometimes the rhythm of our
consciousness
–
the frequency of our duration
–
meshes enough with that of another
process (we are a process, not a
thing) that we can experience it as a process, not
as a thing
. What this entails is a convergence of quality and quantity. Whether we
perceive one or the other is just a matter of the meshing of rhythms of duration.
Sometimes we can even feel the shift fr
om quality to quantity
–
and feeling that shift
Category:Zeno