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A Review
of
Henri Louis Bergson's Book
Time and Free Will
Chapter I: The Intensity of Psychic States
Topic 2: Deep-Seated Feelings
by Doug Renselle
Doug's Pre-review Commentary
—
Start of Review

 

  Chapter:

 I
                            

 II
  

Translator's
Preface

 Bibliography Author's
Preface		 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
 Chapter:                    

 III
                
18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Conclusion Index

Move to any Topic of Henri Louis Bergson's Time and Free Will,
or to beginning of its review via this set of links
( says, "You are here!")

 
Topic 2...............Deep-Seated Feelings

PAGE

QUOTEs
(Most quotes verbatim Henri Louis Bergson, some paraphrased.)

COMMENTs
(Relevant to Pirsig, William James Sidis, and Quantonics Thinking Modes.)

7

 "Perhaps the difficulty of the problem lies chiefly in the fact that we call by the same name, and
picture to ourselves in the same way, intensities which are very different in nature, e.g. the
Different kinds of intensities.
(1) deep-seated psychic states
(2) muscular effort. Intensity is more easily definable in the former case.		 intensity of a feeling and that of a sensation or an effort. The effort is accompanied by a muscular sensation, and the sensations themselves are connected with certain physical conditions which
probably count for something in the estimate of their intensity: we have here to do with phenomena which take place on the surface of consciousness, and which are always connected [we infer Bergson intuits quantum c¤mplementary, included-middle, BAWAM interrelationships in his use of "connected"], as we shall see further on, with the perception of a movement or of an external object. But certain states of the soul seem to us, rightly or wrongly, to be self-sufficient, such as deep joy or sorrow, a reflective passion or an aesthetic emotion."

(Our bold, color, links, and violet bold italic problematics.)

Bergson restarts his footnote counts on each page. So to refer a footnote, one must state page number and footnote number.

Our bold and color highlights follow a code:

  • black-bold - important to read if you are just scanning our review
  • orange-bold - text ref'd by index pages
  • green-bold - we see Bergson suggesting axiomatic, perhaps quantum and even gnostic memes
  • violet-bold - an apparent classical problematic
  • blue-bold - we disagree with this text segment while disregarding context of Bergson's overall text
  • gray-bold - quotable text
  • red-bold - our direct commentary

Index

8 "Pure intensity ought to be more easily definable in these simple cases, where no extensive element seems to be involved. We shall see, in fact, that it is reducible here to a certain quality or shade which spreads [spreading] over [compenetrating] a more or less considerable mass of psychic states, or, if the expression be preferred, to the larger or smaller number of simple states which make up the fundamental emotion.

"For example, an obscure desire gradually becomes a deep passion. Now, you will see that the feeble intensity of this desire consisted at first
Take for example, the progress of a desire. in its appearing to be isolated and, as it were foreign to the remainder of your inner life. But little by little it permeates a
larger number of psychic elements, tingeing them, so to speak, with its own colour: and lo! your outlook on the whole of your surroundings seems now to have changed radically. [Compare what Bergson just described here to how an associative SON works. See our quantum stage as a neural net.] How do you become aware of a deep passion, once it has taken hold of you, if not by perceiving that the same objects no longer impress you in the same manner? [And thus we intuit changings as quantum reality's animate proto-memes of real pre-scient measurement. Changings imply that in quantum reality, we cann¤t know — we can only be in a n¤nanalytical process of knowing. Doug - 15Dec2001.] All your sensations and all your ideas seem to brighten up: it is like childhood back again. We experience something of the kind in certain dreams, in which we do not imagine anything out of the ordinary, and yet through which there resounds an indescribable note of originality [freshness]. The fact is that, the further we penetrate into the depths of consciousness, the less right we have to treat psychic phenomena as things which are set side by side."

(Our brackets, bold, color, links, and violet bold italic problematics.)

See our English language problematic 'define.' Pirsig tells us, and we agree, that DQ ("pure intensity") is partially describable in terms of n¤n-Bohrian "exclusive" SQ, and those descriptions are always agents of their own change and evolution toward better. Thus, as students of Quantonics, we must assume that "pure intensity ought [n¤t] be more easily [classically] definable."

In place of Bergson's 'states' here, we would superp¤se our isoconic quantum stages heuristic.

Bergson's "a certain quality or shade" corresponds in Quantonics to quantum both coherent and decoherent phase-icity of an animate aggregation (locally autonomous ~island) of quantons shaded by their ubiquitous comjugal quantum isoflux c¤mplement, which Bergson sees as our (all reality's) source of instinct.

So we can say here that when Bergson uses "intensity," we intend, in our more modern quantonic lingo, that he speaks of narrow bandwidths of compenetrating quantum qualitative flux. We may show that in any one of these ways:

intensityquanton(DQ,SQ), and
intensityquanton(isons,isops), and
intensityquanton(nonactuality,actuality), etc.

That will be our assumption henceforth.

Similarly, when Bergson uses "extensity," our hermeneutic is that he is speaking in classical language of a classically objective, spatial, quantitative monism. We call it, in Quantonics, 'SOM,' by which we intend, 'classical reality.'

You may now see that where CTMs are incapable of describing "desire," and "passion," QTMs are capable of doing so.

See Bergson's CE_39 for a cinematographical metaphor of his "...side by side."

Index

9 "When it is said that an object [say, for example, a word] occupies a large space in the soul or even that it fills it entirely, we ought to understand by this simply that its image has altered the shade of a thousand perceptions or memories [in our SON quantum stages], and that in this sense it pervades them, although it does not itself come into view. But this wholly dynamic way of looking at things is repugnant to the reflective consciousness, because the latter delights in clean cut distinctions, which are easily expressed in [classically objective] words, and in [classically objective] things with well-defined outlines, like those which are perceived in [classically objective] space. It will assume then that, everything else remaining identical, such and such a desire has gone up a scale of magnitudes, as though it were permissible still to speak of magnitude where there is neither multiplicity nor space [i.e., quality depicted as quantity]! But just as consciousness (as will be shown later on) concentrates on a given point of the organism the increasing number of muscular contractions which take place on the surface of the body, thus converting them into one single feeling of effort, of growing intensity, so it will hypostatize [i.e., to classically objectify; to intentionally enter SOM's mythos] under the form of a growing desire the gradual alterations which take place in the confused heap of co-existing psychic states. But that is a change of quality rather than of magnitude.

"What makes hope such an intense pleasure is the fact that the future, which we dispose of to our liking, appears to us at the same time under a multitude of forms, equally attractive and equally possible." [And we see that quantum futures are an ensemble of possibilities, where classical future is y=f(t) determinate.]

(Our brackets, bold, color, links, and violet bold italic problematics, and violet bold italic problematics.)

SOM despises quantum flux/animacy!

 

Quality is quantum, i.e., potentially manifold omni- hyper-dimensional, beyond ~Hilbert-spatial,

  • animate (Flux is crux!),
  • heterogeneous (Many truths, times, masses, ...,!),
  • ensemble stindyanic qualitative interrelationships,
  • coobsfectively aware,
  • plural (infinitive present-participle),
  • c¤mplementary (Quantum reality coinsides (verb) all quantons via QVF mediation.),
  • included-middle (Aings are BAWAM Aings amd BAWAM n¤t Aings! See "whatings happenings nextings."),
  • uncertain,
  • both-all (BA) general,
  • while-and-many (WAM) omni-dimensionally, islandically, quantum cohesively, autonomously specific.

Quantity is classical, i.e., uni-low-dimensional,

  • inanimate (Status quo is the way to go!),
  • homogeneous (OGT in OGC!),
  • propertyesque quantitative,
  • unilaterally, lisr, observable,
  • singular (unitary active- or passive-voice),
  • dichotomous (SOM's analytic knife reduces reality into arbitrarily small classical ideal objects.),
  • excluded-middle (A is EOOO A EOOO not A.),
  • certain,
  • EOOO uni-parametric, (All classical motion and change is unitemporal! This is a MAJOR problematic for classical philosophy, metaphysics, and science.)
  • EOOO uni-specific.

Students of Quantonics, can you now see how impudent, imprudent and impossible it is to depict quality as quantity?

Consider how hope is much more qualitative than quantitative, much more quantum than classical.

Index

10 "Even if the most coveted of these becomes realized, it will be necessary to give up the others, and we shall have lost a great deal. The idea of the future, pregnant with an infinity of possibilities, is thus more fruitful than the [a, any] future itself, and this is why we find more charm in hope than in possession, in dreams than in reality.

"Let us try to discover the nature of an increasing intensity of joy or sorrow in the exceptional
The emotions of joy and sorrow. Their successive stages correspond to qualitative changes in the whole of our psychic states. cases where no physical symptom intervenes. Neither inner joy nor passion is an isolated inner state which at first occupies a corner of the soul and gradually spreads. At its lowest level it is very like a turning of our states of con-
sciousness towards the future. Then, as if their weight were diminished by this attraction, our ideas and sensations succeed one another with greater rapidity; our movements no longer cost us the same effort. Finally, in cases of extreme joy, our perceptions and memories become tinged with an indefinable quality, as with a kind of heat or light, so novel that now and then, as we stare at our own self, we wonder how it can really exist. Thus there are several characteristic forms of purely inward joy, all of which are successive stages corresponding to qualitative alterations in the whole of our psychic states. But the number of states which are concerned with each of these alterations is more or less considerable, and, without explicitly counting them, we know very well whether, for example, our joy pervades all the impressions which we receive in the course of the day or whether any escape from its influence."

(Our brackets, bold, color, and violet bold italic problematics.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is how we are feeling when we are tapping into reserve energy.

Index

11 "We thus set up points of division in the interval which separates two successive forms of joy, and this gradual transition from one to the other makes them appear in their turn as different intensities of one and the same feeling, which is thus supposed to change in magnitude. It could be easily shown that the different degrees of sorrow also correspond to qualitative [aesthetic] changes. Sorrow begins by being nothing more than a facing towards the past, an impoverishment of our sensations and ideas, as if each of them were now contained entirely in the little which it gives out, as if the future were in some way stopped up. And it ends with an impression of crushing failure, the effect of which is that we aspire to nothingness, while every new misfortune, by making us understand better the uselessness of the struggle, causes us a bitter pleasure."

(Our brackets, bold, color, violet bold italic problematics, and violet bold problematics.)

 

 

 

Index

Return to Chapter Index

To contact Quantonics write to or call:

Doug Renselle
Quantonics, Inc.
Suite 18 #368 1950 East Greyhound Pass
Carmel, INdiana 46033-7730
USA
1-317-THOUGHT

©Quantonics, Inc., 2001-2011 — Rev. 23Feb2009  PDR — Created: 23Feb2001  PDR
(21Jul2002 rev - Change QELR links to A-Z pages.)
(14Apr2004 rev - Replace wingdings arrows with gifs.)
(1Feb2005 rev - Adjust page top color formats.)
(14,26May2006 rev - Release page constraints. Adjust colors.)
(12Mar2008 rev - Reformat index and page slightly.)
(23Feb2009 rev - Add links to recent QELR of 'aware' on two pages of this topic.)

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