This is an excellent outline of Bergson's theory of perception in a holographic universe. The video contrasts Pibram's theory of the hologram inside of the brain with Bergson's theory of the brain as the reconstruction wave for an objective external holographic universe. There are no illusions. Bergson intuited this model two decades before holograms we're discovered. Also, an interesting presentation on the wave-particle interpretation dilemma as well as the Relativity controversy as well as a review of December Broglie's contribution to quantum mechanics.

My take on Bergson was that he was completely discounted because his ‘Elan vital’ was interpreted as another version of Descartes’ res cogitans - a ghost in a machine. And it’s not hard to see there’s no such thing. It’s bit of a wilful misrepresentation but it’s enough to have buried him. — Wayfarer

Any teleological approach to evolution ought be discarded as a mater of course. The point of evolution is its lack of purpose.

Any teleological approach to evolution ought be discarded as a mater of course. The point of evolution is its lack of purpose. — Banno

This is what buried Bergson. The academic warfare on life and meaning wholely and gleefully supported by commercial industry which prefers the term computer robots as a substitute term for humans. Where have we witnessed this before?

Hired guns for dehumanization like Russell. We are nothing more pre-determined bots whose only use is as fodder. Pathetic, disgusting, disgraceful.

I dunno - that all seems a bit Rich...

What part? The dehumanization of people, which you so beautifully articulated (it took only one simple sentence), or how pathetic, disgraceful, and disgusting it is that hired guns are so willing to carry in the dehumanization for the gigantic prize of tenure. We c are told we are just Moist Robots.

Bergson biggest sin was defending and promoting the creative force that lies within us all and connects us all. His name for this was the Élan vital. It is this force that makes life magnificent.

You're a bit of a fan, I gather.

But this was a thread about time.

We know gravities affect clocks. Not at all surprising. We know nothing about human experience and the affect of gravity on it, other than what we feel on Earth. In space, we know humans react in different ways, but none have report time slowing down. — Rich

SO are you saying that Élan vital is outside of time?

Élan vital manifests time as the process of creation. That is why we are here. To create and evolve in the process of learning. This is the real process of evolution not the silly stuff of Darwin.

And there is evidence of this?

And there is evidence of this? — Banno

Our lives. This is what we do every day in our life. Create, learn, experiment, and evolve. That is why people come to forums and why they go to museums, or doodle, or very everything else we do, even dreams. It is all of life. The impetus of life and evolution is us - our Minds.

The point of evolution is its lack of purpose. — Banno

That's the biggest just-so story in the whole history of science, in my view. It is one area where I much prefer Bergson. It's simply because nothing like 'purpose' - and what is that but the Aristotelean 'telos' - can't be accomodated in the procrustean bed of materialism. The origin of all scientism.

And there is evidence of this? — Banno

I would have thought the Earth is evidence.

perhaps. I was hoping for something more specific.

Well, I often wonder why it’s said that evolution doesn’t display any sense of either progress or purpose. But part of the dogma of evolutionary biology is that there is no sense of either. As far as biology is concerned there’s no criteria for deciding that h. Sapiens is any better or ‘more evolved’ than cockroaches or blue-green algae.

I think the issue is that methodological naturalism has to eschew any of those kinds of questions. They’re just not in scope for a naturalist explanation, as they really require a value-judgement of the kind that is beyond the scope of the discipline. But now that biological evolution has become a de facto secular religion, then that is now read as a ‘science shows that life really has no purpose’ or is ‘the outcome of the accidental collocation of atoms’ (Bertrand Russell’s phrase).

But that really is a category error (to put it charitably). Naturalism really has nothing to say about purpose in any sense other than material and efficient causes. Whether life or the universe has or doesn’t have any kind of inherent teleology is not really a scientific question at all, but a metaphysical one. But nowadays of course science is commonly used to rebut metaphysical claims - just as it was in the debate between Einstein and Bergson. Which is like using a sledgehammer to play a fiddle (to mangle a metaphor).

Have a look at the Wikipedia entry on the term teleonomy. The drift is, that having rejected the taboo word ‘teleology’ from the lexicon, scientists were obliged to replace it with a neologism, teleology, because it turned out to be quite impossible to present any kind of coherent biology without a word for ‘inherent purpose’.

Haldane [in the 1930s] can be found remarking, ‘Teleology is like a mistress to a biologist: he cannot live without her but he’s unwilling to be seen with her in public.’ Today the mistress has become a lawfully wedded wife. Biologists no longer feel obligated to apologize for their use of teleological language; they flaunt it. The only concession which they make to its disreputable past is to rename it ‘teleonomy’.

Apokrisis, our resident expert on theory of biology, will acknowledge that the notion of formal and final causes have had to be re-introduced to philosophy of biology for similar reasons.

Besides, where else in science, would the idea that ‘something happened for no reason’, be regarded as ‘an hypothesis’?

There’s a philosopher of biology I really like, by the name of Steve Talbott, whose essays have been published in the New Atlantis, and who discusses these questions. Well worth a read.

We know gravities affect clocks. Not at all surprising. We know nothing about human experience and the affect of gravity on it, other than what we feel on Earth. In space, we know humans react in different ways, but none have report time slowing down.

You keep mixing up clocks with humans, which is comparable to mixing up computers with humans. In any case, my prediction would be if humans are accelerated near the speed of light they would die. I wonder if Einstein would debate me on this? — Rich

That time slows down as speed increases has been empirically shown to be true. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation#/issues . It is not necessary that the speed be near the speed of light for the effect to occur.

A human would not sense his own time slowing, but a human could observe another person's time slowing relative to his own. Suggesting that one could sense time slowing conflates an event with time itself. We don't sense time. We sense that our drink takes too long to be served. If you slowed time, you wouldn't feel like your drink got there faster because your frustration was also slowed down.

Bergson is a fantastic author and even better philosopher, but I wish he had better advocates than the likes of Rich, whose Bergsonism is a caricature, and whose posts are not worth discussing. With respect to teleology, it might be worth noting that the entire trajectory of Creative Evolution (the book) is governed by the need to avoid both what Bergson calls 'mechanism' and 'finalism' - i.e. teleology in any strict sense. It's whole effect was to chart something like a middle path between the two, and in many ways Bergson's understanding of evolution actually comes much closer to the modern understanding of it than most people might realise.

Bergson was entirely right, for instance, that more than sheer randomness was needed to account for phenomena like converent evolution - a major theme of Creative Evolution - but he, along with the science of his time, simply did not have the proper tools to explain it. The Elan vital does more to name the problem than to account for it, but that there was a problem, Bergson was entirely right about. Bergson would have been delighted, I think, with the discovery of evolvability, in which evolution enhances its own ability to generate adaptive traits, a kind of 'directed randomness' or accelerated search function which is entirely explicable on scientific grounds alone. So too would he have loved the advent of epigenetics and the deepening work on genetic assimilation, the principles of which are presciently intuited in so much of Creative Evolution.

Similarly with Einstein, Bergson definitively fucked up in the debate in terms of his own positive account of simultaneity, but he was also entirely right that Einstein's own account did indeed leave out time in any substantive sense.

The point of evolution is its lack of purpose. — Banno

Do you not see that there is purpose in each act of every living thing? If every living thing acts with purpose, and evolution is a result of those acts, how can you conclude that there is a lack of purpose in evolution?

That time slows down as speed increases has been empirically shown to be true. — Hanover

No, what has been shown is that periodicity of movement is affected by matter. Science, by virtue of its incredible bias toward dead matter, just chooses to label clocks as "time". Clocks are not time. Clocks are instruments which, within limits, attempt to measure simultaneous events. Simultaneity is not relative, measurement is relative because of the limits of instrumentation.

A human would not sense his own time slowing, — Hanover

Of course v they do. They do it all the time and they vocalize these feelings

but a human could observe another person's time slowing relative to his own. — Hanover

Never heard this happen anywhere by anyone. This is comparable to flying dogs. I'll be v this under the c heading off fabricated evidence?

So science denies that people can feel time slow, despite the enormous evidence to the contrary, but feel it is perfectly sensible that one human can observe another person's time slowing. This c is exactly how c twisted science had become. It's become the modern version of the traveling troubadours just making up stories for money and amusement. Absolutely amazing.

.

The Elan vital does more to name the problem than to account for — StreetlightX

Oh, the revisionist comes out of the woodwork, and stakes the higher ground by cleansing the narrative for his own pathetic reasons. You want to stay in good graces? I thought you might have some insights. What you offer is nice, nice so you can remain respectable among your buddies.

What can joke. Never have I read such revision of Bergson as this. Why don't you just offer your own stuff if you don't like Bergson? Bergson had more courage in his pinky than you offer in your entirety. Weak.

But I love Bergson. And of course you haven't 'read such revision of Bergson as this'. You're entirely uneducated. But enough with you.

Clocks are not time. — Rich

I specifically stated that time and events were distinct, so I'm not sure who you're arguing with.

Of course v they do. They do it all the time and they vocalize these feelings — Rich

They feel like events are occuring slowly. Humans can't sense time itself. Stop conflating time with events. If I feel like something lasts longer than it did, I didn't feel time slow down because it didn't.

Never heard this happen anywhere by anyone. This is comparable to flying dogs. I'll be v this under the c heading off fabricated evidence? — Rich

I cited the reference you didn't read.

So science denies that people can feel time slow, despite the enormous evidence to the contrary, but feel it is perfectly sensible that one human can observe another person's time slowing. — Rich

This isn't theoretical. It's empirical. Read the cited material.

But I love Bergson. And of course you haven't 'read such revision of Bergson as this'. You're entirely uneducated. But enough with you. — StreetlightX

You have nothing more to offer than your revisionism for your own pathetic reasons. Here is P.AY. Gunter's non-revisionist account of the Élan vital, as told by Bergson, not you:

The élan vital or "vital impetus" is described by Bergson as being engaged in a continual struggle with physical matter. The result of this struggle is twofold: While life is forced to take on many of the characteristics of its material environment, matter is nonetheless shaped into ever more complex and active organisms.

In page 89 of Creative Evolution, noteworthy title for his major work on the nature of Life and consciousness, Bergson defines the Élan vital as the original impetus of life. There is no problem other than with revisionists. I suspect you do not understand one thing that Bergson since you not understand even the most elementary concept of his works.

This isn't theoretical. It's empirical. Read the cited material. — Hanover

No one has ever observed another person's life slowing. The sense of time is an internal feeling of time passing. Read Thomas Mann or Virginia Woolf. Clocks are measurement instruments to try to determine simultaneity.

No one has ever observed another person's life slowing. — Rich

Read the cited material. That's precisely what they've done. That no one has experienced another's experience is a given. Having a first person experience of a second person is incoherent.

Interesting. It appears to my naive eye that there is a hint of intent in what is being said about evolution; and that leaves me uninspired.

So a sparrow that collects food for its family has more successful offspring. But that does not mean the sparrow has an intent to have more successful offspring.

This is curiously parallel to recent discussion of belief in which I have been involved. We use the language of belief to describe the actions of a dog, but does that mean the dog has a belief? We use the language of intent to describe the actions of the sparrow, but does the sparrow have intent?

Edit:

Do you not see that there is purpose in each act of every living thing? If every living thing acts with purpose, and evolution is a result of those acts, how can you conclude that there is a lack of purpose in evolution? — Metaphysician Undercover

What do you make of this, @Wayfarer?

Is this an acceptable argument?

I don't think so.

Read the cited material. That's precisely what they've done. That no one has experienced another's experience is a given. Having a first person experience of a second person is incoherent. — Hanover

Nothing in the article about "a human could observe another person's time slowing relative to his own."

As you said, it is incoherent.

I wish he had better advocates than the likes of Rich — StreetlightX

I wondered as much.

I wondered as much. — Banno

Silly pandering which is exactly what your cowardly buddy is doing. You figure he knows all about Bergson because he insulted me? Did he get into your good graces by pandering to you? You figure maybe that is why he made his heroic comments about me?

Let me say this, his one fleeting comment about Bergson's philosophy was monumentally silly. He opened up the book and read another.

Any teleological approach to evolution ought be discarded as a mater of course. The point of evolution is its lack of purpose. — Banno

I hope you won't mind my drawing attention to this inadvertent pun. I've just been reading Victoria Welby, a neglected philosopher of the turn of the 19th/20th century, who had a notion of 'mother sense' which is a kind of version of 'intuition'. A mater of course seems to fit perfectly.

The very nature of motherhood - which is at the core of evolution though neglected - always seems a primal problem for philosophies of purposelessness, to me. It's hard to understand the act of giving birth unless...well, motherhood embodies purpose. It just is purpose.

Or maybe it's just that...

I always felt that artists are in the closest touch with life.

We use the language of intent to describe the actions of the sparrow, but does the sparrow have intent? — Banno

There seems to me a pretty large assumption in what we are prepared to say that animals do 'out of instinct' - as if this is something obvious. Here's a snippet from one of the aforementioned Talbott essays, originally published in 1927, concerning the activities of the small British bird, the chaffinch:

Here the male must leave the flock, if he has belonged to one, and establish himself in a territory which may at the time be incapable of sustaining him alone, but must later in the season supply a satisfactory food-supply for himself, his mate and family, and for as many birds of other species as overlap his sphere of influence. He must then sing loudly and incessantly for several months, since, however soon he secures a mate, trespassers must be warned off the territory, or, if they ignore his warning, driven out. His mate must help with the defence of the territory when she is needed; pairing must be accomplished; a suitable site must be found for the nest; materials must be collected and put together securely enough to hold five bulky young birds; eggs must be laid in the nest and continuously brooded for a fortnight till they hatch, often in very adverse weather; the young are at first so delicate that they have to be brooded and encouraged to sleep a great part of the time, yet they must have their own weight of food in a day, and in proportion as the need of brooding them decreases their appetites grow, until in the end the parents are feeding four or five helpless birds equal to themselves in size and appetite but incapable of digesting nearly such a wide diet. Enemies must be watched for and the nest defended and kept clean. When the young scatter, often before they can fly properly, they need even greater vigilance, but within a few days of the fledging of the first brood a second nest will (in many cases) be ready and the process in full swing over again. All this has to be done in face of great practical difficulties by two creatures, with little strength and not much intelligence, both of whom may have been hatched only the season before.

Talbott comments:

Here, too, organized behavior reflects the interests and needs, the perception, and the future requirements, of agents carrying out highly effective, end-directed activity. To be sure, the bird is not consciously reflecting upon its situation. But, just as with [a] pedestrian, we make sense of what happens by interpreting it as a series of reasonable responses to the bird’s ever-changing life context — all in the light of its own ends. While we cannot view the bird as inferring, deducing, and deciding, it is nevertheless recognizing and responding to elements of significance in its environment. There is a continual and skillful adjustment to a perceived surround that is never twice the same surround.

I can't help but be reminded of a comment that I once read about a remark in The Origin of Species itself:

“It may be metaphorically said that Natural Selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, and adding up all that are good; silently and insensibly working whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being.” (1876 ed., 68-69)

Darwin has acknowledged that he is using metaphor, but this begs the question: metaphor, for what? Because here, 'Natural Selection' is likewise imbued with the attributes of agency - it scrutinizes, rejects, adds up, and subtly works. A critic remarked that “Darwin starts by insisting that nature is not a goddess but a metaphor. As soon as he begins to talk about nature, however, she is transformed into a divinity with consciousness and will.”

I know this whole subject is massively fraught and contested, but I think there's something deeply amiss with the general, mechanistic way of depicting 'life'. I mean, I will frequently notice narrators on nature documentaries being starry-eyed about what evolution 'does'. But according to evolutionary theory, evolution is not actually 'an agent', and there is a deep question as to whether there really are any 'purposive agents' at all. Yet it seems to me that all living things are indeed animated, and in a deep sense, purposive. But we seem to be persuaded that this itself is a grand illusion.