The whole difficulty of the problem that occupies us comes from the fact that we imagine perception to be a kind of photographic view of things, taken from a fixed point by that special apparatus which is called an organ of perception - a photograph which would then be developed in the brain-matter by some unknown chemical and psychical process of elaboration. But is it not obvious that the photograph, if photograph there be, is already taken, already developed in the very heart of things and at all the points of space? No metaphysics, no physics even, can escape this conclusion. Build up the universe with atoms each of them is subject to the action, variable in quantity and quality according to the distance, exerted on it by all material atoms. Bring in Faraday's centres of force: the lines of force emitted in every direction from every centre bring, to bear upon each the influences of the whole material world. Call up the Leibnizian monads: each is (pg 32) the mirror of the universe. All philosophers, then, agree on this point. Only if when we consider any other given place in the universe we can regard the action of all matter as passing through it without resistance and without loss, and the photograph of the whole as translucent: here there is wanting behind the plate the black screen on which the image could be shown. Our ‘zones of indetermination' play in some sort the part of the screen. They add nothing to what is there; they effect merely this: that the real action passes through, the virtual action remains.(from Matter and Memory pub.1896)
Friday 31 March 2017
The basis of Bergson's Holographic intuition
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2 comments:
he seems to make a lot out of some measure of electromagnetic energy signature of the brain without really explaining why that in and of itself justifies his hologram model for human experience, do you buy it as something other than a poetic gesture taken too literally?
Yes, even on the day that is in it I could go along with that. The hologram thing is an analogy, with a focus that is narrow not an actual attempt to describe what takes place. It is Metaphysics, as a preamble to Physics, contra Aristotle . Most psychologists and phenomenologists proceed on the assumption of Dualism as Dennett points out in Consciousness Explained. The dualism of Bergson tries to steer between Realism and Idealism and get away from the Inner Theatre, Inner Library and Mental Palace. There’s a good scene in Sherlock where Cumberbatch/Sherlock enters into his Mental Palace to think through to a solution.
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