Tuesday 16 June 2020

Bergson, Universals, Upamana and the Gavaya


We may then suppose perceptions as different as possible in their superficial details: if only they are continued by the same motor reactions, if the organism can extract from them the same useful effects, if they impress upon the body the same attitude, something common will issue from them, and the general idea will have been felt and passively experienced, before being represented. - Here then we escape at last from the circle in which we at first appeared to be confined. In order to generalize, we said, we have to abstract similarity, but in order to disengage similarity usefully we must already know how to generalize. There really is no circle, because the similarity, from which the mind starts when it first begins the work of abstraction, is not the similarity at which the mind arrives when it consciously generalizes.
(from Matter and Memory)


Here is a move towards the solution of the problem of universals and indeed the upamana pramana. The misunderstanding of the latter problem is underlined by the displacement of the problem into the recognition of a gavaya. Essentially the instruction is simple - the gavaya (bos gaurus) that roams in the jungle is like your domestic cow. Very good but what is a cow like? What do you mean? A cow just a cow, you know what a cow is. The point that Bergson is making, as I understand him, is that the immediate response that generates the sense of sameness is at a different conceptual level from the universal that is a rational construct. An example that he gives from inorganic reactions i.e. hydrochloric acid and marble, does not lead us to believe that one recognises the other.


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