/lit/ - Literature

>>20848234
What the fuck did you just fucking say

We are not used to paying attention to manifestations of profane ‘thought,’ so we should not have read the recent book by Mr. Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, and still less would we have spoken of it had we not been informed that it was on things which are normally not the responsibility of a philosopher. In fact, the author talks about ‘religion,’ ‘mysticism,’ indeed even of ‘magic;’ we must say at once that this is not one of those things which can be accepted as the idea they are, rather it is the custom of the philosophers to divert the words from their meanings to tune with their particular conceptions.

First, with respect to religion, the origins of the thesis which M. Bergson backs are not mysterious and are very simple in their essence; it is quite astonishing that those who spoke about his book do not seem to have noticed this. We know that all the modern theories in this regard have in common the attempt to reduce religion to something purely human, which amounts to denying it, consciously or unconsciously, since it is to refuse to consider what forms its very essence, which is precisely the ‘non-human’ element. As a whole, these theories can be reduced to two types: the ‘psychological’ one, which pretends to explain religion by the nature of the human individual, and the other ‘sociological,’ which wishes to see it as an exclusively social thing, the product of a kind of ‘collective unconsciousness’ that dominates individuals and imposes itself on them.

The originality of Mr. Bergson is that he has sought to combine these two kinds of explanations: instead of viewing them as more or less exclusive of each other, as their respective supports usually do, he accepts them both at the same time by relating them to different things, but nevertheless designated by the same word ‘religion;’ the ‘two sources’ he envisions are nothing other than this in reality. There are two types of religions for him, one ‘static’ and the other ‘dynamic,’ which, oddly enough, he also calls ‘closed religion’ and ‘open religion;’ the first is of a social nature, the second of a psychological nature; naturally, it is it where his preferences led and that which he considers as the superior form of religion, we say this, because it is quite obvious that in a ‘philosophy of becoming’ such as his, it cannot be otherwise.

From studying Bergson and during my Neuroscience degree, I do think there is reason to believe there is a degree of independence of our explicit memory from brain processing. This is because qualia is irreducible, the brain has no engram, and neural activity across the brain is in perpetual rhythmic and synchronous activity (e.g., in the case of memory it's hippocampal-cortical dynamics or hippocampal theta precessions). What is the nature of explicit memory when it is not persistently arising? Can the qualitative potentialities of explicit memory in its various forms arising from biology be said to pre-exist their temporal appearances? If not, how else can one explain a causal relation of the unique qualities arising from explicit memory in a non-reductionist way accessible to brain activity? In conclusion, explicit memory exists as an encodable field interfaced with the brain. I do not think the qualitative fragmented facades of an explicit memory are reducible to brain activity, even though they depend on it for consolidation and retrieval. Brain activity is not identical with the explicit memory of your joyful, painful, etc. moments because of the irreducibility of qualia (e.g., Mary's Thought Room Experiment). Very brief overview:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter_and_Memory

>>14312394
I influenced Whitehead and Deleuze anon, why haven't you read me yet?

/lit/ tell me about this guy. Why do the Whitehead and Deleuze shills never bring him up? He influenced both Whitehead and Deleuze. What's his deal? What's that intuition, duration, elan vital stuff about? Should I read him? Where does one start? How does one progress? Anything interesting?

Where do I start with him?

So spengler just bit all this guy’s shit, huh?

Smartest man ever

Wew i just tried reading this chap and got filtered hard. What can i read in preparation to try again?

Biology itself can be studied by the usual textbooks and practical experience by playing with living subjects. Once you've absorbed the basic biology, you're ready for the real biology by reading Creative Evolution by Bergson.