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19706805 No.19706805 [Reply] [Original]

>In Creative Evolution, Bergson starts out by criticizing mechanism as it applies to the concepts of life and evolution. The mechanistic approach would preclude the possibility of any real change or creativity, as each development would be potentially contained in the preceding ones.
What's wrong with each development being potentially contained in preceding developments? Why does he say it can't be?

>> No.19706882

Because then it wouldn't be emergent, it would be "evolutionist" in the old sense, meaning just an unfurling or unspooling of something that already exists. It would be the revelation of a latent or hidden thing instead of the creation of a new thing. Bergson's process philosophy is aimed at giving ontological status to creativity itself.

>> No.19706972

>>19706882
I know that's his idea but why does he believe that?

>> No.19706993

>>19706805
There's no novelty if everything is 100% determined. But clearly we experience novelty anyway and have degrees of freedom in doing or not doing certain things. You should read his earlier stuff, Time and Free Will, Matter and Memory.

>> No.19707040 [DELETED] 

>>19706972

A better question would be why do you think the reductionist's ATOMS contain everything they are different to?
How absurd to then have to invent both "cause and effect" and "emergent properties" to put back together what you derived by taking it apart.

Furthermore, where it the atom of "wetness" or of "red?" What are the atoms made of, and do they contain all the atoms they can make?

Where is the atom of "belief!"

Bergson is "wrong" but more right than the line from Plato to Kant, in that at least he questions the absurdity of what you have to create out of nothingness and unknowability to get these stupid philosophies of reality to work.

>> No.19707044

>>19706805
>n-no cause and effect aren't real I swear
psued

>> No.19707059

>>19706805
>the past doesn't include the future or vice versa
because he's retarded

>> No.19707070 [DELETED] 
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19707070

>>19707059
>>19707044
>>19707040
>>19706993
>>19706972
>>19706882

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Anonymous 01/08/22(Sat)09:57:14 No.19706805▶>>19706993 >>19707044 >>19707059
>In Creative Evolution, Bergson starts out by criticizing mechanism as it applies to the concepts of life and evolution. The mechanistic approach would preclude the possibility of any real change or creativity, as each development would be potentially contained in the preceding ones.
What's wrong with each development being potentially contained in preceding developments? Why does he say it can't be?
>>
Anonymous 01/08/22(Sat)10:20:46 No.19706882▶>>19706972
Because then it wouldn't be emergent, it would be "evolutionist" in the old sense, meaning just an unfurling or unspooling of something that already exists. It would be the revelation of a latent or hidden thing instead of the creation of a new thing. Bergson's process philosophy is aimed at giving ontological status to creativity itself.
>>
Anonymous 01/08/22(Sat)10:42:14 No.19706972▶>>19707040
>>19706882
I know that's his idea but why does he believe that?
>>
Anonymous 01/08/22(Sat)10:46:26 No.19706993▶
>>19706805 (OP)
There's no novelty if everything is 100% determined. But clearly we experience novelty anyway and have degrees of freedom in doing or not doing certain things. You should read his earlier stuff, Time and Free Will, Matter and Memory.
>>
Anonymous 01/08/22(Sat)10:56:30 No.19707040▶
>>19706972

A better question would be why do you think the reductionist's ATOMS contain everything they are different to?
How absurd to then have to invent both "cause and effect" and "emergent properties" to put back together what you derived by taking it apart.

Furthermore, where it the atom of "wetness" or of "red?" What are the atoms made of, and do they contain all the atoms they can make?

Where is the atom of "belief!"

Bergson is "wrong" but more right than the line from Plato to Kant, in that at least he questions the absurdity of what you have to create out of nothingness and unknowability to get these stupid philosophies of reality to work.
>>
Anonymous 01/08/22(Sat)10:56:58 No.19707044▶
>>19706805 (OP)
>n-no cause and effect aren't real I swear
psued
>>
Anonymous 01/08/22(Sat)10:59:32 No.19707059▶
>>19706805 (OP)
>the past doesn't include the future or vice versa
because he's retarded

>> No.19707100

>>19706972
That's a hard question to answer. Your cosmology depends on what you take a priori first principles of "being" to be. Some people have a reason for claiming their first principles, others are aesthetically drawn toward theirs, others are confused about theirs or so dazzled by the "system" they learned that they rarely think about its first principles. Some people are explicit about their metaphysical commitments and justifications for stating being behaves the way it does, others adhere to them tacitly, others are evasive. Bergson is not evasive but he's somewhere in between explicit and tacit. His middle philosophy of creative evolution is founded on his phenomenology or pure intuition of the creative soul at the centre of our own being. Later in his life he supplemented this with a mystical intuition of love as a first principle or aspect of reality.

He's similar to Schopenhauer in that he believes descriptive, logical language is itself a subset of created reality and thus can't be used to explain reality. Describing ultimate being as a determinate entity with certain features that "unfold" in a given way doesn't make sense, because this sort of picture-thinking and logical consequence-thinking is itself an emergent subset of reality.

Schopenhauer addresses this by saying that the principle of sufficient reason (essentially, our habit and capacity for describing things as the effects of some cause, whether in a physical, metaphysical, logical, or volitional sense) is a product of reason, which is itself a product of the (world-)Will. Intellect uses the principle of sufficient reason for pragmatic purposes, to understand the world. Even animals (possessing more limited intellects) have causal thinking. Everything contingent can be interrogated as to its "why is this here? why did this happen?" But when we face the Will itself all we can say is that it Is. In fact, we can't even represent it, since it's not an "it," but the ground of all things that underlies all things, what the German mystics called the ab-grund, meaning both "abyss" in the sense of fathomless, and "ab-grund," "receding-ground," since it is always underlying any attempt to get "under" it. At the end of The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer freely addresses the fact that this is not satisfying, and that it can always still be asked "Why is the Will there, then?" which is the same as asking "Why is there something instead of nothing?" He doesn't have an answer.

>> No.19707105

>>19707100
His agnosticism about God's will, and insistence that it can only be experienced or intuited, not logically or imagistically given, is actually the same response given by the mystical and metaphysical traditions of Platonism and the Abrahamic religions, from Plato through Philo and the Neoplatonists (for whom the Good or God is so overwhelmingly "existent" that He/it can't be determinately explained) and down through Sufism and Kabbala, through Christian mysticism like Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa (for whom God was the unsayable but ever-present origin, and also irreducibly personal). And it's similar to the answer given in Indian and East Asian thought as well, that the "source" of all things or ultimate first principle has a form of being or "just-is-ness" that can be intuited or experienced in a way that annihilates all doubt and provides a form of knowledge beyond any sceptic's ability to deny it (at least for the duration of the experience).

But different people and traditions claim to have intuited different things. For Bergson, process and creativity (and later love) are irreducible aspects of the "thing" he senses (which he early on calls Duration) at the core of our own being, and which he then sympathetically intuits (like Schopenhauer does with his Will) by analogy as the core of all other things (an insight similar to the "tat tvam asi" or "that art thou" of Hinduism). His Introduction to Metaphysics is only 50-80 pages so you can read this part of his philosophy quickly and see what you think. Time and Free Will isn't that long either and is a good introduction to Creative Evolution.

If you want more of an introduction as to why Bergsonian-type "process" thinking emerged and distinguished itself from more static thinking about Being unfolding itself in apparent Becoming, but with no actual emergentism, I highly recommend Lovejoy's book The Great Chain of Being which is about this. But becoming-oriented conceptions of being have been around for a long time, e.g. in Eriugena's natura naturans ("nature naturing"). Spinoza's Absolute or Being, which he called Substance or Deus sive Natura ("God or Nature" meaning both), was much more static (being derived from Cartesianism), but people like Herder turned it into a processual entity, an Absolute Becoming instead of an Absolute Being. I think the first chapter of Taylor's Hegel is a bit of an introduction to this.

But I really recommend reading Bergson's shorter works mentioned above since they're not that difficult. And Lovejoy. Bachelard's Intuition of the Instant is also interesting.

>> No.19707159

>>19707100
>>That's a hard question to answer. Your cosmology depends on what you take a priori first principles of "being" to be. Some people have a reason for claiming their first principles, others are aesthetically drawn toward theirs, others are confused about theirs or so dazzled by the "system" they learned that they rarely think about its first principles. Some people are explicit about their metaphysical commitments and j
stopped reading there
world salad
totally irrelevant
meandering to a point that likely doesn't exist

learn to write before you write
no-one is interested in an eternal preface

>> No.19707164 [DELETED] 
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19707164

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Anonymous 01/08/22(Sat)09:57:14 No.19706805▶>>19706993 >>19707044 >>19707059 >>19707070
>In Creative Evolution, Bergson starts out by criticizing mechanism as it applies to the concepts of life and evolution. The mechanistic approach would preclude the possibility of any real change or creativity, as each development would be potentially contained in the preceding ones.
What's wrong with each development being potentially contained in preceding developments? Why does he say it can't be?
>>
Anonymous 01/08/22(Sat)10:20:46 No.19706882▶>>19706972 >>19707070
Because then it wouldn't be emergent, it would be "evolutionist" in the old sense, meaning just an unfurling or unspooling of something that already exists. It would be the revelation of a latent or hidden thing instead of the creation of a new thing. Bergson's process philosophy is aimed at giving ontological status to creativity itself.
>>
Anonymous 01/08/22(Sat)10:42:14 No.19706972▶>>19707070 >>19707100
>>19706882
I know that's his idea but why does he believe that?
>>
Anonymous 01/08/22(Sat)10:46:26 No.19706993▶>>19707070
>>19706805 (OP)
There's no novelty if everything is 100% determined. But clearly we experience novelty anyway and have degrees of freedom in doing or not doing certain things. You should read his earlier stuff, Time and Free Will, Matter and Memory.
>>
Anonymous 01/08/22(Sat)10:56:58 No.19707044▶>>19707070
>>19706805 (OP)
>n-no cause and effect aren't real I swear
psued
>>
Anonymous 01/08/22(Sat)10:59:32 No.19707059▶>>19707070
>>19706805 (OP)
>the past doesn't include the future or vice versa
because he's retarded
>>
-1=-0 01/08/22(Sat)11:01:04 No.19707070▶
File: ------------------.png (46 KB, 278x371)
46 KB
>>19707059
>>19707044
>>19707040
>>19706993
>>19706972
>>19706882

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Anonymous 01/08/22(Sat)09:57:14 No.19706805▶>>19706993 >>19707044 >>19707059
>In Creative Evolution, Bergson starts out by criticizing mechanism as it applies to the concepts of life and evolution. The mechanistic approach would preclude the possibility of any real change or creativity, as each development would be potentially contained in the preceding ones.
What's wrong with each development being potentially contained in preceding developments? Why does he say it can't be?
>>
Anonymous 01/08/22(Sat)10:20:46 No.1970688ertain things. You should read his earlier stuff, Timn t
learn to write before you write
no-one is interested in an eternal preface

>> No.19707192

>>19707164
This nigger bot is raiding us

>> No.19707461

Bump

>> No.19708011

>>19706805
In what way is this a criticism, exactly?

>> No.19708520

>>19707100
>>19707105
I appreciate your response and recommendations anon
>>19707159
Faggot
>>19708011
I copied it from his SEP page. My post is basically asking what his criticism was cause I haven't read him yet.