Bergsonism, Part 3 - Duration

Process Philosophy

This will be an analysis and review of Deleuze’s second chapter of Bergsonism, and a continuation of the first two parts in this series, Bergsonism On Intuition. For Bergson, the integration of intelligence and instinct allows for the emergence of a capacity of intuition. He describes intuition as an “integral experience”, one that presupposes duration, that is a metaphysical method of integrating (making whole) all of the precise differential parts of a geometrical nature that discern with the intellect. Intuition is an awakening of bodily knowledge that is derived from the creative novelty characteristic of vital flux – this allows for a broadening of our perceptive horizon for us to capitalize on not only having intellect knowledge but a body that contains in it instinctual evolutionary knowledge as well. To tap into this instinct, we must use the intellect to state proper problems, but use intuition to discover genuine differences in kind. The method of intuition gives access to our immediate experience, that involves the presence of the body but also a broadening of the horizon of a body’s perception. This broadening extends a field of felt awareness from immediate sensory experience into the more abstract domains accessible to the intellect. Intellect convinces us that we are separate (like a wave in the ocean), due to its production of ego structures, and this has allowed human consciousness to see far into the depths of space and matter, but it has alienated it from itself. To reunite the intellect with itself, we must turn its intensive focus forged in relation to matter, back onto itself, into the flowing movements of its bodily and psychological embedding by means of an intuitive method. This will carry the unconscious felt knowledge of vitality, into the light of conscious awareness – we can call this a kind of intuitive supraconsciousness, that is both the origin and purpose of life, constructed in actuality through the process of an integration that maintains differentiated components. Intelligence has a mechanical quality, logical and geometrical in nature, that is needed to build structures that allow towering perspectives, but our capacity for intuition, beyond the duality of intellect and instinct, allows us to play in discovery of our intellectual creations. 

Through intuition, and broadening our awareness beyond not only our sense perceptions, but also our intellect’s capacity for possibilities of past and future, we can unlock a space to examine a whole new plane of existence – that of the here and now. The method of intuition is a practice of radical empiricism, an effort to develop a new (or rediscover an old) way of thinking about reality, that of a process. Intuition provides access to a durational continuity, to which intellect alone cannot get to, through integrating verbal conceptuality with the affective reality of bodily experience by means of a sustained attention or a particular kind of focus. This intuitive-intellectual focus expands one’s purview to a recognition that matter is the medium from which the creative impulse of life moves: experience is a flow of phenomena. This flow of phenomena is the perceptible flux, where our sensible particulars reveal reality’s manyness-in-one constitution. Reality is not discovered, but invented – our intellect invents our ability to conceptualize reality, and our intuition can then go further into the creation to then discover it. Intuition as method begins first with an act of stating the problem that is through a creation of the intellect; followed by a second act of intuitive discovery of truth/falsity of broadening and contracting; and finally ends with a third act of temporalizing the problem where the problem is solved not spatially, but temporally. The intellect is used for the first act, a movement through differences in degree; intuition is used for the second act of movement of through differences in kind; and intuition is used again for the third, final act, that of immediately making use of our own duration to affirm and recognize the existence of other durations. 

Our immediate life experiences always give us a composite of duration and space. Space as well has two fundamental characteristics: discontinuity and homogeneity. Duration has two fundamental characteristics to speak of: continuity, and heterogeneity. Duration contains a condition of experience, and by taking its fundamental characteristics as an object of focus we can go beyond experience. Pure duration offers us a succession that is purely internal and without exteriority; space is an exteriority without succession. These two, duration and space, combine and form a kind of combination space which introduces extrinsic distinctions, that is homogenous and discontinuous sections. Duration in this combination space, however, contributes the internal succession that is both heterogeneous and continuous. The result of this we can call auxiliary space – in it we are able to preserve instant states of space. This auxiliary space in turn muddles our duration with extrinsic distinctions that we decompose into external parts and think of it as a kind of homogenous time. This is a composite of homogenous time, and auxiliary space, which to properly deal with we will need to divide it up into its respective parts. It is in this way that duration provides us with a kind of immediate datum of the experience, and if we are careful enough, we can extract it out. 

The decomposition of this composite reveals to us two types of multiplicity: the first multiplicity is represented by space which contains in it an impure homogenous time, difference in degree, and a numerical multiplicity (quantitative differentiation) that is discontinuous and actual. The second multiplicity is represented by pure duration, in it contains an internal multiplicity of succession, difference in kind, and a non-numerical multiplicity (qualitative distinguishment) that is continuous and virtual. 

Bergson is utilizing the definition of multiplicity that was defined by the mathematician G.B.R. Riemann, who defined multiplicities as those things that could be determined in terms of their dimensions or their independent variables. Multiplicities are distinguished as either discrete or continuous. Discrete multiplicities contain the principle of their own internal measure (whatever measurement that is particular to it). Continuous multiplicities find an external measure, a metrical principle in something else, such as phenomena unfolding in them or forces acting in them. Bergson starts here and develops this notion of multiplicity further whereby continuous multiplicities are those which belong essentially to duration. With this, we find that duration is not simply something unmeasurable or indivisible but that which can only divide by changing in kind, or in other words, that which is divided only by changing in kind – its measurement performed by varying its metrical principle at each stage of division. This is illustrated further by delineating between subjective and objective. 

“We apply the term subjective to what seems to be completely and adequately known; and the term objective, to what is known in such a way that a constantly increasing number of new impressions could be substituted for the idea which we actually have of it.” Bergson, Matter and Memory

Quantitative Multiplicity

For Bergson, an object can be divided up in infinite ways – but before these divisions are made, they are grasped in thought as possible, without anything changing in the totality of the object. This leads us to conclude that divisions in an object are already visible in the image of the object: in principle, even when an object is not realized (simply possible), the divisions are actually perceptible and thus are able to be perceived. Bergson describes these divisions as actual, instead of virtual, and we use these divisions to perceive subdivisions in the undivided, that leads to a kind of objectivity. Therefore, the objective is that which has no virtuality whatsoever, and whether realized or not, possible or real, everything is actual in the objective. 

In Matter and Memory, Bergson goes on to describe matter as that which does not have virtuality, or any sort of hidden power, and due to this we can assimilate matter into a kind of image. Recall from Part 1 of this series, there is more in the real than in the possible – so in the same way, there is more in matter than in the image that we have of it. But contained in matter, there cannot be anything else or a different kind, from which we make our image of. Bergson comments here on Berkeley, for he had combined body and idea (matter and image). And in this way, he had relegated matter to having no interior, that contains nothing, and doesn’t possess power or virtuality of any kind – is no more than what it presents to us at any given moment. 

Object and objective refer to not only what is divided, but what, while being divided, does not change in kind but changes in degree. That is to say, the object only divides by differences in degree. We can call things objective if it can be characterized by a perfect ratio of the divided and the division, in other words, of number and unit. This is how we can describe an object as a numerical multiplicity. The model of division here is number and the arithmetical unit itself, which are susceptible to dividing without changing in kind. Number has only differences in degree, where its differences (realized or not) are actual in it. 

“The units by means of which arithmetic forms numbers are provisional units which can be subdivided without limit, and each of them is a sum of fractional qualities, as small and as numerous as we like to imagine. While all multiplication implies the possibility of treating any number whatever as a provisional unit that can be added to itself, conversely the units in their turn are true numbers which are as big as we like, but are regarded as provisionally indivisible for the purpose of compounding them with one another. Now, the very admission that it is possible to divide the unit into as many parts as we like, shows that we regard it as extended.” Bergson

Contained in any number is an infinite combination of sums that could be used to get to the whole number in particular, it only depends on what path you wish to take. For example, ½ + ½ = 1 or how ⅓ + ⅔ = 1. The whole number 1 has in it an infinite amount of subdivisions that are simply differences in degree. Simultaneously, it is possible to divide any number into as many parts as we like, this indicates an extension, rather than a change in kind. Again, for numbers, their differences are actual and contained within it, whether they are realized (as a possibility) or not.

Qualitative Multiplicity

In the qualitative non-numerical multiplicity we deal with the subject or subjective:

“A complex feeling will contain a fairly large number of simple elements; but as long as these elements do not stand out with perfect clearness, we cannot say that they were completely realized, and as soon as consciousness has a distinct perception of them, the psychic state which results from their synthesis will have changed for this very reason.” Bergson

Let us take a common phrase, having a love-hate relationship to something: to love ice cream so much because it is delicious but hate it because it is not healthy. This love-hate relationship is actualized in consciousness (you can think in this fashion), and is a complex feeling. This complex feeling however is composed of two simple elements, that of love and hate, but these only become conscious insofar as they differ in kind from one another and also differ in kind from an unconscious (not conscious of these) complex. In reality, duration divides up and does so constantly: this is why we call it a multiplicity. But it is a multiplicity that divides by changing in kind, and does so in the process of division. In this process, the multiplicity goes through changes in kind where we can refer to indivisibles (monads) at each stage of the division (indivisible as in cannot further change in kind, like love and hate, simple elements). In this way, we can have other without there being several; number exists only potentially, depending on the stage in the process of division. 

The subjective, or duration, is the virtual (distinct from space and the actual from the objective). It is virtual, insofar as it is actualized (and not realized as a possibility), and in the course of it being actualized, it becomes inseparable from the movements of its actualization. Actualization comes about through differentiation and creates many differences in kind through its own movement. In numerical multiplicity, everything is actual but not realized – no relationships other than those between actuals, and no differences other than those that differ in degree. Whereas a non-numerical multiplicity (qualitative) plunges into another dimension entirely, which is no longer spatial but purely temporal: moving from the virtual to its actualization, actualizing itself through creating lines of differentiation that correspond to its respective difference in kind. Qualitative multiplicity, or non-numerical multiplicity, has the two properties we already mentioned: that of continuity and heterogeneity, but also a third property – that of simplicity. 

It is in Time and Free Will that Bergson distinguishes between subjective and objective. This conception of the virtual is crucial for Bergsonian philosophy in which we reject the concept of possibility – only using it for relations to matter and closed systems, but always seeing in it the source of false problems. Doing so, we are able to navigate around dialectical problems of Hegel and others, in which concepts are used that do not fit the required analysis. This is the reason for duration as a means of precise measurement that is not found in the sciences (where we find only differences in degree). 

“If I try to analyze duration, that is, to resolve it into ready-made concepts, I am obliged by the very nature of the concept and the analysis to take two opposing views of duration in general, with which I shall then claim to recompose it. This combination can present neither a diversity of degrees nor a variety of forms: It is, or it is not. I shall say, for example, that there is, on the one hand, a multiplicity of successive states of consciousness and, on the other hand, a unity which binds them together. Duration will be the synthesis of this unity and multiplicity, but how this mysterious operation can admit of shades or degrees, I repeat, is not quite clear.” Bergson

Bergson calls for an acute perception of the what and the how many, of what he calls the nuance or the potential number. Duration in this way is opposed to becoming precisely because it is a multiplicity – a type of multiplicity that is not reducible to an overly broad combination. The multiplicity that is duration is not at all the same thing as any simple multiple of something. 

Two forms of the negative can be distinguished: the negative of simple limitation, and the negative of opposites. Kant and the post-Kantians thought that substituting the negative of opposites with the negative of simple limitation was a revolution in philosophy. In Bergon’s critique of the negative, he condemns both of these forms. They both seem to involve or demonstrate a kind of inadequacy. When considering negative notions such as disorder or nonbeing, we must remember that their conception amounts to the same thing as our conceiving of them in opposition to their positives (order versus disorder, being versus nonbeing) as forces that exercise power and combine with their opposites to produce synthetically all things. In both forms of the negatives (disorder and nonbeing), we commit the same ignorance of differences in kind, which get treated as deteriorations and sometimes as oppositions. The very conception of disorder begins from the starting-point of order as the limit of a deterioration in whose interval all things are analytically included.

At the heart of Bergson’s project, is a method to think of differences in kind independently of all forms of negation: there are differences in being and yet nothing negative. This is because negation always involves abstract concepts that are much too general and require a more precise analysis. Deleuze asks, what is the common root of all negation? Bergson answers that instead of starting out from a difference in kind between two orders, or between two beings, a general idea of order or being is created, which can no longer be thought of except in opposition to a nonbeing or a disorder in general, or else that is used as the starting point of a kind of deterioration that leads us to disorder or nonbeing in general. In any scenario, we find that the question of difference in kind – what order? what being? – has been neglected. At the same time, the difference in kind between the two types of multiplicity has been neglected: thus we create a general idea of the One and combine it with its opposite, the Multiple in general, to allow us to reconstruct all things from the very standpoint of the force opposed to the multiple or to the deterioration of the One. Bergsonian philosophy is a condemnation of not only negatives of limitation and negatives of opposition – but at its core is a condemnation of general ideas. 

Movement

Let us now look at movement in this Bergsonian way, in doing so we see that movement as physical experience is itself a composite (albeit badly analyzed). Movement in physical experience is the space traversed by the moving object, that forms an indefinitely divisible numerical multiplicity, where all its parts are real or possible but are actual and differ only in degree. At the same time, however, movement in physical experience also contains a pure movement itself, that is an alteration of sorts, one we can describe as a virtual qualitative multiplicity. Any finite distance is divisible into steps of any unit or combination, but that finite distance changes qualitatively each time that it divides, and this division is that which differs in kind. The police get to the second floor, as the robber gets to the third floor. Once the police get to the third floor, the robber has made it to the fourth floor. Each floor traversed by the police and robber is divisible into finite steps (with a finite distance walked), but an alteration occurs and changes qualitatively each time that both police and robber gets to the place they originally sought (therefore marking a duration). This subjective-aim of an individual hints at a kind of memory, that which makes a body something other than instantaneous and gives it duration. The police (in the example) were told the robber was on the second floor from the dispatch (a stated problem, robber is in building), once they arrived to the second floor, they had discovered the robber was actually on the third floor (a qualitative change had occurred in their quantitative process of discovering that fact). Bergson claims that in each “local transfer” of movement through space in a physical experience, there is always a transfer of another kind as well. What appears to be simply a numerical part – that is a component traversed (by the police) – turns out to be not only external, but turns out to be an experience from the inside as well – that of the affective feeling of discovering that the qualitative change had occurred (the robber is not here). 

“What duration is there existing outside us? The present only, or, if we prefer the expression, simultaneity. No doubt external things change, but their moments do not succeed (in the ordinary sense of the word) one another, except for a consciousness that keeps them in mind… Hence we must not say that external things endure, but rather that there is some inexpressible reason in them which accounts for our inability to examine them at successive moments of our own duration without observing that they have changed. Although things do not endure as we do ourselves, nevertheless, there must be some incomprehensible reason why phenomena are seen to succeed one another instead of being set out all at once.” Bergson 

With these bodies, we know sense perception from without (objectively), but we also know affections from within (subjectively). We also know that we have afferent nerves that provide us with images that we are in the presence of, but also efferent nerves that respond with movement through the body back to the images we are in the presence of. If the afferent nerves were disconnected, we would not receive sensory data any more, but we could still move around (like a chicken with its head cut off). This is due to the fundamental nature of how our central nervous system acts in tandem with our peripheral nervous system, centripetal forces, afferent nerves provide us with information from our surroundings but centrifugal forces, efferent nerves, return movement to our environment. Simple living matter (nervous systems that tend to order their surroundings, rather than be subject to entropy such as nonliving matter), is that which responds to stimulus instantly; complex living matter is that which can be said to take on a nonzero value in time with its response to a cognitive disturbance. That is, a complex living system perceives its environment and sees in its all of the virtual possibility of actions it can exert onto the images that appear to surround it. We have evolved in this way to see, not the conditions of real experience, but instead conditions of possible experience. Through intuition, and notions of the virtual, we can recover the conditions of real experience from our intellect and explore what a body can do. 

Nomadic Notes: Radical Empiricism and Philosophical Intuition

We are attempting to understand Bergson’s intuition as method. It is performed in three acts: first we state the problem through a genuine creative act, but we must carefully navigate through false problems. False problems are of two kinds: nonexistent problems, and badly stated problems. We must not create a nonexistent problem, which would be to confuse the more with the less through negation, or to confuse the less for more through a deficit of the will – both confusing a retrograde projection of the possible. And we must not create a badly stated problem, one of badly analyzed composites that arbitrarily group things that differ in kind. We must critique these two false problems and creatively invent genuine problems through differentiation, else we will be subject to illusions of the intellect (Kantian mirages).

This differentiation is the second act that allows us to take the created invention from the intellect, and discover its truth or falsity with our intuition. This is done through a method of differentiation of carving out the conditions of real experience. The real is carved out (diverged) through properly stated natural articulations of differences in kind; but the real is also a point that intersects along multiple converging paths going towards the same ideal (virtual point). 

Fictions for Deleuze force us to assume the body is like a mathematical, virtual, point in space – a pure instant – or a succession of instants in time. Between excitation of a reflex motor function and response of the body’s executed movement, the brain establishes a cerebral interval. This interval can be divided up infinitely or prolonged into a plurality of possible reactions. This hides from us the whole conditions of the real as we subtract out that which does not interest us and only retain from a material object and the actions issuing from it only elements that are of interest. In essence, we use fictions to extract a whole aspect of real experience and then use cerebral intervals to fill any remainder. Fictions and intervals together produce the real experience, that Bergson calls the perception-recollection composite – fictions from the body give us perception (with succession), cerebral intervals (images) from the mind give us recollection. If we start from this perception-recollection composite, the problem of memory can be properly stated – since starting from the composite we divide it into two divergent and expanding directions of differences in kind. We can find the solution to the properly stated problem by performing an intuitive movement of narrowing, where the lines of internal experience (subjectivity) and external observation (objectivity) converge at the intersection of their different processes. 

These two different processes, that of internal experience and external observation, converge on what we can call a virtual point: that is, a point beyond the Kantian conditions of possible experience turn (i.e. a point in the real). These lines converge onto this point, intersect, and give rise to a distinct sufficient reason; the moment where the lines exit this point, they diverge and increase proportionally. The cost of snap judgements of situations (certain sense data), we substitute real sense data for a recollection of what we think it might be. This is done so out of efficiency, certain circumstances require it and we respond out of habit. This recollection then hides the real nature of the thing, that is, what gives rise to the thing itself – and instead appears to us as a mere numerical quantity (that of extensity, spatially thinking). This is what we wish to expose with Bergsonism’s intuition as method, the experience of the real, unlocked through virtual potential, rather than viewing only the experience of the possible through a retrograde action of interpolation of the past into the present. We will explore this further and go deeper into the metaphysics of memory (and its duration).

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Part 3, of a multi-part series on Deleuze’s Bergsonism text.

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This YouTube video created by Negative Maps of a reading of Bergsonism chapter 2 is a great complement to this essay

Sources

1. Bergsonism, Chapters 1 and 2, Gilles Deleuze

2. Matter and Memory, Henri Bergson

3. Integration and Difference: Constructing a Mythical Dialectic, Grant Maxwell