Time and Free Will:
An essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Henri Bergson
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Translator's Preface
Author's Preface
THE INTENSITY OF PSYCHIC STATES
Quantitative differences applicable to magnitudes but not to intensities, 1-4 ; Attempt to estimate intensities by objective causes or atomic movements, 4-7 ; Different kinds of intensities, 7 ; Deep-seated psychic states: desire, 8, hope, 9, joy and sorrow, 10; Aesthetic feelings, 11-18: grace, 12, beauty, 14-18, music, poetry, art, 15-18 ; Moral feelings, pity, 19; ; Conscious states involving physical symptoms, 20: muscular effort, 21-26, attention and muscular tension, 27-28 ; Violent emotions, 29-31 : rage, 29, fear, 30 ; Affective sensations, 32-39: pleasure and pain, 33-39, disgust, 36 ; Representative sensations, 39-60 : and external causes, 42, sensation of sound, 43, intensity, pitch and muscular effort, 45-6, sensations of heat and cold, 46-7, sensations of pressure and weight, 47-50, sensation of light, 50-60, photometric experiments, 52-60, Delboeuf's experiments, 56-60 ; Psychophysics, 60-72: Weber and Fechner, 61-65, Delboeuf, 67-70, the mistake of regarding sensations as magnitudes, 70-72 ; Intensity in (1) representative, (2) affective states, intensity and multiplicity, 72-74.
THE MULTIPLICITY OF CONSCIOUS STATES; THE IDEA OF DURATION
Number and its units, 75-77, number and accompanying intuition of space, 78-85 ; Two kinds of multiplicity, of material objects and conscious states, 85-87, impenetrability of matter, 88-89, homogeneous time and pure' duration, 90-91 ; Space and its contents, 92, empirical theories of space, 93-94, intuition of empty homogeneous medium peculiar to man, 95-97, time as homogeneous medium reducible to space, 98-99 ; Duration, succession and space, 100-104, pure duration, 105-106; ; Is duration measurable ? 107-110 ; Is motion measurable ? 111-112 ; Paradox of the Eleatics, 113-115 ; Duration and simultaneity, 115-116 ; Velocity and simultaneity, 117-119 ; Space alone homogeneous, duration and succession belong to conscious mind, 120-121 ; Two kinds of multiplicity, qualitative and quantitative, 121-123, superficial psychic states invested with discontinuity of their external causes, 124-126, these eliminated, real duration is felt as a quality, 127-128 ; The two aspects of the self, on the surface well-defined conscious states, deeper down states which interpenetrate and form organic whole, 129-139, solidifying influence of language on sensation, 129-132, analysis distorts the feelings, 132-134, deeper conscious states forming a part of ourselves, 134-136 ; Problems soluble only by recourse to the concrete and living self, 137-139.
THE ORGANIZATION OF CONSCIOUS STATES; FREE WILL
Dynamism and mechanism, 140-142 ; Two kinds of determinism, 142 ; Physical determinism, 143-155 : and molecular theory of matter, 143, and conservation of energy, 144, if conservation universal, physiological and nervous phenomena necessitated, but perhaps not conscious states, 145-148, but is principle of con conversation universal ? 149, it may not apply to living beings and conscious states, 150-154, idea of its universality depends on confusion between concrete duration and abstract time, 154-155 ;Psychological determinism, 155-163; implies associationist conception of mind, 155-158, this involves defective conception of self, 159-163 ; The free act : freedom as expressing the fundamental self, 165-170 ; Real duration and contingency, 172-182: could our act have been different ? 172-175, geometrical representation of process of coming to a decision, 175-178, the fallacies to which it leads determinists and libertarians, 179-183 ; Real duration and prediction, 183-198 : conditions of Paul's prediction of Peter's action (I) being Peter (2) knowing already his final act, 184-18g, the three fallacies involved, 190-192, astronomical prediction depends on hypothetical acceleration of movements, 193-195, duration cannot be thus accelerated, 196-198 ; Real duration and causality, 199-221 : the law " same antecedents, same consequents," 199-201, causality as regular succession, 202-203, causality as prefiguring : two kinds (1) prefiguring as mathematical pre-existence ; implies non-duration, but we endure and therefore may be free, 204-210, (2) prefiguring as having idea of future act to be realized by effort; does not involve determinism, 211-214, determinism results from confusing these two senses, 215-218 ; Freedom real but indefinable, 219-221.
CONCLUSION
States of self perceived through forms borrowed from external world, 223 ; Intensity as quality, 225 ; Duration as qualitative multiplicity, 226 ; No duration in the external world, 227 ; Extensity and duration must be separated, 229 ; Only the fundamental self free, 231 ; ]Kant's mistaken idea of time as homogeneous, 232, hence he put the self which is free outside both space and time, 233 ; Duration is heterogeneous, relation of psychic state to act is unique, and act is free, 235-240.
