Bergson has a very dynamic conception of self. His notion of the self is of one which is constantly evolving. While making a decision, for example, one’s selfhood is not just a witness of possible outcomes. Rather it is constantly morphing in the process of this deliberation.
The inner dynamism of consciousness, according to Bergson, ensures that different states of our consciousness permeate and strengthen each other. And it is this dynamic series that would naturally lead to the formation a free act. The point is that it is the character of the self “is altering imperceptibly every day.” It changes in the deliberation as well as in the experience of its outcome. The free act springs from this character: Our experience of freedom is, then, …show more content…
For example, imagine Neo, who goes through a series N P of conscious states (like fighting the agents, or his curiosity about the Matrix), when he meets Morpheus. When he reaches this point, P, he is given two options: he can learn about reality and the Matrix by choosing to swallow the red pill (PR) or he can go back to his old life by choosing the blue pill (PB).
The libertarians would argue that both these options are equally available for Neo. They imagine the ego hesitating between choosing two specific paths (PR or PB). The determinists would ask why Neo would decide one way than another? The fact that he chooses to swallow the red pill as opposed to the blue has to be taken into account for the determinist.
The problem in both these positions is that the geometrical figure doesn’t show Neo doing the deed but only the deed already done. The figure only shows the memory of the process, i.e. the process as a thing but not the dynamic movement in the act itself. The quandary that remains is: “if the two courses were equally possible, how have we made our choice? If only one of them was possible, why did we believe ourselves …show more content…
In a short essay by Freud called "A Note Upon the 'Mystic Writing-Pad'., he proposes the unconscious as a writing apparatus. He imagined it as a wax tablet covered by a transparent sheet of celluloid. As we live our everyday life, things get written on the plastic surface based on external sense impressions. These perceptions can get erased once the plastic sheet is removed, but what remains are the leftover and superimposed traces on the wax slab from the writing on the plastic sheet. We experience the world through the traces of these previous experiences. But there is no linearity or category to these traces. Like for Bergson, Freud’s conception of the self is understood by the dynamic whole and not individual traces. The unconscious is not a second mind, but only along with the unconscious is there a coherent sense of the
The inner dynamism of consciousness, according to Bergson, ensures that different states of our consciousness permeate and strengthen each other. And it is this dynamic series that would naturally lead to the formation a free act. The point is that it is the character of the self “is altering imperceptibly every day.” It changes in the deliberation as well as in the experience of its outcome. The free act springs from this character: Our experience of freedom is, then, …show more content…
For example, imagine Neo, who goes through a series N P of conscious states (like fighting the agents, or his curiosity about the Matrix), when he meets Morpheus. When he reaches this point, P, he is given two options: he can learn about reality and the Matrix by choosing to swallow the red pill (PR) or he can go back to his old life by choosing the blue pill (PB).
The libertarians would argue that both these options are equally available for Neo. They imagine the ego hesitating between choosing two specific paths (PR or PB). The determinists would ask why Neo would decide one way than another? The fact that he chooses to swallow the red pill as opposed to the blue has to be taken into account for the determinist.
The problem in both these positions is that the geometrical figure doesn’t show Neo doing the deed but only the deed already done. The figure only shows the memory of the process, i.e. the process as a thing but not the dynamic movement in the act itself. The quandary that remains is: “if the two courses were equally possible, how have we made our choice? If only one of them was possible, why did we believe ourselves …show more content…
In a short essay by Freud called "A Note Upon the 'Mystic Writing-Pad'., he proposes the unconscious as a writing apparatus. He imagined it as a wax tablet covered by a transparent sheet of celluloid. As we live our everyday life, things get written on the plastic surface based on external sense impressions. These perceptions can get erased once the plastic sheet is removed, but what remains are the leftover and superimposed traces on the wax slab from the writing on the plastic sheet. We experience the world through the traces of these previous experiences. But there is no linearity or category to these traces. Like for Bergson, Freud’s conception of the self is understood by the dynamic whole and not individual traces. The unconscious is not a second mind, but only along with the unconscious is there a coherent sense of the