Chapter: |
I | II | ||||||||||||||||||||
Bibliography | Author's Preface |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | ||||
Chapter: |
III | ||||||||||||||||||
18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | Conclusion | Index |
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(Most quotes verbatim Henri Louis Bergson, some paraphrased.) |
(Relevant to Pirsig, William James Sidis, and Quantonics Thinking Modes.) |
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""To be conscious of free will," says Stuart Mill, "must mean to be conscious, before I have
Note (1): Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's
Philosophy. 5th ed., (1878), p. 580. |
(Our bold, color, and violet bold italic problematics.) Bergson restarts his footnote counts on each page. So to refer a footnote, one must state page number and footnote number. Our bold and color highlights follow a code:
Opposite is a purely classical term. It is used often, just as Bergson uses it, with the immediately preceding. Classicists' use of thelogos just prior their use of opposite affords them an artificial badge of self-assessed importance. It says they know and are telling us that there is only one opposite. In this classical guise we have, again, mistaken presumption of 1-1 correspondence and causality. In quantum reality there are n¤ classical opposites! There are only quantum complements. And quantum c¤mplements are n¤t classical per se lisr objects. All quantum c¤mplements are subjective ensembles of vast quantum qualities, which we in Quantonics call "interrelationships." When classicists "encrust" subjective quantum ensembles they induce and educe classical propertyesque symbolic and noumenal specificity. They turn quantum animacy into classical state-icity. They turn quantons into classically objective dichons. They turn robust quantum c¤mplexity (view as quantum ensemble c¤mpl-ement-exity) into naïve and endarkened classical simplicity. We can make similar arguments for Bergson's use of difference. "...their use of difference affords them an artificial badge of self-assessed importance" that they know only two classical objects must/can be compared to establish "a difference." But quantum reality denies any such possibility of ideal classical binary "difference" comparison. See our omnifference. |
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175 |
"The argument of the former implies that there is only one possible act corresponding to given antecedents: the believers in free will assume, on the other hand, that the same series could issue in [classically monistically, just one of] several different [classically separable and distinct] acts, equally possible. It is on this question of the equal possibility of two contrary actions or volitions that we shall first dwell: perhaps we shall thus gather some indication as to the nature of the operation by which the will makes its choice. "I hesitate between two possible actions X and Y, and I go in turn from one to the other. This means
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176 |
"Thus we shall get still nearer the reality by agreeing to use the invariable signs X and Y to denote, not these tendencies or states themselves, since they are constantly changing, but the two
"But this conception of voluntary activity does not satisfy common sense, because, being essentially
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177 | "In short, the continuous and living activity of this self, in which we have distinguished, by abstraction only, two opposite directions, is replaced by these directions themselves, transformed into indifferent inert things awaiting our choice. But then we must certainly transfer the activity of the self somewhere or other. We will put it, according to this hypothesis, at the point 0: we will say that the self, when it reaches 0 and finds two courses open to it, hesitates, deliberates and finally decides in favour of one of them. As we find it difficult to picture the double direction of the conscious activity in all the phases of its continuous development, we separate off these two tendencies on the one hand and the activity of the self on the other: we thus get an impartially active ego hesitating between two inert and, as it were, solidified courses of action. Now, if it decides in favour of 0 X, the line 0 Y will nevertheless remain; if it chooses 0 Y, the path 0 X will remain open, waiting in case the self retraces its steps in order to make use of it. It is in this sense that we say, when speaking of a free act, that the contrary action was equally possible. And, even if we do not draw a geometrical figure on paper, we involuntarily and almost unconsciously think of it as soon as we distinguish in the free act a number of successive phases, the conception of opposite motives, hesitation and choicethus hiding the geometrical symbolism under a kind of verbal crystallization." |
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Note here that choice is classically di-chotomous. It, as used, is n¤t a quantum ensemble selectings process. |
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178 |
"Now it is easy to see that this really mechanical conception of freedom issues naturally and logically in the most unbending determinism. "The living activity of the self, in which we distinguish by abstraction two opposite tendencies,
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179 |
"But if the self, when it reaches the point 0, is already determined in one direction, there is no use in the other way remaining open, the self cannot take it. And the same rough symbolism which was meant to show the contingency of the action performed, ends, by a natural extension, in proving its absolute necessity. "In short, defenders and opponents of free will agree in holding that the action is preceded by a
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180 | "It should not
be forgotten, indeed, that the figure, which is really a splitting
of our psychic
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181 |
"But this figure represents a thing and not a progress; it corresponds, in its inertness, to a kind of stereotyped memory of the whole process of deliberation and the final decision arrived at: how could it give us the least idea of the concrete movement, the dynamic progress by which the deliberation issued in the act? And yet, once the figure is constructed, we go back in imagination into the past and will have it that our psychic activity has followed exactly the path traced out by the figure. We thus fall into the mistake which has been pointed out above: we give a mechanical explanation of a fact, and then substitute the explanation for the fact itself. [Further, we then assume said mechanical explanation is a tautology, as Aristotle did. We blunder further and assume a tautology permits modular induction, as Peano did.] Hence we encounter insuperable difficulties from the very beginning: 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 free? And we do not see that both questions come back to this: Is time space? [N¤! But we can classically model time with incremental space, Sir, as you did in a prior topic. Further, we ask, "What is space?" Define it! Classically mass, space, and time are measurable but not definable. But quantumly, our heuristic is that mass, space, and time are definable in terms of absolute quantum flux.] "If I glance over a road marked on the map and follow it up to a certain point, there is nothing
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"Defenders and opponents of free will alike forget thisthe former when they assert, and the latter when they deny the possibility of acting differently from what we have done. The former reason thus: "The path is not yet traced out, therefore it may take any direction whatever." To which the answer is: "You forget that it is not possible to speak of a path till the action is performed: but then it will have been traced out." The latter say: "The path has been traced out in such and such a way: therefore its possible direction was not any direction whatever, but only this one direction." To which the answer is: "Before the path was traced out there was no direction, either possible or impossible, for the very simple reason that there could not yet be any question of a path." Get rid of this clumsy symbolism, the idea of which besets you without your knowing it; you will see that the argument of the determinists assumes this puerile form: "The act, once performed, is performed," and that their opponents reply: "The act, before being performed, was not yet performed." In other words, the question of freedom remains after this discussion exactly where it was to begin with; nor must we be surprised at it, since freedom must be sought in a certain shade or quality of the action itself and not in the relation of this act to what it is not or to what it might have been. All the difficulty arises from the fact that both parties picture the deliberation under the form of an oscillation in space, while it really consists in a dynamic progress in which the self and its motives, like real living beings, are in a constant state [rather, unending quantum ensemblings] of becoming. The self, infallible when it affirms its immediate experiences, feels itself free and says so; but, as soon as it tries to explain its freedom to itself, it no longer perceives itself except by a kind of refraction through space. Hence a symbolism of a mechanical kind, equally incapable of proving, disproving, or illustrating free will." |
(Our brackets, bold, color, and violet bold italic problematics.) And Bergson forgets that quantum free will is n¤t individual just "we/our" free will, rather quantum free will is a quantum complementary animate everywhere associative ensemble of free wills "selectings whatings happenings nextings." Reality authorizes all individuals to participate in quantum emergence of Its n¤vel nextings.
As we say, "Dump SOM, dumb CTMs!" Pragma are performing!
This is a very large issue! Two immediate topics for consideration here: SOM loop creating mind-whir-lock, and Planck oscillations as DQ. Quantum self is free to select; however, outcomings are quantum ensemble indeterminate. Why? Other "selves" compenetrate and complement our quantum ensemble in which we are selecting. They are selecting on our ensemble too. Some with greater, some with lesser Value. Selection is a quantum ensemble of Valuations. |