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Quantity and Quality: The Difference Overcome Bergson’s brilliant revisioning of the nature of matter and mind allows us to cross an abyss that, for many scholars, has often seemed impassable: the philosophical gulf between quantity and quality.1 The quantitative elements of existence (often misleadingly termed “primary qualities” in philosophical discussions during the past few centuries) are the measurable, predictable material units of existence, as opposed to the experienced “qualia” of our perceptions (often known in philosophy as “secondary qualities”). The quantitative level of reality can be seen, for example, in the spectrum of electromagnetic vibrations that underlie the qualitative experience of the color “red.” The philosophical problem is that it is difficult to see how a collection of seemingly insentient, calculable, vibratory movements (that are in no way “red”) can combine together to become our seamless, everevolving , conscious states of awareness (in this case, “red” as we see it). Bergson does not attempt to overcome this problem by denying that a vibratory, quantitative reality exists underneath the qualia of our experienced sensations. He fully acknowledges that beyond our conscious awareness, there are countless vibrations that come together to create the material substratum of the world that science studies so well, the world of calculable, predictable, seemingly lawful interactions. Bergson accepts (and in fact, embraces) scientific evidence . However, he interprets that evidence in a way that is radically different from most conventional scientists and academics, in that according to him, these material vibrations are not inert, but instead have a degree of protoconsciousness inherent within them. As such, this quantitative reality is perhaps better understood as a different “quality” of quality itself. These vibrations are, from Bergson ’s perspective, simply a different rhythm of durée than our own, and as such, they possess a quality of durée that in-and-of-itself cannot be directly accessed by our conscious awareness. What Bergson suggests is that, in order for us to experience the smallest moment of, for instance “red,” billions of vibratory pulses of durée are condensed together in-and-through our memory to form our experience of that distinctive color. This understanding of quality and quantity is a radical shift from the more commonsense understanding that “subjective” experience is “inside,” while “objective” reality is “outside.” Seen from a Bergsonian perspective, “inside” and “outside,” or “subjective” and “objective” are simply interactive poles of a single dynamic temporal continuum, in which “the subjective side of perception” contracts, or compresses, or condenses, via memory, the “objective” multitude of “successive vibrations into which this perception can be internally broken up” into the seamless flow of our ongoing conscious experience (MM 70–71). For Bergson, our “inside” perceptions are, in actuality, “out there.” At every moment of perception we are touching, and touched by, the world that we MIND AND MATTER 195 are perceiving. Similarly, the “outside” world is never completely divorced from consciousness, from what is “inside,” in that it too is simply a more “diffuse,” more “habituated,” more predictable rhythm of durée—the essential “stuff” of reality itself. Rhythms of Durée What Bergson asks us to do here is very difficult. He asks us to stop thinking about reality in spatial (i.e., material, measurable, divisible) terms, and instead to start thinking of reality in terms of time.2 Instead of conceiving of matter as the fundamental substance of reality, as is assumed by materialism, Bergson asks us to conceive of the possibility that everything, both mind and matter, consists of varying rhythms of durée; he asks us to imagine that both matter and mind are simply differing manifestations of a unified (albeit continually changing and intrinsically pluralistic) reality: durée.3 If Bergson is correct, if our thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and indeed matter itself are all different “tensions” or “vibrations” of durée, then matter and mind are not two utterly different substances. Instead, they are two ends of a single interactive spectrum of temporal becoming. If this is the case, then the mind-body problem simply evaporates and the host of day-to-day interactions between our mind and body that we all experience (e.g., I intend to raise my arm, and do so) are no longer philosophical conundrums—and this is no minor accomplishment. However, it can be exceedingly difficult to imagine different levels of duration (which are, in fact, also different levels of consciousness) because of our deeply ingrained tendency to assume that there is only one “homogeneous and independent Time...

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