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What is Matter? Differential Dualism in Bergson’s Philosophy

Evaldo Sampaio

Résumés

Cet essai examine, dans le contexte de la philosophie moderne (du XVIIe au XXe siècle), le problème corps-esprit commun à la métaphysique de l'esprit et à la philosophie de la physique, à travers le contraste entre des théories contradictoires sur le statut de la matière. Pour ce faire, il (i) reconstitue l'évolution de la conceptualisation de la matière au cours de la rupture entre la philosophie naturelle classique et la philosophie naturelle moderne ; (ii) indique la rupture provoquée par la hiérarchisation ou l'abandon du concept de matière dans la philosophie naturelle moderne ; (iii) montre comment, pour la philosophie de la matière d'Henri Bergson, le problème corps-esprit trouve son origine dans la conception cartésienne et son déploiement dans d'autres philosophies ; et (iv) examine l'hypothèse critique de Bergson d'une conception de la matière familière à J. Maxwell, J. Thomson et M. Faraday. Enfin, une distinction bergsonienne est proposée entre deux types d'"extension" (l'étendue et l'extension), impliquant un nouveau type de dualisme ontologique ("dualisme différentiel") qui affirme l'irréductibilité de l'esprit à la matière et illustre leur possible synchronisme.

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I would like to thank Capes (Fundação Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Brazil) for financially supporting the research that resulted in this article.

  • 1 See Kandel (2006, xii). This conception can also be found in the presuppositions of one of the most (...)
  • 2 In this respect, in a recent collection of lectures by professors at the Collège de France who cont (...)

1The reality of the mind is contested by various branches of neuroscience that attempt to eliminate or reduce mental states to bodily states or, more precisely, to brain states.1 The hope is that the science of the mind will become radically empirical and experimental, restricting itself solely to the study of what is “physical” and “material.”2 However, for such a reduction or elimination to take place, it is necessary to be clear about what matter is and, more than that, about the non-existence of the “immaterial.” Now, even a brief look at the history of the concept of matter in modern thought shows that there is no agreement on what makes something material or not and, therefore, on what, strictly speaking, counts as “physical.” If there is no consensus on what is or is not material, the project of reducing or eliminating ethereal mental states to measurable bodily or cerebral states would be faced with the difficulty that the “body” seems to be, in its way, as mysterious as the “spirit.”

2This paper responds to these trends in neuroscience by considering the concept of matter and explaining how Henri Bergson’s philosophy assimilates it, taking it as the guiding thread for the solution or dissolution of the so-called “mind-body problem.” It begins with questioning what matter is, to what extent the concept of matter conditions how we understand the relationship between mental states and brain states and, finally, what the ontological status of the mind (or spirit) is. Although general, these questions are closely related. The hypotheses I intend to develop are that the mind-body problem originates from a certain conception of matter, the Cartesian one, and is extended, with variations, in its different or competing conceptions. As such, Henri Bergson, in returning to this problem in Matter and Memory, finds in a conception of matter that competes with the Cartesian one an opportunity to reject it and suggest another form of dualism that does not fall into the theoretical problems that are often attributed to it. This movement allows him to affirm the reality of both matter and spirit.

  • 3 The papers presented at the aforementioned conference at the University of Notre Dame were brought (...)

3The juncture for philosophical and scientific questions about matter here comes above all from the initiative of a group of researchers who, from a series of conferences held at the University of Notre Dame in 1961, published The Concept of Matter in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy and The Concept of Matter in Modern Philosophy.3 These volumes still represent the authoritative collective and interdisciplinary effort to conceptualise matter in the history of philosophy and, in this sense, are an almost indispensable reference. Although their approach lacks any mention of Bergson, as my interest is above all in the philosophical problem, I will return to this line of research to better situate my hypothesis on the concept of matter and the relationship between the mind and the body.

The concept of matter and modern science

4Historians of science record that the 17th century saw the emergence of a rupture in research practices and technical resources. This rupture occurred due to the progressive theoretical abandonment of what could be called, with some restrictions, “scholastic-Aristotelian philosophy” (Gilson 1998, Ch. VIII). With hindsight, these changes were so profound that they could ultimately be described as a “scientific revolution” (Koyré 1986). The discipline that led to this transformation was natural philosophy. We can clarify the above statement and say that the scientific revolution is a counterpoint to how the scholastic-Aristotelian tradition investigated “nature.” We must bear in mind that this shift was not a simple, albeit radical, re-foundation of scientific activity but rather the very institution of what we understand today as “science.”

5A strict division between “philosophers” and “scientists” in the 17th century is anachronistic. The Latin scientia, sometimes hastily translated as “science,” simply meant “knowledge,” or what some considered a higher genre of cognition; when used in the plural, it could indicate some branch of knowledge, such as arithmetic or geometry. The word that came closest to today’s meaning of “science” was philosophia (Cottingham 1986, 1-4). It was only in 1833, following the undisputed success of modern natural philosophy, that William Whewell proposed distinguishing between those who studied nature and matter from those interested in physics with the term “physicist” and, more generally, adopting “scientist” to separate those who investigated the “material world” from “artists” (poets, literati, craftsmen, technicians; Yeo 1993, Ch. I) — and, we might add, from other “philosophers.” This terminology helped establish a professional identity that spread in the second half of the 19th century, both through the distinction between the “scientist” and the “philosopher” and through the progressive creation of new “scientific” chairs in various higher education institutions, which were decisive in consolidating specialised disciplines and curricula. Thus, thinkers who today are referred to as “scientists,” such as Galileo, Huygens, Boyle and Newton, considered themselves to be “philosophers,” while “philosophers,” such as Bacon, Descartes and Leibniz, identified themselves with research that we later came to classify as “scientific” (Weisheipl 1978, 100-103). The study of the concept of matter in philosophia, precisely because it was an essential topic among those who dedicated themselves to “knowledge” about natural things, can therefore be employed as a key to understanding the progressive internal rupture that took place between modern and classical natural philosophy, which preceded the separation between philosophy and science.

  • 4 Ernan McMullin proposes that the concept of matter is established in ancient philosophy mainly on t (...)

6The concept of matter was established in ancient philosophy based on a series of parallel but sometimes heterogeneous problems. The answers to these problems added nuances to the meaning of “materiality.”4 To explain the sometimes-chaotic changes observable in sensible objects, some Ionians postulated a substratum underlying them. This substrate would later be called “matter” by the Peripatetics, who disagreed with the Ionians that the changes were a mere reorganisation of elements. If this were the case, there would be, strictly speaking, no “change” in sensible objects, only an internal variation of the same primordial matter. The Peripatetics thus maintained the idea of an underlying substance, but rejected it as having any kind of property, supposing it to be an inert receptacle for the structure or “form” of material bodies (Lejewski 1965, 25-36). Therefore, regardless of their disagreement about the ontological status of this substrate, the most basic consensus about its existence marks the first structuring of the concept of matter.

7In another scenario, what we now characterise as matter was proposed as a principle of individuation and multiplicity. According to a certain line of interpretation of Platonism, “substrate-matter” is what guarantees the multiplicity of material objects that, according to the theory of Forms, replicate intangible essences that are unique in themselves. Thus, from the single “form” of “horse” or “circle,” there could be countless horses and circles (Eslick 1965, 39-54). For his part, Aristotle, when dealing with the “ultimate subject of predication” from a logical point of view, concluded that it would be the subject of declarative sentences, such as “Socrates,” the “tree” or “Piraeus.” However, when he approaches the same topic on an ontological level, he tells us that individual entities are predicated on that primordial matter which is, therefore, the ultimate subject of predication for what exists. Now, if a substance is a compound of matter and form and is predicable on primordial matter, what would its status be? Is it a substrate whose existence is independent of substances or a (logical) aspect of substances (Owens 1965, 79-95; McMullin 1978, 12)?

8Among the diverse problems the ancients considered on this topic, Platonists associated matter with the cause of the “imperfection” of the sensible world, as it is what prevents the full realisation of intelligible and perfect forms. For their part, the Peripatetics seem to agree that matter does not prevent the full actualisation of something’s form but is rather a necessary part of it and therefore does not cause the imperfection of sensible objects (Fitzgerald 1965, 55-74).

9Based on these problems, which are only briefly described here, the concept of matter incorporated, among other things, the traits of (i) a foundation underlying change, (ii) a principle of individuation and multiplicity, (iii) an ultimate subject of predication and (iv) an imperfect receptacle for the instantiation of beings.

  • 5 Gaukroger (2009) provides a thorough study of the development of the mechanistic conception by, abo (...)

10The logical and ontological approach to the concept of matter was relevant to classical natural philosophy, as it elucidated various aspects of the notion of “change,” which then covered phenomena of generation and corruption and the path from potency to action, as well as the transfer of an object from one place to another. However, these discussions seemed to be of less importance to modern natural philosophy, at which point the notion of movement was restricted to “spatial displacement” (McMullin 1978, 19-31). The study of observable regularities in the movements of bodies was not neglected by classical natural philosophy, since among the scholastic-Aristotelians there was a recurring debate about the speed of falling, which was considered proportional to either the weight or density of the falling body, or else resulting from the contrast between the density of the body and that of the surrounding environment. However, these discussions were peripheral to the central themes of scholastic-Aristotelian natural philosophy, and there were no major concerns about verifying these hypotheses through observation (Weisheipl 1965, 147-169). A brand-new orientation was established when Galileo geometrically formulated and experimentally tested an equation describing the fall of bodies in a vacuum: the possibilities of this new “method” led Galileo himself to propose that mathematics would be the key to grasping the essence of physical reality. The demarcation between the treatment of the concept of matter by the ancients and by the moderns thus becomes clearer, especially when the latter takes a “mechanistic” approach to describing observable regularities in the movements of bodies (Hall 1978, 76-99).5

11Descartes and Newton are the main turning points within the paradigm established by these new celestial mechanics (Hall 1978, 82-85, 93-99). The questions concerning matter that prompted scholastic-Aristotelian natural philosophy presupposed the consubstantiality between form and matter, with the “soul” being understood as the “form” of matter (Fisk 1965, 218-241). In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes proposes an ontological separation between soul and body — or, to use the scholastic-Aristotelian vocabulary, between form and matter. The problem of the relationship between body and soul arises in its strictest sense when the second meditation establishes that the essence of the soul or spirit is thought and the sixth meditation confirms that the essence of bodies is a (geometric) extension — in other words, that the essence of matter itself is an extension. If the consubstantiality between the soul and the body is a starting point and the very basis of hylomorphic explanations, the ontological separation results in the relationship between soul and matter becoming a mystery, an outcome Descartes himself recognises as being of little help in elucidating the topic. From then on, matter as an “extensive thing” becomes the very object of natural philosophy, since its geometric properties can be known through the procedures of mechanics (Blackwell 1978, 59-75). Soul or spirit, on the other hand, becomes the realm par excellence of metaphysics.

12Descartes’ ontological distinction between soul and body established the mind-body problem. The enigmatic union of the soul with the body and, more precisely, with a part of the body, the brain, spread the thesis of an equivalence between psychic and cerebral states. This equivalence, only hinted at in Descartes, was taken up explicitly by his disciples and made its way into 19th-century psychophysiology. The relationship between brain and mind was thus understood in parallel, as if they were “two series of phenomena that correspond point by point.” If “a given cerebral state is followed by a given psychological state,” a psychophysiologist identifying what is happening in the brain is enough to know what is happening in the mind (Bergson 2011, 231-232). It is thus not surprising that the success of mechanics and the discrediting of metaphysics from then on consolidated the non-Cartesian hypothesis, albeit supported by the ambiguities of this doctrine, that we know the body better than the spirit.

13There was also a strong consensus, even at the time of Descartes, that Cartesian mechanics would not offer satisfactory explanations of physical reality based on the supposed geometric properties of matter. However, the possibility and epistemological advantages of such a reduction, as well as the flexibility of the system to include facts not initially foreseen, stimulated both Descartes’ followers and detractors. Illustrious Cartesians, such as Hooke and Huygens, despite criticising several of their teacher’s proposals, therefore retained the fundamental premises of his theory of matter (Hall 1978, 85-86).

  • 6 For a study on the first receptions of Cartesian philosophy, with an emphasis on lesser-known autho (...)
  • 7 A detailed study of the genesis of Newtonian physics from its conception of matter appears in McMul (...)

14From this work emerged, on the one hand, thinkers (Malebranche, Spinoza and Leibniz, among others) who tried to resolve the ontological issues arising from the new Cartesian conception of matter.6 Another parallel “research programme,” one more attentive to describing and predicting the displacement of bodies, moved away from speculation on the nature of matter to focus on how to isolate only those aspects that would be relevant to the problem of spatial displacement. The project that best characterises the success of this second approach is that of Isaac Newton.7

15The Cartesian theory of matter sounded implausible to Newton in terms of both its postulates and its methods. Newton’s ambition was to understand the nature of matter based on the properties of bodies, and he believed that such an understanding would not involve metaphysical meditation but a combination of maths and experimentation. Like other mechanistic philosophers, Newton argued that the properties of complex material bodies resulted from the properties of simple material bodies. It thus became clear to him that to explain the movement of bodies, it would be necessary to do no more than retain the quantitative aspects of matter and movement, neglecting general ontological considerations. He replaced the concepts of matter and movement with those of “quantity of matter” (mass) and “quantity of movement” (momentum). Furthermore, the peculiarity of the Newtonian initiative was its attempt to explain the movements of bodies not by their simple spontaneous aggregation (as was the case for the atomists) or by their geometric extension (as for the Cartesians) but by “forces of attraction and repulsion” acting on matter. This correlation between the quantity of matter and the displacement of bodies by “forces” of attraction and repulsion allowed Newton to unify the terrestrial movements of impact and falling with planetary movements operating under the same general laws (Hall 1978, 93-97; McMullin 1978, 42-52).

16To focus here only on the problematic aspects of the Newtonian model that have had the most consequences for studies on the concept of matter, the postulation of forces of attraction and repulsion, unverifiable experimentally despite being subject to mathematical elaboration, sounded to many like an ethereal hypothesis, similar to that of the hidden faculties of the scholastics. In other words, Newton had achieved unprecedented explanatory success in describing the movements of bodies by applying the forces of action and repulsion to quantities of matter, but he was unable to justify the existence of these forces (McGuire and Heimann 1978, 104-118). The recent enthusiasm surrounding the first measurements of gravitational waves shows how decisively this difficulty marked modern physics.

17The problems with the ontological status of the forces of attraction and repulsion gave rise to two profiles among the followers of the Newtonian model. There were, on the one hand, those who sought to elucidate the properties of matter as conceived by Newton and explain them rigorously and, on the other, those who developed new theories of matter that did not raise the difficulties of the Newtonian model but retained its explanatory and predictive power. An exemplary researcher of this second orientation was Ruđer Bošković (Hall 1978, 98). For Newton, the ultimate constituents of matter were impenetrable corpuscles subject to the forces of attraction and repulsion. However, this notion produced a series of disputes already known between the atomists and the Cartesians. To understand these corpuscles as being in motion, it would be necessary to postulate a “space” between them, which entailed considering all the paradoxes of the “existence” of the void. Bošković proposed that one need not methodologically assume the existence of indivisible or indefinitely divisible corpuscles to obtain the same Newtonian equations if one assumed the ultimate constituents of matter to be only the “energy centres” caused by the aforementioned forces. The problem of space between two corpuscles would thus disappear, as it would be filled with energy. As Michael Faraday later observed, the dispute here could no longer be decided in terms of experimentation; rather, the choice of ontology was based on the theory that proved to be most consistent (McMullin 1978, 54).

18It’s easy to lose the “point” with so many different threads, and a brief outline above would help guide our attention. This synoptic picture of modern natural philosophy therefore leaves us with at least four conceptions of matter. At the dawn of modernity, we find the idea, inherited from Aristotelian philosophy, that (i) matter is a substrate without any properties, a receptacle for the form of bodies. With the Cartesians, (ii) matter is identified with a geometric extension so that it can be explained quantitatively. By restricting the notion of change to spatial displacement, (iii) the Newtonians relegated discussions about the ontological status of matter to the background, retaining only what would be its “quantitative” part, “mass.” The development of the logical consequences of the Newtonian notion of force led to a return to the ontological problem of matter, finally proposing that (iv) it would not be necessary to assume invisible atoms or corpuscles for their equations to make sense and maintain their predictive power, given their compatibility with the notion of a point or force field.

Bergson’s Philosophy of Matter

  • 8 Čapek (1971, x-xi) reproduces a letter addressed to him by Bergson himself in which the French phil (...)

19What contribution could a so-called “spiritualist” philosophy make to this debate? For Bergson’s contemporaries, his perspective did not seem to imply a mere “rejection” of matter, which is why he was even invited to contribute to a compendium entitled Le Matérialisme Actuel, in which he appeared alongside Henri Poincaré, among others. However, this does not mean that his conception of matter was adequately assimilated by his peers. An attentive reader, Milič Čapek, suggested that several of the caricatures and misunderstandings about Bergson’s philosophy of matter and, consequently, its relationship with modern physics were caused by Matter and Memory appearing at an unfortunate time. In 1896, the new physical theories that Bergson was discussing were still little known and sounded far-fetched to many. Decades later, when the same ideas became widely recognised, Bergsonism was already ostracised.8

20The most famous case of this misfortune was the controversy over the lecture Bergson gave on the theory of relativity at a session of the Société de Philosophie in honour of Einstein in April 1922. For Bergson, “there is no doubt that time for us is initially confused with the continuity of our inner life,” and therefore the main problem to be elucidated is “how do we pass from this inner time to the time of things?” (Bergson 2006, 44). For his part, Einstein questioned the plausibility of the notion of simultaneity being derived primarily from individual perception, since “nothing in our consciousness allows us to conclude the simultaneity of [objective events independent of individuals], since it is only a mental construction with logical entities.” The notion of simultaneity seemed to him irreducible to any psychological phenomenon, and, therefore, “there is no philosophers’ time” — that is, “there is no psychological time different from physical time” (Bergson 2011, 1345-1346). A decisive point not only for resolving this impasse but for understanding the positions involved here is that, when it comes to the perception of “external objects,” we have in mind the “perception of matter.” Einstein's “realist” conception sounds quite different from Bergson’s, even though the common terminology suggests that they are both dealing with the same concepts. In this sense, the misunderstandings and disagreements about the “Einstein-Bergson debate” were also due to a lack of consideration about how its protagonists understood the materiality of things within the idea of simultaneity.

21What leads Bergson to reflect on the matter is the topic addressed in the second and third chapters of Matter and Memory, namely the problem of memory (Bergson 2011, x). At that time, psychophysiology already assumed “thought as a simple function of the brain and the state of consciousness as an epiphenomenon of the cerebral state.” Thus, many considered “the states of thought and the states of the brain” equivalent to “two translations, in different languages, of the same original” (Bergson 2011, x). Therefore, it was believed that “if we could penetrate inside a working brain and watch the crossfire of the atoms that form the cerebral cortex” and “were able to translate the language of mental states into that of bodily states, we would know in detail everything that happens with the corresponding consciousness” (Bergson 2011, x). The technical innovations of neuroscience today allow us to observe something of what goes on in the brain when we think or feel. However, returning to the Bergsonian proposition, for this verification to allow for the translation of mental states into physical ones it is still necessary to discover the “key to psychophysiology” (Bergson 2011, x).

22Neuroscientists sometimes assume that this psychophysiological dictionary has already been created by identifying brain activity. However, the fact that mental state x is simultaneously accompanied by cerebral state y does not confirm that everything that occurs in the former is contained or expressed in the latter. In other words, the fact that mental states and brain states are correlated does not mean that there is a correspondence between the two. The relationship between the mind and the body is an empirical observation, while psychophysical parallelism is a metaphysical hypothesis.

23The first three chapters of Matter and Memory argue that a more careful interpretation of the data obtained by psychological experiments on perception and memory, especially about aphasia, is enough to problematise and even refute the alleged reduction of mental states to cerebral states. However, in the fourth chapter, when the metaphysical problem of the relationship between the mind and the body is decisively addressed, which not only requires showing the irreducibility of one to the other but also their interconnectedness, a new line of enquiry opens up that comes close to the new theories of matter developing from the second half of the 19th century.

24This shift starts from the path of modern physics — the emergence of which we saw in the previous section — whereby there is a reciprocal action between the parts of matter described as neither atom nor corpuscles, but “forces.” When we put ourselves on a microscopic scale, it is no longer possible to say that an atom or corpuscle is solid, liquid or gaseous (Bergson 2011, 263). If we take this reasoning even further, atoms and corpuscles could be understood as movements or “lines of force.” According to Bergson, this proposal was the conclusion of the most important physicists at the time, those who were dealing with the very constitution of matter, namely James Maxwell, Michael Faraday and Joseph Thomson (Bergson 2011, 264-265).

25Although contact seems, for many, to be the only means we have of making our bodies act upon other bodies, Maxwell points out that very simple experiments show that there is never any real contact between two interacting bodies and even that solidity is far from being a defined state of matter (Bergson 2011, 263). Along these lines, in an article on electrical conduction, Faraday proposes that the individuality of the atom is merely a crossing of moving lines of force, such that all atoms are integrated into each other. Thomson, the creator of the notion of the “electron,” saw a perfect, continuous, homogeneous and incompressible fluid that filled space (Bergson 2011, 266). Therefore, concludes Bergson, what we name an atom he makes into a vortex, ever whirling in this continuity and owing its properties to its circular form, its existence and consequently its individuality to its motion (Bergson 2011, 265-6). Although it is still possible to refer methodologically to atoms or corpuscles, their apparent solidity is falling apart. This position justifies the hypothesis that every division of matter into independent bodies with absolutely determined contours is artificial (Bergson 2011, 266).

26What is the relevance of adopting a concept of matter in which its parts or partial expressions are no longer completely separable? The problem of the union between body and soul presupposes an antithesis between the extended [l’étendu] and the unextended [l’inétendue] — that is, between what is completely divisible and what is not. According to this antithesis, there would only be one type of multiplicity, namely that of geometric extension. However, by proposing that the parts of matter are not divisible or separable from one another, we are not saying that they do not differ from one another. After all, “that one man is distinct from another man, tree from tree, stone from stone, is an indisputable” fact; yet it also seems clear that “the separation between the thing and its environment cannot be defined” (Bergson 2011, 278). This differentiation implies another type of multiplicity beyond the geometric, and therefore another manifestation of material extension. Thus, Bergson hypothesises that there are two types of extension: one geometric and the other “concrete,” “continuous” and “real” (Bergson 2011, 266).

27The difference between these types of extension is discussed in detail in the penultimate section of the fourth chapter of Matter and Memory, entitled “Étendue et Extension” (in the English translation, “Extensity and Extension”). An initial difficulty with such terminology is that these terms are almost interchangeable in French — and in English. Bergson uses them several times before clarifying their meaning only in the fourth chapter, making it difficult to understand the originality of the new ontological dualism that is articulated by this distinction. Thus, the English translation reads:

Material extensity [l’étendue] is not, cannot any longer be, that composite extensity [l’étendue] which is considered in geometry; it indeed resembles rather the undivided extension [l’extension] of our own representation. That is to say that the analysis of pure perception allows us to foreshadow in the idea of extension [l’extension] the possible approach to each other of the extended [l’étendu] and the unextended [l’inétendue]. (Bergson 2011, 212)

28Since our experience of matter occurs through perception, it is in the perception of matter that we initially encounter real extension. The theory of perception in the first chapter of Matter and Memory shows that we draw divisions in the extensity [l’étendue] to meet the demands of our practical lives. We thus project onto our perception of matter a sort of backdrop, a “homogeneous space,” which then allows us, by contract, to separate something into as many parts as we can imagine. The mistake that leads to unsolvable problems is constructing this homogeneous space and its geometric extensity as properties of things, since they only consist of a solidification and division that we apply to the moving continuity of reality to find points of support within it: that is, they are the schemes of our action on matter (Bergson 2011, 280-281).

29We should be aware, then, that there is, on the one hand, an opposition between the extended and the unextended, precisely that which deflates the Cartesian (pseudo)problem of the union between the (extensible) body and the (inextensible) spirit. By contesting this opposition as a mere abstraction, Bergson articulates a distinction between extensity (l’étendue) and extension (l’extension) — that is, between a strictly intellectual quantitative multiplicity and a qualitative multiplicity that befits real perception.

30The controversy between realism and idealism over the status of matter (and the spirit) is also based on the shared belief that there is only one type of extensity, the geometric one. By assuming that there is a “discontinuity of the various orders of sensible qualities,” “British idealism” considered extensity to be a property of tactile perceptions and “atomistic realism” proposed that it is a property of things themselves. Since sensible qualities would be inextensible, the idealist cannot explain why they would be different for tactile perceptions or how the other senses obtain from them a notion of extension; for their part, the realist has no way of justifying, without resorting to some mysterious parallelism, how our perception learns to represent extensive properties external to it (Bergson 2011, 289). By rejecting any extensity that is not geometrical, the idealist and the realist are thus led to accept an ontological distinction between matter and spirit and must deal with the (insoluble) difficulties that arise from such an assumption.

31On the one hand, the physical theories of Maxwell, Faraday and Thomson helped Bergson to challenge the realist hypothesis that geometric extensity was a property of things themselves. On the other hand, the psychology of the time already offered him some support to show that, contrary to the idealist hypothesis, “all our sensations are in some degree extensive” in a non-quantitative way (Bergson 2011, 289). Thus, James Ward argues that that “there is no sensation without extensity” [extension], and William James tells us that in every sensation there is “a feeling of volume.” Hence, Bergson conjectures that concrete extension consists of the “diversity of sensible qualities,” (Bergson 2011, 289) which are not divisible, as in geometric extensity.

32If the false premise that gives meaning to the problem of the union between the soul and the body is the supposed incommensurability between the extensive (geometric) and the unextensive (non-geometric) (Bergson 2011, 235), then the ontological obstacle to the relationship between the body and the spirit is removed. If the sensation can be extensive without being quantitative and there are no inextensive perceptions, then it is possible to conceive that there is extension (l’extension) in our perception of matter. Since it is possible to conceive extension in our perception of matter and there are no unextended (l’inétendue) perceptions, then the real distinction is between real extension and intellectual or logical extensity. If both spirit and matter are intertwined in concrete, real and qualitative extension, they share some form of extensity and their difference and irreducibility do not follow from their incommensurability. If there is therefore no “real distinction” between spirit and matter, the problem of the union between the soul and body is dissolved, and concern now falls on proposing transitions between the extensity of sensible qualities and of matter.

33In this way, we find in Bergson what we might call a differential dualism. Like Cartesian dualism, it affirms the existence of matter and spirit, as well as the irreducibility of one to the other. However, the fact that we cannot draw defined contours between this and that does not result from the fact that we cannot distinguish one from the other, because both have extension. Intellectual Extensionality thus makes a false problem of the Cartesian dualist’s reluctance to explain how two instances that share no common property can interact. Since matter and spirit are irreducible, the differential dualist can say that “the object before him […] exists independently of the consciousness that perceives it” (and not that “it exists only in his spirit and for his spirit, as Berkeley would have it”), and that “this colour and this resistance are, for him, in the object: they are not states of our spirit, they are the constitutive elements of an existence independent of ours” (and not, as in Cartesian dualism, “that the object is quite different from what is perceived, that it has neither the colour that the eye attributes to it nor the resistance that the hand finds in it”). In a philosophical sense, differential dualism thus adopts a position that is quite close, at least as far as matter and our perception of it are concerned, to what, with a few caveats, we understand to be “common sense” (Bergson 2011, vii-viii).

34The notion of real extension and its qualitative multiplicity is decisive in producing a more refined understanding of Bergson’s relationship with modern physics. Let us return to the dispute over simultaneity using this new lens. For Bergson, “the theoreticians of relativity never mention any simultaneity but that of two instants. Anterior to that one, however, is another, the idea of which is more natural: the simultaneity of two flows” (Bergson 2006, 52). For those who only conceive of a quantitative extension, the proposal that “it is of the very essence of our attention to be able to be divided without being split up” sounds absurd. However, it seems correct that “when we are seated on the bank of a river, the flowing of the water, the gliding of a boat or the flight of a bird, the ceaseless murmur in our life’s deeps are for us three separate things or only one, as we choose.” After all, “we can interiorize the whole, dealing with a single perception that carries along the three flows, mingled, in its course,” or “we can leave the first two outside and then divide our attention between the inner and the outer,” or we can even “do both at one and the same time, our attention uniting and yet differentiating the three flows, thanks to its singular privilege of being one and several” (Bergson 2006, 52).

35This “first idea of simultaneity” is later superimposed upon by another type of simultaneity when, from this undivided continuity or pure flow that consciousness appears to be: as “we make a line correspond to a duration, to portions of this line there must correspond ‘portions of duration’ and to an extremity of the line, an ‘extremity of duration’; such is the instant — something that does not exist actually, but virtually” (Bergson 2006, 52). When Einstein says that the simultaneity of physical events is, for our consciousness, just a “mental construction with logical entities,” he presupposes (correctly, for a differential dualist) that our conception of (geometric) extensity is a subjective projection. However, if only geometric extensity is accepted, we can only reach the conclusion that there is no psychological time that is different from physical time. Now, if there is a qualitative extension in perceptual consciousness and in matter itself, then there is no physical time different from psychological time, because psychological time — i.e., “duration” — is real-time.

36Differential dualism proposes not only two conceptions of temporality, physical (mathematised) time and real time (“duration”), but also a double conception of the extension of matter — and therefore of the perception of material things. Bergson’s theory of matter thus distinguishes itself from both the Aristotelian conception of propertyless matter — and some form of hylomorphism — and the Cartesian approach considering matter to be essentially geometrical, therefore avoiding falling into enigmatic dualism. Some might propose that we are dealing with a monism here rather than a dualism, since there is no absolute separation between matter and spirit. However, the fact that there is no absolute separation does not necessitate the same ontological density. Therefore, they cannot be considered to be comprised of the same “substance,” as the monist believes, nor that they are “[absolutely] separate substances,” as it seems to the Cartesian dualist. Through a theory of matter that allows us to show that the irreducibility of the relationship between the body and the spirit does not follow from their incommensurability, the differential dualist hopes “to lessen greatly, if not to overcome, the theoretical difficulties which have always beset dualism, and which cause it, though suggested by the immediate verdict of consciousness and adopted by common sense, to be held in small honour among philosophers” (Bergson 2011, 1).

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Notes

1 See Kandel (2006, xii). This conception can also be found in the presuppositions of one of the most important Neuroscience textbooks, Kandel, E., J. Schwartz, T. Jessel, S. Siegelbaum, and A. Hudspeth (2012), of which I recommend the first chapter, written by Kandel and Hudspeth, for a historiographical reconstruction of the discipline in which the project of reducing mental states to cerebral or physical states stands out.

2 In this respect, in a recent collection of lectures by professors at the Collège de France who contributed at different times to the examination of the relationship between the brain and the mind, the organiser, neurologist Alain Berthoz, while acknowledging Bergson’s “luminous presence,” justifies his absence from the volume on the grounds that his dualism (i.e., the affirmation of the reality of matter and spirit and the irreducibility of one to the other) is “inadmissible” for modern neuroscience (Berthoz 1999, 16).

3 The papers presented at the aforementioned conference at the University of Notre Dame were brought together in 1963 in a single volume entitled The Concept of Matter, edited by E. McMullin. Later, with the addition of supplementary material, the work was divided into the two volumes mentioned above under the care of the same organiser of the original edition.

4 Ernan McMullin proposes that the concept of matter is established in ancient philosophy mainly on the basis of a series of eight themes: (i) the idea of a substratum of change; (ii) the principle of individuation and multiplicity; (iii) space as a plenum; (iv) the instance of potentiality; (v) the source of (ontological) degeneration; (vi) the distinction between the living and the non-living (a context which, as will be seen, was decisive in establishing the [modern] problem of the relationship between the mind and the body); (vii) the explanatory basis of reality; and (viii) the ultimate subject of predication (McMullin 1978, 5-12). Some of these themes will be presented in general terms in what follows.

5 Gaukroger (2009) provides a thorough study of the development of the mechanistic conception by, above all, arguing that it did not originate from a clash with the scholastic-Aristotelians but in opposition to the “naturalists” of the Renaissance who took up Neoplatonic theses.

6 For a study on the first receptions of Cartesian philosophy, with an emphasis on lesser-known authors in the historiographical canon, see Ariew 2015.

7 A detailed study of the genesis of Newtonian physics from its conception of matter appears in McMullin 1979.

8 Čapek (1971, x-xi) reproduces a letter addressed to him by Bergson himself in which the French philosopher reveals that “this particular point [i.e., his philosophy of physics] has been hardly noticed for one very simple reason: since my views about this question were formulated at the time when it was regarded as self-evident that the ultimate material elements should be conceived in the image of the [macroscopic] whole, they confused the readers and were most frequently set aside as an unintelligible part of my work. It was probably assumed that this was an accessory part. Nobody, with a possible exception of the profound mathematician and philosopher Whitehead, noticed [...] that this was for me something essential which was closely related to my theory of duration, and which lay in the direction in which physics would move sooner or later.”

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Evaldo Sampaio, « What is Matter? Differential Dualism in Bergson’s Philosophy »Bergsoniana [En ligne], 5 | 2024, mis en ligne le 01 juillet 2024, consulté le 20 mai 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/bergsoniana/2392 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/12b4f

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Evaldo Sampaio

Evaldo Sampaio is associate Professor of Philosophy at the Universidade Federal do Ceará (Brazil). His interests currently focus on the study of representations of Philosophy as a way of life, particularly questions of Philosophy of Knowledge and Language, articulating these themes primarily in Bergson, Hadot, Nietzsche, Descartes, Wittgenstein.

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