Living light and dead light

 When we look at things in our surroundings in a new light, redefining them as what Bergson calls “images,” we get the sense that each thing continues to exist together with the subject who is looking at it, with its own past fluttering in the back. It is as if the space contains the past. In other words, the being of the thing increases the thickness of its existence by its past.

Thus, according to Bergson, the past is never a perception of the present that has passed away: It continues to exist along with the memories that accompany the perception of the present (the present = perception, which Bergson calls “pure perception.”) Therefore, the perception that arises there is no longer a cutout of the moment as before, but can only be “perception as an image,” supported by various memories of one’s own experience. Thus, by shifting from the idea of “perception of an external object” to that of “perception containing memories within itself,” Bergson abandoned the concept of matter and moved toward the spirit. This is the very heart of Bergson’s philosophy. When we apply Noosology to Bergson’s idea of perception as a form of an image, the question arises as to where to locate this perception as an image.

Bergson says that we can only intuit where duration is located since it is impossible to describe time spatialized in a geometric structure. Still, on the other hand, he also metaphorically explains the specific behavior of duration using a conic model, as shown in Figure 1 below. This cone is quite interesting from a Noosology’s point of view, so I would like to introduce it to you.

The cone depicted here, SAB, represents the totality of the images stored in memory. The vertex S corresponds to the present, the field of pure perception. According to Bergson, this point S is the image of the body. The body is always in the present and is the starting point of our actions, and it is always in “-ing,” the present progressive tense.

According to Bergson, the sensory-action system is intimately connected to the body as the present, and its location corresponds to plane P. He distinguishes between memories retrieved by recalling and physical memories acquired through the habituation of movement and action. An easy example is a route to school: No one walks to school while consciously trying to recall the path, right? As Bergson said, habits are always rooted in the present.

On the other hand, the locations of ordinary memories (i.e., recollections) are represented as circles AB, A’B’, and A”B”, which are various cross sections of the cone SAB. The flow of time continues to produce new pasts as AB, A’B’, A”B”, and so on, while the vertex S is always in contact with plane P, and the cone itself grows as if it were pushing plane P. The present, like the arrow in the cone, creates the mental state of each moment by retrieving memories through recall. According to Bergson, consciousness constantly moves back and forth inside the cone, and this repetition brings memories into the present. In other words, consciousness continually oscillates between the present and the past within the psyche. The overall state of the field in which this oscillation occurs can be considered duration.

I have briefly explained Bergson’s cone model, but you can learn many other things about the states of consciousness through the model. If interested, I recommend reading his book, Matter and Memory.

So let’s get back to the main issue. That is, “Where the space of duration exists?”

As you may have already noticed, Bergson’s casually introduced cone model of where duration is at work looks very similar to Minkowski’s light cone in Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. Of course, the light cone is simply a geometrical model created to demonstrate the relationship between time and space only in a physical sense in the direction of its height and base, without any implication of duration, as Bergson describes. However, keeping in mind the concept of “NAIMEN (the Inside: invisible) and GAIMEN (the Outside: visible) of a human being” that Noosology teaches, what happens if we invert Minkowski’s light cone (see Figure 2)?

For clarity, Minkowski’s light cone and the inverted cone are drawn in a horizontal direction. Since the time axis t is also inverted on the side of the inverted cone, it appears as the imaginary time axis it. I infer that this inverted light cone corresponds to Bergson’s duration cone. (To be precise, however, the duration structure is not a cone in the Noosological sense but rather a tiny contracted sphere of infinitesimal size. I will explain it another time.) These are the reasons, which I have discussed so far in previous essays, for it:

1. GAIMEN, the Outside (the visible side) of a human being, is where perception occurs and can be mathematically considered a projective space.

2. In GAIMEN, the Outside (the visible side) of a human being, the directionality of depth is collapsed to a single point. This collapsed depth exists in the viewing space of a person like a thin film (inframince) containing all past to present in the state of light speed.

3. The thin film (inframince) contains the appearance of the object/matter that the person sees and all the space behind it. The memories about the object/matter are considered to exist in layers within the thickness of this thin film.

4. Such overlapping layers of memories make the seer a living being, as Merleau-Ponti describes, “a sentient subject, repository stocked with natural powers” *

*” But the spectacle perceived does not partake of pure being. Taken exactly as I see it, it is a moment of my individual history, and since sensation is a reconstitution, it pre-supposes in me sediments left behind by some previous constitution, so that I am, as a sentient subject, a repository stocked with natural powers at which I am the first to be filled with wonder.” ― Maurice Merleau-Ponty

5. The thickness of this thin film (inframince) is thought to be supported by an axis of infinitesimal length in the direction of 4-dimensional space, known in physics as imaginary time.

It remains to be seen whether or not the predictions of Noosology have hit the nail on the head. For the time being, however, we can separate the three-dimensional space extending from the object/matter in front of us into two domains, “the Outside (the visible side)” and “the Inside (the invisible side)” of a human being, using the inverted relationship associated with the four-dimensional axis (gaze). In addition, we assign to each domain the meaning of “perceptual space rooted in duration” and “conceptual space rooted in time.” By doing so, we are able to organize Bergson’s argument concisely.

On the one hand, there is an indivisible space where memories that hold duration are active. It corresponds to “the Outside (the visible side)“of a human being. On the other hand, there is a space where ‘the present’ in the flow of time is divided moment by moment like dots, conceptualized and arranged like a flip-flop movie. It is regarded as “the Inside (the invisible side)” of a human being. In the former, matter exists as memories, which is the appropriate place for the spirit to reside, as Bergson would say. The latter refers to space-time, which is familiar to us.

Through this spatial arrangement differentiating the domains of immanence and externality, the stubborn sense of our consciousness rooted in the human gestalt, which has been seeing a physical body equivalent to the subject, begins compromised. Under the four-dimensional geometrical concept of “the Outside (the visible side)” and “the Inside (the invisible side)” of a human being, the world is divided into oppositions; the world itself as its subject aspect and the counterpart of it as its object aspect. The transformer gestalt provides such a notion, which enables us to form the fundamental conception of a higher dimensional world.