2 - Philosophy and Knowledge: Uses and Misuses of ‘Representation’

Summary

Some of Bergson's most challenging work addresses the nature of the mind. As we shall see, it questions not only orthodoxies familiar in his own time, but some which persist in current philosophical debate. A strategic example concerns the role of representation in cognitive processes. There is, of course, very extensive modern discussion of this question by philosophers and cognitive scientists. It would be out of place in this book to try to give an account of this discussion. Instead, I try to present Bergson's views, hoping to show that he adopted a distinctive and radical position which should be of continuing interest.

A. Pure Perception

(i) Representation and Perception The notion of representation has been a central and problematic one in philosophy, whether used overtly, or presupposed as a framework. In Bergson's view, modern Western philosophers since Descartes have shared mistaken assumptions about the importance of this notion in the understanding of human knowledge in general. Similar challenges have of course become familiar through the writings of Wittgenstein, Foucault, and Rorty, to take some relatively recent examples. These thinkers, in very different ways, have thought to detect a general defect in traditional thought. But Bergson had already made a point related to theirs in a less extensive and more ‘precise’ way, in the particular context of our understanding of perception. As we shall see, he offers an account of ‘pure perception’ in which representation plays no part.