Bergson says that during the day we create stories (pick out relevant aspects) to fulfill the need of our bodies, it is a tool of life. Our mind acts according to the need of our bodies, it is daily self that acts practically as part of a spatially homogeneous universe. He calls this the superficial self; it necessarily expresses itself in worlds and thinks in time, it classifies objects, solves problems. Both our observation and our language try to pick from reality aspects that are relevant for our practical needs, the rest (of reality) it leaves out of the way. Bergson connects the superficial mind with a cinematographic mechanism, it dissolves motion, picks out images and reconstructs them. This is caused by the utilitarianism of our mind. Our intellect produces what would be common to do next (based on knowledge from the past). Science brings this to to highest level: it can predict what is coming, it only deals with repetition. Science looks for elements that are a reproduction of the past. The past only exists in our memory, that is why the superficial self thinks in symmetrical time (past-now -future).

As different from intellect, Bergson mentioned intuition, which is unique and unspeakable; it is about the world as it is, without the utilitarian function of the mind. It is about direct knowledge, which we cannot communicate. Intuitive insight as opposite to analytical thinking. It is real knowledge as opposite to abstract concepts of reality. The real self is not a tool of life, individually or socially, this deeper self cannot express itself in words. This is where we get in touch with Bergon’s time as ‘durée’. Here time is becoming, it is asymmetrical. Arthur Young on Youtube: ‘Bergson argued with Einstein and talked about the asymmetry of time – he anticipated quantum physics. The universe is not a structure in time and space, it is a structure in space that changed through time and you cannot anticipate. Bergson included novelty in becoming, he said there is a perpetual novelty occurring. There are drops of novelty on the line of time. This is why Bergson was rediscovered by process philosophers. Bergsons intuition is an aspect of the universal life force (Eros) that causes evolution, Intuition is the way we feel One with Eros the universal creative life force, that is God. Through intuition we are aware of the Divine impulse in evolution and that is how we understand its function in the existence of the cosmos.

Locke, Berkely and Hume turned the empirics of nature into philosophy of the human brain. The empirics said: our mental images only arrive through experience. In stead of all high ideas of the rationalists (who tried to explain truth that could be reached with thinking via logic and deduction), the empirics said: we are born with empty heads and only through experience we learn and start thinking.

The early empirics said: that we can only know meaning, but never the object itself. A hammer is a good example: according to Locke there is primary and secondary perception. Primary connects to the categories of Aristotle, like size, weight, color, material, function etc., the secondary perception is is the subjective meaning we give to it like ‘dangerous’ (for hurting yourself), a ‘man’s thing’ etc. (this also connects to Heidegger;s ‘lived experience’).

Connecting it with Hume: people never see the thing itself, the material substance, they only see features. All these different primary perceptions also have already subjective meanings, like red is different than black. We connect these primary perceptions in an instant into the idea of an object. It is not the object we see, it is its features, characteristics we see.

According to Hume there are only three principles of association: important one is ‘causality’ , this is very well known: if we see a billiard ball close to another and that one is going to move, we say the one ’cause the other’ even though there is no prove. Another one is similarity ‘ better, worse, higher, lower etc’. How quickly we do this is shown for example in the ‘ rating system for girls’ that was shown in the movie ‘the social network’. Our brain is constantly busy with associating primary perceptions into more complex one’s. These associations do not have to be logic or rational, but they can change very quickly.