Perception outside

Perception outside
A Sense of Sinking Within Bergson, "Matter and Memory" The Range of Late Nineteenth-Century Thought
Bergson sought to fundamentally rethink how we know and feel the world. First, he emphasizes that perception exists not as an image created in our minds, but as an extension of the external world itself. Desks, walls, and sights are not confined to the interior of our consciousness, but are seen as external facts that are made possible by our relationship to the imagery of the body. In contrast, sensations such as pain and breathlessness are never spatially expansive, but stand as dense responses that arise inside the body. By making a clear distinction between the two, Bergson tries to avoid a false circular theory of mind and body. For if we confuse perception and sensation, we fall into idealism, as if the external world were generated from within, and our relationship to the world becomes opaque. By positioning perception as an action of the external world and sensation as a reaction on the part of the body, it becomes clear how memory intervenes as a bridging element bet
ween the two. In other words, we can see the pathways through which past experiences overlap with present perceptions and give them meaning and emotion. Bergson placed the distinction between perception and sensation as the foundation of his theory of memory and tried to construct a new continuity between the subject and the world.