The Light Unquenchable Moment - The Shadow of Determinism Sewn into the Past (1890s) Bergson, "Time and Freedom"

The Light Unquenchable Moment - The Shadow of Determinism Sewn into the Past (1890s) Bergson, "Time and Freedom"
Determinism attempts to explain human action in terms of causal chains. However, Bergson criticized this very method of grasping the past, saying that it fixes action as a static result of the past and fails to capture the essence of freedom. The acts that determinism treats are spatialized, outlined, and arranged in a form that can be explained later. But it is not in such a static frame that free action emerges, but in the interior of the persistence of consciousness, in the thickness of the continuum that is generated through the permeation of layers of memories and emotions. A free decision is a creative leap in which this persistence condenses at a given moment and opens up a new direction, not something that can be broken down into cause and effect. In hindsight, one reconstructs this leap as a chain of cause and effect, but it is only a shadow of the light cast on the past. Even modern neuroscience has shown that the decision-making process is not linear, but occurs as
a nonlinear leap when the integration of emotion and memory crosses a threshold. Bergson's critique reveals a deep disconnect between the past world that determinism deals with and the present generation of freedom.