Yasushi Hirai

This volume brings Bergson's key ideas from Matter and Memory into dialogue with contemporary themes on memory and time in science, across analytic and continental philosophy. Focusing specifically on the application of Bergson's ideas to cognitive science, the circuit between perception and memory receives full explication in 15 different essays. By re-reading Bergson through a cognitive lens, the essays provide a series of alternative analytic interpretations to the standard continental approach to Bergson's oeuvre, without fully discounting either approach. The relevance of philosophies of mind and memory sit alongside the role of a metaphysics of time in exploring connections to psychology, biology, and physics. This eclecticism includes an exciting focus on numerous topics that are not given sufficient attention in extant studies of Bergson, including the precise nature of his ideas on dualism, memory, and ecological theories of perception, especially in relation to his contemporaries. Led by leading Bergson scholars from France and Japan, this book maps the rich terrain of Bergson's contemporary relevance alongside the historical context of his ideas.

Henri Bergson critiques the traditional view of time as a mere succes­sion of states, arguing that it fails to capture the crucial aspect of time’s speed or pace. The paper explores Bergson’s concept of time’s speed through the lens of modern scientific insights and analytic philosophy, addressing critiques from cognitive science and logical analysis. By introducing the concept of “time qualia,” which distinguishes between the quantitative and qualitative aspects of temporal experience, the author defends Bergson’s position and provides a new theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between external motion, its measurement, and conscious durée. The formulation of this concept not only sheds light on the intrinsic connections between various related texts but also contributes to the differentiation between two distinct types of time speed — time-qualia-based and flow-qualia-based. The author concludes that the qualitative aspects of time experience have an irreducible reality that comple­ments, rather than opposes, the quantitative aspects, arguing that Bergson’s perspective offers a more comprehensive understanding of time’s nature and our experience of it. Keywords: Henri Bergson. Time’s speed. Time qualia. Experience measurement.