>
> There was this Henri Bergson quote,
> >which I'm sure I had
> >bookmarked...damn!!
>
> Bergson stated that freedom is deciding to acquire a new habit. Was
> it in this direction?
> --
Sheesh, I still can't find it. It was a far more beautiful way of saying
that
when we act according to a plan, we use very little of our past, the small
fragment that went into the planning process. When we act on instinct, we
use the entire past as if it's entirety had been squeezed into a single
fluid action.
I think there is a lot of important commentary in Bergson's three books
which
is relevant to interface design (also to robotics and AI):
http://web.archive.org/web/20051231115014/spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~lward/Bergson/Bergson_1910/Bergson_1910_01.html
EXTRACT:
If there is a phenomenon which seems to be presented immediately to
consciousness under the form of quantity or at least of magnitude it is
undoubtedly muscular effort. We picture to our minds a psychic force
imprisoned in the soul like the winds in the cave of Aeolus, and only
waiting for an opportunity to burst forth : our will is supposed to watch
over
------------------------------
*Muscular effort seems at first sight to be quantitative* (21) this force
and from time to time to open a passage for it, regulating the outflow by
the effect which it is desired to produce. If we consider the matter
carefully, we shall see that this somewhat crude conception of effort plays
a large part in our belief in intensive magnitudes. Muscular force, whose
sphere of action is space and which manifests itself in phenomena admitting
of measure, seems to us to have existed previous to its manifestations, but
in smaller volume, and, so to speak, in a compressed state : hence we do not
hesitate to reduce this volume more and more, and finally we believe that we
can understand how a purely psychic state, which does not occupy space, can
nevertheless possess magnitude. Science, too, tends to strengthen the
illusion of common sense with regard to this point. Bain, for example,
declares that " the sensibility accompanying muscular movement coincides
with the outgoing stream of nervous energy : " *[2]* it is thus just the
emission of nervous force which consciousness perceives. Wundt also speaks
of a. sensation, central in its origin, accompanying the voluntary
innervation of the muscles, and quotes the example of the paralytic " who
has a very distinct sensation of the force which he employs in the effort to
raise his leg, although it remains motionless."
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1/f ))) --.
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Received on Sun Jan 06 2008 - 01:10:04 GMT