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Objective analysis and subjective apprehension in Bergsonian metaphysics: the intuition of life and the sieve of facts

Abstract:

This paper intends to explain how the philosophical method developed and applied by Bergson - intuition - articulates different levels of our experience. To this end, we will try to extract some lessons from a special moment in the application of this method, in which the dive into psychological interiority is related to the objective vision of exteriority. Our analysis will focus on the central part of Creative Evolution, the metaphysical nucleus of Bergsonian philosophy, in which we find a reinterpretation of the evolutionary biology of the 19th century. This reinterpretation has as a consequence the most important of Bergson's cosmological theses. More precisely, though the cosmology developed in this book can be regarded as the most paradigmatic performance of intuition, our attention will be directed to an earlier methodological step, the philosophical interpretation of the data of evolutionary biology that underlies the essential statement that consciousness is coextensive with life.

Keywords:
Duration; Life; Biology; Cosmology; Intuition; Experience

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