Divine Omniscience and Income Inequality

Even if God does play dice with the universe, his presumed omniscience guarantees that he knows the outcome in advance.  Now, that divine characteristic contributes to doctrines of Predestination, since if God knows from the outset what will occur, and is omnipotent, all events must be expressions of divine will.  Thus, in particular, good fortune and ill fortune are expressions of divine Grace and Damnation, which as Weber shows, are the cornerstones of some varieties of Capitalism.  So, if Weber is correct, the political fight against income inequality is, according to some, blasphemous.  In any case, Einstein might be correct that God does not play dice with the universe, simply because, as omniscient, he would know the outcome anyhow, thereby eliminating the possible play factor from any motivation to do so.

Physics, Determinism, Divine Omnipotence

Whether or not it is true, "God does not play dice with the universe" is misformulated, perhaps as a reflection of ignorance. For, Einstein's referent is the object of the study initiated by Newton.  Now, according to the latter, that object, the physical world, is created ex nihilo by a deity, a creation that consists in setting it in motion, after which there is no further divine intervention.  In other words, implied in that Theological thesis is that the Determinism of the physical world reflects the omnipotence of its creator.  So, Einstein's refusal to accept the apparent indeterminacies of Quantum Physics is, first and foremost, a reaction to an implicit challenge to the omnipotence of the Newtonian deity.  Furthermore, since there is no post-creation involvement of the deity in the creation, if there is any moment when dice-playing would not occur, it is in the distant past.  Thus, a well-informed reaction to the apparent Quantum phenomena would be "God did not play dice with the universe".  This looseness of Einstein's formulation is perhaps an example of the general unawareness of the continuing influence of Medieval Theology, even on its presumed antithesis, Modern Science.

Determinism, Ends, Means

Many would agree that the behavior of a human organism is predetermined by some biological principle, e. g. to survive.  However, such a principle leaves indeterminate the means sought to achieve that end, thereby not precluding the possibility of Free Will as also a factor in the organism's behavior.  Accordingly, to fill the gap, Determinists often argue that if all the facts of its experience over the course were known, every new episode would be revealed as the effect of one or more prior influences.  Now, one straightforward response is that all the facts are not known, so that hypothesis does not prima facie suffice to rule out the possibility of either Free Will or Chance contributing to that experience.  Furthermore, the assertion begs the question--even granted the antecedent, there is no reason to deny that those facts are indeed sufficient to ground all that transpires thereafter. So, despite the dogmatic reductionism, there seems to be no good reason to reject the empirically sound thesis that human behavior combines determinacy and indeterminacy, perhaps distinguished as Ends and Means.

Free Will, Determinism, Deliberation

Because of the eschatological scale of the tradition debate, Free Will and Determinism are typically regarded as absolutely disjoint, though Kant shows that they might also be not incompatible.  Now, in ordinary contexts, behavior is easily interpreted as either self-motivated or the product of circumstances.  However, the absolute heterogeneity that even Kant accepts does not hinder the ordinary judgment that behavior can be the resultant of a combination of internal and external influences, calculated just like any combination of Forces.  On that basis, when called for, a judgment of a specific event in terms of Voluntary vs. Involuntary usually reflects a determination as to which of the influences is the stronger in the situation, e. g. a guilty verdict when a tough upbringing does not quite explain the violence of an assault.  That a procedure in those terms might be considered impossible at the eschatological level is perhaps a reflection of the irrelevance of the debate at that level, i. e. if either absolute Free Will or absolute Determinism is correct, there is nothing to deliberate in mundane judgments.

Voluntary, Intentional, Formal Causality

In typical contemporary jurisprudential contexts, the Voluntary vs. Involuntary distinction is based on that of Intentional vs. Unintentional.  Now, an Intention is usually conceived as a representation of a goal that precedes the actualization of the goal.  But, while that concept of the distinction might suffice in the context, Determinists argue that the representation that is classified as an 'intention' actually has, at most, as little causal efficacy as a wish, so, rigorously considered, the distinction from Involuntary collapses.  However, the persistent flaw with that analysis, one which even Spinoza repudiates, is that an Intention is present only at the outset of a course of action.  Rather, as that Determinist proposes, the concept of a Circle is not merely present at the outset of the drawing of a Circle, but guides the process to completion.  Likewise, recipes, instructions, etc. are all common examples of a representation functioning as more than the expression of a wish.  In other words, the Causality that Determinists deny to an Intention is either Efficient or Teleological, when, in fact, it is Formal.  So, if Intentional is defined as entailing Self-Control, i. e. an instance of Formal Causality, the concept of Voluntary resists the Determinist objection to it.

Nothingness, Freedom, Determinism

According to some, there is a constraint on an ex nihilo creator--Nothingness.  Accordingly,  this divine Nothingness is absolutely free.  Thus, too, is its secular version--Consciousness, in Sartre's system.  But, this absolute Freedom is not opposed to Determinism.  To the contrary, we are "condemned to be free", as Sartre famously formulates it.  On that basis, the standard concept of 'Determinism', e. g. Newtonian Physics, Behaviorism, etc., manifests a condition that he calls Bad Faith, which consists in the abdication of Freedom by fobbing it off on a purportedly impersonal power, e. g. a deity, an insuperable chain of events, etc.  Of course, Newtonian Physics presupposes the existence of an ex nihilo creator that does not intervene in the created once the act of creation is complete.  So, the Free Will vs. Determinism debate can be conceived as a surrogate for a Theological dispute, or, conversely, absent the Creationist premise, the scope of the debate becomes significantly deflated.

Swerve and Negation

While in British Phenomenalism, the nothingness that separates Sense Data is a passive feature, in Hegelian Phenomenology, Negation is an active, cardinal, principle.  Thus, influenced by Hegel, Marx is predisposed to interpreting Swerve as Negation.  But, doing so falsifies it in two significant ways.  First, Negation abstracts from the infinitude of possible new directions that can eventuate in a Swerve.  Second, even in its Determinate variety, Negation still effects a rupture in what is a continuous motion from the beginning of a Swerve to its completion.  In contrast, Darwinian Variation and Deleuzian Difference more accurately represent the structure of Swerve.

Swerve and Ex Nihilo

Swerve is spontaneous, but not ex nihilo.  For, it presupposes a given condition with respect to which it is a variation.  In other words, what Swerve causes is a Modification, not a mere Effect, which is logically independent of pre-conditions.  Thus, Swerve cannot be the handiwork of an omnipotent deity, since it entails a constraint upon the power of the latter.  Hence, even if Swerve were deified, it could not be the ex nihilo creator of the Biblical tradition.

Occasionalism and Freedom

A variety of ex nihilo Creationism is Occasionalism, according to which the deity re-creates the universe at every moment.  One significant implication of this doctrine is that there is no real causal connectivity between created entities.  So, British Empiricism can be conceived as secularized Occasionalism.  For example, Locke's Tabula Rasa is the ex nihilo of Experience, recurring with every new Sense Datum, with the result that Experience is being constantly renewed.  Berkeley dissociates this sequence from any objective realm, and Hume's Skepticism about Causality is Occasionalist without the Theological premise.  Likewise, the concept of Freedom that emerges from this tradition is Occasionalist--a contentless detachment-from, e. g. the American Declaration of Independence, the 'pursuit of happiness' as an end in itself, etc.  In contrast, Free Will has specific content, i. e. the goal to be effected, thus requiring anti-Occasionalist diachronic Causality.  Since the detachment-from is non-specific, a Political Theory founded on Occasionalist Freedom is a-historical, e. g. that it is from Great Britain, in the second half of the 18th-Century, is inessential to what the American Declaration declares.

Freedom, Swerve, Conservativism, Progressivism

Like Swerve, Dewey's concept of Impulse is a variation of a prior condition--of Habit, just as the former presupposes motion in a straight line.  In contrast, the concepts of Freedom that are typical in Modernity reflect their Theological origins: like the creativity of their bestower, they, too, are ex nihilo.  Consequently, so, too, are the Political Theories in which such Freedom is the foundation, as is reflected in their a-historicality.  Correspondingly in contrast, the concept of Society that Dewey bases on Impulse is inherently historical, as is implicit in the term that he occasionally uses to characterize the concept: 'Reconstruction', i. e. which entails a prior condition that is being varied.  The contrast is actualized in the ongoing conflict of American Political ideologies: Conservativism, which seeks to maintain as changelessly as possible the ex nihilo construction of 1789, and Progressivism, which seeks to indefinitely repeat that Swerve from an antecedent status quo.

Swerve and Impulse

Behavior that is more random and spontaneous than Will is Impulse.  Now, on a Spinozist analysis, Impulse is merely the effect of an external influence, and is unexpected for that reason alone.  However, according to Dewey, Impulse is in itself "plastic", i. e.formless, functioning primarily to break from established Habit, with its eventual direction contingent.  This he presents without referencing Lucretius; regardless, if he is correct, then Swerve is essentially a Psychological, not a Physicist, principle, from which Will is derived, and from which it derives its 'Free' character.

Swerve and Uniformity

As has been previously discussed, a significant problem with the derivation of Free Will from Swerve is that the former entails control and predictability.  The focus on this feature of Lucretius' system thus tends to distract from its perhaps most radical characteristic--the thesis that existence is fundamentally random, a view that has had few prominent subsequent advocates, e. g. Nietzsche, but only in places.  Now, a challenge for a system based on this principle is the unarguable fact of the regularity of at least some of existence, even if it is not as absolute and certain as it is usually taken to be.  But, Lucretius has the resources to meet that challenge.  For, Swerve is not the only motion that occurs in his system--its pre-Swerve given is atoms moving in a straight line.  Hence, there are two principles in his system: Swerve and Uniformity, i. e. the latter obtaining at non-Swerve moments, such that all activity is constituted by a combination of the two, with regularity, e. g. natural laws, one possible combination, another being the combination of spontaneity and control that constitutes Free Will.

Free Will vs. Determinism, Theology, Social Theory

Given the premise that a good deity is the creator of the universe, the Free Will vs. Determinism debate gets aggrandized to eschatological status.  As a result, among the prominent propositions, from both sides, that have emerged from the Theological tradition are: that the deity bestows Free Will on every human; that no such bestowal takes place, so that, instead, the behavior of every human is determined by laws of Nature; and the life of every human is predestined.  Now, each of these propositions has influenced concepts of society, via apparent 'secularization': the principle of the inalienable Freedom of each human, the principle of the inalienable power of each human, and Capitalism as a medium of the dispensation of Grace, respectively.  Thus, if, as has been previously proposed here, Free Will originates in Locomotion, then the Theologizing of both it and Determinism is undermined, and the corresponding foundations of social theory are, at minimum, shaken.

Self-Determinism and Choices of Direction

According to Spinoza, the fundamental principle of behavior of each person is to endeavor to persist in its own being.  Now, in some cases, one has adequate knowledge that a course of action does indeed actualize the principle, while in others, one does not.  Accordingly, in the former, behavior is Self-Determined, while in the latter, it is at least partly determined by some external object or force, e. g. junk food.  On that basis, the occasion on which one believes that one is acting 'freely' is actually constituted by choosing that is abstracted from the reasoning that precedes it, and, hence, involves inadequate knowledge in two respects: that the object of choice conduces to one's well-being, and that one has chosen 'freely', i. e.that one is not, in fact, under the influence of the external object, e. g. the seductive aroma of junk food.  However, Spinoza does not address the scenario in which one has a choice between two courses of action, each of which one knows actualizes the fundamental principle, e. g. two healthful meals.  In such cases, the choice between the two is undetermined, and, hence, can be classified as an instance of Free Will.  So, if the perhaps most formidable of Determinist systems does not preclude Free Will qua choice of one of multiple directions, as has been previously discussed, then arguably none does.

Swerve, Locomotion, Direction

As has been previously discussed, the derivation of Free Will from Swerve is problematic.  Nevertheless, the image suggests a different Naturalist origin of that capacity.  For, Swerve is indeterminate in two ways: one, the one receiving the attention, is the spontaneity at the outset of the movement, the other, is the direction in which the movement terminates.  That is, there are an infinite number of directions that are alternative to that which has been Swerved from.  But, that possibilty is not merely abstract--Locomotion includes multiple, if not infinite, numbers of direction.  Thus, as part of this basic biological process, there is a choice of directions possible as part of a response to a stimulus, the resolving of which sufficiently explains any lacuna between Stimulus and Response, thereby sufficiently distinguishing it from a mechanical Cause-Effect.  This inherent multi-directional capacity also counters one of the pivotal Determinist arguments--that any vacillation in behavior is completely a function of conflicting external forces, expressed by irresolutely turning back and forth between the options, a counter that is not based on mere private data of consciousness.  Likewise, Swerve and at least some Locomotion violate the clause of Newton's First Law that is often taken for granted--that the resulting direction of any change of motion is sufficiently and uniquely determined by preceding external causes.

Swerve, Free Will, Responsibility

The roots of the Free Will vs. Determinism debate are Aristotle's attempts to distinguish voluntary from involuntary behavior, in order to establish criteria for the assignation of responsibility.  Now, abstracting the terms of the debate from that context can distort their relation.  For example, on the one hand, in themselves, Chance and Free Will are each anti-Deterministic.  But, on the other, behavior that is either accidental or a product of external forces is often absolved of responsibility, while that conduct is deliberate is usually regarded as sufficient grounds for credit or blame.  In other words, restored to context of Responsibility, Swerve, i. e. random deviation, and Free Will are antithetical, despite the Lucretian thesis that the former is the source of the latter.

Swerve and Anthropocentrism

The Lucretian universe is non-Anthropocentric--Swerve might occasion a person's liberation from an oppressive situation, but it just as likely might thwart one of their plans.  In other words, an expression of human Will might be a linear motion that is what is Swerved from.  Thus, that Swerve is the source of Freedom does not entail that it is the source of a human Will, and, hence, that it is the source of Free Will.

Swerve and Detachment

With only a few, recent, exceptions, Philosophers have long privileged Theory over Practice, entailing, either explicitly or implicitly, that Contemplation is the Highest Good. Now, Contemplation requires detachment from its objects.  Accordingly, inherent in this tradition is the privileging of a concept of Free Will that accomplishes a liberation from both pursuit and avoidance of external objects.  So, in other words, also among the reasons for the obscurity of Swerve is that the concept of Free Will that is based on it has been long overshadowed by one the image of which is a line coming to a halt.  Indeed, even both Epicurus and Lucretius recognize a moment of hesitation before their line veers off its original course.  Likewise, 'will power' commonly connotes resistance to an external influence, i. e. self-restraint, not a sudden change of behavior.

Swerve and Epicureanism

The relative obscurity of Swerve probably has less to do with simple neglect, and more to do with a distortion of its origin.  That origin, from which Lucretius' concept is derived, is Epicurus' version, which consists in the tranquil turning away from external influences, towards the pursuit of modest pleasures. But, of course, 'epicurean' has come to connote, quite to the contrary, the self-indulgent enjoyment of luxurious pleasures, especially in eating.  So, in the process, Swerve has become dissociated from true Epicureanism, to which attention to its association with the concept of Free Will does not quite restore it.

Swerve and Physics

According to Lucretius, Swerve is fundamentally a description of the behavior of Atoms. Thus, it constitutes a Physics.  Now, three characteristics of Swerve are: it is not the effect of a prior cause, it is not the effect of an external cause, and the direction of motion to which it changes is indeterminate.  A fourth is that it is unquantifiable.  In other words, Lucretian Physics is antithetical to Newtonian Physics in four fundamental ways.  But, Newtonian Physics is among the predominant influences of Modernity, both intellectually and practically, i. e. its technological consequences.  So, perhaps the greatest weakness of Greenblatt's thesis is its application to Physics.  Regardless, Lucretian Physics may offer explanations for phenomena ignored or suppressed by its Newtonian counterpart.  But, until it also accounts for the regularities that the latter has so effectively represented for centuries, it might complement it, but not supplant it.

Swerve and History

Greenblatt's recent book about the recovery of the works of Lucretius, 'Swerve', is more valuable as a bibliographic narrative than an intellectual history. While the title is an allusion to the concept of the behavior of atoms, Greenblatt also proposes it as an image of the transition from the Medieval Era to the Renaissance.  But that usage is not merely superficial; it also obscures a main shortcoming in the book.  For, the image is an uninstructive representation of the perhaps decisive catalyst in that historical transition: Gutenberg's invention, the primary consequence of which is the Democratization of Medieval Theology.  As a result, Greenblatt under-appreciates the continued influence of that ideology through the next several centuries, and even to date.  He, thus, over-estimates the influence of Swerve on the concepts of Freedom that arise in that period, the ancestor of which is the Christian concept of their Super-Natural origin, rather than Lucretius' lesser known Naturalist alternative.  Better indications of the fate of the latter than the mere fact of being on many Renaissance and Modern reading lists, are that its rare explicit treatment is not until Marx attempts a Dialectical interpretation of Swerve in the 19th-century, as well as Einstein's famous insistence that "God" prefers no Free Will to the randomness of the likes of Swerve, e. g. dice.  So, regarding the actual influence of Swerve, Greenblatt's book may be more prelude than postscript.

Swerve and Dyad

In Lucretius' basic image of Swerve, the deviation is with respect to antecedent motion in a straight line.  In other words, Swerve is a Binary concept, in which some antecedent condition is an essential term, though it does not determine what ensues, e. g. Free Will is a spontaneous modification of a given condition, like Acceleration with respect to constant Velocity. Some other prominent concepts that exemplify the pattern are experimentation, supererogatory action, musical theme-and-variation, and Evolutionary Variation and Mutation.  However, due to continued neglect of, and, perhaps, aversion to, Swerve, such potential fruitfulness has gone unrecognized.  On the other hand, in perhaps the closest thing to a notable Modern treatment of it, Marx's Dissertation, Swerve is misrepresented, because he attempts to reduce it to a Dialectical pattern, thereby implying, a reduction, via Sublation, of a Dyad to a Unitary term.  So, the general neglect of the concept may be due to its resistance to both incorporation into a system, and a simplification of it, i. e. to both Totalization and Atomization, the two main Philosophical operations.

Free Will, Determinism, Vitalism

Though the ostensible goal of Time and Free Will is to establish the existence of Free Will, subsequent developments indicate that it has a different, nascent, aim.  For, while the existence of Free Will is central in a Theology according to which humans are the source of Evil, in its maturity, Bergson's project is revealed as Vitalist.  Thus, retrospectively, what he can be understood as trying to accomplish in his earlier work is a demonstration of the irreducibility of Biological principles to mechanistic Physics.  To that end, explaining the independence of Duration from Physicist Time suffices, even if his concept of Free Will remains problematic.  Still, it is not until Matter and Memory, and Creative Evolution, that he more compellingly shows that not only are Vitalism and Physics compatible, the latter is derived from the former.  To that end, whether or not all human behavior is irresistibly determined by Elan Vital, is irrelevant.

Determinism, Free Will, Self-Determinism

Newton's First Law is equivalent to the Detetminist principle that every Cause has a prior external Cause.  Bergson's counter-example, and example of Fre Will, is when a "fundamental self" is a Cause, thereby implying, but without explicit argument, that such a Cause has neither a prior nor external Cause. Thus, conspicuously absent from his presentation is any consideration of two prominent antecedents.  According to Spinoza, all behavior of the Fundamental Self is governed by Self-Persistence, and according to Schopenhauer, all behavior is an expression of both the fixed character of that Self, as well as the Will to Live.  Now, later, Bergson posits that Elan Vital is the source of all Motion, and, in Time and Free Will, casually accepts that a Self has a distinctive personality, so to reinforce the counter-example, he would need to argue that such influences are internal to and concurrent with anything it causes.  But, if so, then its Causality is more accurately classified as Self-Determinism, in contrast with Free Will qua Causality that is a singular event.

Free Will, Determinism, Habit

In Physics, Distance is a rigid path between two points, so attribution of Distance to a moving object abstracts from possible swerves in the motion, in which case the actual distance traveled by the object can be greater than the measured Distance.  Likewise, Velocity, the standard Physicist concept of which is uniform, can abstract from the accelerations and decelerations that are not precluded by average Velocity, which is the concrete original version of the concept.  Also similarly, Habit, the prototype of Determinist behavior, can easily be observed, i. e. in the process of developing it, to be the product of numerous moments of discontinuities that are the occasions of voluntary Effort, e. g. in the memorization of lines. Thus, available to Bergson is a micro-analysis that reveals the irregularities which Determinism pre-supposes.  Instead, he opts, in Time and Free Will, for a weaker neo-Kantian Compatabilism, likely in anticipation of the reinforced Dualism of Matter and Memory, which relies heavily on segregating Habit from Freedom.

Free Will, Determinism, Swerve

A neglected alternative to the standard varieties of both Free Will and Determinism is Lucretian Swerve.  Swerve is not a characterless singularity; rather, its Logical structure is Variation, which entails, more precisely, Variation of some given.  Thus, it is relative to its antecents, but is neither their mechanical effect, nor their deductive consequence.  The pervasive neglect of the concept is for the same reason that Deleuze attributes to the pervasive neglect of Difference--the chronic privileging of Sameness.  It is a potentially fruitful concept, applicable to creativity, i. e. the generation of Novelty, and is specifically exemplified by the motor of Evolution--Mutation.  Plus, it can explain why Effort is the primitive case of Free Will, without requiring recourse to a problematic Bergsonian "fundamental self".

Effort, Free Will, Determinism

Bergson presents Free Will as spontaneous yet durational "effort", the outcome beyond which is uncertain.  However, he vacillates between two further characterizations of this moment.  On the one hand, it is a "sui generis" self-sufficient "fact", akin to Lucretian Swerve and Existentialist Freedom.  But, on the other, the sequence is an effect of a "fundamental self", an entity which seems to both have a fixed noumenal character, and undergo constant modification.  Now, each concept thwarts Einsteinian Determinism, though, in the case of the second, not necessarily Schopenhauer's variety, according to which all behavior is the expression of, and, hence, is not free from, an immutable noumenal personality.  Now, the vacillation is typical of an uncertainty that persists throughout all the phases of Bergson's oeuvre.  For, the first of the accounts of Free Will entails a continuum between Consciousness and Body that is consistent with his later concept of a Spirit-Matter continuum, and that of an Evolutionary process in which the development of organs reflects that of Elan Vital. In contrast, the Self-Act split is consistent with Spirit-Matter and Elan Vital-organ dualisms that can also be read into his later works.  Accordingly, his privileging of incorporeal Spiritualism in his final main work, on Morality and Religion, retroactively commits him to the ultimate position that Free Will is not the observable fact of effort, but a hidden Causality originating in an in itself unobservable Self.  If so, then his position may escape Einsteinian Determinism, but not necessarily Schopenhauer's variety of it.

Duration, Singularity, Existentialism

The common association of the concept of Duration with that of flux has tended to overshadow the primary theme of the context in which Bergson first presents it--Free Will.  For sure, the concept of Time as a continuum does undermine the Mechanical Causality that constitutes standard Determinism.  But, also, that Causality is usually formulated as a law, in which case its instances are also instances of some general law, e. g. physical, behavioral, etc.  So, Bergson's insight is that Free Will entails temporal singularity, a characteristic of experience that can also be conceived as signifying a variation of Existentialism, in the proper sense of the term, i. e. as connoting 'not an instance of a human Essence'.

Writing and Evolution

Beginning with the premise that the contents of Duration are "immediately given", Bergson conceives Spirit and Matter as related as Reality to Appearance, and, eventually, Elan Vital as the Reality of Evolution.  However, since the concept of Evolution entails biological distinctions between greater and lesser complexity, but Elan Vital remains constant, his version of it, perhaps unwittingly, is a theory of Appearances alone.  In contrast, beginning, as has been previously discussed, with the recognition that what he actually presents is a description of Duration, the immediately given is his act of writing, which he could conclude would be impossible without the versatile thumbs that distinguish humans from all other organisms.  Thus, a theory of Evolution developed on that basis might not only describe, but exemplify, Writing as an evolutionarily advanced mode of communication within a species.

Writing, Spacing, Space

In the act of writing, that, as has been previously discussed, is the true "immediately given" to Bergson, he might notice that cramped writing can be illegible, in which case he would endeavor to spread out the letters a little more.  He could thus observe that Space can be created by a process of Spacing, which neither is immobile nor, since it better differentiates the letters, an homogenization of them.  He might therefore conclude that if Physicists falsify Duration when representing it as a Spatial figure, e. g. a line, it is because they first falsify Spacing in it, i. e. by hypostasizing and homogenize it as Space.  He might then also better appreciate Kant's nuance that what represents Time is the "drawing" of a line, not a "drawn" line.

Duration and Writing

Like Einstein, Bergson is apparently oblivious to Kant's concept of Time as a Form of Experience, and, like most Foundationalists, he presents as "immediately given" a datum that is, in fact, the product of several abstractions.  In contrast, the one methodologically rigorous Foundational scenario in all such cases is: sitting at a desk and writing what eventually is being read in these passages.  Accordingly, everything else that these writers develop is derived from that basis.  Thus, for example, for Bergson, Duration first emerges as the flux of his producing words and sentences, and is a Form of Experience, in that respect.  In particular, the flux consists in a continual modification of what has already been, with an end-point not necessarily in sight.  Accordingly, Memory is fundamentally neither a motor habit nor an incorporeal image, as he proposes, but the retention of an earlier stage in its modification.  Likewise, other concepts in his system require appropriate adjustment.