AMMDI is an open-notebook hypertext writing experiment, authored by Mike Travers aka mtraven. It's a work in progress and some parts are more polished than others. Comments welcome! More.
duration is his key idea but apparently hard to grasp. It's a philosophical concept that points to something inexpressible (?). Seems simple enough to me...but maybe I don't get it. Duration is not just subjective time, it is the real, it is more real than anything, the foundation (see A consumer's guide to the foundations of reality )
Bergson's most central idea. A form of time that is not merely a measured linear dimension, but something More, something Basic, something Underlying Everything.
In my understanding this is indistinguishable from Tao. Which sounds like an argument against it, somehow. Not sure why that should be the case. If Bergson is true in the same sort of way that Lao-Tse is true, what's wrong with that?
Not wrong exactly, but perhaps unnecessary. We already have the Tao te Ching, it's much shorter than Bergson and more beautiful even if he did win a Nobel for literature.
Magic Freedom Juice
My sneery name for durée, it reads the way atheists talk about God, that is, with this deliberate misunderstanding. It's not a substance among substances, just like it is not a dimension among dimensions. Or an agent among agents.
Indeed, it is the root of agency, and maybe of everything else besides. That is the point.
It's not the idea of durée I am sneering at, but its misuse as an all purpose mystery explainer. Freedom a bit of a conceptual problem? Durée is your answer.
To be fair JFM is explicitly not a mystery explainer. He's a mystery fan, a promoter, a warrior for it in fact (OK that sounds weird but accurate). I'm the one who wants to explain things, why I am quite often missing the point.
Also, sneering at "magic"? Please remember whose company you are in.