system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
By saying that we can't quantify variations of intensity in different experiences, is Bergson basically completely discrediting what research psychology does?

I sort of got the effect from reading Time And Free Will (first chapter especially) that if psychologists can't use the traditional method of measuring variations between two experiences, then what else is left for them?

If after experiencing two sensations what I experience is the sensation of variation itself (according to him), then what should we make of the studies that have been done so far in psychology? His point seems compelling but since nobody took them into account in social sciences I just wonder how to reconcile the two (his argument and the actual state of psychology/social sciences). Unless I misunderstood something?

I think a problem I have is I'm not entirely understanding the alternative he offers. I understand what the problem is (that quantifying two internal experiences is not possible because the methods of measuring external objects is not applicable to experiences of consciousness, because what is experienced is the change itself), but I'm not sure I understand what his next move is. He also doesn't want to use the traditional method of investigating the cause and effects that lead to the sensation of a given experience, right? So then what's the alternative?

Thank you in advance for helping me.
gpt
His argument is little more subtle than that.  It isn't that we can't quantify sensations, but that sensations do not have magnitudes intrinsically - they are qualitatively different from each other.  Rather, we infer magnitudes indirectly and thereby attribute quantity to sensation.  One mechanism he gives is by estimating the size of the cause.  He gives other mechanisms as well.