Bergson will say that psychical phenomena cannot be studied as an external fact, and in this way, it will oppose the conception postulated by positivism.
For example, in his analysis of the matter of memory, Bergson considers that perception is not simply apprehension of reality by a psychic subject. Thus, the notion of perception gives rise to two different conceptions:
♦ For science, where there is a system of decentralized images, percpetion can only be explained by the assumption of a consciousness conceived as epiphenomno or fosforecence of matter.
♦ For consciousness, perception represents a harmony between reality and spirit.
Therefore, the doctrines proposed by idealism and realism are opposed, which have as common basis the free assumption that perception is only a knowledge. Bergson will resolve this contradiction by stating that perception is primarily action.
He will also say that intuition is that mode of knowledge that, in opposition to thought, captures truthful reality, interiority, duration, continuity, what moves and is done; while thought touches the external, turns the continuum into separate fragments, analyzes and decomposes, intuition is directed to becoming, becomes installs in the heart of the real. Intuition is, therefore, infallible, ultimately (and the expression of intuition, in a way, even falsifies).
Intuition in Bergson is an intuition of realities or perhaps reality itself. Reality opens to intuition when the 'spatializing' and 'pragmatic' categories of thought are broken.