Lonergan asserts, "The facts of good and evil, of progress and decline, raise questions about the character of our universe" (472). These questions have been asked in a variety of ways. The transcendental method brings a unity to these questions. "We can inquire into the possibility of fruitful inquiry. We can reflect on the nature of reflection. We can deliberate whether our deliberating is worthwhile" (472). Behind these questions is the question of God.
Lonergan writes, "The possibility of inquiry on the side of the subject lies in his intelligence, in his drive to know what, why, how, and in his ability to reach intellectually satisfying answers" (472). Why do we desire to know everything about everything? Why are there answers to our questions? Why is the world intelligible? Why should our answers be related to the universe? Why do we assume they do? "So implicitly we grant that the universe is intelligible and, once that is granted,there arises the question whether the universe could be intelligible without having an intelligent ground" (472). Once again, this is the question of God.
Lonergan inquires about our reflections and judgments. "Again, to reflect on reflection is to ask just what happens when we marshal and weigh evidence for pronouncing that this is probably is so and that probably is not so. ... Judgment proceed rationally from a grasp of a virtual unconditioned. By an unconditioned is meant any 'x' that has no conditions. By virtually unconditioned is meant any 'x' that has no unfulfilled conditions. ... To marshal the evidence is to ascertain whether all the conditions are fulfilled. To weigh the evidence is to ascertain whether the fulfillment of the conditions certainly or probably involves the existence or occurrence of the conditioned" (473).
Lonergan states that this explanation of judgment implies another element. If we are going to talk about a virtually unconditioned, then, we must also talk about the unconditioned. Lonergan explains, "The virtually unconditioned has no unfulfilled conditions. The strictly unconditioned has no conditions whatever. In traditional terms, the former is a contingent being, and the latter is a necessary being" (473). In more modern terms, the virtually unconditioned has to do with our world of possible being; the strictly unconditioned has to do with something beyond our world. In both cases, however, the question of God emerges. "Does a necessary being exist? Does there exist a reality that transcends the reality of this world?" (473).
Lonergan asks about our own deliberating, choosing, and deciding. "To deliberate abut 'x' is to ask whether 'x' is worthwhile. To deliberate about deliberating is to ask whether any deliberating is worthwhile" (473). Does worthwhile have any "ultimate meaning?" (473) Is moral living "consonant with the world?" (473) We praise people for their growth in attention, insight, reasonableness, and responsibility. We praise good and renounce evil. We praise progress and reject decline. "But is the universe on our side?" (473). These questions or reflections causes to emerge the question, "Does there or does there not necessarily exist a transcendent, intelligent ground of the universe? Is that ground or are we the primary instance of moral consciousness?" (473)
Behind our questions lie the question of God. "At their root there is the same transcendental tendency of the human heart that questions, that questions without restriction, that questions the significance of its own questioning, and so comes the question of God" (474).
The question of God lies behind all our questioning, "so being in love with God is the basic fulfillment of our conscious intentionality" (474). That fulfillment brings a deep joy that can endure despite the trials of life. That fulfillment brings a lasting peace that overcomes the world. That fulfillment leads to loving one's neighbor. On the other hand, the absence of that fulfillment "opens the way to trivilization of human life in the pursuit of fun, to the harshness of human life arising from the ruthless exercise of power, to despair about human welfare springing from the conviction that the universe is absurd" (474).
Lonergan describes being-in-love-with-God. "Being in love with God, as experienced, is being in love in an unrestricted fashion. All love is self-surrender, but being in love with God is being in love without limits or qualifications or conditions or reservations. Just as unrestricted questioning is our capacity for self-transcendence, so being in love in an unrestricted fashion is the proper fulfillment of that capacity" (474-475).
That fulfillment is not produced by us, but is God's gift. It is not a "product of our knowledge and choice" (475). It is a result of conversion, "it dismantles and abolishes the horizon in which our choosing and knowing went on and it sets up a new horizon in which the love of God will transvalue our values and the eyes of that love will transform our knowing" (475).
Lonergan states that though it is not a product of our knowing and choosing, it is a "conscious dynamic state of love, joy, peace, that manifests itself in acts of kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5, 22)" (475).
Though this dynamic state is conscious, it is not necessarily known. "For consciousness is just experience," but knowledge is a combination of experience, understanding, and judgment. Lonergan says because it is conscious without being known, "it is an experience of mystery. Because it is being in love, the mystery is not merely attractive but fascinating; to it one belongs; by it one is possessed. Because it is an unmeasured love, the mystery evokes awe. Of itself, then inasmuch as it is conscious without being known, the gift of God's love is an experience of the holy, of Rudolf Otto's mysterium fascinans et tremendum. It is what Paul Tillich named being grasped by ultimate concern. It corresponds to St. Ignatius Loyola's consolation that has no cause, as expounded by Karl Rahner" (475).
The religious experience is conscious on the fourth level of intentional consciousness. It is not the consciousness of the first level of empirical consciousness. It is not the consciousness of the second level of intellectual consciousness. It is not the consciousness of the third level of rational consciousness. It is the consciousness of the fourth level of consciousness of deliberation. Lonergan writes, "It is the type of consciousness that deliberates, makes judgments of value, decides, acts responsibly and freely. But it is this consciousness as brought to fulfillment, as having undergone a conversion, as possessing a basis that may be broadened and deepened and heightened and enriched but not superseded, as ready to deliberate and judge and decide and act with the easy freedom of those that do all good because they are in love. So the gift of God's love occupies the ground and root of the fourth and highest level of man's intentional consciousness" (475-476).
Being in love with God does not lead in a straight line upward, but more like up and down. "For that love is the utmost in self-transcendence, and man's self-transcendence is ever precarious. Of itself, self-transcendence involves tension between the self as transcending and the self as transcended. So, human authenticity is never some pure and serene and secure possession" (476).
Lonergan states that faith is "knowledge born of religious love" (477). First, there is "knowledge born of love" (477). Lonergan thinks this is similar to Pascal's "the heart has reasons which reason does not know" (477). This is a knowledge from the heart and affections. Lonergan explains, "By the heart's reasons I would understand feelings that are intentional responses to values ... Finally, by the heart I understand the subject on the fourth, existential level of intentional consciousness and in the dynamic state of being in love. The meaning, then, of Pascal's remark would be that, besides the factual knowledge reached by experiencing, understanding, and verifying, there is another kind of knowledge reached through the discernment of value of a person in love" (477).
This knowledge of faith is a result of God's love being poured into our heart. Lonergan states that added to our apprehension of "vital, social, and cultural values" is the "apprehension of transcendent value" (477). This apprehensions "consists in the experienced fulfillment of our unrestricted thrust to self-transcendence, in our actuated orientation towards the mystery of love and awe" (477-478). Lonergan adds, "Since that thrust is of intelligence to the intelligible, of reasonableness to the true and real, of freedom and responsibility to the truly good, the experienced fulfillment of that thrust in its unrestrictedness may be objectified as a clouded revelation of absolute intelligence and intelligibility, absolute truth and reality, absolute goodness and holiness" (478). This presents the question of God in a new "form". It turns it into a question of decision. Will I love him in response to his love for me? Will I live out that love toward others? The question of God's existence is now secondary.
Lonergan says that faith has both an absolute as well as relative aspect. Lonergan writes, "It places all other values in the light and the shadow of transcendent value. In the shadow, for transcendent value links itself to all other values to transform, magnify, and glorify them. Without faith the originating value is man and the terminal value is the human good that man brings about. But in the light of faith, originating value is divine light and love, while terminal value is the whole universe. So the human good becomes absorbed in an all-encompassing good" (478).
Faith is the answer to the problem of evil. "Without faith, without the eye of love, the world is too evil for God to be good, for a good God to exist. But faith recognizes that God grants men their freedom, that he wills them to be persons and not just his automata, that he calls them to the higher authenticity that overcomes evil with good. So faith is linked with human progress and it has to meet the challenge of human decline" (479).
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
The Lonergan Reader, Part 3, Chapter 3: Realms of Meaning
Different circumstances or contexts bring about "different modes of consciousness and intentional operation, and different modes of such operation give rise to different realms of meaning" (467).
Two realms of meaning are common sense and theory. Lonergan distinguishes between the two: both of them "regard the same objects. But the objects are viewed from such different standpoints," (467) that you have to switch from one realm to the other when dealing with the objects. The realm of common sense deals with objects in relation to us. The realm of theory deals with objects in their relations to each other. A third realm of meaning is the "appropriation of one's own interiority, one's subjectivity, one's operations, their structure, their norms, their potentialities" (468). This appropriation resembles theory. "But in itself it is a heightening of intentional consciousness, an attending not merely to objects but also to the intending subject and his acts" (468). This self-appropriation provides the evidence "for one's account of evidence" (468).
The appropriation of interiority is related to both common sense and theory. The subject returns to the "realms of common sense and theory with the ability to meet the methodical exigence. For self-appropriation of itself is a grasp of transcendental method, and the grasp provides one with the tools not only for an analysis of commonsense procedures but also for the differentiation of the sciences and the construction of their methods" (469).
Finally, according to Lonergan, there is the "transcendent exigence. There is to human inquiry an unrestricted demand for intelligibility. There is to human judgment a demand for the unconditioned. There is to human deliberation a criterion that criticizes every finite good. So it is ... that man can reach basic fulfillment, peace, joy, only by moving beyond the realms of common sense, theory, and interiority and into the ream in which God is known and loved" (469). This is the realm of the transcendent. So we have four realms of meaning: common sense, theory, interiority, and transcendence.
Two realms of meaning are common sense and theory. Lonergan distinguishes between the two: both of them "regard the same objects. But the objects are viewed from such different standpoints," (467) that you have to switch from one realm to the other when dealing with the objects. The realm of common sense deals with objects in relation to us. The realm of theory deals with objects in their relations to each other. A third realm of meaning is the "appropriation of one's own interiority, one's subjectivity, one's operations, their structure, their norms, their potentialities" (468). This appropriation resembles theory. "But in itself it is a heightening of intentional consciousness, an attending not merely to objects but also to the intending subject and his acts" (468). This self-appropriation provides the evidence "for one's account of evidence" (468).
The appropriation of interiority is related to both common sense and theory. The subject returns to the "realms of common sense and theory with the ability to meet the methodical exigence. For self-appropriation of itself is a grasp of transcendental method, and the grasp provides one with the tools not only for an analysis of commonsense procedures but also for the differentiation of the sciences and the construction of their methods" (469).
Finally, according to Lonergan, there is the "transcendent exigence. There is to human inquiry an unrestricted demand for intelligibility. There is to human judgment a demand for the unconditioned. There is to human deliberation a criterion that criticizes every finite good. So it is ... that man can reach basic fulfillment, peace, joy, only by moving beyond the realms of common sense, theory, and interiority and into the ream in which God is known and loved" (469). This is the realm of the transcendent. So we have four realms of meaning: common sense, theory, interiority, and transcendence.
The Lonergan Reader, Part 3, chapter 2: The Human Good
Lonergan discusses judgments of value: "Judgments of value or simple or comparative. They affirm or deny that some x is truly or only apparently good. Or they compare distinct instances of the truly good to affirm or deny that one is better or more important, or more urgent than the other" (456).
Whether the judgment is objective or subjective depends if it comes from a self-transcending subject or an authentic self.
Lonergan states, Judgments of value differ in content but not in structure from judgments of fact" (456). They differ in value because one affirm what does not exist or disapprove what does. They do not differ in structure because both differentiates between criterion and meaning. Lonergan states, "In both, the criterion is the self-transcendence of the subject, which, however, is only cognitive in judgments of fact but is heading towards moral self-transcendence in judgments of value. In both, the meaning is or claims to be independent of the subject: judgments of fact state or purport to state what is or is not so; judgments of value state or purport to state what is or is not truly good or really better" (456).
Lonergan speaks of judgments of value: "True judgments of value go beyond merely intentional self-transcendence without reaching the fullness of moral self-transcendence. That fullness is not merely knowing but also doing, and man can know what is right without doing it" (456-457).
In between judgments of fact and judgments of value are apprehensions of value. These apprehensions are given in feelings. "Apprehensions of value occur in a further category of intentional response which greets either the ontic value of a person or the qualitative value of beauty, of understanding, of truth, of noble deeds, of virtuous acts, of great achievements" (457).
In judgments of value, three things combine. "First, there is knowledge of reality and especially human reality. Secondly, there are intentional responses to values. Thirdly, there is the initial thrust to moral self-transcendence constituted by the judgment of value itself" (457). Judgment of value requires knowledge of human reality. Knowledge by itself is not enough to make judgments of value, therefore, moral feelings must be developed. Finally, Lonergan says, "the development of knowledge and the development of moral feeling head to the existential discovery, the discovery of oneself as a moral being, the realization that one not only chooses between courses of action but also thereby makes oneself an authentic human being or an unauthentic one" (457-458). This discovery helps to emerge in one's consciousness "the significance of personal value and the meaning of personal responsibility"(458). One's continual experience of one's weaknesses causes to emerge the question of one's salvation and the question of God.
There is both development and failure which means that the judgments of value "occur in different contexts" (458). In the context of growth, one's knowledge and living is constantly improving or advancing from vital values to religious values. There is also an openness to continual improvement or growth. The only problem is that "continuous growth seems to be rare" (458). There are diversions from the correct path. There are refusals to keep moving forward. There are the desire for comfort and ease. There are attempts to quiet an uneasy conscience by rejecting the better values. One's outlook becomes clouded by biases. One even begins to hate the good.
Lonergan goes on to talk about the differences between horizontal and vertical liberty based on a study by Joseph de Finance. "Horizontal liberty is the exercise of liberty within a determinate horizon and from the basis of a corresponding existential stance. Vertical liberty is the exercise of liberty that selects that stance and the corresponding horizon" (459). Horizontal liberty is to make choices within one's horizon. Vertical liberty is to make choices beyond one's horizon. "Such vertical liberty may be implicit: it occurs in responding to the motives that lead one to ever fuller authenticity, or ignoring such motives and drifting into an ever less authentic selfhood. But it also can be explicit. Then one is responding to the transcendental notion of value, by determining what it would be worthwhile for one to make of oneself, and what it would be worthwhile for one to do for one's fellow men" (459).
Lonergan next describes the structure of the human good. The human good is both individual and social. Lonergan selects eighteen terms and relates them to each other. First he relates capacity, operation, particular good, and need. "Individuals, then, have capacities for operating. By operating they procure themselves instances of the particular good" (460-461). The next four terms related are cooperation, institution, role, and task. "Individuals, then, live in groups. To a notable extent their operating is cooperating. It flows some settled pattern, and this pattern is fixed by a role to be fulfilled or a task to be performed within an institutional framework. Such frame-works are the family and manners (mores), society and education, the state and the law, the economy and technology, the church and sect" (461). These frameworks are the basic means for cooperation. They tend to change slowly, unless, their are major breakdowns. The third group of terms are plasticity, perfectibility, development, skill, and the good of order. "The capacities of individuals, then, for the performance of operations, because they are plastic and perfectible, admit the development of skills and, indeed, of the very skills demanded by institutional roles and tasks" (461).
The good of order is related to the particular good. Lonergan states, "This concrete manner, in which cooperation actually is working out, is what is meant by the good of order" (461). An example would be lunch today for me would be a particular good. "But dinner every day for all members of the group that earn it is part of the good of order" (461). The good of order makes it possible to acquire particular goods.
Another group of terms for the human good are liberty, orientation, conversion, personal relations, and terminal values" (462). "Liberty means, of course, not indeterminism, but self-determination. Any course of individual or group action is only a finite good and, because only finite, it is open to criticism. It has its alternatives, its limitations, its risks, its drawbacks. Accordingly, the process of deliberation and evaluation is not itself decisive, and so we experience our liberty as the active thrust of the subject terminating the process of deliberation by settling on one of the possible courses of action and proceeding to execute it. Now in so far as that thrust of the self regularly opts, not for merely the apparent good, but for the true good, the self is thereby is achieving moral self-transcendence; he is existing authentically; he is constituting himself as an originating value, and he is bringing about terminal values, namely a good of order that is truly good and instances of the particular good that are truly good" (462).
"Liberty is exercised within a matrix of personal relations. In the cooperating community persons are bound together by their needs and by the common good that meet their needs" (463).
Terminal values are values that are accepted and executed as "true instances of the particular good" (463). Related to terminal values are the persons that do the choosing. "They are authentic persons achieving self-transcendence by their good choices" (463). The subject can will authenticity both for himself and others.
Last we speak of the orientation of the community as a group. Lonergan discusses the orientation of the individual within the community. This main happens with the transcendental notions that "both enable us and require us to advance in understanding, to judge truthfully, to respond to values" (464). This demand requires development of the individual. "One has to acquire the skills and learning of a competent human being in some walk of life. One has to grow in sensitivity and responsiveness to values if one's humanity is to be authentic" (464). However, this development is not guaranteed, success varies with different individuals. There are some who do not succeed. There are some that meet minimum requirements. There are others who develop throughout their life.
As we have shown our orientation is in the way of development, conversion is a "change of direction", a change that is an improvement.
Whether the judgment is objective or subjective depends if it comes from a self-transcending subject or an authentic self.
Lonergan states, Judgments of value differ in content but not in structure from judgments of fact" (456). They differ in value because one affirm what does not exist or disapprove what does. They do not differ in structure because both differentiates between criterion and meaning. Lonergan states, "In both, the criterion is the self-transcendence of the subject, which, however, is only cognitive in judgments of fact but is heading towards moral self-transcendence in judgments of value. In both, the meaning is or claims to be independent of the subject: judgments of fact state or purport to state what is or is not so; judgments of value state or purport to state what is or is not truly good or really better" (456).
Lonergan speaks of judgments of value: "True judgments of value go beyond merely intentional self-transcendence without reaching the fullness of moral self-transcendence. That fullness is not merely knowing but also doing, and man can know what is right without doing it" (456-457).
In between judgments of fact and judgments of value are apprehensions of value. These apprehensions are given in feelings. "Apprehensions of value occur in a further category of intentional response which greets either the ontic value of a person or the qualitative value of beauty, of understanding, of truth, of noble deeds, of virtuous acts, of great achievements" (457).
In judgments of value, three things combine. "First, there is knowledge of reality and especially human reality. Secondly, there are intentional responses to values. Thirdly, there is the initial thrust to moral self-transcendence constituted by the judgment of value itself" (457). Judgment of value requires knowledge of human reality. Knowledge by itself is not enough to make judgments of value, therefore, moral feelings must be developed. Finally, Lonergan says, "the development of knowledge and the development of moral feeling head to the existential discovery, the discovery of oneself as a moral being, the realization that one not only chooses between courses of action but also thereby makes oneself an authentic human being or an unauthentic one" (457-458). This discovery helps to emerge in one's consciousness "the significance of personal value and the meaning of personal responsibility"(458). One's continual experience of one's weaknesses causes to emerge the question of one's salvation and the question of God.
There is both development and failure which means that the judgments of value "occur in different contexts" (458). In the context of growth, one's knowledge and living is constantly improving or advancing from vital values to religious values. There is also an openness to continual improvement or growth. The only problem is that "continuous growth seems to be rare" (458). There are diversions from the correct path. There are refusals to keep moving forward. There are the desire for comfort and ease. There are attempts to quiet an uneasy conscience by rejecting the better values. One's outlook becomes clouded by biases. One even begins to hate the good.
Lonergan goes on to talk about the differences between horizontal and vertical liberty based on a study by Joseph de Finance. "Horizontal liberty is the exercise of liberty within a determinate horizon and from the basis of a corresponding existential stance. Vertical liberty is the exercise of liberty that selects that stance and the corresponding horizon" (459). Horizontal liberty is to make choices within one's horizon. Vertical liberty is to make choices beyond one's horizon. "Such vertical liberty may be implicit: it occurs in responding to the motives that lead one to ever fuller authenticity, or ignoring such motives and drifting into an ever less authentic selfhood. But it also can be explicit. Then one is responding to the transcendental notion of value, by determining what it would be worthwhile for one to make of oneself, and what it would be worthwhile for one to do for one's fellow men" (459).
Lonergan next describes the structure of the human good. The human good is both individual and social. Lonergan selects eighteen terms and relates them to each other. First he relates capacity, operation, particular good, and need. "Individuals, then, have capacities for operating. By operating they procure themselves instances of the particular good" (460-461). The next four terms related are cooperation, institution, role, and task. "Individuals, then, live in groups. To a notable extent their operating is cooperating. It flows some settled pattern, and this pattern is fixed by a role to be fulfilled or a task to be performed within an institutional framework. Such frame-works are the family and manners (mores), society and education, the state and the law, the economy and technology, the church and sect" (461). These frameworks are the basic means for cooperation. They tend to change slowly, unless, their are major breakdowns. The third group of terms are plasticity, perfectibility, development, skill, and the good of order. "The capacities of individuals, then, for the performance of operations, because they are plastic and perfectible, admit the development of skills and, indeed, of the very skills demanded by institutional roles and tasks" (461).
The good of order is related to the particular good. Lonergan states, "This concrete manner, in which cooperation actually is working out, is what is meant by the good of order" (461). An example would be lunch today for me would be a particular good. "But dinner every day for all members of the group that earn it is part of the good of order" (461). The good of order makes it possible to acquire particular goods.
Another group of terms for the human good are liberty, orientation, conversion, personal relations, and terminal values" (462). "Liberty means, of course, not indeterminism, but self-determination. Any course of individual or group action is only a finite good and, because only finite, it is open to criticism. It has its alternatives, its limitations, its risks, its drawbacks. Accordingly, the process of deliberation and evaluation is not itself decisive, and so we experience our liberty as the active thrust of the subject terminating the process of deliberation by settling on one of the possible courses of action and proceeding to execute it. Now in so far as that thrust of the self regularly opts, not for merely the apparent good, but for the true good, the self is thereby is achieving moral self-transcendence; he is existing authentically; he is constituting himself as an originating value, and he is bringing about terminal values, namely a good of order that is truly good and instances of the particular good that are truly good" (462).
"Liberty is exercised within a matrix of personal relations. In the cooperating community persons are bound together by their needs and by the common good that meet their needs" (463).
Terminal values are values that are accepted and executed as "true instances of the particular good" (463). Related to terminal values are the persons that do the choosing. "They are authentic persons achieving self-transcendence by their good choices" (463). The subject can will authenticity both for himself and others.
Last we speak of the orientation of the community as a group. Lonergan discusses the orientation of the individual within the community. This main happens with the transcendental notions that "both enable us and require us to advance in understanding, to judge truthfully, to respond to values" (464). This demand requires development of the individual. "One has to acquire the skills and learning of a competent human being in some walk of life. One has to grow in sensitivity and responsiveness to values if one's humanity is to be authentic" (464). However, this development is not guaranteed, success varies with different individuals. There are some who do not succeed. There are some that meet minimum requirements. There are others who develop throughout their life.
As we have shown our orientation is in the way of development, conversion is a "change of direction", a change that is an improvement.
The Lonergan Reader, Part 3, Chapter 1: Transcendental Method
Lonergan defines method: "A method is a normative pattern of recurrent and related operations yielding cumulative and progressive results. There is a method, then, where there are distinct operations, where each operation is related to the others, where the set of relations form a pattern, where the pattern is described as the right way of doing the job, where operations in accord with the pattern may be repeated indefinitely, and where the fruits of such repetition are, not repetitious, but cumulative and progressive" (446).
He gives an example of method in the sciences. In the natural sciences method direct inquiries. It demands "accurate observation and description": both recur as inquiry. It encourages discovery and discoveries recur. It calls for the "formulation of discoveries in hypothesis" and formulation of hypothesis recur. It deduces implications of hypothesis, and the deductions recur. "It keeps urging that experiments be devised and performed to check the implications of hypothesis against observable fact, and such processes of experimentation recur" (446).
Lonergan states that there are four levels of conscious intentionality. Lonergan explains, "In our dream states consciousness and intentionality commonly are fragmentary and incoherent. When we awake, they take on a different hue to expand to four successive, related, but qualitatively different levels. There is the empirical level on which we sense, perceive, imagine, feel, speak, move. There is an intellectual level on which we inquire, come to understand, express what we have understood, work out the presuppositions and implications of our expression. There is the rational level on which we reflect, marshal the evidence, pass judgment on the truth or falsity, certainty or probability, of a statement. There is the responsible level on which we are concerned with ourselves, our own operations, our goals, and so deliberate about possible courses of action, evaluate them, decide, and carry out our decisions" (448).
All four levels we are conscious and intentional. At all four levels we are aware of ourselves "but, as we mount from level to level, it is a fuller self of which we are aware and the awareness itself is different" (448).
At the empirical level we are similar to other animals. However, this level leads to higher levels. Lonergan writes, "The data of sense provoke inquiry, inquiry leads to understanding, understanding expresses itself in language. Without the data there would be nothing for us to inquire about and nothing to be understood. Yet what is sought by inquiry is never just another datum but the idea or form, the intelligible unity or relatedness, that organizes the data into intelligible wholes. Again, without the effort to understand and its conflicting results, we would have no occasion to judge" (448). Judging leads us to making decisions and action on them. At this level emerges the choosing of values, of making judgments on value.
Lonergan states that the transcendentals are "comprehensive in connotation, unrestricted in denotation, invariant in cultural change"(449).
The transcendentals are: Be attentive, Be intelligent, Be reasonable, Be responsible. Be attentive to the data at the empirical level. Be intelligent as you seek to understand, get insight at the intellectual level. Be reasonable as you make judgments at the rational level. Be responsible as you make choices on the level of deliberation. "So intelligence takes us beyond experiencing to ask what and why and how and what for. Reasonableness takes us beyond answers of intelligence to ask whether the answers are true and what they mean really is so. Responsibility goes beyond fact and desire and possibility to discern between what truly is good and what only apparently is good" (450).
He gives an example of method in the sciences. In the natural sciences method direct inquiries. It demands "accurate observation and description": both recur as inquiry. It encourages discovery and discoveries recur. It calls for the "formulation of discoveries in hypothesis" and formulation of hypothesis recur. It deduces implications of hypothesis, and the deductions recur. "It keeps urging that experiments be devised and performed to check the implications of hypothesis against observable fact, and such processes of experimentation recur" (446).
Lonergan states that there are four levels of conscious intentionality. Lonergan explains, "In our dream states consciousness and intentionality commonly are fragmentary and incoherent. When we awake, they take on a different hue to expand to four successive, related, but qualitatively different levels. There is the empirical level on which we sense, perceive, imagine, feel, speak, move. There is an intellectual level on which we inquire, come to understand, express what we have understood, work out the presuppositions and implications of our expression. There is the rational level on which we reflect, marshal the evidence, pass judgment on the truth or falsity, certainty or probability, of a statement. There is the responsible level on which we are concerned with ourselves, our own operations, our goals, and so deliberate about possible courses of action, evaluate them, decide, and carry out our decisions" (448).
All four levels we are conscious and intentional. At all four levels we are aware of ourselves "but, as we mount from level to level, it is a fuller self of which we are aware and the awareness itself is different" (448).
At the empirical level we are similar to other animals. However, this level leads to higher levels. Lonergan writes, "The data of sense provoke inquiry, inquiry leads to understanding, understanding expresses itself in language. Without the data there would be nothing for us to inquire about and nothing to be understood. Yet what is sought by inquiry is never just another datum but the idea or form, the intelligible unity or relatedness, that organizes the data into intelligible wholes. Again, without the effort to understand and its conflicting results, we would have no occasion to judge" (448). Judging leads us to making decisions and action on them. At this level emerges the choosing of values, of making judgments on value.
Lonergan states that the transcendentals are "comprehensive in connotation, unrestricted in denotation, invariant in cultural change"(449).
The transcendentals are: Be attentive, Be intelligent, Be reasonable, Be responsible. Be attentive to the data at the empirical level. Be intelligent as you seek to understand, get insight at the intellectual level. Be reasonable as you make judgments at the rational level. Be responsible as you make choices on the level of deliberation. "So intelligence takes us beyond experiencing to ask what and why and how and what for. Reasonableness takes us beyond answers of intelligence to ask whether the answers are true and what they mean really is so. Responsibility goes beyond fact and desire and possibility to discern between what truly is good and what only apparently is good" (450).
The Lonergan Reader, Part 2, Chapter 4: Dimensions of Meaning
"Human reality ... is not merely meant but in large measure constituted through acts of meaning" (388). Lonergan says he will explain what this means.
In dreamless sleep, there is no meaning present. When one is an infant before language develops, meaning is immediate. Lonergan writes, "When first hearing and speech develop, they are directed to present objects, and so meaning initially is confined to a world of immediacy, to a world no bigger than the nursery, and seemingly no better known because it is not merely experienced but also meant. Then, to all appearances, it is quite correct to say that reality comes first and meaning is quite secondary" (388). Immediate meaning will be contrasted with mediated meaning. Immediate experience is narrower than mediated meaning because it is limited to our own experience.
When we develop language, we begin to enter a broader world. Lonergan describes mediated meaning: "For words denote not only what is present but also what is absent, not only what is near but also what is far, not only the past but also the future, not only the factual but also the possible, the ideal, the ought-to-be for which we keep striving though we never attain. So we come to live, not as the infant in the world of experience, but in a far vaster world that is brought to us through memories of other men, through the common sense of the community, through the pages of literature, through the labors of scholars, through the investigations of scientists, through the experience of saints, through the meditations of philosophers and theologians" (388).
Lonergan continues his explanation of mediated meaning: "This larger world, mediated through meaning, does not lie within anyone's immediate experience. It is not even the sum, the integral, of the totality of all worlds of immediate experience. For meaning is an act that does not merely repeat but goes beyond experiencing. What is meant is not only experienced but also somehow understood and, commonly, also affirmed. It is this addition of understanding and judgment that makes possible the larger world mediated by meaning ..." (388).
Beyond the world we know about, there is the world we create. This world we make we first intend. Man's making is not limited to the world. He also makes himself. The existential subject has to decide what he is to become. Lonergan thinks that social and cultural changes are changes in meaning.
Lonergan distinguishes between common sense and theory: two levels of meaning. Later he will add interior and transcendence. Myth and magic are also examples of meaning.
A clear example of the breakdown of classical culture exists in the sciences. "But modern science is not true; it is only on the way towards truth. It is not certain; for its positive affirmations it claims no more than probability. It is not knowledge but hypothesis, theory, system, the best scientific opinion of the day" (394). Modern science works in a contingent universe. In the classical world, knowledge was a result of the universe being necessary. "Insofar as the universe was necessary, it could be known scientifically; but insofar as it was contingent, it could only be known by opinion" (395).
In dreamless sleep, there is no meaning present. When one is an infant before language develops, meaning is immediate. Lonergan writes, "When first hearing and speech develop, they are directed to present objects, and so meaning initially is confined to a world of immediacy, to a world no bigger than the nursery, and seemingly no better known because it is not merely experienced but also meant. Then, to all appearances, it is quite correct to say that reality comes first and meaning is quite secondary" (388). Immediate meaning will be contrasted with mediated meaning. Immediate experience is narrower than mediated meaning because it is limited to our own experience.
When we develop language, we begin to enter a broader world. Lonergan describes mediated meaning: "For words denote not only what is present but also what is absent, not only what is near but also what is far, not only the past but also the future, not only the factual but also the possible, the ideal, the ought-to-be for which we keep striving though we never attain. So we come to live, not as the infant in the world of experience, but in a far vaster world that is brought to us through memories of other men, through the common sense of the community, through the pages of literature, through the labors of scholars, through the investigations of scientists, through the experience of saints, through the meditations of philosophers and theologians" (388).
Lonergan continues his explanation of mediated meaning: "This larger world, mediated through meaning, does not lie within anyone's immediate experience. It is not even the sum, the integral, of the totality of all worlds of immediate experience. For meaning is an act that does not merely repeat but goes beyond experiencing. What is meant is not only experienced but also somehow understood and, commonly, also affirmed. It is this addition of understanding and judgment that makes possible the larger world mediated by meaning ..." (388).
Beyond the world we know about, there is the world we create. This world we make we first intend. Man's making is not limited to the world. He also makes himself. The existential subject has to decide what he is to become. Lonergan thinks that social and cultural changes are changes in meaning.
Lonergan distinguishes between common sense and theory: two levels of meaning. Later he will add interior and transcendence. Myth and magic are also examples of meaning.
A clear example of the breakdown of classical culture exists in the sciences. "But modern science is not true; it is only on the way towards truth. It is not certain; for its positive affirmations it claims no more than probability. It is not knowledge but hypothesis, theory, system, the best scientific opinion of the day" (394). Modern science works in a contingent universe. In the classical world, knowledge was a result of the universe being necessary. "Insofar as the universe was necessary, it could be known scientifically; but insofar as it was contingent, it could only be known by opinion" (395).
Monday, April 22, 2019
The Lonergan Reader, Part 2, Chapter 2: Cognitional Structure
First, Lonergan talks about a dynamic structure: "A whole, then, has parts. The whole is related to each of the parts, and each of the parts is related to the other parts and to the whole" (381).
Not every whole is a structure.
He defines a dynamic structure: "The whole itself may be self-assembling, self-constituting; then it is formally dynamic. It is a dynamic structure" (381).
Human knowing is a dynamic structure. "Now human knowing involves many distinct and irreducible activities: seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting, inquiring, imagining, understanding, conceiving, reflecting, weighing the evidence, judging. No one of these activities, alone and by itself, may be named knowing" (381).
"As merely seeing is not human knowing, so for the same reason merely hearing, merely smelling, merely touching, merely tasting, may be parts, potential components of human knowing, but they are not human knowing itself. What is true of sense is no less true of understanding. Without the prior presentations of sense, there is nothing for a man to understand; and when there is nothing to be understood, there is no occurrence of understanding. Moreover, the combination of the operations of sense and of understanding does not suffice for human knowing. There must be added judging" (381-382).
So, knowing requires experience, understanding, and judging.
"But human knowing is also formally dynamic. It is self-assembling, self-constituting. It puts itself togethert, one part summoning forth the next, till the whole is reached. And this occurs, not with the blindness of a natural process, but consciously, intelligently, rationally. Experience stimulates inquiry, and inquiry is intelligence bringing itself to act; it leads from experience through imagination to insight, and from insight to the concepts that combine in single objects both what has been grasped by insight and what in experience or imagination is relevant to insight. In turn, concepts stimulate reflection, and reflection is the conscious exigence of rationality; it marshals the evidence and weighs it either to judge or else to doubt and so renew inquiry" (382).
Lonergan writes about consciousness and self-knowledge: "Where knowing is a structure, knowing must be a reduplication of the structure. ... But if knowing is a conjunction of experience, understanding, and judging, then knowing knowing has to be a conjunction of (1) experiencing experience, understanding, and judging, (2) understanding one's experience of experience, understanding, and judging, (3) judging one's understanding of experience, understanding, and judging to be correct" (383).
There is a difference between consciousness and knowing. "Self-knowledge is the reduplicated structure" (383). Consciousness is just the experience of it.
Not every whole is a structure.
He defines a dynamic structure: "The whole itself may be self-assembling, self-constituting; then it is formally dynamic. It is a dynamic structure" (381).
Human knowing is a dynamic structure. "Now human knowing involves many distinct and irreducible activities: seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting, inquiring, imagining, understanding, conceiving, reflecting, weighing the evidence, judging. No one of these activities, alone and by itself, may be named knowing" (381).
"As merely seeing is not human knowing, so for the same reason merely hearing, merely smelling, merely touching, merely tasting, may be parts, potential components of human knowing, but they are not human knowing itself. What is true of sense is no less true of understanding. Without the prior presentations of sense, there is nothing for a man to understand; and when there is nothing to be understood, there is no occurrence of understanding. Moreover, the combination of the operations of sense and of understanding does not suffice for human knowing. There must be added judging" (381-382).
So, knowing requires experience, understanding, and judging.
"But human knowing is also formally dynamic. It is self-assembling, self-constituting. It puts itself togethert, one part summoning forth the next, till the whole is reached. And this occurs, not with the blindness of a natural process, but consciously, intelligently, rationally. Experience stimulates inquiry, and inquiry is intelligence bringing itself to act; it leads from experience through imagination to insight, and from insight to the concepts that combine in single objects both what has been grasped by insight and what in experience or imagination is relevant to insight. In turn, concepts stimulate reflection, and reflection is the conscious exigence of rationality; it marshals the evidence and weighs it either to judge or else to doubt and so renew inquiry" (382).
Lonergan writes about consciousness and self-knowledge: "Where knowing is a structure, knowing must be a reduplication of the structure. ... But if knowing is a conjunction of experience, understanding, and judging, then knowing knowing has to be a conjunction of (1) experiencing experience, understanding, and judging, (2) understanding one's experience of experience, understanding, and judging, (3) judging one's understanding of experience, understanding, and judging to be correct" (383).
There is a difference between consciousness and knowing. "Self-knowledge is the reduplicated structure" (383). Consciousness is just the experience of it.
The Lonergan Reader, Part 1, Chapter 17: Self-Appropriation
"Insight may be described as a set of exercises in which, it is hoped, one attains self-appropriation" (340-341).
Generally, it is easier to do things than explain how to do them.
"First, then, seeking knowledge is seeking an unknown" (341).
"Now this seeking of knowledge is a special kind of tendency. ... It is not merely a tendency towards an object, it is a conscious tendency. But in seeking knowledge, not only do we tend towards it, not only do we do so consciously, but we also do so intelligently. Moreover, we do so critically; we examine what we have been given and wonder if it is right, and we test it and control it" (342).
"Seeking knowledge may be not only conscious, intelligent, and rational, but also deliberate. Scientists seek knowledge, aim at something, seek an unknown, and yet they go about it methodically. They have a series of well-defined steps which they take" (342).
There is a combination of knowledge and ignorance in seeking knowledge.
Aristotle states that all men by nature desire to know, so there is a "natural tendency, a natural desire to know" (342).
Lonergan states that there are different kinds of habits: infused (supernatural faith, hope, and Love), acquired habits (learning to play the violin), and "tendencies with which we start out and which we must have in order to start" (342-343). This tendency to start is a tendency towards the ideal. So, Lonergan says "The pursuit of knowledge, then, is the pursuit of an unknown, and the possibility of that pursuit is the existence of an ideal" (343).
Lonergan's second point is that this "ideal is not conceptually explicit. It becomes explicit only through the pursuit of knowledge" (343).
"The trick in self-appropriation is to move one step backwards, to move into the subject as intelligent - asking questions; as having insights - being able to form concepts; as weighing the evidence - being able to judge" (351-352).
Lonergan gives different definitions for the term, "presence". First, "you can say that chairs are present in the room, but you cannot say that the chairs are present to the room or that the room is present to the chairs. ... Second, sense of 'presence': being present to someone. It has a meaning with regard to animals. A dog walks along the street, sees another dog on the other side, and crosses over. The other dog is present to him, but not like the chairs are present in the room. Here we have presence to someone. ... There is a third sense of presence: you could not be present to me unless I was somehow present to myself" (352). Self-appropriation is the third type of presence.
It is not looking within oneself. It is not introspection.
Lonergan states there are different levels for the third type of presence. A simple presence is in "empirical consciousness". The next level is intelligent consciousness. You notice if your students are getting it by their expressions on their face. The third level, rational consciousness is when you "are present to yourself" (353). The fourth level is rational self-consciousness is when you ask yourself if you are doing right or wrong.
Lonergan writes about the value of self-appropriation: "it provides one with an ultimate basis of reference in terms of which one can proceed to deal satisfactorily with other questions" (359).
Generally, it is easier to do things than explain how to do them.
"First, then, seeking knowledge is seeking an unknown" (341).
"Now this seeking of knowledge is a special kind of tendency. ... It is not merely a tendency towards an object, it is a conscious tendency. But in seeking knowledge, not only do we tend towards it, not only do we do so consciously, but we also do so intelligently. Moreover, we do so critically; we examine what we have been given and wonder if it is right, and we test it and control it" (342).
"Seeking knowledge may be not only conscious, intelligent, and rational, but also deliberate. Scientists seek knowledge, aim at something, seek an unknown, and yet they go about it methodically. They have a series of well-defined steps which they take" (342).
There is a combination of knowledge and ignorance in seeking knowledge.
Aristotle states that all men by nature desire to know, so there is a "natural tendency, a natural desire to know" (342).
Lonergan states that there are different kinds of habits: infused (supernatural faith, hope, and Love), acquired habits (learning to play the violin), and "tendencies with which we start out and which we must have in order to start" (342-343). This tendency to start is a tendency towards the ideal. So, Lonergan says "The pursuit of knowledge, then, is the pursuit of an unknown, and the possibility of that pursuit is the existence of an ideal" (343).
Lonergan's second point is that this "ideal is not conceptually explicit. It becomes explicit only through the pursuit of knowledge" (343).
"The trick in self-appropriation is to move one step backwards, to move into the subject as intelligent - asking questions; as having insights - being able to form concepts; as weighing the evidence - being able to judge" (351-352).
Lonergan gives different definitions for the term, "presence". First, "you can say that chairs are present in the room, but you cannot say that the chairs are present to the room or that the room is present to the chairs. ... Second, sense of 'presence': being present to someone. It has a meaning with regard to animals. A dog walks along the street, sees another dog on the other side, and crosses over. The other dog is present to him, but not like the chairs are present in the room. Here we have presence to someone. ... There is a third sense of presence: you could not be present to me unless I was somehow present to myself" (352). Self-appropriation is the third type of presence.
It is not looking within oneself. It is not introspection.
Lonergan states there are different levels for the third type of presence. A simple presence is in "empirical consciousness". The next level is intelligent consciousness. You notice if your students are getting it by their expressions on their face. The third level, rational consciousness is when you "are present to yourself" (353). The fourth level is rational self-consciousness is when you ask yourself if you are doing right or wrong.
Lonergan writes about the value of self-appropriation: "it provides one with an ultimate basis of reference in terms of which one can proceed to deal satisfactorily with other questions" (359).
The Lonergan Reader, Part 2, Chapter 2: Openness and Religious Experience
Lonergan states that a philosophy of religious experience includes a material component and a formal component-the experience and philosophy of.
He thinks there can be a philosophy of religious experience.
Lonergan asserts, "Openness as a fact is the pure desire to know" which is what his book, Insight, is about.This pure desire to know is related to Aristotle's idea that wonder "is the beginning of all science and philosophy" (377). Aquinas says it is to know God "by his essence" (377).
Openness is not only a fact, but is also an achievement. Lonergan says it has two aspects. In it central element it concerns the subject, the act of understanding. It is achieved when the knowledge is matched with the pure desire to know.
Openness as achievement also concerns the object, the understood object. Lonergan writes, "For the pure desire to function fully, to dominate consciousness, there are needed not only precepts, methods, criticism, but also a formulated view of our knowledge and of the reality our knowledge can attain" (377).
He thinks that the philosophies that emerged since the Enlightenment "are not open to revealed truths because they possess no adequate account of truth" (377).
Openness as a fact "is an intrinsic component in man's makeup;" but it does not control human consciousness (378).
He thinks that the history of religion, science, and philosophy shows openness a s an achievement.
In addition, there is openness as a gift, "as an effect of divine grace" (378).
Lonergan states, "Man's natural openness is complete. The pure desire is unrestricted. It inquires into everything, and asks everything about everything. The correlative to the pure desire is being ... at once completely universal and completely concrete" (378).
Lonergan thinks there does exist an opposition between openness as a fact and openness as an achievement, "for the primordial fact is no more than a principle of possible achievement, a definition of the ultimate horizon that is to be reached only through successive enlargements of the actual horizon" (378).
It is problematic that the successive enlargements will happen continually. Philosophy will not convert the world. Therefore, there is a need for openness as gift, "as an effect of grace, where grace is taken as ... healing grace" (378).
The successive enlargements falls into two groups. "There are the enlargements implicit in the very structure of human consciousness, the enlargements that are naturally possible to man. But there is also an ultimate enlargement, beyond the resources of every finite consciousness, where there enters into clear view God as unknown, when the subject knows God face to face, knows as he is known. This ultimate enlargement alone approximates to the possibility of openness defined by the pure desire; as well, it is an openness as gift, as an effect of grace", both healing and elevating (378).
Lonergan states that the three types of openness are "related". He says that openness as fact "is the inner self, the self as ground of all higher aspiration" (379). Openness as achievement, "is the self in its self-appropriation and self-realization" (379). Openness as gift is the "self entering into personal relationship with God" (379).
He thinks there can be a philosophy of religious experience.
Lonergan asserts, "Openness as a fact is the pure desire to know" which is what his book, Insight, is about.This pure desire to know is related to Aristotle's idea that wonder "is the beginning of all science and philosophy" (377). Aquinas says it is to know God "by his essence" (377).
Openness is not only a fact, but is also an achievement. Lonergan says it has two aspects. In it central element it concerns the subject, the act of understanding. It is achieved when the knowledge is matched with the pure desire to know.
Openness as achievement also concerns the object, the understood object. Lonergan writes, "For the pure desire to function fully, to dominate consciousness, there are needed not only precepts, methods, criticism, but also a formulated view of our knowledge and of the reality our knowledge can attain" (377).
He thinks that the philosophies that emerged since the Enlightenment "are not open to revealed truths because they possess no adequate account of truth" (377).
Openness as a fact "is an intrinsic component in man's makeup;" but it does not control human consciousness (378).
He thinks that the history of religion, science, and philosophy shows openness a s an achievement.
In addition, there is openness as a gift, "as an effect of divine grace" (378).
Lonergan states, "Man's natural openness is complete. The pure desire is unrestricted. It inquires into everything, and asks everything about everything. The correlative to the pure desire is being ... at once completely universal and completely concrete" (378).
Lonergan thinks there does exist an opposition between openness as a fact and openness as an achievement, "for the primordial fact is no more than a principle of possible achievement, a definition of the ultimate horizon that is to be reached only through successive enlargements of the actual horizon" (378).
It is problematic that the successive enlargements will happen continually. Philosophy will not convert the world. Therefore, there is a need for openness as gift, "as an effect of grace, where grace is taken as ... healing grace" (378).
The successive enlargements falls into two groups. "There are the enlargements implicit in the very structure of human consciousness, the enlargements that are naturally possible to man. But there is also an ultimate enlargement, beyond the resources of every finite consciousness, where there enters into clear view God as unknown, when the subject knows God face to face, knows as he is known. This ultimate enlargement alone approximates to the possibility of openness defined by the pure desire; as well, it is an openness as gift, as an effect of grace", both healing and elevating (378).
Lonergan states that the three types of openness are "related". He says that openness as fact "is the inner self, the self as ground of all higher aspiration" (379). Openness as achievement, "is the self in its self-appropriation and self-realization" (379). Openness as gift is the "self entering into personal relationship with God" (379).
Saturday, April 20, 2019
The Lonergan Reader, Part 2, Chapter 7: The Subject
"There is a sense in which it may be said that each of us lives in a world of his own. That world usually is a bounded world, and its boundary is fixed by the range of our interests and our knowledge. . . . So the extent of our knowledge and the reach of our interests fix a horizon" (421).
The first part Lonergan provides reasons for the neglect of the subject. One of the reasons is the overemphasis on the objectivity of truth to the neglect of the subject. It does not take into considertation the historical situation of the subject.
Next, Lonergan discusses the "truncated" subject. The truncated subject is not self-aware. Is not aware of his ignorance. He thinks what he does not know does not exist.
Lonergan thinks that it is only "by close attention to the data of consciousness that one can discover insights, acts of understanding with the triple role of responding to inquiry, grasping the intelligible form in sensible representations, and grounding the formation of concepts" (425). In contrast, conceptualism has three faults: anti-historical mobilism, excessive abstraction, and its difficulty with the notion of being since the notion of being is "concrete".
Next, is the immanentist subject. Te problem with the immanentist subject is that he has an "inadequate notion of objectivity" (426). Human knowing is a "compound of many operations of different kinds" (426). There is a problem with picture thinking. The myth that knowledge is looking.
Next, is the existential subject. "So far, our reflections on the subject have been concerned with him as a knower, as one that experiences, understands and judges. We now have to think of him as a doer, as one that deliberates, evaluates, chooses, acts." (429)
Just doing changes the world around him. But even more it changes the subject who is doing the actions. Human doing is "free and responsible" (429). Under human doing is the "reality of morals, of building up or destroying character, of achieving personality or failing in that task." The human subject makes himself into what he is going to be by his actions. This is the existential subject.
Lonergan states that there are different levels of consciousness. The lowest level is when one is sleeping without dreaming. The next level is sleeping, but dreaming. Lonergan says at this level we are "merely potentially subjects" (430). We become experiential subjects when we wake up. Fourthly, the intelligent subject "sublates the experiential, it retains, preserves, goes beyond, completes it when we inquire about our experience, investigate, grow in understanding, express our inventions and discoveries" (430). At the fifth level, the rational subject sublates the experiential and intelligent subject, "when we question our own understanding, check our formulations and expressions, ask whether we got things right, marshal the evidence pro and con, judge this to be so and that not to be so" (430). At the next level, rational self-consciousness sublates the experiential, intelligent, and rational subject. "Then there emerges human consciousness at its fullest" (430). It is at this level that the existential subject exists " and his character, his personal essence, is at stake" (430).
The subject moves from experiential to intellectual consciousness by its "desire to understand the intention of intelligibility. What makes him to move from intellectual to rational consciousness "is a fuller understanding of the same intention: for the desire to understand once understanding is reached, becomes the desire to understand correctly; ... the intention of intelligibility, once an intelligible is reached, becomes the intention of the right intelligible, of the true and, through truth, of reality. Finally, the intention of the intelligible, the true, the real, becomes also the intention of the good, the question of value, of what is worthwhile, when the already acting subject confronts his world and adverts to his own acting in it" (431).
The transcendental good is different than the "particular good that satisfies individual appetite, such as the appetite for food and drink, the appetite for union and communion, the appetite for knowledge, or virtue, or pleasure" (431). It is also different than the good of order. Beyond the "particular good and the good of order, there is the good of value. It is by appealing to value or values that we satisfy some appetites and do not satisfy others, that we approve some systems for achieving the good of order and disapprove of others, that we praise or blame human persons as good or evil and their actions as right or wrong" (431).
The existential subject is mainly concerned with what type of person he is becoming, either good or evil.
The last subject is an alienated subject. Existential reflection not only reflects what does it mean for a man to be good, it also reflects on whether the world is good. Lonergan believes that the question "can be answered affirmatively, if and only if one acknowledges God's existence, his omnipotence, and his goodness" (434). Lonergan states that "unless there is a moral agent responsible for the world's being and becoming, the world cannot be good in that moral sense" (435). If the world is not good or moral, and the man wanted to be good, he would be alienated from the world. On the other hand, "he renounces authentic living and drifts into the now harsh rhythms of his psyche and nature, then man is alienated from himself" (435).
The first part Lonergan provides reasons for the neglect of the subject. One of the reasons is the overemphasis on the objectivity of truth to the neglect of the subject. It does not take into considertation the historical situation of the subject.
Next, Lonergan discusses the "truncated" subject. The truncated subject is not self-aware. Is not aware of his ignorance. He thinks what he does not know does not exist.
Lonergan thinks that it is only "by close attention to the data of consciousness that one can discover insights, acts of understanding with the triple role of responding to inquiry, grasping the intelligible form in sensible representations, and grounding the formation of concepts" (425). In contrast, conceptualism has three faults: anti-historical mobilism, excessive abstraction, and its difficulty with the notion of being since the notion of being is "concrete".
Next, is the immanentist subject. Te problem with the immanentist subject is that he has an "inadequate notion of objectivity" (426). Human knowing is a "compound of many operations of different kinds" (426). There is a problem with picture thinking. The myth that knowledge is looking.
Next, is the existential subject. "So far, our reflections on the subject have been concerned with him as a knower, as one that experiences, understands and judges. We now have to think of him as a doer, as one that deliberates, evaluates, chooses, acts." (429)
Just doing changes the world around him. But even more it changes the subject who is doing the actions. Human doing is "free and responsible" (429). Under human doing is the "reality of morals, of building up or destroying character, of achieving personality or failing in that task." The human subject makes himself into what he is going to be by his actions. This is the existential subject.
Lonergan states that there are different levels of consciousness. The lowest level is when one is sleeping without dreaming. The next level is sleeping, but dreaming. Lonergan says at this level we are "merely potentially subjects" (430). We become experiential subjects when we wake up. Fourthly, the intelligent subject "sublates the experiential, it retains, preserves, goes beyond, completes it when we inquire about our experience, investigate, grow in understanding, express our inventions and discoveries" (430). At the fifth level, the rational subject sublates the experiential and intelligent subject, "when we question our own understanding, check our formulations and expressions, ask whether we got things right, marshal the evidence pro and con, judge this to be so and that not to be so" (430). At the next level, rational self-consciousness sublates the experiential, intelligent, and rational subject. "Then there emerges human consciousness at its fullest" (430). It is at this level that the existential subject exists " and his character, his personal essence, is at stake" (430).
The subject moves from experiential to intellectual consciousness by its "desire to understand the intention of intelligibility. What makes him to move from intellectual to rational consciousness "is a fuller understanding of the same intention: for the desire to understand once understanding is reached, becomes the desire to understand correctly; ... the intention of intelligibility, once an intelligible is reached, becomes the intention of the right intelligible, of the true and, through truth, of reality. Finally, the intention of the intelligible, the true, the real, becomes also the intention of the good, the question of value, of what is worthwhile, when the already acting subject confronts his world and adverts to his own acting in it" (431).
The transcendental good is different than the "particular good that satisfies individual appetite, such as the appetite for food and drink, the appetite for union and communion, the appetite for knowledge, or virtue, or pleasure" (431). It is also different than the good of order. Beyond the "particular good and the good of order, there is the good of value. It is by appealing to value or values that we satisfy some appetites and do not satisfy others, that we approve some systems for achieving the good of order and disapprove of others, that we praise or blame human persons as good or evil and their actions as right or wrong" (431).
The existential subject is mainly concerned with what type of person he is becoming, either good or evil.
The last subject is an alienated subject. Existential reflection not only reflects what does it mean for a man to be good, it also reflects on whether the world is good. Lonergan believes that the question "can be answered affirmatively, if and only if one acknowledges God's existence, his omnipotence, and his goodness" (434). Lonergan states that "unless there is a moral agent responsible for the world's being and becoming, the world cannot be good in that moral sense" (435). If the world is not good or moral, and the man wanted to be good, he would be alienated from the world. On the other hand, "he renounces authentic living and drifts into the now harsh rhythms of his psyche and nature, then man is alienated from himself" (435).
The Lonergan Reader: Part 2, Chapter 1--A Definition of Art
Lonergan states, "Art is the objectification of a purely experiential pattern" (363).
When Lonergan speaks of a pure pattern he means "the exclusion of alien patterns that instrumentalize experience" (365).
"First, our senses can be an apparatus for receiving and transmitting signals" (365). An example, a signal light that turns green.
"Secondly, one's senses can be at the service of scientific intelligence" (365). An example would be a botanist looking at a flower.
"Thirdly, one's sensitive experience can be reshaped by a psychological or epistemological theory" (366). One can experience the senses through "a notion of sense data and a notion of objectivity which can make one try to apprehend according to the dictates of the theory" (366).
Next, "the pattern is purely experiential" (366). It is experiencing it through the senses. It is "accompanied by a retinue of associations, affects, emotions, incipient tendencies that are part of one, that arise spontaneously and naturally from the person" (366-367).
He also describes it as a release. Lonergan writes, "When experience is in a purely experiential pattern, it is not curtailed ... It is allowed its full complement of feelings. Experience falls into its own proper pattern and takes its own line of expansion, development, organization, fulfillment. It is not dictated to by the world of science, the world of inquiry, the world of information, the world of theories about what experience should be, or by utilitarian motives. It is." (367)
The purely experiential pattern has an "elemental" meaning. Lonergan explains this elemental meaning: "It is, first of all, a transformation of one's world. When experience slips into a purely experiential pattern, one is out of the ready-made world of one's everyday living. One's experience is not being instrumentalized to one's functions in society, to one's job, to one's task, to all the things one has to do. It is on its own. One's experience is a component in one's apprehension of reality ... It is an opening of the horizon" (368).
Art transforms not only the object, but also the subject.
Art is an example of "withdrawl for return ... It is a withdrawl from practical living to explore possibilities of fuller living in richer world ... But in fact the life we are living is a product of artistic creation. We ourselves are products of artistic creation in our concrete living" (369).
Lonergan states that the experience "not only is unknown to other people, it is not fully known even to the one who does experience it" (370).
"The purely experiential pattern becomes objectivied, expressed, in a work of art. The process of objectifying introduces, so to speak, a psychic distance. No longer is one simply experiencing. Objectification involves a separation, a distinction, a detachment, between oneself and one's experience" (370).
The artist uses symbols to communicate meaning. The symbol has multiple meanings.
"Art, whether by an illusion or a fiction or a contrivance, presents the beauty, the splendor, the glory, the majesty, the plus that is in things and that drops out when you say that the moon is just earth and the clouds are just water" (374).
When Lonergan speaks of a pure pattern he means "the exclusion of alien patterns that instrumentalize experience" (365).
"First, our senses can be an apparatus for receiving and transmitting signals" (365). An example, a signal light that turns green.
"Secondly, one's senses can be at the service of scientific intelligence" (365). An example would be a botanist looking at a flower.
"Thirdly, one's sensitive experience can be reshaped by a psychological or epistemological theory" (366). One can experience the senses through "a notion of sense data and a notion of objectivity which can make one try to apprehend according to the dictates of the theory" (366).
Next, "the pattern is purely experiential" (366). It is experiencing it through the senses. It is "accompanied by a retinue of associations, affects, emotions, incipient tendencies that are part of one, that arise spontaneously and naturally from the person" (366-367).
He also describes it as a release. Lonergan writes, "When experience is in a purely experiential pattern, it is not curtailed ... It is allowed its full complement of feelings. Experience falls into its own proper pattern and takes its own line of expansion, development, organization, fulfillment. It is not dictated to by the world of science, the world of inquiry, the world of information, the world of theories about what experience should be, or by utilitarian motives. It is." (367)
The purely experiential pattern has an "elemental" meaning. Lonergan explains this elemental meaning: "It is, first of all, a transformation of one's world. When experience slips into a purely experiential pattern, one is out of the ready-made world of one's everyday living. One's experience is not being instrumentalized to one's functions in society, to one's job, to one's task, to all the things one has to do. It is on its own. One's experience is a component in one's apprehension of reality ... It is an opening of the horizon" (368).
Art transforms not only the object, but also the subject.
Art is an example of "withdrawl for return ... It is a withdrawl from practical living to explore possibilities of fuller living in richer world ... But in fact the life we are living is a product of artistic creation. We ourselves are products of artistic creation in our concrete living" (369).
Lonergan states that the experience "not only is unknown to other people, it is not fully known even to the one who does experience it" (370).
"The purely experiential pattern becomes objectivied, expressed, in a work of art. The process of objectifying introduces, so to speak, a psychic distance. No longer is one simply experiencing. Objectification involves a separation, a distinction, a detachment, between oneself and one's experience" (370).
The artist uses symbols to communicate meaning. The symbol has multiple meanings.
"Art, whether by an illusion or a fiction or a contrivance, presents the beauty, the splendor, the glory, the majesty, the plus that is in things and that drops out when you say that the moon is just earth and the clouds are just water" (374).
Lonergan Reader: Chapter 16--The Problem of Evil
Lonergan states that knowledge is "transcendent ... inasmuch it goes beyond the domain of proportionate being" (309).
"General transcendent knowledge is the knowledge of God that answers the basic questions raised by proportionate being, namely, what being is and whether being is real" (309).
Lonergan states that still we have the problem of evil and people will argue from the fact of evil "to a denial of the intelligence or the power or the goodness of God" (309).
Lonergan states that both man's intelligence and his will has to be developed.
Lonergan asserts, "the pure desire of the mind is a desire of God, that the goodness of man's will consists in a consuming love of God, that the world of sense is ... a mystery that signifies God as we know him and symbolizes the further depths that lie beyond our comprehension" (314).
Bad will is actually a sin against God.
Humans are free. They would not sin if they were not free. "Because man determines himself, he is responsible; because the course of action determined upon and the process of determining are both contingent, man is free" (315).
Lonergan agrees there is a fact of evil. He also thinks there "can be a problem only if there is an intelligibility to be grasped" (316). There is a lack of intelligibility in sin. Sin comes from man's own act. There is a distinction between natural and moral evil. Lonergan asserts, "The point seems to remain that evil is, not a mere fact, but a problem, only if one attempts to reconcile it with the goodness of God; and if God is good then there is not only a problem of evil but also a solution" (317).
"General transcendent knowledge is the knowledge of God that answers the basic questions raised by proportionate being, namely, what being is and whether being is real" (309).
Lonergan states that still we have the problem of evil and people will argue from the fact of evil "to a denial of the intelligence or the power or the goodness of God" (309).
Lonergan states that both man's intelligence and his will has to be developed.
Lonergan asserts, "the pure desire of the mind is a desire of God, that the goodness of man's will consists in a consuming love of God, that the world of sense is ... a mystery that signifies God as we know him and symbolizes the further depths that lie beyond our comprehension" (314).
Bad will is actually a sin against God.
Humans are free. They would not sin if they were not free. "Because man determines himself, he is responsible; because the course of action determined upon and the process of determining are both contingent, man is free" (315).
Lonergan agrees there is a fact of evil. He also thinks there "can be a problem only if there is an intelligibility to be grasped" (316). There is a lack of intelligibility in sin. Sin comes from man's own act. There is a distinction between natural and moral evil. Lonergan asserts, "The point seems to remain that evil is, not a mere fact, but a problem, only if one attempts to reconcile it with the goodness of God; and if God is good then there is not only a problem of evil but also a solution" (317).
The Lonergan Reader: Chapter 15--Knowledge of God
"The immanent source of transcendence in man is his detached, disinterested, unrestricted desire to know" (292).
This desire wants to "understand correctly" (293). This desire is before understanding. Attainment and desire are not the same things. You can have the unrestricted desire without obtaining the unrestricted object. Lonergan thinks that man "wants to know completely" (294). This unrestricted desire resists limits on its questioning: "The unrestricted desire excludes the unintelligent and uncritical rejection of any question, and positively the unrestricted desire demands the intelligent and critical handling of every question" (294).
The object of this unrestricted desire to know is being. Lonergan writes, "for that desire grounds inquiry and reflection; inquiry leads to understanding, reflection leads to affirmation; and being is whatever can be grasped intelligently and affirmed reasonably. But being is unrestricted, for apart from it there is nothing. Therefore the objective of the detached and disinterested desire is unrestricted. But the desire with an unrestricted objective is an unrestricted desire, and so the desire to know is unrestricted" (295).
To ask what being is, is to ask what God is. God is being. Lonergan asserts, "For the real is being, and apart from being there is nothing. Being is not known without reasonable affirmation, and existence is the respect in which being is known precisely inasmuch as it is affirmed reasonably. Hence it is one and the same thing to say that God is real, that he is an object of reasonable affirmation, and that he exists" (295).
Lonergan thesis: "If the real is completely intelligible, God exists. But the real is completely intelligible. Therefore, God exists" (298).
First, being is completely intelligible and being is the real, therefore the real is completely intelligible.
Lonergan states that being is completely intelligible. "For being is the objective of the detached, disinterested, unrestricted desire to know; this desire consists in intelligent inquiry and critical reflection; it results in partial knowledge inasmuch as intelligent inquiry yields understanding and critical reflection grasps understanding to be correct; but it reaches its objective, which is being, only when every intelligent question has been given an intelligent answer and that answer has been found to be correct. Being, then is intelligible, for it is what is to be known by correct understanding; and it is completely intelligible, for being is known completely only when all intelligent questions are answered correctly" (299).
Second, the "real is being" (299). All that is represents is an object of thought and an object of "affirmation". Being is all that is "to be known by intelligent grasp and reasonable affirmation" (299).
The last part is the major premise, "If the real is completely intelligible, God exists" (299).
If the real is completely intelligible, "then complete intelligibility exists" (299). If complete intelligibility exists, "the idea of being exists. If the idea of being exists, then God exists. Therefore, if the real is completely intelligible, God exists" (299).
Lonergan looks at the premises in turn. First, if the real is completely intelligible, then complete intelligibility exists. Lonergan asserts, "For just as the real could not be intelligible if intelligibility were nonexistent, so the real could not be completely intelligible if complete intelligibility were non existent" (300). Lonergan states that to "affirm the complete intelligibility of the real is to affirm the complete intelligibility of all that is to be affirmed" (300). We could not affirm the complete intelligibility of all that is affirmed if complete intelligibility did not exist.
SEcondly, if complete intelligibility exists, "the idea of being exists" (300). Lonergan states that intelligibilty is either "material or spiritual or abstract" (300). It could not be material because material intelligibility is contingent and not complete in itself. Abstract intelligibility is just "self-expression of spiritual intelligibility" (300). So complete intelligibility has to be a "spiritual intelligibility that cannot inquire because it understands everything about everything. And such unrestricted understanding is the idea of being" (300). So, if the idea of being exists, God exists.
This desire wants to "understand correctly" (293). This desire is before understanding. Attainment and desire are not the same things. You can have the unrestricted desire without obtaining the unrestricted object. Lonergan thinks that man "wants to know completely" (294). This unrestricted desire resists limits on its questioning: "The unrestricted desire excludes the unintelligent and uncritical rejection of any question, and positively the unrestricted desire demands the intelligent and critical handling of every question" (294).
The object of this unrestricted desire to know is being. Lonergan writes, "for that desire grounds inquiry and reflection; inquiry leads to understanding, reflection leads to affirmation; and being is whatever can be grasped intelligently and affirmed reasonably. But being is unrestricted, for apart from it there is nothing. Therefore the objective of the detached and disinterested desire is unrestricted. But the desire with an unrestricted objective is an unrestricted desire, and so the desire to know is unrestricted" (295).
To ask what being is, is to ask what God is. God is being. Lonergan asserts, "For the real is being, and apart from being there is nothing. Being is not known without reasonable affirmation, and existence is the respect in which being is known precisely inasmuch as it is affirmed reasonably. Hence it is one and the same thing to say that God is real, that he is an object of reasonable affirmation, and that he exists" (295).
Lonergan thesis: "If the real is completely intelligible, God exists. But the real is completely intelligible. Therefore, God exists" (298).
First, being is completely intelligible and being is the real, therefore the real is completely intelligible.
Lonergan states that being is completely intelligible. "For being is the objective of the detached, disinterested, unrestricted desire to know; this desire consists in intelligent inquiry and critical reflection; it results in partial knowledge inasmuch as intelligent inquiry yields understanding and critical reflection grasps understanding to be correct; but it reaches its objective, which is being, only when every intelligent question has been given an intelligent answer and that answer has been found to be correct. Being, then is intelligible, for it is what is to be known by correct understanding; and it is completely intelligible, for being is known completely only when all intelligent questions are answered correctly" (299).
Second, the "real is being" (299). All that is represents is an object of thought and an object of "affirmation". Being is all that is "to be known by intelligent grasp and reasonable affirmation" (299).
The last part is the major premise, "If the real is completely intelligible, God exists" (299).
If the real is completely intelligible, "then complete intelligibility exists" (299). If complete intelligibility exists, "the idea of being exists. If the idea of being exists, then God exists. Therefore, if the real is completely intelligible, God exists" (299).
Lonergan looks at the premises in turn. First, if the real is completely intelligible, then complete intelligibility exists. Lonergan asserts, "For just as the real could not be intelligible if intelligibility were nonexistent, so the real could not be completely intelligible if complete intelligibility were non existent" (300). Lonergan states that to "affirm the complete intelligibility of the real is to affirm the complete intelligibility of all that is to be affirmed" (300). We could not affirm the complete intelligibility of all that is affirmed if complete intelligibility did not exist.
SEcondly, if complete intelligibility exists, "the idea of being exists" (300). Lonergan states that intelligibilty is either "material or spiritual or abstract" (300). It could not be material because material intelligibility is contingent and not complete in itself. Abstract intelligibility is just "self-expression of spiritual intelligibility" (300). So complete intelligibility has to be a "spiritual intelligibility that cannot inquire because it understands everything about everything. And such unrestricted understanding is the idea of being" (300). So, if the idea of being exists, God exists.
The Lonergan Reader: Chapter 14--The Problem of Liberation
The fourth level is decision. So the four levels are experience, to understand, to judge, to decide. The decision is an "act of willing" (276).
Decision has similarities with judgment since both "select one member of a pair of contradictories; as judgment either affirms or denies, so decision either consents or refuses" (276). In addition, both are concerned with "actuality;" but judgment is concerned "to complete one's knowledge of an actuality that already exists, while decision is concerned to confer actuality upon a course of action that otherwise will not exist" (276). Finally, both judgment and decision are rational, for both intents objects that are "apprehended by insight," and both are the results of reflective reason (276).
However, there is a "radical" difference between judgment and decision. Lonergan writes, "Judgment is an act of rational consciousness, but decision is an act of rational self-consciousness. The rationality of judgment emerges in the unfolding of the detached and disinterested desire to know in the process towards knowledge of the universe of being. But the rationality of decision emerges in the demand of the rationally conscious subject for consistency between his knowing and his deciding and doing" (276-277).
Lonergan states that there is a "succession of enlargements of consciousness," (277). a successions that says what consciousness mean. Dreaming is replaced by waking up. "Intelligent inquiry emerges in waking to compound intelligent and empirical consciousness" (277). Intelligent consciousness is followed by critical, reflexive thinking labelled as rational consciousness. The last level to emerge is the consciousness of deliberation which adds doing to one's knowing, and deciding reasonably.
This demand of adding doing to knowing is not from necessity, but contingency. Lonergan writes, "The rationality that imposes an obligation is not conditioned internally by an act of the will. The rationality that carries out an obligation is conditioned internally by the occurence of a reasonable act of the will. . . . The rational subject as imposing an obligation upon himself is just a knower, and his rationality consists in radically in not allowing other desire to interfere with the unfolding of the detached and disinterested to know. But the rational subject as carrying out an obligation is not just a knower but also a doer, and his rationality consists in not merely in excluding interference with the cognitional process but also in extending the rationality of his knowing into the field of doing" (278).
Rational consciousness changes into rational self-consciousness. Lonergan sates, "But one can be a rational knower without an act of willing, and one cannot be a rational doer without an act of willing" (278). It is the adding of the act of will that moves the subject from knowing to doing.
Lonergan, then, discusses essential and effective freedom. Lonergan distinguishes between the two types of freedom: "Man is free essentially inasmuch as possible courses of action are grasped by practical insight, motivated by reflection, and executed by decision. But man is free effectively to a greater or less extent inasmuch as this dynamic structure is open to grasping, motivating, and executing a broad or a narrow range of otherwise possible courses of action" (279). He gives the example that one may be essential free from smoking, but not effectively.
Effective freedom is based on essential freedom. Life in the world is contingent. Possible courses to take are also contingent. Possible courses of action "grasped by practical insight are merely possible until they are motivated by reflection and executed by decision" (279).
Not only are courses of action contingent, they also "constitute a manifold of alternatives" (279). People are "aware of the alternatives" (280). Next, the "will's decision is not determined by its antecedents" (280). Evidence of man's freedom "lies in the possibility of inconsistency between human knowing and doing" (280). Lonergan states that the act of the will is "not arbitrary. A course of action is intelligent and intelligible if it is grasped by a practical insight" (281).
Lonergan list four conditions of effective freedom: "(1) external circumstance, (2) the subject as sensitive, (3) the subject as intelligent, and (4) the subject as antecedently willing." Lonergan asserts, "Whatever one's external circumstances may be, they offer only a limited range of concretely possible alternatives and only limited resources for bringing about the enlargement of that range" (281). There are also limitations from the subject's "psychoneural state." Even "perfect adjustment" does not "dispense one from the necessity of acquiring sesitive skills and habits" (282). Third, there are limitations of "intellectual development." Lonergan distinguishes between will, willingness, and willing. "Will is the bare capacity to make decisions. Willingness is the state in which persuasion is not needed to bring one to a decision. Willing, finally, is the act of deciding" (282).
Basically, effective freedom requires effort.
Lonergan asserts that moral impotence means that man's freedom is "restricted."
Man's freedom can be limited by bias: individual and group biases.
There is also the problem of the "incapacity for sustained development" (287). There are ups and downs.
Decision has similarities with judgment since both "select one member of a pair of contradictories; as judgment either affirms or denies, so decision either consents or refuses" (276). In addition, both are concerned with "actuality;" but judgment is concerned "to complete one's knowledge of an actuality that already exists, while decision is concerned to confer actuality upon a course of action that otherwise will not exist" (276). Finally, both judgment and decision are rational, for both intents objects that are "apprehended by insight," and both are the results of reflective reason (276).
However, there is a "radical" difference between judgment and decision. Lonergan writes, "Judgment is an act of rational consciousness, but decision is an act of rational self-consciousness. The rationality of judgment emerges in the unfolding of the detached and disinterested desire to know in the process towards knowledge of the universe of being. But the rationality of decision emerges in the demand of the rationally conscious subject for consistency between his knowing and his deciding and doing" (276-277).
Lonergan states that there is a "succession of enlargements of consciousness," (277). a successions that says what consciousness mean. Dreaming is replaced by waking up. "Intelligent inquiry emerges in waking to compound intelligent and empirical consciousness" (277). Intelligent consciousness is followed by critical, reflexive thinking labelled as rational consciousness. The last level to emerge is the consciousness of deliberation which adds doing to one's knowing, and deciding reasonably.
This demand of adding doing to knowing is not from necessity, but contingency. Lonergan writes, "The rationality that imposes an obligation is not conditioned internally by an act of the will. The rationality that carries out an obligation is conditioned internally by the occurence of a reasonable act of the will. . . . The rational subject as imposing an obligation upon himself is just a knower, and his rationality consists in radically in not allowing other desire to interfere with the unfolding of the detached and disinterested to know. But the rational subject as carrying out an obligation is not just a knower but also a doer, and his rationality consists in not merely in excluding interference with the cognitional process but also in extending the rationality of his knowing into the field of doing" (278).
Rational consciousness changes into rational self-consciousness. Lonergan sates, "But one can be a rational knower without an act of willing, and one cannot be a rational doer without an act of willing" (278). It is the adding of the act of will that moves the subject from knowing to doing.
Lonergan, then, discusses essential and effective freedom. Lonergan distinguishes between the two types of freedom: "Man is free essentially inasmuch as possible courses of action are grasped by practical insight, motivated by reflection, and executed by decision. But man is free effectively to a greater or less extent inasmuch as this dynamic structure is open to grasping, motivating, and executing a broad or a narrow range of otherwise possible courses of action" (279). He gives the example that one may be essential free from smoking, but not effectively.
Effective freedom is based on essential freedom. Life in the world is contingent. Possible courses to take are also contingent. Possible courses of action "grasped by practical insight are merely possible until they are motivated by reflection and executed by decision" (279).
Not only are courses of action contingent, they also "constitute a manifold of alternatives" (279). People are "aware of the alternatives" (280). Next, the "will's decision is not determined by its antecedents" (280). Evidence of man's freedom "lies in the possibility of inconsistency between human knowing and doing" (280). Lonergan states that the act of the will is "not arbitrary. A course of action is intelligent and intelligible if it is grasped by a practical insight" (281).
Lonergan list four conditions of effective freedom: "(1) external circumstance, (2) the subject as sensitive, (3) the subject as intelligent, and (4) the subject as antecedently willing." Lonergan asserts, "Whatever one's external circumstances may be, they offer only a limited range of concretely possible alternatives and only limited resources for bringing about the enlargement of that range" (281). There are also limitations from the subject's "psychoneural state." Even "perfect adjustment" does not "dispense one from the necessity of acquiring sesitive skills and habits" (282). Third, there are limitations of "intellectual development." Lonergan distinguishes between will, willingness, and willing. "Will is the bare capacity to make decisions. Willingness is the state in which persuasion is not needed to bring one to a decision. Willing, finally, is the act of deciding" (282).
Basically, effective freedom requires effort.
Lonergan asserts that moral impotence means that man's freedom is "restricted."
Man's freedom can be limited by bias: individual and group biases.
There is also the problem of the "incapacity for sustained development" (287). There are ups and downs.
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
The Lonergan Reader: Chapter 13--Truth and Interpretation
The "proximate" criterion for truth is "reflective grasp of the virtually unconditioned" (264). Because the judgment is unconditioned, "it is independent of the judging subject" (264). The judgment of truth is the "actuation" of the rational consciousness. "Concretely, however, while reflective understanding grasps the virtually unconditioned, it itself is conditioned by the occurrence of other cognitional acts; and while the content of the subject is grasped as unconditioned, still that content either demands or rests on the contents of experiences, insights, and other judgments for its full clarification"(264).
The "remote" criterion is the "proper unfolding of the detached and disinterested desire to know" (265). "In negative terms this proper unfolding is the absence of interference from other desires that inhibit or reinforce, and in either case distort, the guidance given to pure desire" (265).
Lonergan now discusses the appropriation of truth. "To appropriate truth is to make it one's own. The essential appropriation of truth is cognitional. However, our reasonableness demands consistency between what we know and what we do; and so there is a volitional appropriation of truth that consists in our willingness to live up to it" (266-267).
There are three problems to appropriating truth. First, there is the "problem of learning, of gradually acquiring the accumulation of habitual insights that constitute a viewpoint" (267). Secondly, there is the "problem of identification" (267). One needs to know how to unify the elements that need unifying or relating. Thirdly, there is the "problem of orientation" (267). Once we discover the truth, we have a tendency to doubt it because we have not oriented ourselves to the truth. Lonergan asserts, "We restrict what we might know; for we can justify to ourselves and to others the labors spent in learning only by pointing to the palpable benefits it brings, and the demand satisfied by palpable benefits does not enjoy the unrestricted range of the detached and disinterested desire to know" (268). The three problems of cognitional appropriation is related to the three levels in our knowing. "The problem of learning is met on the level of understanding and formulation. The problem of identification is met on the level of experience ... The problem of orientation is met on the level of reflexion and judgment when at last we grasp (1) that every issue closes when we say definitively, 'It is so,' or 'It is so,' (2) that objective knowledge is being, (3) that, while being is a protean notion, still its content is determined by intelligent grasp and reasonable affirmation and, after affirmation, by nothing else" (268).
Bad will can keep us from appropriating truth. "Cognitional appropriation of truth is solidary with volitional and with sensitive appropriation. Bad will makes truth unwelcome, and unwelcome truth tends to be overlooked. For the appropriation of truth ... makes demands upon the whole man" (269). Good will follows the "lead of intelligence and truth" (269).
The "remote" criterion is the "proper unfolding of the detached and disinterested desire to know" (265). "In negative terms this proper unfolding is the absence of interference from other desires that inhibit or reinforce, and in either case distort, the guidance given to pure desire" (265).
Lonergan now discusses the appropriation of truth. "To appropriate truth is to make it one's own. The essential appropriation of truth is cognitional. However, our reasonableness demands consistency between what we know and what we do; and so there is a volitional appropriation of truth that consists in our willingness to live up to it" (266-267).
There are three problems to appropriating truth. First, there is the "problem of learning, of gradually acquiring the accumulation of habitual insights that constitute a viewpoint" (267). Secondly, there is the "problem of identification" (267). One needs to know how to unify the elements that need unifying or relating. Thirdly, there is the "problem of orientation" (267). Once we discover the truth, we have a tendency to doubt it because we have not oriented ourselves to the truth. Lonergan asserts, "We restrict what we might know; for we can justify to ourselves and to others the labors spent in learning only by pointing to the palpable benefits it brings, and the demand satisfied by palpable benefits does not enjoy the unrestricted range of the detached and disinterested desire to know" (268). The three problems of cognitional appropriation is related to the three levels in our knowing. "The problem of learning is met on the level of understanding and formulation. The problem of identification is met on the level of experience ... The problem of orientation is met on the level of reflexion and judgment when at last we grasp (1) that every issue closes when we say definitively, 'It is so,' or 'It is so,' (2) that objective knowledge is being, (3) that, while being is a protean notion, still its content is determined by intelligent grasp and reasonable affirmation and, after affirmation, by nothing else" (268).
Bad will can keep us from appropriating truth. "Cognitional appropriation of truth is solidary with volitional and with sensitive appropriation. Bad will makes truth unwelcome, and unwelcome truth tends to be overlooked. For the appropriation of truth ... makes demands upon the whole man" (269). Good will follows the "lead of intelligence and truth" (269).
Lonergan Reader: Chapter 12--Development
"Being has been conceived heuristically as the objective of the detached and disinterested desire to know, and more precisely as what is to be known by intelligent grasp and reasonable affirmation. This heuristic notion has been found to underlie all our knowing, to penetrate all conceptual contents, to go beyond them, to provide a core for all meaning. . . . For it is not only our notion of being that is heuristic, that heads for an objective that can be defined only in terms of the process knowing it, but also the reality of proportionate being itself exhibits a similar incompleteness and a similar dynamic orientation towards a completeness that becomes determinate only in the process of completion" (247). This seems it is not enough to know proportionate being.
There is a connection between the "dynamism of the mind and the dynamism of proportionate being. It affirms that the objective universe is not at rest, not static, not fixed in the present, but in process, in tension, fluid" (248). The universe is developing.
Lonergan will now look at the genetic method and the notion of development.
First, there is the "principle of emergence"(248). Second, there is the "principle of correspondence" (249). Third, there is the principle of "finality." "The underlying manifold is an upwardly but indeterminately directed dynamism towards ever fuller realization of being" (249). Fourthly, there is the principle of "development itself". It is the "linked sequence of dynamic higher integrations" (250). Fifthly, the development "is marked by an increasing explanatory differentiation" (250). Sixthly, the development is "capable of a minor flexibility inasmuch it can pursue the same ultimate goal along different routes" (251). Seventhly, it is capable of major flexibility "that consists in a shift or modification of the ultimate objective" (251).
"Classical method is concerned to reduce regular events to laws. Genetic method is concerned with sequences in which correlations and regularities change. Accordingly, the principal object of genetic method is to master the sequence itself, to understand the development, and thereby to proceed from the correlations and regularities of one stage to those of the next" (252).
Human development is similar to organic and psychic development. First, then, "at any stage of his development a man is an individual existing unity differentiated by physical, chemical, organic, psychic, and intellectual conjugates" (254). Secondly, humans develop. The law of effect operates in human development. "Thus, unless one asks the further questions, one remains with the insights one has already, and so intelligence does not develop; inversely, because one wants to develop, one can frequent the lectures and read the books that put the further questions and help one to learn" (255). Thirdly, there is a "law of integration" (255). Different types of development needs to be integrated with the organic, psychic, intellectual. Fourthly, there is a "law of limitation and transcendence" (256). It is a law of "tension." "On the one hand, development is in the subject and of the subject; on the other hand, it is from the subject as he is and towards the subject as he is to be" (256). It is a tension between what we are now and what we can be in the future.
There is a tension in intellectual development. "Intellectual development rests upon the dominance of a detached and disinterested desire to know. It reveals to a man a universe of being ... It invites man to become intelligent and reasonable not only in his knowing but also in his living, to guide his actions by referring them, not as an animal to a habitat, but as an intelligent being to the intelligible context of some universal order that is or is to be" (257). This tension in the human consciousness is "the opposition between the world of sense of man the animal and, on the other hand, the universe of being to be known by intelligible grasp and reasonable affirmation" (257).
There is a connection between the "dynamism of the mind and the dynamism of proportionate being. It affirms that the objective universe is not at rest, not static, not fixed in the present, but in process, in tension, fluid" (248). The universe is developing.
Lonergan will now look at the genetic method and the notion of development.
First, there is the "principle of emergence"(248). Second, there is the "principle of correspondence" (249). Third, there is the principle of "finality." "The underlying manifold is an upwardly but indeterminately directed dynamism towards ever fuller realization of being" (249). Fourthly, there is the principle of "development itself". It is the "linked sequence of dynamic higher integrations" (250). Fifthly, the development "is marked by an increasing explanatory differentiation" (250). Sixthly, the development is "capable of a minor flexibility inasmuch it can pursue the same ultimate goal along different routes" (251). Seventhly, it is capable of major flexibility "that consists in a shift or modification of the ultimate objective" (251).
"Classical method is concerned to reduce regular events to laws. Genetic method is concerned with sequences in which correlations and regularities change. Accordingly, the principal object of genetic method is to master the sequence itself, to understand the development, and thereby to proceed from the correlations and regularities of one stage to those of the next" (252).
Human development is similar to organic and psychic development. First, then, "at any stage of his development a man is an individual existing unity differentiated by physical, chemical, organic, psychic, and intellectual conjugates" (254). Secondly, humans develop. The law of effect operates in human development. "Thus, unless one asks the further questions, one remains with the insights one has already, and so intelligence does not develop; inversely, because one wants to develop, one can frequent the lectures and read the books that put the further questions and help one to learn" (255). Thirdly, there is a "law of integration" (255). Different types of development needs to be integrated with the organic, psychic, intellectual. Fourthly, there is a "law of limitation and transcendence" (256). It is a law of "tension." "On the one hand, development is in the subject and of the subject; on the other hand, it is from the subject as he is and towards the subject as he is to be" (256). It is a tension between what we are now and what we can be in the future.
There is a tension in intellectual development. "Intellectual development rests upon the dominance of a detached and disinterested desire to know. It reveals to a man a universe of being ... It invites man to become intelligent and reasonable not only in his knowing but also in his living, to guide his actions by referring them, not as an animal to a habitat, but as an intelligent being to the intelligible context of some universal order that is or is to be" (257). This tension in the human consciousness is "the opposition between the world of sense of man the animal and, on the other hand, the universe of being to be known by intelligible grasp and reasonable affirmation" (257).
Lonergan Reader: Chapter 11--Method in Metaphysics
"For human consciousness is polymorphic. The pattern in which it flows may be biological, aesthetic, artistic, dramatic, practical, intellectual, or mystical" (224).
"Just as the notion of being underlies and penetrates and goes beyond all other notions, so also metaphysics is the department of human knowledge that underlies, penetrates, transforms, and unifies all other departments" (228).
"Being is whatever is to be known by intelligent grasp and reasonable affirmation. But being that is proportionate to human knowing not only is to be understood and affirmed but also is to be experienced. So proportionate being may be defined as whatever is to be known by human experience, intelligent grasp, and reasonable affirmation" (230).
"Now let us sat that explicit metaphysics is the conception, affirmation, and implementation of the integral heuristic structure of proportionate being" (230).
First, Lonergan explains what is a heuristic structure. There are answers that provide understanding and their are questions that anticipate answers. "A heuristic notion, then, is the notion of an unknown content, and it is determined by anticipating the type of act through which the unknown will become known" (230). A heuristic structure is just an "ordered set of heuristic notions" (230).
Lonergan provides a summary of his notion of metaphysics: "The detached and disinterested desire to know and its unfolding in inquiry and reflection not only constitute a notion of being but also impose a normative structure upon man's cognitional acts. Such a structure provides the relations by which unknown contents of the acts can be defined heuristically. This heuristic structure is immanent and operative in all human knowing" (233).
"A method is a set of directives that serve to guide a process towards a result" (233).
"The process, then, to explicit metaphysics is primarily a process to self-knowledge" (234). It begins with the "polymorphic subject in his native disorientation and bewilderment" (234). The appeal must be to the desire that precedes knowledge. The first step is to "begin from interest, to excite it, to use its momentum to carry things along" (235).
The "directives of the method must be issued by the self-affirming subject to himself" (235).
Metaphysics build on science and commonsense. They are to be accepted, but not uncritically. "There are precise manners in which common sense can be expected to go wrong; there are definite issues on which science is prone to issue extrascientific opinions" (236).
Lonergan discusses universal doubt: "The method of universal doubt is the precept 'Doubt everything that can be doubted" (238).
"Universal doubt leads the philosopher to reject what he is not equipped to restore" (242).
Lonergan sees problems with empiricism. Know is more than looking and sensing.
"Just as the notion of being underlies and penetrates and goes beyond all other notions, so also metaphysics is the department of human knowledge that underlies, penetrates, transforms, and unifies all other departments" (228).
"Being is whatever is to be known by intelligent grasp and reasonable affirmation. But being that is proportionate to human knowing not only is to be understood and affirmed but also is to be experienced. So proportionate being may be defined as whatever is to be known by human experience, intelligent grasp, and reasonable affirmation" (230).
"Now let us sat that explicit metaphysics is the conception, affirmation, and implementation of the integral heuristic structure of proportionate being" (230).
First, Lonergan explains what is a heuristic structure. There are answers that provide understanding and their are questions that anticipate answers. "A heuristic notion, then, is the notion of an unknown content, and it is determined by anticipating the type of act through which the unknown will become known" (230). A heuristic structure is just an "ordered set of heuristic notions" (230).
Lonergan provides a summary of his notion of metaphysics: "The detached and disinterested desire to know and its unfolding in inquiry and reflection not only constitute a notion of being but also impose a normative structure upon man's cognitional acts. Such a structure provides the relations by which unknown contents of the acts can be defined heuristically. This heuristic structure is immanent and operative in all human knowing" (233).
"A method is a set of directives that serve to guide a process towards a result" (233).
"The process, then, to explicit metaphysics is primarily a process to self-knowledge" (234). It begins with the "polymorphic subject in his native disorientation and bewilderment" (234). The appeal must be to the desire that precedes knowledge. The first step is to "begin from interest, to excite it, to use its momentum to carry things along" (235).
The "directives of the method must be issued by the self-affirming subject to himself" (235).
Metaphysics build on science and commonsense. They are to be accepted, but not uncritically. "There are precise manners in which common sense can be expected to go wrong; there are definite issues on which science is prone to issue extrascientific opinions" (236).
Lonergan discusses universal doubt: "The method of universal doubt is the precept 'Doubt everything that can be doubted" (238).
"Universal doubt leads the philosopher to reject what he is not equipped to restore" (242).
Lonergan sees problems with empiricism. Know is more than looking and sensing.
Lonergan Reader: Chapter 10--The Notion of Objectivity
Lonergan summarizes the cognitional process: "Human knowing is cyclic and cumulative. It is cyclic inasmuch as cognitional process advances from experience through inquiry and reflection to judgment, only to revert to experience and recommence its ascent to another judgment. It is cumulative, not only in memory's store of experiences and understanding's clustering of insights, but also in the coalescence of judgments into the context named knowledge or mentality" (212).
Lonergan asserts, "the notion of objectivity is contained in a patterned context of judgments" (212).
Lonergan lists the different properties of the principal notion of objectivity: First, "the notion resides in a context of judgments; without a plurality of judgments that satisfy a definite pattern, the notion does not emerge. Secondly, there follows an immediate corollary: the principal notion of objectivity, as defined, is not contained in any single judgment, and still less in any experiential or normative factor that occurs in cognitional process prior to judgment. Thirdly, the validity of the principal notion of objectivity is the same as the validity of the set of judgments that contain it; if the judgments are correct, then it is correct that there are objects and subjects in the sense defined, for the sense defined is simply the correctness of the appropriate pattern of judgments" (213).
Lonergan states that the notion of objectivity is "closely related to the notion of being. Being is what is known through the totality of correct judgments. Objectivity in its principal sense is what is known through any acts of judgments satisfying a determinate pattern. In brief, there is objectivity if there are distinct beings, some of which both know themselves and know others as others" (213). For example, I am a knower. "This is a typewriter-the further judgment that I am not this typewriter. An indefinite number of further objects may be added by making the additional appropriate positive and negative judgments. Finally, insofar as one can intelligently grasp and reasonably affirm the existence of other knowers besides oneself, one can add to the list the objects that also are subjects" (212).
Besides the notion of objectivity, there are also the "partial aspects of experiential, normative, and absolute objectivity" (214).
"The ground of absolute objectivity is the virtually unconditioned that is grasped by reflective understanding and posited in judgment" (214). The advantage of absolute objectivity is its publicity. It is "accessible not only to the knower that utters it but also to any other knower" (215).
The notion of normative objectivity is "opposed to the subjectivity of wishful thinking, of rash or excessively cautious judgments, of allowing joy or sadness, hope or fear, love or detestation, to interfere with the proper march of cognitional process."
"The ground of normative objectivity lies in the unfolding of the unrestricted, detached, disinterested desire to know. Because it is unrestricted, it opposes the obscurantism that hides truth or blocks access to it in whole or part. Because it is detached, it is opposed to the inhibitions of cognitional process that arise from other human desires and drives. Because it is disinterested, it is opposed to the well-meaning but disastrous reinforcement that other desires lend cognitional process only to twist its orientation into the narrow confines of their limited range" (217).
Lonergan states that the pure desire not only desires, it desires intelligently and reasonably. It is intelligent because it wants to understand, and it desires reasonably because it wants to "grasp the unconditioned" (217).
The third aspect is experiential objectivity. It is the "field of materials about which one inquires, in which one finds the fulfillment of conditions for the unconditioned, to which cognitional process repeatedly returns to generate the series of inquiries and reflections that yield the contextual manifold of judgments" (218).
It is the "given of the given" (218). The given precedes any questioning and "independent of any answers" (218). The given is quite broad. It includes what is given through the senses but also "images, dreams, illusions, hallucinations, personal equations, subjective bias, and so forth" (219).
Lonergan asserts, "the notion of objectivity is contained in a patterned context of judgments" (212).
Lonergan lists the different properties of the principal notion of objectivity: First, "the notion resides in a context of judgments; without a plurality of judgments that satisfy a definite pattern, the notion does not emerge. Secondly, there follows an immediate corollary: the principal notion of objectivity, as defined, is not contained in any single judgment, and still less in any experiential or normative factor that occurs in cognitional process prior to judgment. Thirdly, the validity of the principal notion of objectivity is the same as the validity of the set of judgments that contain it; if the judgments are correct, then it is correct that there are objects and subjects in the sense defined, for the sense defined is simply the correctness of the appropriate pattern of judgments" (213).
Lonergan states that the notion of objectivity is "closely related to the notion of being. Being is what is known through the totality of correct judgments. Objectivity in its principal sense is what is known through any acts of judgments satisfying a determinate pattern. In brief, there is objectivity if there are distinct beings, some of which both know themselves and know others as others" (213). For example, I am a knower. "This is a typewriter-the further judgment that I am not this typewriter. An indefinite number of further objects may be added by making the additional appropriate positive and negative judgments. Finally, insofar as one can intelligently grasp and reasonably affirm the existence of other knowers besides oneself, one can add to the list the objects that also are subjects" (212).
Besides the notion of objectivity, there are also the "partial aspects of experiential, normative, and absolute objectivity" (214).
"The ground of absolute objectivity is the virtually unconditioned that is grasped by reflective understanding and posited in judgment" (214). The advantage of absolute objectivity is its publicity. It is "accessible not only to the knower that utters it but also to any other knower" (215).
The notion of normative objectivity is "opposed to the subjectivity of wishful thinking, of rash or excessively cautious judgments, of allowing joy or sadness, hope or fear, love or detestation, to interfere with the proper march of cognitional process."
"The ground of normative objectivity lies in the unfolding of the unrestricted, detached, disinterested desire to know. Because it is unrestricted, it opposes the obscurantism that hides truth or blocks access to it in whole or part. Because it is detached, it is opposed to the inhibitions of cognitional process that arise from other human desires and drives. Because it is disinterested, it is opposed to the well-meaning but disastrous reinforcement that other desires lend cognitional process only to twist its orientation into the narrow confines of their limited range" (217).
Lonergan states that the pure desire not only desires, it desires intelligently and reasonably. It is intelligent because it wants to understand, and it desires reasonably because it wants to "grasp the unconditioned" (217).
The third aspect is experiential objectivity. It is the "field of materials about which one inquires, in which one finds the fulfillment of conditions for the unconditioned, to which cognitional process repeatedly returns to generate the series of inquiries and reflections that yield the contextual manifold of judgments" (218).
It is the "given of the given" (218). The given precedes any questioning and "independent of any answers" (218). The given is quite broad. It includes what is given through the senses but also "images, dreams, illusions, hallucinations, personal equations, subjective bias, and so forth" (219).
The Lonergan Reader: Chapter 9--The Notion of Being
To Lonergan, Being is the "objective of the pure desire to know. By the desire to know is meant the dynamic orientation manifested in questions for intelligence and reflection" (198-199). It is not the "verbal" of asking of questions; it is not the "conceptual formulation of questions;" it is not "any insight or thought;" it is not reflective judgment. Instead, "it is the prior and enveloping drive that carries cognitional process from sense and imagination to understanding, from understanding to judgment, from judgment to the complete context of correct judgments that is named knowledge. The desire to know, then, is simply the inquiring and critical spirit of man" (199).
It is pure because it is different from other natural desires because it gives "free rein to intelligent and rational consciousness" (199).
The objective of the pure desire is to know. "Initially in each individual, the pure desire is a dynamic orientation to a totally unknown. As knowledge develops, the objective becomes less and less unknown, more and more known. At any time the objective includes both all that is known and all that remains unknown" (200).
The objective of this desire is to know being. "Being, then, is (1) all that is known, and (2) all that remains to be known. Again, since a complete increment of knowing occurs only in judgment, being is what is to be known by the totality of true judgments. What, one may ask, is that totality? It is the complete set of answers to the complete set of questions" (200).
Being has the characteristic of being "all-inclusive" (201). It is knowing everything about everything. Lonergan asserts, "But at the root of the cognitional process there is a cool, detached, disinterested desire to know, and its range is unrestricted. Being is the anything and everything that is the objective of that desire" (203).
We have stated what is being, so what is the notion of being? First, we have to distinguish between the "spontaneously operative notion" and "theoretical accounts of its genesis and content" (203). The spontaneously operative notion is "common to all men," and it functions in a similar manner (203). On the other hand, theoretical accounts of its genesis and content are various. The spontaneously operative notion is with the pure desire to know. People agree that "things are, whether or not we know them," and there are many "things that are known only incompletely or even not at all" (203). The notion of being goes beyond the known to include all that is unknown. Since being is known in judgment, "it is in judgment that we affirm or deny" all things that are (203). Even though being is known in judgment, "the notion of being is prior to judging" (203-204).
Next, there are "objects of thought" (204). I can think of a cow, and I can think of a faun. I can think of the best opinions on almost any discipline, and I can think of previous opinions that were accepted in the past. If we are merely thinking about them, they do not need to fulfill any conditions. It is judging, not thinking that determines if something exists. The purpose of thinking is to consider if something exists. Lonergan thinks the notion of being goes beyond "the merely thought, for we ask whether the merely thought exists" (204). Lonergan adds, "The notion of being, then, is prior to conception and goes beyond it; and is prior to judgment and goes beyond it" (205).
It is pure because it is different from other natural desires because it gives "free rein to intelligent and rational consciousness" (199).
The objective of the pure desire is to know. "Initially in each individual, the pure desire is a dynamic orientation to a totally unknown. As knowledge develops, the objective becomes less and less unknown, more and more known. At any time the objective includes both all that is known and all that remains unknown" (200).
The objective of this desire is to know being. "Being, then, is (1) all that is known, and (2) all that remains to be known. Again, since a complete increment of knowing occurs only in judgment, being is what is to be known by the totality of true judgments. What, one may ask, is that totality? It is the complete set of answers to the complete set of questions" (200).
Being has the characteristic of being "all-inclusive" (201). It is knowing everything about everything. Lonergan asserts, "But at the root of the cognitional process there is a cool, detached, disinterested desire to know, and its range is unrestricted. Being is the anything and everything that is the objective of that desire" (203).
We have stated what is being, so what is the notion of being? First, we have to distinguish between the "spontaneously operative notion" and "theoretical accounts of its genesis and content" (203). The spontaneously operative notion is "common to all men," and it functions in a similar manner (203). On the other hand, theoretical accounts of its genesis and content are various. The spontaneously operative notion is with the pure desire to know. People agree that "things are, whether or not we know them," and there are many "things that are known only incompletely or even not at all" (203). The notion of being goes beyond the known to include all that is unknown. Since being is known in judgment, "it is in judgment that we affirm or deny" all things that are (203). Even though being is known in judgment, "the notion of being is prior to judging" (203-204).
Next, there are "objects of thought" (204). I can think of a cow, and I can think of a faun. I can think of the best opinions on almost any discipline, and I can think of previous opinions that were accepted in the past. If we are merely thinking about them, they do not need to fulfill any conditions. It is judging, not thinking that determines if something exists. The purpose of thinking is to consider if something exists. Lonergan thinks the notion of being goes beyond "the merely thought, for we ask whether the merely thought exists" (204). Lonergan adds, "The notion of being, then, is prior to conception and goes beyond it; and is prior to judgment and goes beyond it" (205).
Lonergan Reader: Chapter 8--Self-Affirmation of the Knower Part 2
Self-Affirmation
Lonergan says the reader must affirm for himself if he is a knower. "Am I a knower? Each has to answer the question of himself. But anyone who asks it is rationally conscious. For the question is a question for reflection, a question to be met with a yes or a no" (188). Who is the I? Lonergan thinks we know what I means without "formulation." Lonergan adds, "If I has some rudimentary meaning from consciousness, then consciousness supplies the fulfillment of one element in the conditions for affirming that I am a knower. Does consciousness supply the fulfillment for the other conditions? Do I see, or am I blind? Do I hear, or am I deaf? Do I try to understand, or is the distinction between intelligence and stupidity no more applicable to me than a stone? Have I any experience of insight ...? Do I conceive, think, consider, suppose, define, formulate, or is my talking like the talking of a parrot? I reflect, for I ask whether I am a knower? Do I grasp the unconditioned, if not in other instances, then in this one? If I grasped the unconditioned, would I not be under the rational compulsion of affirming that I am a knower, and so either affirm it or else find some loophole, some weakness, some incoherence, in this account of the genesis of self-affirmation?" (189). Each person has to ask these questions for himself. Each person has to answer these questions for himself. Lonergan thinks that the "fact of the asking and the possibility of the answering are themselves the sufficient reason for the affirmative answer" (189). If the person answers that they are a knower, the answer is affirmative. If the person says he is not a knower, how does he know that if he is not a knower. So, once again the answer is affirmative.
Lonergan says the reader must affirm for himself if he is a knower. "Am I a knower? Each has to answer the question of himself. But anyone who asks it is rationally conscious. For the question is a question for reflection, a question to be met with a yes or a no" (188). Who is the I? Lonergan thinks we know what I means without "formulation." Lonergan adds, "If I has some rudimentary meaning from consciousness, then consciousness supplies the fulfillment of one element in the conditions for affirming that I am a knower. Does consciousness supply the fulfillment for the other conditions? Do I see, or am I blind? Do I hear, or am I deaf? Do I try to understand, or is the distinction between intelligence and stupidity no more applicable to me than a stone? Have I any experience of insight ...? Do I conceive, think, consider, suppose, define, formulate, or is my talking like the talking of a parrot? I reflect, for I ask whether I am a knower? Do I grasp the unconditioned, if not in other instances, then in this one? If I grasped the unconditioned, would I not be under the rational compulsion of affirming that I am a knower, and so either affirm it or else find some loophole, some weakness, some incoherence, in this account of the genesis of self-affirmation?" (189). Each person has to ask these questions for himself. Each person has to answer these questions for himself. Lonergan thinks that the "fact of the asking and the possibility of the answering are themselves the sufficient reason for the affirmative answer" (189). If the person answers that they are a knower, the answer is affirmative. If the person says he is not a knower, how does he know that if he is not a knower. So, once again the answer is affirmative.
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
Lonergan Reader: Chapter 8--Self-Affirmation of the Knower
Insight is a study of the cognitional process. The emphasis is that the reader will make a judgment of self-affirmation of his own cognitional process. Lonergan means by the self "a concrete and intelligible unity-identity-whole". By self-affirmation intends that the self both affirms and is affirmed. By self-affirmation of the knower Lonergan means that the self as affirmed is "characterized by such occurrences as sensing, perceiving, imagining, inquiring, understanding, formulating, reflecting, grasping the unconditioned, and affirming" (179). This affirmation Lonergan considers to be a "judgment of fact" (179).
Lonergan asserts, "As all judgment, self-affirmation rests upon a grasp of the unconditioned. The unconditioned is the combination of (1) a conditioned, (2) a link between the conditioned and its conditions, and (3) the fulfillment of the conditions. The relevant conditioned is the statement 'I am a knower.' The link between the conditioned and its conditions may be cast in the proposition 'I am a knower, if I am a concrete and intelligible unity-identity-whole, characterized by acts of sensing, perceiving, imagining, inquiring, understanding, formulating, reflecting, grasping the unconditioned, and judging.' The fulfillment of the conditions is given in consciousness" (180).
Next, Lonergan tells us the reader what is consciousness. It is not some kind of look inside. It is not introspection. People tend to think of consciousness as looking at something. They think of consciousness as knowing and that it is looking at something. Lonergan thinks this is a myth.
For now, Lonergan wants to look at knowing as an activity. He defines the knower as someone that "performs certain kinds of acts" (181). He does not ask if the knower knows himself, but does he performs the "act of self-affirmation" (181).
Secondly, he means by consciousness "an awareness immanent in cognitional acts" (181). Lonergan asserts, "But one cannot deny that within the cognitional act as it occurs, there is a factor or element or component over and above its content, and that this factor is what differentiates cognitional acts from unconscious occurrences" (182).
There is an empirical level of consciousness "characteristic of sensing, perceiving, imagining" (182). There is an intelligent level of consciousness "characteristic of inquiry, insight, and formulation" (182). On the third level is the rational consciousness which grasps the unconditioned. Intelligence and intelligibility are characteristic of the second level, and reasonableness and groundedness are characteristic of the third level. Both common sense and positive science "view the material world as subject to intelligible patterns as governed by some law of causality" (183).
Lonergan thinks there are "unities of consciousness" (185). Lonergan writes, "Besides cognitional contents there are cognitional acts; different kinds of acts have different kinds of awareness: empirical, intelligent, rational. But the contents cumulate into unities; what is perceived is what is inquired about; what is inquired about is what is understood; what is understood is what is formulated; what is formulated is what is reflected on; what is reflected on is what is grasped as unconditioned; what is grasped as unconditioned is what is affirmed" (185).
Lonergan asserts, "As all judgment, self-affirmation rests upon a grasp of the unconditioned. The unconditioned is the combination of (1) a conditioned, (2) a link between the conditioned and its conditions, and (3) the fulfillment of the conditions. The relevant conditioned is the statement 'I am a knower.' The link between the conditioned and its conditions may be cast in the proposition 'I am a knower, if I am a concrete and intelligible unity-identity-whole, characterized by acts of sensing, perceiving, imagining, inquiring, understanding, formulating, reflecting, grasping the unconditioned, and judging.' The fulfillment of the conditions is given in consciousness" (180).
Next, Lonergan tells us the reader what is consciousness. It is not some kind of look inside. It is not introspection. People tend to think of consciousness as looking at something. They think of consciousness as knowing and that it is looking at something. Lonergan thinks this is a myth.
For now, Lonergan wants to look at knowing as an activity. He defines the knower as someone that "performs certain kinds of acts" (181). He does not ask if the knower knows himself, but does he performs the "act of self-affirmation" (181).
Secondly, he means by consciousness "an awareness immanent in cognitional acts" (181). Lonergan asserts, "But one cannot deny that within the cognitional act as it occurs, there is a factor or element or component over and above its content, and that this factor is what differentiates cognitional acts from unconscious occurrences" (182).
There is an empirical level of consciousness "characteristic of sensing, perceiving, imagining" (182). There is an intelligent level of consciousness "characteristic of inquiry, insight, and formulation" (182). On the third level is the rational consciousness which grasps the unconditioned. Intelligence and intelligibility are characteristic of the second level, and reasonableness and groundedness are characteristic of the third level. Both common sense and positive science "view the material world as subject to intelligible patterns as governed by some law of causality" (183).
Lonergan thinks there are "unities of consciousness" (185). Lonergan writes, "Besides cognitional contents there are cognitional acts; different kinds of acts have different kinds of awareness: empirical, intelligent, rational. But the contents cumulate into unities; what is perceived is what is inquired about; what is inquired about is what is understood; what is understood is what is formulated; what is formulated is what is reflected on; what is reflected on is what is grasped as unconditioned; what is grasped as unconditioned is what is affirmed" (185).
Lonergan Reader: Chapter 7--Judgment
This chapter is about the notion of judgment. It is the third leg in the knowing process: experience, to understand, to judge. "A first determination of the notion of judgment is reached by relating it to propositions" (163). Two positions can be taken to propositions: they can be considered or one can agree or disagree with them. A proposition "may simply be an object of thought, the content of an act of conceiving, defining, thinking, supposing, considering" (163). Or a proposition can be the "content of an act of judgment" (163). A second determination of the notion of judgment can be "reached by relating it to questions" (163). Two kinds of questions: "There are questions for reflection, and they may be met by answering yes or no. There are questions for intelligence, and they may not be met by answering yes or no" (163). So, the second determination is the notion of judgment is answering yes or no to a question of reflection.
A third determination of the notion of judgment is that it "involves a personal commitment" (164). One must take a position on a proposition.
Lonergan goes on to relate the notion of judgment to the "general structure" of the cognitional process. He states that we "distinguish a direct and an introspective process, and in both of these we distinguish three levels: a level of presentations, a level of intelligence, and a level of reflection" (164).
Lonergan describes the process or the transition from understanding to judgment: "The formulations of understanding yield concepts, definitions, objects of thought, suppositions, considertaions. But man demands more. Every answer to a question for intelligence raises a further question for reflection. There is an ulterior motive to conceiving and defining, thinking and considering, forming suppositions, hypotheses, theories, systems. That motive appears when such activities are followed by the question, Is it so? We conceive in order to judge. As questions for intelligence, What? and Why? and How often? stand to insights and formulations, so questions for reflection stand to a further kind of insight and to judgment. It is on this third level that there emerge the notions of truth and falsity, of certitude and the probability that is not a frequency but a quality of judgment. It is within this third level that there is involved the personal commitment that makes one responsible for one's judgments. It is from this third level that come utterances to express one's affirming or denying, assenting or dissenting, agreeing or disagreeing" (165).
Lonergan now describes how the knower can make a judgment. A judgment must be based on sufficient evidence. Lonergan explains, "To grasp evidence as sufficient for a prospective judgment is to grasp the prospective judgment as virtually unconditioned" which means the conditions needed to make the judgment have been fulfilled. Lonergan continues, "Distinguish, then, between the formally and virtually unconditioned. The formally unconditioned has no conditions whatever. The virtually unconditioned has conditions indeed, but they are fulfilled. The formally unconditioned would be God's knowledge that is not based on anything outside of him. Human judgment, however, is based on evidence and the evidence must be sufficient to make a judgment. Lonergan writes, "By the mere fact that a question for reflection has been put, the prospective judgment is a conditioned: it stands in need of evidence sufficient for reasonable pronouncement" (170).
Judgments are the final part of the cognitional process.
A third determination of the notion of judgment is that it "involves a personal commitment" (164). One must take a position on a proposition.
Lonergan goes on to relate the notion of judgment to the "general structure" of the cognitional process. He states that we "distinguish a direct and an introspective process, and in both of these we distinguish three levels: a level of presentations, a level of intelligence, and a level of reflection" (164).
Lonergan describes the process or the transition from understanding to judgment: "The formulations of understanding yield concepts, definitions, objects of thought, suppositions, considertaions. But man demands more. Every answer to a question for intelligence raises a further question for reflection. There is an ulterior motive to conceiving and defining, thinking and considering, forming suppositions, hypotheses, theories, systems. That motive appears when such activities are followed by the question, Is it so? We conceive in order to judge. As questions for intelligence, What? and Why? and How often? stand to insights and formulations, so questions for reflection stand to a further kind of insight and to judgment. It is on this third level that there emerge the notions of truth and falsity, of certitude and the probability that is not a frequency but a quality of judgment. It is within this third level that there is involved the personal commitment that makes one responsible for one's judgments. It is from this third level that come utterances to express one's affirming or denying, assenting or dissenting, agreeing or disagreeing" (165).
Lonergan now describes how the knower can make a judgment. A judgment must be based on sufficient evidence. Lonergan explains, "To grasp evidence as sufficient for a prospective judgment is to grasp the prospective judgment as virtually unconditioned" which means the conditions needed to make the judgment have been fulfilled. Lonergan continues, "Distinguish, then, between the formally and virtually unconditioned. The formally unconditioned has no conditions whatever. The virtually unconditioned has conditions indeed, but they are fulfilled. The formally unconditioned would be God's knowledge that is not based on anything outside of him. Human judgment, however, is based on evidence and the evidence must be sufficient to make a judgment. Lonergan writes, "By the mere fact that a question for reflection has been put, the prospective judgment is a conditioned: it stands in need of evidence sufficient for reasonable pronouncement" (170).
Judgments are the final part of the cognitional process.
Monday, April 15, 2019
Lonergan Reader: Chapter 6: Things and Bodies
"The notion of a thing is a new type of insight" (154). The notion of a thing sees the pattern in the data: "Now the notion of a thing is grounded in an insight that grasps, not relations between data, but a unity, identity, whole in data; and this unity is grasped, not by considering data from any abstractive viewpoint, but be taking them in their concrete individuality and in the totality of their aspects" (154).
Things are "conceived as extended in space, permanent in time, and yet subject to change" (155). Things possess "properties and are subject to laws and probabilities" (155). There are relations between the insights and the data. We need things to understand change. Lonergan thinks for us to have change, "there has to be a concrete unity of concrete data extending over some interval of time, there has to be some difference between the data at the beginning and at the end of the interval, and this difference can only be partial" (155).
Change is also needed for the continuity and change of scientific thought.
Thing is "the basic construct of scientific thought and development" (156). Things are thought to exist.
After discussing the notion of a thing, Lonergan discusses bodies. Bodies are not things because men "are not pure intelligences. They are animals; they live largely under the influence of their intersubjectivity; they are guided by common sense that does not bother to ask nice questions on the meaning of familiar names" (157).
Lonergan characterizes body as something already existing "out there now real" (158). Terms body, already, out there, real "stand for concepts uttered by an intelligence that is grasping not intelligent procedure, but a merely biological and unintelligent response to stimulus" (158). Lonergan says this is nonconceptual knowing. Lonergan states that there is a knowing in an elementary sense and a complex sense. Lonergan thinks knowing requires experience, understanding, and judgment. The elementary type of knowing is based simply on experience. He thinks both types of knowing are valid.
Things are "conceived as extended in space, permanent in time, and yet subject to change" (155). Things possess "properties and are subject to laws and probabilities" (155). There are relations between the insights and the data. We need things to understand change. Lonergan thinks for us to have change, "there has to be a concrete unity of concrete data extending over some interval of time, there has to be some difference between the data at the beginning and at the end of the interval, and this difference can only be partial" (155).
Change is also needed for the continuity and change of scientific thought.
Thing is "the basic construct of scientific thought and development" (156). Things are thought to exist.
After discussing the notion of a thing, Lonergan discusses bodies. Bodies are not things because men "are not pure intelligences. They are animals; they live largely under the influence of their intersubjectivity; they are guided by common sense that does not bother to ask nice questions on the meaning of familiar names" (157).
Lonergan characterizes body as something already existing "out there now real" (158). Terms body, already, out there, real "stand for concepts uttered by an intelligence that is grasping not intelligent procedure, but a merely biological and unintelligent response to stimulus" (158). Lonergan says this is nonconceptual knowing. Lonergan states that there is a knowing in an elementary sense and a complex sense. Lonergan thinks knowing requires experience, understanding, and judgment. The elementary type of knowing is based simply on experience. He thinks both types of knowing are valid.
Chapter 5: Commonsense Biases
Individual Bias
An animal following its instincts spontaneously are not necessarily egotistical. Following their instincts is to achieve biological results. Natural human response to eat, learn, pursue friendship, and exercise self-love. Friendship requires self-love. Friendship requires self-live in the sense "man loves himself if he wants for himself the finest things in the world, namely, virtue and wisdom; and without virtue and wisdom a man can be a true friend neither to himself nor to anyone else" (129). Lonergan believes there is a "sense in which egoism is always wrong and altruism its proper corrective" (129). Lonergan thinks that egoism is neither spontaneous or pure intelligence, "but an interference of spontaneity with he development of pure intelligence" (129). egoism is an individual bias when the egoist "refuses to put the further questions that would lead to a profound modification to his solution" of the problem (130).
Lonergan states that egoism "is an incomplete development of intelligence" (130). "Just as in the sciences intelligence begins from hypothesis that prove insufficient and advances to further hypothesis that successively prove more and more satisfactory, so too in practical living it is through the cumulative process of further questions and further insights that an adequate understanding is reached" (130). Individual bias seeks to cut this process short. The egoist might be self-deceived, but he is not "totally unaware of his self-deception" (131). The egoist has to fight against the natural drive to raise further questions, and against the natural drive to intersubjectivity which can help with their lack of development in intelligence. Lonergan thinks of it as a "sin against the light" (131). The egoist conscience is away of the fault because "operative within him there is the eros of the mind, the desire and drive to understand; he knows its value, for he gives free rein where his own interests are concerned; yet he also repudiates its mastery, for he will not grant serious considerations to further relevant questions" (131).
Group Bias
Like individual bias, group bias is an "interference with the development of practical common sense. But while individual bias has to overcome normal intersubjective feeling, group bias finds itself supported by such feeling" (132).
Group expectations are not necessarily bad. They are normal ways different types of groups and institutions function. Lonergan writes, "In a school, a regiment, a factory, a trade, a profession, a prison, there develops an ethos that at once subtly and flexibly provides concrete premises and norms for practical human decisions" (132). Groups depend on one another to act in a certain manner. "Such expectations rest on recognized codes of behavior; they appeal to past performance; acquired habit, reputation; they attain a maximum of precision and reliability among those frequently brought together, engaged in similar work, guided by similar motives, sharing the same prosperity or adversity" (132). There exists the bias against other groups.
An animal following its instincts spontaneously are not necessarily egotistical. Following their instincts is to achieve biological results. Natural human response to eat, learn, pursue friendship, and exercise self-love. Friendship requires self-love. Friendship requires self-live in the sense "man loves himself if he wants for himself the finest things in the world, namely, virtue and wisdom; and without virtue and wisdom a man can be a true friend neither to himself nor to anyone else" (129). Lonergan believes there is a "sense in which egoism is always wrong and altruism its proper corrective" (129). Lonergan thinks that egoism is neither spontaneous or pure intelligence, "but an interference of spontaneity with he development of pure intelligence" (129). egoism is an individual bias when the egoist "refuses to put the further questions that would lead to a profound modification to his solution" of the problem (130).
Lonergan states that egoism "is an incomplete development of intelligence" (130). "Just as in the sciences intelligence begins from hypothesis that prove insufficient and advances to further hypothesis that successively prove more and more satisfactory, so too in practical living it is through the cumulative process of further questions and further insights that an adequate understanding is reached" (130). Individual bias seeks to cut this process short. The egoist might be self-deceived, but he is not "totally unaware of his self-deception" (131). The egoist has to fight against the natural drive to raise further questions, and against the natural drive to intersubjectivity which can help with their lack of development in intelligence. Lonergan thinks of it as a "sin against the light" (131). The egoist conscience is away of the fault because "operative within him there is the eros of the mind, the desire and drive to understand; he knows its value, for he gives free rein where his own interests are concerned; yet he also repudiates its mastery, for he will not grant serious considerations to further relevant questions" (131).
Group Bias
Like individual bias, group bias is an "interference with the development of practical common sense. But while individual bias has to overcome normal intersubjective feeling, group bias finds itself supported by such feeling" (132).
Group expectations are not necessarily bad. They are normal ways different types of groups and institutions function. Lonergan writes, "In a school, a regiment, a factory, a trade, a profession, a prison, there develops an ethos that at once subtly and flexibly provides concrete premises and norms for practical human decisions" (132). Groups depend on one another to act in a certain manner. "Such expectations rest on recognized codes of behavior; they appeal to past performance; acquired habit, reputation; they attain a maximum of precision and reliability among those frequently brought together, engaged in similar work, guided by similar motives, sharing the same prosperity or adversity" (132). There exists the bias against other groups.
Lonergan Reader: Chapter 4: Common Sense and Its Subject
The importance of insight to the methodical investigations of mathematicians and natural scientist have been previous been discussed. But insight is important in ordinary life.
Lonergan states how the wonder or desire to know comes like a flood for children once they become language beings. The child wants to know everything immediately, not realizing acquiring knowledge is a gradual process. Lonergan states there exists in all men "the very spirit of inquiry that constitutes the scientific attitude" (98).
There is both "spontaneous" inquiry and "spontaneous accumulation of related" insights.
Lonergan describes our historicity: "Not only are men born with a native drive to inquire and understand; they are born into a community that possesses a common fund of tested answers, and from that fund each may draw his variable share, measured by his capacity, his interests, and his energy" (99).
There exists a self-correcting process of learning in common sense. Common sense is a "specialization of intelligence in the particular and the concrete" (100).
Ways that common sense differ from science or theory: "But common sense, because it does not have to be articulate, can operate directly from its accumulated insights. In correspondence with the similarities of the situation, it can appeal to an incomplete set of insights. In correspondence with the significant difference of situations, it can add the different insights relevant to each" (100).
It also differs in its generalization from science. Common sense differs logic and science "in the meaning it attaches to analogies and generalizations. In all its utterances it operates from a distinctive viewpoint and pursue an ideal of its own" (101). The heuristic structure of science "anticipate the determination of nature always act in the same fashion under similar circumstances" (101).
Common sense does not attempt for "universally valid knowledge," and it does not seek to communicate its findings "exhaustively".
Common sense does not use technical language. Common sense knowledge is both "subtle and fluid" (102). Common sense says what it means to someone. The only "interpreter of common sense is common sense" (102).
Scientific observation is a detached interest; whereas common sense is an involved interest. Common sense is always "is ever on its guard against all theory" (103). Common sense is always asking what difference will the knowledge make. Common sense is practically oriented. Common sense relates to thing as they relate to us; science relates to things as they relate to each other. Lonergan states that there are two kinds of knowledge: "Rational choice is not between science and common sense; it is a choice of both, of science to master the universal, and of common sense to deal with the particular" (104).
For every place of location, for every different job, for different types of common sense, exists an appropriate common sense for it. Common sense is knowledge on how to act in many types of situations.
In the next section, Lonergan discusses the notion of patterns of experience: "biological, aesthetic, intellectual, and dramatic patterns" (106). Lonergan thinks it is abstract to talk about the experience of the senses. The senses: seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, never occur in isolation. They are related to the movement of the body. Without eyes, there is no seeing; without noses, there is no smelling; without ears, there is no hearing. Lonergan asserts, "Sensation has a bodily basis, and functionly it is linked to the bodily movements" (106). In addition, "the bodily movements are subject to an organizing control. Besides the systematic links between senses and sense organs, there is, immanent in experience, a factor variously named conation, interest, attention, purpose" (106).
Lonergan summarizes before describing the different patterns of experiences: "There are, then, different dynamic patterns of experience ... As conceived, it is the formulation of an insight; but all insight arises from sensitive or imaginative presentations, and in the present case the relevant presentations are simply the various elements that is organized by the pattern" (107).
The Biological Pattern of Experience
Lonergan compares the biological experiences of plants and animals: "A plant draws its sustenance from its environment by remaining in a single place and by performing a slowly varying set of routines in interaction with a slowly varying set of things. In contrast, the effective environment of a carnivorous animal is a floating population of other animals that move over a range of places and are more or less well equipped to deceive or elude their pursuers" (107). Both plants and animals are alive, "for in both aggregates of events insight discerns an intelligible unity that is commonly is formulated in terms of biological drive or purpose" (107). Both provides information about our own biological experience. They both adapt to their environments. Lonergan writes, "Outer senses are the heralds of biological opportunities and dangers. Memory is the file of supplementary information. Imagination is the projection of courses of action. Conation and emotion are the pent-up pressure of elemental purposiveness" (107). The pattern "is a set of intelligible relations that link together sequences of sensations, memories, images, conations, emotions, and bodily movements; and to name the pattern biological is simply to affirm that the sequences converge upon terminal activities of intussusception or reproduction, or, when negative in scope, self-preservation" (108). Consciousness is only "a part of the animal's total living" (108). Like the plant, in the animal operates "immanent vital processes without the benefit of any conscious control" (108). "extroversion" is a prominent part of the biological pattern of experience. The body and its functions speak of the elementary experience that is concerned with "external conditions and opportunities" (108).
There is an interaction between the stimulus and the response. "The stimulating elements are the elementary object; the responding elements are the elementary subject" (109). The biological experience is the pattern of experience human share with plants and animal. It is an elementary level of experience.
The Aesthetic Pattern of Experience
There is experience in man that goes beyond the biological. It is conscious living as illustrated by the play of children. Another is the example of sports in which health and exercise is not the dominant motivation. One seeks the experience just for the experience itself.
"The artist exercises his intelligence in discovering ever novel forms that unify and relate the contents and acts of aesthetic experience" (109). Art is freedom in two ways: it "liberates experience from the drag of biological purposiveness, [and] it liberates intelligence from the wearying constraints of mathematical proofs, scientific verifications, and commonsense factualness" (109). There is both the joy of conscious living and creating. "The aesthetic and artistic also are symbolic" (110). What is created in art is unclear or vague or "obscure". It is the "expression of the human subject outside the limits of adequate intellectual formulation or appraisal" (110). It communicates, not through science or philosophy, "but through a participation, and in some fashion a reenactment of the artist's inspiration and intention" (110).
The obscurity of art "is in a sense its most generic meaning. Prior to the neatly formulated questions of systematizing intelligence, there is the deep-set wonder in which all questions have their source and ground" (110).
The Intellectual Pattern of Experience
"The aesthetic liberation and the free artistic control of the flow of sensations and images, of emotions and bodily movements, not merely break the bonds of biological drive but also generate in experience a flexibility that makes it a ready tool for the spirit of inquiry" (110).
Study is hard for the youth. In the experienced observer, outer sense forgets its primitive biological functions to take on selective alertness that keeps pace with the refinements of elaborate and subtle classifications. In the theorist intent upon a problem, even the subconscious goes to work to yield at unexpected moments the suggestive images of clues and missing links, of patterns and perspectives, that evoke the desiderated insight and the delighted cry 'Eureka!' (110-111). Intellectual pattern of experience depends "upon native aptitude, upon training, upon age and development, upon external circumstances, upon the chance that confronts one with problems and that supplies at least the intermittent opportunity to work towards their solution" (111). To the skillful, opportunities for intellectual experience come often. Even with ability, knowledge comes gradually. Lonergan describes the effort needed: "To learn thoroughly is a vast undertaking that calls for relentless perseverance. To strike out on a new line and become more than a weekend celebrity calls for years in which one's living is more or less constantly absorbed in the effort to understand, in which one's understanding gradually works round and up a spiral of viewpoints with each complementing its predecessor and only the last embracing the whole field to be mastered" (111).
The Dramatic Pattern of Experience
Ordinary human living is not the biological, artistic, nor the intellectual pattern of experience. Human living "involves not only succession but also direction" (112). Behind human living can be discern an artistic, "dramatic component."
Human desires are more than the "biological impulses of hunger for eating and sex for mating" (112). Man is an animal. Eating and drinking are "biological performances." But eating for man comes with a multiplicity of activities. Wearing clothes is more than keeping warm. Sex is more than mating.
Man's living is an art form: "Not only, then, is man capable of aesthetic liberation and artistic creativity, but his first work of art is his own living" (112). The biological pattern cannot be denied, but in man they are transformed. Men works not only to make a living, but it must dignify their life. Man desires their aesthetic values be affirmed by others because man is a social animal.
Loner thinks that the "characters of this drama of living are molded by the drama itself" (113). Human develop the roles he might perform. Humans display a plasticity. Man is also historically conditioned. His role is influenced by what preceded him.
Lonergan states how the wonder or desire to know comes like a flood for children once they become language beings. The child wants to know everything immediately, not realizing acquiring knowledge is a gradual process. Lonergan states there exists in all men "the very spirit of inquiry that constitutes the scientific attitude" (98).
There is both "spontaneous" inquiry and "spontaneous accumulation of related" insights.
Lonergan describes our historicity: "Not only are men born with a native drive to inquire and understand; they are born into a community that possesses a common fund of tested answers, and from that fund each may draw his variable share, measured by his capacity, his interests, and his energy" (99).
There exists a self-correcting process of learning in common sense. Common sense is a "specialization of intelligence in the particular and the concrete" (100).
Ways that common sense differ from science or theory: "But common sense, because it does not have to be articulate, can operate directly from its accumulated insights. In correspondence with the similarities of the situation, it can appeal to an incomplete set of insights. In correspondence with the significant difference of situations, it can add the different insights relevant to each" (100).
It also differs in its generalization from science. Common sense differs logic and science "in the meaning it attaches to analogies and generalizations. In all its utterances it operates from a distinctive viewpoint and pursue an ideal of its own" (101). The heuristic structure of science "anticipate the determination of nature always act in the same fashion under similar circumstances" (101).
Common sense does not attempt for "universally valid knowledge," and it does not seek to communicate its findings "exhaustively".
Common sense does not use technical language. Common sense knowledge is both "subtle and fluid" (102). Common sense says what it means to someone. The only "interpreter of common sense is common sense" (102).
Scientific observation is a detached interest; whereas common sense is an involved interest. Common sense is always "is ever on its guard against all theory" (103). Common sense is always asking what difference will the knowledge make. Common sense is practically oriented. Common sense relates to thing as they relate to us; science relates to things as they relate to each other. Lonergan states that there are two kinds of knowledge: "Rational choice is not between science and common sense; it is a choice of both, of science to master the universal, and of common sense to deal with the particular" (104).
For every place of location, for every different job, for different types of common sense, exists an appropriate common sense for it. Common sense is knowledge on how to act in many types of situations.
In the next section, Lonergan discusses the notion of patterns of experience: "biological, aesthetic, intellectual, and dramatic patterns" (106). Lonergan thinks it is abstract to talk about the experience of the senses. The senses: seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, never occur in isolation. They are related to the movement of the body. Without eyes, there is no seeing; without noses, there is no smelling; without ears, there is no hearing. Lonergan asserts, "Sensation has a bodily basis, and functionly it is linked to the bodily movements" (106). In addition, "the bodily movements are subject to an organizing control. Besides the systematic links between senses and sense organs, there is, immanent in experience, a factor variously named conation, interest, attention, purpose" (106).
Lonergan summarizes before describing the different patterns of experiences: "There are, then, different dynamic patterns of experience ... As conceived, it is the formulation of an insight; but all insight arises from sensitive or imaginative presentations, and in the present case the relevant presentations are simply the various elements that is organized by the pattern" (107).
The Biological Pattern of Experience
Lonergan compares the biological experiences of plants and animals: "A plant draws its sustenance from its environment by remaining in a single place and by performing a slowly varying set of routines in interaction with a slowly varying set of things. In contrast, the effective environment of a carnivorous animal is a floating population of other animals that move over a range of places and are more or less well equipped to deceive or elude their pursuers" (107). Both plants and animals are alive, "for in both aggregates of events insight discerns an intelligible unity that is commonly is formulated in terms of biological drive or purpose" (107). Both provides information about our own biological experience. They both adapt to their environments. Lonergan writes, "Outer senses are the heralds of biological opportunities and dangers. Memory is the file of supplementary information. Imagination is the projection of courses of action. Conation and emotion are the pent-up pressure of elemental purposiveness" (107). The pattern "is a set of intelligible relations that link together sequences of sensations, memories, images, conations, emotions, and bodily movements; and to name the pattern biological is simply to affirm that the sequences converge upon terminal activities of intussusception or reproduction, or, when negative in scope, self-preservation" (108). Consciousness is only "a part of the animal's total living" (108). Like the plant, in the animal operates "immanent vital processes without the benefit of any conscious control" (108). "extroversion" is a prominent part of the biological pattern of experience. The body and its functions speak of the elementary experience that is concerned with "external conditions and opportunities" (108).
There is an interaction between the stimulus and the response. "The stimulating elements are the elementary object; the responding elements are the elementary subject" (109). The biological experience is the pattern of experience human share with plants and animal. It is an elementary level of experience.
The Aesthetic Pattern of Experience
There is experience in man that goes beyond the biological. It is conscious living as illustrated by the play of children. Another is the example of sports in which health and exercise is not the dominant motivation. One seeks the experience just for the experience itself.
"The artist exercises his intelligence in discovering ever novel forms that unify and relate the contents and acts of aesthetic experience" (109). Art is freedom in two ways: it "liberates experience from the drag of biological purposiveness, [and] it liberates intelligence from the wearying constraints of mathematical proofs, scientific verifications, and commonsense factualness" (109). There is both the joy of conscious living and creating. "The aesthetic and artistic also are symbolic" (110). What is created in art is unclear or vague or "obscure". It is the "expression of the human subject outside the limits of adequate intellectual formulation or appraisal" (110). It communicates, not through science or philosophy, "but through a participation, and in some fashion a reenactment of the artist's inspiration and intention" (110).
The obscurity of art "is in a sense its most generic meaning. Prior to the neatly formulated questions of systematizing intelligence, there is the deep-set wonder in which all questions have their source and ground" (110).
The Intellectual Pattern of Experience
"The aesthetic liberation and the free artistic control of the flow of sensations and images, of emotions and bodily movements, not merely break the bonds of biological drive but also generate in experience a flexibility that makes it a ready tool for the spirit of inquiry" (110).
Study is hard for the youth. In the experienced observer, outer sense forgets its primitive biological functions to take on selective alertness that keeps pace with the refinements of elaborate and subtle classifications. In the theorist intent upon a problem, even the subconscious goes to work to yield at unexpected moments the suggestive images of clues and missing links, of patterns and perspectives, that evoke the desiderated insight and the delighted cry 'Eureka!' (110-111). Intellectual pattern of experience depends "upon native aptitude, upon training, upon age and development, upon external circumstances, upon the chance that confronts one with problems and that supplies at least the intermittent opportunity to work towards their solution" (111). To the skillful, opportunities for intellectual experience come often. Even with ability, knowledge comes gradually. Lonergan describes the effort needed: "To learn thoroughly is a vast undertaking that calls for relentless perseverance. To strike out on a new line and become more than a weekend celebrity calls for years in which one's living is more or less constantly absorbed in the effort to understand, in which one's understanding gradually works round and up a spiral of viewpoints with each complementing its predecessor and only the last embracing the whole field to be mastered" (111).
The Dramatic Pattern of Experience
Ordinary human living is not the biological, artistic, nor the intellectual pattern of experience. Human living "involves not only succession but also direction" (112). Behind human living can be discern an artistic, "dramatic component."
Human desires are more than the "biological impulses of hunger for eating and sex for mating" (112). Man is an animal. Eating and drinking are "biological performances." But eating for man comes with a multiplicity of activities. Wearing clothes is more than keeping warm. Sex is more than mating.
Man's living is an art form: "Not only, then, is man capable of aesthetic liberation and artistic creativity, but his first work of art is his own living" (112). The biological pattern cannot be denied, but in man they are transformed. Men works not only to make a living, but it must dignify their life. Man desires their aesthetic values be affirmed by others because man is a social animal.
Loner thinks that the "characters of this drama of living are molded by the drama itself" (113). Human develop the roles he might perform. Humans display a plasticity. Man is also historically conditioned. His role is influenced by what preceded him.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)