Lonergan's Critique of Reductionism Part II

David W. Aiken, "Bernard Lonergan's Critique of Reductionism: A Call to Intellectual Conversion. Christian Scholars Review 233-251.

Toward a Holistic Account of the Subject

Lonergan states that reductionism is a "campaign against the flight from understanding" (235). This is a term used by Lonergan to describe one of the ways people avoid insight. It is part of Lonergan's project of explaining intellectual conversion, and "thereby serves to underscore how truncated views of the human subject undermine our capacity for authentic self-understanding" (235). Lonergan seeks to make people aware of the conditions for self-understanding.

Aiken asserts, "As intentional, human intelligence is directed toward being, truth, and value--indeed, toward anything of actual or potential significance--but because intentional operations are by their very nature conscious operations, one can be aware of them and reflexively grasp their significance, singly and in relation to one another" (235-236). Lonergan says these are conscious operations, but people can do these operations without being aware of them. Aiken adds, "These operations and their situating fields of conscious activity form a flexible, dynamic, and indeed normative pattern, the rudiments of which are always and already operating in all our distinctively human projects" (236). These are operations that are done when people seek to understand their experiences. Lonergan thinks knowing requires three elements: experiencing, understanding, and judging. Aiken states that Lonergan's "cognitional theory (as elaborated in Insight ) and his intentionality analysis (as set forth in Method in Theology) are designed to identify this pattern, to encourage his readers to appropriate it," and to avoid the flight from understanding (236). 

Lonergan describes the flight from understanding: "No problem is at once more delicate and more profound, more practical and perhaps more pressing. How, indeed, is a mind to become conscious of its own bias when that bias springs from a communal flight from understanding and is supported by the whole texture of civilization? . . . How can human intelligence begin to deal with the unintelligible yet objective situations which the flight from understanding creates and expands and sustains? At least we make a beginning by asking what precisely it is to understand, what are the dynamics of the flow of consciousness that favors insight, what are the interferences that favor oversight, and what, finally, do the answers to such questions imply for the guidance of human thought and action?" (Insight, 9).

Lonergan's cognition theory states that people have a "penchant for raising questions" (236). This agrees with Aristotle's idea that everyone desires to know. He also says that wonder is the beginning of philosophy. We wonder about things, so we ask question to acquire understanding. Lonergan believes that questions leads to the different levels of knowing. Asking questions is natural to us since we ask questions from the time we are able to talk.

We can accept these ideas with simple self-reflection. We have experiences of asking question for the purpose of understanding. We have experience of reflecting on what we understand to determine if it is true. 

Our questions are a quest for understanding. Aiken asks, "Where does intelligent questioning lead? What is intended in our wondering about the nature of things?" (237). How does our asking anticipate an answer? What "kinds of conscious operations" does our questions enable? Lonergan thinks because "we wonder about the what, how, and why of our experiences shows that we are always and already embarked on a quest for understanding" (237). Understanding is more than just knowing how to solve a problem. It is more than simply following directions. It includes insight. Aiken states, "To gain insight is precisely to catch on, to get the point, to see the light, to understand for oneself" (237). Insights mainly come through asking intelligent questions and being motivated by a "spirit of inquiry." Indeed, what makes "insight an act of intelligence is that it grasps an intelligible pattern, a potentially significant correlation in the data" (237). It is like an inspector examining the clues of a crime scene and getting an insight how the pieces fit together.

Getting an insight is not the same thing as knowing. Lonergan thinks knowing includes experiences, understanding, and judging. You need all three to have knowing. Aiken suggests "our native wondering is not satisfied with just any bright idea, but invites us to consider whether the potentially significant pattern in question has been identified accurately, formulated adequately, expressed clearly, combined appropriately with other insights, and confirmed by sufficient evidence" (237).

The "process of confirmation" begins another level of the cognitional process: "critical reflection" (237). Aiken explains, "Just as questioning the data prompts intelligent understanding, so questioning the veracity of what one has understood heads for an act of judgment whereby, if all goes well, factual truth is affirmed" (237). This reveals our existence as a subject. Our natural desire to know is more than simple understanding, but it is a movement to judgment, to a declaration if it is true or not. It is questioning if the evidence is sufficient for a judgment on its veracity. Aiken thinks that we are both "truth-seekers" and "meaning-makers" (238).

"The activity of weighing evidence leads to another kind of insight," a reflective judgment whether more questions are needed to be answered before making a judgment or if our questions have been answered sufficiently by the evidence. When we have adequately  answered our question, Aiken says we have "come to term." He explains what he means by coming to term: "An intelligible correlation has been intelligently grasped and clearly defined. This formulated insight (or cluster of insights) has subsequently been framed as a hypothesis expressing some specifiable evidential connection between certain conditions and a factual state of affairs representing their fulfillment. Now let us suppose that the relevant data are sufficient to establish that these conditions have indeed been fulfilled. One then is fully warranted in affirming the intelligibility under consideration is in fact the case, for it has now acquired the status of being 'virtually unconditioned,' which means that it has passed from the potentiality of pure thought to the actuality of objective existence. By thus judging the matter to be so, one takes a stand with some degree of epistemic confidence (from probability to certainty). Since the act of judgment draws upon, and sums up, the entire repertoire of cognitional activity, Lonergan regards it as the 'full increment in knowledge' (238)."