Lonergan's Critique of Reductionism Part 3

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

Aiken states that the operation of judgment is more than the conclusion of a syllogism. He writes, "As an activity of the concretely existing subject that heads beyond affirmation to commitment, judging entails a certain measure of accountability for how the relevant evidence has been sifted and weighed" (238). Rational judgment is not simply applying rules to particular circumstances, but is the practice of practical reason; it is "a function of that intellectual 'phronesis' which results from acquired expertise within a given field" (238).

In the action of judging, the human subject completes the circle of knowing. However, this temporary place does not continue continually. Aiken asserts, "The human mind is restless because our wondering knows no limits; indeed, it is totally unrestricted, aiming to understand nothing less than everything about everything" (238-39). Our questioning might be unlimited, but the human subject is not, and so "there will always be something further to understand as long as we continue to wonder, and thereby to fulfill a central aspect of our vocation as humans" (239).

In the inquiring subject, his inquiry does not end with judgment because further inquiry is needed to determine what his response should be to this acquired knowledge. Aiken writes, "This new line of questioning opens up another and higher operational field - that of responsible agency - which, in turn," provides additional opportunities for self-knowledge. Aiken asserts, "If first-order questions - What is it? Why is it? How is it? - prompt intelligent understanding of what might be the case, and reflective questions - Is it so? Are there good reasons for affirming it? - give rise to rational judgments of fact, then questions for deliberation - Is it worthwhile? Is it the responsible thing to do? - head for evaluation, decision, and action. Just as understanding includes the data to be understood and critical reflection includes properly formulated insights, so responsible agency assimilates factual knowledge to ethical praxis" (239). It is at this fourth operational level, that the "full subject emerges as an attentive, intelligent, reasonable, and responsible agent participating in the ongoing historical drama of progress, decline, and redemption" (239). Progress is the dynamic outworking of the unrestricted desire for knowledge; decline is the different types of biases that hinders the desire to know; redemption is the healing of tendency for declines through biases. Aiken states that humans are always operating on this fourth level.

Responsible agency allows us to consider the cognitional process has working from "below upwards" and "above downwards." Aiken describes both processes: "The first rendering yields a developmental account of the subject according to which successively higher functions unfold as the operative range of primordial wondering expands; according to this perspective, higher meanings and more specialized functions arise as lower-order potencies are fulfilled. The second rendering regards the subject as situated within overlapping historical, cultural, and social contexts and animated by ethico-religious concerns, thus interpreting these lower-order potencies from the vantage of fulfillment at higher and more specialized levels of functioning" (239-40). From the second view we pay attention to data, ask questions, acquire understanding, "and make decisions primarily within a context of prior experiences, questions, insights, judgments, and valuations--including those beliefs we have come to accept" on the "basis on the reliable testimony" of others and beliefs we have inherited from our own culture (240). Aiken thinks that our historicity makes knowing a "distinctively human enterprise," in which we feel like it is an "ethical mandate" to live responsible lives through being attentive, intelligent, reasonable, and responsible. He thinks living this way is "a matter of conscience" (240).

This is where Lonergan's "theistic orientation" of the search for self-understanding becomes clear. Aiken asserts, "Since the highest operational field comports the ultimate direction, meaning, and value of our existence, it is also the site where the human drive toward self-transcendence finds or forfeits its authenticity. But insofar as this dynamism intends nothing short of inexhaustible being, truth, and value, it reaches out not only horizontally toward the human other with whom we cooperate but also vertically to the transcendent" (240). Lonergan believes it is God's own self-understanding that grounds our own unrestricted desire to know all that is. The human subject is open "to encountering a Being of unlimited intelligence and generosity," and this God by his initiative through grace helps us to overcome "bias, indifference, and self-deception, through primordial wondering, toward a disposition to love without limits and conditions" (240). It is at this fourth level of "human consciousness the eros of human inquiry encounters divine agape and discovers therein the gentle power which elicits and fulfills our multiple capacities for self-transcendence" (240).