"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.
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