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).