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).