the epistemology of bernard lonergan
TRANSCRIPT
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The Epistemology of Bernard Lonergan
Gregory Bahnsen
If one has become accustomed to the more or less prevailing opinion that
nothing of substantial or serious philosophic challenge can be expected to emerge
from contemporary Roman Catholicism, the writings of Bernard J. F. Lonergan could
well be the disquieting anomaly which alters that outlook. Professor Lonergan has
developed throughout his career an epistemological viewpoint which presents the
persistent significance of medieval thought in the light of modern science, psychology,
and philosophy; Lonergans epistemology is definitively expressed in his astute,
though ponderous, volume Insight, A Study of Human Understanding (Third Edition,New York: Philosophical Library, 1970; originally 1958). Insight is the first mature
philosophic product of the reconstruction called for by Pope Leo XIII, a project
wherein old scholasticism would be re-stored and completed by current day thought.
The epistemological position set forth in Insight is of interest and significance also
because of the ramifications Lonergan sees it as having in other fields, especially
metaphysics and theological method.
The aim of the book is to present a critique of various methods of thought (bothin science and in common sense) and to lead the reader through the maze of dense
argumentation to understand the nature of insight as a cognitional event within his
own rational self-consciousness; from this point Lonergan would examine the
implications of a proper view of method for metaphysics and would point out the
universe which is disclosed by the characteristics of insight. In all this Lonergans
hope is to demonstrate the resilience of the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition by purging
it of its antiquated science and presenting a new philosophy of science in its place, a
philosophy from which he can extrapolate to the world structure that is presupposed
in the effective operation of the many fields of human inquiry.
The overall development of thought through the book, then, is from
psychologism to metaphysics (and God): from the question, What is happening when
we are knowing?, to the question, What is known when we are knowing? In good
Thomist style, Lonergan aims to proceed from an indepen-dent analysis of
rational-scientific human knowing to a demonstration of the existence of God
Himself. An exposition of Lonergans epistemology and its entailed metaphysical
implications should properly precede an appraisal of the same.
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Exposition
In Part I (Insight as Activity) of Insight Lonergan sets out the theory of
cognitional structure which shall undergird Part II, the practice of making correct
judgments (Insight as Knowledge). Four levels of development are discernable
throughout parts I and II, the first level representing Part I itself while Part II is
subdivided into three further levels.
The first step of his argument is the endeavor to grasp the key occurrences in
learning math, advancing science, developing common sense, and formingjudgments in order that we might see cognitional activity as an activity (chapters
1-10).
Secondly, Lonergan would discuss cognitional activity as cognitional, pointing
out that self-affirmation is objective knowledge (chapters 11-13).
From here Lonergan advances to the third level of development and presents
his general case for proportionate being; in this case self-affirmation is the key act.The case for proportionate being is used by Lonergan to establish a general
dialectical theorem, which in turn will make possible a metaphysics of proportionate
being and consequent ethics (chapters 14-18).
Thus far the first three steps of Lonergans argument have sought to present
autonomous thought as the lower story for the climactic fourth step of development
wherein human knowledge of transcendent being (that is, the possibility of
intelligibly grasping and reasonably affirming a being which lies outside of mans
experience) is proved by the fact that such intelligent grasp and reasonable
affirmation occur. This logic of natural theology is plainly expressed Lonergan
himself:
It was to give concrete expression to the sincerity of Catholic thought in
affirming the essential independence of other fields that our first eighteen chapters
were written solely in the light of human intelligence and reasonableness and
without any presuppo-sition of Gods existence, without any appeal to the authority
of the Church, and without any explicit deference to the genius of St. Thomas
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Aquinas. At the same time, our first eighteen chapters were followed by a
nineteenth and twentieth that revealed the inevitability with which the affirmation
of God and the search of intellect for faith arise out of a sincere acceptance of
scientific presuppositions and precepts (p. 744).
Keeping this broad outline of the argument in mind as well as the goal toward
which Lonergan is moving, we can engage in a more detailed analysis of the various
levels in the development of Lonergans case. It should be clear from the overview
of Insight presented just now that step one (i.e., Part I or chapters 1-10) is of seminal
importance for the entire treatise.
The first task that Lonergan sets before himself in that section is to clarify the
nature of insight; this he does in chapters 1-5. In chapter 1 Lonergan discusses theinsights which are sought by the knower. This chapter is crucial in Lonergans
program to demonstrate the possibility of having a philosophy which is
methodological, critical and comprehensive (cf. p. xii); the chapter lays the
groundwork for a study of human understanding, its philosophic implications, and
the cure for flights from understanding. If Lonergan succeeds in showing the power
of his method (p. 488), he will accomplished his goal of finding a common ground
on which men of intelligence might meet (p. xiii).
The crucial issue in his argument is an experimental issue from which everything
else follows; that issue will be the decisive achievement of rational
self-consciousness taking possession of itself as such (p. xviii) and thereby gaining the
ability to discriminate between existential concerns and purely intellectual activity (p.
xix). Thus the question, as Lonergan sees it, pertains to the precise nature of
knowledge and the relations between its two diverse forms, rational and empirical (p.
xvii). His purpose in answering this question is to provide a discriminate of
cognitive acts, effecting a personal appropriation of the concrete, dynamic structure
immanent and recurrently operative in cognitional activities (p. xvii); this
self-appropriation cannot take place in a single leap but must be painstakingly
developed (p. xxiii).
To conclude, our aim regards:
(1) not the fact of knowledge, but a discrimination between two facts of
knowledge,
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(2) not the details of the known but the structure of knowing,
(3) not the knowing as an object characterized by catalogues of abstract
properties but the appropriation of ones own intellectual and rational
self-consciousness,
(4) not a sudden leap to appropriation but a slow and painstaking
development, and
(5) not a development indicated by appealing either to the logic of the as yet
unknown goal or to a presupposed and as yet unexplained ontologically structured
metaphysics, but a development that can begin in any sufficiently cultured
consciousness, that expands in virtue of dynamic tendencies of that consciousnessitself, and that heads through an understanding of all understanding to a basic
understanding of all that can be understood (p. xxviii).
The recurrent structure Lonergan here speaks of is identified with the process of
knowing itself, in contrast to the extensive area of the known (p. xviii); this structure
is always the same (p. xxvi), and thus it is the essence of knowledge and that which
unifies empiricism, rationalism, and common sense. Knowing (this one and the
same recurrent structure) is understanding (p. xxix). To say that Lonergan is seekingto get to the heart of these essential epistemological questions is identical with
saying that his aim is to reveal the nature of insight and to indicate its basic role in
human understanding (p. 269).
Therefore, it is quite evident why chapter 1 of Lonergans book, wherein he
discusses insight as sought by the knower, is the central nail on which his whole
position hangs. Lonergan expresses himself most simply when he declares that An
insight is no more than an act of understanding (p. 45). It is different from
sensation (p. 5), being a function of the inner conditions of ones mind and enters its
habitual texture (pp. 3, 4). Insight is not methodological but creative in character (p.
4), depending upon ones natural endowments, alertness, and habitual orientation,
as well as an accurate presentation of definite problems (p. 5). Lonergan sees it as
the key to practicality (p. xiv), the sudden release of inquiry-tension which pivots
between the concrete and abstract (p. 6).
It is helpful in grasping Lonergans notion of insight to understand the genesis of
insight. Prior to insight altogether, and presupposing experiences and images, there
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is found in man an unrestricted, driving desire to understand which constitutes the
primordial why? (p. 9). Man awakens to intelligence, having this driving desire to
understand; with the coming of a clue the imagination process is triggered and leads
to the insightful achievement of an answer to the question posed (an answer in the
form of a patterned set of conceptsp. 10). An insight provides the pivot between
images and concepts in ones thinking; it is the act of catching on to a connection, an
act which is facilitated by images and which results in concepts (pp. 8-10). As such
insight is a preconceptual event (p. 59) which occurs as a leap of constructive
intelligence (pp. 64f.), a lightening flash of illumination (p. 201). An insight unifies,
organizes and draws into intelligible relations the various particulars which are
known. Hence Lonergan views it as the supervening act of understanding, the act
of organizing intelligence, a constituent of human knowledge which apprehends
relations and meaning by a process of unification and organization (pp. ix-xi); thispsychological aspect of human intelligence, this insight, is the a priori synthetic after
which philosophers have sought, and it is that which Lonergan believes can take him
to a verifiable metaphysic.
He points out that the reader of a detective story can be given all the clues and
still fail to spot the criminal; the solution is only reached when the apprehended
clues are intelligently organized as a distinct activity. This activity is what he labels
insight. Having explained his central notion, Lonergan turns to geometricaldefinitions as examples of the product of insight; from these he goes on to explain
the emergence of higher viewpoints and redefinitions which result from a complex
shift in the whole structure of insights (p. 13) and vast extension of the initial
deductive expansion (p. 15). The emergence of such a higher viewpoint consists in
an insight which arises upon the operations performed according to old rules and yet
expressed in the formulation of new rules.
At this point Lonergans discussion twists to the unusual type of insight which
grasps that the only understanding to be had of certain data is that there is nothing
to be understood, there is no point or solution; Lonergan calls this an inverse insight
which, in the context of a positive empirical object, denies the expected intelligibility
(p. 19). In the process of abstraction which acts of insight call for there is an
unavoidable empirical residue which possesses no immanent intelligibility of its
own (pp. 30, 31). The higher intelligibility of a fully developed science leaves
certain positive (empirical) data which is particular and incidental (thus irrelevant)
unexplained; however, by going beyond the sensible field, the enrichment of
abstraction allows one to grasp that which is essential, significant, and important
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(rather than individual). Lonergan generalizes and says that in all data there is this
empirical residue, the notion of oversight; this is a flight from understanding which
results from an incomplete development of intelligence and reasonableness (p. xi).
It can unconsciously produce a scotoma or blind spot on the understanding; the
production of an aberration of understanding is designated scotosis (p. 191), the
cure for which is found in insight (p. 201).
In recapitulation, Lonergan views an insight as the prevailing and defining form
of the human cognitional process. An insight is the mental act of apprehending
intelligibilities logically distinct from, though psychologically conveyed by, sense data
and images; because these intelligibilities bear witness to entities which are
unimaginable, knowing cannot be identified with the process of mere looking.
Instead, knowing goes beyond the empirical presentations to grasp intelligiblemeanings and to reflectively judge their truth-status; as we shall soon see, the
rational self-consciousness affirms a proposition in view of its sufficient reason,
thereby rendering the condi-tioned virtually unconditioned by linking it up with its
called for conditionsa linkage which is effected by structures immanent and
operative within the cognitional process. In the background of that cognitional
process characterized by insights is a pure, detached, disinterested desire to
understand or know, a desire which gives rise to inquiry and wonder (cf. p. 74). This
desire is seen by Lonergan as central to human nature (pp. 331, 474). InLonergans estimation, this driving desire to understand will climax in metaphysical
theology, indeed the singular goal of Thomistic philosophy and theology. However,
he recognizes that the polymorphism of consciousness and the dialectic of various
philosophies reveal that this driving desire can be channeled into different
(aberrational) streams from that of Roman Catholicism.
In chapter 2 of Insight Lonergan introduces the heuristic structures which inform
the knowers search for insight, showing that the methodological origin and
production of insight lies in a heuristic structure (p. 44). For instance, symbolism is
a heuristic technique (cf. p. 18). However, the insights discussed in chapter 2 are
taken by Lonergan from the field of empirical science; having contrasted the scientific
developments of understanding with those of mathematics (such as discussed in the
preceding chapter), he probes into the origin of those clues that facilitate the initial
insight. He maintains that in the act of inquiring human intelligence already
anticipates the act of understanding after which it is striving. The content which is
anticipated has properties which serve as the heuristic clues that lead into insight
situations. Lonergan isolates two separate groups of heuristic structures: the
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classical (the abstract and systematic which is the convergence point for concrete
particulars) and the statistical (the boundary norm of systematic abstraction from
which the concrete cannot consistently and pervasively diverge).
In chapters 3-5 Lonergan uses a deepened study of math and science to
consolidate his position with respect to insight, classical and statistical heuristic
structures. Statistical laws, according to Lonergan, deal with particular events and
frequencies thereof (p. 53), while classical laws (formed by the abstraction from
similarities in data) state either the relation of things (i.e., the concrete
unity-identity-whole grasped in data as individual, cf. p. 339) to our senses (thus a
descriptive conjugate, the thing being a thing-for-us) or to one another (thus
explanatory conjugates, the thing being a thing-itself) (p. 79). However, all heuristic
structures are of themselves empty and anticipate a filling. The anticipation of thisfilling process itself is used by Lonergan to demonstrate the canons of empirical
method (e.g., selection, operations, relevance, parsimony, and complete explanation).
Due to the presence of inverse insights Lonergan sees the inevitability of statistical
residues in our scientific explanations.
In chapter four Lonergan attempts to deal with the complementarity of classical
and statistical investigations, having recognized the duality involved in the
intelligibility he takes to be immanent in positive data and the domination of theconcrete by the abstract and systematic. He sees a complementarity between them
as types of knowing: in their heuristic anticipations (i.e., either of the systematic or
the non-systematic), procedures, formulations, methods of abstraction, verification,
and data explained. Beyond the fact that classical and statistical methods
complement each other as cognitional activities, Lonergan believes that the results
of both can be combined into a single world view (which incidentally contrasts with
those of teleology, determinism, evolution, and indeterminism all alike), a world view
which is determined precisely by this simultaneous affirmation of both classical and
statistical investigations. Lonergan asserts: . . . heuristic structures and canons of
method constitute an a priori. They settle in advance the general determinations,
not merely of the activities of knowing, but also of the content to be known (pp.
104f.).
In chapter 5 Lonergan shows us the result of his bringing classical and statistical
methods together; it is his notion of emergent probability: the successive
realization in accord with successive schedules of probability of a conditioned series
of schemes of recurrence (pp. 125f.). It is the immanent intelligibility which is
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aimed at by empirical method and which exhibits the inner design of the world
process (p. 128). Emergent probability is the successive realization of the
possibilities of concrete situations in accords with their probabilities (p. 171), the
world of scientific expectation. According to Lonergans philosophy of science,
space is the ordered totality of concrete extensions, and time (just as simply) is the
ordered totality of concrete durations (p. 143). The concrete intelligibility of both is
found in their function of grounding situations and successive realizations in accord
with probabilities (respec-tivelyp. 172). Thus Lonergans view of emergent
probability is founded upon his view of concrete space and concrete time. One can
best understand it by thinking of concrete extensions and durations (i.e., space and
time) as the matter of which emergent probability is the intelligible formbeing
immanent in the matter (cf. p. 172). Cosmology has come within the range of
empirical science alone!
In chapters 6 and 7 Lonergan turns to the activities of intelligent common sense,
and then in chapter 8 he brings common sense together with his previous discussion
of science. Chapter 6 sets out the pure theory of common sense, and chapter 7
discusses its dialectical involvements. As an intellectual development, common
sense is seen by Lonergan as a spontaneous inquiry, accumu-lation of related insights
(i.e., the process of leaning) and collaboration advanced by commu-nication (p. 175).
It is characteristic of common sense to remain incomplete as a specialization ofintelligence, waiting for one key insight into a situation at hand (pp. 175, 177). The
concerns of common sense are concrete and particular, have no use for technical
language, and are concerned with things for us (pp. 176-178); therefore, Lonergan
sharply distinguishes common sense from theoretical science (pp. 178f.). He
maintains that the development of practical common sense entails a change in its
subject, and as well a change in its object: the making and doing which common
sense aims at involve a transformation of man and his environment (p. 207).
In chapter 6 Lonergan had discussed the various patterns of experience known
in common sense (e.g., the biological, the aesthetic, the intellectual, the dramatic),
and this led him into a survey of the individuals problems as connected with
dramatic bias (the oversights caused by psychological undercurrents and which is
fostered by repression and inhibition, characterized by a failure of smooth
performancepp. 191-196); the counterpart to this discussion in chapter 7 is
Lonergans analysis of intersubjectivity and the tension plus dialectic of social order
(pp. 211-218), flowing from which is his detailing of individual bias (stopping of mans
intellectual development at the egoistic level, cf. pp. 219f.), group bias (the
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self-serving reluctance of society to move toward the changes dictated by
intelligence, cf. p. 223), and general bias (the universal lag of intelligence occasioned
by a generalized empirical method (parallel to the empirical method as it relates to
sense data) which, as applied to the data of consciousness, consists in determining
patterns of intelligible relations that unite the data explanatorily.
Such generalized method deals with a multiple of conscious subjects and their
milieu as well, and this brings in the instrumentality of the dialectic (a pure form with
general implications which enables a general form of a critical attitude, applicable to
any concrete unfurling of linkerd but opposed principles that are modified
cumulatively by the unfolding: cf. p. 244). Lonergan has now reached the point
where he can, in chapter 8, draw the necessary distinction between things and
bodiesonly the former are intelligible unities to be grasped within the intellectualpattern of experience, the latter being as significant for animals as they are for
common sense. A body is the already out there now real (p. 251), but a thing is
an intelligible unity which need not be bodily at all (p. 268); the failure to reach this
critical position accounts for the endless chain of philosophic positions according to
Lonergan, and he thinks that only a dialectical analysis which is based on this critical
position will allow one to go on to a philosophy of philosophies.
Things are concrete, intelligible unities. As such, all are alike. Still they are ofdifferent kinds, not merely when described in terms of their relations to us, but still
more so when explained in terms of their relations to one another. For there is a
succession of higher viewpoints; each is expressed in its own system of correlations
and implicitly defined conjugates; and each successive system makes systematic what
otherwise would be merely coincidental on the preceding view-point . . . Moreover,
emergent probability is extended to realize cumulatively, in accord with successive
schedules of probabilities, a conditioned series not only of schemes of recurrence
but also of things (p. 268).
We can now summarize Lonergans view of science and common sense.
According to him they are separate and incomplete cognitional proces-ses. While
common sense investigates things in relation to us, science investigates things in
relation to each other. The objective of science is complete explanation which can
be verified in descriptions of direct experience having formalized scientific method,
Lonergan explicates its structure and points out the kind of world which it
presupposesthereby showing the application of an a priori within knowledge and
experience, and proposing that ones method legislates the types of answers which
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he will deem admissible.
There are three basic methods in science, each having its own peculiar heuristic
structure. The classical method assumes that similars are to be similarly
understood, and these similarities are amenable to mathematical expression; its
objective is to ascertain the unspecified correlation which must be specified. The
statistical method is used to detect probabilities since the coincidental aggregates or
particular individuals do not neatly conform to the expectations of classical method.
The genetic method discovers intelligible patterns, allowing for the subsumption of
the histories or significantly dissimilar individuals under common genetic principles.
Lonergan sees the advantage or investigating methods (instead of synthesizing facts
and laws) as being the elimination of any need or constant revision contingent upon
new scientific discoveries; the methods will persist in that they determinebeforehand which data and principles may count as scientific advances.
Turning then to common sense, Lonergan sees this understanding of things as
related to us as dominated by practical concerns which can in the long run obstruct
the pure, detached, unrestricted desire to know. Certain biases can lead to scotosis
(the unconscious closing off of an insight) which become evident in psychological
breakdowns, soci-etal disruptions, and world crises. Nevertheless, it must be
remembered that common sense does validly yield insight into concrete situations; itis just that the shortcomings of common sense must deprive it of any central position
in the solution to philosophical problems.
Now as to the relation holding between science and common sense, Lonergan
sees them as complementary. This thesis is tested against the issue of thinghood,
for therein science and commons sense would appear to conflict: science seeing
things as wavicles which are verified by sense data yet ontologically distinct for them,
while common sense simply takes things to be concrete, publically accessible. The
reconciliation between these positions is found (through a critical use of dialectic) in
the higher viewpoint of metaphysics which draws proper and necessary distinctions.
Lonergan says that the scientist is in error by supposing that intelligible objects, since
things must be related to each other, must be imaginable objects existing out there;
on the other hand, common sense mistakes everyday appear-ances for the intrinsic
natures of things them-selves. Lonergan overcomes the standoff here by
integrating the insights of both science and common sense in the intellectual pattern
of experience which takes the knowable to be the real. Thus science and
common sense are equally forms of knowledge which can come up against and
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understand reality.
In chapters 9-10 Lonergan comes to the point; chapters 1-8 are given as a
communication of the necessary prior insights which lead into the last two chapters
of Part I, the area of critical judgment. In terms of the cognitional structure which
Lonergan discusses in chapter 9 as the final outcome of his previous analyses,
chapters 6-7 set forth the level of presentations: that is, the empirical raw
materials for intelligence which are ineffable by themselves; chapters 1-5 set forth
the level of intelligence (which follows the level of presentations in the cognitional
process): that is, the acts of inquiry, understanding, and formula-tion. In chapters
9-10 Lonergan comes to the point of asking whether the preceding discussion is so, is
representative of the actual state of affairs; this question is handled through his
analysis of the cognitional process as such and of reflective judgment.
Chapter 9 deals with the notion of judgment and the overall cognitional
structure. The content of a judgment is a proposition (p. 271) and involves a
personal commitment (p. 272); being the answer to a question for reflection (p. 272),
a judgment (in terms of Lonergans scheme, to be discussed presently) is the final
and total increment in the cognitional process (p. 276). This process moves on
three successive levels. First there is the level of presentations, the level of
empiricism and common sense wherein the raw materials for intelligence aresupplied; this level cannot yield understanding of itself. This level is presupposed by,
and complements, the second level in the cognitional process, which is the level of
intelli-gence; here the acts of inquiry, understanding and formulation take place (e.g.,
what? why? how often?). Then because we conceive in order to judge, every
question on the level of intelligence leads invariably on to questions for reflection.
This is the third level of the cognitional process; this level calls for a further kind of
insight and judgment which relate to the notions of truth or falsity, certitude or
probability (though not here in the sense of frequency). Thus each level of the
cognitional process is distinguished by the addition of a new dimension in mans
thinking; the attitude of an inquiring mind which effects the transition from one level
to the next does so by means of questions.
Overall the cognitional process is a cumulative affair (cf. p. 275) wherein the
human mind goes about its proper business of, not contemplation, but adding
increments to its habitual knowledge. Lonergans idea of a cognitional structure is
actually quite a bit simpler than it might sound. What he is essentially setting forth
is this pattern: the knower is confronted with certain empirical situations (i.e.,
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presentations) which raise ques-tions of intelligence in his mind; having formulated
an initial answer by means of an insight, he then asks whether his formulation is true
or whether he can have certitude about it; upon reflection of these questions on the
rational level he finally makes a judgment (answers yes or no). Lonergan
schematizes his analysis of the cognitional process in the following way (each Roman
numeral represents an advanced level, and on each level the progression moves from
left to right and moves onto the next level by means of questions):
I. Data. Perceptual Images. Free Images. Utterances.
II. Questions for Intelligence. Insights. Formulations.
III. Questions for Reflection. Reflection. Judgment.
Thus, the knower moves from empirical conscious-ness onto intelligent
consciousness, and finally onto rational consciousness; in all this he is impelled
forward by the driving desire to under-stand. The last thing which we need to add
to this exposition is the tenet that this triple-level cognit-ional process operates in
two different modes. The direct mode begins with the data of sense (i.e., empirical
science) and proceeds through the three steps; the results of anyone level in the
cognitional process in the direct mode can supply data of consciousness (theexperienced work of inquiry, insight, and formulation, etc.) which become the
starting point for the introspective mode of the cognitional process (which completes
the transi-tion from level to level). Hereby Lonergan ac-counts for all kinds of
thinking and presents know-ing as a dynamic structure (facilitated by insight).
The only thing that remains now is for Lonergan to explain in chapter 10 his
notion of reflective understanding. He takes it to be an insight which meets
questions for reflection and which leads on to judgments (thus is formally parallel to
the acts of direct or introspective understanding discussed just previously). In
grasping unity, or system, or ideal frequency, a reflective understanding also grasps
the sufficiency of the evidence for a prospective judgment (p. 279). When certain
evidence is taken to be sufficient, the prospective judgment is seen as virtually
unconditioned. Thus the reflective understanding transforms a prospective
judgment from a conditioned status to that of being virtually unconditioned; this it
does by seeing what the conditions of that prospective judgment are and noting
their fulfillment (p. 280). A reflective insight grasps this pattern and by a rational
compulsion the judgment follows; hence Lonergan maintains that the judgment is
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implicit in the cognitional process even before the judgment actually comes about (p.
281). Lonergan next goes into an extended examination of the various types of
judgments that knowers make, and he summarizes his discussion in chapter 10
thusly:
Prospective judgments are propositions
(1) that are the content of an act of conceiving, thinking, defining, considering,
or supposing,
(2) that are subjected to the question for reflection, to the critical attitude of
intelligence, and
(3) that thereby are constituted as the conditioned.
There is sufficient evidence for a prospective judgment when it may be grasped
by reflective understanding as virtually unconditioned. Hence sufficient evidence
involves
(1) a link of the conditioned to its conditions, and
(2) the fulfilment of the conditions.
These two elements are supplied in different manners in different cases.
In formal inference the link is provided by the hypothetical premise, If the
antecedent, then the consequent. The fulfilment is the minor premise.
In judgment on the correctness of insights, the link is that the insight is correct if
there are no further, pertinent questions, and the fulfilments lies in the
self-correcting process of learning reaching its limit in familiarity and mastery.
In judgments of fact the link is the correct insight or set of insights and the
fulfilment lies in present and/or remembered data.
In generalizations the link is the cognitional law that similars are similarly
understood and the fulfilment lies in such similarity that further, pertinent questions
no more arise in the general case than in the correctly understood particular case.
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In probable judgments the link is that insights are correct when there are no
further pertinent questions and the fulfil-ment is some approximation of the
self-cor-recting process of learning to its limit of familiarity and mastery.
In analytic propositions the link lies in rules of meaning that generate
propositions out of partial terms of meaning and the fulfilment is supplied by the
meanings or definitions of the terms (pp. 315f.).
This then completes a broad outline of Lonergans basic epistemological position.
Through chapters 1-10 he has laid out a psychologism which centers in the event of
insight, relates the various methods of knowing, and expands into a general
cognitional structure. This is cognitional activity as activity in Insight.
These first ten chapters represent the first step in Lonergans overall argument
in Insight; they are followed by three subsequent steps in chapters 11-20. Therein
Lonergan develops his view of the self-affirmation of the concrete subject (knower)
as a transcendental condition implicit in cognitional acts, his method and content of
metaphysics, his view of proportionate being, the implications all this has for ethics,
and then finally his view of transcendent knowledge (general and special). It is
quite clear that Lonergan sees his cognitional theory as exercising a fundamentalinfluence in metaphysics, ethics and theology (cf. p. 389). However, in
consideration of time, space, and the specific scope of this paper (the epistemology
of Lonergan), only an abbreviated exposition of these secondary developments
would be appropriate. Moreover, if the epistemology previously expunded turns
out to be faulty, the foundation underlying the later metaphysics and theology will be
dissolved and thereby leave any extended consideration of these aspects of
Lonergans thinking useless.
Based on his analysis of heuristic structure and the place it has in cognition as
an activity aiming at truth and oriented toward objects, Lonergan renders the
unusual definition being as whatever is known and remains to be known (p. 350).
Being may be known either by experience, intelligent grasp, or reasonable
affirmation; and because these three ways all disclose distinct aspects of reality,
being should be viewed as proportionate. Metaphysics, then, becomes the integral
heuristic structure of proportionate being (p. 431).
Combining his cognitional structure with a Thomist ontology, Lonergan identifies
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potency with experience, form with intelligence, and act with affirmation. At the
level of common sense and science things have simple potency, form, and act; at the
higher standpoint of metaphysics, though, the thing has a central potency, central
form, and central act. The views of thinghood in science and common sense
parallel Aristotles substantial form, while in metaphysics all contradictions are
resolved by an integrating principle of viewpoint-unification (the intrinsic
intelligibility of being and the central form of reality being perceived in metaphysical
thinking).
Because knowing is more than just taking a look at the world, and due to mans
unnrestricted desire to understand completely, levels of further questions take him
on to the realm of the transcendent (pp. 635ff). His limited capacities will mean
that the range of possible questions will always be larger than the range of possibleanswers for man (p. 639). The content of the unrestricted act of understanding
would be the idea of being; as such it would have to be absolutely transcendent (pp.
644ff.)not just things, but the general idea of being which lies behind things.
However, Lonergan feels that to understand being is to understand God (p. 658), for
they have the same properties. In this case the conception of God is the most
meaningful concept to man since being in the core of meaning (p. 669). To say that
God is real is to say that He is the object of a reasonable affirmation, which
amounts to saying God exists. Therefore, Lonergan feels that our restrictedunderstanding extrapolates back to an unrestricted act, i.e., God (p. 670). His basic
theistic proof then is: If the real is completely intelligible, God exists. But the real
is completely intelligible. Therefore, God exists (p. 672).
The higher level of supernatural knowledge (with its conjugate forms of faith,
hope, and love) was anticipated, then, all along in the lower con-text of cognitional
theory; from the psychologism of insight Lonergan has mounted to a universal
viewpoint. As he sees it, the inner dynamism of inquiry has brought the knower
from an autonomous science to a universally relevant theology; indeed, grace does
perfect nature after all! On page 748 of Insight we find an assertion also given on p.
xxviii of the preface; thus as the brackets of Lonergans study, this assertion shows us
the significance of insight according to his theory: Thoroughly understand what it is
to understand, and not only will you understand the broad lines of all there is to be
understood but also you will possess a fixed base, an invariant pattern, opening upon
all further developments of understanding.
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Appraisal
The fact that Lonergans epistemology is staked on the psychologism he sets
forth in Insight leaves his position in a weak and vulnerable condition from the outset;
he would have to possess privileged access to all human psychological-intelligent
processes in order to argue as he does, but he clearly does not have such an ability
to know whether I reach all my conclusions via the pattern of data-presentation,
insight, and reflec-tive judgment or not. He is merely arguing from the similarity of
outward acts when humans are intelligently engaged in thought to an assumed
identity of cognitional structure; at best this is an argument from silence (seeing that
nothing is known about the internal mental acts of others), and at worst it is the
fallacy of false cause (attributing the wrong cause to the similarity of outwardresponses in a variety of knowers).
Lonergans viewpoint pivots on his notion of the unrestricted, driving desire to
understand, for it is this desire which initiates and sustains the cognitional process.
This drive prompts further and further questions, mounting onward from one level to
the next; it inevitably leads to God as the unrestricted act of understanding, the
absolutely unconditioned condition of all being. So then, the driving desire of
mans mind demands for its fulfilment the complete intelligibility of the universe, apremise necessary for Lonergans theistic proof. However, it is not at all clear why
an argument which moves from the human desire for intelligibility to the putative
existence of an objective intelligibility does not amount to simple wishful thinking.
Moreover, by admitting that there is mystery in the natural world, Lonergan
precludes the possibili-ty of mans driving desire for understanding being satisfied; in
this case the complete intelligibility of the world rests ultimately on faith: Therefore,
Lonergans autonomous proof of Gods existence turns out to be no proof
whatsoever. Indeed, even if Lonergans odd God did exist, the intelligibility of the
universe would only be from a supernatural standpoint and thus irrelevant to human
science and philosophy. Again. we must question whether this supposed driving
desire to understand actually leads inevitably to the Roman Catholic God when in
terms of the manifest results of the history of philosophy we find a motley array of
systems which commonly oppose the scholastic position.
Furthermore, one does not have to search very long to find someone within his
own community or neighborhood who does not seem to have a very strong desire to
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learn or understand at all; indeed, in terms of the revelation of God in Scripture we
should maintain that no one at all seeks to understand God: Throughout his
discussion Loner-gan has committed the customary normalist fallacy; consonant
with his Romanist training, Lonergan does not appear to take the noetic effects of
the fall of man into sin very seriously at all. So much is this the case that he even
attributes unethical acts to oversights of intelligence rather than to any depraved
nature and corrupted mind-set. In terms of what the Bible describes in man, and in
terms of what we actually find in man, the driving desire to know which men are said
to have by Lonergan is far from detached and pure; it is resistive to God and lustful
throughout. That is why behavioral aberrations are not simply caused by flights
from insight (cf. p. 191) and certainly are not cured by intellectual insights (cf. p. 201)!
It would appear that Lonergans psychologism actually embodies a false psychology
of man, an erroneous view of the primacy of mans intellect, and an inadequate viewof sin.
Lonergans idea of cognitional insight is also beset with difficulties. His idea of
discerning Platonic-like relations between the particulars of empirical presentations
falls short of taking account of the phenomenological orientation of mans knowing
process. In fact, men do not encounter isolated, brute facts of sensation (e.g.,
spherical red) which they put together into intelligible unities (e.g., apple); all of
mans experiencing is controlled by interpretations which he already possesses andbrings to the facts. The facts which man encounters, moreover, are themselves
expressions of the divine interpre-tation of the cosmos and fit into the intelligible
pattern of the divine plan; thus insight into the relations holding between various
clues cannot even get off the ground if one is going to insist on an autonomous
attitude from the start. In the case of autonomous intellectual process there could
be nothing into which an insight might be had, for no presentation could stand alone
without at least an initial interpretation assigned to it; since this is the case, an
insight can never be genuinely indepen-dent of outside considerations.
Next, we would ask if the simple insight into a patterned coherence of elements,
traits, or clues says anything at all to us about the truthfulness of that point of view.
Through any given number of points there are an infinite number of geometric
designs which could accommodate the point locations; of themselves these points
do not determine a right or wrong pattern of explanation. So also, an insight might
draw all the disparate elements of presentation together into an interpre-tation or
formulated law, but any nominalist will be quick to challenge the normativeness of
this one insight among many. Lonergan simply assumes that we will recognize the
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truth when we reach it (p. 3OO)an assumption which begs the question
throughout the gamut of the history of philosophical dispute! If men recognize the
truth when they reach it, Lonergan has a lot of explaining to do as to why men never
reach it or why they so pervasively will refuse to recognize or acknowledge it.
If Lonergans notion of insight appears to have the rationalist cast about it
(mans mind is normal and able to attain to ultimate truth in its own ability), it
contrawise also has an irrationalist cast about it. As noted above, Lonergan thinks
that insights are preconceptual events likened to a leap and to a lightening flash; this
all sounds strangely like a mystical experience, an unpredictable, unteachable,
unstructured process of irrational achievement of rational outlook! Finally, we
would ask if it is actually true that images are necessary to having insights; must all
discoveries and scientific or philosophic formulations be arrived at pictorially? Itcertainly seems that the laws of logic are discernable without pictures, and one can
have an insight into a musical score without conjuring up an image in his mind can he
not? If Lonergan expands the idea of image to include all symbolic representations
(e.g., logical signs, musical notes), then his point about insights leading to
formulations can readily be reduced to a trivial declaration that one must use
formulation-symbols if he is going to arrive at a formulation of intelligence. This
same general line of criticism applies to Lonergans idea that insights are
pre-conceptual; it certainly seems possible (and not altogether uncommon) forpeople to have insights which are occasioned by the proper and suggestive
correlation of certain concepts themselves.
With respect to Lonergans views on science and common sense it would seem
that he has assumed that methods of science themselves are constant through all
changes in content; however, even the methods of science have developed and
changed over the years. The arbitrariness of Lonergans views is perhaps evident in
the fact that he refuses to assimilate classical and statistical method to each other, a
task which is logically conceivable and which has been attempted before; by keeping
these two methods separate Lonergan is able to go on to his view of emergent
probability, etc., but he fails to show why these two should be accepted as diverse
and irreconcilable methods. Why should random behavior not be treated as a
conjunction of classical laws instead of as statistical law, for instance?
Furthermore, Lonergan does not show why the emergent probability from
classical and statistical methods is not merely a temporary inadequacy in human
understanding rather than the objective structure of the world (as he propounds).
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Even if the structure of emergent probability were an accurate representation of the
world itself, it is most difficult to see how Lonergan gets from this point to his
cosmology grounded in God and comprised of necessarily dependent beings; this
movement of thought has all the signs of being dictated by a preconceived goal
rather than moved along by the natural logic of the subject matter and discussions.
Earlier we had noted the weak tenability of Lonergans position because of his failure
to have private access to all cognitional activities; the same weak tenability is evident
when we realize that the only thing which is necessary for a refutation of Lonergans
extended case is for the heuristic structures of existing scientific methods to change
(thereby showing that they are not final)a possibility which is highly likely if we
listen to the renown philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn.
Turning to Lonergans views on common sense, it would appear that he isconfronted with the horns of a dilemma: either the driving desire to know may be
engaged as much by practical problems as by disinterested inquiry, or common sense
insights are of inferior truth value than scientific ones. Lonergan cannot accept the
latter view because he affords common sense the status and ability of insight; yet the
former alternative endangers the very disinterestedness and detachment of the
driving desire to understand (fragmentation into mere practical questions would
arrest intellectual development). We must wonder, also, as to the real value of
common sense when, after seeing its downfalls and dangers, Lonergan says that itmust be refined and corrected within the dialectic of the communitywhich is itself
admittedly biased as well! Similar to the case of classical and statistical method, we
need to ask Why Lonergan draws a sharp distinction between common sense and
theoretical science instead of trying to combine them into a common approach;
there are prima facie indications that common sense and science enter into all of
mans reasoning experiences (with different emphases dependent upon the subject
matter and investigator at hand). The implication of arbitrariness again suggests itself
in Lonergans argument.
There are problems to be found also in Lonergans notion of a cognitional
structure. The idea of a structure of cognitional process is a metaphor built up from
a misleading view of mental substance (which can take on structural properties and
distinctives) that can be easily confuted from either modern philosophy or the
Scriptural view of mans soul (heart, mind). If there is no substance inherent to
mind, then the idea of a cognitional structure is nothing more than a way of seeing
things; it certainly cannot be made the basis for a far-reaching metaphysical theory!
Moreover, in what sense are we to think of a cognitional process as isomorphic to
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the metaphysical structure? Why should we assume that it is so? Would a variety
of cognitional structures commit Lonergan to a variety of metaphysical situations?
Finally, because Lonergan reverts to a dialectical scheme to handle all
disagreements of philosophical outlook at the metaphysical level, he apparently has
precluded the possibility of antinomies inherent in mans knowledge as he tries to
probe to the ultimate metaphysical truths of the world. However, he could only
make a successful go of his dialectical method, then, if he were to demonstrate the
complete intelligibility of reality; if he does not present cogent reasons for assuming
this complete intelligibility, then his theistic p roof also falls by the way as something
less than an argument along with the credibility of his dialectical method.
Finally we must call into question the overall possibility and validity ofLonergans argumen-tative logic. He claims to be autonomous in his discussion of
epistemology, and he claims that his epistemology entails and drives him on to his
views of metaphysics and theology. However, it is quite apparent that one cannot
draw this mislead-ing line between epistemology and metaphysics; the
epistemological and methodological stance assumed by a philosopher is assumed for
some reason and in order to best arrive at true conclusions about the states of affairs,
and these reasons as well as the ability to compare the success of competing
positions for engendering true conclusions depend upon a modicum of metaphysicalunderstanding of the world already. Therefore, ones metaphysics informs his
epistem-ology as much as his epistemology informs his metaphysics.
The idea of a completely neutral method or epistemology is a completely
egoistic fiction of rationalism. An autonomous epistemology is not able to
theoretically ground the laws of logic which it employs or the canons of uniformity
upon which it depends; an autonomous epistemology cannot intelligently explain the
successful interaction of synthetic facts and analytic laws in mans thinking. Thus an
autonomous epistemology amounts to either sheer arbitrariness (and therefore
should not command our serious attention) or to the denial of a theoretically
justified doctrine of knowledge (in which case the position is self-vitiating and should
be rejected on the most elementary level of consideration). In accepting the logic
of natural theology, Lonergan implicitly undermined his whole study of epistemology
and metaphysics; in his attempt to explain the groundings of epistemology on an
autonomous basis he precluded the success of his endeavor. And because he
founds his metaphysic and theology in his epistemology, those two outlooks must be
rejected with the same stringency that demands the rejection of his problem-laden
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theory of knowledge.
Before closing our consideration of Lonergan we can briefly sketch some specific
difficulties in his metaphysic and theology. In common with all unscriptural thinking,
Lonergan is pulled apart by the opposite poles of rationalism and irrationalism: for
instance, he tries to combine the determinism of classical laws with the
indeterminism of statistical method, he hold to the rationalistic doctrine that man
must drive toward the limit of omniscience while simultaneously believing the
irrationalist tenet that it is impossible to know all things due to the inevitability of
mystery and distortions. In his metaphysics Lonergan dubiously stretches the
potency-form-act motif which was helpful in analyzing common sense to apply it to
the thing itself (a semi-Kantian thing-in-itself which is outside ordinary human
experience and the reach of normal science); it is questionable whether the fact thatcognitional theory influences metaphysics logically justifies inferences from the
structure of cognitional processes to the constitution of ontological structures.
And yet such argumentation dominates the viewpoint of Lonergans Insight.
Lonergans infer-ence would be valid if and only if he could show that no other
cosmology or metaphysic can account for the structures of the cognitional pro-cess,
and such a universal negative argument simply cannot be adduced (especially on
Loner-gans autonomous platform). Consequently, the argument of his book mustbe seen as faulted. Lonergan could only see methods and cognitional processes as
the foundation for inference to cosmology and metaphysics (rather than specific
instances of them) if he were a Kantian (i.e., holding that the knowing subject
imparts the very structures to knowledge, experience and nature); yet Lonergan is
the diametric opposite of a Kantian since, instead of limiting his conjectures to
human experience, he goes after the things in themselves, even applying the
structure of the cognitional process to God! In the case of Lonergan we find a most
radical subjectivism, a case wherein epistemology, cosmology, and theology all
collapse into a psychologism of the knower as subject.
It is clear that Lonergan has abandoned any truly transcendent starting point
which would ground philosophic thinking in the word revelation of a transcendent
God; Lonergans position is com-pletely immanentistic (despite his intentions!). By
means of his analogy of Being Lonergan forces the knowing subject to become God
projected, and this in order to prove the existence of this God who is mans image!
Professor Lonergans investigations and study were never truly independent of
theological commitment as he had claimed; all along he was working on a scheme
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which of necessity worships the creature rather than the Creatora most definite,
and erroneous, theological commitment. There would, advancing to other
difficulties, seem to be a few contradictions in Lonergans view of being which need
resolution: he says being is the knowable, yet a state of affairs (cf. pp. 348, 358); he
says being is univocal, yet analogical (cf. pp. 361f.); he maintains that being is, and is
not, a genus (p. 367).
Lonergans thinking becomes completely obscure when he holds that the core of
meaning is the intention of being (p. 359); what sense is to be made of that?
Turning finally to Lonergan s own theology we observe that, along with all the past
scholastics, he thinks that he knows that God is but not what God is (cf. p. 634).
When Lonergan identifies Being with God he begs the crucial question of his study;
why, after all, should one just assume a Thomistic notion of God? In a strange formof argumentation Lonergan thinks that the problem of evil (a problem which he had
not taken very seriously in his first seventeen chapters we would note) pushes us to
affirm Gods existence (in the egoistic sense that we need a grounding for
explanation and rationality); how-ever, the problem of evil is usually taken to dictate
against Gods existence, and it is not clear why Lonergans autonomous theology
does not suitably collapse under, that problematic. Lastly we would indicate that
Lonergan, just as his Thomistic predecessors, constructs a proof of God as an
unrestricted act of understanding and thereby makes Him as isolated and irrelevantto the world as Aristotles unmoved mover and entails that He has the same difficulty
in contacting the created world as the God of Aquinas did.
Rehabilitation
Despite all its encumbering fallacies, arbitrari-ness, and philosophic difficulties,
the writings of Bernard Lonergan are not devoid of formally helpful insights. If his
credible points were to be taken and placed upon a presuppositional and Scriptural
foundation there might be a prospect for Christian epistemology being advanced in
some areas. Two areas where Lonergan comes close to offering significant aid to
the Christian apologist are: his position that ones method determines the content of
his conclusions (cf. pp. 104f.) and his more or less transcendental proof of Gods
existence (cf. p. 672). In both of these cases the important insights would have to
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be taken out of the problematic and immanentistic context of Lonergans Thomistic
thought and replanted in a Biblical world-view.
Lonergan might also be the formal jumping off point for genuinely Christian
philosophers to explore the significance of that process of coming to understand
which is designated insight. This notion should profitably be used for comparison
and contrast with the noetic operations of the Holy Spirit in inspiration, inward
testimony and illumination of the believer, and common grace operations whereby
even the unbeliever is enabled to come to some fundamental understanding of his
world. If the notion were purged of its mystical connotations and qualified with
ethical consider-ations, insight might be a valuable didactic cate-gory for Christian
philosophy. But again, if it were to become so it would have to be reworked within
the presuppositional viewpoint of Scriptural thinking.
As noted in the introduction to this paper Bernard Lonergans philosophy is an
anomaly if one is not expecting anything of serious philosophical import from the
Roman Church today. The preceding exposition hopefully demonstrated that.
However, the subsequent appraisal and rehabilita-tion suggestion should have also
made manifest that in the long run Lonergan has really not presented anything new
to us; what we have in his case is simply a redressed form of medieval Thomism. As
the Reformation vigorously opposed such a position, so also reformed thinkers todaymust challenge this persistent heresy so that we do not become like unto it and so
that its proponents will not be wise in their own conceits (Proverbs 26:4-5).