Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Allgemeine Befangenheit (general bias), d. sündige Zustand des Menschen; Luther, Reformation, Gnade, Werkgerechtigkeit; Kontinuität oder Dis- mit dem Weltprozess

Kurzinhalt: To introduce an element such as essentially corrupted nature would be to explain human reality as sufficiently different in structure to be discontinuous with an explanation of world process which satisfies the canon of parsimony.

Textausschnitt: 7.6.3 Sinful Man and Human Agency

72/7 Now it would seem that this view of the human situation places considerable emphasis upon the role of subjective human agency in social and historical success and failure. And it might seem that in spite of his rather pessimistic account of the human situation, nonetheless Lonergan views the problem in the human situation as one which demands a response at the level of human agency and one for which human agency is an adequate response. Professor Gustafson might argue that such a view lies open to a critique from a Protestant theologian for misconstruing the state of human sinfulness. (236; Fs)

73/7 In his Protestant and Roman Catholic Ethics, Professor Gustafson notes that a basic difference in their respective approaches to human sinfulness has traditionally separated Catholic and Protestant theologians. Quite generally, the theologians of the Roman Catholic tradition have tended to conceive man in terms of his origins in God and in terms of his natural orientation towards God and towards his own highest good: (236f; Fs)
The ultimate end of humans is God; [...] Humans are also naturally inclined toward their natural end or good; thus there is a ground for a natural morality available to the knowledge of all rational persons.1

74/7 This view of the continuity between the natural order and the divine order, combined with a recognition of some capacity of intelligence to guide moral action towards this end has led to a conception of moral action, in the Catholic tradition, as contributing towards salvation. (237; Fs)

To be properly oriented toward the natural good is one dimension of being properly oriented toward God. Thus a frame is set in which specific infractions of the natural moral order, specific sins, are salvifically deleterious, and right moral acts (in accord with the natural moral order) are salvifically beneficial.2

75/7 In Professor Gustafson's view, this overall conception of morality and its continuity with salvation (in combination with other factors) tended to shift attention toward particular sins as concrete acts and away from sin as a basic condition of man. (237; Fs)

To Luther, as it has to many Protestants since the time of the Reformation, this preoccupation with avoiding sins for the sake of salvation sounded like 'works-righteousness' (eg: Werkgerechtigkeit). It sounded as if salvation is earned on the basis of meritorious works rather than received as a free gift of God's grace.3

76/7 The Reformers viewed the state of the human condition to be not so much a matter of man's more or less direct orientation towards God as man having turned his back on God and not trusting him. Original sin turned man against God, perverting his desires and distorting his reason.4 And since this original fault was not a moral fault but a religious fault, the only appropriate correction can be an act of God. (237; Fs) (notabene)

If sin is basically unfaith, a lack of trust in God, the antidote had to be faith or trust in God. No moral rectitude could achieve faith; to be properly oriented toward the natural moral good did not set one on a course toward salvation. Faith had to be a response to the free gift of God's grace. Grace was strongly perceived to be mercy, and not so much the rectification, redirection, and fulfillment of nature.5 (notabene)

77/7 There is a sense here in which the Reformers viewed the state of human condition as beyond the capacities of men to rectify, in any significant way, through the development and exercise of natural abilities. Only the free and gracious initiative of God can make a difference in this condition. And man participates in the rectification, not by moral rectitude, but by responding with trust in God's gratuitous activity. The moral action of which man is capable flows as an effect or a consequence of God's gift of righteousness.6 (237; Fs) (notabene)

78/7 It is clear that Lonergan's emphasis upon the upward dynamism of finality, his general preoccupation with cognitional and responsible skills, and most of all his account of the human condition in terms of the relative insufficiency of these developed cognitional and responsible skills place him soundly within the Catholic tradition as Gustafson has characterized it. The question remains, however, whether Lonergan, in his somewhat novel, emergent probability conception of intelligent and responsible activity, still remains open to the Reformers' charge of 'works-righteousness' and their accusation that Catholics have tended to ignore the essentially theological dimension of sin. (237f; Fs)

79/7 It is essential to recall that the general bias is fundamentally a statistical law.7 The relative insufficiency and infrequency of developed capacities and skills is an f-probability for which there is no further explanation in terms of, for example, corrupted nature. To introduce an element such as essentially corrupted nature would be to explain human reality as sufficiently different in structure to be discontinuous with an explanation of world process which satisfies the canon of parsimony. In addition such an explanation would require that human goodness be explained in terms of God's selective dispensation of grace. And whether such a doctrine of election could ever avoid the pitfalls of a gnostic stratification of humanity into the 'children of light' and 'the children of darkness' remains to be seen. In any case Lonergan would argue that introducing such a radical discontinuity as essentially corrupted human nature is neither necessary nor is it unconditionally warranted by the data on human life. His account of the dramatic bias, the egoist bias and the group bias all explain not only the failure of intelligence but also its intermittent and habitual perversion in individuals and groups. And the intimate dialectical relationship between the intellect and the experiential manifold which it orders, allows a distorted intelligence progressively to distort the whole range of human performance so that human spontaneity in all spheres of action becomes perverse. The structure of these biases explains the Reformers' perverse human nature. The structure of history wherein one generation's insights establish the conditions for the activity of the next explains how perversity continues and accelerates. And the statistical fact of the general bias explains the proliferation of the perversion. (238; Fs) (notabene)

80/7 But while the general bias is fundamentally a statistical law, there remains the possibility of occurrence of a systematic element that is in continuity with finality, which would increase the f-probability of developed 'competence.' And this, I would argue, is what Insight, chapter twenty, on 'Special Transcendent Knowledge' is all about. Furthermore, this would explain Lonergan's development of the notion of 'conversion' in Method in Theology. The general relationship of Insight's account of understanding and its biases, to Method's account of the religious subject and his or her conversions can be conceived as a relationship of systematically operative skills to the conditions associated with their f-probably developed performance. The ever-widening circles of intelligent, reasonable and responsive schemes of acts are the systematically operative skills. The developmental stages of growth and, more profoundly, the conversions with their corresponding graces are the conditions whose fulfillment results in the jump in f-probabilities of competent performance. This, too, I would argue, could be the clue to understanding and integrating the respective emphases of the Catholic and Protestant accounts of morality and human sinfulness. But before these insights can be developed a basic presentation of the possibilities for the reversal of the general bias is required. (238f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Systematische, nicht-systematische, zufällig, unbestimmt; Münze: warum Zufall in einer Reihe von Münzenwurfen?; inverse Einsicht

Kurzinhalt: If the tossing of a coin is fully determined by the laws of physics how can there be an element of randomness in a series of tosses?

Textausschnitt: 23/3 One of the prevailing theories on statistical knowledge discussed in Randomness affirms that there exists no objective correlate in being for an inverse insight. The whole of being is systematically interrelated. Knowledge is only of 'classical' laws (laws which express a unified set of direct insights). And thus randomness, or the absence of a systematic, intelligible unity to data or to a process is merely an illusory appearance resulting from insufficient data. Hence statistical knowledge, knowledge which paradoxically grasps a sort of 'intelligibility' in randomly occurring events, is merely an imprecise substitute for complete knowledge of systematic relations.1 (69; Fs) (notabene)

24/3 McShane works towards developing a response to this challenge by introducing two examples, the movement of billiard balls on a table and the movement of a penny through a fair toss.2 I will discuss briefly this second example. When a fair coin is tossed the outcome of heads and tails from a succession of tosses would appear to be randomly or non-systematically distributed. In view of our contemporary knowledge of the laws of physics one might ask why the outcome of each toss could not be predicted successfully. But the fact remains that such prediction, under normal circumstances, is not possible. This resistance to prediction is in some way related to an absence of reason governing the processes involved in a succession of coin tosses. And this absence of reason manifests itself in the absence of system in the distributions of heads and tails in a succession of tosses. How can this be? If the tossing of a coin is fully determined by the laws of physics how can there be an element of randomness in a series of tosses? (69; Fs) (notabene)

25/3 McShane's answer involves a distinction between the terms 'non-systematic' or 'random' and 'indeterminate.'3 The toss of a coin is in no way an indeterminate process. Given enough time and enough data on
(a) the initial position of the coin,
(b) the precise motion and force imparted by the toss,
(c) all the intervening motions and operative forces, and
(d) the characteristics associated with the fall of the coin, the exact motion of the coin and thus the outcome of the toss conceivably could be accounted for. Thus the process is determinate inasmuch as it is determined by a complex of factors that can be understood in each case. (69; Fs)

26/3 But there is something queer about the way that the process is understood.4
(1) The toss consists of a succession of stages each of which involves the operation or intervention of a complex of conditions. There is no way of knowing prior to any toss (except under controlled conditions) what conditions will be operative at each stage. The very presence of any one of the conditions can be decisive for the outcome of that toss. And so no single act of understanding can grasp a generalizable pattern to the conditions operative throughout every occurrence of a succession of coin tosses. (69f; Fs)

(2) The reason why such a single act of understanding is impossible for a succession of tosses is because each condition of each toss is itself conditioned by a multiplicity of further conditions. As each condition is listed in terms of its own complex of conditions the list yields a diverging series. Each condition may be intelligible in terms of its own complex of preconditions. But the mere presence or absence of any one condition in the process is decisive for the outcome of the toss. Such presence or absence alters not simply the particular values and magnitudes in the toss but rather the entire intelligibility of that instance of the process. Each individual toss can only be understood by:
(a) performing a succession of acts of understanding of each possible condition in terms of its own complex of preconditions;
(b) judging whether and how the results of each successive act of understanding brings its respective condition to bear on the process; and
(c) grasping the resultant interaction among the particular operative conditions in that instance of the process in a subsequent act of understanding. This subsequent act of intelligence, far from grasping an intelligible unity proper to the generalized act of 'tossing a coin' grasps only the particular, unique relations among all the previous insights that were required to understand this particular toss. To understand this toss requires not only this one final act of understanding but all the previous acts which determined what conditions were operative in the toss. And the relationship among all the individual acts of understanding is not a generalizable intelligibility proper to all instances of tossing a coin.5 (70; Fs)

(3) Continued attempts to grasp an intelligible unity common to a succession of instances of coin tossing quickly brings an intelligent investigator to conclude that such attempts do not and can not lead towards a generalizable understanding of all instances of tossing a coin. There are too many conditions and pre-conditions that operate differently in each toss. And extremely small variations in each condition and pre-condition have a decisive impact on the outcome. Each toss seems to have a pattern of interrelated conditions that is for all intents and purposes unique. Consequently intelligence is led to conclude that, in any sequence of tosses there is no reason why one result should prevail recurrently over another.6 (70; Fs)

27/3 This final act of intelligence is not a failure to perform an act of intelligence. It is itself an act of intelligence. And what it grasps is an absence of a stable intelligible unity governing recurring instances of the process, and consequently an absence in intelligible reason why one or another result should regularly prevail. The process is named a non-systematic process and this final cognitional act which grasps the absence of stable, recurrent system is the devalued inverse insight. Like all acts of intelligence the content of the inverse insight goes beyond the data to affirm a generalization that is verified in instances of performance of the experiment.7 And somehow even though we admit the possibility of a long run of heads in a fair coin toss we tend to doubt whether any single intelligibility would be found to explain such an unlikely occurrence. The fact is that the continued operation of gambling casinos and lotteries never ceases to verify this particular absence of reason that is at the root of the laws of probability. (70f; Fs)

28/3 The difference, then, between the discharging of a battery as an example of a systematic process and the toss of a coin as an example of a non-systematic process rests in the difference between what can be generalized about a succession of occurrences of a class of events or processes. (71; Fs)

29/3 (A) The insight that grasps the intelligibility of any one instance of a systematic process is the same insight that grasps the intelligibility of all instances of that process. The insight is generalizable because the intelligibility governing the process is stable (invariant) under ranges of environmental conditions.
whereas
The insight that grasps the intelligibility of any one instance of the non-systematic process is different from the insights that understand each other instance of that process. The insight is non-generalizable. And a generalizable intelligibility is not to be found because the intelligibility governing the process is not stable under ranges of environmental conditions. This fact, this lack of a unified, generalizable intelligibility in all instances of the process, is what is generalized as relevant to that class of process. This grasp is the inverse insight. (71; Fs)

30/3 (B) The intelligibility that is common to all instances of the systematic process decisively relates what is particular to each instance of the process.
whereas

The intelligibility that is particular to each instance of the non-systematic process decisively interrelates what is common to all instances of the process. And so there is no generalizable intelligibility associated with the outcomes of a succession of occurrences of the process. (71; Fs)

31/3 It is interesting to observe, here, how the act of classifying events and processes and the act of understanding their intelligibility are interrelated differently in systematic and non-systematic processes. In a systematic process there is a set of insights which distinguishes this class of process from another. But there is also a set of insights which understands the systematic operation of each instance of this class of process. The classifying insights and the insights that understand the process both apply to each and every instance of the process. However, in a non-systematic process there is a set of insights which classifies the process and which applies or corresponds to every instance of the process. But there is no common set of insights which understands the outcome of each trial in terms of its conditions. And this absence of correspondence between classification and explanation in non-systematic processes will be a key element in understanding what Lonergan means by probability. (71f; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Unterschied zw. klassischer und statistischer Methode

Kurzinhalt: klassische Methode: die Natur von ...; statistische Methode: Zustand von ...

Textausschnitt: What is significant here is that Lonergan's account notes a difference in the classical scientist's and the statistical scientist's concern with events. The classical sciences seek to understand an event as the outcome of determining conditions. But the statistical sciences seek to understand the event in terms of its relations with other events whose recurrence defines the state of a population.

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: f-probability, v-probability (Wahrscheinlichkeit); Was-Frage, Ist-Frage; Verwechslung beider Wahrscheinlichkeiten; Beispiel: Kartenspiel

Kurzinhalt: The first and basic step is to distinguish between probability as an answer to a what-question and probability as a quality of an is-answer: the former is f-probability, the latter is v-probability.

Textausschnitt: 55/3 McShane's distinction between is-questions and what-questions is based in Bernard Lonergan's account of the second and third types of cognitional operations.1 In performing the second type of operation the subject wants to understand natures and states. But the product of such a set of acts initially is nothing more than a good idea. To move beyond good ideas requires a shift in one's mental attitude. The ideas are viewed with what might be called here a 'hermeneutic of suspicion,' (to borrow a term from Ricoeur). Can the ideas be verified? Are they the case? And this new mental stance with its concern for evidence characterizes the third type of cognitional operation. (81; Fs)

56/3 The term or object of this operation is not principally the consistency of logic, the unconditional necessity of the hypothetical syllogism. Rather, the object is 'v-probable' facticity. The scientist wants to know as best he or she can what is so, in fact, and not what could conceivably be otherwise. It is this concern with facticity, with particular times and places, that distinguishes the third from the second type of cognitional operation. The second type of operation seeks intelligibility, whether of the classical or the statistical type (with its curious element of absence of intelligibility). The third type of operation seeks to go beyond the intelligibilities grasped in insights and to establish whether these insights integrate all relevant experiential data and thus correspond to the recurrent intelligibility immanent in the ongoing routines of human experience. Do the insights completely satisfy the demands of the question, and do they 'fit' with the data of experience? This is the concern of the third type of question. (81; Fs)

57/3 In the common practice of empirical science answers to is-questions include an indication of a degree of certainty, of a 'probable' certainty. But the term 'probable' here means something quite distinct from the probability that I have been discussing so far. Thus McShane coins the term 'f-probability' to denote the probability proper to statistical science and 'v-probability' for the probability of confirmation or verification in both statistical and classical science.2 (81; Fs) (notabene)

58/3 Most simply, f-probabilities and v-probabilities concern respectively what-questions and is-questions.3 (81; Fs)

The first and basic step is to distinguish between probability as an answer to a what-question and probability as a quality of an is-answer: the former is f-probability, the latter is v-probability. To distinguish them, as we shall see, is not to separate them; they are in many ways interlocked. But without the distinction, which is based on the two different mental stances, the character of their interlocking would be permanently obscured.4
59/3 F-probabilities concern distributions and patterns of distributions of frequencies of events. And the f-probability answers the question 'what is the pattern?', 'what is the ideal frequency?' V-probabilities, on the other hand, concern judgments about the correctness or truth of the answers to what-questions. And these judgments answer is-questions: 'is the law verified?', 'is the distribution normal?' In addition, f-probability does not pertain to an individual case. F-probabilities (in terms of this analysis) are ideal frequencies from which individual cases will always diverge non-systematically. And so when applied to individual cases an f-probability is only a guess.5 The inverse insight 'there is no reason why' which is at the basis of the meaning of f-probability affirms the absence of evidence relevant to individual cases. (82; Fs)

60/3 V-probability, on the other hand, affirms not the absence of evidence relevant to individual cases but the relative sufficiency of evidence available for affirming the truth or falsity of both laws and individual cases. (82; Fs)

Both a guess and a probable judgment are based on incomplete knowledge: intelligent reflection in either case shows that evidence is insufficient for certainty. In the case of the probable judgment that insufficiency is partial: there is some approximation towards sufficiency which can be grasped as such, leading to the modest commitment of a probable judgment, a judgment which is probably true, which converges in a non-statistical sense on true judgment.6

61/3 At this point two possible confusions can arise. First, some debates about the subjectivist school on probability, noted above, arise as a result of the implementation of f-probabilities in the formulation of v-probable judgments of truth. Thus the role of probabilities in statistical and classical science is doubly confusing. It is common practice to perform a succession of verification tests, both in classical and in statistical science, and to express the v-probable truth of an hypothesis in terms of the f-probable frequency of occurrence of test results that fall within a commonly accepted range. The fact that test results cluster around statistical norms bears witness to the fact that testing procedures cannot completely isolate interferences, inaccurate readings, poorly controlled tests, etc., etc. But the statistical norms in the test results are to be understood in terms of a reflective act of intelligence correlating the accepted f-probability of favourable test results with the intelligibility expressed in the insight, to pronounce a v-probable judgment of truth on the hypothesis. (82; Fs)

62/3 The second possible confusion concerns the role of f-probabilities in reasonable betting on individual cases.7 Thus the question can arise whether an f-probability can be the v-probable certainty of an individual occurrence. Clearly, given the option, it would be 'reasonable' to bet on drawing a face card from a euchre deck. And the proper fraction two-thirds that expresses the f-probability associated with the appearance of a face card in a succession of draws figures heavily in the explanation why such a bet would be 'reasonable.' Nonetheless two-thirds is not the v-probable certainty that a face card will be drawn in a single case. This is so firstly because v-probabilities (as defined here) are predicates of judgments of matters of fact. They are not relevant to predictions. We might want to use the term 'likelihood' to designate the relevance of prior evidence to predictions in statistical experiments. (82f; Fs)

63/3 Secondly, the proper fraction two-thirds does not affirm that one-third of the available evidence is missing. The fact is that this f-probability does not express the relative sufficiency of evidence bearing upon this case. The f-probability is one hundred percent of the available evidence bearing upon this case but because the event is the outcome of a non-systematic process all the available evidence still tells nothing about the outcome of this particular draw. There is no reason why any one of the twenty-four cards in the deck should prevail over any other. And it is this 'no reason why' that accounts for the fact that gamblers do not regularly lay fraud charges against casinos when improbable occurrences result in their financial destruction. Individual cases diverge non-systematically from probabilities. (83; Fs)

64/3 How then do f-probabilities figure into reasonable betting on the likelihood of outcomes in particular cases? The answer suggested here has three parts. (83; Fs)

(a) The question 'is it reasonable to bet on drawing a face card from a euchre deck?' is not properly a question of the truth of fact of an occurrence or explanation but a question for deliberation. 'Should I act in this way or not?' The question is on Lonergan's fourth level of cognitional operations.8 And while such a question for deliberation demands empirical facts, it is not answered by them. Questions for deliberation intend future prospects, goals, values, and actions that will realize such prospects. (83; Fs) (notabene)

(b) Assuming that I have decided to place one bet on drawing a face card from a euchre deck the question becomes one of anticipating the possible results of an individual outcome of a non-systematic process armed with an f-probability. 'Is it likely that I will draw a face card?' The occurrence or non-occurrence of the likely outcome will not verify or falsify the f-probability. And so there is neither an f-probability nor a v-probability applicable to the anticipation of drawing a face card. (83; Fs)

(c) But there is an imprecise but relevant meaning to the term 'likely' and this meaning is integrally related to the f-probability, two-thirds, associated with a succession of such draws. The likelihood or the reasonableness of the bet consists in the recognition that
(i) there is no knowledge available to predict individual cases,
(ii) the best available knowledge is the f-probability, two-thirds, which is the mid-point from which a large number of relative actual frequencies of drawing a face card will diverge non-systematically, and
(iii) this f-probability is to be accounted for in terms of the fact that a euchre deck has twice as many face cards as numbered cards. (83f; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Weltsicht: Aristoteles, Galileo; Unterschied zw. Aristoteles u. Galileo: Abstraktion; Galileo: das Naturgesetz umfasst das Partikuläre und das Allgemeine; deterministisch verstandene Materie

Kurzinhalt: Both types seek understanding of systematic relations, of classical laws, but both conceive the meaning of the term 'law' so as, finally, to preclude statistical knowing as a distinct type of knowing.

Textausschnitt: 2/4 "In an effort to gain some preliminary foothold on this mountainous issue of world views I have summarized, quite briefly, Bernard Lonergan's provocative sketch of four other world views that can be contrasted with emergent probability.1 There is no claim here that this summary represents in any way an adequate account of the thought of any of the great men or women who can be identified with these views. But I think that Lonergan'sketch can help to call attention, again, to the import of notions of randomness and system both for one's anticipations of the structure of reality and for one's view of the status of cognitional operations and objects in relation to this reality." (99)

3/4 The first two of the four world views presented for comparison are the 'Aristotelian' and the 'Galilean' views. Both types seek understanding of systematic relations, of classical laws, but both conceive the meaning of the term 'law' so as, finally, to preclude statistical knowing as a distinct type of knowing. The 'Aristotelian' view regards world process as consisting either of cause and effect or of mere coincidence. The regularities of the heavenly bodies explain the coincidental operations and interactions of terrestrial causes. And thus all relations are finally systematic when understood in terms of the motions of the eternal heavens. The 'Galilean' view, on the other hand, pronounces earthly contingency an illusion by distinguishing merely apparent secondary qualities presented in sense experience from the 'reality' of primary qualities that are grasped in mathematical equations based on this experiential evidence. In this view the acts of scientific understanding expressed in these mathematical equations do not omit or leave behind (as unexplained) the particularity or contingency of concrete times and places (the coincidences that were omitted by the 'Aristotelian' laws but subsequently explained away in terms of the eternal laws of the heavens). Rather, natural laws, in the 'Galilean' view are immediately attached to or embedded in the basic 'prime matter,' the stuff of the universe which is perpetually in motion. Thus the natural laws yield a complete and thorough account of all of reality. (99f; Fs)

4/4 The key difference between these two views lies in the meaning of the term 'abstraction.'2 In the 'Aristotelian' view it is understood that laws grasp and express what is intelligibly similar in two or more cases of an object, an event, or a process. But the law says nothing about the particular locations, the particular magnitudes, the particular times of occurrences of two or more instances of the same class of object, event or process. The law 'abstracts' from what is particular or coincidental about the two instances. And such coincidences are explained as resulting from multiple convergences of other operative laws. The operations of all terrestrial laws could, ultimately, be traced back to their originating cause in the heavenly motions and thus the contingencies that are 'abstracted' from in the natural laws are explained away finally in terms of a first cause. In the 'Galilean' view, however, no such appeal to heavenly first causes can be made and so the particularities of two instances of the same class of object, event or process has to be accounted for. This is done by positing a basic prime matter which takes the 'form' of the intelligibilities expressed in mathematical laws in various different times and places. The laws do not 'abstract' from particular, contingent times and places but constitute the 'form' which prime matter takes on in different times and places. Thus the laws, finally, explain both generalities and particularities in a perfect, classically understood, mechanistically determined universe of basic, prime matter. (100; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Weltsicht: Darwin; Indeterminist: Realität nur auf atomarer Stufe (Quantum mechanics); alles ist nicht-systemaisch

Kurzinhalt: But this contradiction is obscured by the overwhelming emphasis upon the evident fact of randomness and its explanatory import for chance variation and natural selection. The 'Indeterminist' world view recognizes this paradox and resolves it by ...

Textausschnitt: 5/4 The 'Darwinian' and 'Indeterminist' world views, on the other hand, both grasp that mere coincidence or contingence is not to be explained away in classical laws. Statistics and the probabilities of aggregates yield explanatory knowledge of reality. But the 'Darwinian' statistical laws apply to species of 'things' and like the 'Galilean,' the 'Darwinian' view conceives such species in terms of observable variations in basic matter and not in terms of intelligibility that 'abstracts from' or disregards the particularity of times and places. Reality is not intelligibility but 'matter' taking on 'form' in place and time. Thus like the 'Galilean' the 'Darwinian' conception of classical knowledge of species demands an intricate, mechanistically determined web of interrelating classical laws fixing the times and locations of species of things in basic matter. This materialist conception of reality finally precludes the possibility of randomness and the operation of statistical laws. But this contradiction is obscured by the overwhelming emphasis upon the evident fact of randomness and its explanatory import for chance variation and natural selection. The 'Indeterminist' world view recognizes this paradox and resolves it by pronouncing the macroscopic classical laws which yield the appearance of material and of regularity to be mere illusion. The real is the microscopic and the random on the subatomic level. And only the statistical distributions of Quantum mechanics constitute knowledge of reality. Thus all processes are essentially non-systematic or random. Classical or systematic relations are creations of the minds of scientists and observers and are imposed upon data. Without classical unities and processes the non-systematic processes cannot be conceived as randomly interacting classical laws and so all process is conceived as essentially indeterminate. (100f; Fs)













Reality is not intelligibility but 'matter' taking on 'form' in place and time. Thus like the 'Galilean' the 'Darwinian' conception of classical knowledge of species demands an intricate, mechanistically determined web of interrelating classical laws fixing the times and locations of species of things in basic matter. This materialist conception of reality finally precludes the possibility of randomness and the operation of statistical laws. But this contradiction is obscured by the overwhelming emphasis upon the evident fact of randomness and its explanatory import for chance variation and natural selection. The 'Indetenninist' world view recognizes this paradox and resolves it by pronouncing the macroscopic classical laws which yield the appearance of material and of regularity to be mere illusion.
()
Reality is not intelligibility but 'matter' taking on 'form' in place and time. Thus like the 'Galilean' the 'Darwinian' conception of classical knowledge of species demands an intricate, mechanistically determined web of interrelating classical laws fixing the times and locations of species of things in basic matter. This materialist conception of reality finally precludes the possibility of randomness and the operation of statistical laws. But this contradiction is obscured by the overwhelming emphasis upon the evident fact of randomness and its explanatory import for chance variation and natural selection. The 'Indetenninist' world view recognizes this paradox and resolves it by pronouncing the macroscopic classical laws which yield the appearance of material and of regularity to be mere illusion.The real is the microscopic and the random on the subatomic level.

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Individual Bias (Befangenheit): Ablehnung der intelligenten Integration, Verweigerung der Frage, Rückwirkung auf die Spontaneität (neurale Mannigfaltige); Egoismus

Kurzinhalt: ... the failure to integrate properly the demands of the neural and intersubjective exigence with the anticipations of a question, in a scheme of acts involving understanding, judgment or decision.

Textausschnitt: 7.2 Individual Bias

14/7 Lonergan calls individual bias the distortion in the development of an individual's intelligence and the consequently ensuing distortion in his or her whole affective and experiential orientation which results from the refusal to choose the good of order over the individual's egoistically centered desires and fears.1 Such egoism is not to be confused with the individual's desire for his or her own development in virtue, in wisdom and in ultimate happiness.2 Rather, egoism is the exclusion of the immanent drive of intelligence to participate, dialectically, with the drive towards spontaneous, intersubjective unification in the pursuit of the common good.3 It is the refusal to raise and to meet the further questions that arise in the design and execution of one's own projects. And such a refusal constitutes a circumscription of one's own horizons of concern and a limitation that one sets on the range of concerns to which one will open oneself. The intelligence is given free play within the boundaries set by personal desire. But beyond these confines practical intelligence is simply ruled out.4 (214; Fs) (notabene)

15/7 The quest for the good of order was conceived as the dialectically structured drive towards the unification of two principles, the operative principle of intelligence and the principle of mutuality.5 Consequently individual bias will manifest itself as contradicting both principles. As a deformation of intelligence, individual bias contradicts the drive of intelligence to raise and answer the relevant further questions. And as a violation of the demands of intersubjectivity, the individual bias suppresses the spontaneous concern for approval of and approval by others. In addition, since the spontaneous drive of intelligence actually involves its own dialectic operating between an exigence in the neural manifold and a drive to order that manifold, the bias will also constitute a distortion in the experiential orientation of the whole subject. Thus, when Lonergan calls individual bias or egoism 'an interference of spontaneity with the development of intelligence,' his presentation here is somewhat misleading.6 It might seem, from this presentation, that knowing seeks an autonomy from the distorting influences of the other human passions, appetites, feelings and drives. And so in this view the individual bias would be another instance of the intrusion of 'affectivity' into the proper exercise and development of autonomous rationality. But this view stands in contradiction to the thrust of my interpretation of Lonergan's account of the dialectical interaction of intelligence with experiential exigence, on the one hand, and with the principal of mutuality in the dialectic of community, on the other.7 (214f; Fs)

16/7 What intelligence seeks to achieve is not a flight from experiential spontaneity or affectivity, rather, an integration of such affectivity. The neural manifold changes with changes in the subject's environment. And operations in 'the basic pattern of experience' seem to order the neural manifold in accordance with a set of anticipations immanent in the question and in subjective spontaneity on the one hand, and with an intelligibility immanent in the environment manifesting itself as an exigence in the neural manifold, on the other. Thus the drive of intelligence involves the tension between two principles seeking resolution in the adequacy of an appropriate integration of a human person, in the context of a flexibly recurring scheme of acts. The individual bias, then, is not so much an intrusion of the biological or aesthetic, affective or intersubjective spontaneities into the proper development of intelligence, but the failure to integrate properly the demands of the neural and intersubjective exigence with the anticipations of a question, in a scheme of acts involving understanding, judgment or decision. The individual bias is, ultimately, an intelligent, responsible act that does violence to the demands of personal and intersubjective experience. And it does so by failing to carry out its own mandate. (215; Fs)
(notabene)

17/7 If carried on long enough the refusal to raise and to answer the appropriate questions will result in distortions not only in the horizon within which intelligence operates but also in the experiential and intersubjective routines of the whole person. These experiential routines are the basis for the subject's practical interrelations with his or her environment. And so as they become more and more distorted the probabilities for adequate integration become lower and lower. Distorted experience becomes the foundation for distorted understanding and praxis and the bias sets the subject on an accelerating course of decline. (215; Fs) (notabene)

18/7 However, while individual bias is operative in society, the recurrent deformations that follow from operative 'social structures' can in no way be attributed to the individual bias. For while individual bias occurs extremely frequently there are not recurrent patterns or trends associated with stable f-probabilities in identifiable classes of individual bias. And when such recurrent patterns and classes arise then the bias is no longer to be explained in terms of the refusal of the 'good or order' but in terms of deformations in the operative notions of what would constitute such order and in how it is to be achieved. In his account of the dissolution of the possessive market structure in the nineteenth century, Macpherson notes that the development of class consciousness, political articulation, and a vision of alternate social and economic relations among the working class resulted in their becoming aware that the existing 'order' was neither necessary nor in the service of their interests. Thus was lost their sense of equal participation in the marketplace. (215; Fs)

19/7 Furthermore with the universal franchise and the perpetuation of consciously operative class division, the general sense of cohesion, necessary for the functioning of the possessive market structure, was also lost.8 This account illustrates well the fact that operative orders need to be known as in fact 'good.' Bias can be operative recurrently in classes to marshall power in the service of group interests which do not serve the wider common good. But as long as such is known to be the case (and evidence is never long in arising) the fact of order ceases to be the 'good or order.' Lonergan's account of the group bias shows that structural parallels exist between the individual bias and the group bias. But the difference lies in the fact of system operative in the genesis and maintenance of f-probably recurrent classes of deformations in notions of what constitutes the 'good of order.' And while power is an accelerator, power is not the central issue in this account. (215f; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Rekursive Schemen (schemes of recurrence): zirkulär, nicht linear; Wahrscheinlichkeit (probability) als Schlüssel zum Verständis der rek. Schemen

Kurzinhalt: ... recurring events can link together in a string or group so that the f-probable occurrence of the first event is systematically followed by the certain occurrence of the others ... The jump in the probability of recurrence of a scheme is the key ...

Textausschnitt: 4.3 Conditioned Schemes of Recurrence

16/4 The basic insight at the center of Lonergan's notion of the recurrence scheme is that of reflexivity.1 The recurrence scheme is reflexive in the sense that the functioning or operation of the scheme has the effect of curling back upon itself and fulfilling the conditions for the scheme to recur. And this reflexivity is a part of the internal structure of the scheme. Most simply a recurrence scheme is a series of events that occur in a specific pattern or order of succession. But not any pattern or order will do. For what is significant about the scheme is that the events recur over and over again in the same pattern or order of succession. And Lonergan proposes, in the reflexive character of the structure of the scheme, a possible or conceivable explanation for this recurrence of a patterned set of events. In a first type of scheme, the relationship between the events making up the scheme is such that each event in the scheme fulfills the conditions for the occurrence of the next event, and the occurrence of the last event fulfills the conditions for the recurrence of the first, thus beginning the scheme anew. In a second possible type of scheme, the events are all conjoined in an interdependent combination pattern such that once all are functioning the scheme continues to function. In any case, the point of Lonergan's notion of the recurrence scheme is that events conceivably can link together in such a way that it is not an antecedent line or string of conditioned events that accounts for the recurrence of any event but a circular or reflexive structure linking a determinate set of events into an ordered pattern. Lonergan provides a few examples of recurrence schemes. (105; Fs)

In an illustration of schemes of recurrence the reader may think of the planetary system, of the circulation of water over the surface of the earth, of the nitrogen cycle familiar to biologists, of the routines of animal life, of the repetitive, economic rhythms of production and exchange.2

17/4 The recurrence of a scheme can be ensured further by defensive circles of events such that any event which tended to upset the scheme would fulfill the conditions for a succession of further events to occur that would terminate in eliminating the intruder. Again the structure of the defensive circle is the set of links between the events in the circle. Each event fulfills the conditions for the next event (or in a circle of the second type one event conditions the occurrence of all the others). (106; Fs)

In illustration of schemes with defensive circles, one may advert to generalized equilibria. Just as a chain reaction is a cumulative series of changes terminating in an explosive difference, so a generalized equilibrium is such a combination of defensive circles that any change, within a limited range, is offset by opposite changes that tend to restore the initial situation. Thus, health in a plant or animal is a generalized equilibrium; again, the balance of various forms of plant and animal life within an environment is a generalized equilibrium; again, economic process was conceived by the older economists as a generalized equilibrium.3

18/4 The key to understanding the relevance of the notion of recurrence scheme for an account of the relationship between scientific 'levels' and strata lies in Lonergan's definition of probability. Within a particular region or environment there can be occurring a host of types of events. If these events are the outcomes of processes which exhibit an absence of recurring system, then the events will recur irregularly in accordance with a certain f-probability. For each event to occur there will be required the fulfillment of a determinate set of conditions. But because that set of conditions is, in fact, fulfilled in a coincidental convergence of laws and processes, the event occurs irregularly (in accordance with an f-probability). However, given the environmental stability of a certain set of factors or conditions, there are types or classes of events that require only the fulfillment of one or a few conditions for them to occur. And when this one or these few conditions are themselves events of another type which are already recurring within this environment (with a certain f-probable frequency) then the coincidental occurrence of the conditioning event(s) in the right time and place is systematically followed by the occurrence of the conditioned event. Given the stability of the conditions of the environment, non-systematically recurring events can link together in a string or group so that the f-probable occurrence of the first event is systematically followed by the certain occurrence of the others. (106; Fs)

19/4 When the string is extended finally to include an event which conditions the occurrence of the first in the sequence, then the string becomes a loop. In this case the mere occurrence of any one event in the loop sets off a chain that simply continues recurring until something intervenes to break the links. The complete set of conditions associated with the occurrence of any single event in the loop will certainly form a non-systematic aggregate and reach far beyond simply the occurrence of the previous events in the scheme. But given the stable fulfillment of these environmental conditions, for whatever reason in whatever chain of circumstances, it is the set of internal relations linking the events in the scheme that explains the fact that the scheme recurs once it has begun. The initial occurrence of the scheme is in accordance with the coincidental convergence of conditions. But once this occurs the recurrence of the scheme is systematic, and the system is constituted by the terms or events, and the relations linking the events into a scheme. (106f; Fs)

20/4 Lonergan expands his hypothesis to include a notion of 'emergence' that is defined in terms of the calculus of probabilities. Since probabilities - the reference throughout here is to f-probabilities - can be calculated for a succession of occurrences of events of a class, a single f-probability can be calculated for successive occurrences of a set of classes of events. This single probability for the occurrence of the whole set is the product of the individual probabilities. And since probabilities are proper fractions, the product of a set of probabilities is smaller than any of the individual probabilities. But if a set of conditions were fulfilled such that the classes of events began to function as a scheme of recurrence, then, if any one event occurred the whole scheme would occur and would continue recurring. In this case the probability of the whole set would no longer be the product of the individual probabilities. For in the case of a scheme of recurrence whose conditions are fulfilled the occurrence of any one of the events would ensure the occurrence and recurrence of all the others. The f-probability of the whole scheme would then be a new combination (a form of summation) of the individual probabilities which, because of the interlocked character of the events in a scheme, would be much higher than the original product of the events' individual f-probabilities. Lonergan concludes that there will be a leap in the probability of the combination of events, constitutive of the scheme when the prior conditions are fulfilled, and that this new probability will be the probability of the scheme's emergence.4 The jump in the probability of recurrence of a scheme is the key element in the meaning of the term 'emergence.' (107; Fs)

21/4 In addition to the probability of emergence Lonergan introduces the related notion of a probability of the survival of schemes. Insofar as all the related conditions for the operation of a scheme continue to remain fulfilled, a scheme ensures its own survival. And within limited ranges defensive circles can arise to take care of the occurrence of conditions that would otherwise interfere with a scheme. But the continued operation of a scheme depends, finally, on the non-occurrence of any condition or event that would spell the end of the scheme. (107f; Fs)

Accordingly the probability of the survival of a scheme of recurrence is the probability of the non-occurrence of any of the events that would disrupt the scheme.5

22/4 Recurrence schemes involve a conditioned series of events. But Lonergan goes on to suggest that the recurrence of schemes can constitute the fulfilling conditions for the occurrence and recurrence of further schemes. Just as the occurrence of one or more events can fulfill the remaining conditions necessary for a scheme to begin and continue, so too the functioning of that scheme can fulfill the remaining conditions for another scheme to begin and to continue. Schemes can combine such that earlier schemes can function independent of later schemes but later schemes require the functioning of earlier schemes. The result is what Lonergan calls a 'seriation,' a conditioned series of schemes which, like the scheme, continues once begun.6 (108; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Emergente Wahrscheinlichkeit (emergent probability); Erklärungsmodell für die Beziehung zw. den verschiedenen Schichten; Beispiel: 2 Körper im Raum; gemeinsame "Materie" der Arten

Kurzinhalt: Emergent probability would understand world processes in terms of conditioned series of schemes of recurrence that emerge, continue functioning and disappear in accordance with successive schedules of probability.

Textausschnitt: 4.4 Emergent Probability

23/4 Emergent probability is Lonergan's proposal for a world view that could account for the evolution or emergence of new intelligible unities onto the scene of world process and thus account for the relations among explanatory 'levels' or strata of science. Emergent probability would understand world processes in terms of conditioned series of schemes of recurrence that emerge, continue functioning and disappear in accordance with successive schedules of probability. And it is the acts of intelligence which grasp the absence of system in the coincidental manifold of laws operative in the environment, on the one hand, and the operation of system linking the events of the scheme and explaining its recurrence, on the other hand, which distinguish the explanatory structure of this account.1 (108; Fs)

24/4 Sets of laws interact randomly and this interaction results in classes of events recurring with certain f-probable frequencies. At any stage, world process consists of a huge number of sets of variously interacting classical laws yielding lists and lists of classes of events recurring with corresponding schedules of f-probability. At a certain point a given set of types of events recurs, but because the events do not occur within an appropriate temporal or spatial range or succession, they interact only minimally. However, given subtle changes in the boundary conditions of the environment, or given the coincidental occurrence of the events in an appropriate time and place, the types of events in the set are such that they would form a chain or a conjoined set. Thus the first occurrence of the scheme ensures the continued recurrence of the scheme. The pattern recurs because each event conditions the occurrence of the next, or a single event conditions the occurrence of them all. When the complete set of environmental conditions is arranged so as to permit the events linking into a scheme, then the probability of the whole set of events occurring jumps from the product of the original probabilities to a new, higher probability. For at this point the occurrence of any one event ensures the occurrence of the whole set.2 (108f; Fs)

25/4 Two bodies moving through space will continue at relatively constant velocities in relatively straight lines until they come within a particular distance of each other. If their masses are in the proper proportion and if their directions of approach are suitable, then, granting the absence of other masses of significant proportion, the two bodies will begin to orbit around each other in any of a large number of possible (more or less perturbed) elliptical orbits. Thus a systematic process or recurring scheme of events emerges where previously none functioned. A particular set of selected physical laws and numerical values explains the shape of the particular ellipses and thus the schematic or systematic relationships among the events which constitute the recurring pattern of motions. The initial velocities and directions of the two masses and the absence of other masses conditioned the initial occurrence of the patterned motions. But they do not explain the pattern. It is this difference in types of conditions and relations that characterizes emergent probability as an explanatory heuristic. The initial conditions of masses, velocities and directions are one set from among a very large number of possible and probable sets of outcomes of antecedent conjunctions of laws and conditions. The occurrence of any one from this very large number of sets of masses, velocities and directions would suffice to condition the emergence of one or another elliptical orbiting pattern. But it is the fact of this particular fulfillment and not its explanation that is relevant to the system which defines the recurring motion. And this fact is understood not in terms of another classical explanation but in terms of the probabilities associated with the occurrence of the fulfilling conditions.3 (109; Fs)

26/4 In another example the presence of liquid water on the earth's surface and the presence of suitable levels of solar heat will result in the occurrence of the events, evaporation and condensation. But when the atmosphere has stabilized within a suitable range of mean temperatures, when glaciated depressions on continental land masses have been filled to overflowing, when the accumulation and melting of glacial ice have settled into one of a large number of relatively stable patterns, and when the movements of global air masses have settled within a relatively stable range of patterns around and over land forms, then the overall global rates of evaporation, precipitation, surface and underground runoff will settle into a systematic equilibrium arrangement. And this stable hydrological cycle or scheme can itself operate as one of the fulfilling conditions for the emergence and survival of various terrestrial life forms. A complex set of physical, chemical, geological and meteorological laws will explain the particular set of values and relations that define the systematic operation of the water cycle. But only the laws of probability will account for the fulfilling conditions that made possible the actual cycle as it has operated at various moments in the earth's geological history. (109f; Fs)

27/4 The explanation of any stage of world process seeks to conceive that stage in terms of the possibilities and probabilities present in the conditioned series of schemes of the previous stage. The events that recur systematically in the future stage recur only non-systematically in the previous stage, and the movement from the earlier to the later stage consists in the fulfillment of the conditions that enable the events to form a scheme and thus to recur in a certain pattern or order of succession with some regularity. Thus there will be a succession of distinct types of acts of understanding that will be involved in the understanding of any stage of world process. (110; Fs)

28/4 First. A direct insight or a unified set of direct insights grasps the particular systematic relationships among events in schemes and among schemes in a seriation. The intelligibilities defining systematically recurring patterns of events during any stage of world process will be classically unified sets of laws, events and particular values. But the fact that this stage operates in accordance with these particulars and not others is not to be explained entirely in terms of the systematic intelligibilities defining the schemes and seriations. For with respect to previous stages of world process, this stage was merely one among a large number of possible and probable next stages. Thus the account of the systematic relations defining schemes and seriations, far from constituting a complete account of that stage of world process, constitutes only a partial account. The immanent intelligibilities of the schemes and seriations of this stage were one set among a range of alternatives awaiting realization through the fulfillment of conditions. And the alternatives presented by the previous stage of world process are to be understood in terms of the f-probabilities associated with the recurrence of respective ranges of constituent events and conditions.4 (110; Fs)

29/4 Second. The actual schemes and series are conceived as one among a number of f-probable next stages in a succession of conditioned series of recurrence schemes. Among the possibilities presented by the previous stage some will be f-probable for some possible seriations will have their constituent schemes and events actually functioning with some f-probable frequency. Some schemes have sets of conditions fulfilled within appropriate spatial and temporal ranges and so will have an f-probability of emergence. And other seriations have the disadvantage of requiring the sufficiently frequent recurrence of defensive circles to disarm actually occurring events or schemes that would interfere with their systematic operation. The point here is that while a scheme or seriation consists in the systematic operation of its constituent events or schemes, still in cases such events or schemes will be recurring in relative isolation with some f-probable frequency before they begin to function together systematically. Whether or not they begin to function as a scheme or seriation depends upon whether or not a set of conditions essential to their systematic interlinkage is fulfilled. And so the various f-probable next stages will be the various patterns in which actually recurring events or schemes could combine to form a system. They will be probable next stages because there will be (f-probable) frequencies associated with the actually recurring constituent events. And there will be f-probabilities associated with the occurrence or sufficiently frequent recurrence of other conditions which would permit the events to form schemes.5 (110f; Fs)

30/4 Third. But while at any stage there is a manifold of f-probable next stages, only one of these next stages actually occurs. The final act of intelligence which completes the understanding of the actually occurring seriation is that form of inverse insight which is the basis for the statistical form of knowledge. The set of conditions which is actually fulfilled for a set of events and schemes to form a seriation is so fulfilled in accordance with a particular set of numerical values. Similarly the event or scheme which initiates the operation of one of the schemes or seriations that has achieved a probability of emergence, occurs itself in accordance with a particular set of values. But particular cases diverge non-systematically from probabilities and so there will be a residual divergence of such particular values from the statistical norms associated with the various f-probable next stages. This residual divergence corresponds to the absence of system in the complete set of environmental conditions associated with the operation of the actual seriation. And so this third and final act of intelligence, the inverse insight, will complete the understanding of the conditioned series of schemes of recurrence.6 (111; Fs)

31/4 The result of such a succession of stages of fulfilling conditions and schematic interactions of probably recurring events would be the emergence of a higher order genus of 'things.'7 And contrary to the anticipations of the determinist or the naive realist, such a higher order genus of things would be irreducible. For the various evolutionary species can only be explained completely in the terms and relations of their own laws which grasp the intelligibility in the systematically recurring schemes and series of schemes operative in their own physical, chemical or biological sphere. The 'matter' common to all such species would not be conceived as some aggregate of prime particles, but as the concretely intelligible set of recurrence schemes which can be understood in all instances of their specific life form and which alone suffices to explain their functioning.8 (111; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Emergene Wahrscheinlichkeit (emergent probability) - Geschichte, Humanwissenschaften; Steuerung d. Weltprozesses; Geschichte bedingt durch d. Meinungen; Isomorphismus

Kurzinhalt: In short, man is that instance of world process wherein what is intelligible becomes intelligent ... The emergence of cognitionally actuated meaning onto the scene of world process introduces a new class of events onto this scene, a class of events ...

Textausschnitt: 4.5 Emergent Probability and the Human Sciences

32/4 Emergent probability would conceive man as the locus of the realization of a set of successively higher order systematic integrations of the materials and schemes of the four levels of physics, chemistry, botany and zoology. Like the plants, man possesses the capacities to systematize biologically various aggregates of chemical compounds, to adapt to environmental conditions, to develop, and to reproduce single cells and ordered manifolds of cells. With the animals man shares the sensitive appetites and schemes that systematize the lower order organic materials. But unlike the animals, man is characterized by the capacity to effect further systematic integrations of the outcomes of such sensitive schemes in acts of insight, judgment and decision. In short, man is that instance of world process wherein what is intelligible becomes intelligent. With man there occurs the possibility and the probability that the intelligibility immanent in every systematic process, every probability, every scheme of recurrence and every series of schemes can become cognitionally present to a knowing subject intentionally oriented to probably emergent world process. Acts of knowing are probably emergent, higher order systematic integrations of non-systematic manifolds of images and sense data. And as with all schemes and seriations, the higher order system realizes an intelligibility possibly immanent in the lower order manifold in accordance with probabilities. The intelligibility grasped in an insight, the truth affirmed in a judgment, and the value realized in a decision to act all emerge in dynamic processes whose operations are indentical in structure to probably emerging world process. It is this isomorphism which is the basis for Lonergan's affirmation that acts of knowing grasp and affirm the intelligibility immanent in being. The concrete actualization of possible and probable intelligibilities immanent in the non-systematic manifolds of world process constitutes the structure of the dynamic movement of world process. And the cognitional actuation of such intelligibilities immanent in the sensory and imaginative experiences of human subjects engaged in world process constitutes the structure of the dynamic acts of knowing world process.1 (111f; Fs) (notabene)

33/4 Emergent probability can offer to the human sciences a structured heuristic which could explain both the continuities and the discontinuities between the human order and the 'natural' orders of physics, chemistry, botany and zoology. Armed with such an explanatory heuristic the human scientist can carve out a domain of inquiry which is both distinct from those of the 'natural' sciences and linked to them within the context of an overall evolutionary structure. And since the most dramatic dimension of human activity is the act of cognition itself, a human science, so conceived, will have within its proper field of inquiry, the very activity of the natural scientist him- or herself and the relationship between this activity and its results. (112; Fs) (notabene)

34/4 However there is also a second way in which emergent probability can be of service to the human sciences. In addition to knowing intelligibilities immanent in world process humans also implement cognitional skills to constitute new events onto the scene of world process. The isomorphism between the structure of world process and the structure of knowing gives rise to the possibility of subjects coming to understand, not only something which has already occurred, but also the fulfilling conditions for the occurrence of something new, something which has not yet occurred. With the development of some level of cognitional and sensorimotor skills humans no longer need to wait for the appropriate convergence of conditions for an event to occur. Rather we can come to know what conditions need fulfilling and we can coordinate and implement a range of motor skills from our own repertoire (as well as from those of others) to bring these conditions into being. The emergence of cognitionally actuated meaning onto the scene of world process introduces a new class of events onto this scene, a class of events which are constituted by meaning. Consequently the study of world process, when it shifts its focus to include humanity, must now be alert to this new type of event, to the new complex of conditions for its occurrence and recurrence, and to a new set of emergent schemes and series in and of such events. For human history is not simply understood in acts of meanings. It is constituted by acts of meaning and by the structures which condition the recurrence of such acts. (112f; Fs) (notabene)

35/4 Finally there remains a third contribution which emergent probability can make to the human sciences. This contribution comes to light when it is understood that there stands a profound link between the understanding of history in acts of meaning and the constitution of history by acts of meaning. The fact is that we constitute our future history in accordance with our current understanding of ourselves and our history. Our interpretation of ourselves and our history informs the actions in which we shape our future. Consequently emergent probability applied to the field of human history, recognizes that central to the fulfilling conditions for ranges of human futures will be the accounts of human life, human pasts and possible human futures which are generally operative in culture. As human scientists seek to provide tools and materials for the responsible direction of history they discover, to an ever greater degree, that the way people understand themselves sets the ranges of possibility for their future responsible actions. Consequently emergent probability directs the human scientist to an increasing degree to the study of the world of human meaning, to the conditions for the wide scale transformations of meaning, and to the limitations imposed upon possible futures by the ranges of extant meanings operative in culture.2 It is to this constitutive function of meaning in practical intelligence and in history that the following chapters are devoted. (113; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Geschichte als Meinung - 3 Einwände; Gegenpositionen (Unterbewusstsein, ökonomische Verhältnisse) -> Selbstaufhebung des Subjekts

Kurzinhalt: In each of these three objections what is at issue is the extent to which subjective acts of intelligence ... are decisive in constituting the over-arching course of history.

Textausschnitt: 6.4 History as Meaning

34/6 There exist at least three fundamental problems with conceiving the structure and dynamism of history in terms of acts of meaning. My procedure here will be to develop some of the foundational notions operative in Lonergan's account of the structure of history and society in the course of meeting these problems. And so an initial presentation of the problems would be in order here. (177; Fs)

35/6 First. While acts of meaning are certainly performed by human subjects, it can be argued that such acts are seldom, if ever, self-constituting or self-regulating. Rather, a myriad of 'internal' psychic, affective and physiological processes of subjects exercise an overwhelming influence upon human intelligent activity, so much so that (in an extreme view) meanings are essentially derivative of such 'internal' processes. Thus, history, conceived as decisively ordered by acts of subjects, is to be explained in terms of the patterns and regularities of subconscious life or, for example, in terms of repressed sexuality rather than in terms of subjectively constituted meaning.1 (177; Fs)

36/6 Second. While meanings are acts of human subjects, historical processes are rarely intended or foreseen by individuals. The battle plans of generals seldom explain the outcome of wars. In addition, the subtly but pervasively operative symbols and images of a society, of a culture, are rarely the result of acts of understanding of citizens of that society or culture. Thus Matthew Lamb criticizes Wilhelm Dilthey for not adequately handling 'the larger systems in history which could not be understood as expressing a given individual's presence.'2 (177; Fs)

36/6 Third. Meanings of individuals emerge in a social context in which the individual participates. But the individual's mode of participation in that context is, for the most part, determined by the economic structure of that society, its modes of production, its habitual routines, its traditional divisions among classes, its patterns of ownership and control over the institutions of society, etc., etc. It is not the meanings that determine the dynamic patterns of historical change but the operative relations of society and economy and the regular order in which such relations are transformed over the history of civilizations.3 (178; Fs)

37/6 In each of these three objections what is at issue is the extent to which subjective acts of intelligence, and more specifically one's own 'interpretation' of oneself, are decisive in constituting the over-arching course of history. Lonergan recognizes that there is a truth to be grasped in each of the objections. But he would argue that at the extreme pole of each, the significance and indeed the possibility of human knowing and human responsible acting is either precluded or rendered insignificant for the course of human life. Lonergan would note that the very act of putting forward an extreme view, in each case, would involve the subject in a contradiction. For each objection itself intends a truth about human life which is not simply to be explained away in terms of inner or outer pre-conditions surrounding its author's cognitional activity. And each intends a decisive reversal of a long-standing history of misunderstanding, and thus each claims to be a significant contribution to man's development. But it is in coming to understand the truth intended by each objection that a fuller understanding of the role of cognitional and responsible activity in human society and history is to be gained.4 (178; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Geschichte als Meinung; Antwort auf den 1. Einwand; Dialektik, Befangenheit (bias); innere Bedingungen und das dramatische Subjekt; das neurale Mannigfaltige - Streben nach Integration

Kurzinhalt: ... that 'internal' psychic and emotional forces and processes operative at a subliminal level, function to condition, massively, intelligent and responsible activity, to the extent that much, if not all, of human freedom ... is an illusion.

Textausschnitt: 6.4.1 'Internal' Conditions and the Dramatic Subject: Dialectic and Dramatic Bias

38/6 The claim of the first objection is that 'internal' psychic and emotional forces and processes operative at a subliminal level, function to condition, massively, intelligent and responsible activity, to the extent that much, if not all, of human freedom (understood here in terms of intelligent self-determination) is an illusion. To respond to this objection requires introducing Lonergan's notion of 'dialectic.' (178; Fs) (notabene)

For the sake of greater precision, let us say that a dialectic is a concrete unfolding of linked but opposed principles of change. Thus, there will be a dialectic, if:

(1) there is an aggregate of events of a determinate character,
(2) the events may be traced to either or both of two principles,
(3) the principles are opposed yet bound together, and
(4) they are modified by the changes that successively result from them.1

39/6 In the dramatic pattern of common sense intelligence, Lonergan notes that there is operative a dialectical interaction between the spontaneous demands of neural patterns and processes, and the selection, integration and repression of such neural demand functions by the psyche through the conscious operations in the 'basic pattern of experience.' In such operations as seeing, hearing, wondering, understanding, an order or pattern is constituted in a manifold of neural events and processes. But such an order is not from nothing, for neural processes constitute an exigence for a certain range of ordering that leads to a correspondence between, for example, certain patterns of change in the optic nerve and certain acts of seeing.2 Since acts of psychic integration which meet an exigence of the neural manifold never occur in accordance with hard and fast laws, there will generally occur acts in the basic pattern which miss their mark. (179; Fs)

40/6 Furthermore, Lonergan goes on to note that intelligent acts operate in terms of anticipatory structures, practical projects, and social relations of role, identity and status. Thus questions are not only met with incorrect answers, they often invite and encourage incorrect answers when the subject's projects and anticipations do not correspond to the demands of experience. Subjects do not only stop short of correct answers, they also reject correct insights in favour of incorrect ones, in the interests of other ranges of concerns. But because the complete neural manifold presents an exigence for an appropriate integration, intelligence will be driven back to the data, back to further questions as long as satisfactory answers are not found and settled upon.3 (179; Fs)

41/6 The two principles of change, the drive to psychic integration and the exigence of the neural manifold for appropriate integration, operate not only in harmony but also in opposition. Lonergan suggests that much fearful avoidance of questions and concerns, an unhappy subterranean life of questions, experiences and images, and some inhibited performance of psychically disturbed subjects has been explained in terms of the reordering of the neural and psychic manifolds around the repression of the 'dramatic bias.'4 In the measure that repressed questions, experiences, and images arise in wider or narrower dimensions of life, the demand of the neural processes for appropriate integration will continue to drive more or less relentlessly towards surfacing in other areas of conscious life. Thus they operate more or less powerfully as a force or principle that warps the rest of the subject's life of experiences, insights, judgments and decisions.5 (179; Fs) (notabene)

42/6 But the dialectical interaction between the ordering principle of psychic acts and the exigences of neural processes for appropriate order does not only manifest itself in dramatic bias and, at the extreme, psychic aberration.6 For this dialectic drives the subject towards further questions, and further experience when insights fail to satisfy the demands of a question, towards images, music and art when the operative values of a culture cease to nourish, and towards getting in touch with the subject's own feelings when projects, routines, and relations of life become mechanical and unreal. But as life is constituted as much by failure as success the resultant aberrations of dramatic bias will manifest themselves as a principle of social and historical decline, which stands in opposition to the historical operation of the drive of universal finality.7 Lonergan explains the historical principle of 'individual bias' in terms of this dialectic. The historical manifestation of this principle of bias will be discussed in greater detail in the next chapter.8 (179f; Fs) (notabene)

43/6 In response to this first objection, then, Lonergan would argue that there certainly remain neural and affective events which constitute the conditions for cognitional and responsible operations and which function in patterns or schemes that distort and limit the effective range of these operations.9 But such events and schemes of events do not order decisively and determine the cognitional and responsible acts. Rather, the neural and affective events and processes constitute a manifold to be ordered by such psychic operations. Because the ordering process involves the operation of two related but opposed principles of change the process will proceed dialectically as a linked set of changes in the intellect and in the neural manifold, such that each change conditions the occurence of the next. Each psychic integration of the neural manifold operates cumulatively on the materials presented by the previous acts and the combined effects of the linkage and opposition between the two principles both keeps the dialectical scheme operating circularly and keeps the subject either developing or, in the case of prolonged bias, declining until the repression either forces a reversal or destroys the subject. The cumulatively operating acts of integration recur in accordance with statistical laws. And in Lonergan's explanation it is the element of randomness, or absence of reason, at the centre of the statistical laws, which precludes a reductionist explanation and which accounts for the flexibility that dynamizes the operation of the dialectic.10 (180; Fs) (notabene)

44/6 While precluding a reductionist account of acts of meaning, this notion of dialectic put forward by Lonergan makes room for an explanation of human action in terms of the operation of psychic aberration and opens the way for an account of historical events and processes in terms of bias. The difference between the operation of bias and the developing orientation of the dialectic is to be understood in terms of a difference in the f-probable frequency of occurrence of competently performed, cumulatively integrating acts of intelligence and responsibility. Shifts in such probabilities in the lives of individual subjects and in the recurring activities of societies and cultures could be explained in terms of changes in conditions associated with experiences and life routines. And a psychological study of the myriad of ways in which bias manifests itself could well prove a powerful explanatory tool in the hands of the historian. But such shifts in probability, Lonergan would argue, constitute expansions or contractions in the range of effective freedom. Far from precluding essential freedom such shifts in probability demand the notion of essential freedom and its dynamic structure as an emergent integration of a lower order manifold.11 (180f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Geschichte als Meinung; 2. Antwort auf Einwand (Lauf der Geschichte - Absicht des Einzelnen);

Kurzinhalt: In the context of this dialectical interplay between the two drives or principles, conceivably there could be a cumulative structure to the operations of societies and to history.

Textausschnitt: 6.4.2 The Schemes and Series of History and Society: Intersubjectivity and Dialectic

45/6 The claim of the next objection to conceiving history in terms of acts of meaning centers around the fact that no historical event or age would seem to correspond to any one person's act of meaning. People's intentions, insights, plans and projects are one thing. But the course of history is usually something quite different. If meaning is the term of a subjective act, then how are we to conceive history in terms of meaning when it is clear that historical patterns and structures would seem to be operative in historical ages whose subjects could not begin to think in terms of such patterns and structures?1 To meet this objection requires an excursus of some length which will involve the development of some of Lonergan's clues in Insight and the introduction of some insights of Gibson Winter's from Elements for a Social Ethic. But an initial outline of the final response to this objection might help the reader through this excursus. (181; Fs)

[...]


56/6 After this lengthy excursus, then, we can get back to the second objection that has been raised against a conception of human history in terms of operations of meaning. Again, this objection recognized the difference between individual acts of meaning and doing and the random or ordered interactions among such individual actions whose overall course or shape will most usually elude the grasp of acting individuals. From the perspective of this reconstruction of Lonergan's thought it is clear that such interactions do occur, that they constitute the shape or course of societies and of history and that they most often have a structure to their operation that is not understood completely by contemporaries of the society or historical age.23 But as human, history consists of human subjects performing distinctively human acts. And from Lonergan's perspective what is distinctively human about these acts is that their regulative principle is not to be sought in antecedent conditions and environmental schemes but in the schemes immanent to the subject and in the intelligibilities that emerge in acts of knowing, judging and deciding; intelligibilities that are spontaneously learned and routinely performed by successive generations of a society, a culture, an economy. Consequently aggregates and patterns of interactions among human subjects are to be understood in terms of the cooperative schemes that link individual acts. (185; Fs)

57/6 Furthermore there can be discerned a pattern to the emergence and development of such societal schemes that can be understood in terms of the dialectical interplay between the dynamic orientation of intelligent, responsible acts (or their biased orientation in groups where a form of bias prevails), and the spontaneous drive to expression and unification that brings and keeps subjects acting together. In the context of this dialectical interplay between the two drives or principles, conceivably there could be a cumulative structure to the operations of societies and to history. And while this overall, cumulative structure moves towards 'progress,' towards events building upon the shoulders of previous events and schemes, the fact that the structure of the movement is dialectical also explains the possibility and the fact of both short and long term 'decline.'24 (185; Fs) (notabene)
59/6 Thus there will be an overall intelligibility to the dynamic structure of intersubjective schemes. And there will be a further intelligibility associated with the pattern of emergence and development of such schemes. A concrete understanding of the schemes requires a grasp of the structure of cognitional acts and their dialectical interactions as well as a knowledge of the operative trends, skills and routines among the participating individuals. But while such intersubjective schemes and such patterns of development and decline will have an intelligibility, this intelligibility need not have been originated in the mind of one historical actor. (185; Fs)

60/6 One further note would seem to be in order here regarding the subjective genesis of meaning and the spontaneously emergent schemes of society and history. It might seem that this account of society and history, as probably emergent schemes and series, would contradict a conception of history in terms of acts of meaning, on the one hand, and a subjective account of the genesis of meaning, on the other. For if the schemes, and the dialectical structure to the development of the schemes of society and history can emerge independently of any one subject devising and implementing them, then how could one possible call this history human meaning if meaning is conceived as the term of a subjective act? (186; Fs)

(1) What is central to Lonergan's conception of history in terms of acts of meaning is the fact that the significant elements of human history are to be identified as humans performing distinctively human acts. Human life is overwhelmingly and inescapably mediated by language, by ideas, by symbols, by habits, skills, and by all the actions which require at least a minimal performance of operations or groups of operations of intelligence. It is in this sense that Lonergan affirms that the essentially constitutive events of human history are acts of meaning. (186; Fs)

(2) But the sufficiently frequent recurrence of appropriate sets of acts of meaning and intelligently mediated performance skills, all other things being equal, fulfills the conditions for a further emergent intelligibility to world process (the schemes and dynamic patterns of development and decline of society and history). The constitutive events of these schemes and series are acts of meaning. And so an account of the genesis of such acts of meaning remains an essential part of the explanation of the schemes and series. And furthermore, in Lonergan's view, the dynamic structure to the emergence of such schemes and series stands in a relationship of isomorphism to a subsequent act of understanding which would grasp and affirm (thus intelligently actuating) the intelligibility immanent in such schemes and series. It is this relationship of isomorphism in the probably emergent structure of world process and in the probably emergent structure to acts of knowing which explains why knowing can know being and why an act of knowing concretely approaches a relationship of isomorphism with an intelligibility immanent in being. (186; Fs)

(3) As intelligence expands its grasp of social and historical processes, more and more of human history comes within the regulative scope of human responsibility. For the dynamic schemes and series of history come to require, to a greater and greater extent, the understanding of such schemes and series as essentially constitutive elements of their regulation and finally their survival. When massive growths in human populations link the survival of larger and larger numbers of people to the survival of economic, industrial, political, social and cultural schemes, then it would seem that the human race has reached a point of no return. It is this awareness of the fragility of the current historical age, I would argue, which most powerfully dynamizes Lonergan's urgent plea to conceive human history as essentially constituted by acts of intelligence and responsibility.25 (186f; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Geschichte als Meinung; 3. Antwort auf Einwand; Zusammenwirken der 1. und 2. Dialektik; Evolution

Kurzinhalt: ... this third objection asks whether the operations of such patterns and processes do not decisively condition subjective acts of meaning so that, in an extreme view, the self-regulating activity of intelligence and responsibility is precluded.

Textausschnitt: 6.4.3 'External' Conditions and the Dramatic Subject

61/6 The last of the three objections to conceiving history in terms of meaning, which were raised above, concerns the schemes and series of society and history as determinants of the intelligent activities of individual subjects. Whereas the second objection above concerned the role of individual acts of meaning in constituting the patterns and processes of society and history, this third objection asks whether the operations of such patterns and processes do not decisively condition subjective acts of meaning so that, in an extreme view, the self-regulating activity of intelligence and responsibility is precluded. (187; Fs)
62/6 The elements for this response have been assembled. And so this response will be brief. In addition, in the following chapter, I will present a more detailed response to the most influential and articulate formulation of this objection.1 And so many more details on this issue will be found there. (187; Fs)

63/6 This account of Lonergan's work recognizes the emergence of patterns in the operation and development of an economy, a political society. And the conditions within which an individual grows, learns, chooses a career, organizes his or her life, understands him or herself will, in large measure, be set by the contemporary modes and relations of production, the contemporary patterns of circulation and accumulation of capital, and the class structures of the age.2 But, once again, there remains operative an immanent dynamism and immanent criteria to the operations that distinctively constitute human activities as human. This operative principle is linked to the experiential exigence of the neural manifold in one dialectic, and it is linked to this exigence and to a further drive towards intersubjective mutuality in another dialectic. But with the performance of the intelligent and responsible skills there occurs an emergent integration of the materials of the intersubjective environment of the subject's life. Such an integration operates more or less competently in accordance with the subject's developed sensitivity to the demands of the experiential manifold and to the drive towards mutuality. But the ordering principle of intelligent and intelligently mediated acts is on the level of the psychic and not on the level of the neural. Consequently this account of the dynamic structure of such acts precludes a reductionist account of the import of economy and polity on the emergence of meaning. In fact it would seem that the schemes and series of contemporary economy and polity require the relatively developed performance of intelligent and responsible acts within wider ranges of flexibility.3 (187; Fs)

64/6 Furthermore, to understand the contemporary operation of economy and history, to identify the flaws in the current situation, to educate others and raise public consciousness of ills that demand redressing, and to implement changes in the structures of routines and in the policies that regulate such routines will require the performance of these cognitional and responsible operations. And such performance will constitute the essential element in the transformation of economy, polity and history. Efforts toward change will be intelligent and they will have a goal and a preconceived conception of the course of such change. The actual course of change will diverge from this goal either for better or for worse. For changes give rise to further changes that cannot be foreseen. But the continued application of intelligence and responsibility will be required either to evaluate this new course of history and to direct it in accordance with intelligent criteria or to refuse the mandate of intelligence and thus mobilize a principle for its own subsequent reversal. (187f; Fs)

65/6 In summary, then, Lonergan presents his notion of dialectic as an introductory analysis of a structure to the operation of historical process understood in terms of emergent probability. The dialectic operative between the exigence of a subject's neural manifold and the transcendental drive to ordering this manifold in the operations of the 'basic pattern of experience' will constitute a recurrent structure in the development and decline of the subject's intentional operations. Since the subject is never an isolated subject the manifold will always consist of schemes that link him or her to the myriad of elements and processes of his or her 'external environment.' Consequently the neural manifold, the complete and total environment of the subject, will always be changing in accordance with the subtlest physical, biological and intelligent events occurring beyond the 'confines' of his or her own envelope of skin. This dialectic, then, will itself constitute a structure of social and historical process. But in addition to this dialectic, there is an additional dialectic that links the structured occurrence of the operations of intelligence of two or more subjects with the spontaneous, vital and affective drive to mutuality and love between them. And so the two dialectics will operate as engines of social and historical change that function in continuity with the free, intelligent and reponsible operations of the subjects, in accordance with a dynamic pattern that need not be grasped and intended by any of the historical actors, and in a concrete context of conditions whose uniqueness and particularity does not violate the general dialectical structure. (188; Fs) (notabene)

66/6 This emergent probability heuristic, in my view, provides a powerful and distinctive framework for understanding the operations of human history in terms of human acts of meaning. As a generalized heuristic emergent probability recognizes human history as continuous in structure with the longer history of physical and biological evolutionary processes. However, the notions of randomness and emergence allow for, and indeed they explain, a discontinuity as well as a wider structural continuity between human history and physical, biological evolution. At the most basic level this discontinuity consists in the fact that human history is constituted by acts of meaning, and that the development of skills can fulfill the conditions for insights thus systematizing flows of classes of insights and adapting insights to concrete circumstances, thus transforming history. But given the fact of intelligent, responsible capacities, a set of intersubjective, social, economic, political schemes can emerge spontaneously in human societies in a pattern which bears remarkable similarity to the general evolutionary structure in physical and biological spheres. (188f; Fs)

67/6 Thus a new intelligibility arises within human history which is no one's invention. Similarly social, historical conditions can shift the probabilities associated with recurring classes of meanings. These conditions can be fulfilled as a result of coincidental convergences, as a result of wider systematically operative trends in language, symbol and culture, or as a result of insight and responsible political action. And these shifting conditions can operate either to liberate humanity to effective freedom or to distort culture in a form of bias. Human responsibility can come to know bias, and promote the accelerated development of skills and conversions, thus adding a wider proliferation in flexibility and adaptability among human historical operators. And here, now, the parallels with physical evolution appear more and more remote. Finally emergent probability can be known as a heuristic and, in time, a theory of history can bring the dynamics of history under a further dimension of human responsibility when it is discovered that theory can embrace and nurture the random, the non-systematic, and that the norms for meaning, value and history are immanent to human subjects. (189; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Ethik und Geschichte 2; Lonergan: Verhältnis von Natur und Vernunft (im Gs. zu Kant); decline; Freiheit als Integration, Kriterium für Freiheit

Kurzinhalt: ... human freedom is not conceived as randomness or the absence of restrictions but as the capacity for some intelligent self-regulation ...

Textausschnitt: 75/6 Writing almost two hundred years later, Bernard Lonergan works through these same sets of questions in his study of understanding, Insight. But while the philosophers of Enlightenment Europe were championing the radical discontinuities between the human exercise of intelligence and what was then conceived to be the 'lawful' operation of the so-called 'natural' processes of the material and social orders, Lonergan was writing in the wake of a massive scientific discovery of the continuites. Evolutionary theory since Darwin had come to think of man as evolving from the animal world and sharing many biological and social behaviour patterns with the higher animals. Psychological experimentation since Freud and Jung was uncovering vast regions of psychic life whose influence on the exercise of 'reason' was both overwhelming and undeniable. Historians, cultural anthropologists, sociologists and scholars in theology and world religions were discovering the massive import of historical, cultural, and indeed since Marx, economic contexts for the prevailing meanings, themes, questions, concerns, symbols, values and styles of reasoning of any given time and place. And quantum mechanics and the statistical methods in the social sciences were progressively undermining a rigidly determinist conception of the 'lawfully ordered' natural world, and were asking questions about the very meaning of the word 'law.'1 (191; Fs)

76/6 Consequently Lonergan's question about the relationship between individual morality and the course of natural and human history is formulated with a notion of 'ought' or 'good' that is not defined purely in terms of what is autonomous or discontinuous in human rationality and morality but in terms of an overall account of the dynamic structure of world processes, both 'natural' and human. The fact of continuity was, for the most part, taken for granted by Lonergan but it remained for him to develop his account of the structure of such world processes that left an open door for understanding the discontinuities: for randomness, for emergence, for freedom and thus for morality. How can the laws of physics and chemistry, the evolutionary structures of biological, zoological and human processes be understood so as to maintain the ground for generalization, for recurrence, for operative process, for continuity, while at the same time explaining the massive fact of contingency, of randomness, or newly emergent events, processes, and operators? This is the question which occupies the first five chapters of Insight and whose answers are integrated into Lonergan's theory of world process, emergent probability. (191f; Fs)

77/6 We have seen, above,2 how Lonergan understands human acts of cognition, the development of skills, and the integration of groups of such skills in ordered patterns conceived by intelligence, in terms of the structured heuristic, emergent probability. The notion of human freedom was defined in terms of this intelligent integration of skills. And thus the apparent contradiction between human freedom and the operation of laws was, at least in principle, overcome. Again, human freedom is not conceived as randomness or the absence of restrictions but as the capacity for some intelligent self-regulation. Thus human freedom, the foundation for the possibility of moral action and thus an ethics, need not necessarily imply an indeterminism or a relativism. The problem that remains, then, is to determine how Lonergan conceives the criterion for discriminating among possible courses of action conceived by intelligence, and for judging some superior to others. (192; Fs) (notabene)

78/6 Most simply Lonergan develops this criterion for judging moral 'good' in terms of the principles operative in his notions of historical progress and decline. (192; Fs) (notabene)
Just as the counter-positions of metaphysics invite their own reversal by their inconsistency with intelligent and reasonable affirmation, so the basically similar counter-positions of the ethical order through the shorter and longer cycles of the dialectic of progress and decline either enforce their own reversal or destroy their carriers. Just as the heuristic structure of our knowing couples with the generalized emergent probability of the proportionate universe, to reveal an upwardly directed dynamism of finality towards ever fuller being, so the obligatory structure of our rational self-consciousness
(1) finds its materials and its basis in the products of universal finality,
(2) is itself finality on the level of intelligent and rational consciousness, and
(3) is finality confronted with the alternative of choosing either development and progress or decline and extinction.3

79/6 Progress is the dynamic towards, and the structure of emergence and development as it is operative in human history. The essential elements recurring in all of Lonergan's discussions on progress are the notion of cumulation and the mediating operations of intelligence.4 The mediating operations of intelligence are what constitutes and characterize world process as distinctively human history.5 But it is the cumulative nature of development which constitutes the dynamic structure of progress. Consequently an analysis of the notions of progress and decline must begin with and focus upon the specific meaning of the terms emergence and development. The most complete treatment of these two terms is to be found in Insight, chapter fifteen, in the section on 'The Notion of Development.'6 Anyone who is familiar with the range of materials covered in this section will understand that only a brief introduction can be attempted here. (192; Fs) (notabene)
[...] a development may be defined as a flexible, linked sequence of dynamic and increasingly differentiated higher integrations that meet the tension of successively transformed underlying manifolds through successive applications of the principles of correspondence and emergence.7

80/6 Schemes emerge and function when their conditions are fulfilled. And their functioning effects a higher order integration of lower order manifolds. The foundation of the normative dynamism of development is this relationship between the higher order integration and the lower order manifold. For the integration marks the presence of emergent system, emergent intelligibility, in a manifold of events whose recurrence is otherwise coincidental or non-systematic. Such an emergence is not necessarily the emergence of a new recurrence scheme. Rather, the routine functioning of older schemes can have the effect of regularly ordering the materials of a lower manifold. And Lonergan provides a number of examples of such emergent integrations. (193; Fs)

First, there is the already familiar principle of emergence. Otherwise coincidental manifolds of lower conjugate acts invite the higher integration effected by higher conjugate forms. Thus, in our account of explanatory genera, chemical elements and compounds are higher integrations of otherwise coincidental manifolds of subatomic events; organisms are higher integrations of otherwise coincidental manifolds of chemical processes; sensitive consciousness is a higher integration of otherwise coincidental manifolds of changes in neural tissues; and accumulating insights are higher integrations of otherwise coincidental manifoldsof images or data.8

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Exkurs (Gibson Winter, Mead); Intersubjektivität; Dialektik: Streben nach Wahrheit - Anerkennung

Kurzinhalt: ... there are operative two distinct principles of change that correspond to the two levels on which the gesture and response demand reconciliation.1 The first principle is the drive towards intelligibility, towards truth, towards value.

Textausschnitt: Exkurs (eü)

46/6 The following explanation of the overarching schemes and patterns of society and history in terms of a subjective account of the genesis of meaning will involve the heuristic structure of emergent probability. The responsible actions, projects, and routines of two or more individuals can link together to form an operative pattern or scheme in which all members participate intelligently and responsibly but which none need have devised and which none need understand completely for the scheme to operate. Such is the structure of the probably emergent scheme of recurrence. In this account the constitutive elements are acts of meaning (whether acts of knowing fact, or, far more regularly, intelligently integrated sets of performance skills). But the structures of society and history are constituted by the schemes in which the recurring classes of intelligent acts link together in a mutually conditioning pattern. And far from precluding the operation of individual acts of intelligence, such an explanation would require their habitual recurrence. This, in outline, is the response to this second objection. But to develop this notion of social and historical schemes will involve a discussion and development of the notion of 'intersubjectivity.' (181; Fs)

47/6 In Insight, Lonergan points to evidence of a spontaneous, intersubjective bond, operative vitally and affectively, linking subjects together in a common field of experience.1 In Method he introduces 'intersubjectivity' as the 'vital and functional' unity of subjects 'that precedes the distinction of subjects and survives its oblivion.'2 As the spontaneous concern for another's welfare, as the spontaneous empathy with another's object of concern, and as the immediate grasp of the irreductible meaning of another's smile, the intersubjective 'we' has its roots in the vital experiences of human subjects in the biological and aesthetic patterns but continues to operate as a condition for the whole range of intelligent and responsible acts of individuals and cultures.3 But it is in Gibson Winter's Elements for a Social Ethic that we can find an account of the recurrent structure of intersubjective exchange among subjects. (181f; Fs)

48/6 Winter's account of the threefold structure of sociality, developed in Elements, did not draw upon Lonergan's work, but rather sought in the work of Alfred Schütz a corrective to an overly deterministic presentation of George Herbert Mead.4 However, Mead's original account of the structure of gesture and response and Winter's reconstruction of Mead both explain the emergence of social identity in terms of a recurring set of acts which, once initiated, operate in a specific order of succession.5 (182; Fs)

49/6 Mead began with a view of the individual person which was developed in the tradition of behaviorism and pragmatic philosophy, and he sought to find how an individual's sense of identity came to be a social identity.6 He developed a threefold pattern of gesture and response, in which an individual comes to see him or herself through the eyes of another person when he or she initiates a gesture, receives a response to the gesture, and in looking at him or herself through the eyes of the responding person interprets how the gesture must have looked to that other person. Mead argued that our sense of who we are emerges not so much in the picture we form of ourselves through our own acts but in the way that we see them through the eyes of others in the responses that they make to us.7 (182; Fs)

50/6 Winter found Mead's account unsatisfactory because it placed too much emphasis upon the socially determined character of our identity.8 He argued that the response to one's gesture is followed not simply by an acceptance of the other's view of who we are or what we meant, but by a drive to what Winter calls 'unification.'9 If another's response presents an image of who we are and what we meant that differs from what we intended by our gesture, we reflect on our original meaning and try to objectify our own image of ourselves that was implicit in this gesture. We compare this image with that presented by the other's response and seek to reconcile the two images with the other person. Thus the third stage or event in the threefold scheme is a drive to unification that conceivably could involve considerable further gesturing and responding until a unification is reached or until the reconciliation process is given up as beyond the resources of time and place.10 (182; Fs)

51/6 Winter explains this threefold structure of sociality in the terms and relations of a philosophical background that is somewhat different from Lonergan's. Nonetheless his account has the form of the scheme of recurrence.11 Each stage functions as the fulfilling condition for the next stage and each stage is an event that can be classified irrespective of the particular meaning that it intends. The gesture always invites a response and we can all recollect personal experiences wherein responding to a gesture was almost impossible to avoid. The response is to the gesture, and it interprets the meaning of the gesture as well as invites its own confirmation or rejection as an adequate interpretation. And the drive to unification brings both the gesture and the response forward to reconcile them on two distinct levels: on the level of the coherence, the truth or the value in what the subjects intended, and on the level of the relative need for mutual confirmation and approval among the persons in dialogue.12 The proper operation of the scheme requires the fulfillment of a determinate set of conditions: competence in the appropriate range of language, a certain antecedent interest and willingness to see the scheme through to unification, sufficient time and resources.13 And the recurrent operation of the scheme sets the context and fulfills the conditions for the development of virtually all the social skills from the child's most primitive engagement with its mother's gestures of affection to the most sophisticated political maneuverings among heads of state. (182f; Fs)
52/6 It is quite regularly in the context of this threefold pattern that sense and motor skills are learned. And the careful gesturing and responding of a sensitive educator can increase significantly the probabilities associated with the assimilation and adjustment developmental scheme described above. 14 By providing the student with the appropriate clues and by responding with affection and approval when a difficult discovery has been made or a group of operations has been performed successfully, the educator can significantly accelerate the rate of learning and development. (183; Fs)

53/6 In Winter's reconstruction of Mead there can be discerned not only the structure of the recurrence scheme, but also a second instance of Lonergan's notion of dialectic. In the drive to unification there are operative two distinct principles of change that correspond to the two levels on which the gesture and response demand reconciliation.15 The first principle is the drive towards intelligibility, towards truth, towards value. In Lonergan's terms, it is the drive of the transcendentals seeking higher order integrations of experiential data of the neural manifold into intelligible orders and into unified complexes of questions, and answers that meet the questions and lay them to rest. It is the drive to coordinate and integrate the manifold of skills within the subject's repertoire in the light of insights, judgments of truth, affective apprehensions of value and the grasp of possible courses of action that realize new human futures judged to be worthwhile. (183; Fs) (notabene)

54/6 The second principle is the drive towards expression and confirmation of what is understood, judged, decided, with another person. It is the desire to understand and to be understood by another, to love and to be loved as a whole person. This second principle is linked to the first inasmuch as what we seek to share with another and to have understood by another is the content of an intelligent or responsible act. But it is opposed to the first because the drive to expression and confirmation wants a confirmation of the subject as a whole person, and not simply an approval of an intelligently grasped meaning. Thus while the initial gesture invites the approval of the other on the truth or value of what is expressed, the drive towards the intelligent grasp of truth and the affirmation and actualization of value is easily suppressed in favour of the more powerful and the more immediately felt need for the other's affection and approval. Similarly, the massive and exclusive cultivation of the cognitional skills can result in a person so relentlessly pursuing some knowledge that he or she runs roughshod over the feelings of others and finally isolates him or herself from the spontaneous care and concern of others.16 (183f; Fs) (notabene)

55/6 Though the effect of this operation of the three-stage, dialectically operative scheme can be the suppression of questions for intelligence or the alienation of oneself from others, the opposition between the two principles of change as frequently has the effect of driving the subjects to new data, to reformulations of questions, to more remotely related insights, to a reconsideration of the other's position or feelings, or to a rediscovery that other people truly care about one's welfare. And even more profoundly, this drive to unification leads to collaboration in the conception and execution of projects and to patterns of social interaction and organization that pursue a desired result which none could have achieved on their own.17 This operation of the dialectic is fundamentally what Lonergan has conceived as the dialectic of community.18 But with the introduction of Gibson Winter's threefold structure of sociality, the dynamic structure of the operation of this dialectic is clarified and expanded. The tension in the dialectic of community remains, as Lonergan has described it, the tension between 'intersubjective spontaneity and intelligently devised social order.'19 (184; Fs)

56/6 But the introduction of Winter's scheme further explains the structure of the dialectical dynamism involved in the transition from a society characterized predominately by a vital, spontaneous, affective mutuality and a society in which this mutuality is operative in collaborative acts and schemes of practical intelligence that yield greater goods for all. The good of order20 (the intrinsic worth of collaborating towards such further collaborative value) is sought, not originally out of the drive of intelligence but rather out of the drive towards mutuality, collaboration, the sense of approval one gets from belonging and participating in a group. The operations of intelligence are harnessed, first haphazardly, then systematically in service of this drive towards mutual confirmation and mutual love. But intelligence has its own immanent criteria and so the extension of the operations of practical intelligence into the realm of intersubjectivity is the introduction of a second principle or operator that is as uncompromising as the first. The drive towards unification with another needs to be a unification in accordance with the criteria of intelligence as well as a unification in a true, non-abusive care. And while compromise on the principle of cooperation and agreement might seem to yield the tumultuous consequence of anarchy and revolution a compromise of intelligence yields the equally destructive failure of poorly conceived plans and the distortions that ensue from 'group bias.'21 (184f; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Ethik und Geschichte 1; Kant, Problem: Autonomie - Natur

Kurzinhalt: ... that Lonergan's account of the patterns and dynamism of history is at the same time an account of the criterion for an ethics, the criterion for distinguishing among more or less valuable courses of action.

Textausschnitt: 6.5 Ethics and History I: Progress and Decline

68/6 Just as Dilthey conceived that an epistemology and a psychology should set a foundation for a comprehensively conceived science of man which would study the structure of historical processes and set the tools and methods for. the writing of history, so too Lonergan has built an account of the dynamic structure of history on the foundation of a theory of cognition. But what may not be immediately obvious is that Lonergan's account of the patterns and dynamism of history is at the same time an account of the criterion for an ethics, the criterion for distinguishing among more or less valuable courses of action. Upon reflection it would seem reasonable that some correlation should exist between a criterion of value and a criterion for historical progress and decline. But during the Enlightenment years a number of substantial concerns arose which resulted in the two sets of criteria being conceived independent from each other.1 And in the work of Immanuel Kant we can see one example of an attempt to deal with this separation. (189; Fs)

69/6 When Kant published the first of his essays on the philosophy of history in 1748, he had already published his Critique of Pure Reason three years earlier, and had worked out much of the material for the Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, which would appear in print the following year.2 And so when Kant asks how individual moral action relates to the overarching course of human history he formulates the question in terms of an account of moral action and the norm of morality that has been founded, for the most part, on his account of the autonomous operation of rationality. Kant's vision of moral man presented in the Groundwork and reflected in the essays on history, is of a self-creating creature who constitutes his own life through the free exercise of his rational will. The essence of Kant's notion of rationality is its autonomously constituting character. In the words of Yermiahu Yovel:

In being autonomous, human reason must abide only by those universal rules it sets up by itself, and in which it can recognize the explication of its own subjective structure. Any other attitude will be 'heteronomous' and thereby non-rational [...] According to this theory, reason cannot be conceived of as a system of universal norms that subsist in themselves, but must be seen as constituted by the human subject.3
70/6 Thus the Groundwork begins with a presentation of the good will, the only thing that is unqualified good in and of itself, and the only thing that can ground the worth of any ends that come about through its exercise.4 (190; Fs)

71/6 There are a number of possible explanations for this strong emphasis on the autonomy and the subjectively constituting character of rationality in the work of Kant. In his first Critique, Kant sought a possible foundation for knowledge in a priori claims, claims whose truth value was independent from an appeal to experience. The reliability of truth claims whose truth rested on a posteriori appeal to experience had been shown by Hume to be unreliable and some foundation for certain knowledge had to be found that was not subject to the errors to which acts of perception were prone. Thus Kant looked to the structure of the mind itself for the source of the reliability and permanence of knowledge.5 (190; Fs)

72/6 George Kelly argues that Kant's work in ethics and in history takes up Rousseau's quest for a new beginning to history in a new foundation for morality. In the face of the corrupt course of history and tradition Rousseau proposed an ideal foundation for social order that required nothing more than the free, autonomous consent of rational men. According to Kelly, Kant championed Rousseau's moral voluntarism as a revolt against dogma and status quo politics and as a manifestation of what was most properly human.6 (190; Fs)

73/6 Charles Taylor argues that Kant's emphasis on the autonomy of rational morality is a revolt against an earlier Enlightenment view of man as driven by his desire or appetite to seek his own utility. Such a view of moral man, in Kant's view, was exactly contrary to true moral freedom because it precluded the decision that liberates the subject from the determining constraints of natural necessity.7 (190f; Fs)

74/6 Whatever the reasons for Kant's concern for the autonomy of reason, the fact of his conception of rationality as autonomous remains clear. And so when Kant sets about investigating the relationship between the operation of rational morality and the overarching course of historical process he faces two sets of problems. First, if the exercise of human reason is free and autonomous, then how does this autonomy relate to the laws that govern the processes of nature and set the context in which man works out his life? Is man's reason a radical departure from nature? Or is he, in some way, in continuity with the biological laws that govern physical, vegetable and animal life?8 Second, is there an overall shape or lawfulness to the course of human history, or is history an aimless aggregate of individual persons pursuing conflicting visions of duty? Is there an ideal way that societies can be conceived and organized so as to foster and coordinate individuals carrying out their duties? Is there an overall end or telos to human history and if so does it negate freedom and the autonomous exercise of free will?9 It is these two sets of questions that are the concern of Kant's essays on the philosophy of history. (191; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Wahrscheinlichkeit - Problem der Einsicht

Kurzinhalt: In many introductory text-books in statistics or probability theory the author includes one definition of probability as a limit of a proper fraction ...

Textausschnitt: 3.1 The Empirical Stance

1/3 "In his 1958 Halifax lectures Lonergan talks a little on the background surrounding his treatment of probability in Insight. In many introductory text-books in statistics or probability theory the author includes one definition of probability as a limit of a proper fraction expressing a proportion of occurrences of an event i to a total number of cases as n approaches infinity. (61; Fs)

2/3 Such a definition is an operational definition of probability inasmuch as it defines a probability as something that can be determined through the performance of a set of experimental operations. However it is not actually operational because an accurate determination requires the performance of an infinitely large number of operations. This definition has led to a host of debates concerning the actual existence of probabilities, the possibility of their accurate calculation and the epistemological status of knowledge gained through the execution of contemporary techniques in statistics.2 And it is to some of these problems that Philip McShane has devoted a good number of pages in Randomness.3 But what is significant here, at this introductory stage, is that Lonergan is concerned with probabilities as some sort of knowledge which can be gained about a state of affairs through the implementation of a set of experimental procedures. His concern is with the a posteriori case of probabilities.4 Statistical procedures are being employed massively in the natural and human sciences. Conclusions are being drawn from experiments that involve their implementation. And such conclusions are held, to one degree or another, as claiming something about the world of human experience.5 Lonergan is curious as to what kind of knowledge, if any, the implementation of statistical techniques yields about the world of human experience. (61; Fs)

3/3 [...] To investigate any matter empirically is to attend to instances of human experience with questions about the 'nature' of such experiences. But when the object of investigation is the act of empirical inquiry itself, the curious subject is faced with a difficulty. To marshall evidence from previous experiments is to attend spontaneously to the content or term of such experiments. But rather than helping the investigation such attention inevitably constitutes an obstacle. For what is sought is not knowledge about what came to be known through the performance of the experiments but knowledge about the knowing. The alternative might seem to be to ask questions, from an a priori perspective, about the very possibility, the logical possibility, of any and all acts of knowing. But such questions bring the subject no closer to answering his or her questions about the nature of knowing. For their answers can only pertain to what might possibly be the case and not to what in fact is the case. A question of fact can never be settled a priori by an appeal to logic but only a posteriori in an appeal to evidence. What then constitutes evidence in an empirical investigation into empirical knowing? Lonergan suggests that we turn to instances of our own empirical inquiry as they occur when we encounter any unknown. (61f; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Einsicht (inneres psychologisches Geschehen); was ist x?; heuristische Funktion von x; weitere Fragen um x (Einheit, Mannigfaltiges, Relationen);

Kurzinhalt: The insight grasps a relation ... that define a in terms of its appropriate context of other elements. And if it is correct1 the insight can be formulated into a definition that fixes its relations to other elements such that ...

Textausschnitt: 4/3 Empirical method has a curious and backward way of moving towards the understanding of its object.1 A customary way of answering the question 'what is it?' is to say 'it is an x' when x designates the name of a class of objects, when such a class is to be distinguished from other classes in a field, and when the characteristics of that class can either be described or explained by experts in the field.2 But when there arise questions about the distinctions between the classes, or about the obscurities of the central insights that define the procedures for classification or when there are discovered objects or data that seem to fit into none of the classes then the question 'what is it?' takes on a new meaning. The answer cannot be found by appealing to stock names, distinctions, insights and verification procedures, for there continue to arise questions that just cannot be answered intelligently in terms of the stock conceptual tools. It is in this case that empirical method implements its curious and backward way of investigating its object. (62; Fs)

5/3 The investigator can name the object. But initially the name has no meaning, no familiarity, no intelligibility. The function of the name is heuristic. The name does not serve to classify the object but only to point to it as an object that can be experienced in some way or another but remains to be understood. 'Let the object be named a,' where a can be any set of marks, squiggles, letters, or characters as long as it is not presupposed that we know what a 'means.' The next step is a little more complicated. The investigator must turn his or her attention to the empirical occurrences of a and to whatever experiential evidence can be gathered about a that will give clues to the appropriate context or perspective in which a is to be understood. Is a an operation or the result of an operation? Is it a unity or a manifold? Does it have a structure? Where does it begin and where does it end? Can first hand sensory operations yield the necessary data or will microscopes, computers, or chemical test equipment be necessary? Is a to be understood in relation to b or in relation to c? Will we need interviews, questionnaires, frequency tables, statistical testing? By shifting contexts and perspectives, trying to bring one or another set of questions to bear on a, listing the data, juggling it around, rejecting one perspective in favour of another, performing endless operations in controlled settings to test possible sets of questions and answers, the investigator moves more or less slowly towards a discovery.3 (62f; Fs)

6/3 That discovery, when and if it occurs, is an insight, an 'internal' psychological event in which something new becomes psychologically present to a human person. It is a personal event which only occurs to one who has travelled the road of questions, operations and rejected answers. Its initial occurrence substantially reduces the obstacles to its successive occurrence in other persons. For, once the appropriate road of questions, procedures and answers has been charted the endless manifold of blind alleys can be avoided. But still the insight occurs only to one who treads the charted path. (63; Fs)

7/3 The insight grasps a relation or set of relations that define a in terms of its appropriate context of other elements. And if it is correct4 the insight can be formulated into a definition that fixes its relations to other elements such that progressive steps in the manipulation of that definition and the drawing of corollaries brings more of the relevant experiential data to bear on a. Thus gradually a becomes less obscure and more intelligible and meaningful. And this meaning, while certainly born of old elements and data is nonetheless a new meaning.5 Everyone has experienced some of these stages in the 'logic of discovery'6 (or the learning process). And so many of us can recall moments when we have been startled to find that something quite familiar was in fact quite obscure and unintelligible.7 The once-familiar object or event is given an ill-fitting or singularly inappropriate name. And then it is manipulated and juxtaposed with other objects of experience which seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with it. But by such manipulations and juxtapositions the object or event comes to be 'seen' in a strangely new context of relations and other terms. By asking and answering appropriate questions we acquire the relevant set of insights that serve to reorient habitually our attitude towards the object. And when these insights are correct8 the daily operations of implementing the understanding continue to yield data which are explained by and which serve to verify and re-verify the insights. (63; Fs)

8/3 Following the approach of Lonergan, McShane's procedure in Randomness is to apply this empirical method, this set of stages in the 'logic of discovery,' reflexively, to the personal, 'internal' discovery process itself as it occurs in the application of statistical techniques in empirical science. Thus while his data base is to be found in references to experiments in the natural sciences and in other philosophers' attempts to understand statistical knowing, the data themselves are psychological events which occur when human persons travel the charted (or uncharted) path described briefly above. The experiments are thus public in the sense that we all have experiences of acts of knowing. But they are private in the sense that my attention to your acts of knowing will most often fail to bear fruit. (63f; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: These 1; verschiedene Meinung: Offenbarung, Dogma - Theologie, Verständnis

Kurzinhalt: There are unbelievers who deny the mystery itself. ... Then there are those who admit mystery and dogma and also desire understanding; not, however, a theological understanding, but ...

Textausschnitt: Divergent Opinions

153c There are unbelievers who deny the mystery itself. (Fs)

There are those who believe the scriptures but, now for this reason, now for that, are unwilling to accept the infallible dogmas of the church. (Fs)
There are those who believe the scriptures and accept the dogmas but consider mystery and problem two very different things; so they assert that the understanding of mystery should be disregarded. (Fs)

153d Then there are those who admit mystery and dogma and also desire understanding; not, however, a theological understanding, but either a rhetorical or a philosophical understanding. Those who seek a rhetorical understanding abhor the technical formulation and systematic solution of problems; they seek not one analogy but many different analogies, and without wishing to thematize any of them explicitly, they choose rather to proceed implicitly and unthematically. Diametrically opposed to this group are the semirationalists. They assert that one ought to proceed with regard to God as three just as one proceeds with regard to God as one. So they would have it that everything concerning God either be self-evident or be demonstrated from natural principles. Their view has been condemned as heretical (DB 1816, DS 3041, ND 137). (Fs)

153e Further, there are those who believe the scriptures and embrace the dogmas and seek theological understanding. But they think the understanding should be a theological conclusion demonstrated from the truths of faith and from naturally known principles. It eludes their notice that, while science is concerned with conclusions, understanding is concerned with principles. So, because they aim at conclusions, they do not arrive at understanding. (Fs)

153f Then again, there are those who believe the scriptures, embrace the dogmas, and deduce theological conclusions, but also proceed from those very conclusions to a technical formulation of a problem. They seek the solution to the problem not through deduction but through a hypothesis; and because they deny that we can attain any other understanding in this life, they think that the hypothetical understanding should be accepted.1 (Fs) (notabene)

155a Finally, there are those who proceed in a more obscure manner. What is hypothetical they strive to demonstrate, as if it were a conclusion. They do not draw an analogy from natural realities truly and properly known. In addition, they throw into the mix interpretations of authorities that are hardly consonant with the principles of hermeneutics.2 (Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Einsicht - Intelligibilität: psychologischer Akt, Fixierung systematischer Relationen in einem Mannigfaltigen, Bestimmung des Objekts durch einen Akt; systematische - nicht-systematische Relationen

Kurzinhalt: the constitutive characteristic of an insight is that somehow, the performance of a psychological act called insight results in the fixing of concrete elements in an experiential manifold in the relations of identity and non-identity such that ...

Textausschnitt: 3.2 Systematic and Non-Systematic Relations

9/3 The terms 'systematic' and 'non-systematic' have specific meanings in the works of Lonergan and McShane, meanings that will not be intelligible immediately to anyone who is not familiar with their works. As a first step towards these meanings McShane provides a set of examples. (64; Fs)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 ...
6 7 5 6 4 7 6 7 5 5 6 4 ...
5 1 8 4 3 9 2 7 4 6 9 3...

10/3 One understands immediately - and this is usually taken to be the full meaning of the dots at the end - how the first series would be continued. The series is systematic, with a formula for the nth term. The behaviour of the series is lawful and that lawfulness is 'mathematically expressible' in an elementary way.1 'Systematic' is defined in terms of the performance of the cognitional act noted above, the act of insight.2 And in an effort to help turn attention to that public but oddly private data base upon which his definition draws, I will reproduce, here, some of the features of insight noted by Lonergan.

What we have to grasp is that insight
(1) comes as a release to the tension of inquiry,
(2) comes suddenly and unexpectedly,
(3) is a function not of outer circumstances but inner conditions,
(4) pivots between the concrete and the abstract, and
(5) passes into the habitual texture of one's mind.3 (64; Fs)

11/3 The stages in the genesis of understanding include clues, concepts, images, questions and anticipations. Women and men ask questions, we wonder, we seek to understand, we look for clues, we check out the clues. We conjure up images and draw diagrams, write sentences, tear up paper, erase sketches, rewrite, suppose and manipulate the suppositions. And then suddenly we have insights that answer the questions. (64; Fs)

12/3 The answer is a patterned set of concepts. The image strains to approximate to the concepts. The concepts, by added conceptual determinations, can express their differences from the merely approximated image. The pivot between images and concepts is the insight. And setting the standard which insight, images, and concepts must meet is the question, the desire to know, that could have kept the process in motion by further queries, had its requirements not been satisfied.4 What is grasped or 'abstracted'5 in an act of insight Lonergan names intelligibility. And the characteristic that is common to acts of insight, the characteristic that constitutes the basis for his distinction between systematic and non-systematic relations, is the fact that intelligibility regards the essential as essential, the significant as significant, the important as important, and it excludes and disregards the incidental as incidental, the irrelevant as irrelevant, and the negligible as negligible. The terms 'essential,' 'significant,' 'important,' 'incidental,' 'irrelevant,' and 'negligible' always have a concrete meaning that is particular to each act of intelligence. But while their concrete referents are always particular the relations among these terms themselves are generalizable as either identity (or similarity) or non-identity (or opposition). And so the constitutive characteristic of an insight is that somehow, the performance of a psychological act called insight results in the fixing of concrete elements in an experiential manifold in the relations of identity and non-identity such that what is fixed in the identity constitutes a unified psychological presence called intelligibility. Thus insight and intelligibility are defined 'implicitly' as, respectively, the act whose occurrence specifies an object and an object whose nature is defined in terms of the occurrence of an act. (64f; Fs) (notabene)

13/3 Hence, relative to any given insight or cluster of insights the essential, significant, important consists

(1) in the set of aspects in the data necessary for the occurrence of the insight or insights, or
(2) in the set of related concepts necessary for the expression of the insight or insights.

On the other hand the incidental, irrelevant, negligible consists
(1) in other concomitant aspects of the data that do not fall under the insight or insights, or
(2) in the set of concepts that correspond to the merely concomitant aspects of the data.6 (65; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Einsicht, hermeneutischer Zirkel; Definition: Intelligibilität; inverse Einsicht

Kurzinhalt: ... 'intelligibility' is defined as that which satisfies the appetite of inquiring intelligence; ... they include the essential as essential and exclude the incidental as incidental

Textausschnitt: 14/3 At first glance it might seem that the approach proposed by Lonergan entraps him in what might be called a 'hermeneutic circle.' And so it would be useful here to describe more clearly what this approach involves. Lonergan never asks whether acts of understanding occur. To ask such a question is to give evidence of the prior occurrence of a set of acts of understanding of some sort or another. His question is always about the empirically verifiable characteristics of intelligent acts and their contents or terms.1 The fact is that acts of intelligence of some sort or another are experiences that are within the horizons of all human subjects. But although we experience such acts, prior to our investigating their distinguishing characteristics we do not know how they occur, what constitutes the essential characteristics of their objects, or what might constitute the difference between such acts competently executed and others incompetently executed. So intelligent inquiry is conceived2 by Lonergan as an appetite for 'intelligibility' and an act of understanding is defined as that act whereby the appetite for 'intelligibility' is satisfied.3 Implicitly, then, 'intelligibility' is defined as that which satisfies the appetite of inquiring intelligence. And at this point the procedure again becomes empirical. Lonergan turns his attention (inviting the reader to do the same) to actual occurrences of instances of investigation and discovery in an effort to discover if there are further distinguishable characteristics, classifiable stages, common orientations to various instances of acts of intelligence. (65f;

15/3 Thus it stands that Lonergan points to an appetite in humans, he notes that this appetite is for answers to concrete questions, he observes that the appetite is satisfied and its satisfaction is signalled when a psychological act occurs whose object meets the conditions of the question, and he attends to various occurrences of the psychological act in order to study its structure, its characteristics, and those of its object. He discovers that the single, universally distinguishable feature of acts of understanding (and of their respective intelligible contents) is that they include the essential as essential and exclude the incidental as incidental. And so the meaning of the term 'systematic' is to be understood in terms of what is included as essential in an insight. (66; Fs)

16/3 Let us define systematic processes by the already enumerated properties that, other things being equal,
(1) the whole of a systematic process and its every event possess but a single intelligibility that corresponds to a single insight or single set of unified insights,
(2) any situation can be deduced from any other without an explicit consideration of intervening situations, and
(3) the empirical investigation of such processes is marked not only by a notable facility in ascertaining and checking abundant and significant data but also by a supreme moment when all data fall into a single perspective, sweeping deductions become possible, and subsequent exact predictions regularly are fulfilled.1

16/3 Thus McShane's first numerical series above can easily be extended to the nth term.2 (66; Fs)
But there is a curious feature to this account of insights, a feature that links the definition of an insight with the definition of what Lonergan calls an 'inverse insight.'3 Systematic relations are defined not only in terms of what is included as essential for the occurrence of an insight, they are also defined in terms of what is excluded by this psychological act. The data, the relations, the other possible answers to the question were rejected as mistaken or irrelevant because they did not qualify in meeting the demands of the question or the intent of the inquiry. When intelligence grasps the unity in, let us say, the meaning of words in a written sentence and the meaning of such sentences in a paragraph in a book, then the size of the page, the style of the print, the various alternate dictionary meanings of the words are all rejected by the spontaneously selective reader as not significant or essential to that meaning. (66; Fs)

17/3 To give another example, if one has left one's car lights burning over a cold winter's night and if one wants to know, the next morning, why the battery does not start the car, the answer would be formulated as an explanation (a unified set of insights) relating the electro-chemical properties of a lead acid battery to the magnitude of the resistance of the car's incandescent headlamps and the fact of a closed switch over eight hours at a temperature below zero degrees Celsius. In this case the single intelligibility that unifies the data systematically is the set of chemical equations that explains the conversion of lead oxide and sulphuric acid to lead sulphate under certain determinable conditions. Neither the colour of the car, the address of its location nor the income bracket of its owner are related systematically to the process that resulted in the battery discharging.4 (66f; Fs)

18/3 It would seem, then, that some questions can be answered with insights that include and relate some data and exclude others.5 In other cases, however, questions need to be met with the admission that there is insufficient data to answer the intent of the question. And currently the natural and human sciences abound with questions of this type. But there remains a third type of case, distinct from the two above, that also seems to occur within the range of our experiences. Some questions deserve to be answered with the 'insight' that there is no answer; there is no intelligible unity to the data that satisfies the intent of the investigation. This brings us to consider the third series of numbers in the above citation from Randomness. (67; Fs)

518439274693...
The third series ends also with dots. But the dots added to it have no other significance than as indicating that the series be continued. There is no rule for its continuation in so far as there is no rule relating the first eleven members given. In so far as there is no law relating to it, it may be described as totally random. The terms follow each other in a non-systematic fashion and one does not expect to arrive at a systematic formula governing them or at a generating formula for further members.6

19/3 Lonergan has named the act which grasps that there is no single intelligible unity to be grasped in data an 'inverse insight.'7 Personal experiences of a devalued sort of such an inverse insight8 would include instances when what one grasped was not the answer to a question but the fact that one has asked the wrong question. Inverse insights are not simply the admission that the question cannot be answered at present, or that one's level of intellectual development in the relevant fields is insufficient. Neither are they an admission that relevant data are missing. An inverse insight is not the absence of an act of understanding. Rather, it is itself an act of understanding. And what it grasps is that there is no unified intelligibility be understood that will meet the demands of the inquiry. There is no systematic unity to the selected body of data.9 (67; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Einsicht; Abstraktion, inverse Einsicht; Sein: systematische Interrelationen; Zufall: Mangel an hinreichenden Daten; statistisches Wissen

Kurzinhalt: ... the inverse insight grasps the absence of an intelligibility which previously was expected to be present; ... randomness ... is merely an illusory appearance resulting from insufficient data

Textausschnitt: 20/3 Before going on to consider some of the problems associated with inverse insights and with randomness that are treated by McShane in Randomness, Statistics and Emergence it might be helpful to note here that there is a kind of inverse intelligence corresponding to every direct insight. The term 'abstraction' is often taken to refer to an act of intellect whose performance results in a unified experiential manifold being wrenched apart or torn from its proper context for the purposes of empirical or analytic scrutiny. The image associated with the term might be that of a student of biology dissecting a frog without any regard for the wonder of life. Or perhaps the term might evoke the image of a 'scholar' making up his mind (usually the image is of a male) on what the world is like or on what it ought to do, in 'abstraction' from any real concrete, detailed knowledge of human experience. It is certain that far too many examples of either image can be found in our world of experience. But let us consider for a moment another, not so popular meaning for the term 'abstraction.' Here the image might be that of a mechanic troubleshooting a failure in the electrical system of a car. When the solution is found the diagnosis 'abstracts' from all the aspects of the car's operation which were not relevant to an understanding of the malfunction. The abstraction, in this case, is an enrichment in understanding and not an impoverishment. And the enrichment involves both the fact that the relevant data on the car's malfunction were identified and correctly interrelated and the fact that the irrelevant data were rejected. Anyone who has needlessly paid seventy dollars for a new battery only to find that the problem was a defective starter motor is in a good position to appreciate this difference between relevant and irrelevant data (and thus this 'enriching' sense in which Lonergan uses the term abstraction).1 (68; Fs)

21/3 Corresponding to every direct insight there would seem to be a kind of inverse intelligence which rejects those elements in experience which are not relevant to the insight. And so the very possibility of any act of intelligence, in this analysis, would seem to rest upon the capacity of intellect to select and interrelate, on the one hand, and, on the other, to reject as irrelevant, at the same moment, data which do not constitute a part of the unity that is the insight. The distinctive feature of the inverse insight, then, would be not that it represents a departure from what usually occurs in a direct insight, but that it involves a focus upon something that is essentially but not obviously present with a direct insight.1 However this focus comes as a surprise in the case of the inverse insight because, unlike the inverse dimension to the direct insight, the inverse insight grasps the absence of an intelligibility which previously was expected to be present. (68; Fs)

22/3 The first chapters of Randomness, Statistics and Emergence are devoted to raising and answering questions about the objects of inverse insights, non-systematic or random relations in data. And this discussion inevitably leads into the distinctions between a naive realist and a critical realist cognitional theory.1 For the purposes of this introduction I will state here simply that Lonergan's cognitional theory affirms that knowing does, in fact, know reality but that knowing reality and experiencing reality are two different but inevitably interrelated ways of relating to reality. Thus the question that Lonergan poses is always the 'nature' of knowing and its relative correspondence with reality. It is never the question as to 'whether' knowledge ever 'knows reality.'2 (68f; Fs)

23/3 One of the prevailing theories on statistical knowledge discussed in Randomness affirms that there exists no objective correlate in being for an inverse insight. The whole of being is systematically interrelated. Knowledge is only of 'classical' laws (laws which express a unified set of direct insights). And thus randomness, or the absence of a systematic, intelligible unity to data or to a process is merely an illusory appearance resulting from insufficient data. Hence statistical knowledge, knowledge which paradoxically grasps a sort of 'intelligibility' in randomly occurring events, is merely an imprecise substitute for complete knowledge of systematic relations.1 (69; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Wissenschaft, Zufall (randomness); verschiedene erklärende Schichten der Wissenschaften; Beispiel: Physik - Meteorologie

Kurzinhalt: It is not simply the physical and chemical principles of radiation and absorption of light which are relevant to understanding the earth's climatic ... Rather, it is the particular combinations of physical and chemical principles that ...

Textausschnitt: 4.2 Randomness and Scientific Explanation

6/4 This introductory presentation of world views might seem like a 'set up,' presenting straw men that can be knocked down. This is, in no way, the intent here, and again I must emphasize that these sketches should not be taken as responsible analyses of any thinker's work. Rather, the informed reader may recognize the problems introduced by one or more of these 'types' as a problem that he or she has had to grapple with in his or her own discipline. The following represents an introduction to the way in which Bernard Lonergan has tried to grapple with such problems and, again, the work of McShane in Randomness, Statistics and Emergence has set the general order of presentation of topics here. It will be left to the reader to compare emergent probability with the four views presented here. (101; Fs)

7/4 Having formulated a definition of randomness and of probability, Lonergan's next step is to ask if these notions can be employed to explain the fact that different 'levels' or branches of the natural and human sciences seem to explain recurring patterns of events and processes without always tracing these explanations back to a set of common determinants on some basic 'level.' An introductory example here might illustrate the problem more clearly. (101; Fs)

8/4 The weather at a given time and location is defined in terms of the categories and relations of meteorology: in terms of rainfall and other forms of precipitation, in terms of wind speeds and directions, in terms of classes of air masses and types of turbulence occurring at fronts where air masses meet, in terms of air pressures, air temperatures and countless other categories. We all know that meteorological phenomena are determined by the laws of chemistry and physics as they apply to atoms and molecules of chemical compounds in terrestrial geography and atmospheric fluid and thermodynamics, given the contemporary state of world conditions in the ongoing dynamics of the universe. And yet meteorological categories and processes do not correspond to physical or chemical categories in any direct sense but rather they represent correlations and convergences of particular ranges of values in specific combinations of units of physics and chemistry.1 (101f; Fs)

9/4 And with respect to explanations in physics and chemistry the particular patterns, magnitudes and combinations of physical and chemical elements that constitute the meteorological categories and relations are coincidental or without significance. For example, with respect to the fundamental laws and categories of physics and chemistry the value of thirty-four percent as an expression of the percentage of light radiation reflected by a surface has no relevance or significance. But when it is recognized that this value represents the approximate average annual sunlight radiation reflected by the earth2 and when this fact is linked to such other facts as the twenty-three and one-half degree inclination of the earth's axis, the nineteen percent of sunlight radiation that is absorbed into the earth's upper atmosphere, the dynamic properties of the particular combination of gases which make up the earth's atmosphere, the mass of the earth, the fluid-dynamic properties of that curious molecule, H2O, and the speed of the earth's rotation, then the particular value, thirty-four percent radiation, begins to take on a significant role in explaining the climatic conditions experienced, let us say, at Montreal, Quebec. It is not simply the physical and chemical principles of radiation and absorption of light which are relevant to understanding the earth's climatic and weather patterns. Rather, it is the particular combinations of physical and chemical principles that are operative in the atmosphere and at the surface of this particular planet in space, that converge to result in a general average sunlight reflection of thirty-four percent. And this fact, and its relative stability, are relevant to the terms and relations of meteorology and incidental to the basic terms and relations of physics and chemistry. Hence meteorological explanations do not try to explain a given day's average temperature in Montreal in terms of the subatomic physics of light absorption and reflection, but they begin with the fact that a certain conjunction of conditions tends to yield a relatively stable solar light reflection rate of around thirty-four percent per annum at a particular time and place of world process.3 (102; Fs)

10/4 This illustration serves to introduce an issue which looms much larger when we come to trying to explain the relationship between chemistry and biology or between zoology and psychology. There seem to be 'levels' or strata of scientific explanations. And while the explanations on a 'higher level'4 of explanation inevitably appeal to laws and processes on a 'lower level' they are nonetheless not conceived usually as being reducible to those 'lower level' laws. Science seems to divide into physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, etc., each with its own set of terms and relations, and each involving a further number of more specific strata of explanatory correlations (e.g. hydrology, astronomy, geology, etc., etc.). A world view that would reflect the procedures and results among and within these various 'levels' and strata would need some understanding of the relationships between these various sets of explanatory correlations and some understanding of the ways in which the processes of the various sciences have interacted throughout the ages of world process. Following Bernard Lonergan,5 Philip McShane begins his approach to this problem by asking if the notions of probability and randomness, as he has understood them, could contribute a clue towards an answer.6 (102f; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Verhältnis zw. Biologie und Chemie / Physik am Beispiel d. Amöbe (Rashevski);

Kurzinhalt: Rashevski's attempts to discern common patterns at the molecular level among groups of amoeba cells yields only explanations of individual cells as particular and unique.

Textausschnitt: 11/4 In his ninth chapter of Randomness, Statistics and Emergence, McShane draws upon some evidence gained from experiments performed by N. Rashevski in the field of mathematical biophysics to point towards the significance of randomness in relating scientific explanatory 'levels.'1 The relations between the processes of biology and the laws of physics and chemistry can be illustrated in contemporary accounts of the life processes of the amoeba. The amoeba consists of atoms and molecules within a certain spatio-temporal range and distribution. But the biological accounts of amoeba-processes, such as digestion, excretion and reproduction, while rooted in physical and chemical explanations, concern a system of characteristics and relations that supervene upon the physical and chemical phenomena. If these biological processes ultimately can be explained completely in terms of the physical and chemical laws then what is the status of the distinct terms and relations of biology? How are we to understand the relation between biological laws and physico-chemical laws? (103; Fs)

12/4 One approach to the problem among philosophers of science has anticipated a systematic or functional relationship between the physical and chemical conditions associated with an amoeba and the biological processes of that amoeba.2 That is to say the philosophers anticipate a unified set of functional relationships which grasp and express a single pattern of interactions among all of the relevant physical and chemical processes associated with every amoeba. And this unified pattern, expressed in the terms of physics and chemistry, would decisively account for all the biological functions which distinguish each amoeba as an instance of the generalized class, amoeba. The particularities of each individual amoeba, in this physico-chemical explanation, would be irrelevant to understanding each amoeba as an amoeba.3 But McShane notes that this anticipation leads to a dilemma. Since biological explanations concern a completely different set of terms and relations from those of physics and chemistry, the philosopher of science is forced either to conclude that the higher, biological level, distinguished by non-deducible characteristics is an epiphenomenon (Pepper) or to accept the overwhelming power of the biological explanations and to account for them by introducing non-scientific factors that could neither be measured nor verified (Meehl and Sellars).4 (103f; Fs)

13/4 McShane approaches this dilemma by noting that the working hypothesis among serious biologists is of distinct levels of science; levels that concern different sets of terms and relations.5 He notes, too, that evidence from the work of such scholars as H. Kaeser,6 and N. Rashevski leads one to conclude that this hypothesis of systematic or functional relationships is not empirically tenable.7 Rashevski's attempts to discern common patterns at the molecular level among groups of amoeba cells yields only explanations of individual cells as particular and unique. (104; Fs)

But, since there are no two cells perfectly alike, the exact solution of the problem for a given case would contain a tremendous amount of detail which is biologically insignificant because it applies only to the given case.8
Similarly H. Kaeser remarks that: (104; Fs)

[...] the complete enumeration, even if it were possible, of all the molecules within an organism would not account for any but its most trivial aspects.9
McShane finds that the evidence points to the fact of randomness, in some way or another, operative at the physical and chemical levels. (104; Fs)

[...] the processes involved within the amoeba form a coincidental aggregate which can be understood concretely only through a coincidental aggregate of equations and conditions.10

When amoeba processes are explained in terms of physics and chemistry it would seem from the evidence that it is the pattern that is particular and unique to the processes of each amoeba that decisively interrelates what is common to all amoebas. If there exists a single set of generalized explanations of the biological processes operative in all amoebas it cannot consist of classical explanations of biological processes as outcomes of determining physical and chemical conditions.11

14/4 McShane takes the evidence of randomness or absence of system as a clue to the relevance of a statistical element in explaining the relationship between 'levels' of explanation. In terms of the definition of f-probability developed in the previous chapter, a statistical norm or an f-probability neither precludes the determinate operation of classical laws nor explains classes of outcomes in terms of determining conditions. Rather, in a random or non-systematic process a converging coincidence of laws whose pattern or intelligibility may be unique in any single occurrence of the process, nonetheless can yield an event or an outcome that can be classified in a direct insight. This outcome is recognized as an instance of a class of events which recurs and which, together with other types of events, defines a population. The event recurs not because of an identical pattern or intelligibility in a set of classical laws. Rather, because a set of initiating and boundary conditions forces a randomly interacting set of classical processes to yield one or another from a determinate set of classifiable outcomes, the classes of outcomes recur with a more or less stable frequency that is expressed in an f-probability, and this f-probability can be explained in terms of a few initiating, environmental or boundary conditions without violating the absence of system relating the conditions to outcomes. (104f; Fs)

15/4 Thus a succession of events of one particular class can recur without any common systematic or intelligible explanation in terms of determining conditions but with a relatively stable frequency that is explained in part in terms of a few selected conditions and in part in terms of the other events that make up the population.12 The introduction of Lonergan's notion of f-probability makes at least possible or conceivable an explanation of f-probably recurring classes of events in terms other than a complete functional or systematic correlation between events and conditions. Whether this clue can constitute an element in an adequate explanation of the relation between explanatory levels in science depends upon whether f-probably recurring events can link up with other f-probably recurring events to yield new systematic patterns and 'laws.' And Lonergan's notion of the 'recurrence scheme' is an attempt to conceive this possibility. (105; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Emergente Wahrscheinlichkeit (emergent probability) - Finalität; Sackgasse der Geschichte - Hoffnung (dynamische Struktur allen Seins)

Kurzinhalt: ... the dynamism of world process is precisely this movement towards higher intelligibility ...
Thus Finality is as applicable to human history as it is to biological evolution.

Textausschnitt: 4.6 Finality

36/4 As an evolutionary hypothesis emergent probability includes some implications about world process that would be open to verification. Since schemes operate only when and where their conditions are fulfilled and since the conditions for higher order schemes are the operation of the appropriate lower order schemes, the successive realization of schemes will involve spatial concentrations. Later schemes will be found only where earlier schemes are functioning. But since the later schemes are only probable, not every set of earlier schemes will lead to sets of later schemes. So the occurrence of later and later schemes will be restricted to fewer and fewer places. And until their conditions are fulfilled the probabilities associated with the occurrence of later and later schemes will be lower and lower. However, such low probabilities for later schemes can be offset by large numbers of instances and long intervals of time. For what occurs only once in a million years or once in a million places will occur a thousand times in a billion places or a billion years.1 (113f; Fs)

37/4 Furthermore since the emergence of higher and higher order schemes is the movement towards increasing intelligibility or system (for the realization of every recurrence scheme is the emergence of system where previously none existed) it would seem that, at least to date, the dynamism of world process is precisely this movement towards higher intelligibility. At least to date the fact of such large numbers and long intervals of time seems verified. And, granted that sufficiently large numbers and sufficiently long intervals of time remain fulfilled, it would seem that the continued, increasingly systematic character of the universe could be assured. For with large numbers and long intervals of time the occurrence of the probable is only prevented by systematic intervention. And actual frequencies do not diverge systematically from probabilities, so while interventions do occur they do not recur systematically. Granted the continued absence of such intervention, the large initial numbers and the long intervals of time would guarantee the ever higher realization of system.2 (114; Fs)

38/4 Since the probabilities of emergence and survival are distinct there will be stability and development as well as breakdowns and blind alleys. And so sufficiently large numbers and long intervals of time conceivably could assure at least one situation in which development occurred. Later schemes generally need earlier schemes for their emergence and survival. While the disappearance of such earlier schemes would lead to the breakdown of the later schemes, the continued operation of such earlier schemes, their development of defensive circles, and their monopolization of materials would tend to secure the stability of the later and more developed schemes. When such defensive circles and imprisoned materials occur, the stability of the developed schemes can have the added negative effect of preventing any further development or the continued development of higher and higher order schemes. Thus there occur blind alleys. But development beyond such blind alleys would be possible if earlier schemes with high probabilities of emergence and low probabilities of survival formed floating populations on which later schemes could depend. Sufficiently large numbers and sufficiently long intervals of time could conceivably ensure that at least one situation would prevail in which world process realized continued development. For despite breakdowns, blind alleys and the consequent need for new starts in both new and old locations, the large initial numbers and long intervals of time would allow development to progress beyond such obstacles.3 (114; Fs)

39/4 The presentation so far might seem a wild and farfetched speculation moving far beyond the presented evidence, leaping gaily to conclusions about evolutionary processes on the basis of suppositions about knowing. It is certainly true that any kind of careful verification of an hypothesis such as emergent probability would demand a detailed study of evidence in every sector of the natural and human sciences. And there is no question that this detailed study remains to be carried out. But the value of this speculation so far can only be appreciated insofar as some implications of the world view, emergent probability, are investigated and understood. The fact remains that the implementation of heuristics in world views does not await verification and no world view to date would seem to stand up very well under careful scrutiny by a community of scholars.4 (114f; Fs)

40/4 Furthermore, the power of world views in uncovering and obscuring data and insights in every branch of the sciences is well known.5 If there is recognized some place for a branch of the human sciences which studies our dynamic orientation to truth, to beauty, to value, to love and to God, then there will be required a structured account of world processes which understands this dynamic orientation as, in some way, in continuity with the structure and orientation of all of reality. In addition, if we are to hope for some possibility of life for our children in an age which seems to present a number of blind alleys in the set of alternative historical futures, then some ground for this hope needs to be investigated. And these grounds will need to be understood, again in some way, in continuity with the dynamic structure of all of being. Emergent probability represents one man's attempts to recover an element in the procedures of contemporary natural and human sciences (the statistical element) and to integrate that element into a world view which, at least conceivably, could explain both this dynamic orientation and some grounds for hope, in a world view whose structure is equally applicable to any dimension of world process. The verification of the relevance and truth of emergent probability remains to begin on a grand scale. The possibilities suggested here are presented as evidence that it ought to begin. (115; Fs)

41/4 One final aspect of emergent probability remains to be discussed, the notion of finality. There is considerable evidence that world process is not static but dynamic. Evolutionary development to date provides evidence of at least one instance of world process wherein higher orders of integration have emerged from lower orders. And every instance of human cognition would seem to provide further evidence that this direction towards higher order integration is in fact continuing. Lonergan names this structured orientation towards higher integration, this upward dynamism, finality.6 Evolutionary development has progressed, at least on this planet, through successively higher systematic integrations of lower order manifolds and each higher integration has been the realization of new intelligibility or system. The fact is, too, that men and women are neither emotionally, intellectually nor responsibly static or satisfied. We are curious, we spontaneously gravitate towards other life forms, we ask questions, we make discoveries, we organize our lives around practical projects, we love and care for ourselves and each other through the responsible development and implementation of cognitionally mediated skills. And in all such acts the drive is towards the actuation of the intelligibility immanent in being or the realization of new being in intelligible projects and plans of action. Finality expresses the fact that the directed dynamism that has been operative in probably emerging world process continues to be operative in the cognitional acts of women and men. Thus Finality is as applicable to human history as it is to biological evolution.7 (115f; Fs)

42/4 While finality makes a limited claim about world process, it is nonetheless not an insignificant claim. Finality excludes a static world process, a world view that has the structure of the logical syllogism, an axiomatic system of postulates and deduced conclusions. It also excludes an indeterminate or totally haphazard movement to world process. For despite breakdowns, blind alleys, spatial constrictions and infrequent leaps forward, the successively higher integrations of lower order manifolds occur and recur according to probabilities. And while a systematic intervention could conceivably prevent what is probable from occurring, such an intervention would constitute a radical change in the structure of world process.8 (116; Fs)

43/4 Finally, while finality is a predicate of proportionate being, being whose intelligibility is conceivably proportionate to the potential capacities of human cognkional skills,56 it is also a datum for and the occasion for a question about the term or objective of this dynamism of world process, transcendent being. Thus when an answer to this question about the objective of dynamically oriented world process is formulated and affirmed, such an answer would also expand upon the notion of finality. It is not the purpose of this study to investigate the answer to the question of transcendent being. But it is widely known that Lonergan's Insight chapter nineteen formulates and affirms such an answer.'" (116)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Biologisches Erfahrungsmuster

Kurzinhalt: The biological pattern is characterized principally by its orientation towards securing the continued life of the organism and its species.

Textausschnitt: 35/5 The biological pattern is characterized principally by its orientation towards securing the continued life of the organism and its species.1 And here we begin to see how Lonergan starts building a foundation for an ethics. The most primitive biological operations of human persons would seem to have a structure that is oriented recurrently towards a set of goals. The routines or recurring schemes of 'sensations, memories, images, conations, emotions and bodily movements,' themselves intricate combinations of more elemental biological events and schemes, 'converge upon terminal activities of intussusception or reproduction or, when negative in scope, self-preservation.'2 The schemes take up the materials of the organism's environment and transform them in the 'interest,' so to speak, of the organism's well-being. When the organism becomes 'conscious'3 the schemes remain, nonetheless, more successful (more rapid, more effective, more efficient) means for attaining these biological ends.4 And while the biological ends concern principally the immanent aspects of the organism's functioning, the greater success of the conscious operations is to be accounted for in terms of the organism's new-found capacity for systematic or controlled attention or 'concern' for the 'external' environment.5 (138f; Fs)

Thus extroversion is a basic characteristic of the biological pattern of experience. The bodily basis of the senses in sense organs, the functional correlation of sensations with the positions and movements of the organs, the imaginative, conative, emotive consequences of sensible presentations, and the resulting local movements of the body, all indicate that elementary experience is concerned, not with the immanent aspects of living, but with its external conditions and opportunities. Within the full pattern of living, there is a partial, intermittent, extroverted pattern of conscious living.6

36/5 There is a very narrow role played by the operations of intelligence within the biological pattern, a role that can be illustrated by any recollection of an occasion of hunger and the subsequent steps that were taken to procure food. But the point to be made here is that the organism in the biological pattern spontaneously brings into play any skills within its repertoire and integrates their performance in any one of a large number of possible schemes oriented towards relieving a state of biological distress or achieving a biological goal.7 It is this orientation that distinguishes the biological pattern, and it is this structured relationship towards the materials of the organism's environment that qualifies the routines of the biological pattern as a first, most basic instance of a practice or transformative activity. (139; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Ästhetisches Erfahrungsmuster; "erhöhte" Erfahrung um ihrer selbst willen (Befreiung); Gefühle als intentionale Antwort auf Werte; Kunst: vor-wissenschaftlich u. vor-philosophisch

Kurzinhalt: The aesthetic pattern is characterized by Lonergan as a liberation 'from the drag of biological purposiveness.' ... Thus the aesthetic experiences can be characterized as flexible schemes ... intentionally ordered towards heightened experience ...

Textausschnitt: 37/5 The aesthetic pattern is characterized by Lonergan as a liberation 'from the drag of biological purposiveness.'1 And the essential, fulfilling condition for this liberation is the organism's capacity for focussed attention upon the objects of experience in 'conscious' life.2 The aesthetic pattern may involve nothing more than a child taking pleasure in the wiggling of fingers and toes. But it is the control over the intentionally-oriented operations of sense that fulfills the conditions for the child's focussed gaze and attention on the subjective experience of such movements. Once some control over the imaginative and intelligent operations of the basic pattern has been achieved through the mediation of sensorimotor skills, the human subject need not await the occasion for aesthetic experience but he or she can fulfill the conditions for its occurrence in himself or herself or in others. (139; Fs)

38/5 What distinguishes the aesthetic pattern in Lonergan's account is its orientation towards heightened subjective experience and the feelings which flow from such attention. And as with the biological pattern the structure of the elements of aesthetic experience usually includes mediating operations of imagination and intelligence. Thus the aesthetic experiences can be characterized as flexible schemes and series of schemes intentionally ordered towards heightened experience for its own sake. Lonergan describes the biological pattern as ordered towards a term or goal. But the successful realization of this goal fulfills the conditions for a conscious subject's emancipation from the constraints of biological purpose. Thus the stable recurrence of the schemes and series of the biological pattern (with some time remaining during waking hours) constitutes the fulfilling conditions for the emergence of the events and schemes of the aesthetic pattern. The heightened experience in the aesthetic pattern is spontaneously sought as preferable (more joyous, more delightful) to the constraints of the biological pattern. (139f; Fs) (notabene)

39/5 The aesthetic pattern involves not only the controlled attention to experiences and the heightened feelings that follow, but also the creative exploration and combination of patterns of images and the feelings that they evoke.3 The effect of this capacity to control images and feelings of the aesthetic pattern is not an enslavement of feelings and image but their liberation both from biological purpose and from the constraints of the questions and anticipations of the intellectual pattern.4 The aesthetic pattern includes some straining for truth and some drive towards value, but what results is not knowledge of truth or value but, I would argue, what Lonergan comes to call in Method the feeling as intentional response to value.5 (140; Fs) (notabene)

The aesthetic and artistic are symbolic. Free experience and free creation are prone to justify themselves by an ulterior purpose or significance. Art, then, becomes symbolic, but what is symbolized is obscure. It is an expression of the human subject outside the limits of adequate intellectual formulation or appraisal. It seeks to mean, to convey, to impart something that is to be reached, not through science or philosophy, but through a participation and, in some fashion, a re-enactment of the artist's inspiration and intention. Pre-scientific and pre-philosophic, it may strain for truth and value without defining them. Post-biological, it may reflect the psychological depths yet, by that very fact, it will go beyond them.6

40/5 Man is oriented towards being, towards truth, towards value. Being is approached and pointed towards in emotions, symbols, images. And such affective and imaginative thrusts toward truth and value are profoundly significant and essential dimensions of human life. The schemes or routines of cognition, the controlled and mediated skills described by Lonergan in terms of Piaget's analysis, are involved in the aesthetic pattern. But their object is not theoretical knowledge, judgment and decision, but the liberation and heightening of feelings that strain toward what is fundamentally of worth in human life. (140; Fs)

41/5 As the successful performance of the routines of biological life fulfills the conditions for the events and schemes of the aesthetic pattern, so too the liberation of sensations and images in the aesthetic pattern fulfills the conditions for their integration in acts of insight in the intellectual pattern. (140; Fs)

Kommentar (vom 26.02.2009): Es gibt ein "aesthetic pattern" gleichsam vor und nach dem "intellectual pattern". Was wirklich Kunst ist, hat seinen Raum im "aesthetic pattern" nach dem intellektuellen Muster.

The aesthetic liberation and the free artistic control of the flow of sensations and images, of emotions and bodily movements, [do] not merely break the bonds of biological drive but also generate in experience a flexibility that makes it a ready tool for the spirit of inquiry.7

42/5 While the biological pattern presents the objects of experience simply as the means for securing the life of the organism and its species, it is the aesthetic pattern that liberates the subject from this narrow orientation. The aesthetic pattern shifts the subject's attention to the object for its own sake; for the sake of its heightened experience. This shift away from a biologically utilitarian preoccupation with the object of experience permits the subject's recurrent and focused attention on experience for its own sake. And this fulfills the conditions for the emergence and recurrence of the schemes of the intellectual pattern. For only a focused preoccupation with the question and the data on their own terms can yield the insights that answer questions.8 While the aesthetic and intellectual patterns are distinct the former constitutes a condition for the occurrence and controlled recurrence of the latter. It would seem that Lonergan's presentation of the relation between these two patterns necessarily implies that the competent performance of the schemes of operations in the intellectual pattern requires a regular return to experience in the aesthetic pattern. (141; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: 1 Dramatisches Erfahrungsmuster des Common Sense - Verantwortung, Moral

Kurzinhalt: ... it is in the dramatic pattern that the object or intentional term of such skills is the ongoing actuation and reconstitution of the pattern of relations of the subject in his or her 'external' and 'internal' environments.

Textausschnitt: 5.5 The Dramatic Pattern and Responsible, Moral Practice

43/5 In his account of the dramatic pattern of experience Lonergan begins to lay the foundations for an account of moral, responsible practice. While the biological and the aesthetic patterns of experience involve some measure of cognitional operation mediating practical routines or skills, it is in the dramatic pattern that the object or intentional term of such skills is the ongoing actuation and reconstitution of the pattern of relations of the subject in his or her 'external' and 'internal' environments. The goal of the presentation in this chapter, to this point, has been to indicate how emergent probability sets the terms and relations of Lonergan's account of the various types of practical skills within human life, and to indicate how the cognitional acts play a limited but nonetheless effective and potentially transformative role in the practical skills of the various experiential patterns. From here on my object is to begin to assemble the foundational elements of the meaning of the term 'responsibility.' And my approach will be to outline some of the similarities and the differences between the dramatic pattern and the other patterns, and then to highlight the distinctive elements of a type of practice in which the human subject transforms and sustains the transformation of his or her life through the differentiated and coordinated application of all ranges of skills. To speak of human freedom and its correlate human responsibility is to suggest that such differentiating and coordinating acts involve some measure of reflexively operative self-constitution. And so the last section of this chapter is devoted to a discussion of Lonergan's rather novel distinction between essential and effective freedom. (141; Fs)

Where the scientist seeks the relations of things to one another, common sense is concerned with the relations of things to us. Where the scientist's correlations serve to define the things that he relates to one another, common sense not merely relates objects to a subject but also constitutes relations of the subject to objects. Where the scientist is primarily engaged in knowing, common sense cannot develop without changing the subjective term in the object-to-subject relations that it knows.1

44/5 First. Lonergan's characteristic distinction of common sense is its preoccupation with the elements of experience insofar as they have an import or a bearing on the subject. In this sense, the dramatic pattern of common sense shares with the routines of the biological pattern an orientation towards the 'sustenance' and the 'nutrition,' so to speak, of the subject. Certainly the mediation of the meanings and routines of a culture, an economy and a civilization vastly expands the meaning of the terms 'sustenance' and 'nutritition' so as to introduce a notion of human 'well-being' that is in no way constrained by the limits of biological purpose. But the orientation of the dramatic pattern remains subject-centered. Theoretical knowing in the intellectual pattern, on the other hand, suppresses this concern for the immediate import of knowledge. The dramatic operation of common sense is concerned with knowing, but knowing inasmuch and insofar as it makes an immediate practical difference to my life. (142; Fs) (notabene)

45/5 Second. Lonergan introduces here the first significant instance wherein the performance of acts of intelligence has the effect of ordering decisively the performance of sense and motor skills towards the attainment of an object. The dramatic pattern is not satisfied merely with knowing intelligible relations, it is oriented towards constituting and reconstituting common and new relations. And such relations are constituted as events and plans of action, conceived by intelligence (whether the intelligence of the subject him or herself, or that of the members or founders of the community) and actuated as the integrating principle of complex schemes of skills. The common sense concern or appetite for changing the conditions of life is integrally related to, and a natural upshot of the concern for the import of things for us. Inasmuch as we care about things that make a difference for us, the common sense understanding of such things fulfills the conditions for our application of intelligence and imagination to devising and executing strategies that relate us to such things in the interest of an ever-expanding notion of well-being. (142; Fs) (notabene)

46/5 Third. The routine operation of common sense changes the subject. In the dramatic pattern this change, a subtle yet significant transformation in spontaneity, emerges in the course of devising and implementing projects, developing roles, and intelligently adapting to new situations (the various ways in which new and old subject-object relations are constituted). While the cognitional operations are decisive in ordering behaviour in the dramatic pattern, still the execution of projects, the development of roles and routines and the adaptation to new situations have the principal effect of transforming ourselves in our habitual way of relating to the objects of experience. Such relations or orientations operate as routine or recurring attitudes, anticipations, expectations, routine patterns for organizing materials and projecting courses of action, and spontaneous feelings and images that are evoked in connection with people, places, insights and environments. (142f; Fs) (notabene)

47/5 Lonergan is quite aware that these habitual orientations to the objects of experience are not directly the products of deliberation and choice. Rather, they are by-products or results of one's whole life of common sense decisions and actions. While common sense intelligence has moved on to new matters the subject's orientation to his or her experience has been constituted by previous experiences, insights and decisions. Intelligent reflection and decision decisively order the materials and activities of experience. But it is the spontaneous relation of the subject to the objects of his or her experience that selects and assembles the materials to be ordered and provides the clues that will condition the probable emergence of insights and programs of action.2 (143; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: 2 Dramatisches Erfahrungsmuster des Common Sense; das neurale Mannigfaltige - Einsicht, Finalität

Kurzinhalt: The structure of this relationship between a flexible neural manifold and its emergent integration in psychic acts reflects a dynamic orientation towards a higher order intelligibility and Lonergan has named this orientation finality.

Textausschnitt: 48/5 There stands here in this account of the common sense operation of intelligence in its dramatic pattern, many of the elements that Lonergan will develop into his prolegomenon to an ethics in Insight, chapter eighteen, and his partial sketch of moral life in Method, chapter two. And it would be worthwhile here to identify precisely what these elements are. (143; Fs)

49/5 First. This account of Lonergan's includes the possibility of a mode of human performance that is not determined entirely by biological, or social or psychological conditions. The relationship between the neurological conditions and the emergence of acts of intelligent control over sensorimotor skills includes an element of randomness.1 The neural manifold of the human subject can be so ordered through the performance of sense and motor operations that a determinate set of images, sensory experiences, and linguistically controlled insights can become present to his or her attention at a given time. This set of images, sense experiences and insights can be ordered or integrated in any of a number of ways in an original or a common act of imagination or insight. Likewise a set of insights can so order this flexible neural manifold that imagination and intellect can be called to attention and sense and motor skills can be ordered or integrated in complex set of operations like those involved in playing the piano. (143; Fs)

50/5 The neural manifold clearly presents an exigence in a certain direction in accordance with the demands of the moment and the habitual orientation of the subject. But this exigence generally is not completely decisive. Rather, there is usually some measure of flexibility to the neural manifold that permits a number of possible forms of psychic integration. It is this flexibility and the absence of completely and universally determining system - this element of randomness - that grounds the possibility of practical action becoming responsible. And it is this element of randomness that is developed as an essentially constitutive element of Lonergan's ethics presented in Insight, chapter eighteen, and discussed in the pages that follow. (143f; Fs)

51/5 Second. The structure of this relationship between a flexible neural manifold and its emergent integration in psychic acts reflects a dynamic orientation towards a higher order intelligibility and Lonergan has named this orientation finality. This dynamic orientation is manifested both in the integration of experiential elements in insights and in the coordination of sensorimotor skills into programs or routines of action in accordance with acts of intelligence. But the dynamism of finality is further manifested in the relations among the various patterns of experience, in the developmental scheme of assimilation and adjustment wherein the child or adult acquires and perfects skills, in the subject's spontaneous preference for more developed satisfactions and values, and most generally, in the subject's whole care-ful orientation to being. Most fundamentally the dynamic orientation of finality is towards emergent intelligibility, towards the probable realization or actuation of intelligibility as its conditions are fulfilled. While this dynamic notion of finality is heuristically operative throughout this account of common sense in its dramatic pattern it is this notion of finality which will become the key element in the distinction between true and false values and between genetically related values in Insight, chapters seven and eighteen, and Method, chapter two. These are discussed below in chapter six, 6.5 and 6.6. (144; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: 1 Freiheit - Moral; wesentliche - tatsächliche Freiheit; Freiheit: verschiedene Auffassungen (Lonergan: Integration des neuralen Mannigfaltigen)

Kurzinhalt: The curious and distinctive feature of Lonergan's account of freedom is not his emphasis upon the role of intelligence. Rather, it is his integration of the statistical element.

Textausschnitt: 5.6 Freedom and Moral Life: Essential and Effective Freedom

52/5 There is no doubt that any discussion of moral life will require as a centrally constitutive element some account of the notion of freedom. And since the Enlightenment there has been an especially concerted effort and find in the notion of freedom that particular aspect of human nature which qualifies human practice as distinctively moral or responsible. In the first chapter of this book on Hegel and Modern Society,1 Charles Taylor introduces briefly the ethics of Kant as background for a subsequent analysis and evaluation of Hegel's political philosophy. Taylor characterizes Kant's moral thought as a protest against an earlier Enlightenment view of man as driven by desire. And in striving to find an a priori basis for moral action in the self-actuating or self-regulating activity of the rational will, Kant hoped to discover the grounds for man's liberation from the bondage of passion and natural inclination. In Taylor's view Kant saw in man's exercise of autonomous, self-regulating, rational will the act which constitutes man's life as free.2 In another introduction to Hegel's social theory, Herbert Marcuse describes Hegel's own account of freedom in similar terms, as the reflexively operative, self-regulating activity which lifts man above a final capitulation to externally determining conditions. (144; Fs)

But freedom is for Hegel an ontological category: it means being not a mere object, but the subject of one's existence; not succumbing to external conditions, but transforming factuality into realization.3

53/5 The term freedom has had a variety of different meanings, meanings that have been developed differently in various historical ages and which have manifested themselves in a variety of ethical theories.4 In one usage what is emphasized is the absence of restrictions. For example, a dog that is not caged or tied on a leash is considered free in this usage of the term. In another usage freedom is conceived in terms of its determining conditions. Here, to be free would mean that an event is not the result of the decisively determining operation of a unified set of antecedent causes or conditions. In Lonergan's terminology freedom here indicates the absence of system or pattern in a unified set of classical laws.5 In this sense the movement of electrons is considered free and a coin's movements throughout a fair toss is regarded as free. (145; Fs)

54/5 Lonergan's efforts to develop a concept of freedom can be seen in continuity with Kant's and Hegel's attempts to understand freedom in terms of man's self-regulative capacities. The argument or debate to which all three are opposed affirms (either explicity or implicitly) the pre-destined or determined character of human life which would preclude any notion of the subjective locus of human responsibility. Like Kant and Hegel, Lonergan sought to find in an understanding of man's reason, his rationality, his understanding, the key element of this reflexive or self-regulating capacity. The similarities and differences between Lonergan's account and those of Kant and Hegel cannot be explored here. But it is sufficient to note, at this point, the fact that all three thinkers set out to conceive the notion with similar objectives. (145; Fs)

Accordingly, an account of freedom has to turn to a study of intellect and will. In the coincidental manifolds of sensible presentations, practical insights grasp possible courses of action that are examined by reflection, decided upon by acts of willing and thereby either are or are not realized in the underlying sensitive flow. In this process there is to be discerned the emergence of elements of higher integration. For the higher integration effected on the level of human living consists of sets of courses of action, and these actions emerge inasmuch as they are understood by intelligent consciousness, evaluated by rational consciousness, and willed by rational self-consciousness [...]6 Man is free essentially inasmuch as possible courses of action are grasped by practical insight, motivated by reflection, and executed by decision.7

55/5 Freedom in this usage is not an absence but a presence; the presence of an actuated capacity to mediate the performance of sensorimotor acts and skills through the schemes or skills of intelligence. It is the actuated capacity to perform a scheme or groups of acts of cognition. But this cognition is not the knowing that terminates in a judgment of truth. Rather, it is the set of acts which grasp a possible course of action among a range of possibilities presented to the subject at a moment in world process, and which constitute an order or a pattern in a manifold of skills within the repertoire of a subject, in accordance with this conceived course of action. Some knowledge of fact is certainly necessary in the exercise of human freedom. But Lonergan's account of freedom in Insight does not define freedom in terms of knowledge of fact. (145f; Fs)

56/5 The curious and distinctive feature of Lonergan's account of freedom is not his emphasis upon the role of intelligence. Rather, it is his integration of the statistical element, his definition of f-probability and his related notion of emergence, into his accounts of intelligence and responsibility which is most original.8 In itself the notion of randomness, understood as the absence of a decisively determining, systematic unity of classical laws, is unsufficient to explain human freedom. For randomness does not explain the reflexive or self-regulating character that Kant and Hegel knew to be operative in human freedom. What is required is an explanation which includes some element of randomness in the relation between the freely performed act and its determining conditions, but which nonetheless recognizes the act as decisively self-regulating or self-integrating. (146; Fs)

57/5 Thus the explanation, in Lonergan's view, would require an emergent integration of a lower order manifold and a possible means for such an emergent integration to control its own form in a succession of reflexively operative recurrences. The neural manifold, its flexibly recurring aggregate of neurological events, the capacity for system or scheme to emerge and order or pattern such events in accordance with f-probabilities, the exigence for certain forms of integration, and the reflexive capacity to coordinate sense and motor skills in accordance with such an order or pattern are the essential elements in such an explanation. The condition of possibility for the emergence of new order or pattern Lonergan explains in terms of f-probably recurring events of a skill linking together in mutually conditioning sets or chains at the psychic level. And in this view the intricate set of neural pathways would seem to allow the capacity for emergent psychic patterns to operate on acquired sense and motor capacities, coordinating sets of skills in accordance with the emergent psychic order. It is the occurrence of such a set of acts (the actuation of this particular capacity, the performance of this skill) which designates a human action as essentially free. (146; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: 2 Freiheit - Moral; wesentliche - tatsächliche Freiheit; Unterschied: Tatsache - Wert -> entsprechend: verschiedene Bedeutung von Möglichkeit

Kurzinhalt: The word possibility here denotes what is grasped at a relatively incomplete stage in a chain of acts whose intentional object is the intelligent actuation of a next stage in world process.

Textausschnitt: 58/5 A number of qualifications would be in order here to specify more clearly Lonergan's intent. The first qualification concerns the relation between knowledge of fact and intelligent, responsible grasp and actuation of a possible course of action. In chapter eighteen of Insight, Lonergan explains rational self-consciousness (what he later comes to call responsible decision)1 as the demand for a consistency between knowing and doing.2 His formulation here is misleading. For it is rooted in a failure to make an adequate distinction between knowledge of fact and knowledge of value, a distinction which is operative implicitly in Insight but only differentiated explicitly in Method.3 (146f; Fs)

59/5 An insight about a matter of fact is a possibility inasmuch as what is understood in the insight might or might not be so. Such an insight grasps an intelligibility in a manifold of experential data and that intelligibility might or might not correspond to the intelligibility immanent in world process. The question as to the correspondence (or v-probable correspondence) is only settled in the judgment of fact which assembles the conditions for rejecting incorrect insights and accepting correct ones. And so the word possibility here denotes what is grasped at a relatively incomplete stage in a chain or scheme of acts whose intentional object is the cognitional actuation of an intelligibility already actuated in world process. The possibility of the insight is the possibility of a more or less complete cognitional correspondence; a possibility which is actualized only in another type of intelligent act further on in scheme and which, when actualized, transforms the subject (the person) but not immediately the object (the known). (147; Fs)

60/5 A possible course of action, on the other hand, is a possibility inasmuch as the relevant conditions for the emergence (the performance) of the course of action are, in part, fulfilled, inasmuch as such conditions are known to be fulfilled (more or less completely), and inasmuch as the course of action is grasped or actuated in an insight or unified set of insights which extrapolates from present and past stages of world process to constitute imaginatively and cognitionally one or more alternative future stages. While such possibilities are occasionally somewhat original, most usually they involve the re-actuation of socially, economically, culturally current routines. The cognitional act which grasps the possibility stands to be followed by a further set of acts in the chain which reflect on the possibility, judge it to be worthwhile, and actuate the intelligibility immanent in the projected course of action in an integration of the skills of the subject (or of the group of subjects if it is a collaborative effort). Such reflection is generally more or less expeditiously executed. The final act, the decision, completes the chain; it constitutes the next stage in that sphere of world process, and thus transforms the objects of world process (the known or to-be-known) as well as the subject(s). (147; Fs)

61/5 The word possibility here denotes what is grasped at a relatively incomplete stage in a chain of acts whose intentional object is the intelligent actuation of a next stage in world process. Consequently inasmuch as the performance of acts of understanding and judgment of truth are themselves intelligent actuations of a next stage to world process, the program or plan which outlines a project of empirical inquiry into matters of fact is a possibility of the second type designed to lead to and actuate a possibility of the first type. And inasmuch as knowledge of fact yearns to be integrated into action programs oriented towards improving the life conditions of people around the world, possibilities of the first type are dynamically ordered towards integration into possibilities of the second type. In this sense knowing is a subset of praxis. (147f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: 3 Freiheit - Moral; wesentliche - tatsächliche Freiheit; was konstituiert einen Akt als frei? Vermögeneiner der intelligenten Integration eines ansonsten zufälligen Mannigfaltigen

Kurzinhalt: Lonergan's definition of freedom has as its central moment the actuation of a capacity for an emergent intelligibility to integrate or order an otherwise coincidental manifold of human skills.

Textausschnitt: 62/5 The second qualification concerns a possible confusion about what distinctively constitutes human action as free. Men and women can judge badly, we can make incompetent judgments of value, and we can reject what we know to be of value in favour of a course of action which we recognize to be a mistake or a poor alternative. But the meaning of the term freedom is not defined here simply in terms of this absence of system or necessity linking insights with favourable judgments and linking judgments on the value of a possible course of action with the actuation of these values. 'Man is not free because he can be unreasonable in his choices.'1 Rather, Lonergan's definition of freedom has as its central moment the actuation of a capacity for an emergent intelligibility to integrate or order an otherwise coincidental manifold of human skills. When a program of action has been conceived and implemented, regardless of the relative competence of the subject's critical evaluation of the worth of the program, and regardless of whether the subject decided to act in accordance with his or her critical evaluation, it is the distinct act of ordering his or her (or their) performance in accordance with an act of intelligence within a reflexively operative scheme which constitutes that actuated program as free. (148; Fs) (notabene)

63/5 The distinctiveness of this type or class of act cannot be overstated. The operation which Lonergan comes to name 'decision' in Method and which he sought to explain in Insight, chapter eighteen, is not knowledge of fact nor is it knowledge of value. It is an operation of ordering an otherwise coincidental manifold of skills in accordance with a cognitional act. And whether the cognitional act is merely a re-enactment of a time-worn tradition or whether it is an ingeniously conceived new way of solving an old problem, the act remains essentially free. The term freedom, in Lonergan's conception, designates the fact that such higher order emergent integrations of 'will' have in fact occurred throughout human life and not the fact that they only correspond to judgments of value (themselves more or less badly performed) in accordance with statistical laws.2 (148; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: 4 Freiheit - Moral; wesentliche - tatsächliche Freiheit (essential - effective freedom)

Kurzinhalt: this distinction between essential and effective freedom can provide the key to understanding how ... psychological, historical conditions can operate to shape and delimit the f-probabilities associated with classes of human performance with

Textausschnitt: 64/5 This introduces the third and last qualification. The occurrence of an intelligent act integrating a manifold of performance skills qualifies that performance as essentially free. But there is a vast different between essential freedom and its various ranges of flexibility. And so in order to explain the apparent fact of levels or degrees of developed responsibility, and in order to account for the massively conditioned character of human life, Lonergan introduces a distinction between essential and effective freedom. 'The difference between essential and effective freedom is the difference between a dynamic structure and its operational range.'1 Effective freedom is the measure of limitations and conditions, both immanent to the subject and proper to his or her historical environment, corresponding to the f-probable occurrence of more diverse ranges of acts and skills within the subject's operative repertoire.2 (148f; Fs) (notabene)

65/5 Effective freedom involves the external circumstances of the subject's life and the subject's own sensitive, intelligent and responsible states of habit, routine or development.3 Lonergan notes briefly the way in which each of these types of conditions affects the subject's effective freedom. But an elaboration of the structure and the import of this presentation would be in order here. For while Lonergan's account of responsible practice focuses on the role of the practical insight in selecting among possible courses of action and in constituting an order in a subjective (or, as we will see in chapter six below, in an intersubjective) set of performance skills, the fact is that subjects are most usually limited in the range of possibilities open to them. In my view this distinction between essential and effective freedom can provide the key to understanding how social, economic, psychological, historical conditions can operate to shape and delimit the f-probabilities associated with classes of human performance without obliterating man's essential freedom. Furthermore this account explains how effective freedom, won principally through the conversions, and operative personally in the lives of subjects, constitutes the condition and the locus of social transformation. (149; Fs)

66/5 In Lonergan's account of the practical, transformative skills in the dramatic pattern of experience, the human subject stands linked into a huge number of recurrence schemes which involve circles of events within his or her own envelope of skin and events of the more or less remote 'external,' biological, intersubjective, social, economic, historical environment. Such schemes includes the nutritional and respiratory cycles, the visual; auditory, tactile, olfactory cycles linking the coordination of muscles and organs to the various sensory responses, the social and linguistic cycles of gesture and role-taking, the economic cycles wherein recurrent actions link together with those of other members of an economy to yield circles of exchange, and historical cycles wherein the dreams of one generation become the routines of another for building the promise of the future. (149; Fs)
67/5 Like the carbon atom the human subject is ineluctably social. But unlike the carbon atom the human subject's sociality is operative on a number of complex, interlocking levels. For a number of the schemes linking the 'inside' and the 'outside' of this envelope have the curious ability to order or coordinate the routine functioning and interacting of other events and schemes. The most significant examples of such coordinating schemes are those involving the cognitional emergence of unities that integrate non-systematic manifolds of neural demand functions, thus constituting an order in what would otherwise be a cacaphony of sensory 'experiences,' or a hodgepodge of muscular movements. This immanent emergence occurs at first non-systematically for it is a structuration occuring spontaneously given the fulfillment of the necessary conditions. But as an emergence its f-probably systematized recurrence can be increased in the context of such developmental and intersubjective routines as pedagogy, parental example and apprenticeship. In this way the operative integrations in the practical life of a culture are drawn from the common font of a sedimented heritage of a succession of civilizations. The emergent integrations remain personal events inasmuch as the locus of their occurrence is the neural manifold of the subject and inasmuch as the fulfilling conditions need to occur and recur within the appropriate spatial and temporal range relative to the subject's neural manifold. But inasmuch as the integrations themselves are of classes, and the classes are common to subjects in cultures, the integrating acts that mediate and coordinate the routines, the anticipations, the memories and hopes of a culture are fully public. (149f; Fs)

68/5 The term essential freedom denotes the fact that the manifold of skills within the repertoire of any human subject is open to the possibility of such an emergent integration occurring in the context of a scheme of acts involving a selection among projected alternatives and modification through feedback cycles.4 Because such integrations occur and recur in accordance with f-probabilities, the human subject is not locked into the determining constraints of biological, psychological or social conditioning. But because biological, psychological and social conditions are mediated to the neural manifold through the operation of countless recurrence schemes, such conditions operate to shift the f-probabilities associated with various classes of integrations. For this reason the subject is social. (150; Fs)

69/5 Furthermore the most significant fact about practically integrating skills is the way in which they function to transform subjective spontaneity, and thus to condition or shape the f-probabilities associated with the course of subsequent performance. Since the generally current practical routines of economy, society and polity will not be authored individually by the majority of subjects but will be established in accordance with the operative exigencies in each of these realms, there will be patterns in the flows of practical and theoretical insights in accordance with historical patterns in such exigencies. As operative routines shape daily experience such experience gives rise to corresponding insights. And as operative routines are themselves transformed in accordance with historically dynamic patterns in the transformation of economic, social and political life, such routines will mediate (both systematically and non-systematically) such patterns to the flows of cognitional acts of subjects. Such patterns of 'conditioning' do not preclude essential freedom. For the capacity for emergent integration in a scheme involving cognitional projection, selection and feedback modification remains. (150; Fs)

70/5 However, there also exists a set of skills wherein the subject can refine progressively the genesis of such operative integrations in accordance with his or her own reflexively transforming anticipations, in a scheme of intersubjective exchange wherein his or her own anticipations and those of another are assessed critically, and in the interests of the ongoing development of the capacity to constitute systematically his or her own subsequent capacities. The term 'effective freedom' denotes the fact that the emergent integration of the subject's skills stands as an act within a set of acts wherein the subject can effect such an integration in one of a number of possible ways, and that the range of possibilities open to him or her at a point in time can be expanded or restricted, through the operation of social, historical, and psychological conditions as well as through the subject's developed skills of modifying or transforming his or her own 'praxis,' and subsequent lines of development in such 'praxis.'5 (150f; Fs) (notabene)

71/5 Because the emergent integrations are inertial (in the absence of intervening conditions) and because they reorder the subject's spontaneous engagement with his or her own environment, the practical, linguistic, cognitional skills of culture, once learned, recur spontaneously with the presence of fulfilling conditions. Consequently the practical routines of culture do not only proliferate, they also endure. But because the experiential life of subjects involves not only the recurring schemes of society, economy, polity, but also the random interactions among events in these schemes and events of the other 'natural' routines of his or her environment, this experiential life will undergo a continual process of transformation. And so essential to the 'welfare' of subjects will be a dynamic flexibility in their development and modification of skills. For this reason the notion of 'effective freedom' pertains, in a minor way, to the social, economic, cultural conditions that restrict the proliferation of determinate practical forms. But in a major way effective freedom pertains to the developmental skills wherein subjects become capable of modifying their own skilled, practical spontaneity in accordance with the shifting exigences of culture on the move. And social, economic, cultural conditions remain relevant to this second, major, instance of effective freedom. But they will function to increase the f-probabilities associated with such dynamic, developmental skills only insofar as they enhance rather than supplant this reflexively operative flexibility. Conversely in this analysis the transformation of the social, economic, cultural conditions of life will exacerbate the problems of culture on the move to the extent that they are not directed towards increasing the occasion for and the f-probability of developing personally constitutive, integrative skills. (151; Fs) (notabene)

72/5 Such is Lonergan's distinction between essential and effective freedom. At its centre stands the emergent cognitional event integrating ranges of performance skills and the reflexively operative scheme of acts whose implementation shapes the content of this integration. In any learning process the role of this cognitional integration scheme is clear and obvious, not as 'knowledge of facts' but as a cognitional anticipation or projection of a possible course of action, and a hit-and-miss process of ordering the elements of the skill in a feedback cycle of progressively refining stages until the elements 'come together.' Anyone who has learned recently to drive a car, to play 'double stops' on a violin, to lay bricks, to write essays, to write poems, will remember the agonies associated with this cognitional anticipation and with its mediating role in assembling the succession of stages and identifying the elements to be integrated. (151f; Fs) (notabene)

73/5 Similarly in any practical or moral dilemma the role of this cognitional scheme in its linked set of operations stands clear and obvious. For a dilemma most usually demands a response in the absence of a clear differentiation of the superior alternative. But most profoundly, and perhaps least obviously, this cognitional scheme mediates the concrete application of socially current 'praxis' to the ever-shifting conditions and situations of day to day living. Without the flexibility associated with the more or less restricted ranges of effective freedom the concrete practical implementation of the routines of culture could never occur. Indeed, because of the powerful way in which operative routines shape and orientate collective spontaneity, the concern for collective responsibility must turn to this conditioning relationship between operative routines and the f-probabilities associated with classes of insights and judgments of truth and value. But because the solutions to the continually arising problems of culture on the move requires the ongoing genesis of skills and the ongoing modification of practical routines in accordance with the shifting demands of randomly and systematically interacting conditions, this central role of the personal, emergent cognitional integration can never be supplanted. (152; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Geschichte: kritische, analytische - spekulative Schule (W.H. Walsh); Lonergan: Schere (obere, untere Klinge)

Kurzinhalt: Walsh's basic distinction is a commonly made one that Lonergan formulates quite simply as the distinction between history as written and history as written about.

Textausschnitt: 6.1 Analytic or Critical Philosophy of History and the Speculative Philosophy of History

4/6 In his Philosophy of History: An Introduction,1 W.H. Walsh sets out a few basic distinctions that will serve to identify some of the major sets of questions and concerns that are addressed in the relevant fields. Clearly contemporary philosophy of history is not a unity but an aggregate. And Walsh traces two roots in this aggregate to Vico in Italy, together with a line of thinkers from Herder to Hegel in Germany on the one hand, and to Dilthey, Rickert and Croce in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, on the other. The two roots represent two positions in a debate that continues to rage over what constitutes a legitimate intellectual contribution to the study of history.2 (166; Fs)

5/6 Walsh's basic distinction is a commonly made one that Lonergan formulates quite simply as the distinction between history as written and history as written about.3 As written about, history is the totality of past events and actions that historians seek to know and explain. As written, history is the account, explanation or narrative of these events or actions that the historian puts together. The collection of all such accounts comprises the corpus of historical writing and most frequently written history is in dialogue with or a commentary upon other works of written history. When conflicts arise among assessments as to what happened or how or why it happened - conflicts that cannot be resolved on this level of writing history - a further 'meta-level' emerges which asks about the nature or process of historical writing and its relation to the history that is written about; what am I doing when I am writing history? Just as the philosophy of science can be an acceptable study of the procedures of scientists so too the philosophy of history can be an acceptable study of the procedures of the historian. And Walsh locates the divergence among the two schools or traditions in the philosophy of history on this further 'meta-level.' The two schools of philosophy of history constitute too different sets of questions that can be asked about the writing of history.4 (166f; Fs)

6/6 In the critical or analytic school, the questions ask about the relation between history as a form of knowledge and other forms of knowledge. This tradition originated, according to Walsh, in Germany in the late nineteenth century and can be associated with names like Dilthey, Droysen, Ranke, Rickert, and Croce. As the field or discipline of historical writing expanded, the questions as to the appropriate methods and procedures for determining the relevant facts, for amassing evidence, for judging truth, and for interpreting both facts and the conclusions of other historians began to abound. Historians discovered that data was selected differently from age to age and from place to place, and that interpretations as to what data was relevant for an explanation reflected more the convictions and allegiances of historians than the horizons of the age being studied. Finally, the various historians and historical schools found themselves divided on what it was they were supposed to be doing. Does the historian simply narrate a course of events or does (s)he explain these events in terms of antecedent events or consequent outcomes? Can events and courses of events be classified? Are there operative patterns or laws to history? Is there an overall intelligibility to history as a whole? (167; Fs) (notabene)

7/6 At the limits of this first school of philosophy of history a set of questions begin to emerge which had horrified the working historians since the German idealists began developing their sweeping accounts of the overarching course of historical process.5 Historians have feared that grand accounts of the meaning, purpose, telos of humanity and of the principal features or determinates of historical causation did violence to a careful empirical study of history. These broad questions about human nature and about the structure and the orientation of the whole of the history that is written about have been the concern of the second school of philosophy of history, the speculative school.6 But their contemporary proponents, the speculative philosophers of history who have upheld a tradition since Vico, Herder, Kant, Hegel and Marx, argue that there is no getting around some implicit or explicit view on such fundamental questions. Walsh argues that contemporary answers to the questions raised by these speculative philosophers certainly need to emerge more carefully from a concrete study of empirical of history. But in Walsh's view the theories of the great speculative thinkers can still operate as hypotheses which the historian can carry with him or her into the empirical study and which must be evaluated in terms of the contemporary data.7 (167; Fs)

8/6 To locate Lonergan's emergent probability within this vast field of questions and answers it would be helpful to begin with an image or analogy introduced in a talk that he gave at the Thomas More Institute in Montreal on September 23, 1960, entitled 'The Philosophy of History.'8 Much of the material in this talk is reworked and refined in the eighth and ninth chapters of Method in Theology9 But the 'scissors analogy' remains relevant and suggestive. (167f; Fs)

9/6 Lonergan addresses himself to the two sets of questions which I have distinguished above as corresponding to the two schools of philosophy of history.10 And to sketch a route through the first set, from the analytic or critical school, he introduces his often quoted analogy of the two-bladed scissors.11 As is the case in the empirical sciences the historian operates not simply with data, with texts, with observation, with the testimonies of witnesses, with his or her own insights and judgments and those of others (the lower blade of the scissors) but also with a set of anticipations as to the shape or structure of the final account or explanation (the upper blade). (168; Fs)

10/6 In the natural sciences Galileo's set of anticipations was the axiomatic system of Euclidian geometry. With Newton it was a similar set of axioms, deductions, empirically verified constants and logically deducible, universally verifiable laws called mechanics. With Einstein and Heisenberg the introduction of notions like indeterminacy and discontinuity into the upper blade of method shattered the lawful determinism of Newtonian mechanics and changed radically the anticipations as to what a final explanation of physical processes would look like. The work of Monod, summarized in 2.2 above, reflects the impact of these revised anticipations. (168; Fs)

11/6 In the field of historiography, whose methods were progressively refined through the contributions of analytic or critical philosophy of history since Ranke, Droysen and Dilthey, a wide sweep of types of 'upper blades' emerged after the late nineteenth century. At one pole of the sweep stands a set of positions that emphasize historical relativity. And as an example, Johan Huizinga defines history as a people interpreting its past to itself.12 Since the people interpreting are almost never the same as the people who lived this past, the interpretation will necessarily differ in orientation, in its selection of significant details, in its assessment of what is of value, from the lived world of the historical actors. Thus there will always be several histories and the horizon of the written history will be the horizon of the writer.13 (168; Fs)

[...]


20/6 In each of these cases various answers to questions about the elements and the structure of the history that is written about were related integrally to the author's conception of the enterprise and the methods of historiography. And so Walsh's suggestion that the theories of the great speculative philosophers of history be understood and assessed by contemporary historians and philosophers is surely a good one. But is there not another angle or tack that can be taken on both sets of issues together? Is there not a basis in epistemology or cognitional theory to both sets of questions? An account of the substance and dynamic structure of historical events and processes is itself an act of knowing as are the procedures of historiography. Indeed there would seem to be some truth in conceiving intelligence as, in some way, constitutive of history. It becomes clear in the more 'relativist' positions that what one conceives as the structure and the limits to acts of knowing history determines how one conceives what the historian is writing about. Writing at the end of the nineteenth century, Wilhelm Dilthey understood the integral connections among cognitional theory, one's conception of the substance and dynamic structure of history, and the enterprise and methods of historiography. (171f; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Geschichte: Wilhelm Dilthey - Lonergan

Kurzinhalt: ... what is relevant here is that Lonergan, like Dilthey, asks whether there can be any foundation for a single 'upper blade' for history in general. ... that a general historiography would need to take its upper blade from something like a ...

Textausschnitt: 6.2 Wilhelm Dilthey

21/6 According to Michael Ermarth,1 Wilhelm Dilthey's life was devoted to finding grounds for reconciling an appropriate knowledge of humanity and a belief in the foundations for human living with a newer form of knowledge of natural processes which was emerging with remarkable success from the application of the methods of the Naturwissenschaflen. Dilthey had seen a marked shift occur in nineteenth century Germany. The first half of the century had been dominated by German Idealism with its emphasis upon the creative, originating, transformative power of mind. Human reality was conceived as decisively constituted by the operations of mind. And so the human sciences, with their sweeping generalizations which sought to bring all of reality under a single systematic viewpoint, were considered the sole adequate means for gaining access to this human reality. After 1850, however, a new, positivist approach began to gain dominance, an approach which emphasized the particular details of human life that could be discovered by applying the methods of the natural sciences. And here, mind and consciousness were not conceived as originating but as derivative of the external, natural world. Dilthey was convinced that the human sciences could still yield some knowledge of reality and that the successes of the natural sciences need not demand a reductionist view of mind. He wondered whether there was a route somewhere between the sweeping generalizations of the idealists and the concrete, reductionist explanations of the positivists. And so he sought to secure a methodological foundation for a newly conceived science of man, which would provide access to a comprehensive understanding of human history while still remaining a legitimate, grounded knowing.2 (172; Fs)

22/6 Dilthey's approach, according to Michael Ermarth, was to recognize the natural sciences as a legitimate way of knowing, but to demand a restriction in the field of knowledge to which the methods of the natural sciences would apply. Taking his clue from the great idealist philosophers, Dilthey asked whether the realm of human history, human value, human meaning was constituted differently from the realm of natural processes. And he found an answer in his distinction between inner lived experience of human conscious life and the outer sensory experience which provides access to the natural world. The human sciences have as their proper object of study the reality which is given directly to the mind as a coherent texture of relations and meanings.3 And this inner lived experience is given directly to the mind as a coherent unity precisely because it is a product of mind itself. Dilthey seized upon an insight which had been formulated first by Giovanni Battista Vico, early in the eighteenth century. The mind can know directly what the mind has created. And so understanding in the human sciences is the reconstruction of mental life.4 Consequently the methodology of the human sciences will have its foundations rooted in an adequate account of the workings of the human mind.5 The 'Fundamental Science,' the foundations for a science of man, society and history, will be at once a psychology and an epistemology. For an empirical study of the laws that rule the human mind in its social, intellectual, and moral activity, will explain both the workings of mind and the nature of its products, human conscious historical life.6 (173; Fs)

23/6 Dilthey's turn was towards an empirical account of human knowing to ground a systematic method of knowing in the human sciences. Human knowing is spontaneously operative in its natural attitude of historical life experience.7 And as such the activity of mind is constitutive of historical reality. Human understanding includes its objectification in language and gesture. And history is the manifold of relations that are constituted by such understanding. History is the process of objectification of Verstehen.8 Thus Dilthey's 'Fundamental Science' set the foundations for an account of the structure and dynamism of history, precisely because it is mind itself which is the author of historical process.9 (173; Fs)

24/6 There is certainly a great deal more than can be said about the work of Dilthey. And Michael Ermarth's book is a marvellous introduction to the many facets of Dilthey's life and his thought. But for the present purposes what is significant is that Dilthey understood the methodological implications for the study of history when history is conceived in terms of the mediating and constitutive acts of human meaning and human freedom. Acts of intelligence are not simply employed to understand human historical processes. Rather, they are, in some way, the significantly constitutive elements of those processes as decisively human. And so to work out a historiographical method will require a more basic explanation of the operation of mind in its mediation and its constitution of historical process. For it is this act of mind, operating in its myriad of concrete times and places, which the study of history seeks to explain.10 There will be two 'modes' of the operation of mind. In the spontaneous 'natural attitude' mind understands and exteriorizes itself, thus constituting its object, historical life. And in the more refined attitude of inquiry in the human sciences understanding grasps the nature of its objectified operation in the natural attitude.11 But the empirical study of the psychology of mind (a further refinement of this second mode of operation) will yield an understanding of the structure of mind's operation in both modes. (173f; Fs)

25/6 Lonergan would have some critical reservations about the way in which Dilthey set about working out his Fundamental Science. And Matthew Lamb has written a book on the similarities and the differences in the two approaches of Lonergan and Dilthey.12 But what is relevant here is that Lonergan, like Dilthey, asks whether there can be any foundation for a single 'upper blade' for history in general. In his 1960 Thomas More lecture, Lonergan notes than [sic, eg: then?] when it comes to writing a history in a particular field, say the history of mathematics, or the history of physics, there can be some agreement on historical explanations of the developments in the particular fields precisely because there is some agreement on how the operations of mathematics and physics currently are carried out. The data that is available on the various moments and advancements in the science constitute isolated points in the chronology, but the historian can fill in the spaces because he or she knows the current science and what is significant to its contemporary operation in its relevant fields of research and application.13 The upper blade of a history of mathematics or a history of physics comes from the methods and procedures operating in present day mathematics and physics. And while philosophers of science still seem to be unable to agree upon a complete explanation of scientific knowing there remains, at the level of scientific practice, substantial agreement in many areas, on what procedures constitute appropriate experimental method and an appropriate foundation upon which to pronounce a hypothesis v-probably verified. What the historian of mathematics or science anticipates as a complete historical account or explanation of the particular field is the genesis of a set of procedures whose performance the historian must understand intimately before he or she sets about the historical task. (174; Fs)

Fußnote 12:
Matthew Lamb summarizes Dilthey's contributions in four points. First, Dilthey understood that what constitutes history is human acts of meaning, the operations of human subjects who are present to themselves as acting subjects. Second, human cognitional acts are 'openly and dynamically patterned in structurally recurrent and related functions or operations.' Third, the world of history is the interaction among many instances of human interiority and so 'any historical objectification is the expression of that interiority, and as such is understandable.' Fourth, there therefore stands a possibility of integrating all systems and contexts of human activity in terms of a growing and ever-refining account of the structures and operations of acts of interiority. See Lamb, History, Method and Theology, p. 352. But Lamb also sees some serious problems in Dilthey's work. Dilthey's cognitional theory was based, finally on the work of Kant. And just as Kant severed the correspondence relationship between the content of acts of cognition and the objects intended by such acts in the natural sciences, so too with Dilthey, historical knowledge was never self-transcending, never oriented towards an object that might not be the work of another's mind. All historical knowledge had to be understood in terms of worldviews and the ongoing march of worldviews finally collapsed into historicism, see ibid., pp. 353-356.


26/6 It would follow, then, that a general historiography would need to take its upper blade from something like a contemporary science of man and culture.14 And here Lonergan is in agreement with Dilthey. Furthermore like Dilthey, Lonergan argues that what is essentially constitutive of human culture and history as human are the operations of human intelligence. There is an existential memory, that is constitutive of the people qua people, just as there is an existential memory constitutive of the personality qua personality. Again, the history of a people is an account, an interpretation of what the people were; but what the people were was their own self-interpretation. A man is not just a thing. It's what he does. What he says, what he works for, is all function of his experience, his accumulated experience, understanding, judgment, his mentality, his way of thinking, what he approves of, and disapproves of, what he wants and doesn't want. His mental activities are the main determinants of all his actions and his mental activities include an interpretation, an idea of what he himself is and what he is for, - his nature and destiny. And as this is true of the individual so also it is true of the group.15 (174f; Fs)

27/6 Lonergan agrees that at the basis of a critical and a speculative philosophy of history will lie a science of man whose foundation is rooted in an account of what is distinctively human about life, acts of meaning.16 (175; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Emergente Wahrscheinlichkeit (emergent probability): obere Klinge einer kritischen Geschichtsphilosophie; statistische, klassische Gesetze; inverse Einsicht

Kurzinhalt: Lonergan's proposal, then, for an answer to the problems encountered in the two schools of the philosophy of history will be that an overall science of man will develop a set of anticipations operative in the writing of history, that ...

Textausschnitt: 6.3 Emergent Probability as an 'Upper Blade' For a Critical Philosophy of History

28/6 Lonergan's proposal, then, for an answer to the problems encountered in the two schools of the philosophy of history will be that an overall science of man will develop a set of anticipations operative in the writing of history, that this science of man will be based in a theory of cognition, that the structure to the explanations in this science of man will be rooted in the operative structures of acts of knowing in both the classical and the statistical sciences,1 and that such a science will recognize that historical events are transformed significantly with changes in the sciences of man which ground the popularly held anticipations of culture. (175; Fs) (notabene)

29/6 Like Huizinga, Lonergan conceives the distinctive, constitutive element of human history, as written, to be acts of meaning, acts of understanding, judging and deciding. And, like Huizinga, Lonergan recognizes that such acts occur within a context or a horizon of anticipations, goals, projects, values, habits, routines, skills, roles, hopes, fears, drives, biases, etc., etc. Lonergan would agree that what is selected for a study by the historian, most usually corresponds to the concerns of a later age. And this foreign horizon of concern, far from constituting an obstacle to writing history, is its condition of possibility.2 But Lonergan also recognizes that the orientation of the act of writing history is to transcend the limitations of this later horizon and to approach a correspondence or identity with an intelligibility immanent in emergent historical process. Consequently the historian's task is to achieve an ecstasis, or a standing out from his or her original horizon of concerns, and gradually to begin operating within a horizon of anticipations that is appropriate to the age or to the thinkers being studied. Thus while the historian chooses to study what he or she, in his or her own culture, deems significant, the study need not remain locked into the cultural horizon of the historian's own age.3 (175; Fs)

30/6 Like the covering-law modelists, Lonergan conceives acts mediated by meaning as events that occur in accordance with the fulfillment of an appropriate range of conditions and he conceives such events and conditions to be of classes. Classes of events recur and associated with this recurrence there is to be discerned an intelligibility that can be formulated as a 'law.' Laws are statistical as well as classical and it is the statistical laws that grasp and intelligibility that is operative in ranges of non-systematic aggregates of converging conditions.4 History does not seek to explain events in their generality but in their particularity. Rather, it is psychology, sociology, economics, political science, and the like that explain events as instances of classes. History is interested in the particular, the concrete.5 And so explanation in history will require an understanding of the classical laws operative in the recurring events and schemes and of the statistical laws associated with the fulfilling conditions for the more or less probable emergence of such events and schemes. But beyond these history will require the inverse insight that grasps individual occurrences as non-systematic divergences from statistical laws. At any historical moment a number of things possibly could have been going forward and at the moment the probabilities associated with the recurrence of appropriate ranges of conditions would narrow down that number. But what actually occurred did so in accordance with an aggregate of converging conditions that constituted a non-systematic divergence from the probabilities. And so while historical explanation will require an appeal to laws, such laws will not suffice to explain the historical events.6 (175f; Fs) (notabene)

31/6 Thus Lonergan agrees with Dray that the historian is interested in the concrete and the particular and that the concrete and the particular is not to be understood completely in terms of classical laws. But while a 'colligation' is a possible account, Lonergan would draw upon the classical and statistical laws to narrow down the possibilities and to estimate the f-probabilities associated with a range of v-probable occurrences in an approach towards grasping a v-probable intelligibility immanent in historical process.7 (176; Fs)

32/6 With Gallic and White, Lonergan recognizes that there are overall structures or patterns operative in the oscillations between progress and decline, that these patterns conceivably could be classified, and that such patterns are surely operative in the imagination as anticipations of the long range course of one's life and that of one's culture and civilization. Lonergan would recognize careful classification of such anticipatory structures to be powerfully relevant to an understanding of a historical age and to one's understanding of oneself. But unlike White, Lonergan recognizes understanding to intend something more than an order in the mind or a structure to language. And Lonergan would argue that inasmuch as White intends to do something more than present an account of the structure of his own mind (inasmuch as White makes a historical claim about nineteenth century philosophers and historians) his own project reflects Lonergan's rejection of this narrower view of cognition. (176; Fs)

33/6 Finally, Lonergan would add that historical events are transformed significantly in accordance with transformations in culturally operative theories on humanity and on historical process. As people in cultures live and act in accordance with anticipations about the nature of humanity, the structures of history, and the dynamics of progress and decline - anticipations which are shaped, generally, by the historians and theoreticians of the current or previous ages - their historical living comes to reflect the structure of such anticipations. The historian, equipped with the tools for an analysis of sciences of man and philosophies of history, will be in a position to understand the course of historical events in terms of transformations in culturally operative views drawn from such extant human sciences and philosophies of history. And a historical writing which reflects any advance upon the status quo in the science of man and the philosophy of history will have a profound effect on the future flow of events when it becomes widespread in the operative anticipations of culture. It is to this end of working out an advance upon current philosophies of history that emergent probability is proposed. (177; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Ethik und Geschichte 3; Integration - normative Dynamik; Definition: Emergenz (emergence): Nicht-Sein -> Sein; Entwicklung: Prinzip der Entsprechung (correspondence); statische und dynamische Integration

Kurzinhalt: The transition or dynamic structure of the movement from non-presence to presence is what is meant here by emergence. And what emerges is being ...

Textausschnitt: 80/6 Schemes emerge and function when their conditions are fulfilled. And their functioning effects a higher order integration of lower order manifolds. The foundation of the normative dynamism of development is this relationship between the higher order integration and the lower order manifold. For the integration marks the presence of emergent system, emergent intelligibility, in a manifold of events whose recurrence is otherwise coincidental or non-systematic. Such an emergence is not necessarily the emergence of a new recurrence scheme. Rather, the routine functioning of older schemes can have the effect of regularly ordering the materials of a lower manifold. And Lonergan provides a number of examples of such emergent integrations. (193; Fs)

First, there is the already familiar principle of emergence. Otherwise coincidental manifolds of lower conjugate acts invite the higher integration effected by higher conjugate forms. Thus, in our account of explanatory genera, chemical elements and compounds are higher integrations of otherwise coincidental manifolds of subatomic events; organisms are higher integrations of otherwise coincidental manifolds of chemical processes; sensitive consciousness is a higher integration of otherwise coincidental manifolds of changes in neural tissues; and accumulating insights are higher integrations of otherwise coincidental manifoldsof images or data.1

81/6 Most simply the normative dynamism of development is rooted in the relationship between being and non-being. A coincidental manifold exhibits an absence of system in its recurring events; an absence of intelligibility; an absence of 'form.' When the appropriate conditions are fulfilled the higher order integration of the manifold is the presence of system; the presence of intelligibility; the presence of 'form.' The difference between the two states of the manifold is precisely this presence or absence. The transition or dynamic structure of the movement from non-presence to presence is what is meant here by emergence. And what emerges is being (the term or object of a potential or actual act of intelligence). In each of his examples above, Lonergan is pointing to instances of the emergence of being from non-being. It would appear that the most basic, the most fundamental foundation for any normative or evaluative predication is conceived by Lonergan to be this dynamic relationship between being and non-being. Thus it is not coincidental that Lonergan's eighteenth chapter of Insight on 'The Possibility of Ethics' begins a presentation of 'The Notion of the Good' with the statement 'As being is intelligible and one, so also it is good.'2 For without this most basic equation (or its opposite) any notion of norm or valuation is utterly precluded from the outset. (193f; Fs) (notabene)
82/6 I think it is worth noting here that the foundation of normative predication, within the context of Lonergan's analysis, is not simply this identity of being as good. Rather, a norm is a dynamic relationship and the possibility of such a dynamism is the possibility of emergence of being from non-being. Furthermore as we move progressively towards a distinctively moral or ethical normative foundation, a further number of elements need to be identified and distinguished. (194; Fs)

83/6 The normative dynamism of development is not simply the fact that emergent and operative schemes can order a coincidental manifold. For 'significantly different underlying manifolds require different higher integrations.'3 This was the point which was most relevant in the discussion of dialectic above.4 The manifold is open to specific types of integrations in accordance with narrower or wider ranges of flexibility. In his 'principle of correspondence,' Lonergan expresses this fact that a manifold has an exigence for a specific form or range of forms of integrations, so that development is not simply a matter of any development in any direction. (194; Fs)

Thus, the chemical elements differ by atomic numbers and atomic weights, and these differences are grounded in the underlying manifold. Different aggregates of aggregates of chemical processes involve different organisms. Neural events in the eye and in the ear call forth different conscious experiences. Different data lead to different theories.5
84/6 But in addition to this exigence for appropriate integration, a manifold has a greater or lesser flexible range of possibilities. And so while development is directed it is not simply a matter of events following upon the recurrence of systematic processes. The presence of randomness in the manifold is the condition of possibility for the emergence of system. And in some cases this flexibility has the curious effect of promoting and sustaining continued development. This brings us to the final aspect of Lonergan's notion of development which is relevant for our purposes here. (194; Fs) (notabene)

There follows at once a distinction between static and dynamic higher integrations. Every higher integration systematizes an otherwise coincidental manifold, but the systematization may be effected in two different manners. It is static when it dominates the lower manifold with complete success and thereby brings about a notable imperviousness to change. Thus, the inert gases lock coincidental manifolds of subatomic events in remarkably permanent routines. On the other hand, the higher integration is dynamic when it is not content to systematize the underlying manifold but keeps adding to it and modifying it until, by the principle of correspondence, the existing integration is eliminated and, by the principle of emergence, a new integration is introduced.6 (notabene)
84/6 The distinctive meaning of the term development involves this continued process of emergent integration which orders, but also transforms the manifold so as to call forth a new integration. In this manner the practical application of intelligence has the twofold effect of constituting an order both in the subjective and intersubjective repertoire of skills (thus ordering the subsequent course of events) and in the subject's routine or habitual spontaneity (thus constituting the subject's own affective and intelligent orientation to reality).7 Practical activity changes the subject. And this change is the condition of possibility for the assimilation and adaptation developmental scheme involved in the acquisition of skills.8 (195; Fs)

85/6 The notion of progress is the distinctively human occurrence of this normative structure of emergence and development in a history of events whose constitutive characteristic is the mediating function of meaning. Progress consists in the continued emergence of being through the performance of the human acts of practical intelligence, within narrower or wider ranges of possibilities. The normative dynamism of progress is most fundamentally rooted in this relationship between being and non-being. But because of the profound import of the self-constituting operation of practical intelligence, progress in human history also means sustained and self-sustaining development. I would suggest that it is in these terms that we can gain a fresh, and perhaps an illuminating perspective on the question of the foundations of moral value. (195; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Ethik und Geschichte 4; Grundierung von Werten; Fortschritt - Niedergang; Gegenposition

Kurzinhalt: ... the criteria of progress and decline link the subject to the objective moral world inasmuch as a 'terminal value'1 is a true value when the subject appropriates the dynamism of progress immanent in the very act of choosing.

Textausschnitt: 6.6 Ethics and History II: The Foundations of Value

86/6 This last section of chapter six begins where the fifth chapter left off, with a question about the foundation of value and its relationship to the overarching course of history. There would seem to be a spontaneous and habitual concern for selecting among alternate possible courses of action and for seeking out criteria for choosing appropriately. Is this spontaneous concern an intelligently grounded one? Even if clear criteria for selection remain to be found in concrete areas of moral life, can the search for criteria be expected to bear fruit at all? Or is the search to be pronounced vain? And if the search is not vain, then will deciding and living in the light of such criteria have any impact at all upon the overarching course of history? (195; Fs)

87/6 Lonergan's discussions of 'the human good' in Insight, chapter eighteen, and in Method, chapter two, link moral value with his notions of progress and decline.1 But the two sets of texts deal with two different dimensions of the relationship between moral responsibility and the course of historical progress and decline. Insight, chapter eighteen, deals with the foundational elements operative in the dynamic structure of rational self-consciousness. Progress and decline are the objects of responsible choice, but they are also the dynamic orientation, the act of choosing itself. Consequently the criteria of progress and decline link the subject to the objective moral world inasmuch as a 'terminal value'2 is a true value when the subject appropriates the dynamism of progress immanent in the very act of choosing.3 Method, on the other hand, speaks of historical progress and decline as proceeding from subjects who are themselves instances of originated value.4 Here progress and decline are not so much a part of the choice of value as they are the result of a subject (and indeed a group of subjects) living their lives as authentic, self-transcending, 'converted'5 human persons, the originators of value. Consequently the discussion that follows will have two parts. (196; Fs) (notabene)

(1) In Insight, chapter eighteen, the focus is upon the structure of the act of responsible choice as the foundation for the criteria for choosing. (196; Fs)

For the root of ethics, as the root of metaphysics, lies neither in sentences nor in propositions nor in judgments but in the dynamic structure of rational self-consciousness. Because that structure is latent and operative in everyone's choosing, it is universal on the side of the subject; because that structure can be dodged, it grounds a dialectical criticism of subjects. Again, because that structure is recurrent in every act of choice, it is universal on the side of the object; and because its universality consists not in abstraction but in inevitable recurrence, it also is concrete.6

88/6 A person's act of integrating his or her own acquired skills to effect an ordering of a manifold of materials of an environment has the structure of an emergent integration of a lower order manifold. Furthermore even to conceive a course of action and to consider its relative merits in anticipation of performance is to give evidence that an emergent integration has already occurred at the level of cognition, and that a further dynamic orientation towards emergence is operative at the level of responsible action. It is not simply that a moral subject faces a choice between courses of action which will either realize or prevent emergence (or a sustained course of emergence in development). Rather, the very act of considering two alternatives is itself evidence that an emergence has already occurred. The 'considering' has the dynamic structure of an emergence, and the act of choosing actuates a further emergence. The problem of moral value arises only insofar as an integrative act of conceiving two possibilities has already occurred. The responsible act of weighing the two alternatives is oriented towards a further emergence and this is constituted when the decision is made and the act is carried out. And so a decision as to whether to effect or to reject the normative orientation of development is itself an instance of such an orientation. If development is to be denied, either in a concrete case or as a general principle, it can only be denied through an instance of its own occurrence. And so the question arises as to whether a subject can reasonably repudiate something in principle that is actuated in the very act of repudiation. (196f; Fs) (notabene)

89/6 It is this question that is at stake in Lonergan's queer and repeated insistence upon promoting the 'positions' and reversing the 'counter-positions.'7 In humans the events whose recurrence ensures routine operation throughout individual lives are not only the respiration of oxygen, the procurement and ingestion of food, the elimination of wastes, and the raising and caring of young. More significantly, they are the dialectical interplay between the subject's 'interior' environment and his or her drive to order or coordinate that environment in accordance with psychic acts. In terms of emergent probability, what I am as human is a dynamically ordered set of physical, chemical, botanical, zoological schemes whose events include both occurrences within the spatial confines of a body, and events that occur beyond those confines. The complete set of processes that flow within and through me involves sets of higher integrations of manifolds of events that occur in accordance with exigent states of the manifolds. The relative correspondence of the integral pattern to the demands of the manifold either drives the psyche toward renewed attempts at integration or sets it to rest with the satisfaction of v-probable correspondence (only to find that the act of integration has given rise to a new form or instance of Sorge.) The dynamic operation of this dialectic is the structure of the scheme of judging value and deciding to act in the light of such judgments. And so the decision to affirm or to repudiate the principle of development, and to actuate or to refuse this principle in an act of progress or decline, is a decision whose content seeks to approximate a correspondence with the operative structure of its own occurrence. (197; Fs)

90/6 When the content of a judgment or decision does not approximate such a correspondence with the intelligibility immanent in the structure of the performance of the act, the exigence of the neural manifold drives intelligence to keep raising further questions, attending to new data, adopting new perspectives. Lonergan's examples of the various types of efforts to dodge self-knowledge are put forward as evidence of the power of this drive towards correspondence.8 And his account of the dramatic bias and its effects is an example of what distortions ensue when this drive is repressed or prematurely laid to rest.9 (197; Fs)

91/6 The affirmation of a counter-position is understood by Lonergan as an occurrence of a cognitional or responsible event which seeks to order the experiential manifold of a subject in accordance with an order or a pattern which, if it were true, would prevent the cognitional or responsible event from occurring. The spontaneity of intelligence is to continue rejecting such incongruity until isomorphism is approached or until the operator is deformed in his or her capacity. And so the grasp and affirmation of positions constitute the development of the subject while the affirmation of counter-positions sets the subject on the road towards decline. Furthermore since practical acts in humans have the effect of constituting the spontaneity and the habitual orientation of successive acts of the subject, the choice of development not only avoids the deformations that ensue from bias but it also sets the orientation of the subject in anticipation of further instances and manifestations of development. This is the cumulative and progressive character of development which was discussed above. And in this fashion the choice of progress has the effect of constituting the subject as an instance of originating value.10 (197f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Ethik und Geschichte 4; Zielwert, Ursprungwert (originating value); immanente Norm der Wahl; individuelle Wahl (Fortschritt, Niedergang) - Lauf der Geschichte

Kurzinhalt: The fact is that the self-constituting character of practical, responsible action is the central condition for the cumulative, and continually developing character of historical progress. The affirmation of progress over decline is fundamentally ...

Textausschnitt: 92/6
(2) If Method focuses on progress and decline as resulting or proceeding from the intersubjective activities of subjects who are, themselves, instances of originating value, this focus is in no way absent from Insight. The fact is that the self-constituting character of practical, responsible action is the central condition for the cumulative, and continually developing character of historical progress. And this explains why Lonergan sets terminal values as subordinate to originating value in his hierarchy of values. (198; Fs)

Again, terminal values are subordinate to originating values, for the originating values ground good will, and good will grounds the realization of the terminal values.1
93/6 Lonergan's introduction of the notion of 'conversion' in Method raises the question of the role of gratuitous grace in effecting a change in a subject's orientation. And this topic will be discussed further in the next chapter. But notwithstanding the degree of our own cooperation in constituting ourselves as instances of originating value, there remains an interesting dialectical interplay between practical, responsible activity and the course of historical events that follows from this account. Inasmuch as the dynamics of development and bias are operative immanently in the human subject the relative prevalence of the one or the other will orient the subjects' spontaneity and his or her habitual judgments and decisions. Such spontaneity will be reinforced or redirected by responsible acts. And these responsible acts will have the effect of increasing or decreasing the f-probable occurrence of judgments and realizations of true terminal values. Meanwhile the acts themselves will contribute to or present obstacles to the emergence of historical progress. And whatever they do, they will certainly change historical conditions to a greater or lesser degree, thus placing the subject in a new set of historical circumstances with a new set of practical problems to solve. (198; Fs)

94/6 Immanently operative development and bias find their influence felt [sic] on intersubjective, historical progress and decline, and vice versa. And the mediator or regulator is the subject who possesses the remarkable ability to monitor, in a cybernetic-like fashion, 'internal' and 'external' environmental events and processes by v-probably approaching a cognitional actuation of the intelligibility immanent in both sets of data, and ordering both manifolds in accordance with an emergent 'projection' of a possible course of action in the light of such cognition. The immanent norm for selection is the dynamic towards growth and development operative in the human subject. And the nature of truly human growth is such that a person can choose long-term progress in history even when such a choice leads to the short-term destruction of the person himself or herself. (198f; Fs) (notabene)

95/6 The affirmation of progress over decline is fundamentally at the root of the notion of value. And persons as originators of value are the engines of historical progress and decline. Were progress and decline only predicates of history and not immanently operative in the human subject, then responsible, moral action would be purely a matter of conformity to an extrinsic norm. Were they operative only immanently and not in history, then moral activity would not make a difference to the course of historical events. Morality would be irrelevant. Lonergan's approach, to try to explain both at once, in terms of generalizable heuristic, provides the bare bones of a possible explanation which may well bear some fruit if applied to the study of humanity and history. (199; Fs)

96/6 There remains the fact that while individuals will choose progress or decline, the course of a society and of history is never simply the result of one person's choice. It follows that there will certainly be coincidental aggregates of converging decisions and actions. And human society and human history will exhibit considerable evidence of randomness or absence of system. But randomness is never simply randomness. Rather, it is the condition of possibility for the emergence of higher order recurrence schemes which integrate lower order events into orders and routines, and regularly order the materials of the lower order in recurring patterns. Does this mean that there will be patterns or cycles in intersubjective, social and historical events? Lonergan's brief discussion of the three biases in chapter seven of Insight is his attempt to sketch a response to the great speculative philosophers of history on this question of the order(s) of history. (199; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Ordnungsgut, soziale Struktur: Lonergan - Hobbes (Leviathan); G. Winter: 3-fache Struktur der Sozialität; Tradition - intelligente Ordnung;

Kurzinhalt: ... Hobbes' theory of political obligation is rooted in an implicit social theory of a possessive market society ... Lonergan develops a complementary account of the structure of social processes that aims at righting a distortion in this view of society

Textausschnitt: 7.1 The Good of Order and Social Structure: Lonergan and Hobbes

4/7 In the thirteenth chapter of Leviathan, part one, Thomas Hobbes begins his consideration of the social state of man.1 On his own man could achieve some limited success in securing the objects of his desire, in securing his own happiness or 'felicity.' But placed in the permanent and inescapable company of other men who are all equally matched in skill, intelligence and strength, the pursuit of the objects of desire becomes a permanent state of competition for the same things. Thus, social life is the permanent state of struggle or war among equally matched opponents for the same, scarce objects of desire. To achieve any worthwhile goal is simply an invitation for someone to come and take it away. And since worth is a comparative term men need not even want the same things for them to stand in conflict. For whatever their possessions, their relative superiority or inferiority in their respective states of felicity will always be an object of competition.2 Thus, in the words of Michael Oakeshott: (210; Fs)

There is a radical conflict between the nature of man and the natural condition of mankind; what the one urges with hope of achievement, the other makes impossible.3
5/7 Man's deliverance from this permanent state of all out war rests in his fear of death. And so out of fear men are willing to transfer the right to the exercise of their own free will, in specific matters, to a third party, the 'Commonwealth,' who will exercise this right on their behalf and who will enforce each man's commitment to his contracted restrictions. Hobbes thus conceives social order as the necessary constraint upon each individual's free pursuit of his or her own desires, in the interest of securing the basic conditions for any pursuit of personal happiness.4 (210; Fs)

6/7 The power of Hobbes' theory of social order has been immeasurable. His conception of society as a constraint upon the individual's exercise of his natural rights and freedoms has prevailed in a line of social and political theory that continues to this day.5 In the view of C. B. Macpherson, Hobbes' theory of political obligation is rooted in an implicit social theory of a possessive market society.6 And in Macpherson's view, the historical conditions for such a possessive market society were, in fact, met between the seventeenth century and the mid-nineteenth century.7 The individual in this society is seen as 'the proprietor of his own person or capacities, owing nothing to society for them,' as sole owner of himself, as part of no larger social whole, as one whose freedom consists in independence from the wills of others. (210f; Fs)

7/7 Society consists of relations of exchange between proprietors. Political society becomes a calculated device for the protection of this property and for the maintenance of an orderly relation of exchange.8 In response to the various theories about the meaning of Hobbes' use of the term 'nature of man' Macpherson argues that what Hobbes was doing was describing the behavior of men in a particular type of society.9 He draws out explicitly some of the elements of this type of society and contrasts it with two other types of society in an effort to argue that Hobbes' political theory remains untenable in a historical age where the conditions of the possessive market society no longer prevail.10 (211; Fs)

8/7 Macpherson's brief account serves to highlight the essential elements of Hobbes' social and political theory. Man is essentially and perpetually in conflict or competition with his or her fellow man, and capable of securing the minimum conditions for commodious living only through the transfer of personal rights to an all powerful sovereign.11 In his 'Introduction' to the Penguin edition of Leviathan, Macpherson calls Hobbes the 'analyst of power and peace.' For more than any other his concern was dominated by the fear of civil war and the control of power which could secure some lasting relief from its hideous threat.' But in contrasting some of the characteristics of the possessive market society with two alternatives, Macpherson indirectly draws attention to some more basic characteristics of the structure of societies in general. If Macpherson is correct, then concurrent with the competition of man against man, there is operative an intricate set of relations of exchange and cooperation in Hobbes' marketplace. And I would suggest that Lonergan's intent in his notion of the 'good of order' is captured in his description of this possessive market model." (211)

9/7 "In chapter seven of Insight, Lonergan develops a complementary account of the structure of social processes that aims at righting a distortion in this view of society. Society certainly operates as a constraint upon individuals, as a constraining condition into which individuals are born and raised, as an imposition upon the individual's exercise of freedom, and as a contracted compromise that seeks to secure the minimum conditions for public order. But society is also collaboration in the achievement of ends that none could secure on his or her own. And it is to this dimension of social order that Lonergan turns in his account of the 'good of order.' (212; Fs)

10/7 In the terms of the last chapter's presentation of Gibson Winter's threefold structure of sociality, intersubjective exchange proceeds in three stages: with the gesture, the response and the drive to unification.12 The unification that is sought between two subjects is on two levels: on the level of the truth or the value in the meaning intended by the gesture and on the level of mutual confirmation of the two subjects as subjects. The structure of the drive towards unification is dialectical. The two principles of the dialectic are the two drives of the subjects towards intelligent grasp, reasonable affirmation and responsible decision on the content of the gesture and the response, and towards mutuality in personal expression and confirmation. In the primitive, intersubjective community the bonds that unite the members of the family or tribe as the foundation for interpersonal exchange are not the products of acts of intelligence, but they precede such acts as a condition for their occurrence. And so in the dialectic of gesture and response it is the spontaneously apprehended drive toward mutual respect and approval with, for example, a mother or father, that tends to prevail as the operator in the drive towards unification. (212f; Fs) (notabene)

11/7 But as acts of practical intelligence begin to yield more and more palpable success in securing advantages in living, the immanent criteria of intelligence are given more and more sway in the dialectic of social exchange. The authority of social relations and roles begins to give way to the authority of practical success when the fruits of such success begin to be felt in war, in hunting and in agriculture. And when experiments in the division of labour begin to produce craftsmen who can devote their total time to the pursuit of their craft, their achievements become cumulative. Children learn the skills of their fathers and mothers and carry the development of those skills forward with their own innovation. Gradually the community realizes that it is worthwhile to provide such craftsmen with the food, clothing and shelter they require to pursue their craft. For the fruits of their labour increase the gross product of the whole community. Thus the dialectical drive towards unification among subjects begins to demand the demonstrations of practical intelligence to complement and to found the roles and the authority of intersubjective spontaneity. With this trend there begins to emerge a new notion of 'the good' in which the talents, roles, and contributions of each are measured not in terms of some antecedent image or tradition of social order but in terms of their practically demonstrable contributions to the good of all. The undeniable success of practical intelligence becomes an operative principle in the dialectical drive towards the unification among subjects. And mutual respect and admiration becomes respect for competence and admiration for socially valuable skill.13 (213; Fs)

12/7 Once again, it must be emphasized that Lonergan recognizes the truth in Hobbes' claim.14 Society is not all cooperation and collaboration. It is also constraint and coercion. But while Hobbes' principle datum was the fact of competition for scarce goods, Lonergan's central datum was the fact of collaboration towards hitherto unknown goods.15 Social process is not entirely the one or the other. And so an account based solely on the one or the other will lead to a distortion in one's understanding of society. Furthermore it will lead to a distortion in one's direction of society, for an account of the structure of a social process will constitute a foundation for a science of the direction of social process, for a political theory.16 (213; Fs)

13/7 What Hobbes understood and expressed well in his Leviathan was the spontaneous orientation of the subject to pursue his or her own individual desires and the negative, constraining aspect of the dialectical tension that ensures between this individual pursuit and the intelligently emergent common good. Hobbes conceived the spontaneous pursuit of individual felicity to be the 'natural' state of man. But Lonergan recognizes Hobbes' own passionate concern for the good or order to be no unnatural accomplishment. And Hobbes' achievement was a responsible act in which Hobbes transcended his own vital desires and fears. Consequently Lonergan's method of proceeding begins by taking Hobbes' own drive towards the practical realization of value as an equally 'natural' state of man and then accounting for the human phenomena that Hobbes describes in these chapters of Leviathan, part one, as an earlier stage in an ongoing personal and/or social development or as one or another form of 'bias.' (213f; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Praktische Intelligenz - Geschichte; Lonergan - Marx

Kurzinhalt: The constitutive elements of societies, in Lonergan's analysis, are 'the pattern of relations of a social order.

Textausschnitt: 7.3 The Practical Intelligence as Historical

20/7 In the twenty pages on 'Group Bias' and 'General Bias,' Lonergan's emergent probability becomes a foundation for a theory of historical dynamics. In these pages the sketch of the structure of historical change which so far has remained heuristic and suggestive takes on some flesh. After discussing the two biases and their corresponding cycles of historical decline, Lonergan briefly sets his account in opposition to that of Marx. (216; Fs)

To ignore the fact of decline was the error of the old liberal views of automatic progress. The far more confusing error of Marx was to lump together both progress and the two principles of decline under the impressive name of dialectical materialism, to grasp that the minor principle of decline would correct itself more rapidly through class war, and then to leap gaily to the sweeping conclusion that class war would accelerate progress. What, in fact, was accelerated was major decline which in Russia and Germany leaped to fairly thorough brands of totalitarianism.1

21/7 This presentation is, without a doubt, not what one could call a sensitive analysis of Marx's thought. But in spite of its scathing dismissal of Marx's proposed solution for the reversal of historical decline, this passage betrays a profound concern for a solution to the problem to which Karl Marx was passionately dedicated. (216; Fs)

22/7 Like Marx, Lonergan understands clearly the integral relationship between an account of human nature and a theory of social and historical process. It is certainly true that Lonergan conceives the performance of acts of intelligence and responsibility to be the constitutive elements of human nature as human. But there is evidence in Insight that Lonergan shares with Marx the view that the broad range of human life involves not so much the theoretical operation of intelligence in the intellectual pattern of experience but the practical application of common sense intelligence to the transformation of 'material' conditions of society, culture and economy. (216; Fs)

Common sense is practical. It seeks knowledge, not for the sake of the pleasure of contemplation, but to use knowledge in making and doing. Moreover, this making and doing involve a transformation of man and his environment, so that the common sense of a primitive culture is not the common sense of an urban civilization, nor the common sense of one civilization the common sense of another. However elaborate the experiments of the pure scientist, his goal is always to come closer to natural objects and natural relationships. But the practicality of common sense engenders and maintains enormous structures of technology, economics, politics, and culture, that not only separate man from nature but also add a series of new levels or dimensions in the network of human relationships.2

23/7 Man's most primitive as well as his most developed activities consist of the recurrent practice of applying human ingenuity and effort to the available materials of life and converting these materials to the satisfaction of physical needs and of culturally and economically created desires, appetites and values. Such activity not only transforms the conditions of life. It also creates such conditions so that in time the environment in which men and women live and work is constituted predominantly by the fruits of previous acts of intelligent 'production.'3 Thus, Lonergan conceives the practical operation of intelligence in its 'labour' or 'production' to be the motive power of history has human.4 (217; Fs) (notabene)

24/7 Lonergan also recognizes that what is most significant for a proper study of human nature and history is the concrete, historical performance of the acts of practical intelligence by human subjects. Ideas are not begotten by ideas, but by human subjects developing and executing cognitional and cognitially-mediated skills in concrete contexts of historical materials and conditions. Lonergan has sought to understand the structure of the schemes of acts wherein such ideas and such practical activities are born. Marx, on the other hand, has focussed most predominantly upon the historical and economic conditions surrounding the performance of specific classes of such acts. And, as will be discussed in greater detail below, this difference in orientation is a significant element in the differences between Marx's and Lonergan's accounts of history and the human prospects. But the two thinkers share a profound appreciation for the concrete genesis of acts of practical intelligence. (217; Fs)

25/7 The constitutive elements of societies, in Lonergan's analysis, are 'the pattern of relations of a social order.'5 The operative distinctions between modes or forms of labour, the fields of skills corresponding to such forms, the functional distinctions between productive sectors of an economy, the current classifications of income groups and the distinctions between functioning contributions to political process all constitute the terms and relations which define implicitly the operative routines of schemes of a society. And while such operative terms and relations are themselves the products of countless instances of the practical application of intelligence, the context of such conditions into which all of us are born and raised has the overwhelming effect of shaping and adapting human spontaneity in accordance with its own needs and exigences. (217f; Fs)
In a school, a regiment, a factory, a trade, a profession, a prison, there develops an ethos that at once subtly and flexibly provides concrete premises and norms for practical decisions. For in human affairs the decisive factor is what one can expect of the other fellow. Such expectations rest on recognized codes of behaviour; they appeal to past performance, acquired habit, reputation; they attain a maximum of precision and reliability among those frequently brought together, engaged in similar work, guided by similar motives, sharing the same prosperity or adversity.6

26/7 As was discussed earlier, Lonergan's notion of intersubjectivity and his account of society and history as constituted by human acts of intelligence by no means implies that all insights are the genesis of novelty or that the pattern of insights constituting a social order is the product of one subject.7 For the most part, the course of a person's development consists of his or her grasping the dominant meanings of the culture and actuating the currently accepted practical forms of labour and social comportment. And while every form of activity represents the fruit of some intelligent adaptation to the conditions of life or some ingenious solution to a practical problem, the complete set of practical insights and the consequent patterns of interactions among such operative insights is seldom, if ever, understood by any one person. Consequently the operative set of practical relations and routines which constitutes any society and any economy will remain, for the most part, operative implicitly, hidden from the understanding of its citizens, and a powerful determinant in shaping the ideas emerging in that milieu. In a very significant sense, then, Lonergan recognizes that the relations which structure a society and an economy operate to shape and adapt the sensitive spontaneity and the practical intelligence of that society in accordance with the smooth attainment of its own social and economic ends.8 (218; Fs)

27/7 The course of society and history, in Lonergan's analysis, proceeds as practical activity[eg:,] gives rise to new sets of conditions and problems and then seeks subsequently to adapt to these conditions and solve their problems. As was noted above, the possibility for social order rests in the fact that individuals will perform practical operations which link up with those of others to form flexible schemes yielding goods which otherwise could not have been achieved.9 And it should be clear now that such schemes operate to condition the emergence of further insights and practices which perpetuate their smooth functioning. But the actuation of such events and schemes changes environmental conditions, and eventually there occurs a sufficiently great set of changes as to require an adaptation of the events and routines of the society and economy. At this point the tendency of the social whole to adapt new insights and practices in accordance with its sustenance and its perpetuation begins to operate as an obstacle to its own survival. For the sufficiently changed conditions no longer call for minor adaptations in the routines of the society. They call for major changes in its constitutive terms and relations. (218f; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Gruppenbefangenheit (group bias); Dialektik: Anpassung zugunsten des Strebens nach Wahrheit; Spannung: dominante - margnalisierte Gruppen

Kurzinhalt: ... the 'group bias' results when the second dialectic, operative immanently in men and women, undergoes a recurrent distortion. And the drive towards mutuality with members of the social group takes precedence over ...

Textausschnitt: 7.4 Group Bias

28/7 In the above presentation of Lonergan's notion of intersubjectivity I suggested that two dialectics are operative immanently in the living out of man's nature as distinctively human. The first involves the tension between the exigence of the subject's experiential basis in the events and schemes of his or her neural manifold and the intelligent and responsible drive to integrate that manifold in acts of understanding, judgment, and most profoundly practical, moral activity. The second dialectic involves the tension between the first dialectic and the spontaneous drive to unification with other human subjects as subjects, in the mutuality of respect, care and love. The individual bias occurred when the human subject so circumscribed his or her horizon of personal desires and goals that the drive of intelligence and responsibility was stopped or cut short. In the face of an experiential exigence demanding further questions to be answered, a broadened sensitivity to more remote realms of experience and finally an expansion of that horizon within which intelligence functions, the spontaneous dynamism of intellect is laid to premature rest. The result of this failure of intelligence and responsibility is a reordering of the experiential manifold, a censorship of its exigencies and a repression of the relevant neural demands until they either forced their way back into conscious life or deformed the habitual operations of the subject. (219; Fs) (notabene)

29/7 When the social and economic routines that are constitutive of a society begin to meet changing conditions which demand substantial changes in their operative structures, there occurs a rising frequency of instances of bias in the intelligent, responsible operations of subjects. But unlike the individual bias this instance of bias is not merely the result of individuals restraining the mandate of intelligence in the interest of personal gain. Rather, the 'group bias' results when the second dialectic, operative immanently in men and women, undergoes a recurrent distortion. And the drive towards mutuality with members of the social group takes precedence over the demands of practical intelligence and responsibility. (219; Fs) (notabene)

30/7 When changes in the environment of a society's operation begin to demand structural changes in the relations which constitute that society then the dominant groups in that society face the prospect of significant threats to their established gains and interests. Thus members of the group circumscribe their own horizons of interests as over against mounting evidence that such is not the more general good. And bias begins to operate.1 But because the interests which are defended by the dominant group are those of a class or group of people the drive towards solidarity within the group will begin to operate massively and effectively to preclude habitual attention to the defects in its horizons. Thus the conditions surrounding the wide-scale genesis of insights and responsible action that seek the good of the whole of society are precluded (i.e. regular experiential contact with the suffering of the marginalized, and the habitual raising of questions concerning the relevance of this experience to the restructuring of the whole society or economy). The intelligent and responsible acts of the group settle their accounts with the drive toward intersubjective mutuality within the group before consulting the exigence of the experiential data on the whole of society. And the common insights, values and expectations of the group operate spontaneously as a horizon within which intelligence meets the data of experience.2 (219f; Fs)

31/7 The fact that the dominant classes possess control results in their increased ability to mobilize insights that promote their own interests. Corresponding to this success is the failure of marginalized groups to make operative the acts and routines which would promote their own welfare.3 Thus the course of social development (220; Fs)

[...] does not correspond to any coherently developed set of practical ideas. It represents the fraction of practical ideas that were made operative by their conjunction with power.4
32/7 The tension between the partial insights operatively constitutive of the social whole and the experiential exigence of the conditions of social and economic life which demand a restructuring of the social whole (a restructuring which would favour the whole of society and not simply the dominant groups) manifests itself in a tension between the dominant and the marginalized social groups and a visible distortion or aberration in the routines of social and economic life. This distortion eventually becomes great enough to be visible to all and the tensions between the groups begins to manifest itself in class unrest. This combination of evident distortion and class unrest becomes a principle for social and historical change that awaits the catalysis of an individual like Marx to be actuated.5 (220; Fs)

33/7 Clearly Lonergan shares Marx's (and Hegel's) appreciation of the fact that history moves forward as the distortions of any age fuel the engines for their own reversal. But in Lonergan's view, an end to this cycle of domination cannot consist in a transformation of historical conditions. The historical cycle which results from the group bias and its tendency to effect its own reversal by mobilizing the neglected interest and insights of the marginalized is conceived by Lonergan to be an ongoing shorter cycle of alienation and short-lived liberation. Once the marginalized groups come to power their own attempts to structure the whole of society in accordance with the partial insights of their own perspective eventually suffer the same distortions due to the group bias for which their predecessors were ousted. The basis for this conviction, that the group bias is not to be overcome immanently, is rooted in Lonergan's basic conception of the problem operative in the group bias. And here he differs with Marx in his assessment of the form and the import of historical, economic conditions for acts of 'production,' and of the role of subjective agency in effecting historical change. And so in order to understand as precisely as possible the locus and the nature of these differences I will draw upon some reliable sources to summarize, very briefly, Marx's analysis of the human situation and its prospects for solution. (220f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Lonergan, Thomas: Wille, Entscheidung - Vernunft; allgemeine Befangenheit (general bias);

Kurzinhalt: ... there lies not a single operation of 'will' but three distinct types of operations, the practical insight, practical reflection (what, in Method, terminates in the judgment of value), and the decision.

Textausschnitt: 7.6.1 Preliminary Clarifications: Intellect and Will

51/7 General bias is the statistical fact that the problems of human living most frequently exceed the developed capacities and skills of human subjects to meet them.1 (227; Fs) (notabene)

Besides the bias of the dramatic subject, of the individual egoist, of the member of a given class or nation, there is a further bias to which all men are prone. For men are rational animals, but full development of their animality is both more common and more rapid than a full development of their intelligence and reasonableness. A traditional view credits children of seven years of age with the attainment of an elementary reasonableness. The law regards as a minor anyone under twenty-one years of age. Experts in the field of public entertainment address themselves to a mental age of about twelve years. Still more modest is the scientific attitude that places man's attainment of knowledge in an indefinitely removed future.2

52/7 The greatest problem involved in coming to understand what Lonergan is trying to grasp and express with his notion of 'general bias' concerns the meaning of the expression 'full development of their intelligence and reasonableness.' There is some evidence within Insight and in a later remark of Lonergan's that in writing Insight, Lonergan was undergoing a development in his view of 'intelligence and reasonableness' as it relates to moral action.3 In his 1941 and 1942 articles in Theological Studies on St. Thomas Aquinas' notion of 'operative grace' (the articles which have since been collected into the volume entitled Grace and Freedom), Lonergan works out Thomas' view of the relationship between intellect and will in terms of a faculty psychology approach.4 This, of course, was the approach of Thomas. And it would seem from his treatment of 'The Notion of Will' in Insight, chapter eighteen,5 that Lonergan maintained the basic distinction between intellect and will that is rooted in this faculty psychology approach. But there is also some considerable evidence in Insight, chapter eighteen, that Lonergan had already modified his conception of the role of 'intellect' in moral action to the point where a more traditional distinction between 'intellect' and 'will' (a distinction rooted in a faculty psychology approach) was no longer tenable. By the time of Method in Theology (1972) Lonergan had come to casting his analysis in terms of an 'intentionality analysis' approach that was sufficiently different from the older approach as to require a rejection of the older term 'will.' (228; Fs)

Again, [decision] is not to be conceived as an act of will. To speak of an act of will is to suppose the metaphysical context of a faculty psychology. But to speak of the fourth level of human consciousness, the level on which consciousness becomes conscience, is to suppose the context of intentionality analysis. Decision is responsible and it is free, but it is the work not of a metaphysical will but of conscience and, indeed, when a conversion, the work of a good conscience.6

53/7 In Grace and Freedom, Lonergan points to a discovery of Dom Lottin's as an important moment in explaining Thomas' account of the relationship between intellect and will. The challenge to Thomas presented by the Parisian Averroists' doctrine of determinism was the occasion for Thomas' own refinement in his understanding of the operation of the will. If the specification and the exercise of the act of will are both caused by intellect, then free will is finally precluded. For the will would then be activated by anything that occurs to intellect. Thomas' response to this dilemma was to specify four presuppositions necessary for an act of free will: (228f; Fs) (notabene)

[...] (A) a field of action in which more than one course of action is objectively possible; (B) an intellect that is able to work out more than one course of action; (C) a will that is not automatically determined by the first course of action that occurs to the intellect; and, since this condition is only a condition, securing indeterminacy without telling what in fact does determine, (D) a will that moves itself. All four are asserted by St. Thomas but with varying degrees of emphasis at different times.7 (notabene)

54/7 Following Aristotle, St. Thomas took for granted a faculty of will, distinct from the faculty of intellect, with a distinct object of desire, the good in general.8 And in an effort to develop an explanation of free, moral action he affirmed both a link between the two faculties and a distinction in their operation. (229; Fs)

Finally, while it was always maintained that the will is not determined by the intellect, it is only in the De malo and the Prima secundae that one finds an explicit answer to the question: What does determine the will? As we have seen, Aristotelian passivity of appetite is then transcended and the freedom of man yields place to the freedom of the will; in consequence, attention is concentrated on the negative factor that the will is not determined by the intellect, and on the positive factor that the will moves itself and in this self-motion is always free either to act or not act.9

55/7 The point to be observed here is that for Thomas intellect and will are presupposed, from the outset, to be the two distinct categories in whose terms the problem of freedom is to be resolved.10 There is some clue in these passages that intellect performs different types of functions with respect to different types of objects when it conceives and judges truths of fact, on the one hand, and when it conceived and judges possible courses of action, on the other. But nothing more is made of this clue either by Thomas or by Lonergan in Grace and Freedom. The problem of freedom is not to be resolved in terms of a radical set of differences in types or levels of 'conscious' operation each involving some role of intelligent emergence. It is to be resolved in terms of a distinct category, the will. (229; Fs)

56/7 In Insight, chapter eighteen, considerably more is made of the different types of conscious operations, all involving intelligence, and the distinct objects towards which they move. (229; Fs)

The detached, disinterested, unrestricted desire to know grasps intelligently and affirms reasonably not only the facts of the universe of being but also its practical possibilities. Such practical possibilities include intelligent transformations not only of the environment in which man lives but also of man's own spontaneous living. For that living exhibits an otherwise coincidental manifold into which man can introduce a higher system by his own understanding of himself and his own deliberate choices. So it is that the detached and disinterested desire extends its sphere of influence from the field of cognitional activities through the field of knowledge into the field of deliberate human acts.11

57/7 It is generally recognized that in the Verbum articles Lonergan discovered St. Thomas to be working with a view of intellect which recognized not one but two distinct types of operations, the operations of insight or understanding and the operation of judgment. It would appear that in Insight Lonergan was on the verge of a further discovery, a discovery which would eventually expand the older faculty psychology distinction between intellect and will into a series of circularly operating schemes involving something like fourteen distinct acts progressing cumulatively towards transformations on at least four distinct levels and on two further sub-levels.12 The first piece of evidence which seems to have struck Lonergan was Thomas' observation that intellect can not only have insights and make judgments about matters of fact, it can also have insights and make judgments about practical courses of action which are not yet fact. The twofold scheme of insight and judgment is operative in each case, but in Insight Lonergan takes great pains to point out the radical differences in the intention of the questions and the status of the answers in each pair of operations. (230; Fs)

However, while the speculative or factual insight is followed by the question whether the unity exists or whether the correlation governs events, the practical insight is followed by the question whether the unity is going to be made to exist or whether the correlation is going to be made to govern events. In other words, while speculative and factual insights are concerned to lead to knowledge of being, practical insights are concerned to lead to the making of being. Their objective is not what is but what is to be done. They reveal, not the unities and relations of things as they are, but the unities and relations of possible courses of action.

There follows another important corollary. When speculative or factual insight is correct, reflective understanding can grasp a relevant virtually unconditioned. But when practical insight is correct, then reflective understanding cannot grasp a relevant virtually unconditioned; for if it could, the content of the insight already would be a fact; and if it were already a fact, then it would not be a possible course of action which, as yet, is not a fact but just a possibility.13

58/7 The practical insight and its corresponding reflection do not head towards truth. Rather, they head towards value. 'Now it is in rational, moral self-consciousness that the good as value comes to light, for the value is the good as the possible object of rational choice.'14 But values do not remain as objects of understanding and judgment. Beyond the practical insight and its corresponding judgment lies the actuation of the value, the execution of the course of action. It is in his account of the 'decision' that Lonergan tries to integrate this developed set of distinctions into an overarching faculty psychology framework of intellect and will. And, in so doing, Lonergan shows up the serious inadequacy of this older framework. For by now Lonergan had discovered that beyond the levels of experience, understanding and judgment, there lies not a single operation of 'will' but three distinct types of operations, the practical insight, practical reflection (what, in Method, terminates in the judgment of value), and the decision.15 It is in Method that Lonergan focuses on the distinctiveness of the practical reflective operation to highlight the way in which judgments of value integrate the spontaneous orientation of the subject towards value in feelings.16 But in Insight practical reflection had already been noted as a distinct operation. (230f; Fs) (notabene)

Secondly, though the reflection heads beyond knowing to doing, still it consists simply in knowing. Thus, it may reveal that the proposed action is concretely possible, clearly effective, highly agreeable, quite useful, morally obligatory, etc. But it is one thing to know exactly what could be done and all the reasons for doing it. It is quite another for such knowledge to issue in doing.17 (231; Fs)

59/7 From the very beginning of his eighteenth chapter, Lonergan recognizes that the will is not discontinuous with intellect, but a further, distinguishable function of intellect itself. (231; Fs)

[...] the goodness of being comes to light only by considering the extension of intellectual activity that we name deliberation and decision, choice and will [...] Further, willing is rational and so moral.18 (231; Fs) (notabene)

60/7 But it would appear that Lonergan's inclination to cast his analysis in the terms of the faculty psychology distinction between intellect and will prevailed over this insight into the continuity. And so he brings his account of will with the more traditional analogy of sensitive hunger. (231; Fs)

Will, then, is intellectual or spiritual appetite. As capacity for sensitive hunger stands to sensible food, so will stands to objects presented by intellect.19

61/7 There is a sense in which this analogy to sensitive hunger remains true through both Insight and Method. For appetite is understood by Lonergan as a dynamic orientation of a whole human person to take up environmental materials and to transform them or integrate them in the performance of a skill.20 But the problem with this traditional analogy is that it also evoked the traditional conception of will as ordered towards the object of intellect. The faculty psychology approach began with a categorical distinction between intellect and will and argued to will's independence from intellect, on the one hand, and to its orientation towards the objects of intellect, on the other. In 'Insight. ' Lonergan had assembled all the materials for conceiving will as a set of distinct acts and schemes of acts, involving some occurrence of an emergent integration, on the one hand, and all ordered towards an object which is distinct from the object of the 'speculative' operation of intelligence, on the other. (231f; Fs)

62/7 With his framework of emergent probability Lonergan had set the grounds for conceiving 'will' in a radically new way, as a part of a larger recurring skill or scheme of acts whose developed performance yields a more or less intelligent integration of the (biological, aesthetic, affective, intelligent, reasonable, intersubjective, historical) experiential materials of a human subject and which is oriented towards the grasp, the affirmation and the actuation of courses of action which transform and constitute both the subject and his or her environment. All of these elements are present in Insight, chapter eighteen. But the traditional faculty psychology approach tended to prevail in Lonergan's attempts to specify the precise function of the 'will' precisely because the context of his analysis was the traditional scholastic question of the independence of the will from the determining constraints of rational necessity.21 So he defines the will as 'an exigence for self-consistency in knowing and doing.'22 And in so doing he obscures both the continuity of intelligence in its various functions throughout the whole operation of 'will' and the distinctiveness of 'will's' own object. (232; Fs)

But the rationality of decision emerges in the demand of the rationally conscious subject for consistency between his knowing and his deciding and doing [...] But the final enlargement and transformation of consciousness consists in the empirically, intelligently, and rationally conscious subject
(1) demanding conformity of his doing to his knowing, and
(2) acceding to that demand by deciding reasonably.23

63/7 When it is understood that by 'knowing' Lonergan does not mean knowing truth but 'knowing' the value of a possible and probable course of action, his definition begins to ring true. And when it is understood that the object of this 'demand for conformity' is the comprehensive integration of the enormous manifold of skills of the person or people involved in accordance with this 'projected' course of action, then the act of will begins to appear less as the passive submission of humanity to the imperious demands of intellect and more as the heroic work of intelligent devotion and love creatively cultivating and actuating the fragile directives of truth and value. (232; Fs)

64/7 All of this brings us back to the issue of the general bias. On the basis of the above evidence it would be fair to conclude that when Lonergan speaks of 'full development of their intelligence and reasonableness' his intended meaning would be obscured badly by contrasting 'intelligence and reasonableness' either with 'willing' or with sensitive spontaneity. The general bias does not apply solely to knowledge of facts but more generally to the cultivation of intelligently mediated spontaneously operative skills on all levels of what Lonergan subsequently comes to call 'conscious intentionality.' I would suggest that what Lonergan had in mind in writing his account of the general bias was something that he came to call in Method a problem of 'horizons,' where the word 'horizons' designates both the limitations in what one can conceive as possible, and the limitations in developed capacities and skills which usually go hand in hand with an earlier stage in development, with a deficiency in experiential range or with a distortion in operational authenticity.24 And so even though Lonergan would seem to define willing as seeking conformity to knowledge and even though he seems to characterize the basic problem in the human condition in terms of insufficient knowledge, I would argue that both of these expressions tend to diverge from, rather than converge upon his emergent probability conception of humanity and world process in Insight. (232f; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Allgemeine Befangenheit; langer Zyklus, Niedergang (General Bias and Decline); Common sense; Machiavelli

Kurzinhalt: Most simply, the distinctive characteristic associated with the operation of the general bias is the restricted horizon or viewpoint within which common sense (practical) intelligence operates.

Textausschnitt: 7.6.2 General Bias and Decline

65/7 The general bias concerns the insufficiently developed and infrequently actuated capacities and skills of intelligent, responsible knowing and doing.1 The normal routines of human life are massively constituted by the common and more or less novel mediating activities of theoretical and practical intelligence. Such activities are performed in accordance with developed capacities and within the confines of corresponding cultural, economic, social, historical conditions and limitations. The simple fact about human life that is expressed in the notion of general bias is that the problems encountered most regularly throughout human life demand a general level of developed capacities and skills in excess of that which is commonly operative. This fact is true not only of aggregates of persons, but also of the course of any one person's life. And the consequence of this fact is that human attempts to order human life in accordance with the immanent norms of developed intelligence quite regularly fail. Finally, by specifying the essential problem in the human condition as insufficiently developed skills, this view paints a substantially gloomier picture than that of Marx. This view certainly lends itself to a consideration of the social, cultural, economic and psychological conditions surrounding the development and exercise of skills. But unlike Marx's view, Lonergan's view permits no shortcuts around the basic requirement that each and every human being acquire, develop and exercise the relevant capacities and skills. This, I would argue, is the reason for Lonergan's endless preoccupation with 'the subject.' For I can never acquire or exercise a skill for another person.2 (233; Fs) (notabene)

66/7 Lonergan's account of the human condition in terms of the general bias does not rest with noting the recurrent fact of failure. Rather, he goes on to discuss the particular characteristics of failure which result from the operation of the general bias and the historical consequences of its impact. Most simply, the distinctive characteristic associated with the operation of the general bias is the restricted horizon or viewpoint within which common sense (practical) intelligence operates. (233f; Fs) (notabene)

The lag of intellectual development, its difficulty and its apparently meagre returns bear in an especial manner on common sense. It is concerned with the concrete and the particular. It entertains no aspirations about reaching abstract and universal laws. It is easily led to rationalize its limitations by engendering a conviction that other forms of human knowledge are useless or doubtfully valid. Every specialist runs the risk of turning his specialty into a bias by failing to recognize and appreciate the significance of other fields. Common sense almost invariably makes that mistake; for it is incapable of analyzing itself, incapable of making the discovery that it too is a specialized development of human knowledge, incapable of coming to grasp that its peculiar danger is to extend its legitimate concern for the concrete and the immediately practical into disregard of larger issues and indifference to long-term results.3 (notabene)


67/7 Lonergan's call for a higher viewpoint, a wider perspective on man and history within which to understand the specialized operations of common sense, recalls Dilthey's efforts to set the groundwork for his fundamental science of man. And Lonergan is explicit in conceiving his higher viewpoint as analogous, in intent, to Marx's historical theory. (234; Fs)
So far from granting common sense a hegemony in practical affairs, the foregoing analysis leads to the strange conclusion that common sense has to aim at being subordinated to a human science that is concerned, to adapt a phrase from Marx, not only with knowing history but also with directing it. For common sense is unequal to the task of thinking on the level of history. It stands above the scotosis of the dramatic subject, above the egoism of the individual, above the bias of dominant and of depressed but militant groups that realize only the ideas they see to be to their immediate advantage. But the general bias of common sense prevents it from being effective in realizing ideas, however appropriate and reasonable, that suppose a long view or that set up higher integrations or that involve the solution of intricate and disputed issues.4

68/7 The historical consequence of the operation of the general bias is the emergence of a dynamic trend that stands in opposition to the drive of finality towards successively higher emergent integrations. Lonergan calls this inverse trend 'the longer cycle of decline.' And the central characteristic of this trend is the 'neglect of ideas to which all groups are rendered indifferent by the general bias of common sense.'5 The reason why the general bias yields this trend is to be understood in terms of the fact that history is constituted by meaning.6 The insights made operative in one age set the conditions for life in the next age. If common sense is generally prone to restricting its horizons of operation to the realm of the immediate and practical, then the alternating cycles of group bias consistently will fail to discover and to implement the insights that would serve the good of all. For the group bias turns the operation of intelligence to serve the interests of the group. In addition, since the data base of common sense is the common experience of life in that age, every narrow viewpoint of common sense that is made operative will set the experiential range of the successive age. As long as common sense excludes insights that are relevant to understanding and directing the whole of life (the distinctive characteristic of common sense's operation), it will bequeath upon the next generation an ever-narrowing data base for the discovery and regulation of human affairs.7 (234f; Fs) (notabene)

69/7 Like the other biases, the general bias is not merely negative. It is not only an exclusion of complete insights. Rather, like the other biases the general bias involves the subject in a dialectical tension with the exigencies of his or her intersubjective experience. The partial insights of common sense result in a distortion of the subject's experiential manifold. And so subsequent insights and practical decisions begin conforming more and more to the distorted experiential base. But the general bias involves its own peculiar form of distortion, a distortion that is more serious than those of the other biases. For insufficiently developed intelligence with its shrunken or delimited horizons does not grasp the need for growth. And as ever-narrower points of view gain wider and wider acceptance, insufficiently developed intelligence pronounces theoretical issues to be irrelevant. The result is that common sense not only finds itself insufficiently developed, it also judges further development to be impossible or irrelevant. (235; Fs) (notabene)

70/7 The cycle of decline has a number of distinct implications. And Lonergan's presentation of these implications is cast as a dramatic monologue which mounts from a technical restatement of the elements of the longer cycle, through the history of the growing irrelevance of religion and philosophy to a graphic portrayal of the barbarism of Hitler's Germany. One could speculate on the names, dates, places and events to which Lonergan alludes. And in some cases little imagination would be required. But throughout the monologue Lonergan's principal target is that particular form of insufficiently developed intelligence which manifests itself in a repudiation of intelligence. The narrowed horizons of common sense practicality with its short-term preoccupation with solving the problems at hand using the immediately available tools gives rise to a commonly operative theory which judges the theoretical issues, the general of ultimate good, the foundations of truth, to be irrelevant speculation. And to illustrate this narrowing of horizons in the field of political philosophy, Fred Lawrence quotes Leo Strauss in identifying Machiavelli as a key figure in the history of this shift towards short-term practicality: (235; Fs)

The initiator of the shift from the medieval synthesis into that succession of lower syntheses characteristic of socio-cultural decline was Machiavelli who, in the fifteenth chapter of his odd little book. The Prince, wrote the fateful words: '[...] many have imagined republics and principalities which have never been seen or known to exist in reality; for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done will rather learn to bring about his own ruin than his preservation. A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good. Therefore it is necessary for a prince who wishes to maintain himself to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it according to the necessity of the case.'8

71/7 The general bias with its longer cycle of decline concerns the failure of the development of intelligence in its various schemes of operation with its respective transformations. Intelligence which neglects or refuses to understand itself places an insurmountable obstacle in the path of its long range development. And since common sense intelligence looks to the data of contemporary experience for the source of its insights, the mounting exclusion of theoretical insights on man from the normal range of experience gives rise to the growing conviction that such insights are neither possible nor relevant. It is claimed that the truth about humanity is not to be found in an analysis of his capacities or her potentialities. Rather, it is to be discovered in generalizations from common performance. And when such generalizations are put forward as the only plausible norms for subsequent performance, then every subsequent stage is bound to conform to the past age's incomplete understanding of itself. The only norms for intelligent performance are current or recently past general performance. And so intelligence, both in its speculative and in its regulative or moral operations, becomes 'radically uncritical.' For it has rejected its own immanent norm of 'progress,' in favour of the extrinsic and arbitrary norm of current practice.9 (236; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Ethik, Geschichte: Möglichkeit der Umkehr; Kosmopolis (3 Kennzeichen), höherer Gesichtspunkt - Verengung

Kurzinhalt: ... there arises a growing preoccupation with the environmental and interior determinants of human life ... In opposition to the short-term practicality of intelligence, Lonergan proposes a 'higher viewpoint' ...

Textausschnitt: 7.7.1 The Higher Viewpoint, Cosmopolis, and Moral Impotence

81/7 The root of the problem in the human condition, the general bias, is understood by Lonergan as an insufficient development and a corresponding insufficiently frequent actuation of the human capacities and skills for intelligent knowing and doing. The consequence of this insufficient development is a deformation or bias in common sense intelligence's habitual operation. The direction of this bias is towards short-term practicality, and its preoccupation with immediately realizable solutions using immediately available means and commonly available experiential resources. Because the world of experience of any historical age is, for the most part, constituted by the insights that were made operative by the previous generations, this bias towards short-term practicality results in an ever-narrowing series of horizons. As common sense becomes more and more practical, the range of experiential data and insights that are deemed relevant to human life shrinks to include only those elements that can be discovered and verified in a appeal to current practice. Since the insights that order and regulate human life emerge from the experiential data base on man which that age recognizes as relevant, the ever-shrinking ranges of practical insights will bequeath upon successive generations ever-shrinking experiential ranges. And the major upshot of this trend is intelligence's rejection of the need for development and its despair of the possibility of development. As intelligence progressively is judged irrelevant to human life there arises a growing preoccupation with the environmental and interior determinants of human life. Corresponding to this growing conviction there arises a growing appeal to the use of force either to ensure and secure those determinants which are thought essential to the routine operation of existing social schemes, or to realize those determinants which are thought to be capable of transforming social life. Such is the longer cycle of decline. (239; Fs) (notabene)

82/7 The possibility for the reversal of this bias and its longer cycle consists in reversing this deceleration in the development of intelligent capacities and skills and promoting accelerated development. In opposition to the short-term practicality of intelligence, Lonergan proposes a 'higher viewpoint' on man and history from whose perspective common sense, with its virtues and its deficiencies, can be understood.1 Such a higher viewpoint would be something like what Vico, Marx and Dilthey sought to develop: an integrated theory of man and history which would grasp man's fundamental and essentially human capacities and which would explain their positive and negative contributions to the dynamism of human history. But Lonergan insists that the central element of this higher viewpoint must be the discovery that intelligently mediated operations play the chief role in the constitution of culture and history and that because intelligence has its own immanent norms, norms which cannot be forced or externally conditioned, there is no alternative to the widescale development of responsible subjects. If a higher viewpoint is to meet the general bias and its longer cycle of decline it must grasp the route towards this development and it must affirm both its possibility and its necessity. (239f; Fs) (notabene)

83/7 In Lonergan's analysis, the route towards progress requires the recognition that if intelligence and responsibility contain their own immanent norms, then progress can be cultivated only through the growth of the whole human person. Human progress can never be realized merely through the transformation of social or economic life conditions or through the imposition of the rule of force. Quite the contrary, in this analysis of the human situation, force can and must play but a minor role. For inasmuch as intelligent acts and intelligent development have the structure of a probably emergence of a higher-order integration, the condition of possibility for this emergence is a sufficient randomness.2 In human life the form of this randomness is liberty, the opportunity for trial and error accumulation of skills, and a sufficiently wide range of opportunities for the application and cultivation of skill and creativity.3 Environmental conditions and the exercise of force play a role in reversal insofar as they promote rather than supplant this assimilation and adjustment growth scheme.4 (240; Fs)

84/7 The role of culture in reversal is to embrace and to reflect this higher viewpoint on human life and human history and to critique any deformations in common sense intelligence in the interests of its liberation from short-term practicality. But first culture itself needs to undergo this very liberation. As long as the general bias has its strangle-hold on culture then culture only accelerates the decline. Consequently culture must understand the elements of the higher viewpoint.5 (240; Fs)

85/7 It is to this higher viewpoint on man and history that Lonergan gives the name 'cosmopolis.' It is not altogether clear precisely what Lonergan intends by cosmopolis. But three of its functions can be summarized. (240; Fs)

(1) Cosmopolis seeks to express and make operative the ideas on man and history that are rendered inoperative by the general bias of common sense. In contrast to common sense's short-term practicality, cosmopolis proclaims a wider perspective on man and champions those dimensions of human life that are not immediately practical. Cosmopolis must witness publicly to the possibility of such ideas being made operative in society and culture without appeal to the use of force.6

(2) Cosmopolis has the critical function of exposing, ridiculing and falsifying the deformations in common sense's exclusively practical concern for day-to-day living. Far from repudiating the practical orientation of intelligence such a critical function operates in the interests of practical intelligence. For it is common sense's exclusive preoccupation with short-term practicality that results in its own ultimate destruction.7
(3) Cosmopolis develops its higher viewpoint on man on the basis of a critical analysis of history. And to carry out its tasks cosmopolis needs continually to be engaged in the critical study of historical origins and historical responsibilities. Thus while cosmopolis is a development of intelligence it is not merely another specialized field for the operation of common sense. Rather, it is a development of intelligence beyond common sense from whose perspective the historical operations and limitations of common sense could be understood, and from whose perspective common sense's positive and negative contributions to the whole historical process can be understood.8 (240f; Fs)

86/7 In a very general sense cosmopolis includes the very project which Lonergan has begun in his own life's work. It concerns a developed understanding of those operations which distinguish human life as, in a limited but nonetheless essential sense, self-regulating or self-constituting. It concerns an account of human history as essentially constituted by human acts of intelligence and it concerns the specific ways in which the horrors and deformations of human life are to be explained in terms of the limitations and perversions of these acts. It concerns the fact that such a grasp of the limitations of intelligence can lead to a subsequent reduction in the impact of such limitations and to a development in the competent operation of intelligence. But it also concerns the fact that such a grasp of the limitations of intelligence leads to a fuller and richer appreciation of the limitations of the human condition. For to grasp the possibility for the reversal of the general bias is also to grasp that the fulfillment of the conditions for such a reversal appears unlikely.9 (241; Fs)

87/7 Clearly cosmopolis is conceived by Lonergan to be the foundation of the possibility for the reversal of decline. But if his presentation would have ended with Insight, chapter seven, Lonergan would have left us with an account of the human situation whose central problem, intelligence's inability and refusal to develop, could only be resolved if the human situation were to undergo significant structural change. For clearly, cosmopolis is the very thing that the bias of common sense precludes. However, his account of the possibilities for the reversal of decline does not end with Insight, chapter seven. And it is clear in chapters eighteen to twenty that Lonergan recognizes that as long as the analysis is restricted to man, the sufficiently widespread proliferation of cosmopolis must be considered unlikely.10 (241f; Fs)

88/7 It is certain that Lonergan appreciates the dilemma that his presentation leaves for man. For in his subsection of chapter twenty entitled 'The Existence of a Solution,' he defines what he means by the human 'problem.' 'First of all, I have employed the name, problem, in a technical sense, so that it is meaningless to speak of a problem for which no solution exists.'11 If Lonergan's analysis of the human situation and his introduction of the notion of cosmopolis as the condition for reversal are to be something more than a counsel of despair then his intended meaning needs to be re-examined. And I would suggest that a first clue in this re-examination is to be found at the end of chapter eighteen. (242; Fs)

Earlier, in the chapter on Common Sense as Object, it was concluded that a viewpoint higher than the viewpoint of common sense was needed; moreover, that X was given the name, cosmopolis, and some of its aspects and functions were indicated. But the subsequent argument has revealed that, besides higher viewpoints in the mind, there are higher integrations in the realm of being; [...]

Finally, whether the needed higher integration has emerged or is yet to emerge, is a question of fact. Similarly, its nature is not an object for speculation but for empirical inquiry. Still, what can that empirical inquiry be? Since our metaphysics and ethics have been developed under a restriction to proportionate being, we have to raise the question of transcendent knowledge before we can attempt an investigation of the ulterior finality of man.12

89/7 It becomes perfectly clear in chapters nineteen and twenty that the viewpoint higher than common sense, to which corresponds the higher integration in the realm of transcendent being, demands grappling, finally, with the question of God. (242; Fs)

Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Lonergan (Insight 20): Humanwissenschaften - Theologie; Gnade - Geschichte;

Kurzinhalt: In Lonergan's view it is the habit of 'charity' in which the 'will' is ordered towards God, in which this habitual love of being manifests itself in an ordering of the intellect, and ...

Textausschnitt: 7.7.3 God's Love as the Wholly Transcendent Solution Operative Immanently in the Lives of Subjects

95/7 In his 'Epilogue' to Insight, we get an indication as to what Lonergan understood himself to be doing in chapter twenty, and how he conceived the whole of Insight as a bridge between the human sciences and theology. (248; Fs)

Still such human science would offer, not an adequate understanding of its proper aspect of human activity, but only the measure of understanding possible from the scientific viewpoint. For an adequate understanding reveals the manner in which man can remedy the evil in his situation. But the solution to man's problem of evil has been seen to lie, not in a human initiative, but in an acceptance of the solution that God has provided; and while empirical human science can lead on to the further context of the solution, the systematic treatment of the solution itself is theological. In a word, empirical human science can become practical only through theology, and the relentless modern drift to social engineering and totalitarian controls is the fruit of man's effort to make human science practical though he prescinds from God and from the solution God provides for man's problem.

96/7 My second suggestion is the obverse of the first. Grace perfects nature both in the sense that it adds a perfection beyond nature and in the sense that it confers on nature the effective freedom to attain its own perfection.1 A glance through the index to Insight reveals onto two entries beside the word, 'grace.' One might be led to conclude, from this, that Lonergan was not concerned with grace, in Insight, but with the solution(s) to the human problem which could be initiated by man. However, Lonergan's remarks above, as well as his conclusions on cosmopolis, summarized earlier, would suggest that he saw no possible solution that could be secured on the basis of purely human initiative. Consequently his analysis of 'The Heuristic Structure of the Solution' in chapter twenty must be understood as an analysis of the locus of the operation of grace. It should become clear that Lonergan understands the operation of God's grace, in its capacity to transform human subjects, to be the condition of possibility for the development and the fully competent operation of human intelligence and responsibility. (248; Fs)

97/7 His analysis of the structure of the solution begins with the fact of the goodness of being. Like all facts Lonergan's judgment here is an insight into the data of human experience which is pronounced v-probably true. And his proof is an extrapolation of the structure of proportionate being into the realm of transcendent being.2 But since Lonergan has ruled out the possibility of a solution at the level of purely human agency, this fact requires the introduction of further elements of his 'higher viewpoint.' (248f; Fs)
98/7 Fifthly, the solution can consist in the introduction of new conjugate forms in man's intellect, will, and sensitivity. (249; Fs)

For such forms are habits.

[...]

because man's living is prior to learning and being persuaded, it is without the guidance of knowledge and without the direction of effective good will; as long as that priority remains, the problem remains. The solution, then, must reverse the priority, and it does so inasmuch as it provides intellect, will, and sensitivity with forms or habits that are operative throughout living.

Seventhly, the relevant conjugate forms will be in some sense transcendent or supernatural.3 (notabene)

99/7 In accordance with the structure of emergent probability, the higher order conjugate forms are integrations in and of a lower order manifold in dialectical tension with an exigence of that manifold. Like all higher order integrations these habits are in no way a departure from the events and routines of the manifold but they are an ordering of the sensitive drives, passions, feelings, anticipations, habitual insights, values, outlooks, practical routines, skills, and aspirations of the human person. (249; Fs) (notabene)
Eighthly, since the solution is a harmonious continuation of the actual order of the universe, and since that order involves the successive emergence of higher integrations that systematize the non-systematic residues on lower levels, it follows that the relatively transcendent conjugate forms will constitute a new and higher integration of human activity and that that higher integration will solve the problem by controlling elements that otherwise are non-systematic or irrational.4

100/7 What is this higher order integration which will constitute a solution to the problem of the general bias and its longer cycle of decline? In Lonergan's view it is the habit of 'charity' in which the 'will' is ordered towards God, in which this habitual love of being manifests itself in an ordering of the intellect, and in which the overall effect on the subject is a transformation in the orientation of one's complete spontaneity. The solution consists in an inversion of the priority of living over knowing how to live. For with charity, the capacity of practical intelligence to devise and to implement courses of action which realize true value rests no longer simply upon the capacity of developed intelligence, but now upon the affective, intelligent and responsible spontaneity of the subject to seek and realize the good. In the thirteenth place, then, the appropriate willingness will be some type or species of charity. [...] (249; Fs) (notabene)

Again, a man or woman knows that he or she is in love by making the discovery that all spontaneous and deliberate tendencies and actions regard the beloved. Now as the arm rises spontaneously to protect the head, so all the parts of each thing conspire to the good of the whole, and all things in all their operations proceed to the realization of the order of the universe.5
101/7 I would suggest that the deficiencies pointed out above in Lonergan's retention of the older, faculty psychology distinction between intellect and will, show up again when Lonergan states that 'good will follows intellect.'6 It might seem as if Lonergan were presenting an intellectualist account of grace by affirming that an act of intelligence needs to precede an act of love and that grace is, first and principally, a good insight. But his meaning, I would suggest, is better understood by noting that with charity the will follows the 'desire of intellect.' (250; Fs)

For good will follows intellect, and so it matches the detached, disinterested, desire of intellect for complete understanding; but complete understanding is the unrestricted act that is God; and so the good that is willed by good will is God.7

102/7 The point Lonergan is making here is that just as intelligence, in its appetite for understanding and truth, is oriented towards God, so too practical, responsible intelligence 'follows' the earlier stages or operations in the complete skill of intelligent, responsible human living in this hunger for God. Whereas the actual operations of understanding and judging truth may be performed either competently or incompetently, charity is the orientation of practical, responsible living in accordance with the ultimate desire of intelligent humanity, irrespective of the subject's failures, defects, biases, or incomplete development in some or all aspects of the overall range of skills. Consequently while the charitable will 'follows' the 'desire' of intellect in the sense that it shares its orientation towards God, it need not, and in fact does not, 'follow intellect' in the temporal sense of awaiting the correctly judged insight. And for this reason Lonergan can conclude that good will has the subsequent effect of functioning as the condition of possibility for the perfection of intelligence. (250; Fs)

In the fourteenth place, besides the charity by which the will itself is made good, there will be the hope by which the will makes the intellect good.
For intellect functions properly inasmuch as the detached and disinterested desire to know is dominant in cognitional operations. Still this desire is merely spontaneous. It is the root of intelligent and rational self-consciousness, and it operates prior to our insights, our judgments, and our decisions. Now if this desire is to be maintained in its purity, if it is not to suffer from the competition of the attached and interested desires of man's sensitivity and intersubjectivity, if it is not to be overruled by the will's connivance with rationalizations,then it must be aided, supported, reinforced by a deliberate decision and a habitual determination of the will itself.8

103/7 I have discussed above, some of the problems associated with Lonergan's insistence that 'the detached and disinterested desire to know' stands in contrast and in competition with 'the attached and interested desires of man's sensitivity and intersubjectivity.'9 Whereas this mode of expression might seem to lead one to conclude that knowing stands opposed to the other human and intersubjective desires, and that those other desires constitute an intrusion into the proper operation of intelligence, I have suggested that Lonergan's analysis understands knowing as an act of coordinating or integrating these other desires and that the integration effected by knowing (most particularly knowing value) seeks an isomorphism with a structured dynamism operative in all of human spontaneity.10 However, Lonergan's subsequent analysis of belief and faith, in Insight, does place considerable emphasis upon the role of knowledge in the reversal of the longer cycle of decline. (251; Fs)

There is needed in the present a universally accessible and permanently effective manner of pulling men's minds out of the counter-positions, of fixing them in the positions, of securing for them certitude that God exists and that he has provided a solution which they are to acknowledge and to accept. [...]

Now the argument outlined above goes to prove that there is no probability of men generally moving from the counter-positions to the positions by immanently generated knowledge. On the other hand, as far as the argument goes, it reveals no obstacles to the attainment of truth through the communication of reliable knowledge.11

104/7 It is clear that his focus here upon the importance of knowledge (particularly knowledge of value) in reversing the longer cycle of decline is a focus upon knowledge as a communal, cultural, historical, religious inheritance and that within the context of his analysis of charity, the condition of possibility for the appropriation of this knowledge in 'belief is a transformation of the 'will' in love.12 However, while I am convinced that the role of knowledge in reversing the general bias cannot be underestimated I would say that his analysis of the route towards reversal, in Insight, remains to be complemented by a fuller study of the role and nature of conversions, the massive effect of symbols, cultural traditions, economic and social modes of life and work, and, most generally, the various ways in which human spontaneity, patterns of action, and profound feelings aroused by literature can shift the f-probabilities of virtuous action in cultures in the absence of immanently generated or responsibly appropriated knowledge of fact. Lonergan's work in Method marks a first step in the direction of this complementary study.13 (251; Fs)



105/7 One final word needs to be said here on the particular way in which charity constitutes a reversal to the historical cycle of decline generated by the general bias. (251f; Fs)

Now the will can contribute to the solution of the problem of the social surd, inasmuch as it adopts a dialectical attitude that parallels the dialectical method of intellect. The dialectical method of intellect consists in grasping that the social surd neither is intelligible nor is to be treated as intelligible. The corresponding dialectical attitude of will is to return good for evil. For it is only inasmuch as men are willing to meet evil with good, to love their enemies, to pray for those that persecute and calumniate them, that the social surd is a potential good. It follows that love of God above all and in all so embraces the order of the universe as to love all men with a self-sacrificing love.14 (notabene)

106/7 How this dialectical attitude of 'will' would translate into concrete economic, political, social programs of action remains to be discovered in an analysis of history and an in-depth study of the economic, political, social problems of our times. Lonergan's account here focuses only upon the structure of a solution which would stop the ever-accelerating cycles in which progressively deformed cultural patterns of experience become the data base for progressively shrinking ranges of insights on human life, and such shrinking ranges of insights become implemented as the practical routines of the subsequent cultures. The root of this cycle of decline is common sense's tendency to generalize insights from common experience. As actual experience becomes more and more deformed common sense develops theories that ratify the deformations, it despairs of the possibility of broader explanations of human potentials, and it pronounces the rule of force as the only corrective for the deformations. The dialectical attitude of 'will,' on the other hand, breaks the ever accelerating cycle of decline because it refuses to respond in kind to the fact of evil. The 'will' transformed by love refuses to accept the fact of evil as the whole story, it refuses to explain the totality of life on the basis of an appeal to the massive proliferation of evil, and it refuses to base its practical response upon a despair of man ever rising above the corruption of common practice.15 (252; Fs) (notabene)

107/7 Lonergan conceives the charitable 'will' as practical intelligence's grace-full refusal to act in accordance with common sense's generalizations from corrupt practice. It is the refusal to meet evil with evil, to meet aggression merely with the punitive rule of force. It is, more positively, humanity's willingness to respond to the fact of evil with an act of love, to look to the historical evidence of such benevolence as an integral part of the foundation for a science of man, and to base the programs of action of a society upon a political theory which anticipates graceful benevolence and which is itself animated by such benevolence. What we find in Insight, chapter twenty, is the completion of Lonergan's analysis of cosmopolis, begun in chapter seven. With the transformation of the 'will' (clearly a misleading term) in an act of charity, practical intelligence is liberated from its bondage to the experience of corrupt practice, and theoretical intelligence is given an orientation and a data base upon which to understand and act towards realizing new human possibilities. While the solution is the liberation and the orientation of intelligence towards truth and value the condition of possibility for this operation of intelligence is not itself an act of intelligence, the fruit of human initiative, but an act of grace which orders human intelligence and responsibility while at the same time respecting its essential freedom. (252f; Fs)

108/7 Insight, chapter twenty, is clearly the transition to Lonergan's book on theology, the book which Lonergan set out to write when he began Insight, and which he had to leave until Method. There is no doubt in my mind that Lonergan understood a theology to be the only adequate foundation for a science of man. And if I am right in noting the novelty of his emergent probability foundations for a theology, then it is clear that Lonergan did not conceive such a theology to be a completed enterprise. I would say that his life's work was devoted to laying foundations for a theology that could take seriously the procedures and the discoveries of the nineteenth and twentieth century natural and human sciences. And his call for a theology to provide a foundation for a renewed human science was born of the conviction that any other approach would paralyze human science with a heuristic and a foundation that progressively stifled that of man which is most distinctively human, his and her drive towards self-transcendence, towards God." (252; E01, 29.10.2001)