Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Michael Vertin, Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Stichwort: Philosophie der Philosophien; empirische Grundlegung (empirical foundationalism)

Kurzinhalt: (i) If valid knowing occurs in me, then (epistemically accessible) reality exists, but the distinctive features of the latter are IN NO WAY PREFIGURED by the distinctive features of the former; (ii) that assertion is based upon EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE and ...

Textausschnitt: i. empirical foundationalism

236b What distinguishes philosophers in our first major group from those in the three further groups is their stand on the basic epistemological-metaphysical issue. The first group has a variety of subgroups, but they all maintain at least three things in common. First, they all contend that, although valid knowing surely manifests reality, the characteristic traits of knowing do not necessarily foreshadow the characteristic traits of reality in any way. Nothing at all can be said about reality save in and through one's actual knowing of it; and any effort to interpret a priori claims as radically distinct from empirical ones but still referring to reality is wrongheaded from the start. Second, the ultimate evidence to which they appeal in asserting the first point is evidence extrinsic to their making of that assertion itself. That is to say, they argue in effect that their view of the relation between knowing and reality must be accepted because it is uniquely solidary with the presuppositions or conclusions of the natural sciences, or because it is bound up with what is required for human practice's attainment of beneficial results, or because it alone is consistent with certain crucial religious beliefs, or for some other "extrinsic" reason. Third, they agree that making those first two assertions is methodologically the most fundamental of all philosophical moves, constitutes in a general way the sole acceptable starting point of sane philosophizing, and establishes the framework within which all other philosophical assertions are to be interpreted and assessed. We may denominate this three-part claim "empirical foundationalism"1 and summarize it as follows:

A. 3a (Empirical Foundationalism):
(i) If valid knowing occurs in me, then (epistemically accessible) reality exists, but the distinctive features of the latter are IN NO WAY PREFIGURED by the distinctive features of the former;
(ii) that assertion is based upon EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE and thus is EMPIRICALLY PROBABLE; and
(iii) the first two assertions constitute the general form of the fundamental determinative member of the integral set of basic philosophical stances. (Fs) (notabene)
238a The (empirical) stand that a philosopher in our first group takes on the question of reality's recurrent characteristics will of course reflect that philosopher's judgment about which type of empirical study is the most basic. Thus Thomas Hobbes, for example, giving pride of place to the natural sciences and especially physics, concludes that reality is radically self-absent, fundamentally lacking in consciousness, essentially non-subjective, a view often labelled "metaphysical materialism" or "metaphysical naturalism" (Hobbes, 1651: "The First Part"). Charles Hartshorne, on the other hand, generalizing his reading of the human sciences and especially a version of introspective psychology, concludes that reality is characteristically self-present, fundamentally self-possessed, essentially subjective, a view often labelled "metaphysical idealism" or "pan-psychism" (Hartshorne, 1962: 3-27, 161-233, 245-62). (Fs)

238b Over against this first group of philosophers (with its various sub-groups), our three remaining groups all maintain a different stand on the basic epistemological-metaphysical issue. They jointly profess that certain constant traits of reality necessarily are anticipated, projected in advance, prefigured in some way, by the constant traits of one's valid knowing, whatever the latter are; that one must accept that assertion because any effort to argue the opposite invariably involves one in some kind of contradiction; and thus that one's philosophically most fundamental claim must methodologically precede one's basic epistemological-metaphysical stand. We may call this tripartite contention "pre-empirical foundationalism" and express it thus:

A. 3a (Pre-Empirical Foundationalism):

(i) If valid knowing occurs in me, then (epistemically accessible) reality exists, and the distinctive features of the latter are PREFIGURED by the distinctive features of the former;
(ii) that assertion is based upon PRE-EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE of some sort and thus is INCONTROVERTIBLE; and
(iii) therefore no stance on the basic epistemological-metaphysical issue can constitute the general form of the fundamental determinative member of the integral set of basic philosophical stances. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Michael Vertin, Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Stichwort: Philosophie der Philosophien begriffliche prä-empirische Grundlegung (conceptual pre-empirical foundationalism); Descartes, Kant, Fichte, Marx

Kurzinhalt: (i) If and only if specific apparent knowing occurs in me, then valid knowing occurs in me, and the latter is TOTALLY IDENTICAL with the former; (ii) that assertion is based upon PRE-EMPIRICAL CONCEPTUAL EVIDENCE ...

Textausschnitt: ii. conceptual pre-empirical foundationalism

239a What distinguishes philosophers in our second major group from those in the two further groups is their stand on the basic phenomenological-epistemological issue. All the persons in this group agree on at least three contentions. The first is that valid cognitional operations are to be identified not with apparent cognitional operations tout court but only with some specific kind of apparent cognitional operations, though the specific kind varies from subgroup to sub-group. For some, the requisite cognitional operations are intentionally intuitive, involving the bipolar functional immediacy of cognitional act and distinct cognitional content. For others, they are nonintentionally intuitive, with the monopolar functional immediacy of cognitional act that is its own cognitional content. For others, they are intuitive in either of these two senses. And for still others, they are characteristically non-intuitive, discursive. The second common contention is that the evidence one invokes in establishing the first contention is the pre-empirical evidence constituted by the very concept of valid knowing, a concept that is logically self-evident, whether the logic be formal or transcendental. In other words, rejection of the first contention inescapably involves the rejector in some type of logical contradiction. And the third common contention is that the first two contentions outline what is methodologically the most basic of all philosophical stands. We may name this threefold contention "conceptual pre-empirical foundationalism" and state it in summary form:
A. 2a (Conceptual Pre-Empirical Foundationalism):

(i) If and only if specific apparent knowing occurs in me, then valid knowing occurs in me, and the latter is TOTALLY IDENTICAL with the former;
(ii) that assertion is based upon PRE-EMPIRICAL CONCEPTUAL EVIDENCE and thus is CONCEPTUALLY INCONTROVERTIBLE; and
(iii) the first two assertions constitute the general form of the fundamental determinative member of the integral set of basic philosophical stances. (Fs)

240a The stand that a philosopher in one of these sub-groups takes on the basic epistemological issue is of course a function of his stand not just on the basic phenomenological-epistemological issue but on the basic phenomenological issue as well. Thus Rene Descartes, for example, combining "intentional intuitionism" with a ("divinely guaranteed") conviction that the requisite intentionally intuitive cognitional acts do indeed occur, concludes on this basis that valid knowing does indeed occur, a view often named "(epistemological) naive realism" (Descartes, 1641: III-VI). Immanual Kant, likewise maintaining a version of "intentional intuitionism" but convinced that the requisite intentionally intuitive cognitional acts do not occur, concludes on this basis that valid knowing does not occur, a view sometimes called "(epistemological) critical idealism" (Kant, 1787: B 33, 45,66-72, 74-75,92-93,295-315). On the other hand, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, combining "nonintentional intuitionism" with a conviction that the requisite nonintentionally intuitive cognitional acts do in fact occur, judges on this basis that valid knowing does in fact occur, a stand that we may call "(epistemological) naive idealism" (Fichte, 1801: I-VI). Again, Karl Marx, similarly maintaining a version of "nonintentional intuitionism" but convinced that the requisite nonintentionally intuitive cognitional acts do not occur (that is, not yet), judges on this basis that valid knowing does not occur (that is, not yet), a view sometimes called "(epistemological) relativism" (McInnes, 1967: 173-76). Finally, for the various versions of the conceptual pre-empirical foundationalist stand on the basic phenomenological-epistemological issue there are correlatively specified stands on the basic epistem-ological-metaphysical issue; and the latter combine in turn with various basic epistemological stands (such as the ones just noted) to yield a range of stands on the basic metaphysical issue. (Fs)

241a Over against this second group of philosophers (with its several sub-groups), our two remaining groups both take a different tack regarding the basic phenomenological-epistemological issue. Notwithstanding their important disagreements, they concur that valid cognitional operations are not some conceptually pre-specified kind of apparent cognitional operations, whatever the latter turn out to be; that the essential reason this claim must be accepted is that any effort to affirm the opposite cannot but involve one in a specifically operational contradiction, performatively invoking the very claim that verbally one would reject; and hence that one's most fundamental philosophical assertion must be methodologically prior to the stand one takes on the basic phenomenological-epistemological issue. We may label this composite view "operational pre-empirical foundationalism" and put it concisely as follows:

A. 2a (Operational Pre-Empirical Foundationalism):
(i) If and only if apparent knowing occurs in me, than valid knowing occurs in me, and the latter is TOTALLY IDENTICAL with the former;
(ii) that assertion is based upon PRE-EMPIRICAL OPERATIONAL EVIDENCE and thus is OPERATIONALLY INCONTROVERTIBLE; and
(iii) therefore no stance on the basic phenomenological-epistemological issue can constitute the general form of the fundamental determinative member of the integral set of basic philosophical stances. (Fs)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Michael Vertin, Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Stichwort: Philosophie der Philosophien intuitive operational prä-empirische Grundlegung (intuitive operational pre-empirical foundationalism); Owens, Hepburn

Kurzinhalt: (i) Apparent knowing does indeed occur in me, and it distinctively consists of INTUITIVE operations;
(ii) that assertion is based upon PRE-EMPIRICAL OPERATIONAL EVIDENCE and thus is OPERATIONALLY INCONTROVERTIBLE; and

Textausschnitt: iii. intuitive operational pre-empirical foundationalism

241b Their stand on the basic phenomenological issue is what distinguishes philosophers in our third major group from those in the fourth. As before, so also here the members of the group have at least three joint views. The first is that apparent cognitional operations essentially are functionally immediate or intuitive in kind, though there is disagreement about the precise character of that intuitivity. Some see it as uniquely intentional, involving the bipolar functional immediacy of cognitional act and distinct cognitional content. Others see it as uniquely nonintentional, with the monopolar functional immediacy of cognitional act that is its own cognitional content. For still others, the intuitivity is intentional in one dimension of the operations and nonintentional in another. The second joint view is that the evidence to which one properly appeals in asserting the first joint view is the pre-empirical evidence intrinsic to the concrete performance of seriously asserting any view at all. Apparent cognitional operations are essentially intuitive; in any denial of that intuitivity the act of denial would be intuitive and thus would operationally contradict the content of the denial; hence to maintain the denial consistently is concretely impossible. The third joint view is that the first two joint views together manifest the overall pattern of what is methodologically the most fundamental of all philosophical stands. Let us call this threefold view "intuitive operational pre-empirical foundationalism" and sum it up in this way:

A. 1 (Intuitive Operational Pre-Empirical Foundationalism):
(i) Apparent knowing does indeed occur in me, and it distinctively consists of INTUITIVE operations;
(ii) that assertion is based upon PRE-EMPIRICAL OPERATIONAL EVIDENCE and thus is OPERATIONALLY INCONTROVERTIBLE; and
(iii) the first two assertions constitute the general form of the fundamental determinative member of the integral set of basic philosophical stances. (Fs)

242a Two examples: "intentional intuitionism" as just characterized may also be called "(phenomenological) naive realism"; and I would propose Joseph Owens as a philosopher holding a version of this view (Owens, 1968: 14-43). Again, "nonintentional intuitionism" as just characterized may also be called "(phenomenological) naive idealism"; and I am inclined to think that the claims of certain so-called "introvertive" mystics illustrate this view (Hepburn, 1967: 429-34). Finally, for each version of the intuitive operational pre-empirical foundationalist stand on the basic phenomenological issue there are correlatively specified stands on the basic phenomenological-epistemological and epistemological-metaphysical issues, and, in consequence, on the basic epistemological and metaphysical issues. (Fs)

Autor: Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 4

Buch: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 4, Supplmentary Issue

Titel: Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop

Stichwort: 'Instant' Lonergan; 2 Prinzipien: invariante Struktur - Geschichte; Beispiel: Tschechow

Kurzinhalt: The framework remains steady and becomes familiar with use, but what happens within the framework can be quite new and unfamiliar ... Such endless variety cannot be handled the way the structural principle was; ...

Textausschnitt: 1. 'INSTANT'LONERGAN: AN OVERALL VIEW

2a To offer an overall view of Lonergan's thought sounds like a threat. Will it include all that has been said in these workshops since 1974? Be not afraid. For present purposes I offer an 'instant' Lonergan: a pair of headings that are comprehensive in intent but omit all details. I am told that one can put half of physics into seven typing spaces: E = mc2. I present a formula like that for my overall view of Lonergan. (Fs)

2b The formula, then, states that there are two components in his thinking. There is the structural principle. This focuses on the invariant, the hard and fast, the fixed and determined. But there is also what we may call the historical principle, which is not invariant at all but subject to continual change, is not hard and fast but open to development or to decline, is not fixed and determined but insecure and precarious, does not provide some instant Utopia but would lead the human race forward in a steady process of learning. (Fs)

2c Lonergan himself provides support for this formula: 'A contemporary ontology,' he says, 'would distinguish two components in concrete human reality: on the one hand, a constant, human nature; on the other hand, a variable, human historicity. Nature is given man at birth. Historicity is what man makes of man.'1 That is a statement in ontology; transfer it from ontology to his work and thought, and you have my instant Lonergan. (Fs)

2d Still, even an instant view may be allowed some expansion. I will expand my first principle very briefly, my second not so briefly. (Fs)

2e The obvious illustration of the structural principle is the four levels of consciousness.2 You have heard about those levels a dozen times, and it would bore you to tears to hear me go through them again. From my viewpoint it should bore you, as it should bore future generations; that's a position I'll take when I come to its future in part 3. So it needs no further discussion at the moment. (Fs)
3a Next, the historical principle. The framework remains steady and becomes familiar with use, but what happens within the framework can be quite new and unfamiliar, infinitely various, infinitely rich, and very exciting. When I first worked on this talk, I happened to be reading an old book, The Tales of Tchehov.3 The 'Introduction,' by Edward Garnett, speaks of Chekhov's 'picture of life's teeming freshness and fulness,' of the way he conveys 'a mysterious sense ... of life's ceaseless intricacy.' He points out how Chekhov's 'flexible and transparent method reproduces the pulse and beat of life, its pressure, its fluidity, its momentum, its rhythm and change ...'4 This may not at first sound much like Lonergan. On reflection, however, and thinking of the two principles in our instant formula, we might agree that it is the perfect partner to his thought on history. Garnet says of history in artistic terms what Lonergan says of it in his more theoretic terms. It is the addition of history, with its endless variety, to structure; it is not the steady framework, it is what happens within the framework. (Fs)

3b And what is it that happens? What happens is Homer singing of Ulysses, Plato writing his dialogues, Archimedes taking a bath, Augustine hearing the child say 'Take up and read.' Thomas Aquinas happens, and so does Dante, so does Isaac Newton. Jean Vanier establishes his L'Arche communities, while others climb Mt Everest or land on the moon or give their lives for the poor and oppressed of the third world. Well, you get the idea: in 'the pulse and beat of life' anything and everything and everybody happens. (Fs)

3c Such endless variety cannot be handled the way the structural principle was; it needs more study; and that brings me to part 2. (Fs)

Autor: Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 4

Buch: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 4, Supplmentary Issue

Titel: Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop

Stichwort: Der "wesentliche" Lonergan; Geschichte

Kurzinhalt: The 'Essential' Lonergan; I would claim that the need to understand history, basic history, the history that happens, is the chief dynamic element in all his academic work.

Textausschnitt: 2.1 The 'Essential' Lonergan

4c What is the role of history in Lonergan's thinking? I would claim that the need to understand history, basic history, the history that happens, is the chief dynamic element in all his academic work. From start to finish history is the pervasive theme: not insight, not method, not economics, not emergent probability, but history. I suggested something like that in this workshop a few years ago. The idea didn't exactly catch fire. Nevertheless I present it again, I will even call it the 'essential' Lonergan, and I will try to make a better case for it this time. (Fs)

4d Any number of books use the word 'essential' in their title: The Essential Augustine, The Essential Confucius, The Essential Darwin; I suspect that most of them offer a selection of writings, and the selection is meant to convey the main ideas of a particular thinker. That is a legitimate use of 'essential' but it is not the usage here. I am not referring to a selection of writings; I am referring rather to the key to such a selection, and the key to someone's mind and life and works. (Fs)

4e Notice that my 'essential Lonergan' is not the 'instant Lonergan' I began with; that was a mini 'table of contents'; it gave us two pegs to hang ideas on. It was a summarizing word, the term of a process of reduction. But my 'essential' describes a principle rather than a term; it is not a later summary of works, but the prior inspiration that would make the summary; it can be a tacit influence even when it is not declared. (Fs)

5a Think of it in terms of intentionality. What is the total intended goal of the total intending thought of Bernard Lonergan? What lies behind all his particular intendings, and all his achieved results? Behind all his labor to construct an organon, and all his efforts to apply it? He has taught us to recognize the intention of being latent in every concept.1 I would claim that there is a similar intention of universal history latent in all his writings, even in the great Insight and Method, which function then, not as the goal, but as an organon to move him toward the goal. This, I submit, is the essential and characteristic Lonergan. (Fs)

5b Can such a claim be proven? In a sense it doesn't need proof, for it just puts in other terms what we would all say, that Lonergan was concerned all his life with the real world: method, he would say, is not an end but a means; withdrawal is only for a return. But the real world is the world of people and what they do; and the sum total of what they do is their history. Of course, we study physics and chemistry and biology and the natural sciences generally, but mainly because and insofar as they are part of our human world. (Fs)

5c My position then hardly needs argument. Nevertheless I will argue. Think of prospectors in search of precious minerals: they watch for outcroppings of a hidden lode. Our outcroppings are certain little phrases that keep popping up: 'the transition from feudal to bourgeois society',2 'systems on the move';3 'ongoing discovery of mind';4 'the emergence of ethical value';5 the 'long transition from primitive fruit-gatherers, hunters, and fishers to the large-scale agriculture of the temple states';6 'from the compactness of the symbol to the differentiation of philosophic, scientific, theological, and historical consciousness';7 'how is there generated the transition from one level or stage in human culture to another later level or stage';8 and so on, and so on. (Fs)

6a 'On the move,' 'ongoing,' transition,' emergence,' 'from ... to' - they are all outcroppings of a lode, signs of a mindset, pointers to the essential Lonergan. Aristotle and Aquinas say that character is manifested in sudden reactions to the unexpected, 'ex repentinis.'9 These phrases have the same effect. They show us one whose second nature is to think in terms of change, development, history. They suggest the need to add to 'Insight Revisited' a more comprehensive 'History, or Lonergan Revisited.' (Fs)

6b Let's revisit him at least at the start and finish of his career. There is that letter of 1938 when he said to his religious superior, 'philosophy of history is as yet not recognized as the essential branch of philosophy that it is,' and asked for freedom to work on that needed branch.10 Likewise in 1982 at the end of his career, in the last paper he gave, he was still deep into history: 'It is cultural change that has made Scholasticism no longer relevant and demands the development of a new theological method and style, continuous indeed with the old, yet meeting all the genuine exigences both of Christian religion and of up-to-date philosophy, science, and scholarship.'11 How many works can you find between 1938 and 1982 that do not include some reference to the transitions of history? I do not mean that you can find the word in every paragraph or even every chapter but, as an ascetic finds God in a multiplication table, so in Lonergan, at a deeper level in his spirit, the intention of history is always operative. (Fs)

7a These pointers are only my build-up; his own statements clinch the matter. In his 1958 lectures on education he stated that 'reflection on history is one of the richest, profoundest, and most significant things there is. In the past few centuries any great movement has been historical in its inspiration and its formulation.'12 Almost twenty years later he stated that 'to understand men and their institutions we have to study their history. For it is in history that man's making of man occurs, that it progresses and regresses, that through such changes there may be discerned a certain unity in an otherwise disconcerting multiplicity.'13 He links the two great works of his organon to a theory of history: 'I have a general theory of history implicit in Insight and in Method.'14 And sees it as explaining doctrinal development: 'the intelligibility proper to developing doctrines is the intelligibility immanent in historical process.'15 And he expressly relates his 1938 position to that of twenty-five years later.16

7b So much for the question that: is it a fact that history has a pervasive role in his mindset? Let us return to the question what. What are Lonergan's views on that history of the past which I hope to extend in part 3 into the 'history' of the future? I have three headings for this: the underlying structure of history, the possibility of history, the actual transitions of history. (Fs)

Autor: Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 4

Buch: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 4, Supplmentary Issue

Titel: On the "Meditative Origin of the Philosophical Knowledge of Order"

Stichwort: Lawrence über Voegelin: Intentionalität (keine Beschränkung auf Sinneserfahrung); Intentionalität - Staunen, Selbsttranszendenz; Objekt, Ding, Realität

Kurzinhalt: ... I would question the adequacy in his analysis of the intentionality structure of using sense perception to provide the main specification of the meaning of intentionality. Why not use wonder or questioning as the key to the meaning of intentionality?

Textausschnitt: 59a
A. Intentionality: For me, the most questionable part of Voegelin's analysis is his treatment of intentionality along with the cognate terms, "object" and "thing." The main problem I have is with the dominance of the model of sense perception in it. I would contend that there are conscious acts which are intentional, but which simply may not be helpfully compared to sensory acts. Thus, just as Voegelin criticized the narrowness of Husserl's choice of examples of auditory perception in relation to the matter of consciousness as a stream and the constitution of time-consciousness, so I would question the adequacy in his analysis of the intentionality structure of using sense perception to provide the main specification of the meaning of intentionality. Why not use wonder or questioning as the key to the meaning of intentionality? This would be more in harmony with the centrality of the participatory experience of the tension towards the ground of being as well as with the dynamics of remembering. Surely it can be shown that the range of conscious and intentional activities at work in concrete human questing involves irreducibly distinct yet complementary kinds of questions and coordinate acts which arise in response to these questions. These acts are also intentional, but what they intend most radically is not "the already-out-there-now," but being. Acknowledging the fuller range of wonder's dynamic structure bursts open the meaning of intentionality as restricted to the experience of discrete acts of sense perception of the already-out-there-now. For if intentionality springs from primordial wonder, the potential range of consciousness as intentional matches that of the questioning response to the mysterious pull of transcendent mystery. (Fs) (notabene)

59b
1. Correlative revision in notion of consciousness: Shifting from sense perception to wonder as the key to human consciousness even as intentional allows us to understand consciousness itself in a manner that only confirms Voegelin's basic insight into consciousness as "the In-Between reality of the participatory pure experience" (1977a: 171). To begin with, it let us expand Voegelin's brief against "the immanentizing language of a human consciousness which, as a subject, is opposed to an object of experience" to the specific reality of human knowing. When Voegelin's analysis of conscious intentionality is radicalized by asking about what we as concrete persons actually do when we ask and answer questions, we find that human knowing is not a simple, mysterious confrontational relationship between subject and object on the analogy of sensing, but a structured activity composed of distinct elements none of which alone constitutes knowledge by itself, since each element is merely a constitutive part of the whole we name knowledge. At the same time we discover that consciousness as a strictly inner experience of oneself and one's cognitive and appetitive acts is nothing like an inward look, but a property common to those acts, in spite of the differences in their contents, which is evidently not shared by other bodily acts like the growth of our hair and fingernails. We grasp, too, that it is on the basis of this similarity that the acts of sensing, inquiring, understanding, critical reflection, and judgment are not disconnected, but get integrated into unified acts of knowing. Wonder, inquiry, direct insight, etc., form a natural unity because they are conscious. And so consciousness, which is activated by and in accord with these manifold and diverse processes, achieves their immanent identify, even as it itself goes beyond each of them by providing them their constant point of reference. The inner experience of consciousness secures our presence to what we intend by conscious acts; but through these acts of apprehension and appetite, it is also operative as a concomitant and irreducible presence to self. (Fs)

2. Conscious Intentionality and Self-transcendence: The present analysis of conscious intentionality agrees with Plato, Aristotle, and Voegelin that the central manifestation of consciousness as human is the specific tension of spirit we call wonder. This disturbance, this unrest within us that renders Hume's world of sensations puzzling and questionable is rooted in human consciousness as that by which we are originally given to and experience ourselves, prior to any intelligent and reasonable response, and prior even to any determination and formulation of wonder by an inner word. For doesn't wonder mean that we are given to ourselves as an infinite potentiality that strives toward the whole of being in a dynamic movement? And isn't consciousness basically just this presence of ourselves to ourselves in unrestricted and active potentiality, the self-presence, that is to say, of a principle of infinite questioning and questing whose measure and standard is determined by the goal of infinite understanding and love that is the divine mystery? If these questions can be answered affirmatively, then consciousness is an unrestricted dynamism that underpins and penetrates all our knowing. "It is an unrestricted intention that intends the transcendent, and a process of self-transcendence that reaches it" (Lonergan, 1967a:231). This is what makes possible that "ceaseless action of expanding, ordering, articulating, and correcting itself" that Voegelin tells us activates "conscious existence" as an "event in the reality of which as a part it partakes" (1977a: 221). (Fs) (notabene)

3. The Meaning of "OBJECT", "THING", "REALITY": If we turn, then, to a basic meaning of the words, "object," and "thing", it becomes clear that they should not be made equivalent to the correlative of sense perception. Indeed, to think of "thing-ness" as spatio-temporal bodiliness and of objectivity as "the already-out-there-now" is to fall into a conception of reality and of being that is irrational. This is not to dispute the spontaneous evidence of an external world or the rationality of propositions based upon such evidence, but to suggest that problems of immanentism and relativism are only resolved within the unrestricted horizon of the question. With that horizon, then, reality is the object of those acts by which the unrestricted desire to know is actuated and by which the quest for knowledge becomes actual knowledge. A more exacting examination of our mental processes of coming to know shows how sense perceptions provoke a structure of several intellectual operations that are "related to sensitive operations, not by similarity, but by functional complementarity" (Lonergan 1967a:234): inquiry, understanding, conceiving, critical reflection, reflective insight, and judgment. Once we acknowledge this structure of consciousness as under the sway of wonder, it becomes difficult to limit the meaning of "object", "things", and "reality" to the "already-out-there-now" grasped by sense perception. Instead they are what we apprehend by insight and reasonable affirmation. (Fs)

61a This conception of "object", "thing", "reality" as the objective of the dynamic structure of our pure desire to know does not entail any bondage to a principle of immanence:
Because the intention [of consciousness] is unrestricted, it is not restricted to the immanent content of knowing, to Bewusstseinsinhalte; at least, we can ask whether there is anything beyond that, and the mere fact that the question can be asked reveals that the intention, which the question manifests, is not limited by any principle of immanence. But answers are to questions, so that if questions are transcendent, so also must the meaning of corresponding answers (Lonergan, 1967a:230). (Fs)

Autor: Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 4

Buch: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 4, Supplmentary Issue

Titel: On the "Meditative Origin of the Philosophical Knowledge of Order"

Stichwort: Lawrence über Voegelin: Luminosität - Staunen, potens omnia facere et fieri; geschaffene Teilnahme am ungeschaffenen Licht

Kurzinhalt: I am basically in agreement with these insights into luminosity ... But I would prefer not to dissociate luminosity from intentionality, but rather to specify it too in terms of wonder and questioning.

Textausschnitt: 61b
B. Luminosity: I would like to return now to the subject of the luminosity-structure of consciousness. On Voegelin's account, luminosity tends to function as a counterfoil to the limitations ascribed by him to the intentionality structure on the model of sense-perception. This procedure casts suggestive light on aspects of consciousness that cannot be accounted for from the vantage of the perceptualist model's presupposition of the subject/object split as ultimate. On the one hand it goes beyond the voluntarist connotations of attentiveness: we notice the women as they come and go, we hear them speaking of Michelangelo, whereas luminosity has more the character of supervening on or occurring to us, like the moment in the rose-garden. On the other hand, whereas the intentionality of sense perception tends to get absorbed with what we are focally aware of, however much luminosity may determine our focal or explicit consciousness at any time, it is always principally operative as implicit or tacit background awareness, to which we respond by articulation in word and deed. Consequently, events of luminosity can never be exhausted by acts of focal awareness, or be brought fully into the foreground of consciousness. We can only become more attuned to luminosity. (Fs) (notabene)

62a I am basically in agreement with these insights into luminosity as profiled against the intentionality-structure of sense perception. But I would prefer not to dissociate luminosity from intentionality, but rather to specify it too in terms of wonder and questioning. With Lonergan I would rather say: "questioning not only is about being but is itself being, being in its Gelichtetheit (luminousness), being in its openness to being, being that is realizing itself through inquiry to knowing that, through knowing, it may come to loving" (1967b:206). What differentiates human being from other conscious beings is that it is a notion of its goal. This means that in wonder or in the pure desire to know, consciousness experiences itself precisely as spiritual or intellectual, inasmuch as the unrestrictedness of its intention--completely universal and utterly concrete--entails an anticipatory grasp of the intelligibility, the unconditionality, and the absoluteness of being. Since, with Aristotle and Aquinas, we are speaking here of an infinite potency (potens omnia facere et fieri), this immediately given luminosity of wonder is not the luminosity of that which it is already, but rather of what in its empty totality it anticipatorily apprehends and longs for, and what it dynamically seeks. I would say that what is most basically meant by luminosity, therefore, is wonder as involving an experiential knowledge of itself (ex parte subjecti) that has not been objectified and so does not involve the objective content of any cognitive act; instead it is an implicit awareness of itself as the principle of such acts, and so it is an inexhaustible background, a tacitly performative awareness. When it is unfolded in particular questions for intelligence, reasonableness, and deliberation, it does so as involuntary occurrence, supervening on sense awareness; and its fulfilment in direct and reflective acts of understanding manifests these same traits: we cannot will either questions or insights; we can only be more or less open to them. (Fs) (notabene)

62b It follows that I would agree in principle with what Voegelin was getting at when he contended that concrete human consciousness "is not an apriori structure, nor does it just happen, nor is its horizon a given [but] a ceaseless action of expanding, ordering, articulating, and correcting itself" (1977:4). The reason for this is that luminosity as wonder is a factual constituent of human consciousness, but in Lonergan's words, "it does not consistently and completely dominate human consciousness. It is a fact to which man has to advert, which he has to acknowledge and accept, whose implications for all his thinking and acting have to be worked out and successfully applied to actual thinking and actual acting" (1967c: 199-200). In short one has to make one's actual horizon match the factual yet merely potential range of primordial wonder's unrestrictedness. (Fs) (notabene)

62c Furthermore, by equating luminosity with primordial wonder as questioning, we can preserve Voegelin's insight into the role of the divine pole in luminosity's achievement by stating simply that God is the ultimate ground of knowledge, but that human beings know because luminosity is an immanent source of transcendence. We know because of our own intelligence whose immanent structures possess a transcendent dynamism. In Thomas Aquinas's formulation, human intelligence is a "created participation of uncreated light." This strengthens Voegelin's idea that attending to luminosity subverts the intentionalist-hypostatizing assumption of the ultimacy of the subject/object split. From the perspective of luminosity as an immanent source of transcendence, the so-called problem of knowledge is transformed. It is not a matter of the subject "in here" moving to objects "out there", but of our moving from an "infinite potentiality commensurate with the universe towards a rational apprehension that siezes the difference of subject and object in essentially the same way that it seizes any other real distinction" (1967:88). (Fs) (notabene)

63a Once we have grasped the distinction between God as the ground of knowledge and human luminosity as an immanent source of transcendence, the possibility also opens up of drawing a radical distinction between classes of horizon-enlargement that may actually arise when the orientation and performances of finite human consciousness really do coincide with the demand implicit in the pure desire to know and "an ultimate enlargement [that] alone approximates to the possibility of openness defined by the pure desire" (Lonergan, 1967c: 200). This distinction is intimately connected with Plato's breakthrough to the Beyond as the creative, divine ground and Aristotle's description of the ground of being as "eternal, immovable, and separate from the change of sense perception" (Voegelin, 1974:245). Thomas Aquinas discerned this distinction from the difference between the adequate object of our desire, namely, videre Deum per essentiam (to know God by his essence), and the proportionate object of our knowledge, namely, realities intrinsically conditioned by space and time (Lonergan, 1967d; 1956:634-730). (Fs) (notabene)

63b On account of the limitations of the proportionate object of our knowing (experienced in the endlessness of the questions for intelligence, reasonableness and responsibility that can be raised), our natural knowledge of God will only admit of analogical-or, to use Voegelin's term, symbolic-fulfilment. But we still naturally desire and are open to essential knowledge of God who is not intrinsically conditioned by space and time. In Thomas's framework, this means the fulfilment of our natural desire to know is supernatural. Accordingly, the class of actual enlargements of horizon "implicit in the very structure of human consciousness," is really distinct from its "ultimate enlargement, beyond the resources of every finite consciousness, where there enters into clear view God as unknown, when the subject knows God face to face" (200). For Christians, the existence of such a fulfilment is known by faith in the beatific vision. But the theoretical distinction between nature and supernature helps the believer to articulate the gift and elevating character of grace, while guarding against any suspicion that God's self-communication is alien or extrinsic to the horizon of human being (Lonergan, 1974). (Fs)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Michael Vertin, Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Stichwort: Lonergan: 3 philosophische Grundfragen (Fragen)

Kurzinhalt: Lonergan argues that, when all is said and done, the truly fundamental philosophical questions, the basic issues in philosophy, may be reduced to three: "What am I doing when I am knowing?" "Why is doing that knowing?" ...

Textausschnitt: 3.1 On the basic philosophical issues

216b Lonergan argues that, when all is said and done, the truly fundamental philosophical questions, the basic issues in philosophy, may be reduced to three: "What am I doing when I am knowing?" "Why is doing that knowing?" "What do I know when I do it?" (1974: 37, 86; 1972a: 307; 1972b: 25, 83, 261, 297, 316). The first question regards one's own concrete activity as a knower: what are the recurrent features of whatever conscious-intentional performances I label "knowing"? The full-blown answer to this question, arrived at through a reflexive objectification of operations that one already experiences oneself performing, constitutes one's cognitional theory, gnoseology, phenomenology of knowing. The second question regards the justification for the positive epistemic value that one ordinarily attributes to the conscious-intentional performances just noted: upon what grounds do I consider my "knowing" to be epistemically valid, secure, objective? The sufficiently detailed response to this question constitutes one's epistemology. The third question regards what one's cognitional performances are oriented toward: what in general is the character of the to-be-known, reality, the universe of being? The fully developed reply to this question constitutes one's metaphysics. Furthermore, the question about reality is third because an adequately critical answer to it is prefigured by one's answers to the other two questions together; and the question about epistemic objectivity is second because an adequately critical answer to it is prefigured by one's answer to the first question alone (1974: 37; 1972a: 307; 1972b: 20-21). Finally, the three questions, ordered in this way, make up what I am calling the integral set of basic philosophical issues. (Fs)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Michael Vertin, Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Stichwort: Philosophische Grundpositionen nach Lonergan: Empirismus, naiver Realismus, Idealismus, kritischer Realismus

Kurzinhalt: ... for the empiricist, the activity called "knowing" is nothing other than sensing, sensory intuiting, physical seeing; ...

Textausschnitt: 3.2 On the basic philosophical stances

217a In line with our terminology, a basic philosophical stance for Lonergan is the answer that one gives to the initial question about knowing, or the question about epistemic objectivity, or the question about reality; and an integral set of basic philosophical stances is the ordered group of one's answers to all three questions. Dialectically opposed integral sets are those whose corresponding stances on knowing and/or epistemic objectivity and/or reality are radically and totally opposed. Are there any examples? (Fs)

217b During the long course of his investigations Lonergan time and again discusses various dialectically opposed integral sets of basic philosophical stances; but he regularly lays special emphasis on four, which he labels "empiricism," "naive realism," "idealism," and "critical realism" (1967b: 207-220, 231-236; 1971: 14-15; 1972b: 76, 238-39, 263-65; 1974: 30,219,239-14; cf. 1967a: 7, 20, 179n 200; 1957: xxviii, 361, 489,496, 634-35). While the four differ in a variety of ways, the most important difference is between the first three, on the one hand, and the fourth, on the other. The first three share the conviction that the essential feature of epistemically objective cognitional acts is that they achieve their contents directly, immediately, intuitively, in a way that is either simply identical with or at least similar to the way that acts of sensing achieve their contents. In Lonergan's shorthand characterization of this claim, objective cognitional acts are acts of "seeing." The fourth, by contrast, rejects this claim. (Fs)

218a More amply, then, for the empiricist, the activity called "knowing" is nothing other than sensing, sensory intuiting, physical seeing; this activity is epistemically objective because it satisfies the principle that objective knowing is sensing, sensory intuiting, ocular vision; and reality is precisely what is capable of being sensed, intuited via the senses, seen with the eye of the body. (Fs)

218b For the naive realist, the activity called "knowing" is mainly or even exclusively a supposed supra-sensory perceiving, intellectual intuiting, spiritual seeing; this activity is epistemically objective because it meets the principle that objective knowing is mainly or even exclusively supra-sensory perceiving, intellectual intuiting, mental vision; and reality is mainly or even exclusively what is able to be perceived in supra-sensory fashion, intellectually intuited, seen with the eye of the mind. (Fs)

218c For the idealist, the activity called "knowing" includes an intellectual unifying, organizing, synthesizing of sense data; but it does not include the naive realist's intellectual perceiving, intuiting, seeing, for the idealist cannot discover the presence of any such activity. Still, the idealist maintains the naive realist's principle that objective knowing is supra-sensory perceiving, intellectual intuiting, mental vision. Consequently, knowing is not epistemically objective, and no cognitively justifiable characterization of reality can be given. (Fs)

218d For the critical realist, the activity called "knowing" includes three components: experiencing, which is either sensing or-in the case of self-knowing-primitive self-presence, consciousness; understanding, which is the intellectual unifying of the data of sense or of consciousness; and judging, which is the rationally justified affirming of the intellectually unified data of sense or of consciousness. This composite activity is deemed epistemically objective not by virtue of some abstract principle of epistemic objectivity but rather because-so claims the critical realist-every attempt to dispute its objectivity inevitably presupposes that very objectivity on the level of actual performance. And the reality proportionate to human knowing is a compound of the experienceable, the intelligible, and the affirmable. (Fs) (notabene)

219a On Lonergan's own view, of course, the fourth of these dialectically opposed integral sets of basic philosophical stances- critical realism-is uniquely correct, fully critical, fundamentally "positional." Its stance on reality is implied by its stances on epistemic objectivity and the activity named "knowing"; its stance on epistemic objectivity is implied by its stance on the activity named "knowing"; and its stance on the activity named "knowing" results from a thorough reflexive objectification of cognitional operations that concretely one already experiences oneself performing. All the other sets of stances, by contrast, are somehow deficient, uncritical in one way or another, fundamentally "counterpositional." Specifically, empiricism, naive realism, and idealism all suffer from their commitment to the mistaken principle that epistemically objective cognitional activity is essentially some type of seeing, a principle which arises in the absence of sufficient concrete knowledge of one's own cognitional activity, and a principle which itself is nothing other than an unwarranted generalization of a cognitional feature that one may well indeed be concretely familiar with. It must not be thought, however, that eliminating the "myth" that knowing is seeing, and thus shifting into the basic stances of critical realism, is an easy matter. In fact, so pervasive and deep-rooted is this myth that the achievement of eliminating it from one's own habits of mind is a

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Michael Vertin, Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Stichwort: Neuformulierung der philosphischen Grundfragen Lonergans

Kurzinhalt: I would propose that the basic phenomenological, epistemo-logical, and metaphysical questions can each be restated in such a way as to bring out more fully both its precise nature ...

Textausschnitt: 4.1 Reformulations of the "three basic questions"

220b I would propose that the basic phenomenological,1 epistemo-logical, and metaphysical questions can each be restated in such a way as to bring out more fully both its precise nature and-so I would allege-the fact that it possesses not just one main part but two. Let me expand these points by considering the questions in turn. (Fs)

220c The basic phenomenological question, "What am I doing when I am knowing?", need not presuppose positive epistemic value on the part of the concrete conscious-intentional performances about which it asks: that matter properly falls within the ambit of the second basic question, not the first. That is to say, the first question is not necessarily concerned with purportedly epistemic processes insofar as they are genuinely epistemic, valid;2 it may regard them simply insofar as they are functionally-phenomenal, apparent. Again, however, it is concerned not with the whole of apparent knowing, either: the basic phenomenological question regards just the essential traits, the constitutive characteristics, the distinctive features, of apparent knowing. Nor must the first question presuppose even that there actually is such a thing as apparent knowing: in fact, the benefit of avoiding that presupposition will become obvious in the fifth section of this paper. Finally, besides the matter of whether there is any apparent knowing and, if so, what its distinctive features are, there is a further highly important matter that deserves to be made explicit-the matter of why one thinks that one's claim about apparent knowing's distinctive features is correct, the matter of the cognitional ground, rational justification, evidential basis, upon which one's claim rests, and, consequently, the certitude of that claim. In light of these considerations, I would propose the following restated form of the basic phenomenological question:

(i) What are the DISTINCTIVE FEATURES of my apparent knowing, if any; and (ii) what is the EVIDENTIAL BASIS and the CERTITUDE of the response I give to that query? (Fs)

221a The basic epistemological question, "Why is doing that knowing?", is concerned not just with apparent knowing but rather with valid knowing, with cognitional performances actually possessing positive epistemic value. Now, although Lonergan's usual form of this question presupposes that such knowing does indeed occur, it strikes me that this presupposition is not essential: in fact, as will become clearer in the fifth section of this paper, there is some advantage in leaving the matter open at the outset. Again, as with the first basic question, there are two parts: whether there is any valid knowing and, if so, what its distinctive features are; and, secondly, why-that is, on what evidential basis-one makes whatever claim about it that one does, and hence with what certitude. By contrast with the first basic question, however, Lonergan's usual way of posing the second basic question highlights this second part-but at the expense of the first part; and while this brings a happy economy of expression, it also brings an unhappy reduction of clarity. For all these reasons, I would suggest the following expanded form of the basic epistemological question:

(i) What are the DISTINCTIVE FEATURES of my valid knowing, if any; and (ii) what is the EVIDENTIAL BASIS and the CERTITUDE of the response I give to that query? (Fs)

222a The basic metaphysical question, "What do I know when I do it?", regards what it is that one validly knows or at least in principle could know, the (intrinsically knowable) real, (inherently epistemically accessible) reality.1 More exactly, it regards not the whole of the latter but only its constant characteristics, constitutive traits, distinctive features. Again, while Lonergan's usual form of this question presupposes that there is such a to-be-known, that presupposition is not essential, in my view; and, as will become evident below, there is even some advantage in omitting it. Finally, like the first two, the third basic question has two parts, and an adequate grasp of the question's thrust requires that both be spelled out: whether (epistemically accessible) reality actually exists and, if so, what its distinctive features are; and, secondly, why-that is, on what evidential basis-one makes whatever claim about it that one does, and therefore with what certitude. Accordingly, I would offer the following reformulation of the basic metaphysical question:

(i) What are the DISTINCTIVE FEATURES of (epistemically accessible) reality, if any; and (ii) what is the EVIDENTIAL BASIS and the CERTITUDE of the response I give to that query? (Fs)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Michael Vertin, Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Stichwort: Philosophie der Philosophien; diskursiv operational prä-empirische Grundlegung (discursive operational pre-empirical foundationalism)

Kurzinhalt: : (i) Apparent knowing does indeed occur in me, and it distinctively consists of DISCURSIVE operations; (ii) that assertion is based upon PRE-EMPIRICAL OPERATIONAL EVIDENCE and ...

Textausschnitt: iv. discursive operational pre-empirical foundationalism

243a The fourth group of philosophers agrees with the third group in every fundamental respect save one: for the fourth group, the hallmark of apparent cognitional operations is not directness, immediacy, intuitivity, whether intentional or nonintentional or both. On the contrary, it is attentiveness (in experiencing), intelligence (in understanding), reasonableness (in judging), and responsibility (in evaluating), all of which bespeaks at least four levels of cognitional operations that, though intentional, also possess a crucial conscious (or nonintentional) dimension-operations, that is to say, characterized by a certain intentional indirectness or mediacy, operations characterized by discursiveness. But like the third group, the fourth group maintains that the evidence from which one properly argues in professing a phenomenology of cognitional operations is nothing other than the pre-empirical evidence identical with whatever is functionally intrinsic to one's concrete performance of seriously professing anything at all. Moreover, like the third group, the fourth group maintains that the first two contentions together outline what methodologically is the very first step in philosophizing. We may term the fourth group's stand on the basic phenomenological issue "discursive operational pre-empirical foundationalism" and summarize it thus:

A. 1 (Discursive Operational Pre-Empirical Foundationalism): (i) Apparent knowing does indeed occur in me, and it distinctively consists of DISCURSIVE operations;
(ii) that assertion is based upon PRE-EMPIRICAL OPERATIONAL EVIDENCE and thus is OPERATIONALLY INCONTROVERTIBLE; and
(iii) the first two assertions constitute the general form of the fundamental determinative member of the integral set of basic philosophical stances. (Fs)

243b "Discursivism" as just characterized may also be called "(phenomenological) critical realism"; and I would propose Bernard Lonergan (with important antecedents in Aristotle and Aquinas) as a philosopher holding this view (1967b: 160-163 et passim). And of course I should add that to the discursive operational pre-empirical foundationalist stand on the basic phenomenological issue there correspond correlatively specified stands on the basic phenomenological-epistemological and epistemological-metaphysical issues and, in consequence, on the basic epistemological and metaphysical issues. (Fs)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Byrne, Patrick H., Insight and the Retrieval of Nature

Stichwort: Aristoteles: Natur; Potenz, hyle, hypokeimenon

Kurzinhalt: ... hupokeimenon is the 'x' in the statement "x is what is initially cold, but later hot" and similarly for other pairs of contraries ... "there must always be an x which is presupposed by saying, 'x becomes.

Textausschnitt: 1.2 Form and Matter

9a Aristotle's first approach to determining these principles began with a review of previous views on natural principles. He pointed out that despite their differences all earlier thinkers posited as principles contraries of one kind or another (188a19). He took this somewhat surprising commonality as the starting point of his own account of the principles of change: whatever change occurs is from one contrary to the other. He went on to indicate that the conflicts between the earlier thinkers arose because they were not at a sufficiently advanced stage of development (188b30-35). That is, their principles were instances of contraries initially "better known to us," what is closer to sensation (184a25), such as the Dry and the Moist, the Hot and the Cold, Friendship and Strife. In their place Aristotle introduced contraries "better known in themselves," namely the presence and absence of "form." Aristotle further noted (Physics, A.6-7) that there must be some other principle besides the contraries, namely that which the contraries "act upon." This other principle-something which "underlies [hupokeisthai] that which is in the process of becoming" (190al5)-is subsequently identified as hule, matter. (Fs) (notabene)
9b Aristotle's principles are known not through sensation but through nous, intelligence. Note that Aristotle did not initially use the term hule, matter, to denote the "underlying nature." That usage first appeared later on in Book B, presumably because Aristotle thought it crucial to dispel any misleading connotations of the term. And indeed the mistaken interpretations of both "matter" and "form" in Aristotle's time and throughout subsequent history have been legion. Therefore, a clarification of Aristotle's meanings is important for our study. (Fs)

9c A first clarification is that, in the context of Physics A.6-7, "underlying nature" means nothing more than "whatever it is that first possesses one contrary (for example, cold) and then another (for example, hot)." It is like an 'x' in an algebraic problem (for example, "x is whatever, when squared, yields three less than nineteen"). Yet to this clarification another must be added, for the phrase, "possesses one contrary," itself can be misleading. The phrase suggests that the one contrary is within something like a container or rests upon some underlying neutral material, only to be plucked away and replaced by the other contrary. This is why it is technically more correct to speak of "underlying nature" as "that of which one contrary is initially truly predicated, but later not." Or, to put it another way, hupokeimenon is the 'x' in the statement "x is what is initially cold, but later hot" and similarly for other pairs of contraries. Just what this 'x' ("underlying nature") is, remains to be determined. (Fs)

10a To clarify this further it must be added that while this somewhat awkward phrasing at least eliminates the mistaken connotation of some "underlying material," the fact that Aristotle actually used the terms, "underlying subject" and "underlie" (hupokeimenon and hupokeisthai) and later identified this 'x' as "matter" (hule) (191a9, 193a2-193b22), can lead to further misunderstanding. Aristotle is actually using the Greek word, hupokeimenon, in this case to mean "what is presupposed by." Hence, a translation such as, "there must always be something which underlies that which is in the process of becoming" is better be rendered as "there must always be an x which is presupposed by saying, 'x becomes.'" (Fs) (notabene)

10b Thirdly, although Aristotle mentioned the earlier philosophers' opinions that this 'x' was earth, fire, air, water, and so on (189b3, 193a22-23), he himself did not endorse such views. In fact, he pointed out that earth, air, fire, and water were themselves "already composites with contraries" (189b5). Again, one might regard "flesh and bones" as matter, but Aristotle also spoke of these as having their own "potency" ("matter") and requiring form for their being (193b1). The point is that "underlying nature" or "matter" are relative to their corresponding form. "Matter," for Aristotle, is simply the 'x' presupposed by the process of becoming of a certain form (for example, heat, a building, musical proficiency, and so on). To each form there is a range of corresponding x's (matters, potentialities), any one of which can fulfill the role of the "presupposed." Any further properties of this presupposed something remain to be determined. In other words, Aristotle's "matter" simply cannot be imagined as hard, dense, extended, particulate "stuff," as would become the case in the modern period. Rather, for Aristotle "matter" is "whatever is presupposed by." If this leaves the reader at a loss as to how to picture this "matter," that is precisely the point. Aristotle's science of nature is radically different from the science of the seventeenth century, where picturable underlying matter played such an important role. (Fs) (notabene)

11a For these reasons Aristotle claimed: "As for the underlying nature, it is knowable by analogy" (191a8). That is, "underlying nature" is knowable only in its relation to the form, as the "whatever" required in order that that form have full being (ousia). For example, almost every one knows the formula or definition of a circle. What is the matter of "circle"? The question is ambiguous because the definition is open to a variety of matters-graphite, gold, bronze, the set of space-time locations of a circulating object. Likewise, the matter of a purple finch is variable: the precise chemical composition varies from individual to individual within the species, and indeed with time for each individual bird. Yet despite all this variability, all correspond to the formula, the definition. Therefore, "underlying nature" or "matter" is, and is known to be, only in relation to form. (Fs)

11b In view of these clarifications, Aristotle's subtle identification of matter and potency, dunamis (193b1), is understandable. Matter (the totality of components), when already actually related in the manner specified in the form's formula or definition, manifests or "actualizes" a given form. Hence, that same totality, when not yet so related, has the potentiality to be so related, to be "informed." Finally, this analogous relationship establishes the basis for Aristotle's definition of motion or change: "a motion is the actuality of a potentiality qua potential" (210a11-12). That is, change is the process of relating parts together in accord with the form's formula.1 (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Byrne, Patrick H., Insight and the Retrieval of Nature

Stichwort: Aristoteles: Natur; Form; eidos - morphe (intelligible Einheit)

Kurzinhalt: Even though Aristotle did occasionally use morphe interchangeably with eidos, he explicitly defined both as "what is known through the formula of a definition," and this is not known through sense perception ...

Textausschnitt: 11c The meaning of "form" has suffered a similar distortion. This is partially due to the fact that, in addition to the technical Platonic term, eidos, Aristotle also used the more common Greek term, morphe, meaning "shape." Ask someone what the form of a purple finch is, and invariably they will draw you a diagram of its visual, side-view shape. Nor is the problem restricted to the realm of common sense; a similar confusion preponderates throughout philosophy. In the history of philosophy, even when the more obvious mistakes are avoided, the tendency to think of form as shape appears in more subtle ways. Galileo's arbitrary preference for "primary qualities," Descartes's for res extensa, and Hume's criteria for impressions are all mistakes of this kind. (Fs) (notabene)

12a Even though Aristotle did occasionally use morphe interchangeably with eidos, he explicitly defined both as "what is known through the formula of a definition," and this is not known through sense perception-as shape is-but through acts of nous, intelligence. The circle as defined literally has no shape, because it cannot be pictured. Only the combination of matter and form-say a phonograph record-has a shape. (Fs) (notabene)

12b Moreover, the absurdity of thinking of form as shape becomes particularly striking in the context of Aristotle's science of nature, because there form was supposed to be a principle of motion. In what sense is the visual shape of a purple finch explanatory of its movements? In the first place, detailed knowledge of those movements (its embryological development, physiological maturation, patterns of flight and migration, breeding behaviors, territorial habits, feeding habits, muscular and skeletal coordination, digestive, respiratory, and circulatory motions) must be assembled. Only after this type of detailed description has been obtained can one meaningfully raise the question seeking "natural" scientific knowledge, namely, "Why does it move in these ways?" The formula or definition of a purple finch consists in the formulation of the integrated understanding which grasps the interrelationships of all these motions.1 Only then does the relevance of "shape" enter in: the shapes of its body, wings and tail relate its protein-synthesizing pathways to the patterns of its flight behaviors; the shape of its beak to its feeding behaviors, and so on. Finally, it may be noted that, roughly speaking, the animal's shape (of the whole body and its parts) stands as matter to its form. They are among the "x's" employed and organized by the characteristic forms of behavior (for example, the form of a purple finch's feeding behavior is primarily that of a "seed eater," and the shape of its beak is determined by, adapted to, that form). (Fs)

13a To employ another illustration, what does knowledge of the definition of a circle contribute to the science of the motion of a wheel? Nothing, it might seem, since the circle as defined is ever unchanging. However, if one meticulously describes the motions of wheels-their smoothness on flat surfaces, their paths over various bumps-it can be seen that the parts of those motions are made intelligible by one and the same definition: the center is always the same distance from whichever extremity is in contact with the surface. (Fs)

Grafik ...

13b And if one objects that there is more to a radial tire than the definition of "circle" because one needs a great deal of engineering education in order to be able to design one, the point can be readily admitted because a radial tire's form, its definition, includes, but is more complex than, that of a circle; not because the something more is "stuff," "matter" in the modern sense. (Fs)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Byrne, Patrick H., Insight and the Retrieval of Nature

Stichwort: Aristoteles: Natur; 4 Ursachen; Definition: Bewegung

Kurzinhalt: Thus Aristotle's four causes turn out to be distinct yet legitimate ways of answering the question, "Why is it changing the way it is?"

Textausschnitt: 1.3 Immanent Nature and the Four Causes

13c After this preliminary specification of form and matter as his principles of Nature, Aristotle turned to develop his account of those principles further. He observed that natural change is overwhelmingly regular, recurrent, harmonious, and no attentive person can fail to notice this fact. And yet, the regularity of Nature's recurrences does not completely exclude the reality of chance as a feature of Nature. These facts of regularity and of chance in combination led to his assertion that "all things existing by nature appear to have in themselves a principle of motion and of rest" (192bl4-15) and "no thing by nature acts on, or is acted on by, any other chance thing" (188a32-34). In other words, the regularities in Nature could not be wholly accounted for by the chance sequences of external influences. There is simply too much regularity in "all that changes," Nature, to be accounted for by external influences alone. Plants of a given species are never exposed to exactly the same sequence of moisture, light, heat, and nutrients. None the less, they exhibit remarkably identical growth patterns. Hence, there emerges a second meaning of the term "nature"-the "nature" not of the whole but of some thing. "Nature is a principle and a cause of motion or rest in that to which it belongs primarily" (192b21-22).1 The "natures" of things are what are known in grasping the fuller reasons for the regularities in Nature. These "natures" are primarily the forms. They determine to a large extent what sorts of changes a thing will characteristically undergo; and along with the matters, they determine what sorts of movers can move the thing to such changes. (Fs)

14a But because the matter of a given form can also be the matter of other forms as well, movers can "violently" move the matters to new forms which disrupt the natural form's organization. The potted plants, sleeping cats, and pieces of furniture alike are moved across the room, not in virtue of their forms, but because their matters happen to also have the potential for that motion; a bird's wing is severed in a way not explained by the bird's form, but in virtue of properties relating the flesh and bones to the severing instrument. Thus the changes which actually occur are determined by the particular sequences and constellations of the matters and forms which constitute both the movers and the moveds. (Fs)

15a These observations clarify something about the composition of the Physics which can lead to confusion. In Book A Aristotle developed two principles of nature: matter and form; but in Book B he developed the four causes. It would seem, therefore, that there are two parallel and distinct explanatory schemata relevant to the science of nature. However, the famous four causes are in fact the same two principles taken from various viewpoints. The "that from which as a constituent" (or material cause) is matter in the sense discussed above. The formal cause is form as discussed above, from the viewpoint of integral explanation of the thing's characteristic recurrent motions. The "that from which change or rest first begins" or efficient cause is a substance (ousia) but primarily with respect to its form. In other words, whatever is changed receives its form from the ousia which already "has" that form. Aristotle's example is of the parent as cause of the child. The form of humanity of the parent is indispensable for the transformation of matter not yet human into the form of a human being. And finally, the "that for the sake of which," telos or final cause, is not some inner impulse directing growth. It is the form which finally results when the motion continues on to completion (194bl5-26). (Fs)

15b Thus Aristotle's four causes turn out to be distinct yet legitimate ways of answering the question, "Why is it changing the way it is?" Biological examples are particularly illuminating. To "why is it sprouting leaves along its branches rather than only at their tips?" one could legitimately answer in four different ways. First, "The growth pattern characteristic of this species is thus and so," is an answer via the form (formal cause) of the moved thing. Again one could answer, "Because it has absorbed sufficient and appropriate nutrients with which to do so," and the answer would be in terms of matter (material cause). Or one could answer, "Because it has developed from a seed produced by the plant of such and such a species," which designates the form, definition, of the principal mover of the moved plant (efficient cause). Finally one could answer, "It is part of the sequence of developments which lead to the mature adult plant" (final cause). In the latter three cases, form as the answer to the question is construed in three different ways: the form as overall integral organization of characteristic behavior; the form of that which first has form and thereby stimulates a reorganization of the moved, either in whole or in part; and finally as the developmental sequence specified by means of its ideally completed form. (Fs)

16a From these observations, Aristotle's definition of motion follows fairly straightforwardly: "Motion is the actuality of the potential qua potential" (201all-12). The motion of growing is occurring just as long as what can be transformed into the form of a mature plant continues to be, but has not yet been, so transformed. Nor does the mature plant stop moving (living) once it has become mature; it is no longer doing the moving called "growing," but it does exhibit motions of replenishing, reproducing, and so on, which are all moving just as long as relevant matters are in the process of being, but have not yet been, given the relevant form. Form, then, is the fundamental determinant of change for Aristotle. (Fs)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Byrne, Patrick H., Insight and the Retrieval of Nature

Stichwort: Aristoteles: Natur als Ganzes; Sphären des Himmels; Nous

Kurzinhalt: Insofar as one is seeking the ultimate natural principle of Nature, this is the outermost sphere; but insofar as one is seeking the ultimate principle of Nature without qualification, it is Nous itself, the Unmoved Mover.

Textausschnitt: 1.4 Nature as a Whole

16b The theory of the causes supplies one part of the account of the regularity of natural motions: because things have natures (forms and matters), no natural thing "acts on, or is acted on by any other chance thing" (188a32-341). But even this neither suffices to explain the degree of regularity found in the whole of Nature, nor accounts in any way for the phenomena of chance. Because efficient causes form series, the issue becomes more complicated. In the biological examples, parents are principal efficient movers of the whole sequence of movements; but prey "set off" predatory behaviors, and mature members of the opposite sex "set off mating behaviors. Hence, prey and mates stand as the proximate efficient movers of their corresponding sets of motions. Similarly, climatic changes are among the proximate efficient causes of changes in plant growth cycles. Thus to the theory of causes, Aristotle added a scheme of the sequences and constellations of movers and moveds. Very briefly, the scheme looks like this:

16c The outermost sphere of the cosmos moves in a perfectly circular fashion, according to that sphere's potency to receive motion. It is not moved by being "pushed," but rather by its "aspiration" for the perfection of the form of Nous itself, the Unmoved Mover. The outermost sphere, in turn, moves the next inward sphere, according to its natural potency, and so on inward. If all the potencies were of exactly the same nature, they would all turn in exactly the same, synchronous fashion. However, because the arrangements and types of potencies admit of irregularity, the movements of the spheres become more and more complex as one moves inward toward the earth. The movements of the planets admit of a regularity, but one far more complex (i.e., including retrograde motions) than that of the stars. The movements of the innermost sphere, the "atmo-sphere"-namely, the seasons and weather patterns in general-have a certain regularity, but also a great deal of irregularity as well: it isn't always wintery on December 22, nor does it rain exactly 20 inches every year, but only "for the most part." (Fs)

17a Finally, terrestrial motions of animate and inanimate things have regularities, but these are radically contingent upon where and when their movers act upon them. Changes in the atmosphere (climate) move, but do not completely govern, cycles of plant growth. Plants move the sensations and desires of herbivores in complex ways; herbivores similarly move carnivores; and the whole of the sensible world moves the senses, thoughts, and practical actions of humans. Because of the multi-potentialities of their natures, each can be naturally changed in a variety of different fashions, depending upon which mover happens to be in a position to move one or another at a given time. In turn, once changed, the moved's capacity to effect a change in yet another is altered in a complex fashion, and so on. (Fs)

17b Although this schema may evoke in the modern reader images of sequences of "efficient" causes, it must be borne in mind that Aristotle thought of it in the complete generality of sequences and combinations of all four causes, especially the "final" cause. (Fs)

17c The repetitions built into this scheme, Aristotle thought, would provide adequate room for account of the regularities of Nature apparent to epagoge. On the other hand, this scheme also provides an account of the objective reality of chance, without turning chance into a "cause." Chance turns out to be the intervention of a second mover in the midst of a pattern of change initiated by an earlier mover.2 The intervention, and the consequent changes ensuing from it are perfectly "natural" and causal; but there is no causal relationship between the movement initiated by the earlier mover and the place and time at which the second mover intervenes. From the view point of the earlier natural causal sequence, the second movement is merely "chance." (Fs)

18a This scheme also makes clear the ambiguity of the question of the principle of any natural change: from one point of view it is the matter and form of the moved; from another, it is the form of the mover; from yet another, it is the matter and final form which a whole pattern of change produces. Again, the scientific search for first principles of Nature must lead from what is most evident (first) to our senses (the changes as described) to what is relatively prior (the "nature" of the changed), then beyond to what is still more prior (the hierarchy of spheres) and finally to what is ultimately prior. "Ultimate priority" itself admits of a distinction. Insofar as one is seeking the ultimate natural principle of Nature, this is the outermost sphere; but insofar as one is seeking the ultimate principle of Nature without qualification, it is Nous itself, the Unmoved Mover. This accounts for the fact that the later books of the Physics (Books N and Q) relate the First Mover to the earlier discussion. But the "chain" of causes tracing back to the first mover is not a simple one, for Aristotle (like scientists of the late 19th and 20th centuries, but unlike those of the 17th and 18th centuries) acknowledged the objective reality of chance in the cosmos (B. 4-6). For Aristotle, then, real scientific investigation brings one to a profound recognition of the intricacy of natural interconnections, and especially the connection of Nature with its ultimate non-natural principle, namely the form of Nous in its highest actuality, the Unmoved Mover. (Fs)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Byrne, Patrick H., Insight and the Retrieval of Nature

Stichwort: Aristoteles: Natur; Das Natürliche - Unnatürliche

Kurzinhalt: He distinguished what "always comes to be in the same way" from what comes to be "for the most part," and both of these from "chance" (196b9-16).

Textausschnitt: 1.5 The Natural and the Unnatural

18b Let us now apply this lengthy interpretation of Aristotle's positions regarding nature by asking just what would be meant in saying that an occurrence is "natural" or "unnatural"? Since the principles of nature are several, the answer to this question must be multiple. From one point of view, the "nature" of anything is the form as specified by the formula or definition, and whatever occurs in accord with that definition is natural. For example, the time series of positions of a planet is natural insofar as they describe a path about the sun which conforms to the definition of an ellipse (at least to a first approximation). Likewise, the annual cycles of foliation and defoliation of maple trees. And the annual migratory patterns of Canadian Geese likewise are "natural" because they accord with the nature, the form-as-defined, of those species. (Fs)

19a Again, whatever occurs as a means to the realization of the form-as-defined is also natural. In such cases the form does not stand as the immanently intelligible integration of a thing's materials, but as final cause of the occurrences. For example, the swimming and feeding patterns of a mosquito larva can be said to have a "form" of their own; but it is a form on the move, an "imperfect," relatively unstable form of organizing the materials, which will yield to the "final form" integrating the flying and feeding behaviors of an adult mosquito. These occurrences are not made intelligible by the final form directly; rather the form-as-final-cause makes them indirectly intelligible as the form to be realized through their unimpeded occurring. (Fs)

19b Relative to the naturalness of occurrences in accord either with the formal cause as immanent nature, or with the formal cause as final cause, the naturalness of occurrences conditioned by the matter is an ambiguous issue. Insofar as the materials are either organized integrally by the form, or are being operated upon so as to bring about the integral functioning of the final form, both kinds of operations upon the matter are clearly "natural." But insofar as a second mover acts upon the matter-say, a rock falls into an eagle's nest and shatters a ten-day egg-the "naturalness" is ambiguous. Relative to the "natural" physiological functioning of the embryonic organism, the changes wrought are disastrously disruptive and violent, "unnatural." Again, relative to the final form which would have resulted from the continued embryological and maturational development, the rock's effects are also violent and unnatural. However, either the viewpoint of the embryo's functioning or that of the eagle's final form are not the only natural viewpoints. Relative to the rock's natural downward fall and its naturally accumulated "impetus" (to use a pre-modern term), the shattering is also perfectly causal and natural. From its standpoint, the only thing which might be called "violent" is the fact that the rock was impeded from reaching its "natural" place, the center of the earth. Finally, from the viewpoint of Nature as the totality of the changing, one could say that nothing is unnatural (in the sub-human realm, at least). (Fs)

20a Why, then, do we tend to speak of the eagle's hatching and maturation as natural, but the rock's smashing, or the birth of a mutant, as unnatural? Clearly there is a notion that these two sorts of events are not on the same footing with regard to nature. Since the prevailing feature of Nature is its regularity, Aristotle drew upon this feature to distinguish these different types of events from one another. He distinguished what "always comes to be in the same way" from what comes to be "for the most part," and both of these from "chance" (196b9-16).1 Celestial phenomena-movements, positions, and phases of the sun, moon, planets, and stars-"always come to be in the same way," and that way is known scientifically when one knows their forms. Meteorological phenomena and the vegetative and animal cycles which depend upon them happen regularly "for the most part." Chance phenomena exhibit virtually no regularity at all. Hence, the classicist tradition has fostered a tendency to regard what "always" happens as most natural, what happens "for the most part" as more or less so, and what happens "rarely," or by chance, as virtually unnatural. (Fs)

20b It should be noted that in the foregoing examples there is an incompletely acknowledged combination of form, matter, and something else. Aristotle does not seem to have had under complete systematic control the indeterminacy inherent in any proper definition.2 That is to say, one may indeed have the matters integrated and organized in accord with the definition, but unless a whole host of "other things remain equal," the regularity of occurrences will neither occur nor recur. Hence for Aristotle and the classicist tradition, the "natural" all too frequently amounts to the undifferentiated combination of form and "other things being equal." It is precisely the "other things" which the notions of "what always comes to be in the same way" and "what comes to be for the most part" imply as being the case. Clearly, "what always comes to be in the same way" and "what comes to be for the most part" for Aristotle were more natural than chance, so that occurrences which have high probabilities were taken to be more natural than those which have lesser probabilities. This lack of differentiation is the source of virtually all future distortions of the meaning of "nature." (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Byrne, Patrick H., Insight and the Retrieval of Nature

Stichwort: Aristoteles: die menschliche Natur; Seele: dynamis, hexis, pathe; Habitus: intellektuell - moralisch; phronesis

Kurzinhalt: His [Aristotle] new beginning consisted in raising the question of the "proper function of a human" (1097b22-23). In doing so, Aristotle was seeking to determine just what sort of powers or potencies characterize a human soul.1 He noted that ... reason

Textausschnitt: 1.6 Human Nature

21a Thus far we have described the general context of Aristotle's thought on nature. We now turn to the particular issue of how Aristotle conceived nature as a standard for evaluating human living. That Aristotle and the classicist tradition considered human nature to provide such a standard is undisputed. What is disputed is precisely what he, if not his followers, took this standard to be. (Fs)

21b Aristotle worked out the foundations of human nature as a norm for human conduct in the Nicomachean Ethics. After a dialectical critique of earlier opinions (including Plato's) regarding the "good life," Aristotle noted that a new beginning was needed. His new beginning consisted in raising the question of the "proper function of a human" (1097b22-23). In doing so, Aristotle was seeking to determine just what sort of powers or potencies characterize a human soul.1 He noted that whatever is in the soul is either a potency (dunamis), a habit (hexis), or an act (pathe).2 Aristotle went on to observe that the activities which are distinctively human always involve reason/thought (logos), so that the sought-for proper functionings of human beings are those which involve reason. Of these, there are two sorts of functionings: those which originate reasons, and those which collaborate with the reasonings (1098a2-8). Corresponding to these two types of acts, there are, respectively, the intellectual and the moral habits-the aretai, excellences or virtues. In particular, the intellectual habit of phronesis or sound judgment orients the emotional life of the soul by determining what is the proper proportion, the mean, of "fear, confidence, desire, anger, pity" and anything of the sort (1106bl8-19). (Fs)

22a By itself, however, phronesis cannot cause moral excellence in behavior; for that, practice in the refinement of the feelings is also required. Thus human nature is to a large extent defined in terms of the excellences or habits of which it is capable. But as Aristotle noted, these habits are not "implanted in us by nature." Rather, "we are by nature equipped with the potency to receive them, and habit brings this potency to completion and fulfillment" (1103al4-25).3 (Fs)

22b Hence, human nature is largely potency, and the finality of that potency is defined in terms of the excellences or virtues.4 As habitual and recurrent characteristics of a person, the excellences (such as courage, generosity, wisdom, and so on) are "forms" in the sense specified above. To put it another way, the form of planetary motion may be thought of as a habit which is given, not developed. Precisely because human forms must be developed-and are therefore properly called "habits"-a human being can either fulfill or violate his or her nature. Hence, the natural and the unnatural become, in human affairs, either right by nature (phusei dikaion) or unnatural and so wrong. The difference regards whether or not the habits are informed by the guiding power of intelligence (virtues) or not (vices). Nor is it surprising that Aristotle would take the "mean of a proportion" as the paradigm of the intellect giving definition to the soul in the moral aretai, since in the history of Greek mathematics, the gradual working out of the definition of proportion stands as the ultimate achievement of thought. (Fs)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Byrne, Patrick H., Insight and the Retrieval of Nature

Stichwort: Aristoteles: die menschliche Natur in der Natur; Bindeglied: Vernunft, Intelligibilität;

Kurzinhalt: The foregoing sub-sections show that "form" provides the key to Aristotle's notion of "nature." ... In other words, what makes anything natural for Aristotle is its intelligibility, its luminosity to intelligence. Exactly ...

Textausschnitt: 1.7 Human Nature in Nature

23a How is this sketch of Aristotle's standard of human nature connected with the general context of his teachings on nature? The foregoing sub-sections show that "form" provides the key to Aristotle's notion of "nature." The form is the immanent nature of something; a thing's operations are natural insofar as they accord with that form or are realizing the final form. But form is known through the formula or definition as grasped by acts of nous, intelligence, not through sensation or anything else. In other words, what makes anything natural for Aristotle is its intelligibility, its luminosity to intelligence. Exactly the same holds true for human affairs. Human characters, deeds, and institutions are "natural" precisely insofar as they share in the intelligibility which is grasped by nous and expressed in definition. In brief, they are natural just insofar as they are intelligent and reasonable. Hence, Aquinas goes on to teach that the "natural law" is participation in reason (Summa Theologiae IIa-Iae: Q90a1; 91a2). (Fs) (notabene)

23b This interpretation of Aristotle reveals a striving for definiteness about what is humanly "natural" and "unnatural." There is no nonsense in Aristotle that there are deeds and ways of living which are either naturally right or unnaturally evil and so evil. Nevertheless, Aristotle himself noted there is also a real indeterminacy (1094b12-26). Because of so much diversity in human affairs, there is an ongoing need to define exactly what is "the right time, toward the right objects, toward the right people, for the right reason and in the right manner" (1106b20-22). And knowledge of this flows from highly developed habits of reasoning, particularly phronesis. (Fs) (notabene)

23c Finally, Aristotle was far more aware of the indeterminacy in human forms of behavior than rationalistic moralists of the modern period. Nevertheless, a failure to differentiate adequately form as such from the circumstances having higher probabilities was still operative as for instance in remarks regarding the "natural superiority" of certain kinds of people, or, again, in his inability to discern a "natural" function in the interest paid upon borrowed money.1 This failure was open eventually to deep distortions in the notion of nature, especially so when Aristotle's nuanced context was not adequately understood. To this we now turn. (Fs)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Byrne, Patrick H., Insight and the Retrieval of Nature

Stichwort: Dialektik: Verlust der Natur; Rationalisierungen einer Nicht-Natur (Wille zur Macht, etc.)

Kurzinhalt: The "loss of nature" is not a past event, but rather an ongoing historical process with a clear dialectical structure. That structure can be summarized as follows:

Textausschnitt: 24a The "loss of nature" is not a past event, but rather an ongoing historical process with a clear dialectical structure. That structure can be summarized as follows:

(a) there arises a misunderstanding of nature;
(b) the misunderstanding becomes incorporated and passed on as part of the tradition's meaning of 'nature';
(c) the inherited meaning of 'nature' comes to be ill-received, partly because of the originally distorted understanding, partly because of the biases and resentments of its heirs;
(d) the unfavorable reception becomes the basis of a counter-movement against some of the older misunderstandings as well as some of the older normative understandings. Thereby a new and more complexly distorted meaning of 'nature' is introduced;
(e) the cycle repeats itself. (Fs) (notabene)

24b Eventually there arises a stage in the series of cycles when the distortion gets so severe that the very idea of there being anything 'natural' is explicitly rejected. This does not mean, however, that there is no longer any operative meaning of 'nature.' Rather, ever more distorted meanings of what is natural are generated, but hidden under the guises of a variety of terms (for example, "history," "the will to power," and so on). At this point detection and reversal of the misunderstandings becomes an exceptionally difficult task. (Fs) (notabene)

25a The foregoing outlines the dialectical structure of the loss of the notion of nature. As an ongoing historical process, the loss of the normative notion of nature displays all the complexities of concrete human living. As ongoing, the process is currently operating in our culture, and yet it is not new. Plato and Aristotle both noted that the variety of opinions about what is natural had led many of their contemporaries to express the opinion that nothing was right by nature. Thomas Aquinas's Contra Gentiles was structured to counter a series of misunderstandings regarding the compatibility of Christian faith with a science of nature. Modernity employed different ideas of modern science against traditional natural standards. The details of this ongoing historical process are too intricate for treatment within the confines of the present paper. (Fs)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Byrne, Patrick H., Insight and the Retrieval of Nature

Stichwort: Lonergan: Natur; Schlüsselwort: "explanatory" Natur als klassische heuristische Struktur; Beispiele: Galileo, Robert Boyle

Kurzinhalt: Still, the basic meaning of "explanatory" is the fundamental key to our understanding how Lonergan retrieves the normative core of Aristotle's philosophy of nature while escaping its limitations which motivated the dialectical loss ...

Textausschnitt: 2.2 Immanent Nature and Explanation

26b In Section 1.3 of Part 1, I introduced the phrase, "immanent nature," to denote Aristotle's "nature as a principle of motion and rest in that to which it belongs primarily." I used "immanent" both in order to distinguish it from "Nature as a whole," and to avoid the counterposition suggested by the preposition, "in." How is that account of nature connected with Insight? How does much of what was covered correspond to what Lonergan himself called "nature"? In fact, his own use of the term is restricted to one small portion of the book devoted to one of the "heuristic notions" of modern science. Is it an extravagant claim to say that Insight can be understood as a retrieval of Aristotle's notion of nature? (Fs) (notabene)

27a I would like to suggest that the underlying puzzlement here has to do with the extraordinary cultural transformation condensed by Lonergan into the term, "explanatory." It is impossible to overestimate the range of cultural challenges which have flowed from the emergence of modern explanatory practices when, first, the question of explanation began to be put with a new urgency; second, there arose over the relatively short span of about one hundred years whole ranges of mathematical and scientific innovations which vastly clarified just what sort of answers the explanatory questions were seeking; and third, the modern "natural" sciences discovered tremendously flexible and incisive analytic aids to finding answers to certain of these questions for explanation. (Fs)

27b However brief, Lonergan's discussion of the heuristic notion of "nature" did clarify in the most fundamental fashion just what explanation really is. Moreover, whereas Aristotle and his successors simply used "nature" in an undifferentiated sense, Lonergan also introduced other terms such as "state," "emergent probability," "genetic operator and integrator," "immanent intelligibility," and "invariant structure of consciousness." These differentiated terms avoid the misunderstandings associated with the compact use of "nature" in the classicist tradition. Still, the basic meaning of "explanatory" is the fundamental key to our understanding how Lonergan retrieves the normative core of Aristotle's philosophy of nature while escaping its limitations which motivated the dialectical loss of any notion of nature. Strictly speaking, not Lonergan's use of the term, "nature," but his "explanatory genera and species" corresponds most closely to Aristotle's term, "immanent nature." Yet, in what follows I hope to show there is a connection of explanatory genera and species with Lonergan's usage of the term, "nature." (Fs) (notabene)

27c To begin with, Lonergan's term, "nature," denotes a kind of question, not a principle or cause in the more traditional sense. (Fs)

For what is to be known by understanding these data is called their nature ... What is to be known insofar as data are understood is some correlation or function that states universally the relations of things not to our senses but to one another (1958: 36; 44). (Fs)

28a Hence, Lonergan first links the meaning of "nature" with a certain kind of question about specific sense data. It is a to-be-understood, but not yet understood. The heuristic notion of "nature" guides and orients what Lonergan calls the "classical heuristic structure." The "notion" of nature interrogatively intends what is to be understood by an explanatory classical correlation, an explanatory functional relation. This will sound strange indeed to an Aristotelian, a Lockean, or a romantic. But this strangeness is simply an index of the profound cultural change grounded by the shift into explanatory and heuristic thinking. (Fs)
28b What does it mean to speak of "nature" in this sense of a "notion," when one does not yet understand what the notion intends? How can one discourse about what one does not yet understand? The answer has to do with the fact that a term can be specified in two ways: either directly, or via its relation to something else. In the case of a heuristic notion such as "nature," the term is specified in the second way. The "nature" to be understood has a relation to the data; the data are known through sensation and description; the relation is known through the intention, the anticipation, of explanatory inquiry. So one may meaningfully speak of the "nature" of fire, light, reproduction, humanity, or whatever via this indirect route (1958: 37). (Fs)

28c The indirect way of discoursing about natures has a severe limitation, however, for the data are only described in relation to our senses. But our sense experiencings are selected and patterned in accord with our orientation, our de facto self-constitutions. We can speak of the nature of fire as "to go up," "to be hot, bright, destructive," and so on. Yet all these terms are descriptive; they have their meanings in relationship to our sense experiencings as they function in our ordinary routines of living. Furthermore, for Lonergan we would only be able to speak of anything's nature in the full sense if the orientation of our self-constitution were as unrestricted as the whole universe (Lonergan, 1959: 76-79). So in restricting ourselves to thinking about natures only descriptively or even heuristically, there is real danger that without realizing it, our idea of what is and is not natural is incorporated within the restricted horizon of our own practical interests. (Fs)

29a Furthermore, amidst the pull of already constituted concerns it is quite easy to neglect the second component of the meaning of nature, namely the relation to the explanatory question. If one neglects the fact that "nature" is only what will be attained in a fully explanatory account, the data as described by themselves can seem to give answers. "What is the nature of fire?" then becomes not what one will understand when one understands in an explanatory fashion why it goes up (and under what circumstances it will not); rather the nature of fire is to go up, period. Thus, Lonergan's meaning of "nature" runs counter to the classicist or modern or romantic focus upon things as related to one's senses and one's unexamined and unchallenged practical orientation. (Fs)

29b Lonergan's meaning of "nature," then, is what is to be understood about data in an explanatory fashion. This means that the data are to be understood as related according to specific functional correlations. For example, Galileo held that "natural free-fall" was uniform acceleration and, furthermore, that uniform acceleration consisted in a very definite relation of proportionality between some of its "material" parts: the distances traversed and the squares of the times of transit. Symbolically, that relationship is:

[...] (Formeln können im Textmodus leider nicht dargestellt werde)

34a Even so, Newton himself did not altogether escape the realm of the descriptive. His second law of motion and gravitation presupposed the existence of absolute space.1 To speak of "absolute space" is just a descriptive way to speak of "Euclidean geometry." Absolute space has its meaning in the descriptive relationship to a de facto limited patterning of someone's imagination (and Newton has had plenty of company in this limitation). But to speak instead of "Euclidean geometry" is to grasp the relationship of this particular patterning to other equally intelligible "non-Euclidean" patternings. Riemann and others built upon Gauss's work to develop a "tensor (or 'absolute') calculus" as the basis for the explanatory seriation of geometries to one another. (Fs)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Byrne, Patrick H., Insight and the Retrieval of Nature

Stichwort: Lonergan: Natur; "erklärendes" (explanatory notion) Verständnis der Natur; schemes of recurrance; primäre Relativität - sekundäre Bestimmungen; Beispiel: Relation -> nicht-systematische Elemente

Kurzinhalt: Explanatory nature is neither a thing nor the "immanent nature" of a thing ... It lacks a precise name in classicist terms, so Lonergan called it "primary relativity" and contrasted it with "secondary determinations":

Textausschnitt: 2.3 Primary Relativity and Secondary Determinations

34b The foregoing are meant to provide some illustrations and insights into just what is meant by Lonergan's explanatory notion of "nature." Explanatory nature is neither a thing nor the "immanent nature" of a thing. It is also not Nature as a whole. It entails a wholly new differentiation of thinking, and this new differentiation is at the heart of the normative achievement in modern science. It lacks a precise name in classicist terms, so Lonergan called it "primary relativity" and contrasted it with "secondary determinations":

It is necessary to distinguish in concrete relations between two components, namely, a primary relativity and other secondary determinations. Thus, »if it is true that the size of A is just twice the size of B, then the primary relativity is a proportion and the secondary determinations are the numerical ratio, twice, and the two observable sizes. Now 'size' is a descriptive notion that may be defined as an aspect of things standing in certain relations to our senses, and so it vanishes from the explanatory account of reality. Again, the numerical ratio, twice, specifies the proportion between A and B, but it does so only at a given time and under given conditions; moreover, this ratio may change, and the change will occur in accord with probabilities ... so the numerical ratio, twice, is a non-systematic element in the relation. However, if we ask what a proportion is, we necessarily introduce the abstract notion of quantity and we make the discovery that quantities and proportions are terms and relations such that the terms fix the relations and the relations fix the terms. For the notion of quantity is not to be confused with a sensitive or imaginative apprehension of size (1958:491. Emphasis added).1

35a This distinction between primary relativity and secondary determinations is due to the kind of intelligibility characteristic of any explanatory functional correlation. Such correlations possess an inherent indeterminacy. So far from determining distances and times, Galileo's law presupposes them; likewise, Boyle's law presupposes variations in volumes and pressures in order to understand their intelligible relationship; and likewise, both Galileo and Boyle presupposed entities whose explanatory conjugate, mass, happened to have certain definite values. They likewise presupposed temperatures; and they presupposed patterns of energies which would have given the universe a Euclidean character. The classical correlations always carry the implicit proviso, "other things being equal," but do not themselves determine when, where, how, and so on, this proviso is realized. So far from implying the kind of determinism in which Descartes, Newton, Laplace and Einstein believed, by itself the explanatory notion of nature determines nothing in the concrete. (Fs)

36a Hence, there is a proper and indispensable field of statistical study. The statistical is concerned with the question, "What is the state of this population?" A population can be a population of heavenly bodies, an enclosure of gas molecules, a distribution of dandelions in a field, or a congregation of macaques in a forest. Moreover, statistical studies can also be explanatory for two reasons. (Fs)

36b First, contemporary statistical studies (especially those employing the methods of quantum mechanics) have improved upon Laplace's original definition of probability: "the ratio of the number of favorable cases to that of all the cases possible" (Laplace, 1952: 11). Laplace's definition singled out the "favorable"; but favorable to whom? Behind the definition there stands, implicitly, a subject with a concrete constitution and orientation. To that subject, certain events are more favorable than others.2 Fully scientific statistical studies, on the other hand, seek to determine with as great an accuracy as possible the ideal frequencies of all classes of events, even those with exceptionally remote probabilities. Hence, statistical studies require determination of the complete set of ratios, p, q, r, ..., such that, p + q + r + ... = 1. These two requirements serve to constitute a statistical study as explanatory, for they relate the occurrences, Pi, Qi, Ri, both to the total population, N, (since Pi/N = p) and, through the sum, to one another. (Fs)

36c Second, the classifications of the occurrences themselves come from the terms of explanatory correlations: what are the frequencies of various values of M? How frequently is d small relative to the radius of the earth? How often is T constant? Where and when is the distribution of energy in the universe such that g?? has Euclidean values? (Fs)

36d Aristotle clearly did not think a science of this sort was possible. Rather, he distinguished what comes to be by "chance" both from what "always comes to be in the same way" and what comes to be "for the most part." The latter, he thought, could be traced in some fundamental fashion to the regularities of the celestial movements, but the former was utterly devoid of intelligibility. Hence, despite the enormous differences between Aristotle and Laplace on almost every other issue, on this one point there is a great similarity: with respect to the field of the statistical, they both operated in a fundamentally descriptive rather than an explanatory context. Developments subsequent to Laplace have effected a massive methodological turn away from descriptive statistical thought toward explanatory statistical thought.3 (Fs)

37a Now probabilities have an odd kind of regularity about them. While statistical events do not have the kind of regularity associated with classical schemes, nevertheless events "conform to probable expectations" (Lonergan, 1958: 59) to "an ideal frequency from which actual frequencies may diverge, but only non-systematically" (110). This regularity bears a partial relationship to the regularity Aristotle observed to be a fundamental feature of Nature. By determining these probabilities, statistical studies provide a first approximate explanatory transposition of Aristotle's "Nature as a whole."

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Byrne, Patrick H., Insight and the Retrieval of Nature

Stichwort: Lonergan: Natur; Schemes of Recurrence; Beispiel: Schwungrad - Carnot Kreislauf

Kurzinhalt: The notion of the scheme of recurrence arose when it was noted that the diverging series of positive conditions for an event might coil around in a circle. In that case, the series of events, A, B, C, ... would be so related that the fulfillment of ...

Textausschnitt: 2.4 Schemes of Recurrence

37b Now the statistical science of secondary determinations goes a long way towards answering the questions, "What are the other things, and how often are they equal?" But secondary determinations can also be supplied in ways which are not merely non-systematic. The first of these is the "scheme of recurrence." (Fs)

The notion of the scheme of recurrence arose when it was noted that the diverging series of positive conditions for an event might coil around in a circle. In that case, the series of events, A, B, C, ... would be so related that the fulfillment of the conditions for each would be the occurrence of the others (1958: 118). (Fs)

38a A couple of illustrations of schemes of recurrences-one an idealization of human artifact, the other recurring in nature-will connect with the previous discussion of explanatory correlations and primary relativity. (Fs)

38b The first illustration is a flywheel driven by a steam engine operating in what is known as a "Carnot cycle." The Carnot cycle has four recurrent stages, which involve changes in quantity of heat, volume, pressure, and temperature of the gas in a piston/cylinder arrangement. Schematically:

(1) The gas is compressed from its original volume (V1) to a smaller volume (V2) without loss of heat. This results in a corresponding lowering of the temperature (from T1 to T2). This is in accord with the correlation, pV = nRT. (Fs)
(2) Some heat of the piston is released, but the temperature is maintained at the constant level (T2) by allowing the volume to further contract to (V3). This is in accord both with pV = nRT, with the law of energy conservation and with the law of specific heats of gases. (Fs)
(3) The volume is now forced to expand (to V4), causing a rise in temperature (again in accord with pV = nRT). When the temperature reaches (T1), the forced expansion is stopped. (Fs)
(4) The cylinder is now heated; the temperature is maintained constant at (T1) by allowing the cylinder to further expand until it reaches the original volume, (V1); again in accord with pV = nRT, energy conservation and with the laws of specific heats. (Fs)
The cylinder and gas are now in the same state as at the beginning of stage 1, and the cycle can recur. (Fs)

38c Two distinguishable sets of determinants are required for an explanation of the sequence of events in this cycle. The first set is the classical correlations-the gas law and the laws of specific heats. The second is the propinquitous delivery of just the right values of T and V to one stage by its predecessor. This is really quite a marvelous thing, when one stops and thinks about it! If stage 1 delivered values different from T2 or V2 to stage 2, the cycle simply would follow a different, non-recurrent set of stages thereafter. (Fs)
38d The reader will also notice that this cycle is not exactly self-sufficient. It requires some "external" source to do the compressing and the forced-expanding. This is supplied by the fly-wheel connected to the piston by a drive shaft. Here yet another set of correlations is introduced, concerning the laws of torque and conservation of angular momentum. In effect, the heating and cooling of the gas drive the flywheel in stages 2 and 4, and the angular momentum of the flywheel drives the piston in stages 1 and 3. (Fs)

39a Yet this illustration does not completely eliminate the statistical. It, too, will operate only "other things being equal." The most obvious "other things" concern the delicate timing of heating and cooling. If too much heat enters or leaves in stage 2 or 4, or if any heat enters or leaves in stages 1 and 3, the cycle will fail to recur. In the world of concrete universe, these indeterminacies of the heating are responsible for the fact that this particular scheme of recurrence is so improbable that it has never been actually realized. (Fs)

39nb A second illustration is drawn from molecular biology, namely, the cycle of "oxidative phosphorylation."1 The greatest biological significance of oxidative phosphorylation consists in the fact that it results in the net production of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) molecules, which are the energy sources cells use for movement (for example, oscillation of flagella and contraction of muscle fibres), synthesis of molecules, active transport of molecules across cell membranes, nerve-impulse communication, and so on. (Fs)

One part of oxidative phosphorylation is a sequence of five chemical reactions, in which the last reaction produces one of the substrates required by the first reaction (see Figure 1). (Fs)

[...]

43a Lonergan of course provided his own series of illustrations of schemes of recurrence, beginning with the example of the "planetary system" (1958: 118). As a result, I think, the planetary system has taken on the status of a paradigmatic "scheme of recurrence," and I think this is unfortunate. The planetary system is more suggestive of a series of events which "coil around in a circle," than of a systematizing of events "related so that the fulfillment of the conditions for each would be the occurrence of the others." The circle image, together with the counterpositional pull to think primarily in terms of an imaginable "object," can make it seem that an oxidative phos-phorylation cycle does not really fulfill the definition of a scheme of recurrence, when in fact it is one of the most fruitful illustrations.1 (Fs)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Byrne, Patrick H., Insight and the Retrieval of Nature

Stichwort: Lonergan: Natur; "höhere" Gesichtspunkt; Ding -> erklärende Art / Gattung: Kombination von schemes of recurrance;

Kurzinhalt: ... Lonergan defined explanatory genera by noting that it is quite possible to have "distinct sets of conjugates" (i.e., the terms in explanatory relations), where the sets of conjugate may be related by higher viewpoints but not "logical operations" ...

Textausschnitt: 2.5 Higher Things

43b Just as the variables of explanatory correlations (such as p, V, T; or CytFe and X, and so on) can be combined into schemes of recurrence, so also schemes themselves can be added together in various ways. We have already seen an illustration of this when the turning flywheel (itself a scheme of recurrence of the most simple sort) was added to the Carnot cycle. There the connection between the two cycles was made as the drive shaft transformed the variable, angular momentum, into the variable, pressure, and conversely, pressure into angular momentum. In this section I would like to mention one principal way in which schemes can be added together, namely, explanatory genera/species; a second way, emergent probability, will be treated in the next section. (Fs)

44a In Insight Lonergan defined explanatory genera by noting that it is quite possible to have "distinct sets of conjugates" (i.e., the terms in explanatory relations), where the sets of conjugates may be related by higher viewpoints but not "logical operations" (1958: 255). Similarly, explanatory species are series of things with "higher systems which make systematic [in various ways] the coincidental aggregates" of events (263). For example, the oxidative phosphorylation cycles in a cell make systematic a portion of the vast aggregation of chemical transformations which happen to lie within a cell's membrane; their regularity results in a regular frequency of ATP; other "biological pathways" combine the ATP with other molecules in various sequences to yield still further systematized functioning (such as the cyclical synthesis of insulin proteins in a pancreas cell). The occurrence of the oxidative phosphorylation cycles, in turn, depend upon other cycles (such as the Krebs cycle) in which glucose, fatty acids, or proteins are broken down to supply energetic hydrogen atoms to the NAD coenzymes. The overall way in which oxidative phosphorylation cycles and other cycles are added together results in the distinctive pattern of functioning of this or that "species" of cell. Introduce different cycles, or combine the same cycles in different ways, and you will have a different species. (Fs)

44b Now the addition of schemes to one another in this way adds great versatility to the combination. The Carnot cycle alone would have to depend upon the luck that compressions and forced expansions would be supplied at just the right times. The flywheel by itself would have to rely upon the highly improbable complete lack of friction. Likewise, the oxidative phosphorylation cycle requires a constant supply of electrons from NAD-H2; the cycles of intussusception and glucose break-down require supplies of ATP as conditions for their functioning. But together, these cycles can systematically supply conditions to one another which the coincidental aggregate would not supply with sufficient regularity. So it is that more complex and differentiated species have highly flexible, adaptive ranges of "natural" functioning, changing, and behaving-what Lonergan called a "flexible circle of ranges of schemes of recurrence" (1958: 459). (Fs)

44c Such combinations owe their flexibility proximately to the complex and differentiated way in which the diverse set of schemes are integrated together. But principally they owe this natural adaptiveness to the fact that explanatory correlations underpin the whole pattern of functioning. This is because the events in such cycles are intrinsically determined by explanatory conjugates, and the explanatory conjugates are intrinsically related in a determinate way to other variables. For example, p and V are related to one another in a complex but determinate manner by the Gay-Lussac law, such that when the temperature changes, they do not cease being related. Rather, their concrete relation shifts in accord with the changed secondary determinations of temperature. If this were not so, the cycle could not close. Likewise, CytFe+++ can function either as the recipient of energetic electrons, or as the product of 2CytFe+++X reacting with H(PO4)--, or in any of a whole host of other ways in accord with explanatory chemical correlations. The explanatory correlations form the heart of this fact. Finally, no less than natural adaptiveness, the "unnatural" demise of individual things and indeed of whole species is likewise explained by the explanatory correlations. When the conditions shift, crucial links in the cycle are blocked. If the oxygen supply is blocked, 2CytFe++X cannot give up its two electrons, and so cannot transfer an energized X to phosphate, nor resume its role in stage 1. (Fs)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Byrne, Patrick H., Insight and the Retrieval of Nature

Stichwort: Lonergan: Natur; emergente Wahrscheinlichkeit (emergent probability); Beispiele

Kurzinhalt: Emergent probability answers the question, "How often are these other conditions the same?" ... Emergent probability is the second approximation to the transposition of Aristotle's "Nature as a whole" into the context of modern ...

Textausschnitt: 2.6 Emergent Probability

45a The second way in which schemes can be added together is over a temporal sequence-and this is what Lonergan meant by the process of "emergent probability." The basis of this notion lies in the realization that schemes may form dependent series:
We are concerned, not with single schemes, but with a conditioned series of schemes. Let us say that schemes, P, Q, R, ... form a conditioned series, if all prior members of the series must be functioning actually for any later member to become a concrete possibility (1958: 118). (Fs)

45b Emergent probability, then, is the generic process whereby temporally earlier schemes begin to operate. They thereby shift the probabilities for the emergence of a second order of schemes, which in turn shift the probabilities for later schemes. Lonergan gives a very general illustration-schemes of carnivorous animals emerge only once schemes of herbivorous animals are actually functioning, and so on (1958: 119). A more specific series can be developed from the biochemical example given above. (Fs)
(1) The cycle of insulin synthesis requires a regular supply of ATP, among other things. Without ATP, insulin production would be a random event of exceptionally low probability. (Fs)
(2) The oxidative phosphorylation cycle of ATP provides a regular supply of ATP, but in turn requires a regular supply of energetic electrons, as well as a supply of oxygen to later receive them. (Fs)
(3) The Krebs cycle regularly supplies electrons (via NAD-H2), but requires a constant supply of pyruvic acid. (Fs)
(4) The glycolysis cycle regularly converts glucose (C6H12O6) into pyruvic acid, but requires a regular supply of glucose for its functioning. (Fs)
(5) Various plant cycles regularly supply glucose or compound starches, but require supplies of biologically fixated nitrogen, water, CO2, and light energy for their functioning. (Fs)
(6) The sun's hydrogen-helium fusion cycle regularly supplies light energy, but requires a sufficient concentration and pressure for its functioning. Such a concentration could have come about in many ways, but in fact emerged from the gradual, recurrent accumulation of matter from a coincidental aggregation throughout space and time. (Fs)

46a The occurrence of scattered molecules of insulin in outer space has a distinct but negligible probability; the probability, however, of its recurrent production under such circumstances is effectively nonexistent. One of the conditions which shifts that probability is the recurrent supply of ATP. In a similar fashion, the actual emergence of earlier schemes makes possible, and increasingly probable, the later schemes. Moreover, such schemes are not confined to the "interior" of individual molecules or organisms. As Lonergan put it, "Within such schemes, the plant or animal is only a component. The whole schematic circle of events does not occur within the living thing, but goes beyond it into the environment" (1958:133). (Fs)

47a Individual things and cycles have their flexible ranges of natural functioning. These natural functionings, in turn, have their conditions. In large part, these conditions have to be supplied not just once, but regularly and recurrently. It follows, therefore, that the natural functioning of things in this universe is heavily dependent upon schemes of recurrence which are neither provided by nor part of their own immanent natural functioning. (Fs)

47b Thus, emergent probability is an explanatory notion. In part it provides an explanatory account of the supply of the naturally recurring conditions under which things function naturally. Emergent probability answers the question, "How often are these other conditions the same?" in a highly nuanced and dynamic fashion, linking species of things, series of mutually conditioning schemes and dynamically increasing or decreasing probabilities. Emergent probability is the second approximation to the transposition of Aristotle's "Nature as a whole" into the context of modern explanatory science. (Fs)
47c The third approximation comes from attending to the explanatory studies of developments. All things have natural ranges of functioning, but higher things spend considerable portions of their life cycles developing from less flexible to more flexible ranges of functioning. (Fs)

47d Developments are marked by stages. The functioning of each stage in the development is natural, in the sense that the recurrent functioning of each stage is made intelligible by combinations of explanatory conjugates along with appropriate conditions. Moreover, the development itself-the sequence of transitions from stage to stage-is also natural. The functioning of a prior stage gradually modifies its underlying conditioning schemes, thereby insuring its own demise. But at the same time, the modified underlying schemes are precisely those required by a distinct, subsequent, and more differentiated stage of functioning. Developments are, so to speak, sequences of serendipitous "leaps in the dark," which are related together in a remarkably intelligible fashion. (Fs)

47e In his treatment of development, Lonergan accepted a contemporary methodological shift away from Aristotle's notion of a developmental science. Aristotle specified the nature of a change through its achieved end. Galileo and Newton specified locomotions through the primary relativity immanent in the explanatory correlations of their parts. Thus, conditions and ends are linked together in virtue of the explanatory correlations. Under the appropriate conditions, a body can naturally fall "up."1 Likewise, contemporary study of the "nature" of development concerns not the end points, but its immanent intelligibility in terms of the "sequence of operators that successively generate further functions" (Lonergan, 1958: 461). Such an approach accounts for the remarkable flexibility of natural developments. A sequence of operators is also conditioned, and its conditions can be fulfilled either statistically or by the regularities of statistically conditioned series of schemes of recurrence, or by the regularities of statistically conditioned series of schemes of recurrence and developments of other organisms. This more generalized linking of developments and their natural conditions Lonergan referred to as "generalized emergent probability" (1958: 462). It provides the third and fullest transposition of Aristotle's "Nature as a whole." (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Byrne, Patrick H., Insight and the Retrieval of Nature

Stichwort: Lonergan: Natur; das Natürliche - Unnatürliche; natürlich: Bestimmung im Hinblick auf: erklärende Korrelationen; schemes of recurrance; Universum

Kurzinhalt: That is, the question, "What is natural?" can be answered only by first specifying, "Natural with respect to what?" Hence, we may ask what is natural with respect to: (1) an explanatory correlation, (2) ...

Textausschnitt: 2.7 The Natural and the Unnatural

48a Let us now summarize the foregoing by asking, "What is natural and what is unnatural?" The term, "natural," has an intrinsic relativity.1 That is, the question, "What is natural?" can be answered only by first specifying, "Natural with respect to what?" Hence, we may ask what is natural with respect to: (1) an explanatory correlation, (2) a scheme of recurrence, (3) an explanatory species, an ecology, (4) or the universe as a whole. (Fs)
(1) Relative to an explanatory correlation, any set of variables which are actually correlated in the way the correlation prescribes, and under the conditions it dictates, is natural. Thus, for example, relative to Galileo's law of falling bodies, the pairs, (distance = 4 ft., time = 0.5 sees.; distance = 16 ft., time = 1 sec; distance = 64 ft., time = 2 sees.), are naturally occurring dimensions of a body's fall, while the pair (distance = 4 ft., time = 4 sees.) is not. Of course, were we actually to observe this last pair, we would not say that this falling body "violated nature" or was "unnatural." We would spontaneously search for a change in the conditions affecting the correlation or, failing in this search, conclude that Galileo's understanding of the correlation itself was simply wrong. Our notion of the normative intelligibility of nature is that strong. (Fs)

(2) The nature of any scheme of recurrence is for it to function regularly in its pattern. Relative to an oxidative phosphorylation cycle, the regular recurrence of its sequence of five stages is natural-is its "immanent nature." Relative to its functioning, the regular supplies of energetic electrons from NAD-H2, of oxygen recipients of lower-energy electrons, of phosphate and X provide a natural environment for its functioning. Moreover, there is not just one way to provide those conditions, but many,2 and relative to the oxidative phosphorylation cycle, all such ways of providing these conditions are perfectly natural. What is unnatural to it is any set of conditions which permanently interrupt that cycle: for example, the cessation of oxygen supply, or the presence of potassium cyanide. (Fs)

49a On the other hand, relative to other chemical cycles of oxygen or potassium cyanide, occurrences which terminate oxidative phosphorylation cycles can also be perfectly natural. These occurrences are just as naturally intelligible, relative to the sets of explanatory conjugates and correlations which inform them. If carbon monoxide is introduced, oxygen will combine with it far more frequently than with 2H+; relative to oxidative phosphorylation cycles, this interruption is a "violent and unnatural occurrence"; relative to carbon-oxygen cycles, it is not. (Fs)

(3) What holds for schemes of recurrence also holds for their assemblies into more complex unities, including explanatory genera and species of things, their developmental sequences, "flexible circles of ranges of schemes of recurrence," and ecologies. Each has a range of recurrent functioning, however complex. Each range of recurrence has its conditions. Any sequence of events is "natural" if it is part of that conditioned range of recurrence-even if it happens only once in an organism's lifetime, or if it occurs in one out of a million instances of that species. In general one can say that any sequence of occurrences which serves to terminate unalterably some part of the range of recurrent functioning (for example, an unremitting fever, or a myocardial infarct) is "unnatural" relative to the assembly of schemes it impairs. Yet precise knowledge of whether or not such a sequence of events is natural is to be had only from detailed explanatory investigations, which relate actual occurrences to patterns made recurrent by the particular combination of explanatory conjugates. Likewise, all the sets of conditions which are compatible with such natural recurrent or developmental functioning are "natural" conditions, or natural environments, relative to them; those which are incompatible are "unnatural" environments for them. (Fs)

(4) Relative to the whole universe, every sequence of occurrences is natural which is in accord with combinations of explanatory correlations, and their realization in accord with dynamically shifting probabilities. In short, relative to the universe, every sequence of events which accords with generalized emergent probability is natural. This is indeed a vast range of occurrences, but by no means an arbitrary or unlimited range. (Fs)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Byrne, Patrick H., Insight and the Retrieval of Nature

Stichwort: Lonergan: menschliche Natur und Geschichtlichkeit 1

Kurzinhalt: His [Lonergan] cognitional theory was an explanatory account of the correlations among the terms and relations which constitute human consciousness

Textausschnitt: 2.8 Human Nature and Historicity

50a The crucial question, of course regards human nature. Is there any such thing? Hasn't modern science swept this away, as first Rousseau and later Nietzsche held? Haven't the statistical sciences of the random left us with no norms at all? Since this is not a question about Nature in general, but about human nature, it is about what is natural, relative to human functioning. answer to the question follows the same pattern outlined in the preceding sections. (Fs)

51a We begin by noting that Lonergan considered his contributions to the theory of human consciousness to be concerned with explanation. His cognitional theory was an explanatory account of the correlations among the terms and relations which constitute human consciousness (1958: 333-334). The terms are cognitional acts-experiencing, direct insight, formulating, reflective insight, judgment of fact, judgment of value, decision. The pattern of correlations is the cognitional structure in which these acts are related to and defined in terms of one another via questions for intelligence, reasonableness, and responsibility. Hence, the questions themselves pose a natural standard for what is intelligent, reasonable, responsible, and loving. As Aristotle put it, once we discover something, our inquiry about it reaches a natural completion (89b26-28).1 Just as in the earlier illustrations, so here the terms are variables, but the correlation (i.e. cognitional structure) is invariant. For example, anything into which one intelligently inquires is an example of the variable, 'experience.' This invariance of the structure of our knowing is the fundamental meaning of the transposed phrase, "human nature," according to Lonergan. (Fs) (notabene)

51b Second, the variables correlated by this invariant structure can be combined in diverse sets of schemes. Human consciousness can integrate wide ranges of experiences with insights into them; with judgments about the correctness of those insights; with judgments about the value of possible ways of living worked out by insights; and with decisions as to whether or not to act in accord with values known to be good and true. This is a generic meaning of schemes, or habits, of human living. (Fs)

52a Third, it is somewhat abstract to speak of the recurrent schemes of conscious activity which actually constitute the living of any given human being. Schemes of any human being's conscious operating do not merely recur; they also develop. All patterns of human consciousness operate on the basis of the unrestricted desire to know and love. Already achieved human insights, judgments, and decisions are natural completions to particular questions put about particular ranges of experiencings. But they are not the natural completion of the source of all such questions, the unrestricted desire. The unrestricted desire is a permanent natural source of perfecting and transforming achieved habits or schemes into ever more highly developed ones. Hence, insights, judgments, and decisions occur only to give rise to questions which would not have occurred without them. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Byrne, Patrick H., Insight and the Retrieval of Nature

Stichwort: Lonergan: menschliche Natur und Geschichtlichkeit 2; recurrant schemes: Geschichte, Meinungen; Tugend - moralische Impotenz

Kurzinhalt: Human schemes of living are natural if they are intelligent, reasonable, responsible, and loving-an exceptionally high standard.

Textausschnitt: 52b Fourth, both schemes of consciousness and their developments are conditioned. Direct insights play a central role in informing human living, for decisions and the judgments of value which motivate them presuppose something to decide about and to be judged as having or lacking value. That "something" is what insight grasps. But insights themselves presuppose experiences-sensible, remembered, or constructed by intelligently alert imagining. Hence, human experiencing conditions (but does not completely determine) human living in three ways: through its own patterning or orienting of conscious flows; through the schemes of neural demands; and through the schemes of meaning which constitute the shared life of human history. (Fs)

(i) Human schemes of living are natural if they are intelligent, reasonable, responsible, and loving-an exceptionally high standard. Therefore, experiencing functions in a natural, human way when it collaborates with, is systematized by, and is developed by intelligence, reasonableness, responsibility, and loving. But human beings can freely violate their own nature. One way in which this happens is when the orientation of human experiencing is anything except the experiences which would occasion the insight sought by natural human questioning (1958: 192). Hence, human beings can develop vices, bad habits, aberrant orientations. These condition consciousness by obstructing understanding, correct judgments of fact and value, and decisions. Such orientations "prevent the emergence into consciousness of perspectives that would give rise to unwanted insights ... [and admit] to consciousness ... any materials in any other arrangement or perspective [so long as they do not give rise to unwanted insights] (1958: 192). Such obstructions can serve other desires, fears, and interests-the fear of death, desires for acquisitions, and so on. But insofar as such an orientation violates the cause of intelligence, reasonableness, and goodness, it is ultimately without proportionate reason and therefore humanly unnatural. (Fs) (notabene)
53a On the other hand, patternings of experiencing can condition recurrent human functioning and development in natural ways. Such patternings readily and flexibly supply intelligence with images to figure out the what, how, and why of things and occurrences. They conjure up counter-examples for judgments of fact. They flesh out fundamental options for human living in concretely imaginative ways, and complement possible courses of action with naturally appropriate feelings of admiration or revulsion. Such orientations condition human living in ways which are natural to its functioning. (Fs)

(ii) Second, while human sensing has a wide range of selectivity to its attention, while memory and imagination admit of even greater flexibility, nevertheless all are based in neural physiology. Neural physiology is characterized by recurrent patterns of electrochemical impulses, which sensing, remembering, and imagining systematize into experiential patterns or schemes of recurrence. Hence, concrete human living consists in ever meeting the challenge of intelligently, reasonably, responsibly, and lovingly responding to the "neural demand functions," the lower cycles which condition such higher schemes. (Fs)

53b Now it is to be noted that different human beings have different neural demand schemes, and that such schemes occur with greater or lesser frequency and completeness. Most obvious examples come from contrasts between normal and pathological neural demand functions. Hyperactivity, dyslexia, schizophrenia, manic-depressive disease, and proneness to alcoholism are all believed to be based in schemes of neural functioning which occur with frequencies above or below the average. Less well understood and less easily defined examples concern the different sorts of neural rhythms of men and women, and of infants, adolescents, and adults. It follows that people with differing frequencies of neural schemes of recurrence will have somewhat different experiencings, and that the higher levels of consciousness will endeavor to respond to these in correspondingly different, but nevertheless intelligent and responsible fashions. In fact, any attempt to impress identical habits upon all such differences would be anything but intelligent and responsible. (Fs)

54a These observations make the transposition of natural virtues more concrete. In Aristotle's account, the moral virtues are patternings of desires and fears which support right action. But Aristotle was emphatic that there was a degree of indeterminacy in such virtues, for "matters concerned with conduct and what is good for us do not have fixity" (1104a3-5).1 Hence, the virtue of self-restraint may characterize both an average and a hyperactive person, but the concrete conscious schemes which constitute this virtue will not be identical. (Fs)

54b Finally, although it may be rather abstract to formulate the matter this way, such things as unnatural frequencies of neural schemes of recurrence would tend toward a limit of zero if one were to prescind from the problem of moral impotence.2 Otherwise, neural schemes which pose problems for human living for which there are no possible intelligent, reasonable, responsible, or loving solutions would be natural. By nature human intelligence is as open as the unrestricted desire so that such solutions can be found in principle unless the objective surd of sin in fact were to condition that natural openness unnaturally. And the fact that we have not yet found them does not settle this in any definitive way. While the neural demands of some or all people can only be intelligently integrated in fact by supernatural operations, this need can only be determined from a supernatural act of understanding. (Fs) (notabene)

(iii) Third, schemes of recurrence in the physical, chemical and biological environments condition neural schemes. While these schemes are not without their importance, the schemes of the human world are far more influential in conditioning human consciousness. For the most part, our experiences come from the artifacts, expressions, and the deeds of other human beings, both living and deceased, especially because our attention gives these experiences greater prominence in the patterning of experience than it does those derived from the merely physical and biological environment. (Fs) (notabene)

55a Hence, there can be more or less natural human schemes of collaboration-schemes which are more or less consonant with human nature. In his "structure of the human good" (1972: 47-52), Lonergan worked out a second explanatory, invariant set of terms and relations. In that scheme, "capacities and needs" set a natural basis which human collaboration attempts to systematize. On the other hand, the criteria of the goods-particular goods, the intelligibility of goods of order, and terminal values-present standards for determining whether the schemes of collaboration meet or violate human nature. (Fs) (notabene)

55b Schemes of human collaboration are based upon shared meanings. These meanings include shared insights as to how to get things done and "what can be expected of the other fellow," shared judgments of what the situation actually is, shared judgments of value as to what the point to it all is, and shared interpersonal relations of respect, admiration, and love, or hostility, resentment, and hatred. The meanings become shared through processes of formal and informal education, where the expressions of one become experiences of others, sources for their questions, "What did that mean?" and eventually acts of consciousness which answer, or fail to answer, the questions. We would term "unnatural," therefore, any human collaboration which regularly pollutes its social atmosphere by introducing "any materials in any other arrangement and perspective" except those which would facilitate answers to certain questions and which makes it unlikely that understanding and judgment will occur. Instead it makes the occurrence of unnatural human living and decline increasingly probable. (Fs)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Byrne, Patrick H., Insight and the Retrieval of Nature

Stichwort: Zusammenfassung: Natur - Aristoteles, Lonergan; Tatsache des Bösen - Gnade; Moderne: Austreibung des Bösen durch das Böse

Kurzinhalt: The crisis of modernity has been caused by modernity's series of attempts to use evil to countervail against evil.

Textausschnitt: 3. CONCLUDING REMARKS

56a The foregoing is an attempt to clarify Lonergan's transposition of the normative core of "nature" into the modern context. Here I indicate what I think are some of the implications of this interpretation of Insight. (Fs)

(1) The classicist tradition's reliance on the norm of nature was heavily indebted both to some of Aristotle's limitations as well as to what was normative in his account. The classicist tradition has tended to go beyond the normative heuristic account of nature by incorporating certain unfortunate secondary determinations. In particular, meanings and roles which served as intelligent conditions for intelligent human functioning in classicist terms are not invariant in the way that the structure of human consciousness is. Without some estimate of the concrete problems which are posed in changed patterns of meanings, and some understanding and evaluation of how well classicist standards respond to those challenges, insistence on classicist standards may be an insistence on something unnatural. (Fs)

(2) On account of Aristotle's tendency to focus on completed virtues, anything other than a completed virtue might be judged, not immature, but wicked. Correlatively, one overlooks the fact that the natural occurrence of new insights means that virtues are but temporary achievements, and human excellence is ever a matter of continual excellent developing. More importantly, one might be tempted to limit the relationship of intelligence to good living in the virtuous person to the addition by phronesis (practical wisdom) of "one further insight into the situation at hand" (Lonergan, 1958: 175), while forgetting that "further insights" are constantly needed over and above formed moral virtues. This oversight has led to the consequent denigration of phronesis even in the classicist tradition itself. It has led to a failure to appreciate the great importance of other types of understanding and their relationships to human living. A lack of intelligent grasp of long-term consequences has promoted much long-term decline. (Fs)

(3) Finally, Lonergan's heuristic structure of nature is entirely compatible with what is normative in modern science. It is a heuristic for arriving at objective judgments about what is and is not in accord with human nature. But it does not imply that the solution to pervasive unnatural conditioning of human life can or must be natural. Aristotle clearly recognized the powers of corruption in his own day. Although he also knew that a certain small number of genuinely virtuous people emerged whose presence was absolutely indispensable for any level of decency in the rest of the culture, he did not really understand what makes this emergence possible and probable beyond acknowledging that it had a kind of regularity reminiscent of the regularities of Nature. Aristotle's and Plato's profound reverence for Nature did not flinch from the great evils of humankind; nevertheless it rested on a reasoned trust in a natural support for ultimate natural goodness. But Augustine, Aquinas, and Lonergan transposed this reasonable trust into a context in which the emergence of good transforming human lives depended not upon the regularities of Nature, but the supernatural mysteries of divine grace. (Fs)

57a Within the horizon of modernity, the regularities of human affairs show only that human nature is evil, and one cannot change that. The crisis of modernity has been caused by modernity's series of attempts to use evil to countervail against evil. If an alternative to the crisis of modernity is to be found, it must be sought by a graced, hopeful understanding and communication of what truly is in accord with subhuman human nature. Clearly, without either the tenuous, reasoned, yet undifferentiated trust in natural goodness of an Aristotle or Plato, or the theologically differentiated and transformed hope of Christianity, any appeal to standards of intelligent and reasonable nature will appear pathetic. (Fs; 07.02.2009) (notabene)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Flanagan, J., Insight: Chapters 1-5

Stichwort: Potenz; Unterschied: empirisches Residuum (empirical residue) - inverse Einsicht

Kurzinhalt: Thus inverse insight is a deliberate abstraction from questions because you know they are misleading; while empirical residue refers to those aspects of experience that scientists spontaneously abstract from because ...

Textausschnitt: 91b Both these topics deal with the process of abstraction, but with an important difference. Inverse insights ground a major reorientation of the way you wonder or, phrased negatively, inverse insights permit you to abstract, from questions that were misleading, your prior inquiries. Inverse insights reveal that you were asking the wrong questions. Empirical residue is a broader category and refers to the way that scientists abstract from particular places and times or from particular things without noticing that they are doing so. Thus inverse insight is a deliberate abstraction from questions because you know they are misleading; while empirical residue refers to those aspects of experience that scientists spontaneously abstract from because their minds are spontaneously oriented toward the intelligible and so they realize there is nothing intelligible to be found in certain aspects of experience, such as particular places and particular times. (Fs)

91c First, note that the category of empirical residue points to the mind's natural potency for seeking light, while inverse insight points up the mind's tendency to mistake darkness for light. It is startling that throughout the history of Western culture certain of the most brilliant thinkers spent a great deal of time searching for nothing. They called it by different names such as the void, absolute space and absolute time, and the aether; but in every case after several hundred years of assuming its existence they discovered that nothing is just that-nothing. Yet even after the discovery that nothing is nothing, later thinkers started assuming its existence again. The paradox, then, is that inverse insight is about the mind's ability to spend two or three hundred or thousand years searching for the wrong things because of asking the wrong question while empirical residue is about the mind's natural ability to turn away from certain experiences because they are not in themselves intelligible. The clue to understanding both ideas is that each pertains to potency. (Fs)

92a Potency, as I have noted, is a tension of opposites. From one point of view potency is a limit or boundary and is not directly intelligible; but from another point of view potency is an invitation to go beyond barriers. Potency, then, is not itself intelligible but is intelligible only through form and act. Or to put it another way, potency is a limit and a limit, though not itself directly intelligible, becomes intelligible through its relation to other limits; and both relations and limits become actually intelligible through insight. If you ask, "what is a limit?" you are barking up the wrong tree. But the clue I am pursuing is that empirical residue refers to limits that the mind spontaneously abstracts from without being able to give account of its own orientation towards the light; inverse insight, on the other hand, is not just an abstraction, but a clear grasp of the mind's own ability to transcend limits by making limits changeable or transformable. With this distinction in mind I turn to chapter two and its relation to chapter four. (Fs)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Flanagan, J., Insight: Chapters 1-5

Stichwort: Heuristische Struktur (heuristic structure) am Beispiel Galileo; klassische Naturgesetze als Möglichkeit; klassische, statistische Gesetze

Kurzinhalt: ... Newton gave scientists the means of anticipating comprehensive and concrete judgments about the order of our universe. The further laws or normative correlations still needing to be discovered were in some sense already known, ...

Textausschnitt: 95a Chapter two, then, is about the modern ways of doing science that emerged in the Renaissance-new ways to collect data, new ways to select data for study, new ways to conceive hypotheses, new ways to test and verify these guesses, and finally, new ways to keep generating further data for new understandings that would require further testing. Lonergan names these new ways a "heuristic structure." Let me use Galileo to illustrate what this means. (Fs)

95b Medieval scientists looked for the material, formal, efficient, and final causes that explained why things were what they were and why they behaved the way they did. It has been stated frequently that Renaissance scientists eliminated efficient and final causes and focused on material and formal causes; and this often has been interpreted to be a loss of a higher viewpoint. Surprisingly perhaps, Lonergan regards this prescinding from final and efficient causes as a major advance. He notes with approval that Galileo did not wonder why bodies fall, or even about what caused their falling; but suspected instead that their motion could be understood as an invariant correlation between distances and durations. Galileo's wondering was an anticipation of a new kind of understanding of the formal cause of falling motions: motion was the matter and the form was the unchanging correlations governing the motions. Galileo's unchanging correlation of distances and durations was a new form or law-a normative or standard correlation that governed the changing distances and durations of a freely falling body. Kepler followed this same path, anticipating an invariant correlation between the different periods or orbital speeds of planets and their greatest distances or locations from the sun. Finally, Newton formulated a set of laws grounding all prior standards, laws, or normative correlations in a systematic structure that permitted scientists to anticipate and predict how any two masses, whether celestial or terrestrial, would function with respect to their gravitational actions and reactions. Combining the rectilinear, curvilinear, and parabolic normative correlations of Galileo with the elliptical correlations of Kepler, Newton gave scientists the means of anticipating comprehensive and concrete judgments about the order of our universe. The further laws or normative correlations still needing to be discovered were in some sense already known, since scientists would anticipate a priori these laws to be correlations of the type that Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Hooke, Huygens, and others had already discovered. Even so, such scientists would be puzzled by Lonergan's question in chapter two, "What can you infer about the concrete from classical correlations or norms or laws of the type invented by Galileo?"-very puzzled indeed. (Fs) (notabene)

96a If we take Newton's law, or normative correlation of terms and relations, F = G m.m/d2, as an example, and ask, "What can you infer from this theoretical statement about the actual order of our universe?" some scientists would be apt to say that you can deduce from this statement how every resting and moving mass in this universe is related to every other resting and moving mass. But Lonergan's quite different and surprising answer is that if a classical law like Newton's has been verified, you cannot deduce anything about the actual order of the universe from it, nor can you predict what probably has, is, or will happen, but only what possibly has, is, or will happen. Classical laws like f = ma or E = me2 reveal concrete possibilities, not concrete probabilities or concrete actualities. (Fs) (notabene)

96b This restriction of classical laws comes as a surprise because when you ask a friend, "Did you attend the lecture?" and he assures you that he did, then you know a fact, something that actually happened. Verifying a single fact, however, is quite different from verifying a system of meanings. But Newton's system of equations or laws are so interconnected that in verifying one aspect of this system you become involved directly or indirectly in verifying the whole system. That system is intended to explain not how this or that planet or this or that star attract one another and mutually determine each other's accelerations and successive positions in the universe but rather how every mass in this universe has, is, and will cooperate with every other mass. Verifying that a person attended a lecture is verifying a particular event in human history, a common sense fact. But scientists are not intending to verify any singe fact but to verify completely and comprehensively their understanding of how this entire universe actually operates. (Fs) (notabene)

96c When Lonergan asks what you can infer from classical laws, he is referring to this comprehensive explanatory context. Before you can infer anything concrete from classical laws, first, you must understand the laws or normative correlations of the system you are going to use; second, you must understand how you are going to combine these laws; finally, you need to particularize the combination of equations you have worked out by assigning particular values to the variables in the equations. This is where measurement comes in. However, since scientists are not always able to deal directly with concrete givens, they set up idealized situations to particularize the combination of equations they are seeking to validate. But an overwhelmingly important assumption about this practice constitutes the basic anticipation of classical method, namely, that all the normative equations can be put together to yield a single, cumulative, and comprehensive understanding of the concrete functionings of the universe; and that this understanding can be tested in any given concrete situation in the universe since every situation will eventually be found to be similar to every other situation. But for Lonergan this assumption begs further questions. (Fs)

97a Lonergan has no doubt about the significance of classical laws, but they offer only partial understandings of the actually and probably recurring happenings in this universe. A quite different assumption that scientists can and do make will lead to quite different kinds of laws which also are measurable and verifiable. Instead of assuming that all situations are similar to all other situations they may anticipate that conditions in other places or at other times are not similar and do not converge toward a moment when every part of the process becomes intelligible in a single insight or in a single set of insights. Scientists may assume that successive situations diverge from rather than converge with one another, as happens for example when water in clouds condensing from a vaporous state into a liquid state begin to descend to the earth with constantly accelerating velocities. As the rain falls the air resistance keeps changing the direction and the accelerating velocities of the raindrops. One may question whether the resisting actions of the air molecules on the falling raindrop exert regular or irregular resisting effects. Answering such questions divides the research of the statistical from that of the classical investigator. (Fs)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Flanagan, J., Insight: Chapters 1-5

Stichwort: Rekursive Schemen (schemes of recurrande); Beispiel: Karten; Schemen: möglich - wahrscheinlich - tatsächlich

Kurzinhalt: Schemes of recurrence can combine sets of classical and statistical normative correlations into the actual schemes that go beyond the field of classical and statistical laws to reach what actually and concretely occurs.

Textausschnitt: CHAPTER FOUR: SCHEMES OF RECURRENCE

99b The card game also illustrates Lonergan's idea of classical and statistical laws as complementing one another through what he calls "schemes of recurrence." A casual assessment of the way the best players keep winning at the game of chance might lead one to overestimate the role of classical intelligibility by thinking of the game as a regular systematic cycle that operates in the same way as Newton thought that the planetary cycle operates as it provides the regular recurring seasons of fall, winter, spring, and summer for us on earth. Yet both the winning cycles in the card game and the periodic cycling of planets result not just from systematic processes alone, but from the successive states of systems that must have supplied underlying sets of continually changing conditions. Most importantly, these "continually changing conditions" do not change in a systematic fashion but are made up of lower coincidental manifolds of conditions which, despite their divergence or randomness, happen to be continually mastered respectively by the higher strategic playing of the winners in the case of the cycle of card games; or by the higher gravitational pattern that fixes each of the planets' changing velocities through the recurring and changing velocities of each of the others as well as of all in relation to the centering force of the sun's gravitational field. (Fs)

100a Note the concrete and descriptively accessible quality of the recurring patterns in the examples of the card game and the planetary system. Recall that descriptive relations occur and recur in our sensible field of awareness and are observable by our senses. But explanatory correlations such as Newton's or Einstein's basic equations (e.g., f = ma or E = me2) abstract from descriptive relationships in their understandings and formulations; but still must be verified in concrete observables that are correlative to our own sensory-motor reference frames. Moreover, the concrete observables have to be carefully selected since the assumption behind the verification is that all other relevant data would be the same as the data selected. Considering all the other relevant data, however, reveals that some are the same but some are not only different but randomly different. (Fs)

100b Thus, to return to the example of playing cards, when you keep reshuffling the cards the relevant data in each successive hand keep diverging in unpredictable ways. Yet despite the recurrently random pool of cards, the better players take what they are dealt, choose alternatives from among their wide range of strategies, and keep on winning. Now to explain the strategies you would have to abstract from the description of any actual concrete set of plays and enter through the abstraction of both the classical and statistical kinds into the realm where you can determine, first, how many possible combinations of cards a player can receive; and, second, what the probabilities are of these possibilities actually emerging (or more clearly, how many times in how many hands one can reasonably expect these alternative possible combinations). Even after all the alternative probabilities are worked out, one has approximated but still not reached the actual, concrete, unique set of events that do in fact occur. (Fs)

101a It may perhaps be more clear now why Lonergan distinguishes, (1) schemes that are possible, which include any and all combinations that can occur; (2) schemes that are probable; and finally, (3) the actual schemes. The concretely possible schemes make up the largest group and are determinable by classical correlations. The concretely probable schemes combine some concretely possible combinations with a series of frequencies, while the actual sequence of events is singular, unique, and thus distinguishable from what could and might have happened but did not in fact occur. Schemes of recurrence can combine sets of classical and statistical normative correlations into the actual schemes that go beyond the field of classical and statistical laws to reach what actually and concretely occurs. (Fs) (notabene)

101b Lonergan cites such physical schemes as the planetary system, the hydrological cycle, and biological schemes such as the nitrogen cycle as examples of actually occurring schemes. As we see, actually occurring schemes of recurrence can be hierarchically coordinated with the planetary schemes that explain and describe the seasonal cycle which sets the gravitational and thermodynamic conditions for the possible, probable, and actual weather patterns that occur in any particular place and time in the world's geographical history. Note the linking of conditions: the nitrogen cycle cannot emerge unless the hydrological cycle is already operating, but the nitrogen cycle (like the successful winning cycle of card playing) is conditioned by the lower cycles and it in turn orders the recurrent recycling of the complex series of inorganic and organic events whose patterns cannot be explained by laws of inorganic chemistry alone but also involve higher organic, normatively oriented correlations. Similarly, the biological schemes of plants in turn condition psychic schemes of animals. (Fs)

102a Lonergan call this conditioned series of schemes, with lower schemes setting conditions for the emergence and survival of higher schemes that in turn condition further higher schemes, "emergent probability." It is the key to his explanation and description of the design of concrete world order. (Fs)

Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Flanagan, J., Insight: Chapters 1-5

Stichwort: Bezugssyteme: senso-motorisch, Sprache; Kopernikus - Newton - Einstein; Licht als Konstante; Bemessung der Relativität; Zeit - Raum

Kurzinhalt: Einstein, therefore, relativizes Newton's absolute frame not by deabsolutizing it, but by making all physical constants limited invariants, intrinsically limited by the finite velocity of light.

Textausschnitt: Reference Frames

102c Reference frames may be personal, public, or universal. A reference frame may be defined as the ordering set of relations and terms that fix the origins and orientations of any and all things. How can one shift from one reference frame to another in a manner that will unite these frames to one another in a systematic and invariant way? For example, how does one shift from a personal to a public reference frame in a consistent manner? Or how does one shift from a personal and public frame to a universal context that unites any and all personal and public orderings of places and times? (Fs)

102d Piaget's studies on the way children develop their sensory-motor reference frames are very helpful in illuminating this issue. Piaget has shown how children first develop their own sensory motor frameworks to guide them in their ramblings from one place and one time to other places at other times, and back again to the place at a different time. He also has shown how children's emerging language systems are conditioned from below by their skeletal, muscular, and other sensory-motor skills. Finally, his research has demonstrated how difficult it is for children to decenter themselves in relation to their own personal frameworks and correlate their particular frames to those of other children (e.g., learning that what is your right side may be another person's left side or what is here for you may be there for another child). Gradually children do decenter themselves and become able to move from a personal to a more public spatio-temporal context of places and times. This decentering takes place primarily through ordinary language that expresses directional differences through the system of prepositions relating terms like down-up, to-from, in-out, and temporal differences through the tenses of verbs modified by a set of adverbs. This public ordering of places and times grows to include the geography of the planet and the correlations of dates to one another through cultural calendars that order the succession of events in single, unified time lines. The next step is to move from a public reference frame to a universal frame that includes any and all positions and times. Here Lonergan makes a distinction between concretely possible, probable, and actual ordering frames. (Fs)

103a The Greeks ordered the position of the moon to the position of the earth through triangles or trigonometry-measurement by triangles. The moon, however, had a series of different positions during a series of different times. The Greeks tried to account for the moon's series of temporal positioning by showing how it was conditioned by a series of concentric spheres, with the earth at the center, with each sphere depending ultimately on the outermost, or first, mover that received its motion from an unmoved mover. But, just as children eventually decenter themselves in relation to their own sensory-motor frameworks and recenter their spatio-temporal intervals within a public context of meanings, so Copernicus decentered the Greek frameworks towards a universally solar-centered framework of terms and relations. Copernicus's decentering, however, was not as significant as most people considered since it was not completely decentralized: he still assumed that the physical universe was absolutely centered. Moreover, this concretely possible way of framing theoretical measurements still used the Greek or Euclidian universal measuring frame that depends on the public Greek and Latin language system of meanings which operated in terms of the descriptive framework of the seasonal calendar. (Fs)

104a A key step in trying to abstract both from the descriptive seasonal frame and from the public frame of Greek and Latin was taken when Vieta and Descartes, primarily, invented new modes of symbolic expression that broke from the Greek and Latin languages that had influenced the Euclidian meaning-system. They thus made possible a more universal mode for framing positions and times. At roughly the same time Galileo began to abstract from descriptive relations of "heavy" and "light" as grounding the basic meaning of "up" and "down" and the other directions. These developments prepared the way for Newton's formulation of new sets of terms and relations which could be expressed in the new algebraic symbolism invented by Descartes. (Fs)

104b Through a series of misconceptions, unfortunately, these new ways of expressing the meaning of Euclid's geometric framework also led to an invalid discrediting of the particular and public frameworks that consist of descriptive frameworks of positions and times expressed in ordinary language systems. Renaissance and Enlightenment scientists actually began to operate in two quite different frameworks of measurement. The first were their own conventional public and particular frameworks that centered on the earth with its cycles of the seasonal calendar; and the second was the mathematical measuring framework that originated from the minds of the scientists and was centered physically in the sun's gravitational field. They solved the problem of how to unite the ordinary, descriptive set of relations and terms with the abstract mathematical reference frame (e.g., Newton's method for coordinating any and all positions and times) by simply asserting that descriptive reference frames are merely apparent orderings of positions and times. For these theorists and propagandists the only real and objective order of positions and times is the abstractly possible reference frame invented by Descartes and Newton. They held that this real, objective Cartesian framework of coordinates corresponds to the actual physical framework of the entire universe. But how could they empirically verify this assertion of this abstract, absolute measuring system of positions and times? (Fs) (notabene)

105a Newton simply postulated that all the various positions and times of resting and moving masses are coordinated through a universal system of gravitational forces; and that these forces can be measured from any place in the universe, because whatever the origin and orientation of the ordering framework, this framework could be referred to an absolute frame of space and time existing independently of any system of physically moving masses within which scientists make their measurements. Newton had no problem in uniting physically different frameworks to one another, because Nature did it for him, providing an objective (though in fact only postulated) norm for correcting every scientific observer's framework with a single, universal scale that ordered every instant and position to one another. (Fs) (notabene)

105b The physical existence of this independent reference frame was never actually verified. Instead, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries scientists discovered other possible geometric measuring frames besides the Euclidian one. Whether these other geometric frames might have an existential reference was not considered until developments in electromagnetic theories began to raise certain doubts about the existence of what they called the aether frame, which was a modified form of Newton's absolute frame that had served as a completely universal map and calendar for uniting all scientific measurements. (Fs)

105c If this universal reference frame did not actually exist, then scientists could not provide standards or normative corrections for reference frames. They would have lost their normative center that grounded the measurements in verifying their laws. But just as Copernicus decentered the Aristotelian reference frame, Einstein decentered the Galilean and Newtonian universe by drawing attention to the problem of performing the measurements by which scientists test their laws. Lonergan has grasped how Einstein thus raised the problem of relating abstract explanatory frameworks to the descriptive frameworks that had been eliminated by Galileo, in all its generality. (Fs)

105d Einstein dramatically assumed that the aether frame does not exist, or that it is not measurable, which for scientists means the same. He also eliminated the absolute center of the universe by supposing that any position in the universe could serve as a center, because, besides being a spatial position, it is also a temporal position; and any spatio-temporal position could be related to any other spatio-temporal position by light signals which always moved at the same speed no matter what their point of origin. This was a shocking assumption, since scientists expected a light signal to have its own velocity plus the acceleration or deceleration due to its originating position. However, if it did not matter how fast, or how slow, or in what direction two different frameworks were moving, then the speed of light could order their different speeds and directions to one another even in an infinite universe. As Lonergan saw, Einstein opened up the problem of coordinating descriptive frameworks, because in supposing his universal constant to set a maximum limit to velocities, just what the differences happen to be among all the particular frameworks of lesser velocities is left completely open. Finally, by limiting his assumption of special relativity to inertial frames, Lonergan understood that Einstein also opened up the concrete possibilities for measurements of frameworks that are accelerating with respect to one another in terms of other explanatory systems of geometry. (Fs) (notabene)

106a Einstein, therefore, relativizes Newton's absolute frame not by deabsolutizing it, but by making all physical constants limited invariants, intrinsically limited by the finite velocity of light. Newton distinguished between relative motions and absolute motions, with relative motions being merely apparent, while absolute motion is the true or real motion grounded in the truly real space and time, postulated to be unlimited, infinite, normative, and objective. Einstein eliminated this distinction and made all motions relative to one another. Thus Einstein made it possible to understand that space and time, as well as potencies or limits, are not intelligible in themselves but become understood through the gravitational and electromagnetic correlations that order them to one another. (Fs) (notabene)

106b To phrase this more in Lonergan's way, the times fix the spaces, the spaces fix the times, and the equations co-order both. Spaces and times thus may be defined heuristically as those properties of atomic things that become known through electromagnetic and gravitational equations. To measure the concretely possible spaces and times knowable through Newton's and Maxwell's equations as modified by Einstein, you in fact select some particular here-now and some other there-now and coordinate their spatio-temporal relations internally through light signals. This reveals the concretely possible spatio-temporal schemes operating in our universe of proportionate beings. This does not also embrace the myriad concrete public and particular spatio-temporal reference frames as such. To include all the concrete probable and actual reference frames means shifting to Lonergan's theory of emergent probability. As Lonergan says at the end of chapter five, "concrete extensions and concrete durations are the field or matter or potency in which emergent probability is the immanent form or intelligibility." Spaces fix the times, times fix the spaces, and emergent probability orders both. (Fs; E09 16.02.2009)