Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Metaphysik und Intentionalität; Fragen als Operatoren der Intentionalität

Kurzinhalt: It follows that the single cognitional operation is neither a merely immanent psychological event nor yet a properly objective cognitional attainment. It has the intermediate status of an intentional act:

Textausschnitt: 22/3 Intentionality analysis yields a contrasting picture of the subject. Along with the rest of modern science, it eschews dependence on metaphysics. For metaphysicians do not agree. A critically constructed metaphysics presupposes a theory of objectivity, an episte-mology. An epistemology has to distinguish between knowing, as illustrated by any cognitional operation, and adult human knowing, which is constituted by a set of cognitional operations that satisfy a normative pattern. It follows that the single cognitional operation is neither a merely immanent psychological event nor yet a properly objective cognitional attainment. It has the intermediate status of an intentional act: as given, it refers to some other; but the precise nature and validity of that reference remain to be determined; and such determination is reached through the further intentional operations needed to complete the pattern constitutive of full objectivity. In a word, phenomenology brackets reality to study acts in their intentionality. In the very measure that it prescinds from questions of objectivity, it all the more efficaciously prepares the way for a convincing epistemology. (28; Fs) (notabene)
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23/3 Intentionality analysis, like the rest of modern science, begins from the given. Unlike the rest of modern science, which dilates upon electrons and viruses, it can remain with the given, with human intentional operations dynamically related in their self-assembling pattern. (28; Fs)
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24/3 In its broad lines this dynamism rests on operators that promote activity from one level to the next. The operators are a priori, and they alone are a priori. Their content is ever an anticipation of the next level of operations and thereby is not to be found in the contents of the previous level. (28; Fs) (notabene)
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26/3 Three types of operator yield four levels of operation. Each lower level is an instance of vertical finality, and that finality is already realized as the higher levels function. The lower level, accordingly, prepares for the higher and is sublated by it. (29; Fs) (notabene)
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27/3 We experience to have the materials for understanding; and understanding, so far from cramping experience, organizes it, enlarges its range, refines its content, and directs it to a higher goal. We understand and formulate to be able to judge, but judgment calls for ever fuller experience and better understanding; and that demand has us clarifying and expanding and applying our distinctions between astronomy and astrology, chemistry and alchemy, history and legend, philosophy and myth, fact and fiction. We experience and understand and judge to become moral: to become moral practically, for our decisions affect things; to become moral interpersonally, for our decisions affect other persons; to become moral existentially, for