Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Übergang von Logik -> Methode (Aristoteles); Faculty psychology; Psychologie und Metaphysik; Intentionalitätsanalyse

Kurzinhalt: For logic what is first is premises. Among premises come first the most universal:; Because metaphysics is first, psychology has to be a faculty psychology:; Method reverses such priorities

Textausschnitt: 34/4 The transition we envisage is from logic to method. Aristotle himself would not admit the strict application of his own Posterior Analytics outside the field of mathematics. Modern science places its reliance, not on any principles or laws it has discovered and may revise, but upon empirical method. Modern scholarship operates on similar lines in its very different field: it is a matter of growing familiarity with the data, advancing comprehension of their meaning and significance, and complete submission to the demand for revision when contrary data or a fuller comprehension come to light. My own study, Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas," would show the continuity of such ideas of method with the Aristotelian and Thomist tradition, while my larger work, Insight, sets forth a generalized empirical method that operates principally on the data of consciousness to work out a cognitional theory, an epistemology, and a metaphysics. First it asks what one is doing when one is knowing. Next, why is doing that knowing? Thirdly, what does one know when one does it? (45; Fs) (notabene)

35/4 A shift from logic to method is a change rather in structure than in content. Both logic and method start from principles, from what is first in an ordered set (primum in aliquo or dine). But the order of logic differs from the order of method. For logic what is first is premises. Among premises come first the most universal: they regard being, and so metaphysics is the first of the sciences. Because metaphysics is first, psychology has to be a faculty psychology: its basic terms are modifications of metaphysical terms, and so it has much to say of potencies and habits, which are not among the immediate data of consciousness, and it relates acts to objects not by intentionality but by efficient and final causality. Again, because metaphysics is first, a primacy goes to speculative intellect which concerns itself with metaphysics. (45f; Fs) (notabene)

38/4 Further, the shift from logic to method includes an acknowledgment of the autonomy of science and of scholarship. But the autonomy recognized is under the control of method. Such controlled autonomy ensures both openness to current views and alertness to spot needed revisions. It grounds sharp distinctions between the results of scientific work and the extrascientific opinions of scientists, between scholarly conclusions and nonscholarly pronouncements. If it permits modern science and scholarship to correct what in the Aristotelian corpus might be mistaken for philosophy, it thereby puts on a rational basis what otherwise tended to be, initially the haphazard result of a long-sustained war of attrition, but later the wholesale desertion of a venerable and still valuable tradition. (46f; Fs)

36/4 Method reverses such priorities. Its principles are not logical propositions but concrete realities, namely, sensitively, intellectually, rationally, morally conscious subjects. Among investigations the key place goes to the self-appropriation of the subject, to his discovery and acknowledgment of human authenticity and unauthenticity, to his option for authenticity and, thereby, for a philosophic foundation less showy but far more effective than an appeal to demonstrations. There follows the replacement of a faculty psychology by an intentionality analysis. Finally, as intentionality analysis distinguishes successive levels of conscious operations by the type of questions they answer, as it has questions for intelligence (what? why? how? what for?) precede questions for reflection (is that so? are you certain?) and both precede questions for deliberation (is it good? is it truly good?), so also it acknowledges the sublation of the earlier by the later. By sublation the later goes beyond the earlier, sets up a higher objective, introduces new operations, but so far from setting aside or interfering with the earlier preserves them in their integrity, refines their performance, extends their relevance, enriches their significance. On this showing speculative intellect loses its primacy. The key position now pertains to the deliberating subject, and his deliberations are existential, for they determine what he is to be; they are interpersonal, for they determine his relations with others; they are practical, for they make this earth a better or a worse place in which we are to live. (46; Fs) (notabene)

39/4 Finally, there is an important difference between method in the sciences and method in philosophy. Empirical method leaves the sciences open to radical revision, because its appeal is to the data of sense but its basic terms and relations denote not the data of sense but constructs derived from empirically established laws. In contrast, the basic terms and relations of an empirically established cognitional theory are not just constructs but also data of immediate consciousness. Its basic terms denote conscious events. Its basic relations denote stages in conscious process. Hence, to introduce new basic terms and new basic relations and thereby establish a radical revision would be, not merely the revision of a theory, but the creation of a new type of consciousness. (47; Fs) (notabene)