Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Unterschied: sensation - perception; consciousness - self-knowledge; Infrastruktur und Suprastruktur -> Gefühle

Kurzinhalt: As outer experience it is sensation as distinct from perception. As inner experience it is consciousness as distinct from self-knowledge

Textausschnitt: For example, any scientist will distinguish sharply between his hypothesis and the data to which he appeals. To the data the hypothesis adds a suprastructure of context, problem, discovery, formulation. But the data, as appealed to, are not yet the infrastructure. For, as appealed to, the data are named; and the naming involves its own suprastructure of a technical language and of the scientific knowledge that had to be acquired to use that language accurately. Moreover, this suprastructure supposes an ordinary language, through which one advances to a grasp of scientific terminology, and a commonsense style of knowledge, through which one advances to scientific knowledge. So finally one comes to the infrastructure. It is pure experience, the experience underpinning and distinct from every suprastructure. As outer experience it is sensation as distinct from perception. As inner experience it is consciousness as distinct from self-knowledge, consciousness as distinct from any introspective process in which one inquires about inquiring, and seeks to understand what happens when one understands, and endeavors to formulate what goes on when one is formulating, and so on for all the inner activities of which all of us are conscious and so few of us have any exact knowledge. (57; Fs) (notabene)
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I say that so few have any exact knowledge of these operations, for while they are conscious, still that consciousness is not knowledge but only the infrastructure in a potential knowledge that few get around to actuating by adding its appropriate suprastructure. (57f; Fs) (notabene)

To conclude this subsection, let us note a possibility. It may be that inner religious and outer sociocultural factors come together to constitute a new religious consciousness inasmuch as (1) the inner religious factor resembles an infrastructure while (2) the outer sociocultural factor makes possible, or begins to countenance, or expresses, or interprets the religious experience. (58; Fs)

12/5 Further Illustrations of Consciousness as Infrastructure. My book, Insight, is an account of human understanding. As a book, it is an outer sociocultural factor providing expression and interpretation of events named insights. But at the same time it is inviting the reader to self-discovery, to performing in and for himself the illustrative insights set forth in successive chapters, to adverting to what happens in himself when the insights occur and, no less, to what is missing when they do not occur, until eventually as is hoped he will be as familiar with his own intelligence in act as he is with his ocular vision. (58; Fs)

13/5 What can be done for insights, can also be done for feelings. Feelings simply as felt pertain to an infrastructure. But as merely felt, so far from being integrated into an equable flow of consciousness, they may become a source of disturbance, upset, inner turmoil. Then a cure or part of a cure would seem to be had from the client-centered therapist who provides the patient with an ambiance in which he is at ease, can permit feelings to emerge without being engulfed by them, come to distinguish them from other inner events, differentiate among them, add recognition, bestow names, gradually manage to encapsulate within a suprastructure of knowledge and language, of assurance and confidence, what had been an occasion for disorientation, dismay, disorganization. (58; Fs)