Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Überzeugung und objektive Wahrheit; Unmittelbarkeit - Bedeutung (Empiristen - Rationalisten)

Kurzinhalt: INNER CONVICTION AND OBJECTIVE TRUTH; Man the symbolic animal lives in both of these worlds; philosophers opt for one of the two worlds;

Textausschnitt: 19/9 At first blush inner conviction and objective truth stand at opposite poles. Inner conviction is subjective. Objective truth is the truth about what is already-out-there-now for everyone to see and grasp and handle. It is public truth, and the publicity is spatial. Precisely because it is spatial, because in principle it can be tested by anyone, it is beyond doubt or question. (134; Fs) (notabene)
20/9 Still questions do arise. One can distinguish between the world of immediacy and the world mediated by meaning. The world of immediacy includes all the data of sense and all the data of consciousness. It consists of two parts: the totality of the data of sense is the sphere of objectivity that is spatial, public, in principle open to anyone's inspection; the totality of the data of consciousness is an aggregate of distinct and segregated subjectivities none of which can inspect what is going on in any of the others. (134; Fs) (notabene)
21/9 To be contrasted with this world of immediacy there is the world mediated by meaning. It consists of all that is to be known by asking questions and arriving at correct answers. It is a world unknown to infants but gradually introduced to children as they learn to speak, to boys and girls as they study in school, to students and scholars in centers of learning. (134; Fs)
22/9 Man the symbolic animal lives in both of these worlds. As animal he lives in the world of immediacy and, like Macbeth, is liberated from his fantasies when he adverts to the sure and firm-set earth on which he treads. As symbolic, he both suffers from the fantasies and brings about his liberation, for that consists not merely in the pressure on the soles of his treading feet but also in his certainty that the earth is firm-set and will not give way under his tread. (134; Fs) (notabene)

23/9 Still man the symbolic animal has long been a puzzle to man the philosopher. Insofar as philosophers search for simplicity and coherence, they opt for one of the two worlds and attempt to get along without the other. Empiricists opt for the world of immediacy, and proceed to empty out from the world mediated by meaning everything that is not immediately given. Rationalists take their stand on demonstrative argument and, if they go along with the ancient Eleatics, will argue that there cannot be more than one being and that that one being cannot undergo any change. (134f; Fs) (notabene)
24/9 But both of these are extreme positions. Empiricists usually find it convenient to take an occasional excursion into the world mediated by meaning, at the very least to expound and prove their own position. Rationalists can advert to the fact that questions are raised with respect to the data of experience and that answers are confirmed by pointing to data that show what they say. So they are led to supplement the apodictic power of demonstration with the intuitions of sense and/or consciousness. But both empiricist excursions into meaning and rationalist appeals to intuition are compromises. They renege on their initial premise of simplicity and coherence. They point the way to a new starting point that acknowledges the complexity of man the symbolic animal. (135; Fs)
25/9 The so-called "new" starting point is, of course, very old. It goes back to Plato and Aristotle. It reached crises in the medieval controversy between Augustinians and Aristotelians and in the later victory of modern science over Aristotelian constructions. It heads into a quite different starting point in the twentieth century in which the notion of method aspires to a foundational role. (135; Fs)