Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Konstitution Dei Filius: Objekt - Gegenstand der Intention (Sein); Verifikation: direkte u. indirekte; Prinzip (2 Bedeutungen)

Kurzinhalt: ... are there principles that do not need to be verified? Here I would distinguish two meanings of the word "principle."

Textausschnitt: 124a Intending then is comprehensive. Though human achievement is limited, still the root dynamism is unrestricted. We would know everything about everything, the whole universe in all its multiplicity and concreteness, omnia, to pan, and, in that concrete and comprehensive sense, being. To that object our cognitional operations are related immediately, not by sensitive intuition, but by questioning. (Fs) (notabene)

124b Now if God cannot be an object in the etymological or Kantian or equivalent meanings of the word "object" it would be only a fallacy to conclude that he cannot be an object in the quite different meaning just indicated. Moreover, it has always been in the context, at least implicit, of this meaning that the question of God and arguments for God's existence have been presented. Nor is this meaning of the word "object" limited to philosophers and theologians. On the contrary, every serious scientist that ever existed was concerned with the advancement of science, with coming to know more than at present is known, with the object to which we dynamically are orientated by our questions but which we only partially know. (Fs)

124c Secondly, let us consider the nature of the unverifiable principle by which we proceed from knowledge of this world to knowledge of God. Four points need to be touched upon, namely, What is verification? What principles need to be verified? Are there principles that do not need to be verified? Will these principles take us beyond this world to knowledge of God?

124d First, what is verification? Vulgarly, verification seems to be conceived as a matter of taking a look, of making an observation. In fact, while verification includes observations, it includes not one but indefinitely many, and it includes them within a very elaborate context. That context divides into two parts, direct and indirect verification. Direct verification is a matter of working out the logical presuppositions and implications of a very carefully formulated hypothesis, devising experiments that will yield data that conform or do not conform with the implications of the hypothesis and, when hypotheses conflict, devising crucial experiments that will resolve the conflict. Indirect verification is more massive and, ultimately, more significant. All hypotheses, theories, systems of a science are linked together proximately or remotely in logical interdependence. So, for instance, the law of falling bodies was verified directly by Galileo, but it also has been verified indirectly every time in the last four centuries that that law was among the presuppositions of a successful experiment or a successful application. Similarly, any other law of principle wins an ever securer position by the far-flung and almost continuous process of indirect verification whether in laboratories or in the applications of science to industry. Nonetheless, not even the cumulative evidence assembled by the all but countless observations of direct and prolonged indirect verification suffice to exempt a scientific hypothesis from liability to revision. Unlike the everyday statements of common sense, such as "I now am here speaking to you," they do not meet the requirements for a certain judgment set by the natural light of human reason. They are merely probable, and everyone enjoying the use of the natural light of human reason knows that they are merely probable. (Fs)

125a Incidentally, may I remark that I should like to see greater attention paid by certain types of analytic philosophy to the notable gaps between an observation and a process of verification and, on the other hand, true and certain knowledge. (Fs)

125b Secondly, what needs to be verified? What is the need for verification? It is a need disclosed to us by what Vatican I referred to as the natural light of human reason, by what I should name our power to ask and answer questions. The first type of question, the question for intelligence, asks what or why or how. The question is put with respect to data, but the answer that is sought goes beyond the data; it is not just some other datum but something quite different from data, namely, a possibly relevant intelligible unity or relationship. Such possibly relevant intelligible unities or relationships are grasped by insights and expressed in hypothetical statements. From the nature of the case there arises, then, the further question, Is the possibly relevant unity or relationship the one that is actually relevant to this case or to this type of case? Common sense meets such questions by what I called in my book Insight the self-correcting process of learning. Natural science meets them by the process of direct and indirect verification. (Fs)

126a Thirdly, are there principles that do not need to be verified? Here I would distinguish two meanings of the word "principle." Commonly it is understood as a logically first proposition, an ultimate premiss. More generally, principle has been defined as what is first in any ordered set, primum in aliquo ordine. In this more general sense, an originating power is a principle, and, specifically, our power to ask and answer questions is such an originating power and so a principle. Now obviously this principle, which is the human mind itself, does not need verification for its validation. It is only by the actual use of our minds that any inquiry and any process of verification can be carried out. Hence, every appeal to verification as a source of validation presupposes a prior and more fundamental appeal to the human mind as a source of validation. (Fs) (notabene)

126b However, besides the mind itself, besides our originating power to ask and answer questions, there is the objectification of this power in concepts and principles. Besides the notion of being, which is the intending behind all our questions, there is also the concept of being, which is an objectification of the notion. Besides the native procedures of the mind in asking and answering questions, there is the objectification of these procedures in such principles as identity, contradiction, sufficient reason and, more fully, in logics and methods. Now these objectifications are historically conditioned. They can be incomplete or erroneous, and they can be corrected, revised, developed. Consequently, they have to be scrutinized, checked, verified. But the process of verification appeals, not to the data of sense, but to the data of consciousness, not to any data whatever of consciousness but to the data on the process of asking and answering questions. (Fs)
127a Fourthly, do these principles suffice to take us beyond the visible universe to knowledge of God? The answer to that question depends on the answer to our prior question about knowledge and its object. On Kantian and positivist views our knowledge is confined to a world of experience. On some subjectivist views, while we cannot know God as an object, still we can enter into some subject-to-subject relation with him in religious experience. But if human knowing consists in asking and answering questions, if ever further questions arise, if the further questions are given honest answers then, as I have argued elsewhere at some length, we can and do arrive at knowledge of God.1 (Fs)