Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: 1 Dramatisches Erfahrungsmuster des Common Sense - Verantwortung, Moral

Kurzinhalt: ... it is in the dramatic pattern that the object or intentional term of such skills is the ongoing actuation and reconstitution of the pattern of relations of the subject in his or her 'external' and 'internal' environments.

Textausschnitt: 5.5 The Dramatic Pattern and Responsible, Moral Practice

43/5 In his account of the dramatic pattern of experience Lonergan begins to lay the foundations for an account of moral, responsible practice. While the biological and the aesthetic patterns of experience involve some measure of cognitional operation mediating practical routines or skills, it is in the dramatic pattern that the object or intentional term of such skills is the ongoing actuation and reconstitution of the pattern of relations of the subject in his or her 'external' and 'internal' environments. The goal of the presentation in this chapter, to this point, has been to indicate how emergent probability sets the terms and relations of Lonergan's account of the various types of practical skills within human life, and to indicate how the cognitional acts play a limited but nonetheless effective and potentially transformative role in the practical skills of the various experiential patterns. From here on my object is to begin to assemble the foundational elements of the meaning of the term 'responsibility.' And my approach will be to outline some of the similarities and the differences between the dramatic pattern and the other patterns, and then to highlight the distinctive elements of a type of practice in which the human subject transforms and sustains the transformation of his or her life through the differentiated and coordinated application of all ranges of skills. To speak of human freedom and its correlate human responsibility is to suggest that such differentiating and coordinating acts involve some measure of reflexively operative self-constitution. And so the last section of this chapter is devoted to a discussion of Lonergan's rather novel distinction between essential and effective freedom. (141; Fs)

Where the scientist seeks the relations of things to one another, common sense is concerned with the relations of things to us. Where the scientist's correlations serve to define the things that he relates to one another, common sense not merely relates objects to a subject but also constitutes relations of the subject to objects. Where the scientist is primarily engaged in knowing, common sense cannot develop without changing the subjective term in the object-to-subject relations that it knows.1

44/5 First. Lonergan's characteristic distinction of common sense is its preoccupation with the elements of experience insofar as they have an import or a bearing on the subject. In this sense, the dramatic pattern of common sense shares with the routines of the biological pattern an orientation towards the 'sustenance' and the 'nutrition,' so to speak, of the subject. Certainly the mediation of the meanings and routines of a culture, an economy and a civilization vastly expands the meaning of the terms 'sustenance' and 'nutritition' so as to introduce a notion of human 'well-being' that is in no way constrained by the limits of biological purpose. But the orientation of the dramatic pattern remains subject-centered. Theoretical knowing in the intellectual pattern, on the other hand, suppresses this concern for the immediate import of knowledge. The dramatic operation of common sense is concerned with knowing, but knowing inasmuch and insofar as it makes an immediate practical difference to my life. (142; Fs) (notabene)

45/5 Second. Lonergan introduces here the first significant instance wherein the performance of acts of intelligence has the effect of ordering decisively the performance of sense and motor skills towards the attainment of an object. The dramatic pattern is not satisfied merely with knowing intelligible relations, it is oriented towards constituting and reconstituting common and new relations. And such relations are constituted as events and plans of action, conceived by intelligence (whether the intelligence of the subject him or herself, or that of the members or founders of the community) and actuated as the integrating principle of complex schemes of skills. The common sense concern or appetite for changing the conditions of life is integrally related to, and a natural upshot of the concern for the import of things for us. Inasmuch as we care about things that make a difference for us, the common sense understanding of such things fulfills the conditions for our application of intelligence and imagination to devising and executing strategies that relate us to such things in the interest of an ever-expanding notion of well-being. (142; Fs) (notabene)

46/5 Third. The routine operation of common sense changes the subject. In the dramatic pattern this change, a subtle yet significant transformation in spontaneity, emerges in the course of devising and implementing projects, developing roles, and intelligently adapting to new situations (the various ways in which new and old subject-object relations are constituted). While the cognitional operations are decisive in ordering behaviour in the dramatic pattern, still the execution of projects, the development of roles and routines and the adaptation to new situations have the principal effect of transforming ourselves in our habitual way of relating to the objects of experience. Such relations or orientations operate as routine or recurring attitudes, anticipations, expectations, routine patterns for organizing materials and projecting courses of action, and spontaneous feelings and images that are evoked in connection with people, places, insights and environments. (142f; Fs) (notabene)

47/5 Lonergan is quite aware that these habitual orientations to the objects of experience are not directly the products of deliberation and choice. Rather, they are by-products or results of one's whole life of common sense decisions and actions. While common sense intelligence has moved on to new matters the subject's orientation to his or her experience has been constituted by previous experiences, insights and decisions. Intelligent reflection and decision decisively order the materials and activities of experience. But it is the spontaneous relation of the subject to the objects of his or her experience that selects and assembles the materials to be ordered and provides the clues that will condition the probable emergence of insights and programs of action.2 (143; Fs) (notabene)