Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: 2 Dramatisches Erfahrungsmuster des Common Sense; das neurale Mannigfaltige - Einsicht, Finalität

Kurzinhalt: The structure of this relationship between a flexible neural manifold and its emergent integration in psychic acts reflects a dynamic orientation towards a higher order intelligibility and Lonergan has named this orientation finality.

Textausschnitt: 48/5 There stands here in this account of the common sense operation of intelligence in its dramatic pattern, many of the elements that Lonergan will develop into his prolegomenon to an ethics in Insight, chapter eighteen, and his partial sketch of moral life in Method, chapter two. And it would be worthwhile here to identify precisely what these elements are. (143; Fs)

49/5 First. This account of Lonergan's includes the possibility of a mode of human performance that is not determined entirely by biological, or social or psychological conditions. The relationship between the neurological conditions and the emergence of acts of intelligent control over sensorimotor skills includes an element of randomness.1 The neural manifold of the human subject can be so ordered through the performance of sense and motor operations that a determinate set of images, sensory experiences, and linguistically controlled insights can become present to his or her attention at a given time. This set of images, sense experiences and insights can be ordered or integrated in any of a number of ways in an original or a common act of imagination or insight. Likewise a set of insights can so order this flexible neural manifold that imagination and intellect can be called to attention and sense and motor skills can be ordered or integrated in complex set of operations like those involved in playing the piano. (143; Fs)

50/5 The neural manifold clearly presents an exigence in a certain direction in accordance with the demands of the moment and the habitual orientation of the subject. But this exigence generally is not completely decisive. Rather, there is usually some measure of flexibility to the neural manifold that permits a number of possible forms of psychic integration. It is this flexibility and the absence of completely and universally determining system - this element of randomness - that grounds the possibility of practical action becoming responsible. And it is this element of randomness that is developed as an essentially constitutive element of Lonergan's ethics presented in Insight, chapter eighteen, and discussed in the pages that follow. (143f; Fs)

51/5 Second. The structure of this relationship between a flexible neural manifold and its emergent integration in psychic acts reflects a dynamic orientation towards a higher order intelligibility and Lonergan has named this orientation finality. This dynamic orientation is manifested both in the integration of experiential elements in insights and in the coordination of sensorimotor skills into programs or routines of action in accordance with acts of intelligence. But the dynamism of finality is further manifested in the relations among the various patterns of experience, in the developmental scheme of assimilation and adjustment wherein the child or adult acquires and perfects skills, in the subject's spontaneous preference for more developed satisfactions and values, and most generally, in the subject's whole care-ful orientation to being. Most fundamentally the dynamic orientation of finality is towards emergent intelligibility, towards the probable realization or actuation of intelligibility as its conditions are fulfilled. While this dynamic notion of finality is heuristically operative throughout this account of common sense in its dramatic pattern it is this notion of finality which will become the key element in the distinction between true and false values and between genetically related values in Insight, chapters seven and eighteen, and Method, chapter two. These are discussed below in chapter six, 6.5 and 6.6. (144; Fs)