Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Gruppenbefangenheit (group bias); Dialektik: Anpassung zugunsten des Strebens nach Wahrheit; Spannung: dominante - margnalisierte Gruppen

Kurzinhalt: ... the 'group bias' results when the second dialectic, operative immanently in men and women, undergoes a recurrent distortion. And the drive towards mutuality with members of the social group takes precedence over ...

Textausschnitt: 7.4 Group Bias

28/7 In the above presentation of Lonergan's notion of intersubjectivity I suggested that two dialectics are operative immanently in the living out of man's nature as distinctively human. The first involves the tension between the exigence of the subject's experiential basis in the events and schemes of his or her neural manifold and the intelligent and responsible drive to integrate that manifold in acts of understanding, judgment, and most profoundly practical, moral activity. The second dialectic involves the tension between the first dialectic and the spontaneous drive to unification with other human subjects as subjects, in the mutuality of respect, care and love. The individual bias occurred when the human subject so circumscribed his or her horizon of personal desires and goals that the drive of intelligence and responsibility was stopped or cut short. In the face of an experiential exigence demanding further questions to be answered, a broadened sensitivity to more remote realms of experience and finally an expansion of that horizon within which intelligence functions, the spontaneous dynamism of intellect is laid to premature rest. The result of this failure of intelligence and responsibility is a reordering of the experiential manifold, a censorship of its exigencies and a repression of the relevant neural demands until they either forced their way back into conscious life or deformed the habitual operations of the subject. (219; Fs) (notabene)

29/7 When the social and economic routines that are constitutive of a society begin to meet changing conditions which demand substantial changes in their operative structures, there occurs a rising frequency of instances of bias in the intelligent, responsible operations of subjects. But unlike the individual bias this instance of bias is not merely the result of individuals restraining the mandate of intelligence in the interest of personal gain. Rather, the 'group bias' results when the second dialectic, operative immanently in men and women, undergoes a recurrent distortion. And the drive towards mutuality with members of the social group takes precedence over the demands of practical intelligence and responsibility. (219; Fs) (notabene)

30/7 When changes in the environment of a society's operation begin to demand structural changes in the relations which constitute that society then the dominant groups in that society face the prospect of significant threats to their established gains and interests. Thus members of the group circumscribe their own horizons of interests as over against mounting evidence that such is not the more general good. And bias begins to operate.1 But because the interests which are defended by the dominant group are those of a class or group of people the drive towards solidarity within the group will begin to operate massively and effectively to preclude habitual attention to the defects in its horizons. Thus the conditions surrounding the wide-scale genesis of insights and responsible action that seek the good of the whole of society are precluded (i.e. regular experiential contact with the suffering of the marginalized, and the habitual raising of questions concerning the relevance of this experience to the restructuring of the whole society or economy). The intelligent and responsible acts of the group settle their accounts with the drive toward intersubjective mutuality within the group before consulting the exigence of the experiential data on the whole of society. And the common insights, values and expectations of the group operate spontaneously as a horizon within which intelligence meets the data of experience.2 (219f; Fs)

31/7 The fact that the dominant classes possess control results in their increased ability to mobilize insights that promote their own interests. Corresponding to this success is the failure of marginalized groups to make operative the acts and routines which would promote their own welfare.3 Thus the course of social development (220; Fs)

[...] does not correspond to any coherently developed set of practical ideas. It represents the fraction of practical ideas that were made operative by their conjunction with power.4
32/7 The tension between the partial insights operatively constitutive of the social whole and the experiential exigence of the conditions of social and economic life which demand a restructuring of the social whole (a restructuring which would favour the whole of society and not simply the dominant groups) manifests itself in a tension between the dominant and the marginalized social groups and a visible distortion or aberration in the routines of social and economic life. This distortion eventually becomes great enough to be visible to all and the tensions between the groups begins to manifest itself in class unrest. This combination of evident distortion and class unrest becomes a principle for social and historical change that awaits the catalysis of an individual like Marx to be actuated.5 (220; Fs)

33/7 Clearly Lonergan shares Marx's (and Hegel's) appreciation of the fact that history moves forward as the distortions of any age fuel the engines for their own reversal. But in Lonergan's view, an end to this cycle of domination cannot consist in a transformation of historical conditions. The historical cycle which results from the group bias and its tendency to effect its own reversal by mobilizing the neglected interest and insights of the marginalized is conceived by Lonergan to be an ongoing shorter cycle of alienation and short-lived liberation. Once the marginalized groups come to power their own attempts to structure the whole of society in accordance with the partial insights of their own perspective eventually suffer the same distortions due to the group bias for which their predecessors were ousted. The basis for this conviction, that the group bias is not to be overcome immanently, is rooted in Lonergan's basic conception of the problem operative in the group bias. And here he differs with Marx in his assessment of the form and the import of historical, economic conditions for acts of 'production,' and of the role of subjective agency in effecting historical change. And so in order to understand as precisely as possible the locus and the nature of these differences I will draw upon some reliable sources to summarize, very briefly, Marx's analysis of the human situation and its prospects for solution. (220f; Fs) (notabene)