Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: self-affirmation als description und explanatory definition; das Ich ist nicht bloß "hypothetisch"

Kurzinhalt: Aussagen über die Selbstaneignung: Synthese der Vorteile von Beschreibung und erklärender Definition; behaviorist, linguistic analyst

Textausschnitt: () Is this a descriptive account of the knower, or is it an explanatory account? Our distinction between description and explanation was between the type of knowledge that appeals ultimately to the relations of things to us and the type of knowledge that involves relations of things to one another. It is clear that this is an explanatory account, insofar as it isolates fundamental elements, distinctive steps in the cognitional process, which are definable by their relations to one another.
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Again, while the account is explanatory, it is not hypothetical in the sense in which explanatory science is hypothetical. Each of the elements is directly verifiable.
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Is this account, then, descriptive or explanatory? It has the advantages of both, one may say. It has all the advantages of the concreteness of the descriptive type insofar as the elements and the unity are verifiable in consciousness. It has all the advantages of the explanatory type insofar as the different elements are of their very nature interdependently linked together in the process.