Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Debatte um a priori als Folge der Erkenntnis als taking a look; stattdessen: Erkenntnis als antologische Vollkommenheit

Kurzinhalt: The Notion of the A Priori; Schluss: a priori, a posteriori, a simultaneo; synthetische Aussagen a priori (Kant); spiritual x-rays; anstelle: Frage nach a priori: Fr. nach Bedeutung

Textausschnitt: () 'The a priori' is a term used in three contexts. First, it is used with regard to reasoning or inference. An a priori inference is from the cause to the effect; an a posteriori inference is from the effect to the cause; an a simultaneo inference is from the mere concept of the thing. You cannot have an a priori proof of the existence of God because God has no cause. Any argument for God's existence in terms of cause and effect has to be from the effect to the cause, an a posteriori argument.
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Kant spoke of the a priori particularly with regard to propositions or judgments. His notion of an a priori proposition or judgment is that it is absolutely independent of experience.
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Kant assigns absolutely a priori propositions two characteristics, necessity and universality.
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Kant further divides a priori propositions into analytic and synthetic, ...
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On the other hand, if knowing is conceived not as looking but as an ontological perfection of the subject,
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A third sense of the a priori was also introduced by Kant with regard to intuitions and concepts. Kant holds that there are a priori intuitions, a priori concepts, and also a priori ideas. He reaches an a priori intuition by removing from intuition all of its contingent elements. If you are looking at a body and you remove the color, shape, hardness, its impenetrability, and so on, you are left with empty space; you don't remove that: it is intrinsic to having an intuition. So the space is a priori. Similarly, with regard to the concept, ...
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Now the real issue is, How much of knowing is from the subject, and how much is from the object?
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Knowing can be conceived as intrinsically or essentially a matter of confrontation, of taking a look, seeing what is there, intuition. Since knowing, on this account, is what comes from the look, anything that comes from the subject is not knowing at all; and if it comes from the subject, that just means it is not knowing. Knowing is what is given in the look, and what is known is what is out there to be looked at and seen when one looks. One may go further and distinguish between sensible looks (looks through one's senses) and spiritual looks (looks with one's intellect, interior and spiritual x-rays that penetrate the essence of things and see the essence that is there).
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If you conceive knowing as a perfection, then the question of the a priori, of what comes from the subject and what comes from the object, is of minor moment. ... We have, then really two questions, a question of fact and a question of significance. It is the question of significance that concerns us, ...
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Our account certainly involves a dependence of knowing on the subject. But it is not simply our account. We know because it is natural to us. Plants do not know, because it is not natural to them to know. Animals have sense knowledge, but not intellectual knowledge. But we know. Why?