Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Geschichte als Meinung; 3. Antwort auf Einwand; Zusammenwirken der 1. und 2. Dialektik; Evolution

Kurzinhalt: ... this third objection asks whether the operations of such patterns and processes do not decisively condition subjective acts of meaning so that, in an extreme view, the self-regulating activity of intelligence and responsibility is precluded.

Textausschnitt: 6.4.3 'External' Conditions and the Dramatic Subject

61/6 The last of the three objections to conceiving history in terms of meaning, which were raised above, concerns the schemes and series of society and history as determinants of the intelligent activities of individual subjects. Whereas the second objection above concerned the role of individual acts of meaning in constituting the patterns and processes of society and history, this third objection asks whether the operations of such patterns and processes do not decisively condition subjective acts of meaning so that, in an extreme view, the self-regulating activity of intelligence and responsibility is precluded. (187; Fs)
62/6 The elements for this response have been assembled. And so this response will be brief. In addition, in the following chapter, I will present a more detailed response to the most influential and articulate formulation of this objection.1 And so many more details on this issue will be found there. (187; Fs)

63/6 This account of Lonergan's work recognizes the emergence of patterns in the operation and development of an economy, a political society. And the conditions within which an individual grows, learns, chooses a career, organizes his or her life, understands him or herself will, in large measure, be set by the contemporary modes and relations of production, the contemporary patterns of circulation and accumulation of capital, and the class structures of the age.2 But, once again, there remains operative an immanent dynamism and immanent criteria to the operations that distinctively constitute human activities as human. This operative principle is linked to the experiential exigence of the neural manifold in one dialectic, and it is linked to this exigence and to a further drive towards intersubjective mutuality in another dialectic. But with the performance of the intelligent and responsible skills there occurs an emergent integration of the materials of the intersubjective environment of the subject's life. Such an integration operates more or less competently in accordance with the subject's developed sensitivity to the demands of the experiential manifold and to the drive towards mutuality. But the ordering principle of intelligent and intelligently mediated acts is on the level of the psychic and not on the level of the neural. Consequently this account of the dynamic structure of such acts precludes a reductionist account of the import of economy and polity on the emergence of meaning. In fact it would seem that the schemes and series of contemporary economy and polity require the relatively developed performance of intelligent and responsible acts within wider ranges of flexibility.3 (187; Fs)

64/6 Furthermore, to understand the contemporary operation of economy and history, to identify the flaws in the current situation, to educate others and raise public consciousness of ills that demand redressing, and to implement changes in the structures of routines and in the policies that regulate such routines will require the performance of these cognitional and responsible operations. And such performance will constitute the essential element in the transformation of economy, polity and history. Efforts toward change will be intelligent and they will have a goal and a preconceived conception of the course of such change. The actual course of change will diverge from this goal either for better or for worse. For changes give rise to further changes that cannot be foreseen. But the continued application of intelligence and responsibility will be required either to evaluate this new course of history and to direct it in accordance with intelligent criteria or to refuse the mandate of intelligence and thus mobilize a principle for its own subsequent reversal. (187f; Fs)

65/6 In summary, then, Lonergan presents his notion of dialectic as an introductory analysis of a structure to the operation of historical process understood in terms of emergent probability. The dialectic operative between the exigence of a subject's neural manifold and the transcendental drive to ordering this manifold in the operations of the 'basic pattern of experience' will constitute a recurrent structure in the development and decline of the subject's intentional operations. Since the subject is never an isolated subject the manifold will always consist of schemes that link him or her to the myriad of elements and processes of his or her 'external environment.' Consequently the neural manifold, the complete and total environment of the subject, will always be changing in accordance with the subtlest physical, biological and intelligent events occurring beyond the 'confines' of his or her own envelope of skin. This dialectic, then, will itself constitute a structure of social and historical process. But in addition to this dialectic, there is an additional dialectic that links the structured occurrence of the operations of intelligence of two or more subjects with the spontaneous, vital and affective drive to mutuality and love between them. And so the two dialectics will operate as engines of social and historical change that function in continuity with the free, intelligent and reponsible operations of the subjects, in accordance with a dynamic pattern that need not be grasped and intended by any of the historical actors, and in a concrete context of conditions whose uniqueness and particularity does not violate the general dialectical structure. (188; Fs) (notabene)

66/6 This emergent probability heuristic, in my view, provides a powerful and distinctive framework for understanding the operations of human history in terms of human acts of meaning. As a generalized heuristic emergent probability recognizes human history as continuous in structure with the longer history of physical and biological evolutionary processes. However, the notions of randomness and emergence allow for, and indeed they explain, a discontinuity as well as a wider structural continuity between human history and physical, biological evolution. At the most basic level this discontinuity consists in the fact that human history is constituted by acts of meaning, and that the development of skills can fulfill the conditions for insights thus systematizing flows of classes of insights and adapting insights to concrete circumstances, thus transforming history. But given the fact of intelligent, responsible capacities, a set of intersubjective, social, economic, political schemes can emerge spontaneously in human societies in a pattern which bears remarkable similarity to the general evolutionary structure in physical and biological spheres. (188f; Fs)

67/6 Thus a new intelligibility arises within human history which is no one's invention. Similarly social, historical conditions can shift the probabilities associated with recurring classes of meanings. These conditions can be fulfilled as a result of coincidental convergences, as a result of wider systematically operative trends in language, symbol and culture, or as a result of insight and responsible political action. And these shifting conditions can operate either to liberate humanity to effective freedom or to distort culture in a form of bias. Human responsibility can come to know bias, and promote the accelerated development of skills and conversions, thus adding a wider proliferation in flexibility and adaptability among human historical operators. And here, now, the parallels with physical evolution appear more and more remote. Finally emergent probability can be known as a heuristic and, in time, a theory of history can bring the dynamics of history under a further dimension of human responsibility when it is discovered that theory can embrace and nurture the random, the non-systematic, and that the norms for meaning, value and history are immanent to human subjects. (189; Fs)