Lonergan's Cognitional Theory

What am I doing when I am knowing?

One’s answer to this question, as I noted earlier, will be a cognitional theory. Lonergan believed that in order to know how we come to know anything, we need to pay close attention to the things that go on in our consciousness.

He listed the following as the “basic pattern of operations”:

seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting, inquiring, imagining, understanding, conceiving, formulating, reflecting, marshalling and weighing the evidence, judging, deliberating, evaluating, deciding, speaking, writing.¹

Presumably most if not all of these operations are familiar to you.

The first thing to be noted is that all of these operations are intentional. This is another potentially misleading term. The most common meaning of this term is roughly synonymous with the word “deliberate,” but that is not how Lonergan is using it here. He is referring to the fact that each of these operations requires an object. So, for example, one cannot see without seeing something, nor can one imagine without imagining something, and so on. The something in each case is what Lonergan calls the object.²

Lonergan further explains,

To say that the operations intend objects is to refer to such facts as that by seeing there becomes present what is seen, by hearing there becomes present what is heard, by imagining there becomes present what is imagined, and so on, where in each case the presence in question is a psychological event.³

Now, operations imply an operator, and the operator is called the subject. The operations are performed consciously, and it is through these operations that the operator is conscious.

The operations are diverse, and so too are the objects intended by them. Lonergan identified four levels of consciousness and intentionality:

1. The empirical level, the level of experiencing: sensing, perceiving, imagining, feeling, and so on.
2. The intellectual level, the level of understanding: inquiring, understanding, conceiving, and so on.
3. The rational level, the level of judging: reflecting, marshalling and weighing the evidence, passing judgment on the truth or falsity, or the certainty or probability, of a statement.
4. The responsible level, the level of deciding: considering possible courses of action, evaluating them, deciding whether to carry them out, etc.⁴

This is how Lonergan describes the subject’s movement through these levels:

Our consciousness expands in a new dimension when from mere experiencing we turn to the effort to understand what we have experienced. A third dimension of rationality emerges when the content of our acts of understanding is regarded as, of itself, a mere bright idea and we endeavor to settle what really is so. A fourth dimension comes to the fore when judgment on the facts is followed by deliberation on what we are to do about them.⁵

More succinctly, we can say that every act of knowing involves a pattern of experiencing, understanding, and judging. [The fourth level, of deciding, while extremely important, is not constitutive of knowing as such. We come to know many things without making any decision about what to do them. The responsible level will be treated separately.] I’ll briefly describe each level, leaving a more detailed explanation (with concrete examples) for later:

Experiencing. If someone is in a deep coma, or is undergoing dreamless sleep, they cannot come to know anything. So experiencing is necessarily a part of knowing. But, contrary to the claims of empiricist philosophy, experience it is not in itself constitutive of knowledge. What we experience is, by itself, nothing more than scraps of data.  

Understanding. To the data of our experience we put the question, “What is it?” Lonergan calls this the “question for intelligence.” Our answer comes in the form of an insight. We have an insight whenever we come to understand something. Merely arriving at an insight is not constitutive of knowledge, either. Our answer to the question “What is it?” might well be correct, but it could also be incorrect.

 Judging. With regard to our insight we ask the question, “Is it so?” This is the “question for reflection.” It’s here that we judge whether there is adequate grounds to support our initial insight. The question for reflection is answered with a further insight, what Lonergan calls a reflective insight. That, in a nutshell, is Lonergan’s answer (as I understand it, anyway) to the question, “What am I doing when I am knowing.” But why is doing that knowing? That is the second basic question which I’ll take up next.

The next post in this series, “Epistemology,” is forthcoming.

Notes

1. Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology, 6.

2. For a helpful explanation of the various meanings of “intention” and “intentionality,” see Michael Vertin, "Intention, Intentionality." The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality. Michael Downey, ed. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000: 542-543.

3. Lonergan, Method, 7.

4. Lonergan, Method, 9.

5. Lonergan, Method, 9.

Lonergan's Three Basic Questions

Bernard Lonergan said that the human person “achieves authenticity in self-transcendence.”¹

Self-transcendence can be cognitive or moral. In cognitive self-transcendence I attain knowledge of that which is beyond myself. The judgment I make concerns “not what appears to me, not what I imagine, not what I think, not what I wish, not what I would be inclined to say, not what seems to me, but what is so.”²

Moral self-transcendence is attained when I judge that this or that is not only apparently good, but is truly good (or, conversely, not only apparently bad, but truly bad), independently of my thinking so.

Lonergan’s account of how we achieve self-transcendence, which he called “Transcendental Method,” is his most important contribution to philosophy. I’m going to spend a little while discussing it.

Consider the following three questions:

• What am I doing when I am knowing?
• Why is doing that knowing?
• What do I know when I do it?

Lonergan held that a person’s answers to these questions will be, respectively, their cognitional theory, their epistemology, and their metaphysics.³

It is important to clarify what Lonergan meant (or didn’t mean) by some of these terms. By “knowing” he did not simply mean “possessing knowledge.” We possess a lot of knowledge attained in the past, and we aren’t really doing anything with it most of the time. What he meant by “knowing” is the process of coming to know something.

Another potentially misleading term is “metaphysics.” Some people are quite turned off by this term, equating it with a kind of outmoded philosophical speculation unsupported by any kind of evidence. This is certainly not how Lonergan uses it. Indeed, he described his metaphysics as “verifiable,” and as we will see, this is exactly what it is.

I’m going to quickly go through Lonergan’s answers to each of the three questions, and then provide more detailed explanations with some concrete examples.

Read “Lonergan's Cognitional Theory”

Notes

1. Lonergan, Method in Theology, 104.

2. Lonergan, Method, 104; emphasis added.

3. Lonergan, Method, 25.

Lonergan on the Problem of Authenticity

In our time, said the Jesuit philosopher Bernard Lonergan, an "agonizing question" has arisen, "namely, how can one tell whether one's appropriation of religion is genuine or unauthentic and, more radically, how can one tell one is not appropriating a religious tradition that has become unauthentic."¹

So the problem of authenticity occurs on two levels: the minor level of the individual in relation to their tradition, and the major level of the tradition itself.²

On a minor level, individual people might “ask themselves whether or not they are genuine Catholics or Protestants, Moslems or Buddhists,” etc. They might conclude that they are, and they may be correct—but they might also be incorrect. They may have appropriated some of the ideals demanded by the tradition, but there are other ways in which they have diverged from the tradition.

Whether from selective inattention, or a failure to understand, or an undetected rationalization, the divergence exists. What I am is one thing, what a genuine Christian is is another, and I am unaware of the difference. My unawareness is unexpressed. Indeed, I have no language to express what I really am, so I use the language of the tradition I unauthentically appropriate, and thereby I devaluate, distort, water down, corrupt that language.³

It’s important to understand what he is and is not saying here. He is not saying that there is one true form of a religious tradition, and that any divergence from that one true form is tantamount to inauthenticity. (Note that where Lonergan uses “unauthentic,” etc., I find it more natural to write “inauthentic.” I mean the same thing.) On the contrary, there is always the possibility of authentic progress when people understand the genuine ideals of their tradition and know what they’re doing when they effect change. It’s when people are inauthentic—when they are insufficiently attentive, when they fail to understand or be fully reasonable or responsible—that they appropriate their tradition inauthentically.

Such devaluation, distortion, corruption may occur only in scattered individuals, and then there occurs unauthenticity in its minor form. But it may also occur on a more massive scale, and then the words are repeated but the meaning is gone. The chair is still the chair of Moses, but it is occupied by scribes and Pharisees. The theology is still Scholastic, but the Scholasticism is decadent. The religious order still reads out the rules and studies the constitutions, but one may doubt whether the home fires are still burning.⁴

When a tradition becomes inauthentic, and when an individual takes that inauthentic tradition as normative, the best they can do authentically realise inauthenticity. This, Lonergan says, “is unauthenticity in its tragic form, for then the best of intentions combine with a hidden decay.”⁵

When this is the case, the individual has to meet the problem of authenticity on both levels: “Not only have they to undo their own lapses from righteousness,” Lonergan says, “but more grievously they have to discover what is wrong in the tradition they have inherited and they have to struggle against the massive undertow it sets up.”⁶

Lonergan adds that “the problem is not tradition but unauthenticity in the formation and transmission of tradition. The cure is not the undoing of tradition but the undoing of its unauthenticity”:⁷

The cure is not the undoing of tradition, for that is beyond our power. It is only through socialization, acculturation, education, that we come to know that there is such a thing as tradition, that it has its defects, its dangers, its seductions, that there are evils to be remedied. To learn as much is already to be a product of the tradition, to share its biases, to be marked in a manner that we can change only in the light of what we have learnt and in the directions that such learning opens up. However much we may react, criticize, endeavor to bring about change, the change itself will always be just another stage of the tradition, at most a new era, but one whose motives and whose goals—for all their novelty—will bear the imprint of their past. The issue is not tradition, for as long as men survive, there will be tradition, rich or impoverished, good and evil. The issue is the struggle of authenticity against unauthenticity, and that struggle is part and parcel of the human condition…⁸

The struggle against the minor form of inauthenticity has long been recognised. So St. Paul, for instance, exhorted the Corinthians, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are living in the faith,” (2 Cor 13.5) to see, that is, whether you have authentically appropriated what has been handed down to you. It seems to me that the need for this particular struggle is universally recognised, even if it is not universally achieved.

The need for the more radical struggle, on the other hand, is a matter of some controversy. While there are many who recognise that their tradition has been distorted by inauthenticity, there many more who do not. There are some, indeed, who think it rather impious merely to consider the idea. Much of the conflict in the Church is over precisely this point, so it is a matter of considerable importance.

The authenticity of a tradition depends on the personal authenticity of the individuals who begin and transmit the tradition (which ultimately amounts to everyone within the tradition, to some extent). So it is important to understand what personal authenticity involves. I’ll continue by exploring some of his ideas on the subject.

Read "Lonergan's Three Basic Questions

Notes

1. Lonergan, “Religious Knowledge,” 130. (All of the quotations in this post have been taken from two lectures Lonergan gave in 1976 that were subsequently published in A Third Collection. Some of the material Lonergan used in his lecture can be found in Lonergan, Method in Theology, 80.

2. See Lonergan, “Religious Experience,” 120.

3. Lonergan, “Religious Experience,” 121.

4. Lonergan, “Religious Experience,” 121.

5. Lonergan, “Religious Experience,” 121.

6. Lonergan, “Religious Experience,” 121.

7. Lonergan, “Religious Experience,” 121-122.

8. Lonergan, “Religious Experience,” 122.