[Lonergan_l] the "real"

[Jaray...@aol.com]

Josh,

as a first, minimal corrective to your phrasing "that reality is
identical with understanding" one had best say that understanding is identical
with reality to the extent that one's understanding has gone through the
process of arriving at correct judgments to "carve out" a correct understanding
of a certain limited reality.

The later Lonergan (BL), eg in his Method in Theology (MiT), refined
that process by investingating the process of mutually mediated understanding
(by communities of investigators and/or authentic persons) in the process
he explores in the functional specialties. In any case, Lonergan invites us
to ever further conversions so that instead of understanding being
"identical" with reality, it involves the further self-corrective process of ever
deeper understandings of what "reality" may be about, how it can be
addressed.

You say BL wants "to affirm a real that is not understanding". One
could only conceivably say this in the sense that the "real" (the MANY known
unknowns) has (have) to be appropriated through correct judgments. Such a
process of arriving at correct judgments begins with self. The process is
(ever re-)affirmed through functionally specialized cooperation as outlined in
MiT. This is at best a skeleton outline which I do hope others will expand
upon.

To relate this present discussion to some of the problematics that
Nicholas has been focusing on, I would refer you to Insight (1958, 538) where
in Chapter XVII, "Metaphysics as Dialectic", BL writes:

"Mythic consciousness experiences and imagines, understands judges, but
it does not distinguish between" the activities of critically reflective
processes. It is therefore "incapable of guiding itself by the rule that the
impalpable act of rational assent is the necessary and sufficient
condition for knowledge of reality."


John

[Jeremy Blackwood]

It might also help to insert the further corrective that reality and
understanding are FORMALLY identical.

Sent from my iPod

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[Toll Booth]

Jeremy (and others),

Thank-you and a good point. When I write of this I am writing from a
reduplicative view that would include an understanding of the relations
between different varieties of understanding - direct, inverse, reflective.
I guess what I'm saying is that understanding understanding is primarily an
intimate self-unity that differentiates into these types or moments to find
that the relations between them resolve back into that primary unity on the
basis that understanding understanding is the basis of differentiation into
types of understanding, the relations between the types being identical with
understanding understanding relating them by differentiating them.

My sentences get a bit long sometimes, sorry if what I just wrote seems a
mess. I guess what I am saying is that, rather than saying that he is
talking about moving from non-understanding to diverse inter-related types
of understanding to the reduplication of those relations and types
(composite self-affirmation) to the unity of transcendent understanding with
itself, why not drop the history and say the differentiation begins with
that unity of understanding with itself?

Here is the concrete difficulty that leads me to say this. The latter is a
condition of setting up the conditional structure to verify the former, so I
run into difficulty verifying the former progression/process without
assuming that the process is already complete.

In other words, I can only articulate the difficulty if I have an
understanding of the solution. I read this as lining up with Lonergan's
statement (in the chapter on special transcendent knowledge) that there is
no problem without a solution.

Does this make any sense?

Thanks, and anyone can feel free to respond. Thank-you for all your
responses I look forward to considering them further.

Josh

[Toll Booth]

Joe,

Long-shot here, but could one say that there is a similar twist in regard to
interpreting the differentiation of species, both in the differentiation of
process and differentiation of result? Only once life exists in its basic
form does it differentiates (through whatever process) into varieties with a
common history. Only once a new fundamental insight into life occurs does it
enable differentiation of species on that basis within that common
understanding.

There is one special difference between living and understanding that I
notice (and do not note here), but I don't think the difference precludes
the similarity just mentioned.

Josh

[mou...@uw.edu]

One of the "strange" features extends a more-or-less static description of understanding with the necessary dynamic aspect of conceiving and judging whereby we make meaning; not-just in self-corrective response, but by dialectic determination of what we will the world to become.

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