Rahner's bullet list

[Doug Mounce]

I'm getting some clarity on Rahner since he gave a bulleted list of his concerns.  This comes at the end of his introduction on why he is focused on Thomas' Article 7.

The sensitive part of our relation to reality is something on which we mostly agree most of the time.  When describing this, I had not fully considered what "immaterial" might imply when using subject and object categories to describe our operations and their associated outcomes in level methods.  Rahner has helped me see why the material and immaterial difference might matter in metaphysics.

I've always found that when we ask questions then the shared nature of our methodical investigations (those methods that result in science or knowledge) are apparent and agreeable, but I always emphasize that the natural deconstruction into subject and object categories only are descriptive because they always combine in any reasonable explanation of reality.  Reality is this single existence between the tension of subjective and objective poles.  As Mr. Rodgers sings, `You are all one piece.'  The categories of subjective processes and their related objective products are the same poles at each of the different level methods.  The levels differently describe different combinations, where hypotheses might arise from experiment, or, perhaps more common, where the investigator makes a deductive search for proof; these levels only describe but do not prescribe.  The unity of process and product in different levels underlies how I answer the question about a tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear.  My answer differs from Hugh's, I believe, which was the first step on this journey to study further.

In Rahner's bulleted list, Thomas' idea about intellectual knowing is possible only in an encounter with the material world (through sensibility), and the important difference arises with the immaterial nature of intellectual knowing.  My emphasis on the combination of questioning and answering might make too little of this difference.  As Chesterton says, it's just as wrong to make too much of the difference as it is to ignore it.  Lonergan only explains that, when coming full circle, we arrive at a notion of being, and it is a structured notion.  I say that every thing is a Divine expression of Will, Beauty and Truth, albeit an insect is a lesser expression than you.  In Rahner's list, "This intellectual knowing is also an immaterial, universal, and necessary knowledge, thus is already "metaphysics," which in principle transcends the object from which it took its departure."  Rahner suggests that Thomas found the immaterial implication of this judgment to be an important paradox. 

Rahner continues with bullet 3, "It is asking whether or not this metaphysical knowledge, which transcends its point of departure, must achieve this transcendence (Ubergriff) always and in every case in a grasp (Zugriff) of this material point of departure."  The idea here is that if your ability to think depends on the material mind then how can judgment judge itself with itself?  Lonergan resolves this with his idea about the virtually unconditioned.  Rahner's point aims at how our knowledge about knowledge is supposed to be based on (convertere) things (phantasmata), and yet as universal and necessary knowledge is supposed to judge these things.  "This also shows that Article 7 is not an incidental question in the Thomistic metaphysics of knowledge which can be detached from the whole and answered arbitrarily.  This Article recapitulates the whole paradoxical nature of this metaphysics of knowledge and poses it in its final sharpness."

Such is my brief attempt to convey why Rahner finds the metaphysical nature to be worth further investigation.  The difference we use to describe what we all experience might also imply a metaphysical feature.  At least we all tend to agree about general methods, whose different levels also mirror the precepts.  As Lonergan says, there remains outrageous disagreement about what these methods mean.  Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoyed a Sunday full of rest!

cheers, Doug

[jaraymaker]

Doug,

 

you're dealing with a very complicated theme touching on Rahner's very abstruse discussion of issues addressed by Aquinas. It would help if you indicated where your "bullets" can be found in Spirit in the World.   John

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[Doug Mounce]

Thanks for reading John!  Those quotes come from Spirit in the World, Part 1, Introductory Interpretation of Summa Theologiae I, Question 84, Article 7, pages 20-21 in my version.

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[Hugh Williams]

Doug et al,

I had jumped ahead in Rahner’s text ‘Spirit in the World’ into the section on ‘Abstraction’ and the sub-section treating of esse (pp.156-162). Our texts seem to be aligned in their pagination, which is good. And you are beginning at the beginning, as we should, with the ‘Introductory Interpretation of STI Q84 art.7’.

Rahner’s text is perhaps one of the most difficult texts I have ever read. More difficult than Lonergan? Yes, especially in the sense that I’m dealing with a translation from the original German. But also, he is widely viewed as difficult, very difficult, even in the original German.

Is it worth it to take on such a text?

Personally, I say yes, yes, yes … and the reasons are there in the early sections of the text –

So my offered gloss (on pp.15-17)

Rahner begins with ‘the question of man’ where he considers the soul of man in his tradition as the place of the theological event, of the address of the divine. He says something, in my view, of equal importance – that the human person is not completely him or herself until he/she ‘acts’ … only in such action is it manifest what the human person is.

In turning to Thomas’ Summa, we find Thomas first concerned with human intellectual knowing. His concern for human desire is of the Summa’s second part. Rahner outlines Thomas’ schema of human knowing – of the corporeal, of the knowing soul itself, and of the spiritual realities beyond the soul - (the corporeal, intellectual, spiritual).

But Rahner says there is a special depth to this systematic of which Thomas is aware – that if knowledge of the sensible-material things is the proper object of specifically human knowledge then these three areas are not separate regions of human knowledge equally accessible. Rather knowledge of the knowing subject and of the Absolute depends on knowledge of the essence of material things. The possibility of knowledge of the subject and of the Absolute must be understood from that of our knowledge of the material-sensible. Thus, Thomas’ treatment of corporeal knowledge (knowledge of the body) assumes a decisive role in determining the Thomistic theory of any and all human knowing. Thus, STI Q 84-86 is/are the core of Thomas’ metaphysics of knowledge in the Summa.

And so Rahner sets out his three part guide for his problematic and its interpretation of Thomas – 1) it is concerned with intellectual knowledge as the point of insertion (occasion) for a theological event, 2) it is dealing with knowledge of the world and its possibility as fundamental, and 3) in and through this knowledge of the world there is an opening towards transcendence beyond this world …..

Commentary

Again, why would anyone today want to tackle such a difficult text. Allow me to propose some things for consideration – Rahner is arguably one of the most important theologians of all time … this would cast him in a handful of intellectual and spiritual giants, Thomas of course being one of this group …

His impact on Vatican II through the German Bishops at the time is undeniable.

Consequently, he is the target of a restorationist trend in the Catholic Church … at best a creative tension that at worst can well up into a vehement controversy and conflict often represented, at least at one time, by the two major journals Concilium and Communio. Rahner being seen as on the side of Concilium …

The relevance of this difficult ongoing ‘debate’ is apparent to anyone one who has paid attention and been involved in the issues at stake in the Church’s present Synodal process under Pope Francis.

And finally, lest one should think that Rahner’s work was totally absorbed by intramural Church controversies and disputes, he was very much concerned to make Christian faith intelligible to the World.

And in no way, by turning to the things of the world, was Rahner turning away from things divine or sacred …

And those who make that charge today, simply do not know much about Rahner (nor of Thomas for that matter) ….

… and finally, Doug, it is much too soon for us to answer ‘the question about the tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear’, or to presume that we’d answer it in a contradictory manner. In fact, after

 Rahner, perhaps the problem might be entirely recast … we can at least hope …

thanks so very much again

Hugh

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[jaraymaker]

Doug, Hugh,

 

you both provide good references that help contextualize present efforts of Pope Francis to invigorate the synodal process in our very complex world (and indirectly to how Rahner and Lonergan have been key "background" figures in such debates). Here is a link pointing why some archconservatives in the Church feel threatened and are aggressively opposing the Pope.

 

https://store.tfp.org/the-synodal-process-is-a-pandoras-box/

     

"Heretical voices within the Catholic Church clamor for change.  Their radical agenda at the Synod on Synodality is clear: Distort doctrine, subvert tradition, and dismantle the hierarchical nature of the Church.  

With refreshing clarity, authors Jose Antonio Ureta and Julio Loredo de Izcue explain the present crisis in their new book, The Synodal Process Is A Pandora’s Box: 100 Questions & Answers.  Every page offers wisdom, insight, and truth.  Every answer unmasks the sophistry, deliberate confusion, and heresy behind the Synod.

Cardinal Raymond Burke notes in his foreword, “Synodality and its adjective, synodal, have become slogans behind which a revolution is at work to change radically the Church’s self-understanding, in accord with a contemporary ideology which denies much of what the Church has always taught and practiced.”

The Synodal Process Is A Pandora’s Box is a cry of alarm.  Find out why faithful Catholics have a moral duty to stand fast and resist the normalization of unnatural sin, women’s ordination, the reception of Holy Communion by adulterous "remarried" divorcees, and the egalitarian democratic leveling within the Catholic Church.

If you love the Catholic Church and its hierarchical form of government as established for all time by Our Lord Jesus Christ this book is for you." End quote    John

 

[jaraymaker]

It may be worthwhile pointing out that St. Ignatius of Loyola who was born eight years after Martin Luther founded the Jesuits. Rahner, Lonergan and Pope Francis are three influential Jesuists who in their own ways have followed in the founder's footsteps. But there are also some are archconservative Jesuits "doing their thing." The following link provides a good historical context and a reference to a book on the subject:

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=archconservative+jesuits+today&sca_esv=a094c7c2a3a5cbf6&source=hp&ei=NxDwZc6-J92G9u8P970d&iflsig=ANes7DEAAAAAZfAeR4dW14gjXT14G435o_hSKaibvHwL&ved=0ahUKEwiOttSbpe6EAxVdg_0HHfdeBwAQ4dUDCA8&uact=5&oq=archconservative+jesuits+today&gs_lp=Egdnd3Mtd2l6Ih5hcmNoY29uc2VydmF0aXZlIGplc3VpdHMgdG9kYXkyBRAhGKABMgUQIRigATIFECEYoAEyBRAhGKABSKfZAVAIWPi2AXAEeACQAQGYAYECoAGhIqoBBzE0LjIxLjO4AQPIAQD4AQGYAiagAvwhqAIAwgIKEAAYgAQYRhj7AcICBRAAGIAEwgILEC4YgAQYxwEY0QPCAgUQLhiABMICCBAuGIAEGNQCwgIHEAAYgAQYCsICCxAuGIAEGMcBGK8BwgIHEC4YgAQYCsICChAAGIAEGEYY-QHCAgQQABgewgIGEAAYHhgPwgIIEAAYBRgeGA_CAgcQIRgKGKABwgIEECEYFZgDA5IHBzEwLjI2LjKgB6CEAg&sclient=gws-wiz

 

 John 

.

[Hugh Williams]

Doug et al,

Can we pause to consider two points Doug makes below? 1) In interpreting Rahner, Doug asks with Rahner, I suspect, - “if our ability to think depends upon the material mind then how can judgment judge itself with itself?” Doug goes on to say ‘Lonergan resolves this issue with his idea about the virtually unconditioned’ (in our pursuit of knowledge).

I’m wondering if it fair to ask Doug to briefly expand on his understanding of just how Lonergan resolves this problem with his idea of the virtually unconditioned?

2) The second point perhaps is most germane for this turtle-paced reading of Rahner … when Doug says below that ‘the difference we use to describe what we all experience might also imply a metaphysical feature’ … and if I’m coming close to understanding him here, this may be a most important insight. This is because, for me, it points us back to the reading of Thomas’ text, ST1 Q84, art7, that Rahner begins with in his own text (pp.2-11) which perhaps we should pause over (turtle paced) as well, and especially on this notion of ‘intuition’, which Rahner introduces and uses (p. 9) as a sub-title in his representation of the text of Thomas. This, however, is not a term Thomas uses in this article, as near as I can tell ... Here, I’m concerned we may have some degree of Kantian influence showing itself in Rahner’s interpretation of Thomas at this point (as we do in Lonergan, I would argue) and because of Thomas’ deep Aristotelian influence, this notion of ‘intuition’ can just as easily be a source of confusion and misunderstanding as it can be helpful for us in trying to forge a common description of ‘what we all experience’ in knowing and knowledge …

As I understand it, in Aristotle, knowledge arises out of abstraction of noeta from aistheta, but there always is the proviso that these intelligible and sensible elements distinguished in thought do not exist separately in reality. Aristotle says in De anima 431b,18 ‘that the mind which is actively thinking is the objects which it thinks’. Kant in contrast tends to speak of intuition in terms of our relationship with certain objects occupying (in our thinking) an intermediate or mediating position between noeta and aistheta (the intelligible and sensible) and yet his position emphasizes the paradoxical character of these objects for us … (See Howard Cayhill, A Kant Dictionary, 1995, pp.262-266)

thanks

Hugh

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[Doug Mounce]

Hugh, et al,

Yes, I believe I originally wrote that statement about Lonergan's virtually unconditioned as a question, and then later changed it to a statement.  So, maybe there should be a question about how Lonergan finds the metaphysical categories from cognitive structure?

In any case, my understanding is that Lonergan says we acquire a rational component at the cognitive stage of reflection prior to judgment where the mind seeks an absolute meaning. This is Lonergan's nod to the process of verification in physics, chemistry, etc. and the idealist immanentism of Kant.  Notice how I said that the methods describe more than prescribe, and yet this component is associated with a particular type of question in a suggested sequence. 

I'll defer, for now, comment on how this relates to a metaphysical principle where "a restricted horizon of intentionality has the character of absoluteness".(quoted from Sala)  In short, Lonergan conceives of metaphysics as the integral heuristic structure of proportionate being, and proportionate being is whatever is to be known by experience, intelligent grasp, and reasonable affirmation - "The content of intelligent grasp of proportionate being necessarily remains unknown until full explanation is reached. But the content of reasonable affirmation is known already, for it is a virtually unconditioned yes."  One critic was suspicious that there should be an integral heuristic structure that just-happens to reflect Lonergan's cognitive structure.  

-Doug

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[jaraymaker]

Doug,

 

You write, suggesting: "Maybe there should be a question about how Lonergan finds the metaphysical categories from cognitive structure? Pierre and I touch on that issue in our recent book. Here is what we write in said book:

 

"For Tad Dunne, GEM is a new way to “shift from fixed conceptual systems to the ongoing management of change. . .. It provides a new conceptual system based on a higher control over other systems.” Dunne adds that morality has moved from its original focus on action “into a variety of conceptual systems under the heading of ethics.” Our own GEM-FS approach focuses on these systems and their associated categories. On this level, concepts lose their rigidity. “As long as investigators are committed to, and explicit about their cognitional theory, epistemology and metaphysics, they will continually refine or replace concepts developed in previous historical contexts.”[1]

 

                      The Structure of the Human Good and Policy-Making

 

On the matter of replacing concepts developed in previous historical contexts, one must advert to the fact that Lonergan had to move from the closed system of morality he inherited prior to Vatican II to the more open type of system we are exploring. Even some of Lonergan’s students who were exposed to his earlier Scholastic approach have failed to grasp the profound change in Lonergan’s post-Vatican II method. It has been noted that Lonergan was mistakenly categorized as a “transcendental Thomist,” and therefore rejected as being a subjectivist and anti-realist thinker by many Thomist authors and teachers. It is certainly true that Lonergan was deeply indebted to the thought of Thomas Aquinas, but his studies found in Aquinas a theory of knowledge and a kind of realism that was, and still is, at odds with other prevailing Thomist interpretations. Prior to his two studies of Aquinas, he was already deeply influenced by his readings of Plato, John Henry Newman, Hegel, and Marx. These great thinkers prepared him to find in Aquinas ideas that earlier scholars had overlooked—ideas that he would develop into his own unique treatments of knowledge, science, the natural world, history, truth, goodness, and God.^[2]

---

[1] Tad Dunne, “Bernard Lonergan”, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://iep.utm.edu/Lonergan/

[2] Patrick Byrne, Dominic Scheuring, Stephen Ferguson in Oxford Bibliographies, 24 April 2019. End quote.

At stake are the vast historical and cultural revolutions in our present artificial-intelligence-driven globalized world and the need to find "a common idiom." Pierre and I  argue for the need of six conversions to address present global challenges,

John

.

[Hugh Williams]

Doug et al,

In your post below you define metaphysics with Lonergan as the study of the ‘integral heuristic structure of that which is known by experience, intelligence, and reasonable affirmation’. But then you add in your last line the suspicion held by some over how this integral heuristic structure ‘just-happens to reflect’ Lonergan’s structure of cognition.

I’m going to try and consider the issues you raise in relation to our efforts to read Rahner’s ‘Spirit in the World’.

And I’d begin by asking - does this not in some way raise the issue Lonergan articulates so clearly in Verbum (pp.71-73) in his discussion of judgment (my gloss) –

… ‘so far Lonergan has been considering the mental composition in its basic stages, now he is considering knowledge of the correspondence between mental and real composition. And here he says the issue is not knowledge as true or false but knowledge known to be true or false. Conceptualization does not include such knowledge. It is only in judgment that intellect attains correspondence to its object and also reflects upon and assesses that similitude.

But then such reflection presents the puzzle of representation for which Thomas Aquinas is thought to avoid this dilemma by admitting a standard or representation in judgment that is neither the thing in itself nor its representation in the mind but rather as a matter of intellectual principle which Lonergan says he will discuss later (which I have argued he never does in any adequate manner …).

(Nevertheless) Lonergan makes three important points relevant for any effort in exposition on this matter. 1) There is something to be said on the effects on assent and certitude in knowing. 2) There is something to be said on the common criteriological level, i.e., on how one tells what is true and false in knowledge, or even if no judgments are true but only subjectively necessary, what then are the grounds of that necessity. 3) If there is subjective necessity that some judgments be as knowable and known, how does the mind proceed from this inner conviction to objective truth, and through this truth to reality?’

This in my view is Lonergan’s classic statement (by way of my own gloss) of how he understands the problem and, in this instance, it seems to be leading him (as it is Rahner) back to, or on towards Thomas Aquinas, or at least to some required reading and interpretation of his metaphysics of knowledge (especially as found in ST 1) as we have in Rahner’s ‘Spirit in the World’.

In the simplest terms Thomas is seen in some quarters to have resolved this problem or puzzle by way of his treatment of being, i.e., being as esse, and esse as expressed in and through the copula. In a certain sense this is what I see Rahner has set out to discuss, albeit tentative (because for him he admits he has no intention of covering the whole of Thomas’ ontology nor does he consider it, in this text, possible for him (p.156)),  … in perhaps one of the most difficult yet important texts in philosophical-theology ever written …  

I’m afraid I do not see Lonergan actually doing this with the same intensity or rigor as we have in Rahner. And so, in some sense Lonergan directs his energies elsewhere bearing considerable fruit but, in my view, leaving his metaphysics wanting in the sense that he never really resolves this fundamental issue he outlined so clearly in Verbum …

Hugh

------------------------------

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[Doug Mounce]

Thanks for this John, I have become more interested in the nature of concepts.  We naturally create and use them, of course, but, with Lonergan, we avoid conceptualist thinking. 

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[re...@yahoo.com]

The link is conscious and concrete.  Link is not the proper term because it is an identity. But there is a difference.  we can distinguish us from the known.  The distinction is an inadequate one.  Since it  is relational also we need to take care to get beyond the influence of extroverted consciousness which casts the relationship inadequately.  If we do not this seems quite confusing if not impossible.  Understanding truth and its ontological nature is a key. Good luck.

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[re...@yahoo.com]

In the interest of providing more clarity, here is a take on the phenomenological approach from a paper I presented at gonzaga last year.  i have attached the paper.

When I awake, I am conscious.  When I open my eyes, I see something.  This presents an issue for anyone who wants to understand consciousness.  I am conscious.  What I see is conscious by virtue of my seeing it, but it is not my consciousness, but independent of it.  But as seen it is part of my consciousness.  There is some identity of me with it, of my consciousness with it.  But there also is a difference because what I see may not be me.  This provides a philosophical conundrum, a paradox of intentionality.  My goal is to resolve this paradox by making some key points illustrating the identity and difference of intentionality with what is intended.

The difficulty is illustrated by Franz Brentano: 

 

Every mental phenomenon is characterized by … the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, … reference to a content, direction towards an object … or immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself…. In presentation something is presented, in judgement something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on. This intentional in-existence is characteristic exclusively of mental phenomena. … We could, therefore, define mental phenomena by saying that they are those phenomena which contain an object intentionally within themselves. [i]

 

He references the intentional as “inexistence”.  He later abandoned this term and struggled with characterizing the realism of the intentional.[ii] To be a realist the intentional existence is not inexistent or not fully real, or in some sense merely intended, but is real. Human consciousness intends being and has identity with it and difference from it. Phenomenology, which drew from Brentano’s interpretation of intentionality via Husserl, is primarily a philosophy of immanence because it did not adequately understand that being is consciously immanent and transcendent simultaneously.

---

[i] Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (Routledge, 1995)   p. 88-89

[ii] I believe the issue was his conception of intentionality as a relation to the object that was not an identity with it. He likely retained some vestiges of the extroverted model of mind. 

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[jaraymaker]

David,

 

you touch on a basic philosophical problem, that of "our cognnitional structure" & "metaphysical categories."

 

I googled and at

 

https://repository.mdx.ac.uk/download/7c8605b04d9171b91fe11f928f650d3b23b8ad74caeb208424c65c4f087b3c9b/2243179/DJHeading%20thesis%20EMBARGO.pdf

 

I found a paper by David Heading which addresses the issue. I am taking an easy way out to address the issue you raise by quoting , in part, from Heading, namely, his remarks on and quotes from Elizabeth Beirne, David Tracy and Jan Ramsey.  I quote David Heading:

 

"For Lonergan, metaphysics is possible as the ultimate explanation of the world. Transcendence is then an issue which turns on the need to explain the cosmos. Humans have a drive to know the truth which is a questioning. The cognitive process goes on and on. Its object is everything there is to be known, an unrestricted object named being or the concrete universe.

 

Beirne suggests that Lonergan’s ‘concrete universe’ corresponds, roughly, to Ramsey’s ‘universe as a whole’. Ramsey alluded to the self-affirming aspect of cosmic disclosures, but avoided explaining exactly what a disclosure is, or why some people never grasp the concept. Lonergan describes this as ‘flight from insight’,

and describes various biases which prevent it. According to Beirne, Ramsey, in Lonergan’s terms, offers a position and a counter-position. His position is given by his notion of a disclosure and the claim that a cosmic disclosure is of the universe as a whole and results in the self-affirmation of the subject. Beirne does not think that Ramsey held that intelligent inquiry and critical reflection are necessary to objectivity.

 

Some of Ramsey’s biblical examples were the result of the activity of God, for example. From Lonergan’s perspective Ramsey has a group bias towards empiricism and did not gain full reflective insight, and he failed to self-appropriate the cognitive activity that he did have direct insight into. He insisted on remaining within the framework of empiricism. While he recognised this as an inconsistency, he did not do anything about it.

 

Beirne, following Lonergan, thinks that as counter-positions invite reversal and positions invite development, Ramsey’s thought can be the subject of both. However, she does not go on to do this.67 It is possible that Beirne, by focussing on Ramsey’s examples of disclosures, has underemphasised the more metaphysical statements that he makes, and over-emphasised the narrow empiricism which Ramsey, in fact, criticises.

 

Ramsey does not seem to think that description is the same as knowledge. In terms, for example, of science, for Ramsey, the labels we apply to things have ontological meaning, and are not just descriptive shorthand. 65 Beirne, Logic of Disclosures, 101. 66 See Lonergan, Insight, Chapter 8. P. Kidder, 'What Is a Thing for Lonergan?', Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 7, 1 (1989), 1-17. 67 Beirne, Logic of Disclosures, 111-6. 13 Overall, Beirne does engage with both Ramsey and Lonergan, but does not strictly compare the two. She is making a suggestion for further development, of replacing Ramsey’s rather vague ideas of cognitive process with Lonergan’s epistemology and metaphysics.

 

Our argument in this thesis is that the two are compatible and that Lonergan’s ideas can be used to augment and extend Ramsey’s. We have attempted to undertake what Beirne suggested. Tracy obtains his ‘basic’ notion of a model (or ideal type) from Lonergan:68 Models, then, stand to the human science, to philosophies, to theologies, much as mathematics stands to the natural sciences. For models purport to be, not descriptions of reality, not hypotheses about reality, but simply interlocking sets of terms and relations.69

 

Tracy distinguishes ‘disclosure’ and ‘picture’ models following Black and Ramsey.70 He asserts that theological models are disclosure models. He aims to develop Lonergan’s notion of a model by uniting it with his intentionality analysis. The basic models that Tracy identifies in contemporary theology are developed by him in accordance with the subject and object poles of each theological horizon.71 Theological models, for Tracy, do not provide exact representations of the realities they disclose, but re-present them. They are to be taken seriously but not literally. For Tracy, Lonergan’s central concept is ‘self-transcendence’.72 We live authentically insofar as we live in an expanding horizon. The expansion is the ‘going beyond’ in accordance with the transcendental imperatives: be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible, develop and if necessary, change. The real world is affirmed and constituted by what we understand and can give evidence for. We cannot imagine, literally, the theories of quantum mechanics, but we can understand and affirm them. The questions for intelligence, reflection and deliberation are the existential conditions for being an authentic human......" End of quoting Heading's comment  featuring his appeal to Tracy and others

 

John