[Lonergan_l] just to share a comment
Octavio Groppa
I just want to tell you that yesterday morning I had my STL dissertation on
BL's GEM and the relatonship between Theology and Social Sciences, at the
Jesuit Uniersity, here in Buenos Aires.
You don't imagine my surprise and emotion when this morning I realized that
yesterday had been Lonergan's birthday! A nice gift!
I wish a merry Christmas for you all.
Octavio
_______________________________________________
You are subscribed to the Lonergan_l mailing list
Loner...@skipperweb.org
Archives on skipperweb:
http://skipperweb.org/mailman/listinfo/lonergan_l_skipperweb.org
List Moderators: John Raymaker and Adrial Fitzgerald
List Owner: Robert Boyd Skipper
St. Mary's University
San Antonio, Texas
For conversations or topics not directly related to Lonergan or to
the GEM (Generalized Empirical Method) please use the sister list, Eureka:
http://skipperweb.org/mailman/listinfo/eureka_skipperweb.org
Lonergan_L archives (from June 5, 2007):
http://groups.google.com/group/lonergan_l
mou...@uw.edu
(mi tio fue desde buenos aires, y mi primas carnales viven en la ciudad - Feliz Navidad!)
mou...@uw.edu
Dear All, there were two features of the "Introduction" that I hoped would be pursued because I think they are related. One was the question of, "How do you present naive realism to itself as it's own problem?," but the other is the correct understanding of the desire to know.
J.J. Gibson's experiments clearly demonstrate that organs participate in data collection rather than merely transmit data as neutral channels. Given the simplicity of the demonstration, the "problem" presented here suggests an intersubjective relation. The one who can ask such a question, for example, probably has a theological or geometrical maturity demonstrating that naive realism is not a problem for them, and hence the implied concern is between one judging above about one who is judged to be below.
Some on this group will recognize my familiar interest in the rich culture (albeit small on the radar) of patient-centered therapy that developed maturity at about the time Lonergan began writing Insight. This is where the individual dialectic was explicitly understood, and if Lonergan's extension to a social dialectic in Ch VII Insight is useful then I recommend this interesting record of that historical development where we see that "problems" are defined by patients.
http://world.std.com/~mbr2/cct.development.html
"...the patient is the author of this play, but the therapist retains the role of producer."
Octavio Groppa
Re the subject of my thesis, well, it won't be easy to resume it in a few
words... I think that the relationship appears through the orientation given
by the fourth level of our intentional structure, that is, through the
judgments of value and the decision to act, because Theology is the ultimate
horizon of meaning and it handles with the religious level, which integrates
our whole identity and our affective dispositions (because it is an
experience of transcendental love).
Maybe the most daring of my conclusions is that the omission of reflection
on transcendental value (grace) in the social order tends to identify with a
negation of grace itself (or however you'd like to call it in a
postchristian world), because current social values -reflected or not-
conform the horizon the subjects depart from, and the incarnation of value
in human society can only be achieved in a conscious, reflexive, free, way.
So, a social science who insists in being "value-free" would only give us a
distorted or truncated (in the sense of Newman's theorem) image of society
and human person.
That is what still happens in our dismal science (?)...
Best regards !
Octavio
2009/12/18 <mou...@uw.edu>
Joe F
Will you overlook my ignorance about theology just long enough to
consider a question I have. You mention that theology is the ultimate
horizon which gives meaning and values to the social sciences. Why
should that not apply to physics? I don't blame you if you think that
sounds silly. But couldn't there be a sort of moral rightness to the
physical order- I mean when things, cells, solar systems are
functioning well. I have had a theory that Lonergan, who applies the
notion of the uniquely probable, which is a tool of the physical
sciences, to an important aspect of his metaphysics, derived that
notion of the probable from a very sophisticated and specialized
notion of the theologically probable the sense of which may be
available only to the theologian living immersed in a theological
community and not the layman like myself-theological probabiliorism.
In other words we can expect nature to be, in its proper function, to
reflect the moral grandeur of God in the same way that we can find
moral laws to be 'probable'. And Lonergan exported that sense in some
measure to his notion of the uniquely probable which has been applied
in scientific hypothesis making.
Joe F
Octavio Groppa
Well, your point is a hard task to answer, especially because I don’t know
the notion of the “uniquely probable” … but let me share with you my point
of view.
First of all, I would have in mind the difference between the intelligible
and the intelligent process. Physics is a theory which deals with the
intelligible that is not intelligent, that is, the material world subject to
emergent probability. Theology, instead, deals with religious experience and
meaning, and so, with the autotranscedent subject. (Of course that, in the
foundational level, boundaries between Theology and Philosophy are fuzzy. I
refer to it as theological field but it could also be called a philosophical
field, provided it is open to or compatible with Christian *Weltanschauung*
.)
So, the “rightness” in the intelligible that is not intelligent could hardly
be called “moral”. But in both arenas we should aim at grasping and
achieving explanatory conjugates: in the first one, by developing systems
that integrate and account for all the relevant issues and its mutual
relationships in the field in question; in the second one, by grasping our
cognitional structure, which Lonergan called “interiority”, and applying it
properly.
If a philosopher or theologian borrows any category from another field, that
exercise does not mean that that field would be foundational: in any case,
that field (Physics, in your example) would have been using a category
grounded in another level of analysis. Foundational categories cannot be
grounded on applied sciences, as the task of understanding does not lie in
the empirical level. It is a different functional specialty (in a first
stage, interpretation, GEM2; if it achieves the virtual unconditioned, it
could be derived from Foundations, GEM5). When you understand the categories
you are using in Physics, then you are not doing Physics, but theory of
Knowledge or Epistemology.
Re “moral laws”, well, I am not sure that they exist at all, if with under
that expression we are assuming a notion of objectivity as if it is
something “already-out-there-here-and-now”. I don’t know much about Lonergan
and probabiliorism (I guess that he could have accepted it in his young
“molinist” years, but let us hear the opinion of those who know more than me
about it), but I relate it with a conceptualist interpretation of Ethics
which is far from BL’s thought. See that in *Insight*, the chapter dedicated
to Ethics is called “The *possibility* of Ethics” (my underlining).
I hope I have answered your questions. Best regards!
Octavio
2009/12/22 Joe F <172...@gmail.com>
Joe F
Thanks for your reply. If we start with so basic an idea that God
created the universe, that everything in the natural order is His
Creation then why shouldn't theology make also among its interests
that natural order in addition to the intelligently intelligible.
Surely theology grants that God created the natural order and that the
natural order is His Creation. So I don't see how theology must
abandon its role in the study of the natural order. It is not
customary to view that theology number among its concerns the natural
order. I know. I guess I just don't see why theology has come to view
itself as not being properly concerned with the Creation itself and
its relation to God, limiting itself to a concern with man and his
relation to God. I don't disagree with this, necessarily but I wonder
when theology diverged from a study of the Creation- and why.
Joe
Joe F
Joe F
Season's Greetings. Lonergan uses the idea of the uniquely probable in
INSIGHT as a way to propound how explanatory genera are arranged.
(Something like that- I find it's difficult reading). In other words
its a slight departure from direct empirical testing but nevertheless
a useful scientific way of thinking. A conception is considered the
uniquely probable conception if it meets a question squarely for which
there are no alternative views available. It turns out to be the stuff
of scientific hypotheses. I found in a scientific article the
assertion that '...this is the uniquely probable mechanism...for the
bio-luminescense' for example.
I wondered if this 'uniquel probable' is not a continuation of a
thread from theology method of discerning 'moral probability', and had
always hoped that with it one can begin to see God's signature in the
natural order. Not to say there is not a lot of bad in the natural
order. Edward Forbes discerned ten 'creation centers' in the Natural
History of the European Seas, a book published posthumously with the
completion of his friend Godwin - Austin in 1859 needless to say in
the Shadow of Darwin's work. Forbes felt that a science that did not
admit an area of mystery is a form of 'besotted human pride'. Of
course modern science wants to explain everything.
But the two views are not incompatible. The mystery can co-exist with
the penchant for uniquely probable or plausible models. That's my
personal hangup but I do wish to ask how Theology justifies an
abandonment of a concerted study of the Creation as it stands in its
relation to God on an an independent basis, though not in irrelevant
way, to its consideration of man and his relation to GOd. Forbes
thought that he could identify the original species of a 'creation
center' and detect the aberrations. That would be so good for one who
wanted to study cell physiology and detect the good functioning from
the bad, or intrusive, functioning. C'mon morality is part of the
natural order and theologians should attend to it and not avoid a
sacred study of the creation.
Joe
On 12/22/09, Joe F <172...@gmail.com> wrote:
Octavio Groppa
Why do you think that theology has abandoned the study of Creation? I don't
think so. In fact, ¡next year I will be teaching a course on Theology of
Creation in my University! Only in Spanish there are quite a number of
treatises on that issue.
The point is what we mean when we say that *God* created the universe. What
do we mean by that name, *God*? I think that the transcendental notion of
the given (or the *givenness*) is, phenomenologically speaking, a way to
speak of creation (see Husserl, and above all, Marion). Christian Theology
adds a linkage of that mystery with the faith in the death and resurrection
of Jesus Christ (*mysterium paschale*) and so interprets the data or
theories of physicists within a religious framework, but leaving the task of
scientific thought its proper autonomy for it has its own rationale. It does
not say that God was the "lighter" of the Big-Bang ([?]). I don't believe
that the mission of a (christian) physicist or of a theologian should be
looking for the footsteps of God in creation, for example. That would be
just apologetics and (learning form Galileo case) arguing in this way would
be quiet risky and daring. In this way, I agree with you that science and
theology (reason and faith) are compatible.
But what Theology does have to do is to remain as a critical instance when
scientist trespass their own field and yield conclusions beyond what their
data and assumptions allow (in my humble opinion, I believe that would be
the case of multiverse theory). Properly speaking, this would be an
epistemological task, but Theology has some useful criteria (mainly, the
Trinitarian and Christological dogmas, which, by the way, were decisive for
the development of Aquinas' theory of knowledge; see *Verbum*).
Octavio
2009/12/23 Joe F <172...@gmail.com>
mou...@uw.edu
from the usual-comments dept.
Fully-agree here that Christian Theology adds a linkage of that mystery with the faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ! Whenever I hear terms like "interpret" or "data," however, I think of Lonergan's method (scientific method).
Isn't that "scientific thought?" If we replace the idea of remaining critical when a scientist trespasses their field with the idea of remaining critical when anyone trespasses anywhere beyond where their data and assumptions allow, then aren't we remaining critical about the same offense to science? In any case, I think you mean science as physics, chemistry and biology as many people do.
Let's not forget that we all use the same methods! And, I must admit that, although I differ with Joe on the quest of science being for invariant laws, I do believe that God's got his footprints all over the place-and is still walking around-moreover gracefully allowing us an imprint on that sovereign ground. regards, Doug
Joe F
I am glad that physics may be viewed within a religious perspective
without losing its proper autonomy as a science. i wonder if students
will in the long run find anything absorbing if they do not see a
spark of the Divine in it. Edward Forbes was a really fine naturalist
of the mid nineteenth century and yet he has been overlooked for all
his industry and love of science because he had what he termed an
admittedly 'theological view' of Polarity, he thought he saw that in
the paleontological data a symmetry of distribution in time of
radiata, and saw it as an indication that God is the Divine Artificer
who could so arrange nature. I like to think that only a great knower
like Forbes could obtain conviction because he alone knew his
'geologic' and 'botanic' stuff and this is why many people dismissed
the idea- even Darwin.
To bring these minds such as that of Forbes before the students of
today I think will take a theology that properly addresses the
relation between theology and science so that both can have their say.
That's why I was concerned. Above all men like E. Forbes and Henri
Agassiz who are often set aside as 'quaint' or 'creationist' because
they believed God is creating the whole of nature were powerful
motivators. Somehow the motivation comes I think from the theological
base. And I am afraid that science is running on the momentum from
that age.
Anyway many thanks,
Joseph Ferrara
mou...@uw.edu
``Keep it!'' repeated Scrooge's nephew. ``But you don't keep it.''
``Let me leave it alone, then,'' said Scrooge. ``Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!''
``There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,'' returned the nephew: ``Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!''
Merry Christmas everyone, Doug
Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol
Joe F
Scientists seek more than invariant laws I guess. But at least Darwin did:
"The grand question that every naturalist ought to have before him
when dissecting a whale, or classifying a mite, fungus, or infusorium
is 'What are the Laws of Life?" Charles Darwin Notebook B:
[Transmutation of species (1837-1838)
Was he kidding?
Joe
Joe F
Question: is the 'given' as you see it an already out there now real?
I notice that the 'given' has a structure and certain aspects. It
consists of the expected and unexpected (Quality). The unexpected will
not be 'given' if it is not sought after (Quantity). The only thing
given about the given is the fact that it is given. In fact its
quality and quantity are entirely dependent on thought about it.
Joe
Octavio Groppa
oh, this could drive us to a long, long discussion! J.L. Marion has been
writing several books on this phenomenological matter. But I think we are
coming to terms...!
Does the "given" have a structure? Well... I think that it hasn't a
structure independent of our interpretation of it. In your words, if it is
not "sought after". I guess that in BL's scheme this would be the same as
saying that it has a potential objectivity. It is not an "already out there
now real" (nothing is), because, as given, it is not a real fact (yet). Only
facts have absolute objectivity. The "already out there now real" is a wrong
interpretation of knowledge, a wrong-set-out problem discovered thru an
inverse insight.
I see underlying here the problem of the "desire to know" drive, of the
primacy of the above upwards movement, or above downwards. Exciting matter!
Marion says that the given is known in the adonné (could I say "begiven"? I
don't know how the English edition of Marion translates that neologism). The
adonné is the subject, but not as modernity thought him, that is, as a
nominative (I, with capitals!), but as an accusative (me, Levinas),
recipient of a previous movement.
Regards!
Octavio
PS. I will be leaving on vacation for 2 weeks.
2009/12/27, Joe F <172...@gmail.com>:
Octavio Groppa
regarding God's footprints and motivation, I don't reject the idea of God
leaving His footprints in Creation... I just say that we cannot grasp a
virtually unconditioned in those matters. Such affirmations are dependent on
our faith (that is, an interpretation based on our cultural and historical
context). So we just (?) can admire and get astonished by mirabilia Dei, and
this is the source of a strong motivation. It is not the movement of a
proof, but of an acknowledgment.
In transcendental matters we are moving in the level of interiority, not of
theory. So we won't be able to affirm that we have found out God's
footprints in cosmos, but we do are able to interpret that within our faith,
or to affirm that that conclusion is not refutable or that it has sense,
given our cultural context. Finally, though conclusions of science may be
changed vis-a-vis new discoveries are made, isn't marvelous the fact that we
are in an ongoing process of getting astonished once again, from discovery
to discovery, that the only invariant "thing" is the very process of our
insights?
Octavio
mou...@uw.edu
I like that! I use Lonergan's inverse insight regarding the material condition as an illustration of *reducto ad absurdum,* but the longer journey recommends itself in terms that come to present a notion of unrestricted being; and it is a structured notion. Doug
Joe F
This would be interesting to discuss. Are you interested in the
subjunctive mood and the difference between Quid Sit and Quid Est,
'what might it be? as I am. I don't think a discussion of ebonics will
go very well through a google translator but I highly respect it
because it is filled with the subjunctive. 'he be a learned fellow'.
Definitely a higher mode of thought.
When it comes to casting a judgement against the 'already out there
now real' as a form of thinking, I hesitate. Oh I know it's naive of
me to think so but there is a period in life when we absorb naively
and if we get too too intellectual we miss it. Edward Forbes for
example scouting his Isle of Man and becoming a great naturalist who
could forge his name for all time in only the thirty nine years of
life granted to him. Then of course at some period, God grants that we
may leap to self-reflectivity and all that residue is worked up into a
lather of knowing.
Ernest Jones MD, a psychiatrist had a theory that in order to become a
creative thinker one must go through a period of naive
'credulousness'. After quoting Huxley’s upbraiding of himself for his
stupidity at not getting what Darwin came to realize, Ernest Jones,
M.D., of a psychoanalytic turn of mind, surmised that Huxley, who was
a doggedly scientific sceptic, had never participated in an essential
learning-phase of boyish ‘credulousness’. Jones points out that a
phase of credulousness to precede a useful scepticism was
characteristic of such great and productive thinkers as Darwin, Newton
and Faraday. That should be an encouragement to those credulous fools.
So I am trying to support the fact that we should abstain from casting
too harsh a value judgement on that niave form of thinking. We should
put it in perspective and advocate the next step of course. But it may
have a role in a developmental stage. I also think the wisdom of the
Catholic Church which informally allows children up to the age of
seven to run a little wild prevails also. I would argue that a child
should reach a certain stage of development before being encouraged to
think about their thinking etc. Descartes cautioned those following in
his footsteps to be of mature age, etc.
Joe
Catherine B. King
I really appreciate the reference to patient-centered therapy--excellent
read. And the historical aspects of it is also enlightening, that it was
written in circa 1947. So many questions, so little time. But just one
thing: a relational point about general empirical method and non-directive
therapy can be found in the following quote:
"The self-concept is a learned perceptual system which is governed by the
same principles of organization which govern other perceptual objects."
Those same principles of organization are, in part, those embedded in
general empirical method. The learning is different, but the principles,
and the GEmethod, are the same. All learning occurs through the method
which has a feedback loop back into our feelings/emotions, images, etc.,
from day-one, e.g., H. S. Sullivan's work on psychiatry, also in pre-1040's
writings.
At any rate, I appreciate the link,
Catherine
Doug Mounce
Thanks Catherine, that's very kind. What are you working-on this year?
I have some course-work to develop, so I might need your advice and
Phil's. There's Ulysses to read. I also want to flush-out the theory in
some slow-read essays to summarize Rank's Art and Artist which I'll post
here.
I like reading the Ernest Becker newsgroup, and there's a dearth of women
participating there. In any case, there is one interesting teacher named
"jennings" of-sorts, who seems able to move conversations and has an
individual personality...
"these feelings are individual to each person
hard to generalize
none of us are perfect
we each have something to struggle
that is what makes us human
and mortal
the challenge is in the struggle
rejisupershrink
"most of us by the way
have been in lifelong therapy
so it is all ongoing"
Catherine B. King
In terms of movements of power, I find a similarity to be noted between (1)
the article you sent earlier at:
http://world.std.com/~mbr2/cct.development.html where the move is towards
patient-centered therapy,
(2) movements in education (still considered radical in some writings)
pointed-up by people like Paulo Freire where the educator does not "impose"
knowledge (referred to in education as the method of direct teaching), but
rather provides a kind of mirror for the student to become more
self-reflective, especially (for Freire) to become a reflective and
self-reflective reader and, in that reading, to self-guide the curricula,
and to become able to critique the various tyrannies that affect their
lives, including the potential tyranny of the teacher and what is proposed
as "knowledge"; and (2-a) modifications of that movement in K-12 education
where the conceptual flag is "student centered education"; and
(3) action research--what I have mentioned here before and what David
Coghlan's work is in part about (google it) or ask for his articles.
The internet is, of course, a great tool for such a migrations of power;
though its potential for mishandling at the individual level is so clearly
evident in so many movements of thought here in the U.S., e.g., the
tea-baggers, much of talk-radio, the obsessive focus on polemical extremes
(instead of any modicum of reasonable discourse) by our press (exception:
PBS and some of the C-SPAN programming), and, of course, Wall Street and the
Bernie Maddows of the world--however they are spelled. They need to be
forgiven because they surely cannot know what they are doing to their own
history.
At any rate, let's make it a good year,