Re: [lonergan_l] Re: The IJK of Insight

[David Bibby]

One of Lonergan’s recurring themes is that there are three levels of cognitional operations: experience, understanding, and judgement. But the level of understanding is often divided in two, because understanding involves two steps: i) having an insight into a presentation, or experience, or some empirical residue that is given, ii) having an insight that formulates what has been understood as an expression, definition, or other description.

How can we conceptualise this distinction? One way is to use a diagram. This diagram is a heuristic, not a replacement, for understanding Lonergan’s cognitional theory, distinguishing cognitional operations from their products and highlighting the mediating role of expression between insight and judgement:

Acts: X = eXperience, I = Insight, J = Judgement.

Products: P = Presentations,  E = Expressions,  K = Knowledge

If we focus on the acts first, we recognise Lonergan’s familiar triad. What distinguishes the acts is their relations: experience X has no prior operation, while insight I depends on the presentations provided by experience, and judgement J depends on both, the content of the insight (what is it?), and the validity (is it so?), grounded in the presentations of experience.

The acts are represented by arrows in the diagram, and the three cognitional acts may be distinguished structurally by the number of antecedent sources on which they depend. Experience is represented by an arrow entering the diagram from outside. This does not imply that experience has no causes or conditions, but only that, within cognitional theory, it is the first cognitional operation and therefore has no antecedent operation represented within the diagram.  The arrow starts from nowhere, not because experience has no source, but because it cannot be captured in a diagram. Insight arises from the presentations provided by experience, so the arrow starts from P, and points to E. Judgement has two sources because the conditions are formulated by intellect, but the fulfilment of those conditions is to be found in the presentations of experience. Therefore, the two arrows of judgement point from P and E to K.

But each cognitional operation also has an associated product, P, E, and K. The one we are most likely to overlook is the first one, P, because experience is not a purely passive operation. Rather, it is patterned from the start according to our attention and interests, as we become more aware of the experiences on which we focus. When sensory experience is received, it is not merely retained in the memory, but is organised into a mental presentation P which is not a direct replica, but an apprehensive abstraction of what is received. For sight this may be an image, and for hearing an echo, but the presentations arise in the mind itself as the product of experience X.

The insight I is the “Aha!” moment between the presentations P and the expressions E. It is a cognitional act and, being dynamic, necessarily has a relation both to its source, P, and its product, E. These two relations correspond to the two steps referred to at the beginning. The first relation is the natural orientation of the intellect towards P, by which intelligibility is sought in the presentations of experience. In this orientation, attention is directed towards those aspects capable of yielding insight, while irrelevant particulars recede into the background. The second step is the intellect forming for itself an expression for the intelligibility it has discerned. It is also an abstraction, but (in Thomist terminology) a formative abstraction rather than an apprehensive one.

The judgement J is an act that leads to a single increment in overall knowledge K. Unlike insight, judgement depends upon two antecedent sources. Insight I formulates the conditions that must be satisfied if knowledge is to be attained, but judgement J asks whether those conditions E are in fact fulfilled in the presentations P of experience. Both sources are indispensable. Without the first there would be nothing to verify; without the second verification would become a purely conceptual exercise, detached from what is given. 

This depiction of judgement as a binary, not a unary, operation, guards against the counterposition that thinks of knowing as “taking a look”. This “looking” could manifest itself in two ways: either by looking at P, which would lead to a naive realism, or by looking at E, which would lead to a naive idealism. The intellectual position combines the products of both experience and understanding, using E to formulate the conditions for judgement, and P to determine whether those conditions are fulfilled.

In summary, the IJK diagram offers a possible formalisation of Lonergan’s cognitional theory, distinguishing the operations from their products and representing their structural relations as shown in the following table:

Act/ Operation	Antecedent Sources	Product
eXperience	0	Presentations
Insight	1	Expressions
Judgement	2	Knowledge

The diagram should not be taken as a “picture” of insight, but as a lens for self-examination. By inviting us to attend to the operations of experiencing, understanding, and judging within our own consciousness, it provides a heuristic aid to the reflective affirmation, I am a knower. In that sense, it is less a picture of consciousness than a heuristic for self-appropriation.