Appendix 18
For Finding the Mind: Pedagogy for Verification of Cognitional Theory/Primer for Self-Appropriation-Affirmation
To doubt questioning is to involve oneself in a counterposition, and so questioning is beyond the doubter's capacity to doubt coherently.... questioning itself is the beginning. (Lonergan, "Metaphysics as Horizon," Collection, 1988, 190)
From Introduction
More specifically, by basic I mean those who understand Lonergan’s and others’ work in terms of Lonergan’s contributions to philosophy but, more importantly, to philosophical self-knowledge--especially in terms of the biases, of epistemology, and of the application of both (at least) to your personal development and critical correctives of your own foundations (writ small). Also, I mean by basic those who understand how the work imports on the foundations of groups, e.g., institutions, corporations, etc. (writ large). I also refer to our attitudes as theoretically developed by E. Piscitelli in his work on foundations (1985).
Further, this work is not a theoretical treatise on education but rather is pedagogyy-about finding the basic structure within one's own expressions and then clearing the way, hopefully, within the self. Of course, I hope I have adequately treated the theoretical aspects of the work; however, I have written more to mediate a specific formulation of that theory into the lives of those who are unfamiliar with theory, or with philosophical study--especially as a critical-personal venture--and to foster critical self-reflection, than to present a theoretical treatise on the philosophy of education to scholars and theoreticians.
Furthermore, the experiment in the main text is interspersed with references to relatively brief appendixes (this one and others online: King 2010). Those appendixes address (a) pedagogical notes for teachers and (b) various issues and questions written to further challenge reader foundations--questions that should arise as readers go through the experiment herein. The appendixes, and the pedagogical and foundational references in the text (including in the preface and introduction), are meant to promote further self-reflection beyond the experimental and verification phase where the theory will be verified and the basic structure discovered in the reader’s own narrative as objectified in writing.
Though I do not fully treat or address reader foundations here or in the appendixes, both experiment and appendixes are written to draw attention to, and to raise questions about, the reader-experimenter’s interior life and about their (a) personal philosophical development and (b) potential self-corrective. The appendixes also point to the fact that we all are potential for such development, though we may be completely unaware of it, and though we may, and probably will, begin our study in this state of relative unawareness--of our own foundations. People familiar with Lonergan’s work will recognize the terms: latent and problematic metaphysics, and polymorphism of mind (1958 and 2000).
The appendixes offer some further explorations, then, into the vast foundational context that holds together and already informs--sometimes well, sometimes badly--our concerns and activities in our daily life-events, and that underpins any relatively streamlined experiment such as the one offered in the main text, should the reader want to take that longer journey.
Thus, where I refer to this text as the shorter philosophical journey, the appendix narratives are meant to further introduce readers to, and perhaps even engage readers in, the beginnings of what I refer to as the longer philosophical journey. Though I have developed what I think is some new thought and theoretical distinctions here, and though I have not scoured every corner of ancient, medieval, or post-modern philosophical work, this distinction--between shorter and longer journeys--and the critical pedagogy-experiment itself, are what make this work unique to the field of philosophical study.
The experiment in the shorter-journey text, then, leads the reader to make the concrete and critical connection between the theory and the reader’s basic structure as it constantly emerges in our expressions and, in so doing, to verify the theory in personally-developed data. However, the writing of the shorter-journey guide is premised on the fact that a relatively brief text and experiment cannot do the foundational-pedagogical work (philosophical development and self-corrective--conversions, major insights, etc.) that is hoped for, for example, in the use of a moving viewpoint Lonergan’s Insight: A Study of Understanding (1958 and 2000).
Hence, I distinguish the shorter from the longer philosophical journeys in order to clarify the kinds of insight-experiences that a reader-experimenter new to theory and to philosophical study, and to a Lonergan-type call for self-understanding-knowledge (also unique in its critical philosophcal intent), can expect and not expect in either journey. And I spend a good amount of narrative making sure that the attentive reader understands something about both journeys and how they relate to one another--and that taking on the shorter does not necessarily secure the benefits of the longer.
Thereby, this relatively shorter text raises the issues of foundational development and corrective for the reader to at least know-about their foundational milieu--as a beginning moment in what may be and hopefully will be a personal--and intimately so--engagement with that longer journey.
That being said, I do not ignore a reader’s polymorphic-epistemic situation. Rather I explore briefly, but I hope with some clarity, the reader’s latent philosophical (metaphysical) situation (the reader’s critical-and-good judgments about their own verification of data in common situations) and potential philosophical polymorphism; and I overtly rely on the reader's common experience of developing, of self-correction, and of making good judgments about the good-true-real for this shorter-journey experiment. (See chapter 2: section on Philosophical Methodology, Relying on Your Latent Assumptions.)
While you may not yet understand my distinction between the shorter and longer journeys, I trust this distinction will resonate with your own problematic attempts to mediate general empirical method and other aspects of Lonergan’s (or indeed, any philosophical) work to a variety of audiences--some theoretically astute, and some not. And I trust that, generally speaking, you are quite familiar with the philosophical exploration, development, and self-correctives--the whole sweep of the philosophical project--that constitutes the longer journey, as a journey, and as the central thematic in Bernard Lonergan’s corpus of writing. I include, of course, the difference between (a) general-empirical and (b) transcendental methods where the later bridges the empirical movements of the virtually unconditioned and proportionate being with our religious beliefs, with the experience of religious conversion and, more generally, with spiritual and religious concerns (1958 and 2000) and with knowledge born of the conversion experience.
Briefly, the shorter journey provides the objectifying and verifying experiment; but it does not and cannot include a prolonged treatment of the underpinnings of foundational self-understanding and self-corrective. Whereas: the longer-journey is about just that. The shorter-longer distinction draws a clear, artificial but, I hope, helpful line between (a) gaining objective knowledge and (b) gaining interior self-development. Here, a clear beginning pedagogy can be undertaken for educational institutions where a three-credit format is common—one that does not avoid or obscure the import of foundational (a) development and (b) self-corrective.
My point to the Lonergan-savvy reader is this: We can all acknowledge substantial disagreements, conceptual differences, corrections to Lonergan’s and others’ works, and newly discovered nuances in our understanding of the critical work that can inform this longer journey for any of us. However, to all, at least let us recognize the pedagogical value of offering a clearly stated and step-by-step shorter journey--one with well-defined goals that can be accomplished in a relatively brief classroom setting, and that can exist and move others forward within the greater dialogic context. That context is of (a) those many differences evident in our current philosophical discourse (or lack of it); (b) the various available (and known to us) conversion experiences hoped for in the midst of prolonged philosophical study for our students, however conceptualized and-or however embodied those experiences come to be; and (c) other aspects of that aforesaid longer journey in all of its warps and weaves.
By comparison and as a conscious aspect of the text Finding the Mind as a guide to the shorter journey, this work is modest, then, and I argue it must be. The work is more of a clarifying distinction between nuanced aspects of a much broader and comprehensive project, than it is a further development-of that project (though some new ideas and language are offered here). That is, I mean to lead the reader to find and verify the basic structure in his-her own concrete and objectified expressions and to verify the theory, but only that--as an initial entrance into their own interior domain and what I am referring to as the longer journey, and with a starting point at whatever foundational milieu readers may have and, at present, already bring to the study.
Polymorphism of mind is a given starting point for any teacher; unravelling that polymorphism is a necessarily-long journey; and in that journey we can find well-defined moments and plateaus, as it were, that can contribute to, rather than further obscure, the needed moments of that longer journey. Taking on the shorter journey can bring the reader to one of those plateaus in a clear and critical way.
On the other hand, in providing for this relatively brief entrance, I have remained conscious-of and faithful-to the need for readers to understand the difference between (a) commonsense and (b) theoretical consciousness, and between their own (a) topical-extroverted thought and (b) undercurrents of their foundational reality, and to begin carving out for themselves what Lonergan refers to as a theoretically differentiated consciousness and further differentiations of mind (1972).
In the narrative in the main text, then, I refer to, but do not engage the reader fully in, what is generally known in Lonergan circles as the various foundational explorations and conversion experiences or massive changes of horizon that, we know, can be inspired by guided and critical self-reflective practice.
In my view, for many who may be interested, we need to provide a distinct venue for initial verification that does not obscure or omit but openly regards such study and experiences before full engagement is actually approached--or even if the reader decides naught. Thus, this work is fully focused on readers first making their solid connection-verification of the theory, and on using their own recurring experience as data with its implication and suggestion of an interior reality. I refer to aspects of the longer journey throughout; however, we can only hope that the reader will follow through in that further foundational self-development and corrective.
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Those who are familiar with Lonergan’s work will recognize, then, that the experiment in the shorter journey of Finding the Mind emerges as a flower overtly attached to a deep-set root system--a system that constantly draws and develops in us all--whether we are aware of it or not (our philosophical and other foundations). And if reader-engaged, the appendixes, quotes, and references (mainly, to Lonergan’s work but also to several others’) offer treatment of the whole-self, as it were, and refer in more intimate fashion to that root. The root, as you well-know, is our own potential development, corrective, and coming-to-consciousness of self and world; or--a horrible term to introduce to novices--at the very least: explicit metaphysics.
The distinction between the two journeys, then, is made with caution. The appendixes are provided online, as this on is--should readers wish to approach the self-reflective project in a more comprehensive and prolonged fashion or, again, to continue on in what I refer to as the longer journey (King 2010).
Thus, if you have a basic understanding of Lonergan’s contributions to cognitional theory, epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, etc., you can read the experiment for critical self-discovery herein as a treatise on pedagogy for self-appropriation-affirmation and understand something new, even if you do not read the introduction or appendixes (though again some of the treatments and technical terms are new and may interest you anyway).
Also, if you already understand the cognitional theory and its unique personal applications (self-appropriation-affirmation) and including its vast philosophical implications in the formal fields of study, you might want to skip over the theoretical development in part II. Though note that in our treatment, the good-bad complex is intimately related to all four desire-quests and their shadow-questions.
Questions Rather than Levels
Further, we take the desire-quests, or the development of differentiated inquiry as a spontaneous experience, as our theoretical focus and expression. That is, I conceptualize the basic structure here in terms of four desire-quests (internal-actual, remote, but regularly expressed) and then as shadow questions (theoretical expression), and not in terms of levels of consciousness. The relationship between desire-quests and their shadow questions portrayed in the main text and the other appendixes is pedagogical; while the difference between (a) the desire-quests/shadow-questions and (b) levels of consciousness should be clear to those who have already studied Lonergan’s work in a comprehensive way and who understand the difference between a metaphysical approach and an approach from an understanding of interiority and of intentionality analysis. (See note 1 in this appendix 18.)
Also, in Collection (1988), and speaking of E. Coreth's work on metaphysics, Lonergan explains the primacy of the question:
No doubt the proper place to begin is at the beginning, but some say one issue and others say another is the proper begining. So there is a question about the beginning and, indeed, no matter where one starts, one starts from some question. For Fr Coreth, then, questioning itself is the beginning....the condition of the possiblity of any and all questions is an awareness that goes beyond the already known to an unknown to be known (p. 190).
Though the term levels is appropriate for some explanations, the term question (and for us our term desire-quests) goes to the heart of general empirical--interior--point of view.
Furthermore, and as a pedagogical point, I develop the division of concepts, between (a) shadow-questions and (b) desire-quests, to support the division between (a) theoretical conceptualization and (b) reader self-discovery (their own experience of the desire-quests as they occur in the reader). The experiment begins with the reader’s own experience. Conceptually, these terms refer to the same basic structure. As pedagogical, however, the two-fold division of concepts encourages reader self-reflection by making formal (as a part of the superstructure) the distinction between (a) theoretical conceptualization and (b) their own interior life as they begin to objectify aspects of it via their guided self-reflection.
On the other hand, again, it is common to my experience that even those who have a basic understanding of Lonergan’s contributions can have vastly different views about and expressions of that understanding. And some pretend to know but really do not, or just can use more refinement of understanding and ability to express knowledge.
Furthermore (in Lonergan’s technical language) counter-positions are recalcitrant--set in place, commonly for a long time, as learned-received, now-assumed, and as a part of our polymorphic foundations for our thinking that inform our life-event matters (1958 and 2000). We can also refer to the difference between (a) our more object-oriented understanding of the counter-positions (and-or philosophical attitudes) and (b) the project of self-identity and internal development—of long-term developments and self-correctives integrated as new and transformed meaning into our personal complex of foundational memory, its implications, and its now-spontaneous formation of our speech and actions (Piscitelli 1985).
In other words, and depending on the narrative circumstances, old problematic foundational lenses (e.g., some names are mechanist determinism, naïve realism, idealism, relativism, dogmatism, etc.) can hide within the warp and weave of our latent-to-problematic philosophical viewpoint and influence our thought and how we frame meaning, in any context, and for a very long time (Lonergan 1958 and 2000; and Piscitelli 1985).
A critic of any Lonergan-inspired text--a text written from the point of view of interiority and explicit metaphysics--first should consider the above, and be open for potential internal change--even internal transformation--before taking a final view of such a critique.
The philosophical lenses we bring to our experiment herein provide no exception. Thus, depending on the person, and without a fuller longer-journey foundational review, development, and corrective, reading and understanding the experiment and-or the appendixes will rest-in and be influenced-by any one of a number of personal, well or badly developed, foundational contexts. This is so even in those who people Lonergan studies—and, I argue, like no other. And relationship between our latent and problematic philosophical foundations is living and complexly so. As such, conceptual or even substantial differences evident in many scholars’ writings about Lonergan’s work may never be settled in our lifetimes--and maybe in some sense they should not be, the mysteries of developmental and dialectical functions being what they are.
Over and above such manifest differences, however, is a person’s self-understanding. The experiment herein reaches for that reader self-understanding, again, without regard yet for a full treatment of their foundational milieu. In this text, again, we separate-out and talk about, but do not ignore, readers’ foundational concerns. The experiment contains only what can be empirically and critically established, and repeated in scientific-objectivist fashion, using collected data from reader's own experience.
The experiment can be undertaken alone or in any classroom setting, in a reasonable amount of time, and from almost any foundational situation--even from an initial denial of the existence of foundations.
The main text (with its online appendix-extensions) (King 2010) is layered, then, so that, with frequent references to the appendixes and other resources, (1) we can approach and complete the experiment in critical fashion while (2) we maintain awareness of the integrative relationship between (a) that objectivist-experimental, critical (but extroverted) verification procedure and (b) a more prolonged and “painstaking” treatment of the reader’s philosophical foundations (1958, xxiii and 2000, 17).
In this way, we can develop one aspect of self-knowledge in a relatively brief format (the experiment as the shorter journey) with a clearly established finishing moment (as a plateau), while preserving a close, even intimate relationship to the longer journey--to the narrative-about and reference-to more comprehensive foundational study and insights, correctives, horizon development, and self-knowledge.
Speaking of his book Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, Lonergan comments:
More than all else, the aim of the book is to issue an invitation to a personal, decisive act. But the very nature of the act demands that it be understood in itself and in its implications. What on earth is meant by rational self-consciousness? What is meant by inviting it to take possession of itself? Why is such self-possession said to be so decisive and momentous? The questions are perfectly legitimate, but the answer cannot be brief…it is not the answer itself that counts so much as the manner in which it is read. (1958, xix and 2000, 15)
As you know, the “manner” refers to readers’ foundational lenses and to potential deeply felt changes in them and in us. Underlying this treatment of the shorter and the longer journeys, then, is my hope that the abbreviated experiment herein can bring a broader audience of reader-experimenters one-step-closer to the fuller set of direct and reflective insights that constitute what Lonergan means by self-appropriation and self-affirmation—including awareness of needed personal-foundational transformations only achieved through long-term philosophical reflections.
Such is the aim of setting up the context and conditions for some development and-or corrective to occur, rather than merely for something personal to be learned-about in a topical way, even if that topical learning is scientifically-experimentally sound.
Further, we are exploring what happens when a human being is in the process of knowing. Since knowing is central to the project of any teaching, our audience includes those involved in teacher education.
We are concerned not with the existence of knowledge but with its nature, not with what is known but with the structure of the knowing, not with the abstract properties of cognitional process but with a personal appropriation of one’s own dynamic and recurrently operative structure of cognitional activity.… For the labor of self-appropriation cannot occur in a single leap. Essentially, it is a development of the subject and in the subject and, like all development, it can be solid and fruitful only by being painstaking and slow. (1958, xxiii and 2000, 17)
Thus, my aim is to provide pedagogy for bringing Lonergan’s central and unique philosophical contribution to the field of education and, through that field, to teachers--while regularly referring to foundational development and self-correction. Thus, again, the work is meant to avoid “telescoping” philosophical study or “vulgarizing” Lonergan’s work (McShane 2009).
Intentionality Analysis and Levels, but not Potencies
In Method in Theology, in section 9 labeled A Technical Note (1972, 120-24), Lonergan clarifies the distinction between a classical-metaphysical view underpinning theoretical developments, and what he refers to as a view from the performance of an intentionality analysis. I take this to mean the difference between analyzing from the point of view of (a) the writer having understood, clarified and dispensed with the older metaphysical view and (b) the writer having objectified, become conscious of, understood, and appropriated-affirmed elements of their own interior functions (as evident in their ongoing experience of their own functioning). And I take it to mean: the writer as having become comfortable, even spontaneous, in incorporating this interior-based intentional-ist view into their thinking, conversations, and writings. The view includes the inherent limitations of human knowledge and an understanding of the difference between what we know and what we belief, opine or merely think, etc.
Lonergan’s narrative in that section will grate on those who thoroughly understand more recent feminist transitions (as they do me) as cultures go forward in their cultivating process. Nevertheless, in this extended part of my introduction aimed at those familiar with Lonergan’s work and contributions, let me at least put forth that I am familiar with this transition and that the present experiment is just that—an experiment where the reader-experimenter begins with the data of consciousness as to-be-collected first in the written narrative of the readers’ own experiences, and only then moves to theoretical developments for later applications. Those developments are couched in intentionalist rather than classicist language and their philosophical assumptions.
Further, in Method in Theology, Lonergan counter-poses the metaphysical view with the view from interiority:
…in terms of intentional and conscious acts on the four levels of experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding. The lower levels are presupposed and complemented by the higher. The higher sublate the lower. If one wishes to transpose this analysis into metaphysical terms, then the active potencies are the transcendental notions revealed in questions for intelligence, questions for reflection, questions for deliberation. (1972, 120)
Here, I take Lonergan to mean that, in terms of philosophical foundations, reference to the active potencies, with no reference to empirically-established data, personal or otherwise, reveals an under-lying classicist or metaphysical view. Whereas, from an interior-view (explicit metaphysics, as appropriated and known empirically), intentionality analysis goes forward from that view, accounting now for intentional acts as experienced by the writer. Indeed, in the present work, we start with the reader-experience of raising questions and refer to the transcendental notions that, in fact, are revealed in those questions (generally stated as) questions for intelligence, questions for truth, questions for reflection, questions for deliberation, etc. Further, our rendition of the theory (using the four generally-drawn shadow-questions) is meant to make the transition back from theory-to-experience for the reader as easily drawn as possible.
The present work, then, takes the above distinction between philosophical-foundational viewpoints fully into account and is written from the point of view of interiority; and it provides a venue for readers to begin on their own journey of understanding and coming to know their own philosophical foundations.
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Note (for this appendix only)
1. Lonergan refers to levels of consciousness at several places in both Insight (1958 and 2000) and Method in Theology (1972); e.g., experience, understanding, and judgment, are determined as levels of consciousness that come together to complete our knowledge. Your understanding of what Lonergan means here is essential to the fuller project of self-understanding. Also many writers have taken up the levels metaphor as central to their understanding of conscious order and to what Lonergan means by it, e.g., What is it? and Is it so? However, note that these expressions are in question form and that Lonergan refers to inquiry, the questioning process, and our kinds-of and specific questions again and again in his writing.
In the Finding the Mind text, I do not use the metaphor of levels to depict conscious structure, but rather use the term desire-quests. However, and to avoid confusion, I would like here to determine the difference between (a) the conceptualization of specific questions and (b) a reference to desire-quests and their framework—both as general.
Thus, we note that our anticipations born of desire-inquiry are distinct--one from the other and as operative within the experiencing-understanding–judgment-deliberation-decision-act complex. As generalized, we can see a structure emerge, that some refer to as having levels. Thus, our desire-quests are unified, structured, and integrated--at first in need of differentation, and then interrelationship, and then a re-integration (Piscitelli, 1985). In real life, our desire-quests often go unnamed and are often undifferentiated and overlapping, making them sometimes difficult to isolate for analysis.
Nevertheless, the unnamed but experienced desire-quests as generalized into theoretical expression (now named shadow questions) can be teased out of any discourse--they are all a part of a process we experience as knowing and then moving towards speaking-acting. As such, the distinctions and relationships between the shadow questions also can be understood as demarcations of different levels of consciousness. Therefore, the two terms (levels and inquiry, or desire-quests) are an attempt to capture different nuances and aspects of the same reality that constitutes the general structure of the human mind. A level refers more to a relationship between desire-quests or kinds of questions than to a concrete experience and will emerge only as differntiation occurs.
I have found in teaching that the term inquiry or desire-quest or question is a more concrete metaphor than level as either tends to allow students to better follow an unbroken link from their experience, to their conceptualization of that experience in their crisis narrative, to identification of the desire-quests in their narratives, to self-identity. (Perhaps Lonergan would refer to the term inquiry as a primitive term [1958, 11-12 and 2000, 36-37].)
As such, in my experience, and as a commonly unnamed but now-described function occurring regularly in conscious operations, desire-quests and their framework are easier to locate and identify in my students’ experience than anything resembling a level. Thus desire-quests and shadow questions, as differentiations of the more inclusive general term inquiry, are described structural demarcations in personal consciousness. Such demarcations suit the pedagogical purpose of helping novice philosophers and those interested in the critical details of self-appropriation-affirmation (or a primer such as is our main text) locate and connect the theory and the language more easily with their own concrete experience of thinking.
Further, we are linking desire to quest to avoid a common but incorrect philosophical notion that would separate questioning, questing, or intelligence from the fullness of feeling, image, and whatever else we might mean by desire or fear, for that matter. As desire is human, it enters human consciousness and our intelligence in a way that is difficult to distinguish from what it means to quest, e.g., a question of the type What is it?, is our desire to understand as manifest in-process.
Though different, in fact, feelings and images are inexorably linked in human beings' to our interior life as intelligence on the move. What we might mean by intelligence as distinct from feeling-image is, in fact, intimate with feeling-image. As distinct, these are a working set of mutually transformative aspects of that interior life and, thus, of what it means to be human.
We want to maintain an understanding of that relationship-in-difference throughout our work in our main text and in these appendixes.
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