Our Desire-Quest-Complex 3 and the Is-Ought Relationship as Historical and-or Logical
Table of Contents
Introduction
As Creative
Two Meanings of "Act"
Our Questioning as (1) Conscious Choice, or as (2) Given
Historical Transformation: Ought Becomes IS
Our Well of Fungible Meaning
Speculative Knowing
History and Logic: Insider's or Outsider's View
The Tensional In-Between
Conclusion
Introduction
From the point of view of logical analysis, we cannot derive an ought from an is. That is, if something is, it does not automatically follow that it should be or ought have been.
Also, the same criteria for understanding and knowing the truth holds for understanding and knowing what ought to be. That is, what ought to be, or the good-bad we decide to say and do as speculative (before we say-do it), rather than what already is, is a product of critical movement of mind towards our making a judgment yes-or-no--about what I should/should-not say-do. Or it's in the development and build-up of relevant meaning-intelligibility towards the fullness of that saying and doing, and our selecting and marshalling all relevant evidence for making those judgments-for-knowledge/truth.1
First, we are speaking from the point of view of history and empirical analysis.
Second, our shadow-question-3 is generally stated as: Is it worthwhile? (...for me to say and-or do?).
Third, the Is it worthwhile? shadow-question also holds together a complex of prior moments of (a) resonating under-meaning combined with (b) the meaningful situation-at-hand, about which the question arises.
Finally, (c) our What is worthwhile to do?-question initiates a flow of thought that can (but need not) take us to the further questions: (c-1) Is it worthwhile? (c-2) Should-ought I do it? And (c-3) Will I do it? We can also refer to this flow of questioning as deliberation. That flow is commonly followed by meaningful speech and-or bodily action, otherwise known as implementation.
Further, in (c) above, c-1 calls for resonant under-meaning connections and developments; while c-2 and c-3 call for a confirming closure: Yes or no. This closure is not about what is, in fact, true. Rather, these are moments in the movement towards implementation of what is intended to become the IS of concrete data that, in turn, can be data for our questions for meaning and truth.
Thus, shadow-questions that call for a yes-no response assume prior meaning treated in its prior What-type-question--in this case: (a) What is worthwhile for me to say-do? The content in all questions is referred to throughout and generally as IT.
Or if a yes-no judgment cannot be made at present through my deliberation, the movement of mind calls for further contemplation of meaning—or dissembling, as the case may be (c-1).
Stated differently, after we develop meaning and identify what is worthwhile for me to say-do, and after we confirm that, indeed, it is so-worthwhile (yes/no), our further deliberative questions become: Should I and will I Bring IT into concrete being through my speech-act?
Of course, the flow from one desire-quest/shadow question to another can be interrupted or aborted at any juncture, and for many reasons.
As Creative
In this way, the flow of our questioning moves us from considerations of meaning, to concrete speaking and acting, to reflective considerations of that said-acted meaning again, and then to knowledge of the truth of that meaning.
As empirically established and historical, the flow is intimate with reality-being (ourselves thinking, speaking, and acting in-with-on the world); the flow is fundamentally creative (we are a part of and, as a whole, we bring about history); and the flow is derived from the albeit-limited freedom that comes with being human (Lonergan 2000, 646).
As creative, then, our complex and spontaneous flow of desire-questing conditions our participating in, but also our bringing about, a continually transformed intelligible reality—a reality that—good and-or bad or in-between--emerges transformed from the half-burned body and ashes of the old.
Before we choose to do anything, and as condition for that choosing, we are intimately involved in creating that new reality--one that we contribute to forming through the meaning-intelligibility that flows through our fundamental set of desire-quests towards expression in the world in our speaking-doing.
Thus, logically-speaking we cannot derive ought from is. However, from an historical and empirically established point of view,
Ought-should, in fact, becomes IS through act (and speech as act).
We could say that what is thought, in speculation, as meaning-intelligible-good (ought-should know-say-do-be) is constantly transformed into actual-IS through our speech and actions.
Two Meanings of "Act"
In his technical philosophical work Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, Bernard Lonergan refers to act in a technical way identifying act with judgment for knowledge-truth. Thus, the act of judgment follows upon experience, understanding, and reflective understanding (1958 & 2000). And so we have two meanings of “act,” or we can speak of: one as technical meaning referring to our judgment for knowledge-truth, and the other more common meaning referring to meaningful speech and bodily movements:
Act-1 Knowing-judgment of the real, and
Act 2 Creation of the real through concrete movement and speech, or through our implementation of the meaning we have explored and engaged in the concrete material world we live in.
Our Questioning as (1) Conscious Choice, or as (2) Given
Further, though we can certainly act before thinking, we are born-in-act (both acts 1 and 2 above) as intelligent beings. From birth and before, our intelligence is on the move—understanding the meaning-intelligiblity of what-is, judging that meaning to be so or not; understanding what we can and will say-do (or not), deliberating about that meaning towards actually saying-doing (or not).
In a highly variable and more or less differentiated fashion, we move quickly or slowly through our given set of desire-quests-to-questions anticipating insights-to-understanding, and then our rationale and decisions for speaking-acting in the world. We do so depending on our developmental state, on our patterns of thought and emerging specific interests, and in terms of what happens to us in our living. In fact, our history of both awareness and our speaking-acting (meaning: act-2) concretely in the world is a constant manifestation of this whole-set of desire-quests, their insights and judgments, and their accumulation of meaning.
Or in common terms, our desire-quests are given—we begin with them and do not choose to have them as a basic structure. Rather, the desire-quests are the conditioning factor for that choosing.
Our desire-quests manifest as a basic structure and underpin and condition all of the content and direction of of our, all reflection and self-reflection, all planning and follow-through to speaking and acting in the world. Our specific meaning-clothed questions, which can be governed by our awareness, executive functions, and conscious choice, themselves emerge from the basic structure (expressed theoretically as our shadow-questions). That structure has a dynamism about its functioning.
Again, we do not choose to have or to employ it. As a dynamic and developmental whole, our desire-quests form the internal activity and structure of what it means to be an intelligent, aware, and developing human beings who seek to understand, value, know, speak and move around in the world in the way we do (act-2).
Again, rather than always consciously choosing to question, or to ignore questions, our choices of raising specific questions--including our choice to further develop our reflective capacities--are conditioned by our prior universal and basic structure and its set of given and developing desire-quests (explored in our main text: Finding the Mind).
We may try to run away from specific questions; however, we cannot run away from desire-questing itself—because, first, merely being awake and aware is our desire-questing activity already on-the-move as it spontaneously resonates and considers new meaning and because, second, if you want an object, say, a new home or pet, you would not do so until you have some understanding of what that object is.
Any understanding that we have gained we have done so through our desire-questing activities. You learned what that object is from your first having desire-quested about its meaning, generally stated as: What is it? (shadow-question-1).
Historical Transformation: Ought Becomes IS
Part of human development consists of our reversing the movement of mind from our:
acting first and thinking second (if we think at all) to
thinking first and then speaking-acting after having been informed by that prior thinking.2
With that developmental range in mind, we can say this: at the cresting of intelligent being-in-act, between knowing (act-1 )and saying-acting-being (act-2), all human IS’s were once human should-oughts.
That is, all should-oughts emerge from the generalized Is it Worthwhile? complex of desire-quests. Furthermore, the specific meaning of should-ought depends for its depth and quality on the specifics of our meaning-developmental horizons; on the ensconced principles that we have built-up to govern our thought; and on the developmental state of our executive functions.
Such meaning always emerges within a specified cultural context. Or, in our moments of concrete speech-act-in-intelligence (act-2), all potential and speculative (non-factual) should-oughts are transformed into concrete IS’s. As implementation occurs, that transformed-meaning IS no longer speculative. As transformed, only then does that IS become data that can then come under the further question for intelligible, logical, qualified, and reflectively-established fact (our desire-quests/shadow-questions-1 and 2: What is it? and Is it so?).
At that catalytic point between thinking and speaking-acting (now), our active flow of pondering--all of our desire-quests in our worthwhile complex--ends, and our act-2 occurs.
Ought-should becomes IS.
Further, this momentary end-in-act-2 renders moot all of our prior questions about this specified content X, de facto. For we do not ask: should we or if we will say-do something AFTER we have said-done it or after we have missed-the-moment of the event of our potential speech and-or action.
Concretely, once the plane leaves, we may regret that we didn’t get on it, or be glad that we did. However, in either case, we do not continue to contemplate whether or not we should actually get on board after we have boarded, or after we know it has left the terminal. Or, “no one chooses to have sacked Troy, for deliberation does not refer to the past but only to the future and to what is possible, …” (Aristotle, trans,1962, 149). What is possible is not yet factual, but still within the range of my saying-doing. Or in our own language, we can know IT-ought before it occurs, but that knowing remains speculative.
In this way, human acts-2 are developmental and formative of the human being involved in the act, and of the history of our being in the world. Our speaking and acting in the world is in some way final in its specific intelligible context. Or as Aristotle refers to Agathon saying:
“One thing alone is denied even to god; to make undone the deeds which have been done.” (trans. 1962, 149)
Further, the term worth is a derivative of the more primitive notion of the good. In the case of worthwhile-ness of our being, we are considering, discerning, and then deliberating and deciding about (what-should-will I?) the good-bad-worthwhile-ness of what we actually can think, say, and do (the range of intelligible possibilities).
Concomitantly, if the content of the worthwhile-to-understand-know-say-do were already concrete fact, the flow of meaning through our desire-quests would not even move into our desire-quest-3 complex (Is it worthwhile) or come to inform our executive functions. In such a case, there would be nothing to execute.
Our Well of Fungible Meaning
Furthermore, regardless of our developmental moment, our should-ought quest and its language are derivative of our given desire-quest to understand and know the meaningful-good-worthwhile. Also, The meaning-well, from whence all of our desire-quests draw, is fungible. That is, the worthwhile complex of desire-quests towards saying-doing (desire-quests-3-4) shares its meaning-well with the qualitative-evaluative-intelligible aspect of our desire-quests-1-2, expressed here as shadow-questions: What is it? and Is it so?
Seen as a whole flow of meaning from desire-questing or thinking, to knowing, to acting-2, our worthwhile-ness reflections on that meaning are more or less circumscribed by our efforts of discernment in consideration of our being-participation-creation. In other words, we can, but do not always or often, differentiate clearly between what we are thinking-about and what we are considering to say-do (what I should-ought say-do).
Differentiated or not, those efforts spontaneously draw from our relatively fungible field of developing under-meaning, and all of its facets (including both objective-knowledge and self-identified developmental meaning. That meaning-field includes the good-bad or qualitative meaning-intelligence, and informs us, whether or not it’s hidden from the stage of our conscious awareness in our un-awareness.
Speculative Knowing
Nevertheless, when considering future actions, that movement of intelligibility and its evaluative aspects remain speculative—IT IS-not-yet in the concrete, existential, or historical sense—we can still dissemble or abort, IT can still be avoided, and IT still may not be done or said. Rather, we may have completely settled all of the meaning of our speculated-projected IS-doing or saying where our speculative intelligibility, deliberations, and decisions are completely settled early on, but where we have yet to act-2. In such cases, as far as we can see, we plan to act-2 if nothing substantial intervenes, and if all things remain the same.
For example, if it does not rain on Sunday, and if nothing else interferes, we’ll have a picnic at the park. Such settling, however, is always contingent (if) until the event comes around and until we act in that event, or until the act occurs, or the set date-time event passes.
On the other hand, historically, any ought that is intelligently projected into a future time and place becomes a factual IS at that catalytic moment when my Will-I question goes moot as I speak-act or fail to speak-act in-that-context-moment (now). Sunday arrives, and we actually have that picnic, or we do not, and the questions about that IT go moot.
In this way, all of our speculative future judgments will rest in a nest of past relatively fungible under-meaning and judgments--of which some are true; some are partially true or just undeveloped; some are based on belief (reasonable or not); some may have been made incorrectly, some are received but uninspected for their meaning and implications, some are rightly or wrongly related and applied. Still, forthcoming yes-no judgments about the worthwhile-ness of a future would-could-should-be act, again, are conditional (they depend on unfulfilled ifs).
By definition, speculations cannot be true (unconditioned fact) precisely because conditioned conjecture, no matter how well-meaning or secure-in-mind, is not yet fulfilled-conditioned ir factual. Or in Lonergan’s technical terms, the future is conditioned (it’s surrounded by ifs). As decided-on before it occurs, we may refer to it as the virtually conditioned (1958 and 2000).
As already virtually UNconditioned, the meaning is approached with understanding and true-knowledge of fact in mind. Again, we do not deliberate about what already has taken place or about what IS. In this way, the virtually unconditioned (knowledge of what is true-real) is potentially informative of what we contemplate, deliberate about, and decide to say-do. We approach the future only with conditions surmised as to-be-fulfilled, but as not yet really so.
In a sense, we can say that speculative knowledge is virtually conditioned, rather than virtually unconditioned. (See references to the virtually unconditioned in Lonergan [1958 & 2000], and in our Finding the Mind: Foundational Review [unpublished manuscript at this writing].)
History and Logic: Insider's or Outsider's View
Let us refer again to logic and to the relationship between, first, what is so, or factual and, second, our worthwhile-should-ought complex of desire-quests-to-questions-to-deliberations, etc. Of course we can apply logical principles to any speculative narrative.
However, here we distinguish between, first, a logical and, second, an existential-historical relationship between What Is factual, on the one hand, and What Is Not but Should-Ought Be, on the other. We do so to secure the different but related methodologies of logic and the method of mind in history with regard to our worthwhile-is-ought complex of desire-quests and their complex relationships.
That is, we can claim that, logically-speaking, an ethical-ought cannot be derived from a given is. Logically, no necessary relationship holds between Is and the intelligence or lack of intelligence of Ought or Should. Logic, then, can reveal the order of, but cannot explain or direct, human speech and act (1 and-or 2). Thus logic is central to many aspects of understanding and rationality, is related to reasonability, but is not formative or directive of human responsibility. In that broader notion of responsibility, logic is not directive of the methods of either development or dialectic in human concerns. Nor can it direct us in our moving from one horizon to another. Nor does it account for either the instance of the raising of a question nor of the occurrence of insight.
However, historically we are existentially responsible—involved with participating in and creating the transformed IS that was only potential before we came to be involved, directed, and self-directed in it. We do that spontaneously via our structured desire-quests and the meaning that flows through them, i.e., our is-it-worthwhile complex of desire-quests that include what-should, should-ought I, and will I say-do IT?
In this way, logic reveals the order of, but has little or no bearing on human responsibility. The impasse of relating IS to OUGHT, or logic to the good-should-ought complex in logical circles, is broken when we speak (a) from the point of view of the historical nature of our being where should-ought transforms into IS; (b) to our limited freedom within that history of being (1958 and 2000); and (c) to our creativly-involved nature as we participate intimately, in the continuous and eventual now, in that history.
As such, the structure and activities of our being reveal that we are intimate with the universe of history which, for us, is fundamentally moral-ethical-spiritual—and cannot be otherwise. This is so since, regardless of our moment in our development (1) the worthwhile-should-ought-I complex of desire-quests informs all speech and act. Thus, (2) it is essentially about our participation-in and creative bringing-about-of the good-bad (or failing to act) in the history of human being, and (3) precisely because, concomitantly, all human history is an expression of our speech-act responses to that complex of desire-quests.
The history and discoveries of logic rightly reveal that mere logic cannot direct or lock us into good or bad speech or action-2. However, we also can ask if such lock-stepping is really an attractive idea in the first place—or historically, and with the advent of secularity and its loosening of religiously-derived restraints, is fostering such an odd ideal really a covert excuse to let-go of our desire-quest for being responsible human beings—or for what it means to live a good life, including in the context of our relationships with others. For in fact, regardless of a logicians’ inability to connect IS with ought logically, we all still go home, and we live in this complex of desire-quests where we are constantly transforming our many thoughtful oughts into IS’s.
We can call up the post-modern philosophical and logical quandary where ethicists are left to wring our hands and watch with dismay (and even horror) while the ground of ethics crumbles and disappears before our very eyes, and where we fear for the future of humanity.
However, seen from an existential historical view, the distinction between is and ought presents us with the creative space only known to humans and where quali-meaning is worked out and implemented, or with the basic structure of human creativity, discovery, freedom, and participation in being-in-history (Lonergan, 1958 & 2000).
Thus, from a bird's-eye or outsider's view of history, logic does not and cannot bridge the relationship between knowing what is and oughting-the good. Logic is of what Lonergan (drawing from Coreth) refers to a "restricted sphere":
A point not made in Insight I have since learnt from Fr. Coreth. It regards spheres of being. Real being is known when the fulfilling conditions are data of sense or of consciousness. Restricted spheres of being are known when the fulfilling conditions are not data but some lesser requirement: the merely logical is what satisfied criteria of clarity, choherence, and rigor ....(1988, p. 297)
IS cannot be a necessary cause of our moral-ethical lives, though it can be. When it is, it becomes so through our given intelligent operations we are studying here, e.g., either through mere trust and acceptance (as when we do what our parents tell us, before we can understand what or why we are doing it and, thus, we create a moral habit); or through the series of desire-questioning WHAT and IS for our understanding and knowledge, then through deliberation, decision, towards our own speech-act in the world. In either case, there is nothing lock-step about the relationship. (See note below about the relationship of this dynamism to Lonergan's functional specialties.)
From an insider's view of history, then, we are called to address that now-age-old question: What does it mean to know an IS and-or a speculative IS and, within that question, What does it mean to know at all, and how do we understand or argue the imperative to connect the ought-good with our historically reality?
Our point is this: We can think ourselves outside of history via our questioning structure, but we cannot say-do-BE outside of that history.
We can and do objectify ourselves, and our moral-ethical ought-should, just as we objectify-qualify anything. But we can only connect that ought-should to IS from our awareness of ourselves as historical insiders. In other words, if we are worried about the is-ought philosophical connection, then we have to know ourselves as not only knowers, but also as now-implementers in history. Further, that implemented history is structurally within the venue of the good-bad question. Though always also under the auspices of dialectic and a vast range of development, it cannot be otherwise approached--that is, without the question of the good-bad as venue.
We are all, at least in part, in the process of making our own being.
From this insider's view, entertaining the is-ought-should relationship is merely a matter of engaging fully in the question: Who am I, and who am I to be? or communally, Who are WE, and who are we to be?
From the point of view of insider-history, then, the is-to-ought/should “problem” is not even a problem for logic or, if so, only as a clarifying or editorial moment of one's already-developed narrative. Rather, the is-ought relationship is a problem for ethicists (as outsiders and/or insiders) and for human beings in general who, in fact, are constantly defining and engaging in forming our future existence.3
Also, from the point of view of human beings in history, the IS-OUGHT problem disappears to reveal the question not of logic but of human and cultural development ans corrective (self- or other-directed) or, it reveals the question that Lonergan puts as What is cosmopolis? (1958 and 2000). (Also, see our Appendix 5 on the Pervasiveness of the Good, which is more basic language for our should-ought complex of thought.)
In concrete human concerns, then, it makes no sense to position the relationship between Is and Ought only in a venue of logic--precisely because that relationship is not only conceptual, or static, or merely logical where the form of the argument is the issue. Rather, the relationship between is and ought is discovery-developmental (genetic), dialectical (tensional-dynamic), participative and creative. We haven't been able to carve that connection in logic because, in commonsense terms, ethicists are searching for the right pew in the wrong church. It will never happen.
The relationship speaks fundamentally to the communitarian--it's fundamentally about how we speak and act in the world and our formative meaning as we do so. The analysis from the point of view of insider-history means, in fact, we can reflect on, from a distance, as it were, but we cannot divorce ourselves from (a) our past meaning accural or (b) our responsibility in and to history.
Thus, the actual relationship between Is and Ought cannot be made from a conceptual or logical point of view, on principle. If it could, we would be robotic rather than human. And we would have no part in our own choices of self-development. Rather, the relationship includes and employs, but takes us way beyond, the concerns of logic. Logic tells us how we order our intelligence and its language once we arrive at system and its language. However, logic cannot capture the dynamism of intelligence-worth-good in history or general empirical method in operation as it conditions speech and logic and reveals to us how we arrive at logic’s concerns in the first place.
Using our own term, then, logic’s limited focus for such concerns is excisively warped from the point of view of the dynamism of human beings in history. Or it rests in, depends on, and is derivative of the broader range of history-on-the-move. For all of its legitimate contributions to system, corrective, and critical expression, the history of logical analysis and its philosophical underpinnings is to separate itself from the whole of human being and to claim to capture for itself (falsely) the whole-real. Logic understood as whole-being or as directive of the developmental-dialectical cum ethical aspects of human being is a huge metaphysical mistake. (Mistakes and errors can remain quite logical.)
As creative-historical, then, the relationship between Is and Ought includes both developmental and dialectical venues and concerns. That is, existentially and concretely, we raise the Worthwhile-ness set of desire-quests behind, before, because of, and for the existential speech-and-act--as a question for the human good that I first deem worthwhile saying and doing, that I should or should not do, then that I will or will not do, and then what I actually say-do. As such, human beings, at the crest-point now of speech-action, in fact, are transforming and creating a new and qualified (or not qualified) IS from a thought-about Ought.
Or we transform from an Ought-Not or, relatively thoughtlessly, from reactionary unthinking where our potential for reflection and self-reflection has not developed yet or has become truncated and has failed to do so. We participate-create by continuously carrying out human thought, speech, and act through the venue of our desire-questing, and in an arena of meaning where notoriously no fixed data have accrued as human history (Aristotle, trans, 1962, 35).
The most general aspects of cognitional context are represented by logic and dialectic. Logic is the effort of knowledge to attain the coherence and organization proper to any stage of its development. Dialectic, on the other hand, rests on the breakdown of efforts to attain coherence and organization at any given stage, and consists in bringing to birth a new stage in which logic again will endeavor to attain coherence and organization. (1958, and 2000, p. 301)
Behind all speech and act is the albeit-developmental and potentially dialectical reflective and self-reflective thought that contains our general desire-quests in all their latent and-or creative potency and dynamism. Concretely, then, and from our general ought-should complex of under-meaning and questions, you and I create an ever-new and ethical (or not) IS that is our human life and history in-the-making. Further, and again, because of our basic structure, we can then approach such now-accomplished IS data with our questions of meaning and good-meaning, fact, good-fact, and logical order and, further, with our questions for reflection and self-reflection: Was it really worthwhile?, and Should I have done or said it?
What's done is done, however, and what is not, is not. The historical nature of the analysis can be understood as a call to, but not a determination of, the ought-should of free and responsible human speech and action in history.
Thus, logic alone will not help us reconcile the classic ought-is impasse and the apparent implications of the un-grounding and subsequent presumed relativity of truth in ethics or considerations of the moral universe in character. Nor will a classical frame of mind help us with what needs to be, and what responds better to, an empirical-insider's view of historical exploration.
Rather, existentially speaking, and including the logician in all his-her personhood, we either act arbitrarily and thoughtlessly, or we develop in degrees around the spontaneously arising desire-quests for the good and the worthwhile, in all of their developmental-dialectical nuances, in all of their potential derailments, and in all of their cultural diversity.
From an outsider's view: OUGHT cannot be derived from IS
From an insider's view: IS is derived from OUGHT through thoughtful speech and act-2
The Tensional In-Between
Further, before we speak and-or act, a tension in us fills our desire-questing process towards deliberation--Should I?--and pushes us towards the decision--Yes I should (or should not), and I will (or will not). Again, this existential tension and its further deliberation is released at the now-moment we speak and-or act—the continuous crest-now of human living. We are then taken up into new meaning and sets of tensions,... and life goes on.
What we commonly refer to as our conscience comes into play here as a set of developed principles with their roots deeply grown into our imaginations and feelings--into our very celular makeup.4 Our focus, however, is on the prior set of desire-quests that, when our under-meaning is insight-informed come to constitute our conscience in the first place (our grown-in foundations and their established principles/doctrines).
Our speech and act-2, then, are not only our making an intellectual and responsible commitment, or our taking a stand, about a given issue or truth. Our speech and act-2 also constitute our coming-to-be, our being, and our committing our whole selves to the meaning that comes to fruition and keeps on unfolding in and through that speech and act in our history of speech and act. Amen. Let it be. It is done.
In this way, like the tension behind our What is it? question is released with the occurrence of an insight or set of insights (Aha!), the tension behind the existential complex of desire-quests-3/4--Is it Worthwhile?-Should I do it?-Will I do it?--is released at the moment of human speech and act as they are occurring. We move on to other tensions, but THAT tension is resolved.
In our existential-concrete meaning, then, our two orders of the good, Is it good/Is it worthwhile-complex, stand in the midst of our development and our unique accumulation of under-meaning within that developmental framework. The underlying meaning that informs our is-ought movement of thought interlocks (is fungible) to inform our awareness (and our under-awareness) and the spontaneous, ranging and often unruly movements of our ever-new wonder. What we already have discerned and judged to be good or bad, and our past speech and acts—in our myriad experience of that movement--constitute the meaning-resource for our new questions and judgments about What is worthwhile, and What I ought to do or not do, in the next moment or in the long-off future.
Conclusion
Ought, untransformed through speech-act, is not IS and never will be. So that logic cannot provide a fluid, dynamic bridge between Is and Ought—nor would we be human if it could. The structure of our being in history, then, presents us with a constant call-to-being as our inner discernments and our outer-expressed choices in history can and do continuously transform our oughts into our IS’s.
NOTES: (for this appendix only)
1. Here we are speaking in terms of foundations and their development. That is, when we say or do something we know to be bad, we are still in the question for the good as my expression of my existence. That is, in our speech-and-acts, we answer the question "What is best (should-ought) for me to do?" by that actual saying-doing. "I should not do or say this, but I'm going to do-say it anyway." In fact, our basic structure allows us to both (a)know objectively what is good, and (b) be knowing-identified-with the best-for-me--of saying-doing the bad. The meaning development (or lack of it) that feeds into this dynamic is complex, layered, internally conflicting, and in most cases, person-specific.
2. If you have at least a modest understanding of Lonergan's eight functional specialties (1972), you can easily relate them to the hearing-speaking phenomena.
Briefly, and here in terms of psychological development, the first four functional specialties are about hearing towards internal development, whereas the second four are about that internal development towards speaking and acting in the world or implementation.
Hearing (from below upwards): Research, Interpretation, History, Dialectic
Speaking (from above downwards): Foundations, Doctrines (principles, policies, etc.), systematics, and communications (implementation).
Both "sides" of the specialties are always operative, though they are commonly undifferentiated, and to one degree or another. That is, whenever we are listening, we are also speaking-to-ourselves, at least. And whenever we are speaking, we are also listening to ourselves, again, at least. Such is the complex and layered dynamism of the human condition. (See appendix 1: Self-Presence and Language). However, in that dynamism, we experience a movement of emphasis.
For instance, a child speaks, but his internal development is commonly going forward and building up (internal doctrines, principles govern speech-act, etc.) from having been other-directed. That is, a child hears and heeds, but at first, mostly not from their own basis in understanding.
On the hearing side of the specialties, however, and if left to develop on a relatively normal plane, the meaning-base for the child's own questions is also being develped so that, as he becomes developmental able to reflect and self-reflect, he also becomes able to raise questions for meaning about those earlier-merely-accepted doctrines and principles.
When we are acting first and thinking second (as an extreme), our interior activities emerge as expression from our second set of four specialties (from above downwards); whereas when we "turn around" and begin to think first and act second, our expressions of our internal activities emerge from the first four specialties as focus (from below upwards). One can see this complex and dynamic movement of thought in the broad movements over time of eastern and western history.
The other metaphor that Lonergan uses is the upper and lower blades of scissors. When we understand the tri-part structure and how language works within, it, we can see that objectification in language is where the two blades meet and "cut" in the meaning-moment of history.
None of this means much, however, unless the reader can appropriate the movements in your own thought processes and relate the above to your own thinking, speaking, and acting in the world.
3. We've already been in this process since history started. For instance, the forces for the known and pragmatic good righted several fascist movements in our not-so-distant past. Unless we want to claim (or admit) that, philosophically speaking, the Nazi's activities were fundamentally arbitrary, we have to question our truncated outsider's view of ourselves in history.
In terms of the basic tri-part structure, we need to come out of our over-focus on the thrown-object and ourselves as "seeing" that object from some kind of unexplained birdseye view, to engaging ourselves as a part of the movement of history. Such a movement of mind (a corrective of the ruling paradigm) applies to natural and physical scientist as well.
4. Such growing-in is why it's so difficult for human beings change, and why Aristotle spoke of the importance of having good parents and a good education when we are young (trans, 1962, 37).
END Appendix 7
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