Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, Volume 3: 003 (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan)

I am so terribly happy I've found this book. You see, dear friends Because status updates don't work well for this purpose, I've decided to list my ever expanding notes into my review. You see, dear friends, what Lonergan is doing is nothing less than taking us on a guided tour of our own inner experience as it relates directly to whatever it is we consider knowledge. It's structure is rhetorical rather than poetical, which is not to say he's arguing, but to say that he's not obfuscating.

At least for now, I'll list two important quotes and try to demonstrate their significance. This is probably because it just simply isn't teached. Probably because you can't teach Kantianism to middle-schoolers. But, that's a different contention. This is the movement by which we come to know: There is a middle ground between Image and Concept formation. In Thomism, there is the notion of the Active and Passive Intellects.

Lonergan is giving us a thorough going account of the process of insight, and in so doing, explaining its conditions and its consequences, and thereby giving a summary account of epistemology as it should be approached with respect to not merely common-sensical styles of knowing, but also the severely more rigorous mathematical knowing.

This is my favorite statement to date: It goes back to, I'm not entirely sure, probably at least Duns Scotus. But, the most thoroughgoing re-interpretation of the idea I'm familiar with is Heidegger's. This is the pivotal meaning: This is the radical individuality of the object. This is what you see in a still-life, my friends. This is why a still-life is important. It shows us a state-of-affairs that is not otherwise. Furthermore, it emphasizes the profundity structurally inherit in every single moment of our lives. This is one of the principle sources of Wonder, which has been called the principle source of philosophy.

The next thing you look at, consider that in the history of history, never before has that thing been there then the way it is, nor will it ever be again. If I'm reading Lonergan correctly, he has spelled out this insight in the clearest possible terms available. He calls it empirical residue.

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It is the pre-conceptual stuff of intentionality. You should try it. Further reflections on Scotosis: View all 5 comments.

Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, Volume 3

Jun 17, Colm Gillis rated it it was amazing. What an interesting book!! This offers a really novel angle on human understanding. Written almost as a series of mini-essays? But the fascinating dialogue that occurs renders such critique superfluous. A ground-breaking study which is challenging but rewarding to read. Jul 08, Paul rated it really liked it. There is totes a hardback edition, Goodreads. Nice red boards and everything. I really struggled over the 3 to 4 star rating.

It really doesn't matter. At pages of actual text, you have to want to know what he has to say. It's a series of suggestions and sketches out a possible way of looking at things; there is nothing that would constitute a proof in even a weakened, philosophical sense of the term I hesitate to even use the word "argument" to describe much of anything There is totes a hardback edition, Goodreads.

It's a series of suggestions and sketches out a possible way of looking at things; there is nothing that would constitute a proof in even a weakened, philosophical sense of the term I hesitate to even use the word "argument" to describe much of anything in this book. In the closing pages he confesses to being a professor of dogmatic theology My God, Popper and Carnap feel the need to stop every two to ten pages for the Response to Comments and then the Response to Dipshit Comments Made by People Who Solely Like To Argue, and this guy just floats along as if he's never actually been challenged on a single point in his entire career.

Everything he says needs to be tried and tested and pounded upon and seen whether any of it really works, but I find myself scratching my chin and thinking it might be worthwhile. Let me give an example. A core claim in this book is that Lonergan understands human cognitional process so well he can use it to erect a completely unassailable central nub of metaphysics, upon which any possible actually working way of understanding what the whole universe of being has in common must be erected.

This cognitional process includes as its most prominent feature a three-step structure of knowing, which proceeds in an Aristotelian-Thomist fashion 1 from sense input or introspection of, say, an emotional process to 2 insights which provide "understanding" of possible real structures of the world that provided those sense inputs to 3 reflection and judgement on whether the insights actually correspond to reality. That needs to be compared with actual neuroscience.

There have to be predictions that can be made on that basis that could be checked. Lonergan's "proof" of this theory of cognitional process does in fact contain a stray element of proof, in that he notes that anyone who wants to argue with him about the truth of his theory will engage in some sort of reflection and judgement, i. That's good so far as it goes, but it does not bring us very close to determining whether the three steps are complete and properly described as Lonergan states them, which of course I cannot present in detail here.

Let me resume what else I remember of Lonergan's long, repetitive, smug, but nevertheless intriguing system: The notion of the empirical residue, which is largely just where things are in spacetime, and leads to the scatter of observations away from the predictions of classical [i. The notion of schemes of recurrence and emergent complexity, evolution someone else would have called it, which allows families of simple entities to assemble into composite objects that turn out to have their own systems of rules, e. In this context, he spends a paragraph or three insisting on a dry little unconvincing point that the composite entity completely assumes the simpler entities and it is no longer sensible to talk about them individually.

Right, like it makes any sense to say that I can't speak of John Q. Just in the past few days my reading about medieval philosophy has possibly given me the answer, that Lonergan was still defending Thomas' point about the individuality of the substantial form against multiplicity of forms The notion of the social surd, the tendency of people to initially set up a society or system according to thought-out rules and then corrupt the system by means of "common sense", which is to govern ones actions by the rules that will maximize payoff in the shortest term and which are discovered by trial and error.

This inherent tendency causes the decline of civilizations, the need for new insights, and the tension between those with a coherent vision and those whose "common sense" and "practicality" drag society further down. The social surd is the irrational [get it? He also uses the completely redundant word "obnubilation" more than once and LOVES the word "scotosis", which I thought he had made up to mock Duns Scotus until I looked it up just now.

This brings us to the main dish, the carving out of a metaphysics according to Lonergan's ideas of cognitional process, which are, again, a neo-Thomist progression from 1 the conscious stream and sense input to 2 the construction of possible schemes of understanding the inputs to 3 checking, reflection, and judgment upon the schemes as certain, possible, or false, resulting in knowledge.

That shows that the moment of insight is more than just a grasp of data. It is a grasp of the immanent intelligibility inherent in the data and it eventuates in the formulation of an hypothesis. But our hypotheses can be wrong. That is where judgment comes in. Judgments are answers to what Lonergan calls questions of reflection. Questions of reflection ask "Is it so?

The way we go about answering questions of reflection is by searching for what Lonergan calls the virtually unconditioned. The formally unconditioned is something that is necessary and has no conditions God's necessary existence, for example. The virtually unconditioned is not absolutely necessary. It has conditions, but those conditions are fulfilled. If we grasp the conditions of something, and we grasp that they are in fact fulfilled, then we grasp the virtually unconditioned and we can answer "Yes" to our question of reflection. This is the barest outline of the cognitional theory Lonergan works out in this book and, in that simple form, it probably does not seem that impressive.

But it is amazing how many long-standing philosophical problems Lonergan is able to solve based on his cognitional theory. I can merely give the barest hint of a few of them here. For example, Lonergan is able to resolve the conflict between various sets of insights: Lonergan is also able to solve Meno's problem through his notion of anticipatory heuristic structures. Lonergan is able to solve the problem of primary and secondary qualities through his distinction between pure and experiential conjugates.

Most importantly, Lonergan is able to solve some important problems in the contemporary philosophy of science. For example, since Kuhn we have known that the history of science is not a linear history of progress. This has, in some quarters, given rise to relativistic views. Paradigms are incommensurable and there is no way to adopt a neutral stance to determine which paradigm is superior, etc.. Lonergan is able to account for the dynamic transformation in paradigms without falling into relativism.

Lonergan sees the progress of science in terms of the unchanging, but dynamic, structure of cognition itself. Science moves from data, to hypotheses, to new data. The formulation of hypotheses is the moment of insight where concepts are created. We are not, therefore, trapped in our concepts or in our paradigm. Obviously, I cannot really give a one paragraph summary of Lonergan's solution to such an important philosophical problem but I believe Lonergan's account of cognition is able to account for the genuine insights of people like Kuhn without the relativistic consequences. Lonergan is also able to solve the problem of how we can have knowledge of what is transcendent.

This has probably been the single biggest philosophical problem since Descartes. Virtually every major philosopher tried to find a way to solve it. Lonergan is able to solve the problem because he understands knowledge as three operations. What we know is not just what we see but what we judge to be the case. So, the example that Lonergan gives is: I can judge that I exist, I can judge that the typewriter exists, and I can judge that I am not the typewriter. Lonergan solves the problem through real distinctions. Through our acts of judgment we are able to make real distinctions.

Lonergan was very influenced by Hegel but this is probably the major point in Lonergan's philosophy where he departs from Hegel.

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I do not feel like my summary has really been adequate. There are a ton of interesting insights in this book that I have not even touched upon. In the second half of the book Lonergan develops a metaphysics based on his cognitional theory. Lonergan has interesting things to say about ethics, about myth, and about God. Lonergan also works out an ontology of emergence based on his notion of schemes of recurrence that is able to account for the irreducibility of the higher level sciences like biology to the lower level sciences like physics.

There is just so much of permanent value in this book. I recommend that anyone interested in epistemological and metaphysical questions get a copy of this book as soon as possible. We tend to get trapped in our ways of thinking. We find problems and we try to solve them and we fail to see how the terms of the problem make it irresolvable, or, how background assumptions are getting in the way of solving the problems we are interested in. The best thing that a book can do, I think, is break through those habitual ways of thinking and open up new avenues of research, new means of approach to familiar problems, make new distinctions, and present new possible solutions to old standing problems.

I have rarely read a book that was as successful in opening up new avenues of thought, in showing me the arbitrary nature of many of my most long-standing assumptions, than this book by Bernard Lonergan. I give it my very highest recommendation. Lonergan's master work "Insight" is not a philosophical, scientific, or theological treatise, as most people believe, though it relies on sweeping content in these areas as points of illustration, rather it is a self-help book for intellectuals, the aim of which is to achieve nothing short of self-possession or the grasping-of-that-which-grasps!

Of course, the injunction to "know thyself" has been around for a long time, and there have been many methods, both mystical and scientific, proffered to achieve it. Lonergan provides his own unique approach by dragging us screaming and kicking through periods of dense, and at times impenetrable prose, to various islands of lucidity, all to bring us to the precipice of "immanent intelligibility.

1. Mit der Angst im Nacken (German Edition);
2. Unterrichtsstunde: Erstellen einer Powerpoint-Präsentation (Kauffrau / -mann für Bürokommunikation) (German Edition).
3. Fun In The Sun.
4. See a Problem?.

There's a probability that it will, but factors such as time, place, and individuality i. For me, it did happen, and it was a surprise. I don't want to spoil the ending, so, using an abbreviation, the final insight, at least for me, was an II, where one grasps himself by letting go. This may be the most comprehensive book ever written to answer a simple question: What is the basis of understanding?

At pages it may seem daunting. Yet it is worth the effort if you are doing serious work in the field. If you are not familiar with philosophical terminology, you will have to spend some time figuring out what phrases like "empirical residue" mean. And there is the detail: Every thought is elaborated and elaborated and so forth. This is not a criticism. It is just an explanation of the rigour that Lonergan brought to the effot.

The last pages or so approach understanding from a theological point of view. If you are not interested in that aspect, you will learn plenty from the rest of the book.

Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, Volume 3 by Bernard J.F. Lonergan

So yes I recommend this book for the serious scholar. One of the most important books of the twentieth century. Lonergan is a first class mind and stand head and shoulders above most of his contemporaries.