The Foundations of Logic, part 2
Sku: 10800A0E050
Archival Number: CD/mp3 108
Author: Lonergan, B.
Language(s): English
Decade: 1950
Description:
CD/mp3 108, part 2 of lecture 4 on mathematical logic 1957. Corresponds to CWL 18, pp. 106-14 and 343-37. Another element from the tradition that can supply a dimension of foundations for logic is the notion of judgment as a contingent event that requires a personal commitment that is intrinsically rational. And a basic point has to do with the three levels in Aristotle's explanatory syllogism, which correspond to experience, understanding, and judgment. Going behind ordinary expressions of terms, propositions, inferences to these intellectual facts give the real meaning of what Aristotle was trying to convey in talking about syllogism and the foundation on which one can build a logic and from which one can judge whether a logic is adequate or not. The fundamental differences in philosophy can be set up in terms of the measure in which the subject finds those levels in himself/herself. The subject's personal appropriation of one's own intelligence and rationality is the real foundation of a logic. But it is also the foundation of epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. The foundations are dynamic; they ground a grand-scale analogy; they provide a basis for an invariant logical structure despite continuous variations in content. Items raised in the questions included the interpretation of the complex texts of Aristotle and Aquinas, the meaning of foundations in terms of real principle, the relative priority of being and knowing in philosophy, philosophical unification of the sciences and human life, and self-appropriation as the first task.