Insight Chapter 6

Insight Chapter 6
Sku: 37400DTE050
Archival Number: A374
Author: Lonergan, B.
Language(s): English
Decade: 1950
Open 37400DTE050.pdf

Description:

A 374 is a carbon copy of a version of chapter 6 of Insight. The Catalogue of Lonergan Papers states, `Cf. variation from Batch III version from p. 43 to end'. The pages are numbered 1-46. They are here compared with the published text (pt = 1957 version).

pt 173, l. -15 (ts 1): No quotation marks around `Eureka!' And no exclamation point.

Note: These pages contain only sections 1 and 2 of the chapter thus conceived. (What was the third section, of course, became chapter 7.)

pt 174, l. 7 pt 173 (ts 1-2): A second paragraph of introduction is provided: `The present chapter falls into three main sections. In the first the parallel between empirical science and common sense is examined. In the second and third, attention is drawn to fundamental differences. While empirical science seeks the relations of things to one another, common sense is content to know the relations of things to us. Despite its deceptive simplicity, this undertaking is ambiguous. Not only is the development of common sense a change in us, but also common sense is practical and devotes itself to changing the things related to us. While empirical science endeavours to grasp the relations between the fixed natures of things, common sense seeks to relate the two variables and, by that very effort, brings about their variation. Accordingly, the second main section of this chapter examines the subjective aspect of common sense, and the third section turns to the effects of common sense practicality.'

(ts 2). ts: `... find them out for ourselves.' [pt: `... find them out ourselves.']

pt 174, l. 10 (ts 3): ts has comma after `questions'.

pt 176, l. 3-4 (ts 5). ts: `... In correspondence with the similarities of situations, ...' [pt: `In correspondence with the similarities of the situation, ...']

pt 176, l. -2 (ts 6): In ts the paragraph `Common sense ...' is run into the preceding paragraph. No indication is given to change this.

pt 177, l. 13 (ts 6): Again, the paragraph `It follows ...' is run into the same paragraph with the two preceding ones, and no indication is given to change this.

pt 178, l. 2 (ts 7): In ts, `common sense' is not hyphenated. So too throughout this typescript for the use of `common sense' as an adjective.

pt 178 (ts 8): The paragraph, `Common sense ...' is run into the preceding paragraph, with no indication to change this.

pt 179, l. 7 (ts 9). ts: `... and in logic?' [pt: `... and logic?']

pt 179 (ts 9): The paragraph, `Common sense ...' is run into the preceding paragraph, with no indication to change this.

pt 181, l. -11 (ts 12): ts has no comma after `abnormality'.

pt 181, l. -6 (ts 12): ts reads, `Still, such acts never occur by themselves, in isolation from one another, and quite apart from all other events. [pt: `Still, such acts never occur in isolation both from one another and from all other events.']

pt 183, l. -8 (ts 15): ts has comma after `disturbed'.

pt 184, l. 3 (ts 15). ts: `... and movements of the organs, the mnemic, imaginative, ...' [pt: `... and movements of the organs, the imaginative, ...']

pt 184 (ts 16): there is no indication in ts of the note that appears on p. 184 of pt.

pt 185, l. 1 (ts 17): `two-fold' [hyphen] in ts, not in pt. The same subsequently in the manuscript.

pt 185, l. 9 (ts 17): ts has no comma after `living'.

pt 185, l. 11 (ts 17): ts has `The aesthetic and artistic also are symbolic.'

pt 185, l. 13 (ts 17): ts has no commas around `then'.

pt 185, l. 16 (ts 17): ts has a typographical error--`some' for `something'. This is noted.

pt 185, l. -8 (ts 18): ts has `these' where pt has `those'.

pt 186, l. 7 (ts 18): `sub-conscious' is hyphenated in ts, not in pt.

pt 186, l. 10 (ts 18): again, in ts no quotation marks around `Eureka!' And no exclamation point.

pt 187, l. 14 (ts 20): `dining-room' is not hyphenated in ts.

pt 187, l. 17 (ts 20): ts has `colored'. Most such instances have American, not British, spelling. Will not list others here.

pt 187, l. - 10 (ts 20): ts has `Style is the man ...'

pt 187, l. -6 (ts 20): ts has no comma after `man'.

pt 189, l. -11 (ts 23): ts has: `... that direct and release them. To learn to walk is to learn to correlate psychic elements with bodily movements, and the human child takes a notable time to do so; yet precisely because walking is such a laborious acquisition, other acquisitions are equally possible. The initial plasticity ...' [pt: `... that direct and release them; and the initial plasticity ...']

pt 190, l. 14 (ts 24): ts has, `Perceiving is a function not only of position relative to an object, the intensity of the light, the healthiness of eyes, but also ...' [pt: `Perceiving is a function not only of position relative to an object, of the intensity of light, of the healthiness of eyes, but also ...']

pt 190, l. -14 (ts 24): in ts, no quotation marks around `Eureka!' and no exclamation point.

pt 191, l. 5 (ts 24): ts has no comma after `period'.

pt 191, l. 5 (ts 25): ts shifts to a different typewriter with page 25 (at `there are limits ...'). This typewriter seems to have been used for the remainder of the chapter, though the carbon becomes darker at p. 31 (or is this the original?)

pt 191, l. 15 (ts 25): ts has `... in practical and personal matters. Nor has such a bias merely some single and isolated effect. To exclude ...' The sentence `Nor ...' is not in pt.

pt 191, l. 21 (ts 25): ts has no comma after introversion, but does have a comma after extroversion.

pt 191, l. -15 (ts 25): the word `that' (after ego) is omitted; simply an error

pt 192, l. 3 (ts 26): ts has `with a rationalization'

pt 194, l. 3 (ts 29): ts has only `In Jung's terminology,'

pt 194, l. 8 (ts 29): ts has `... a diffident shadow. It would seem to be ultimately the same phenomena that are named ambivalence by the Freudians, bipolarity by Stekel, and an alternation of opposites by Adler.' The last sentence is not in pt.

pt 194, l. 15 (ts 29): ts has `... the ego and the persona'

pt 194, l. -17 (ts 29): ts underlines `my'

pt 195, l. 2 (ts 30): ts omits (by mistake) the word `the' before `self-constituting'

pt 196, l. 1 (ts 31): ts has `its functional significance.'

pt 196, l. 4 (ts 31): ts does not have the word `they' after `also'

pt 196, l. -2 (ts 33): section 2.7.5 is entitled in ts `The Main Problem.'

pt 197, l. 9 (ts 33): no new paragraph in ts at `However'

pt 197, l. -19 (ts 33): ts has comma after movements

pt 197, l. -14 (ts 34): no new paragraph in ts at `During'

pt 197, l. -7 (ts 34): ts has `simple' for `single'

pt 198, l. 10 (ts 34): ts has no comma after pains

pt 198, l. 14 (ts 35): ts has Tabou

pt 198, l. -8 (ts 35): no new paragraph in ts at `This'

pt 199, l. 5 (ts 36): ts has comma after Buddhists

pt 199, l. 8 (ts 36): no new paragraph in ts at `Again'

pt 199, l. 11 (ts 36): ts has `glazed'

pt 199, l. 13 (ts 36): ts has `of his feelings.' I.e., the word `moral' does not appear.

pt 199, l. -12 (ts 36f.): The same wording as in batch 3 at this point (down to pt 200, line 15, `The work ...')

pt 201, l. 10 (ts 38): ts has `without an abreaction of aberration.'

pt 202, l. 19 (ts 40): ts has no comma after Unfortunately

pt 203 (ts 41): footnote does not appear in ts

pt 204, l. 9 (ts 42): ts has `... assumes a significance that Freud himself could not suspect.'

pt 204 (ts 42): footnote does not appear in ts

pt 205 (ts 43): footnote does not appear in ts

pt 205, l. 6 (ts 43): ts has `determination' for `determinism'

pt 205, l. 9 - pt 206, end (ts 43-46): ts reads as follows: `But if one admits that some reasons are only probable, that postulate becomes compatible with statistical laws; and if Laplace has failed to exclude probability from physics, there is little likelihood of its being excluded from psychology. There is a more momentous consequence. For the acknowledgment of statistical laws gives a new status to the science of psychogenic health and psychogenic illness. Neural determinants settle not unique psychic events but sets of psychic alternatives. Psychic determinants acquire an independent function of selecting between neurally determined alternatives. It becomes possible to conceive two distinct sets of schemes of recurrence, one conscious and the other non-conscious, where each set follows its own classical and statistical laws yet through its own laws is linked to the other set. Then, psychic health is the harmony of the two processes, conflict and break-down are their incompatibility, psychogenic aberration is a direction of the stream of consciousness that heads towards break-down, and analytic treatment is at once a reorientation of the stream of consciousness and a release from neural obstructions with a psychic origin. This is no more than a thumb-nail sketch but, if neural determinants admit psychic alternatives, the psychic can acquire an independent role, and that independence is the basic significance of statistical laws in the conception of psychic and neural relations. Moreover, our whole presentation has been careful to observe the canons of parsimony and of statistical residues; we have spoken simply of intelligible relations between psychic events under the name of patterns of experience and of intelligible relations between neural events under the name of neural patterns; nor were neural patterns conceived as unique determinants of psychic events but, on the contrary, they involved no more than neural demand functions capable of being satisfied in many ways.

`There is a further aspect of the matter. On the assumption of mechanist determinism, one may speak of the actual, of the necessary, and of the impossible; but within the confines of that view there is no room for the potential, for what really could occur yet in fact may not occur. On the other hand, once statistical laws are acknowledged, the potential assumes its proper status; each present situation is the potential for a variety of future situations, none of which is necessary, none of which is impossible, yet only one of which will arise. Moreover, this notion of the potential is needed for the adequate conception of Freud's discoveries; the censorship, whether constructive or repressive, pertains to the potential of future conscious states; the neural demand functions similarly pertain to that potential; the situations, favorable or adverse, in which experience occurs, pertain to the potential of the experience. The unconscious, that is never conscious, is the neural. The preconscious, that can become conscious, is the potential. The repressive censorship is a negative potential opposed to a positive potential arising from the neural and the situation.

`A final point has to be made. Freud hesitated for a year before publishing his Interpretation of Dreams. His conscientious devotion to the insights he had won made him stress aspects of his discoveries that he knew full well would arouse resistance, opposition, and vituperation. But while I cannot but admire the self-sacrificing devotion to conscience in a man sometimes supposed to have abolished guilt, I must point out that this loyalty was directed less to his own discoveries than to the mechanist determinism current in the scientific milieu of his age. There is nothing revolting or shocking in the affirmation that man has a commonly rejected potential for parricide, cannibalism, incest, and suicide; otherwise, those unpleasant names would not exist. Freud's difficulty arose because determinism eliminated the notion of the potential to leave only the actual, the necessary, and the impossible; and it was further complicated by the mechanist obsession that has to invent an unobservable reality and has to regard as mere appearance the observable and as mere thinking the verified correlation. As yet, we have not been able to state what we believe the real and objective to be, nor even to say what is meant by a thing, a man, a person. In due course we hope to do so. But, at least, we can conclude that within a scientific context, controlled by the canons of parsimony and of statistical residues, Freud's spectre tends to vanish. The latent content of the dream, so far from revealing the "real" man, exhibits merely potentialities rejected not only by waking but also by dreaming consciousness.'

Transcription:

No transcription available.