Insight Chapter 11
Sku: 41100DTE050
Archival Number: A411
Author: Lonergan, B.
Language(s): English
Decade: 1950
Open 41100DTE050.pdf
Description:
BL's typescript of chapter 11 of Insight, manuscript A
Database and descriptions © Copyright 2017 by Robert M. Doran
Transcription:
pt 319, l. -3 (ts 1): ts has colon after difficulty
pt 320, l. 4 (ts 1): no subheading in ts
pt 320, l. - 11 (ts 2): ts: `... upon their success. For there may exist other readers, whom we resemble more closely, and they find that when they try to look into themselves success. For, after all, there may well exist other readers that resemble the writer and find that looking into themselves yields results that, if not just blank, are clearly very dim.'
pt 321, l. 12 (ts 2): ts has colon after attends
pt 321, l. 16 (ts 2): ts has `as unconscious as the growth'
pt 322, l. 1 (ts 3): ts has no subheading; and it begins the paragraph, `Thirdly, by consciousness ...'
pt 322, l. - 18 (ts 3): ts has `yields' for `commands'
pt 323, l. 3 (ts 4): ts has `to reach a judgment'; and the next paragraph is run into this one
pt 323, l. 8 (ts 4): ts has `by the insights.'
pt 324, l. 6 (ts 4): ts has par `Again' run into preceding
pt 324, l. 19 (ts 5): ts has `the mystic'
pt 324, l. - 4 (ts 5): no subheading
pt 326, l. 1 (ts 6): no subheading
pt 326, l. - 7 (ts 6): ts has `This remark brings us to our second topic. We proposed to say what was meant and not meant by consciousness. We also proposed to say what was meant and not meant by the experiential fulfilment of conditions for the affirmation of the conditioned. By such experiential fulfilment, then, one does not mean ...'
pt 327, l. 13 (ts 7): ts: `gives not statements nor ...'
pt 327, l. - 20 (ts 7): ts has `and dimensions' for `or the dimensions'
pt 328, no subheading
pt 328, l. 7: ts: `... we turn to the issue. Am I ...'
pt 328, l. - 20 (ts 8): ts: `envisages not ...'
pt 328, l. - 6 (ts 8): ts: `of affirming that I am and so, ...'
pt 329: no subheading
pt 329, l. - 16 (ts 9): the following attempt at this paragraph is crossed out: `The conditional necessity of contingent fact is what involves the talking skeptic in contradictin. If enthusiasm for the achievements of Freud leads me to affirm that all thought and affirmation is a by-product of the libido, then this thought and affirmation must be such a by-product; and if it is such a by-product, then it is silly for me to complain that others pay no heed to utterances from such a source this pronouncement of mine.'
pt 330, l. 9 (ts 9): ts has `sensa'
pt 330, l. 18 (ts 9): ts: `that wonder'
pt 331, par. Clearly: run into preceding
pt 331, l. 16 (ts 11): ts has `than it was'
pt 331, par. Confronted: run into preceding
pt 331, l. 7 (ts 10): three attempts crossed out in ts:
`... something that we name fact? As yet, at least, we are not concerned with metaphysical answers, and so what is wanted now, or what for the present will have to do, is an account, not of fact itself, but of knowing fact
that we name fact? More exactly, in what does our knowing fact consist? Clearly, fact is concrete, as is sense and consciousness. No less clearly, fact is virtually unconditioned; it might not have been; it might have been other than it was; but, as things are, it possessesconditional necessity, and nothing can possibly alter it. Fact, then, has the concreteness of experience, the clarity and precision of intelligent formulation, and the absoluteness of judgment
that we name fact? More exactly, in what does our knowing fact consist? Clearly, fact is concrete, as is sense and consciousness. Again, fact is intelligible: if it is independent of all doubtful theory, it is not independent of the insight and formulation necessary to give it precision and accuracy. Finally, fact is virtually unconditioned; it might not have been; it might have been other than it was; but as things stand, it possesses conditional necessity and nothing can possibly alter it now. Fact, then, combines the concreteness of experience, the clarity of accurate intelligence, and absoluteness of rational judgment. It is the natural objective of human cognitional process. It is the anticipated unity to which perception, inquiry, imagination, insight, formulation, reflection, grasp of the unconditioned, and judgment make their several contributions. When Newton knew that the water in his bucket was rotating, he knew a fact though he thought he knew an absolute space. When relativity and quantum mechanics posit the unimaginable in a four-dimensional manifold, they bring to light the difference between the realm of imagination and the realm to which fact pertains.'
pt 333, par The initial use (ts 12): run into preceding
pt 334, l. 9 (ts 13): ts: `If one starts from the data of sense, one begins by describing but goes on to explain. Again, if one starts from the data of consciousness, one begins by describing ...'
pt 335, l. - 14 (ts 15): ts:`Again, I do not mean that human nature ...'
pt 335, l. - 15 (ts 14): the following is crossed out, after `fulness of detail.' `What is excluded is the radical revision that involves a shift in the fundamental terms and relations of the explanation.
The source of this peculiarity of cognitional theory would seem to be a coincidence of the thing-for-us that it begins by describing with the thing-itself that it ends by explaining. When physics or chemistry turns from things-fir-us to things-themselves, there occurs a step into the merely hypothetical. But when cognitional theory turns from its thing-for-us to its thing-itself, there occurs no more than a change in perspective. One describes sensation, perception, imagination, inquiry, insight, formulation, reflection, grasp of the unconditioned, and judgment, inasmuch as one states that each of these kinds of act are like acts performed and experienced under described conditions. Similarly, one describes the relations between these acts by pointing to dynamic states, such as inquiry leading from presentations to insight and formulation, or reflection leading from formulations to grasp of the unconditioned and judgment; again, one describes relations by pointing to the coalescence of the contents of different acts; thus insight is into images or data; formulation is of the idea, grasped in insight, with what is essential to the idea in the presentation; the unconditioned is a combination of a conditioned formulation with the fulfilment of its conditions; judgment adds a Yes or No to a question derived from other partial contents. Now the transition from such description to explanation involves no new terms or relations. It retains the same terms and the same relations and effects merely achange of perspective. Insight ceases to be what is similar to a certain event in consciousness and becomes what stands in certain relations to inquiry, presentations, formulations, other insights, reflection, and judgment. In like manner each of these other terms becomes fixed by its relations to the rest. Explanatory exposition takes as fundamental the experientially validated dynamic states of inquiry and reflection. These states are relational. They both distinguish and connect the three levels of knowing. Again, they are dynamic; they head for further acts in which 1) the second level adds to the first and the third level adds to the second and 2) the addition of the second level to the first is combined with the first, and the addition of the third level to the second is combined with the'
pt 335, no subheading
pt 336, l. 14 (ts 15): ts has `definitively' for `definitely'
pt 336, no subheading
pt 337, l. 10 (ts 16): ts: `... level. If it did not develop, it would be always at some fixed level; it would possess or yield some permanent stock of systematic unities and relations; it would offer a limited range of instances of the conditioned as conditioned, and so there would be no possibility of new questions of fact. Moreover, it must be a freely developing level; it must envisage the conditioned simply as conditioned and apart from the fulfilment of the conditions; for if it envisaged only such instances of the conditioned as had their congitions fulfilled, then questions of fact would not really arise
Without free development there would be no positing of the conditioned simply as conditioned and apart from the fulfilment of the conditions; if there were
For without free development ...'
pt 337, l. - 14 (ts 16): ts: `... reference to such a field.
But this second requirement presupposes a third. There must be the field of fulfilling conditions. Continuous with this field, though with some independence, there must be the freely developing process of positing systematic unities and relations that yield the conditioned as conditioned. Finally, continuous with both, there must be the third level that combines the conditioned as conditioned with the fulfilling conditions. Nor is "continuous" the exact epithet. Rather, there must be a single concrete unity and identity in which the fulfilling conditions emerge, the process of freely developing sytematization occurs, and the combination of conditions and conditioned is grasped.
The third requirement of a concrete unity calls for a modification of the starting-point. The initial demand was for the conditions of any possible judgments of fact
But this second requirement ...'
pt 338, l. - 11 (ts 17): ts does not have `prior'
pt 339, no subheading
pt 341, par `A fifth difference' (ts 19): ts has an earlier version, crossed out (two paragraphs):
`A fifth difference has to do with consciousness. Kant acknowledges an inner sense. Roughly one may say that he acknowledged what we have termed empirical consciousness, that is, the awareness that accompanies seeing, hearing, imagining, desiring, fearing, and the like. On the other hand, for Kant there was no awareness of the generative principles of the categories. The categories could be inferred from their occurrence in judgments. But as Kant spoke neither of inquiry nor of insight nor of reflection nor of grasp of the unconditioned, so he did not speak of intelligent or of rational consciousness. There he left a vacuum into which Hegel boldly marched. But if Hegel marched into that vacuum, he did not grasp the fulness of its resources and versatility. He had some of the Kantian illusion of fixed categories and not enough awareness either of the possibilities of intelligent inquiry or of the significance of simple facts.
We differ from kant in our conclusions, then, because we differ in our assumptions. The issue between us is a question of fact, for our self-affirmation, despite its overtones of necessity, is fundamentally an affirmation of fact. If the Kantian objects to our stand on fact as a mere psychologism, our answer has already been given. There is an empirical inquiry that escapes the merely hypothetical, that can claim immunity from future radical revision. It is cognitional theory.'
pt 342, end of first paragraph (ts 20): ts has another paragraph here, crossed out:
`If our position differs from Kant's, it also differs from Descartes'. Descartes represents the entry into philosophy of naive Renaissance views on objectivity. It was Kant's merit that he challenged such views. It was his misfortune that he did not succeed in disengaging himself completely from them. Descartes took them for granted to affirm a res cogitans and a res extensa, to invite Hobbes to his reduction of the thinker to the status of a res extensa
pt 342, no subheading
pt 343, l. 7 (ts 21): ts: `conceived exactly as it ought to be'
pt 345, l. 5 (ts 23): from `Seventhly' to `Tenthly' BL was off by one number. This paragraph begins `Sixthly', despite the fact that the previous paragraph also did. No change is indicated in ts.