The length of that work turned out to be the source of the insight: that such philosophical pedagogy is in need of a clear distinction; and so the shorter philosophical journey of Finding the Mind (now published) was born from the longer philosophical journey of the earlier work. Also, an invitation to a longer philosophical journey is how I would describe Lonergan's work. For an introduction to the published Finding the Mind (the shorter journey), see googledocs:
Preface
It is only by knowledge making its bloody entrance . . . . It is only through the long and confused twilight of philosophic initiation that one can find one’s way into interiority . . . .(Lonergan, 1972, p. 84)
My hope is that by the end of this century the basic idea of the four levels will be part of our general culture; so much so that to explain them, and still more to prove them, will be quite boring. Pupils leaving primary school will be as familiar with this structure as they are with, say, the golden rule. (Crowe, 2002, p. 15)
Beginning
We begin with you. This book is for those who want to learn and teach about reflection, self-reflection and critical self-knowledge and, further, to deepen those capacities in your own spirit. The book’s central promise is to focus with theoretical precision on one newly-discovered aspect of your own thought and, if you are a teacher, your students’ thought; and to provide you with critical and regular access to that discovery. Your discovery will, in turn, provide you with a recovery of the beginning point of all that you know, and for all other inquiry and knowledge. Transcendental method is the technical name given to that discovery by the philosopher Bernard Lonergan (1972) and is explored in great depth and breadth in his own varied works. We will refer to Lonergan’s works, and the works of others who draw from transcendental method, many times in ours.
Why, then, did this book need to be written? The shorter answer to that question may be given in seven notions: Mediation, pedagogical method for access, education, history, integration, intimacy and unification. Let me explain each of these notions further:
First: MEDIATION
Lonergan’s writings cover broad areas of philosophical and theological thought. The present work, however, while developing a good amount of background for your own foundational review, still aims at mediating only one important though comprehensive aspect of that thought.
Lonergan’s writing is precise and often colorful. However, he writes mostly for readers familiar with philosophical study and theoretical thought and language. While the present work holds to the precision of theory, it deliberately transposes (mediates) theoretical meaning into practical terms and practice using more commonly-used metaphors and examples. Such transposition, in turn, can be modified and used by a teacher to introduce students to their own cognitional activities, to cognitional theory, and to other philosophical language and issues that deeply influence their lives.
Second: PEDAGOGICAL METHOD
As the critical and systematic aspect of mediation, the present work is pedagogical providing exercises, dialogue topics, portfolio development, etc. In this way, the work sets up the concrete conditions for you to critique your own philosophical foundations and to identify in your own and others’ experience precisely what the different theories refer to in all human data. This critical but also personal treatment provides systematic pedagogy for mediating an important philosopher’s work to intelligent persons who might not be drawn to, or be in the habit of reading, philosophical works or technical-theoretical philosophy.
Also, if you picked up this book, you are most probably what I would call a renaissance reader—an intelligent, inquisitive, and critically-minded person swimming in a sea of information and concepts, much of which has no well-articulated philosophical ground. Or if it is grounded, you cannot yet say what that ground is made of—and not because you are incapable of such thought, but rather because you just have not thought much about it. This book should create a sea-change in how you view that sea of information, concepts, and persons. It is especially important for teachers who wish to inspire such sea-changes in your students.
Further, you already hold some view of what cognition is and, further, of what knowledge and truth are. For instance, how often have you said and meant, I know? or That’s true? On the other hand, how many times have you inspected the full implications of these statements in any critical or thoroughgoing way, or considered that such statements might have profound philosophical meaning?
Also, you may have read philosophical works before; you may be a scientist; and you may be connected with a theoretical profession. If so, then this work will do you a world of good by increasing the critical nature of your thought. However, you need not be a scientist, a philosopher, or a genius to follow the progression of the present work. You need only be reasonably intelligent, reasonably educated, and interested enough to take up the project of critical self-reflection, and-or to teach about it.
Furthermore, the philosopher Lonergan calls us to make his discovery our own; and many have done so through what he calls a “long and confused twilight of philosophical initiation” (1972, p. 84). However, for many reasons--some of them good--Lonergan provides no exact or clear pedagogical method to make the connection between, first, his discovery, second, his theory and, third, your own personal experience. This includes the experience of those errant initiates who have left the confusing, too abstract, ungrounded and, thus, “floating” philosophical project, but who might have stayed with the project if a concrete personal connection were provided early on in their philosophical journey. The present work provides that exact and clear connection—a pedagogical method for your own personal—even intimate--understanding and critical verification of this most important philosophical discovery—transcendental method.
At the same time, as an educator I fully endorse the philosophical initiation-by-immersion that requires a long-term commitment, especially where teachers are concerned. Philosophers, sages, and saints, etc., all the way back to Plato and before, were right to expect such an immersion of their own selves and of us: A lifetime of sometimes-confusing reflection and self-reflection, and a high regard for critical-philosophical, spiritual, personal and (much later on in history) professional and scientific, self-examination. For human beings are vastly meaningful, and human history is still quite mysterious; and the more we study ourselves and others, the more meaning we find comes available to confuse, confound, incite and insight, and delight us.
Thus, through the present work I encourage such a lifelong journey, and hopefully provide a good beginning for it--a pedagogical bridge--to the intimate order of your own mind, and to your own transcendental method. The bridge is solid and, with the pedagogy in hand, you verify it once and again, if you wish. Even so, the daunting “long and confused twilight,” I suggest, is still essential to philosophical maturity.
On the other hand, at least with an adequate pedagogy, you will begin with a verified centerpiece to hold your “lifetime philosophical journey” together at the center, should you decide to continue on with that journey. And perhaps making a solid and early experiential connection will make more meaningful for you just what that journey might, well, mean.
Third: EDUCATION
The formal fields of philosophy and education (and theology and religious studies) are rightly distinct from one another; and Lonergan’s work is fundamentally philosophical, though he was also a first-rate theologian. However, Lonergan’s philosophical contribution of transcendental method and other theoretical nuances have vast implications for both secular and religious education, and for its reformation towards building from a verifiable and, thus, verified foundation for each of us. The present work, then, isolates an important aspect of Lonergan’s contribution and relates that contribution to you personally, writ-small, but also to the field of educational and academic foundations, writ-large. In this way, the text provides a needed personal-to-theory connection between two rightly distinct fields of study—philosophy and education. Education, of course, is intimately related to history.
Fourth: HISTORY
Transcendental method is a theory. However, as the unnamed operating center of all human thought, TM-the-reality is also the operating center of all political, and democratic, movements in history. That is, democratic movements follow from power shifts, i.e., from kings, dictators, oligarchies, etc., to the people, the demos, the public. But in most cases the power shift is motivated not from those who hold from-above power, and who are commonly averse to giving up political power, but rather by the questioning consciousness from-below, of the people who have begun to question the political arena they live in. In this way, transcendental method as a set of questions is the operating center of all democratic political revolutions.
Further, our project of discovery emerged from a philosophical tradition where, a few centuries back, those involved in the scientific revolution called into question the assumption that knowledge and truth about anything came down from above, i.e., from unquestionable kingly mandates and policy and-or from long-held religious doctrine that, many assumed, was directly informed by God and was dispensed unquestionably by the keepers and interpreters of The Doctrine.
Furthermore, the scientific revolution was, indeed, revolutionary precisely because the new way of doing science rightly identified itself with empirical experimentation (from-below-upwards,) and with gaining hard-won, repeatable evidence before claiming knowledge of what, in fact, is true about the scientist’s object of interest. As such, unquestioned down-from-above Knowledge (large K) was transformed into, and at times came into conflict with, its opposite--up-from-below knowledge (small k). After a time, and rather than being considered unquestionably Absolute, this small-k knowledge remained open for change in terms of new questions and newly discovered data. Our change of thinking in Western history was truly revolutionary because history was, in fact, turned upside down--in terms of what knowledge means and, importantly, with regard to who knows.
With the scientific revolution, critical empirical method was born as systematic and set on its course to underpin, but also to confuse and leave in crisis, much of Western thought--from then on with regard to philosophical thought and to the assumed powers of political, social, and religious doctrine. The failure of the philosophical project to define knowledge from an empirical point of view, and to find new ground for philosophy itself and for the fragmenting sciences, has been a central factor in that confusion and cause of that crisis. (We devote a chapter to the history of this fragmentation and how it might affect your own thought.)
Moreover, science’s critical-empirical method (from-below) was so powerful because it worked so well, at least with natural-physical data. As such, our fields of natural-physical scientific inquiry maintained their focus on what we might call the "directly observable," and went merrily on their way with their many discoveries accompanied by their critical verifications--or, scientific method. Moreover, in time, we came to identify the natural-physical sciences as the holders of all “hard” knowledge, so much so that we often say “science” and mean “natural science,” as if there were no other kind of true and real science.
So in the cloudy field of common understanding, the term “science” has migrated from, first, referring to a critical-empirical method applied to any and all data to, second, referring to only the data of the physical and related sciences. Thus, in many people’s minds, scientific method became indistinguishable from only one kind of data field.
Unfortunately, the migration of science’s creative movement of thought into our common dialogue and its philosophical underpinnings has produced two effects on that thought. First, and though we may act differently, we have tended to identify our common experience in everyday life as “unscientific” and therefore more about our personal psychology and our biases, our sentimentality, our ignorance, and our error, rather than about any critical truth about the real we might come to know. That is, our common experience is now “unscientific” and “merely anecdotal;” and both of these terms are pejorative and fall far short of anything we might think of as critical analysis.
Second, we have tended to identify anything that is “unseen,” like our minds, or the moral-spiritual life, as “merely subjective” (in-here) and apparently unverifiable--thus, neither can be understood “critically,” “objectively” or “scientifically.” The next step, of course, is to relegate such anecdotes and the unseen to the world of the unreal, and to leave the natural-physical sciences, et al, as the proud owners of everything real and, therefore, everthing worth knowing. You might guess on which side of the knowable-real vs. the merely subjective-unknownable dichotomy our notions of value and the good fell.
Though common and astute wisdom is the loser in this Faustian bargain about what constitutes the accessible real, still, it is common thought that continues to relegate itself as unscientific, “merely anecdotal,” "impure," and unseen, therefore unreal and only approached “as-if” it were real. (This point of view also has its "clarification" in the philosophical tradition in past centuries.)
At the same time, and for the same reasons, we have ignored the vast power and implications of empirical method on philosophy, on all kinds of knowledge besides knowledge of the natural-physical world, on the developing fields of ethics, and on a wealth of other “unseen” human data and studies that did not take the data of natural science as their object of interest (Lonergan, 1958, p. 294; 2000, pp. 318-19). And so since the scientific revolution, philosophically, we ignore the search for a ground for metaphysics, and philosophy proceeds to “float,” never again to be associated so closely with the Divine, but also having no feet to walk around with on the good earth that is ours to know in an empirical way. The natural sciences, et all, own that ground, for now anyway.
Nevertheless, and though fading off from “hard” reality, our common notions of knowledge and truth that take us beyond natural science data, e.g., psychology, social-political concerns, ethics, law, literature, the arts, culture, etc., have gone forward brilliantly in many arenas of human thought, discourse, and activity. However, none have recovered or lighted on solid philosophical ground. And the abandonment of philosophy is hardly an adequate or honorable refuge.
As such, philosophy, the human sciences, the arts and humanities, and many other fields have so far failed to provide a way either to reconnect our notions of knowledge and truth with from-above-downward movements, or to find their connection with empirical movements, from-below-upward. Thus, none has provided a solid grounding in critical knowledge of the true and the real. What is called for, of course, is a qualified, applicable, and verifiable theory of knowledge, even though that theory may be more modest than some would like, and take us farther into true reality than some others would like.
The shadowy exception, of course, is statistical science. However, and though we have long-treated our questions about human beings with statistical method (and I think rightly), statistical science still often clings defensively to the natural science-data model, and still tends to overlook the “unseen,” the conscious, the developmental, and historical-event aspects of either their human data or themselves as scientists, who also happen to be human. This is not to mention the event of the human and historical anomaly that is systematically overlooked in statistics, but that is the focus of great attention of those who simply know how to love themselves and others.
As a general rule, statistical scientists, and many in the more integrative educational fields “want it both ways,” without doing the difficult personal and philosophical work required to arrive at that critical and unified place, first, of having access to all data in all fields of inquiry; second, of maintaining science’s empirical method throughout; and third, of having access to a completely overt philosophical integration. Hence, we have the half-way house of the “pragmatic philosophical paradigm” where,
What is healthy about a pragmatic social science of mixed and multiple methods is . . . it allows a number of projects to be undertaken without the need to identify invariant prior knowledges, laws, or rules governing what is recognized as ‘true’ or ‘valid.’ Only results count! (from Maxcy, 2003, in Mertens, 2005, pp. 26-27)
Such thinking regards “mixed methods as offering a practical solution to the tensions created in the research community concerning the use of quantitative or qualitative methods” (Mertens, 2005, p. 27). So the train is going in the right direction, but it has no tracks, or at least doesn't acknowledge them.
One of those deeper tensions, then, has been aptly named the problem of knowledge.
Much has been written about the knowledge foundations of all fields of study; and we will further discuss quality and excellence, or the notion of the good, and how it relates to knowledge at this deeper level in a later chapter. However, for this preface let us recount that, before the scientific revolution in the West, and before an adherence to empirical method became systematically ensconced in various fields of study, knowledge and truth were compact with, or mixed up with, belief and opinion, and with political and religious power and their pronouncements, in such a way as to render them all indistinguishable from one another in any systematic way. The pre-Christian Greek philosophers made inroads into these differentiations, but history “closed over” those distinctions in the centuries that ensued.
The scientific revolution resurged what the early Greeks were onto and, this time, caught hold of the public consciousness in a way that rendered us unable to go back to a prior way of thinking. This was indeed a revolution of the first order. It was during the scientific revolution that the problem of knowledge emerged. Since that time three basic views of knowledge and truth have also emerged.
First, some maintained the old notion that those in political, religious, or now scientific power had unquestioned and Absolute Truth. However, since the question of knowledge emerged calling for some systematic explanation, these folks could not empirically ground that knowledge to everyone’s satisfaction. (The reader may note the fundamental contradiction in the efforts of some to ground Absolute Knowledge.)
Second, some maintained that knowledge and truth could be grounded in “sense evidence” only. That is, we could have "sense knowledge." The problem with this view is that all knowledge and truth (and by subtle inference, reality) rest exclusively with the natural and physical sciences and the presumed tenets of their observable data. Again, natural science means reality, and all others are suspect and, let's say it, inaccessible.
However, if knowledge of human affairs broke with the unquestioned mandates of religious authorities, it found no ground either in the cold hard facts of “sense evidence.” We can see stars, and we can use a microscope to see cells, but we cannot see knowledge. In this way, all other inquiry about human affairs is ruled out-of-court, or as aiming at potentially critical and true knowledge, e.g., psychology, social sciences, philosophy, etc.
Scientists in these “soft” fields scrambled to copy the methods of the natural-physical sciences, e.g., with their statistical method. We also expected to get the same kinds of results from human data that natural scientists expected of, and continued to get from, observing and testing natural phenomena. Even though the data field is completely different, our expectations of results in the human fields maintained the standards set by natural-physical sciences. Such thought became known as various forms of positivism.
The movement of thought away from positivism in the human fields over the last century is complex, deserves its own treatment, and is out of range of our present work (Mertens, 2005). However, over the last century many of the human fields, e.g., education, have made great inroads into their studies, even though we have yet to acknowledge our foundations or a working theory of knowledge to give coherence to our fields. Thus, such inroads still “float” on an ungrounded philosophical cloud; and a notion of “sense evidence” still reigns as the only authentic evidence in many fields and camps.
Or, third, some have maintained that knowledge and truth are unattainable on principle. If we can “know” any “truth,” they can only be related to the subjective thought, or to the internal order of historical context, or are purely “relative” or even arbitrary affairs. Such notions present us with either a “ground” in arbitrariness (no ground at all), and-or a basic operative hypocrisy that manifests regularly in the difference between, first, how we speak and act in our common and professional discourse and, second, our purported view of the good-knowledge-true-reality complex which informs that speaking and acting.
The twain, as it were, is not yet met. The following captures the three notions of the good-knowledge-true-real complex that have emerged since the scientific revolution in the West:
* Knowledge and Truth are Absolute and Unquestioned, are from-above, and are embodied in statements from authority figures and in religious or even philosophical texts. In the early stages of the “hard” sciences, scientific doctrine itself took on this from-above view of itself, e.g., classicism.
* Knowledge and Truth are only about sense data and are embodied in the natural and physical sciences. Everything else is “soft;” and we speak an act “as-if” we know, have truth, or are involved directly with reality.
* Knowledge and Truth are unattainable, especially in human affairs and, thus, are all relative, arbitrary, and mere belief and opinion.
The third view above lends a pseudo-scientific air to all studies of human data that fall outside of the interests and the data of the natural and physical sciences. Again, such “science” “floats” philosophically; and quite sophisticated arguments for relativism provide the cloud that obscures but does not adequately explain our connection with reality or even with “sense evidence.”
Regardless, from any of the above views we often get-along famously in real-world study and concrete culture—until someone disagrees and raises the philosophical question: Isn’t that just your opinion? And in the philosophical fields that address knowledge, truth, and the good, at best, we have become fragmented, encamped, and, at worst, many have discarded all claims to knowledge and truth as impossible on principle (Mertens, 2005, p. 26).
Furthermore the field of education stands or falls on, first, its claims to critical-empirical knowledge of a great many things; second, on formative, and transformative knowledge; and third, on the basic idea of aiming at and sometimes attaining the identification with the quest for true excellence of those who are being educated. Prior to these are self-reflection and the discovery process itself. As such, any of the above three post-scientific revolution migrations of thought are deadly to the assumed tenets of the education project in the West, pervasively and over time if not an immediate shot through the heart.
So it goes, educators probably best not raise the questions of meaning-good-knowledge-true-real. If we do, we risk turning our children into budding nihilists by providing them with a clear view of the hole in the floor of the academy where our foundations of knowledge ought to be explicitly stated--well. And so, without that explication, we ignore the problem for fear of finding what we have found: Nothing secure to stand on. Or, worse, we overshoot the problem with the clarion call: "Only Results Count!" And there goes the knowledge-moral connection between the means and the ends, or the question of how we act as it relates to that we act.
Perhaps we are already providing the “ground” for an embrace of nihilism via misguided secular movements of thought and the smoky and hypocritical philosophical assumptions we bring to the classroom. For instance, we now know that teachers are human and can err, and we are faced with the authority of the “hard” sciences as the only qualified explorers and holders of reality. Further, if everything in human affairs is mere belief or opinion and necessarily bias-ridden, on what basis does the teacher in human fields claim any authority at all, or to stand on the power of the knowledge-truth complex, or even say anything true at all about human affairs? In this philosophical air, for our students the hint is of not only intellectual, but moral castration of the teacher.
Without a working theory of knowledge, the common claims of educators to knowledge, to the demands of truth, or to the recognition of excellence as real in our time, are standing in the smoke that still hangs in the air from the fires of the scientific revolution. Again, break the calm waters of discourse with a relevant question, and the “but-how do you know, and, by the way, who's to say what knowledge is anyway?” volcano underneath erupts. A sense of arbitrariness (born of the pervasive and sometimes unspoken attitude of relativism) can be found just under the surface poisoning the waters of the entire project of education, including any authority in human affairs that a teacher might authentically inhabit.
Let us now connect our brief outline of the scientific revolution, the history of philosophical thought, and education (the emergence of the problem of knowledge) with our own present study.
That is, the philosopher Lonergan emerged in the last century from that history of thought in the West to pick up the frayed philosophical threads of the last several centuries, and to dare to work through to a vital completion the revolution in knowledge for philosophy--a completion so that we all can get past the problem of knowledge and get on with things in a way that meets with how we go about understanding and knowing, and with our actual responsibility to and for human history. He does so by developing transcendental method which includes a working theory of knowledge drawn from the data of concern—the emergence and world-acceptance of scientific method itself, and from the actual historical activities of the scientist, the wise person of commonsense, the artist, the theologian, and the person who has developed religious consciousness. The data of concern is the actual movement of knowledge, and how it works, in all of these fields, as well as our operating hypocrisy which is also evident in all arenas of human affairs.
Our hypocrisy manifests in our attitudes of relativism and Absolutism while, at the same time, we blithely continue to employ science’s empirical method and the actual wisdom of commonsense, etc., without regard for the inferences embodied in all about our knowledge-truth-real acquisition. In other words, in science and in common living, we keep on going—employing our critical capacities in order to analyze and to know what is true or not in both science and in our steering our way through our own common affairs in history; but yet relativism and Absolutism are both rife throughout our culture.
Hypocrisy aside, those operating assumptions that continue to gain us knowledge in science and in human affairs are explicated here and ground our research of transcendental method in a wholly critical-scientific, but also personal experimentation. Also, because we are inquiring about the human mind, the theory’s experimental ground can be (and is) set in the personal experimentation and verification of the data of your own mind.
So the scientist in our study has an edge by having already understood critical method and the place of theory in inquiry. And we will depend on that critical exigency in you to qualify our project.
Furthermore, anyone can do the experiment between these pages and verify transcendental method in your own or others’ minds; and we can all understand and identify within our own critical activities the broad outlines of a working theory of knowledge. At the same time, we can openly regard yet-unknown meaning, speculations, visions, belief, opinion, and even faith as potentially available resources to us-you for guidance in living in complex human affairs in history. Such a combination of resources--that is not yet empirical knowledge--is necessary for all human living—for we cannot know what is not yet. In fact these broader resources regularly frame, inform, and complement your critically gained and regularly evidenced knowledge in order for you to plan, speak, and act in the world.
Finally, new knowledge increases and edifies old knowledge, as well as your beliefs, opinions, etc. The whole vibrant complex of thought remains a constant source of our creativity, is deeply influential to even the most mundane of human activities, and perpetually enters an open field of new meaning as we go about our daily lives.
With Lonergan’s and others’ contribution to philosophy and to the sciences of human affairs, then, we get to keep the critical aspects of empirical method and its true-knowledge without reducing everything potentially real to the data of the natural and physical sciences (positivism and post-positivism). And with full regard for and employment of our critical method and judgment, we get to keep the ever-mysterious, wonderful, and beautiful meaning that the human spirit has always craved and sought to recognize and to bring into being in our albeit-limited but open-ended way. Again, we can do so without abdicating our intelligence and without giving up our need to know the truth in exacting and critical fashion in all arenas of human living.
In brief, we need not back-away from critical knowing of all sorts of human data, including our own minds. Rather, we can know ourselves as knowers of all data, and not merely the data of the natural and physical sciences.
With regard to the problem of knowledge, the theory of knowledge that is part of transcendental method identifies knowledge with the empirically established order, though not only with what is known as “sense evidence.” Further, the theory includes the personal self as a critical knower while, at the same time, regarding human development, belief structures and faith as varied but potentially legitimate guides and horizons of thought in all human affairs.
In the midst and movement of philosophical history in the West, then, we find that, with regard to what we mean by knowledge, we need to acknowledge the historical migration from a from-above-downward view to a from-below-upwards view. We need to do so while remaining in a close and even loving relationship with the from-above meaning flow and, ultimately, with the fullness of mystery that is the object-source of our built-in and incessant questions.
In this way, we will need to complete the revolution by grounding a cognitional theory in empirically drawn evidence. That is, we ground-verify the cognitional theory in how your own mind works, and in how the minds of the person of good commonsense, as well as scientists, etc., actually work when we are at our critical-and-creative best.
Further, we define and ground-verify a theory of knowledge in the movement of what goes by knowledge in history (in non-hypocritical fashion), i.e., the obvious and recurrent intimate relationship between what human beings question-and-understand, our self-corrective processes, and what we say-and-do in the concrete world of all human affairs in history. Again, both theories are aspects of transcendental method.
At the same time transcendental method maintains a regard for our thrust towards mystery, towards gaining fuller and fuller meaning, and towards self-world edification. In short, TMethod is the questing source of our aim to know Everything about Everything, and to be involved with what is really worthwhile (Piscitelli, 1985).
Indeed, all science rests on a fundamental faith that the world is intelligible; and further that we can come to know what it is as manifest in some grand and unified field theory. On what basis would such faith end, except either the end of all that is to be known, or our coming to know it? Whatever we name that Knowledge, we do not in fact have it at present. This fact is evidenced by our still having many unanswered questions, and we must remain humble about this fact. However, by the same fact, the scientists among us continue to assume it, to desire it, and to even fear it from the depths of our being.
Transcendental method as theory, then, acknowledges the unknown and reveals the internal structure of that desire-fear complex in us. TM-the-theory accounts for the broad outline of the questioning process; and it accounts for the tenuous but firm knowledge (in the context of the still unknown) we have actually gained and continue to gain. TM accounts for the constancy of our aim at edification as well as for its failure; and again, it leaves room for our fundamental openness to all that we do not yet know—the mystery that continues to surround us.
Such a faith and quest towards the mysterious is human, and it manifests in all common-everyday and scientific inquiry. Further, this faith is concrete and proximate to you now, as you read this document. It is manifest in your awareness that drives you forward into the unknown as you read these words. In this way, the intentional-quest that you are is so close to you as to be indistinguishable from your merely being awake and aware, e.g., as you read this text.
In the theoretical work we recover here, we will carve out a distinction between, first, the faith-intention quest that we all have; second, the forward vision of actually having Knowledge-of-All (large K) that emerges from that faith-quest; and third, actual human knowledge in the midst of history and of our further questions (small k). For us, human knowledge is of clearly defined and specified aspects of meaning that our judgments can and do close around in an absolute way. For instance, and though it may seem silly to say so, you know that you are really reading this page right now in your time. You know this, but not everything. Our evidence as empirical, then, is drawn from the manifestation of human action in history in you (writ small) and in the entire sweep of human history (writ-large).
Further, such you-knowledge, and the knowledge born of scientific theory and experimentation, are far from being merely relative or arbitrary. Rather, such knowledge is of the concrete and is always in an arena of defined meaning--meaning that happens to be the case or really so.
Of course the consistency we find in actual acquisitions of truth is keyed to such concrete knowledge—as of the real. That is, if you actually have knowledge, what you know is also concretely true and real—in this case, about your reading this document right now. Thus, while you can say you are, and are not, reading this text right now, you cannot also BE TRULY reading this text while, at the same time, not TRUELY reading it. And I can ask you if you are reading this text, and you can say yes, if indeed you are to match what you say with what you do. However, only in jest will you say you are reading, but you cannot know that you are reading--so intimate is our relationship to what we do, what we know, and how we further act in terms of that knowledge.
Such defined but final (small-f) knowledge (small-k) of the real is underpinned and driven by our faith-quest to Know-Everything about Everything (Large F and Large K). However, our actual knowledge of the true-real is in fact meaning-defined, only human and, thus, is not yet All Knowledge. Rather, our knowledge is about aspects of meaning within the broader vision of Knowing Everything Real that our faith-quest continues to reach for.
And so we will speak of a technical term for such refined-defined meaning, and for final, human knowledge as virtually unconditioned; and we will explain in detail just what this means and how you can recognize its regular occurrence in yourself and in the scientist, about yourself, and about the scientist, especially when we are at our critical-best.
The theory of knowledge, embedded in transcendental method, then, takes into consideration and accounts for our love affair with knowledge, for our desiring to Know Everything about Everything and Everyone, for envisioning what and whom we do not yet know, and for what and whom we actually know in the concrete judgments of fact that we make everyday of our lives. Furthermore, a personal but critical examination of the processes that afford us such concrete knowing provide theoretical philosophy with a fundamental ground, venue, and vector for knowing a general cognitional theory, or what is part of general empirical method, or transcendental method (1972).
The present work aims to mediate that cognitional theory/theory of knowledge, or transcendental method as theory; to connect both with your own personal experience, or with transcendental method-the-reality as actually operating in you; to show you the way towards critical verification; and to find such a connection in the history of thought as an innovative movement forward in the various fields of knowledge.
To say the least, making such a connection is already an enlightening experience of personal transformation. However, with the writer of the theory (Lonergan), I also aim to help recover the ground of the philosophical project that went astray, and that never found its ground, with the emergence of the scientific revolution in the history of philosophical thought in the West. The present work does so by providing the pedagogical tools to find and now-consciously root the good-knowledge-true-real complex in your own and others’ empirical discovery and verification, again, while regarding the full meaning and import of faith, belief, opinion, principle, speculation, and the mysterious in our everyday lives.
Furthermore, in our exploration, we find the quest-intention for the good (quality, excellence, etc.) that all human beings have. Though this quest-intention for the good is developmental and manifest in so varied and questionable a way, as a general thrust, it is hardly an adjunct to human history. Rather the good intention-quest finds solid empirical ground in human conscious structure, and is accessed through the verification process of transcendental method, whether you are a person of good commonsense, a teacher, a philosophically skeptical scientist, an artist, a nihilist or a person of sound religious faith.
We need not look to the object alone to discover the empirical ground of the good, but rather to our built-in, developmental, and incessant quest--our need--to qualify and to judge in terms of that qualification. We seek and find the good by our developed and developing criteria, we do not create the good, but constantly seeks ways to instantiate it; and we live in the good as best we can.
Again, the empirical evidence is available to us in both writ-small and writ-large form. We continue to search for the Absolute, and Absolutely Certain, Ground of Knowledge and the Good; and some claim to have found it. However, from an empirical point of view that everyone can appreciate, both knowledge generally, and knowledge of the good, are grounded in the facts that we are built to quest for both, that our view of both is developmental, and that we experience change from one horizon to another as far from arbitrarily drawn. As an empirical endeavor, the ground is plenty-strong. We would not want anything less tenuous coming from mere human beings.
Fifth: INTEGRATION
Philosophy has come under fire over the years—many say philosophy is irrelevant, too-abstract, and disconnected from real human living. And in some “camps,” I think it deserves this critique. However, let us recall that philosophy has always been about love, love of knowledge, and the truly excellent, and that it always emerges in the midst of serious reflection and self-reflection. That is, philosophy is emergent as the contemplative life. If so, philosophy is opposed to thoughtlessness, immediacy, stupidity, hate, evil, and an inflated self-regard—as well as an irresponsible self-negation. Thus, the fullness of the philosophical experience is varied from person to person, but is always a rich, edifying, critical, entirely human, and intimately personal affair. As such, philosophy deserves to have its reputation attuned with its reality: As an entirely intimate, critical, and edifying partner in all human endeavors.
Furthermore, a teacher once told me: “The moment you become thoughtful and reflective is the moment when philosophy is born in you.” Of course, there is an infant-to-adult development that is also needed. However, if you understand the present work fully, you will also understand how intimate philosophy, and transcendental method, really are to your own being as human and, subsequently, to the history of all culture and civilization.
That is, when the first two different thoughts, persons, or cultures came together, philosophy emerged—in lieu of war, that is. Again, count how many times you use words such as what, is, not, true, false, good, bad, be, etc., in your daily conversations and thought, and you will gain an initial insight far beyond grammar, and into how intimate philosophy is to your daily life. Instead of keeping philosophy “under fire,” then, or pointing to its many failures, let us here recover philosophy as our own love of knowledge that begins in our faith-quest towards being involved with Everything Thoughtful and Worthwhile. Let us find philosophy as the intention-thrust under our specific and spontaneous questioning, and also as the insightful and integrative force within in us.
Further, we will distinguish transcendental method the-theory from transcendental method the-reality in you. We will find transcendental method the-reality in you at the core of all of your present knowledge, and of philosophy and the faith-quest. These are merely different names for the fire that fuels all of human existence. Let us, then, employ the present work towards a new and integrated relationship between you and your own thought, and between philosophy and its place in culture.
Sixth: PHILOSOPHY AS INTIMATE
We have already spoken of the philosophical as intimate. The “end” of the present work has an essential intimate component. For, in the least, what is verified in the data of your own consciousness using empirical method is a private performance (Lonergan, 1980, p. 123) that, in turn, invites recognition of the import of the performance on this and all other knowledge. Though your own thought processes influence everything else in your inward and outward experience, they also are intimate to you.
Further, your own philosophical development is worthwhile all by itself. That is, you need no other reason to engage in this or any other philosophical thought and work, besides becoming aware of and enjoying your own movement, deepening, and increase of thought, and of experiencing its concrete influence in your life as you develop through it. If the notion of “enlightenment” comes to mind, it is entirely appropriate to our presents adventure—but with an entirely critical component.
My intention, then, is to separate-out and mediate a crucially important aspect of a major philosopher’s work, first, for you as a thoughtful, self-questioning, self-edifying person, whose development-of-thought is important in its own right; and, second, for you to bring a philosophical integration to the discourse in your profession, field, or science. I suggest that in either your personal and-or professional capacities, you will benefit from becoming acquainted in a critical but also intimate way with transcendental method and the pedagogy for its verification in-for-of you that is presented here. For, at the core of things, the contribution and the pedagogy are about you, and are intimate to you, and to whatever field or profession you belong to. To turn to the personal and to human affairs in history, we need “float” no longer.
Seventh: UNIFICATION
Of course, unification is directly related to integration and follows upon it. I may sound bold at this point; however, the pedagogy for verification provided here flows from the work of a philosopher who sought and found a way to unify the sciences, common-sense, and all of the various fields of study, professions, cultures, and ways of human being. Again, Lonergan’s work provides the materials and avenue-of-correction for an errant philosophical tradition in the West; and the work provides a way for Eastern philosophy to move forward and to find a right relation with what is essential to Western thought--and vice versa--again, if I may be so bold. Lonergan’s (and now others’) work flows from, and is a comprehensive and valuable contribution to, the underlying movement of human history, culture, and civilization and, for our present work, for the foundations of education within that civilization.
Mediation, pedagogical method, history, education, integration, intimacy, and unification— these are fundamental themes of the present work, and at least begin to answer the question about why it and other works have to be written.
