(15) Philosophic Movements & TM as "The Rock"

Philosophic Movements

Lonergan follows his work Insight, A Study of Human Understanding, with his Method in Theology. The later title is deceptive, however, because in Method in Theology Lonergan focuses on theology as one field. However, he also shows clearly how transcendental method is intrinsic to the infrastructure and development of not only theology but of any field. He does this by setting out what he calls the functional specialties--differentiated arenas of thought and activities drawn from the less differentiated structure of human consciousness and, with transitions, made suitable for analysis of the underpinning order of any field of study. Taking cognitional structure as our framework writ-small, we can see a general foundational structure emerge for all fields, sciences, and professions writ-large.

From this core structure we are in a position to analyze any field and, indeed, any culture (1972) and, with adaptations, to recognize and develop a kind of generalized and loosely normative standard and order of relations. Again, the standard is loosely normative as it is rooted in the continually verifiable structure of human consciousness as evident in your own personally available data—potentially understood and known by you.

In this way, Lonergan shows how our understanding of our own theoretical fields of inquiry, whatever those are, are drawn from and point us back to the fundamental method of our own minds. That same method can provide us with a fundamental, continually verifiable, and analytical-to-normative framework for any study we decide to undertake (1972, pp. 81-83). The project affords us the foundation for a comprehensive and ongoing negative-dialectical and diacritical analysis, as well as knowledge of the creative framework that embraces not only all fields of study but all of human history as well.

Further, Lonergan gives explanation to the “normative pattern of recurrent and related operations yielding cumulative and progressive results” (1972, p. 5) and invites the reader to identify that pattern and operations within the intimacy of our own minds, whenever we want, and in the midst of our own thoughts. This deceptively simple passage in Method in Theology points to more thoroughly expressed connections throughout Lonergan’s work. In this passage, however, we find the connection between, first, psychology, in the pattern and method of consciousness; and second, factual history in his reference to “cumulative and progressive results.” Within these two apparently disparate fields (psychology and history [and theology]) is an implied and working epistemology that can unify both-all.

Furthermore, Lonergan shows the movement between the spontaneous intention-thrust of our desire to know, and the truth and reality of the results of that thrust. First. this desire-thrust underlies and informs the structure and procedures of our wondering activities. Without that thrust and without our conscious activities, we can have no “explosions of knowledge” and certainly no historical “results” as we know them.

Second, without abiding in our current state of cumulative knowledge, nothing new can be known. That is, our wondering-about, in fact, emerges from our present state of under-knowledge. Our questions emerge clothed in that under-knowledge and continue to produce insights that, in turn, are met with a critical-corrective process by those who attend to such knowledge and to such resulting actions.


Transcendental Method as “The Rock”

The corrective process that is central to transcendental method emerged systematically in writ-large Western history as empirical method, and was first appropriated and employed methodically in the natural sciences. The cognitional activities so common to the wisdom of persons of common-sense, artists, and persons of science, resulted in an increase and accumulation of insights; such insights, in turn, produced explosions of knowledge as well as a wealth of new questions and newly-defined fields of study; and such fields of study became governed increasingly by the collection, refinement, and critical experimentation that eventually became the canons and tenets of science’s empirical method (1958, 2000, Chaps. 1-5). It should be no surprise that, eventually, someone would turn those questions and that experimental method on the human mind itself, on the questions, the insights, the experimentation, and on the whole idea of knowledge-truth-reality.

First, the full cognitional activity of self-correction that is transcendental method-the-reality produced scientific method and all past knowledge, and consistently produces all current and new understanding and knowledge. Second, this same activity stands in, draws from, and starts anew in the midst of that cumulating knowledge. Third, the intention-thrust behind cognitional activity continues to drive us toward new and emergent understanding and towards a constant reappraisal and re-expression of current knowledge. Further, the unknown continues to draw us to it, and to be the object of our obsessive attention. Predictably, and again, Lonergan calls the invariant pattern lying behind all accumulation of human knowledge, the “rock” for its solid and abiding quality (1972, pp. 19-20). To explore, experiment with, understand and verify this rock in oneself is to come into conscious possession of that which has always been at the center of our conscious existence in the first place.

Again, the idea of the rock is not easy to develop in the current philosophical air; for at present the possibility of the existence of such a rock is assumed to be entirely impossible on principle, or at least under severe question. Further, under present unexamined assumptions, its access is denied a critical methodology. Or, dimensions of the rock are studied but grossly misunderstood, for instance, as the brain. Here, any truths such studies might unearth are severely diminished when viewed through the lens of the very half-lit and ill-conceived assumptions that are themselves, ironically, being explored (1958, 385-90; 2000, pp. 410-15).

As example, in an otherwise-thoughtful work, Moral Minds, Marc D. Hauser compares moral theory with language theory:

We are in the midst of a comparable collaborative effort with respect to our moral faculty. We are now ready to appreciate and develop Rawls's insights, especially his linguistic analogy. I introduce the Rawlsian creature," equipped with the machinery to deliver moral verdicts based on unconscious and inaccessible principles. This is a creature with moral instincts. (Hauser, 2006)

Again, here we are in one of the human sciences, moral theory, lost and “floating” with a theory of “unconscious and inaccessible principles” that, on principle, cannot be verified or affirmed.

Further, we find the rock at the center of interior functions and not commonly at the level of topical concern; even though the rock’s pervasive and exceptional influence can be found in all concrete thought, dialogue, and action. However, foundational conflict emerges and is evident in virtually all of our theoretical knowledge fields. Drawing again from Ornstein and Hunkins, we find this remark:


. . . there is much dialogue about involving students in their learning and empowering them to be the central players in the classroom. . . . discussion on constructivism stresses process designs. However, much debate occurs as to the nature of the process to be stressed. Many process designs that privilege the scientific method are challenged by some as not appropriate for a post-modern world. Often the modern process design teaches students that they can use procedures to uncover a reality that exists “out there.” The post-modern view challenges that. Students must realize that the methods employed in inquiry result in a world constructed, a world we can and must remake and reconstruct as the need arises. . . .

Process designs may be the most dynamic in the future. Much discussion, disputation, is occurring. It is not likely that this dialogue, indeed confrontation, will diminish. Some postmodernists would probably celebrate the fact that there can be no final agreement. They hold that there can never be a permanent consensus as to the optimum process by which to organize the curriculum. We can only arrive at various temporary points of agreement, along the way to discovering, inventing, and constructing new ideas as to how to generate sense of our world and our participation in it. (1998, p. 251; 2004, p. 252)


The above suggests an admirable openness, but also that the “camp” mentality will continue within the various ice fields, and that the great divide between the natural-physical sciences and other more human-related fields, will maintain, with reality firmly stationed on one floe.

To early-address this argument, we do not in fact have a “final agreement” at present. That is, we do not have answers to Every Question About Everything. Also, with the “process” camp, perhaps we put ourselves in a special kind of peril in thinking we will or should have “all the answers.” This End-All Know-All assumption is especially problematic if our connection with the truth and reality of results is thought to be rightly shorn of our connection with the fullness of human meaning and the good—the ethical, political and spiritual-religious implications of such expectations.

However, we do have the empirical beginning of the facts within our reach and the argument within our range: Transcendental or general empirical method and the foundational self-corrections that underpin its full understanding. That is, while we do not have all the answers, we do have the centerpiece from which our questions emerge, and we do have some of the answers. Fueling those questions and answers, and supporting our argument with prima fascia evidence, is our abiding desire to have them. That abiding desire is universal; and that universal desire is a given fundament to human living, and can become a general and open-ended framework for our metaphysics as well as our theory of knowledge(Lonergan, 1958, 2000).

Transcendental method is a set of expressed theories. However, if understood adequately and personally verified, the subjective elements of transcendental method--in the reality that is you--provide us with a non-revisable, potent and potentially agreeable, empirical beginning point that we can personally and critically come to understand and to know. As such, we come to understand that human beings are continually open to new questions, and to our potential transformation in terms of those new questions. In this way, a thorough appropriation of our own conscious order, accompanied with a thorough-going theory of knowledge, points to our potential to relate and to integrate the various polemical positions in education and the fields that inform Ornstein and Hunkins’ argument above.