Moving through Conceptuality with Acts of Understanding: Augustine, Aquinas, Lonergan
Posted by Dunstan in Augustine, Cognitive Theory, Dunstan Robidoux, OSB, St. Thomas Aquinas on August 22, 2010
To understand a bit better what could be meant by saying that acts of understanding, by their very nature, always transcend material variables and conditions, one can verify the meaning of such a claim or, on the other hand, one can discover the meaning of such a claim, if, for instance, as a thought experiment, one moves into the theology of St. Augustine and one carefully reads and studies it in order to locate and identify some of St. Augustine's principal insights (insights as one finds these in the understanding which he evinces in his theology). For instance, if one takes St. Augustine's understanding of moral evil and sin, an understanding is offered which refers to moral evil and sin as the absence of any meaning or significance. Sin, evil is the absence of any kind of intelligibility. Sin, evil exists as a privation, as an absence of being. It is that which should not be. At times, in his texts, Bernard Lonergan refers to moral evil as a “false fact.” Hence, as one encounters understandings of this kind which cut across historical and cultural barriers, one realizes that, by their very nature, acts of understanding possess a degree of ahistoricity. Yes, they are conditioned by their circumstances of origin and emergence but, no, they are not determined by the influence of these same circumstances. An act of understanding is one thing. A proffered conceptualization is another. Acts of understanding exist in a self-transcending kind of manner and this self-transcendence explains why they can be enjoyed by any person who experiences degrees of self-transcendence in one's own life through the acts of understanding which one may happen to have.
In looking back into the theological tradition, it can be admitted that an insight or an act of understanding can be expressed in the words and the language of an inadequate philosophy. The conceptuality which is employed might not be too sound or accurate. Misleading connotations can be suggested. Witness, for example, how St. Augustine speaks about human judgment in a manner which relies on Platonic cognitional conceptions. One knows a truth by contemplating or by looking at a set of higher eternal reasons which, in some way, one sees or beholds from a distance. From the context of a lower viewpoint, one ascends or looks upwards toward some kind of higher viewpoint that is given or beheld by a seeing which now occurs within one's mind. Cf. Lonergan, Verbum, p. 85. In the kind of language which Augustine uses, in our human knowing one does not simply believe or hold to what one's bodily eyes may see since “what is not so seen is more truly seen, for what is [physically] seen belongs to time, but what is seen with the mind and soul belongs to eternity.” Cf. Augustine, Tractatus de Mysteriis, nos. 8-16, as cited by Matthew Lamb, Eternity, Time, and the Life of Wisdom (Naples, Florida: Sapientia Press, 2007), pp. 32-33.
When speaking about his own analysis, Augustine refers to a process of self-reflection which leads him to speak about a cognitional movement which he finds within the depths of his soul (a cognitional movement that takes him from instances of sensible experience to instances of intelligible experience as this is given to him through lightning flashes or quick glimpses that suddenly and unexpectedly reveal the presence and workings of a higher “intelligible and intelligent light.” Cf. Lamb, p. 32. As Augustine had noted in his Confessions: although the mind “generates all images,” it is not itself an image. It possesses a “totally different nature.” It exists as a “spiritual presence or light” which is able to know that what is real is not to be identified with what exists as a body. Cf. Confessions, 7, 1, as cited by Lamb, p. 32; 7, 1-13, as cited by Lamb, n. 16, p. 35. The human mind exercises a specific causality of its own and in a manner which verifies a traditional maxim (in the words which Leibniz uses to express this maxim): “there is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses, except the intellect itself.” Cf. Loemker, G. W. Leibniz 556, as cited and quoted by Tim Lynch, “Human Knowledge: Passivity, Experience, and Structural Actuation: An Approach to the Problem of the A Priori,” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 17 (Spring 1999): 77.
In the words of Augustine's conceptuality, in the human knowledge of any truth, a “changing mind” is contrasted with what never changes. It is changed by “unchanging, eternal truth.” Tentative acts of understanding, to the degree that they exist as true acts of understanding, are all grounded in eternal reasons which, in Augustine, are to be regarded as first principles although, in the conceptuality of his language, Augustine does not speak about first principles, “first principles” being a designation which Aquinas uses in order to speak (in a more differentiated manner) about grounding acts of sense and intellect (acts of sense and intellect which function as the first principles of one's human cognition in all its subsequent acts). Acts of human reason are normed by fundamental laws of thought that govern how one's mind can rationally move from one proposition or thought to another proposition or thought without risk of contradiction. Through this kind of approach, however, which moves from Augustine to Aquinas, a transposition is effected which allows one to move from the philosophy of mind present in Augustine to the philosophy of mind present in Aquinas (in a manner which transcends what differences may exist). The context is a prolongation or a continuity which is to be adverted to and which exists more profoundly and more deeply than the existence of any difference.
By way of the understanding which Aquinas brings to his discussion, the eternal reasons of Augustine undergo a kind of shift because of how they are being interpreted. In Aquinas, they come to exist as a set of cognitive first principles that one normally observes as fundamental precepts whenever one is engaged in good cognitive praxis in one's human cognition. By an analysis that speaks about first principles and different kinds of first principles, the eternal reasons of St. Augustine receive an articulation which adds to what is known about them as one thinks about how they were understood by St. Augustine. Or, if one wants to speak in another way about the kind of change that is occurring here, one can say that Aquinas's analysis unpacks a meaning for eternal reasons which, perhaps, Augustine had been attempting in vain to identify and to spell out in the context of his theology. He could not do certain tasks too well with the kind of cognitional philosophy which he had inherited and which he was borrowing from the Platonic tradition in philosophy that was then prevalent in his day.
In Augustine's philosophy of mind, one finds that human knowing does not exist as some kind of simple, single act which is to be equated with a philosophy of mind which thinks about knowing in terms of a simple act of intuition. Augustine's distinctions with respect, for instance, to the difference between “understanding and judging, conception and truth” all point to a philosophy of cognition which realizes that human knowing exists as an ordered structure of different kinds of acts which are all necessarily related to each other. Cf. Lamb, n. 12, p. 34. Not only, on the one hand, does the human mind have a nature which differs from that which belongs to acts of sense but, on the other hand, it has to be said that the human mind has a nature which points to a number of different operations that cannot all be reduced to each other. If, for instance, one looks at how, in the De Trinitate 15, 11, n. 20, Augustine distinguishes an inner or mental word (a word which exists as a concept) from words which exist as audible sounds and from words which exist as remembered, imagined audible sounds (an “inner word” is other; it exists as the term of rational or mental operations), then one finds evidence which indicates that, in Augustine, beyond sensible activities and operations, one can find operations that point to a higher level of cognitive activity which is specifically mental, rational, or intellectual. One kind of operation accounts for images; another, for concepts. Cf. Crowe, “Some Background Notes to Lonergan's Insight,” Lonergan and the Level of Our Time, p. 18; p. 25.
In conclusion then, as these examples may well thus illustrate and perhaps demonstrate, acts of understanding function as privileged points of access for anyone who is interested in moving into the understanding and wisdom which has come down to us from earlier developments in philosophy and theology. The intellectuality or the spiritual character which belongs to acts of understanding explains why, through later acts of understanding which other persons can have, a person in one age and time can begin to enter the mind and soul of other human beings who have lived in earlier ages and times and who have yet also truly enjoyed acts of understanding which have united them to a world of real objects – a world which exists whether or not it is known by any given human being through human acts of understanding and judgment.
Lonergan’s Notions of Consciousness Derived from St. Augustine’s Notions of Presence
Posted by sro in Augustine, Blog, Cognitive Theory, Dunstan Robidoux, OSB, Latest, Trinity on May 21, 2010
In the De Trinitate, 10, 3, 12, St. Augustine distinguishes between two kinds of presence (which have been interpreted as two kinds of object). A first kind refers to something which exists as the terminus or term of a cognitional act (whether one speaks about an act of sense or an act of reason). As Augustine notes, this is the kind of presence which exists if one sees one's face in a mirror. One's face, as seen in a mirror, is experienced as an object, an external object. It exists cognitionally as an other. It is other than one's act of cognition although it also exists as the term of one's cognitive act. A second kind of presence or object, however, refers to an experience of self-presence. As Lonergan translates the wording of Augustine’s discussion as he cites Augustine's text in The Incarnate Word, p. 182: “But when it is said to the mind: ‘Know yourself,’ then it knows itself in the very act in which it understands the word ‘yourself’; and it knows itself for no other reason than that it is present to itself.” In his Summa Contra Gentiles 3, 46, 8, Aquinas refers to this insight of St. Augustine: “And so, according to Augustine’s meaning, our mind knows itself through itself, in so far as it knows concerning itself, that it is. Indeed, from the fact that it perceives that it acts it perceives that it is. Of course, it acts through itself, and so, through itself, it knows concerning itself that it is.” On the basis of the kind of wording used, Augustine and Aquinas do not speak directly about consciousness although, if one refers to how Lonergan talks about these two kinds of presence as they were known by Augustine and Aquinas, he refers to presence by way of a transposition which speaks about consciousness and the existence of different theories about consciousness. Presence, the presence of something suggests a metaphysics; consciousness, an understanding of cognition.
Before venturing into a more specific explanation that one might allude to in the context of Lonergan's work and interests, an historical note helps us understand why, for instance, Augustine and Aquinas did not explicitly speak about consciousness and self-consciousness (as we directly speak of these things and as Lonergan also speaks of them). Owen Barfield’s History in English Words (Inner Traditions International, April 1986), pp. 169-171, looks at the vocabulary of the “self” and notes how developments in our concept of the human self (especially since the 16th Century) have had fructifying consequences for developments in language so that we can now speak more precisely about the interior life of the human self in a manner which can distinguish between different parts and elements and which can also speak about the relations which also exist between different parts and elements. Citing one summary that speaks about this development (Fr. John Eudes Bamburger, “Retreat conference given at St. Anselm’s Abbey, Washington, DC,” August 22, 2009, unpublished):
Plato and other Greek philosophers had but a partial grasp of the concept of the self as we know it. Although the first glimmerings of the modern self appear in the High Middle Ages under the form of such words as the individual and the person yet it functions under many occult influences. It is only after the Reformation and especially at the end of the 16th Century that such a series of words as self-consciousness, self-conceit, self-love, self-liking, self-command, self-esteem, self-knowledge, and other hyphenated forms of self appear. Descartes, in 1664, made the thinking self the source of knowledge and most philosophers since his time have assumed the same stance. It was shortly before this date that Locke…adopted the new word “consciousness” and defined it as “perception of what passes in a man’s own mind.” Coleridge was the first to use the term “self-conscious.”
In turning then to proximate reasons which can be identified in Lonergan's thought, because consciousness exists as a human experience which all persons can relate to and identify, it can be regarded as a fundamental point of departure for discussions which would want to move through consciousness to whatever can be known about a human subject. But, if Augustine and Aquinas speak about two kinds of presence or two kinds of object, they are referring to a metaphysical difference which translates into a cognitional difference that distinguishes between two notions of consciousness. The experience of one kind of object suggests a particular species of consciousness and the experience of another kind of object, another species of consciousness. But, without a clear understanding of differences, one will not understand how these two notions or two kinds of consciousness are ordered to each other and how one species of consciousness conditions another. One will not understand why one cannot have one species of consciousness without also having the other. Difficulties in this area create problems for theology if an inappropriate notion of consciousness is employed as an analogy to find deeper meanings than that what is initially given through the proclamation of a revealed truth. The unity of God's being is not well understood if the unity of God's consciousness is not adequately fathomed, if its unity finds no echo in how we, as human beings, experience and find unity within the orientations that we find in our own consciousness. In Christology, Christ's incarnation and suffering death cannot be too well understood if it is not possible to argue that Christ's consciousness of self should be regarded as a precondition for a consciousness which refers to a consciousness of objects that is other than a consciousness of self as this is given in Christ's acts. Without this prior consciousness of self as this occurs through specific acts or by reason of specific, no consciousness of objects can be properly attributed to Christ's consciousness. On the cross, it cannot be said that Christ truly knew pain, that he truly suffered from any pains that were inflicted on him by the kind of death he suffered. Without a good understanding of consciousness that we each have as human beings, we cannot so easily join ourselves to Christ's consciousness in a manner which more fully joins us to the life of a divine being. The availability of our consciousness coupled with its malleability or changeability reveals a point of access which encourages forms of self-examination. We ask about the kind of person which we have become through our acts and we also ask about the kind of person which we can become through our acts. Through changes of consciousness, we can draw closer to God. We become more conscious about the depths of our interiority.
40 Years After Humanae Vitae: Observations on the Female Procreative Schemes, The Organic Level
Posted by David Fleischacker in David Fleischacker, Marital Ethics, The Gift of Life on January 21, 2010
by Dr. David Fleischacker
As with men, the organic and psychic procreative life of women possesses an intelligibility that begins with the finality to conceive life. And as in men, the lower levels are intrinsically oriented toward higher levels of intelligibility. Another, way of saying this is that the lower levels of organic life possess intrinsic orientations toward higher levels of intellectual, rational, volitional life, and an obediential potency to a life of sanctified grace in faith, hope, and love.
Hence, as with the general way of proceeding established earlier, starting with the lowest levels of the procreative order to the highest, we will begin examining the women’s body in its organic structure with one exception, the neurological schemes. I will deal with the female neuro-schemes in a later blog, because the complexity requires separate treatment.
The female procreative order
The physiology of the women has a number of key elements that relate it to the conjugal union with a man, to the creation and formation of a new human being, and to nurturing the existence of the new life once born. For example,
- The ovaries provide a place for the developmental growth and maturation of oocytes.
- The uterus provides for the early formation of a child in the womb and the mother’s mammary glands for the early post-natal life of the child.
- The woman's body is bio-physically and bio-chemically structured for receiving the spermatozoa of the man and then facilitates the movement of the spermatozoa toward the oocyte.
These features point to the key elements of the female procreative schemes. Explanatorily, much more is involved. As has been recognized in earlier blogs, procreativity is an intelligibility that really belongs to the entire unity of a man and a woman. Hence, it is something that is an intelligibility that involves the integration of many of the recurrent schemes of correlation and recurrent schemes of development in the body. It is closely linked to the neural system, the endocrine system, the circulatory and respiratory systems, the muscular system, the skeletal system, and it is protected by the immune system. It is not merely a part of the body, but rather it is an ordered intelligibility of the many parts of the human body.[1]
Prior to the woman's own birth, her body came to form all of the oocytes she will ever possess. However, it will take until adolescence before her body forms to a degree to support the formation and the nurturing of a new life. Once she reaches procreative maturity, her body has undergone a series of changes that have capacitated her to receive a man and his spermatozoa and to mature her own oocytes for 1) release, 2) fertilization, 3) implantation, 4) growth in the womb, and then 5) growth as an infant. Many of the biochemical schemes involved in all of these stages are simply unknown. However, many have been learned in the last few decades because of the high profitability and the demand for the “reproductive” and contraceptive industries.
As was mentioned in earlier blogs, the oocyte is structured to receive one and only one spermatozoa. Here is a small refresher. The zona pelucida that surrounds the oocyte is species specific (meaning that spermatozoa from another species could not penetrate it). Furthermore, once a spermatozoa has worked its way through the zona and becomes incorporated into the oocyte, the egg shifts its structure to hinder the entrance of other spermatozoa. Hence, the oocyte has a functional and schematic relationship to the spermatozoa. This scheme forms a new type of being, one that has an intrinsic developmental finality and this finality is oriented toward the mature human adult. On their own, the spermatozoa and the oocyte do not possess this developmental capacity.[2]
Now let us turn to the woman's body. Oocytes are found within the ovaries. Since the woman's body is the location where the first 9 months of life are formed, her body is on a kind of recharge cycle that is roughly one month in length (interestingly, I did read one study that argued that if a woman is in a largely natural light environment, her cycle will line up with the cycles of the moon). This recharge cycle is needed because of how her body has to prepare itself for the possibility of nurturing a new life which requires a tremendous amount of energy to accomplish. Without the recharge cycle, the woman’s body would be in a constant state of fertility, which would require for example a constant release of a sufficiently matured oocytes, a constant state in which the uterus is prepared for implantation, a constant state of readiness that would burn tremendous amounts of calories and other nutrients far beyond her normal human intake. From a scientific viewpoint, here are some of the steps involved in the cycle.
Follicular Phase → Luteal Phase
Relationship to creation of new life
Let us begin our explorations of the monthly cycle of a woman with the follicular phase. This phase derives its name from the follicles which reside within the woman's ovaries. Each follicle contains an oocyte which is surrounded by a kind of protective sheath of cells (granulosa cells). At the beginning of this phase, hormones trigger some of the follicles in the woman's ovaries to begin to mature, which means that the oocyte grows in size, adding components that would be needed for fertilization and by an embryonic human being. When the maturation of the follicle begins to take place, the granulosa cells divide and increase in number, forming multiple layers around the oocyte, and between these layers an atrial pouch forms that fills with fluids, rich in hormones. This process leaves just one layer of granulosa cells around the oocyte. At the same time, these cells secrete a layer of thick gel around the oocyte called the zona pellucida. 14 days after the follicular phase begins, the most mature follicle will burst open, releasing the oocyte with its zona pellucida and the one layer of granulosa cells. This release marks the end of the follicular phase and the beginning of the luteal phase. The remaining part of the follicle then forms into a corpus luteum. Blood vessels have permeated this corpus, and the cells begin to produce progesterone and some estrogen, which then travel into these blood vessels and subsequently into the body, triggering various responses. One of the important responses in the woman’s body is the modification of the uterus, creating a special lining suitable for implantation and the growth of a young child. If no fertilization results, then the entire scheme returns to the follicular phase to begin the cycle anew. The entire meaning of these schemes is oriented toward the creation of new life.
Relationship to man
One can also focus on a variety of other changes that take place in the woman's body. Some of these relate the woman to a man. The woman begins to secrete a mucous that is designed to facilitate the conjugal act. The woman's olfactory senses come to respond to male pheromones in a new way.[3] During the conjugal act, the triggering of similar schemes as found in the male body results in the expansion of blood vessels in a variety of places in her body. It also results in a contraction of muscles in her body that work to move the spermatozoa more completely into her body, and into the regions that have been prepared to direct and facilitate the movement of the spermatozoa toward the oocyte.
Luteal Phase → Pregnancy
If conception of the zygotic person takes place and implantation occurs, the woman's body then begins another set of changes that prepare for her role in forming the young boy or girl in her womb, and subsequently in nursing and caring for him or her in the first years of life.[4] The implantation itself triggers various changes, including the release of a hormone that keeps the uteral lining from disintegrating and shedding. Even her brain will undergo significant changes to facilitate both bonding as well as increased abilities to attend to the needs of the child within the environment (thus, this facilitates increases in some of the cognitive abilities of the woman as well—more on that in a later blog).
Pregnancy → Birth
Once the child is born, the preparation taking place in the woman's mammary glands during pregnancy then gives way to small quantities of breast milk called colostrum, specifically designed for the needs of the newborn. Then, the nutrients shift to “milk” for the duration of nursing. Interestingly, during nursing, the nerves triggered release two hormones from the pituitary gland in the brain: prolactin and oxytocin. Prolactin then triggers the mammary glands to pull proteins and sugars from the blood stream to produce the milk. Oxytocin results in triggering cells in the breast to contract and push the milk out. Oxytocin also causes cells in the uterus to contract, thus shrinking it.[5] Nursing also inhibits a hormone needed for the maturation and release of new oocytes, hence the reason that many, though not all, women who are nursing will not become pregnant until nursing ceases.
Far more can be said about many of these interlocking procreative schemes, however, the few mentioned here should be sufficient to give the reader an appreciation of the close integration of many events that take place in the women’s body and which form the procreative organic schemes.
[1]This language follows the neuro-scientist Shewmon who has argued for a variety of “wholistic” properties that belong to the body as a whole, and really require the integration of a variety of different parts of the body. Hence, for example, healing of the body requires the operative integration of many systems, and is really not a property of just one part of the body. Likewise, the procreative life of the body is not merely the result of the uterus or the vagina or the ovaries. It really is an feature of an integration of many schemes.
[2] As a note, this key fact is one of the grounds for claiming that the human person begins at this point, though because of the intrinsic independence of the human capacity for self-transcendence from the empirical residue, this is not as easy as one might suppose. I presented this in an earlier set of blogs (“When does the human person begin to exist?”)
[3] As a note, recent studies in the last few years indicate that women will be more attracted to men with a greater complementarity in their immune systems. This complementarity however is not found if the woman is taking the contraceptive pill. For one summary of this, see this BBC article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7558499.stm.
[4] The argument that the zygote is a human person was made in another set of blogs entitled “When does the human person begin to exist?” In this blog, I started with St. Thomas' definition of a person.
[5] You can find a summary of these points at http://www.babies.sutterhealth.org/breastfeeding/bf_production.html. Another interesting study linked oxytocin to bonding. Here is a summary of it.http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071015110059.htm.
Matter as a Cause of Knowing in Aquinas and Lonergan
Posted by Dunstan in Cognitive Theory, Dunstan Robidoux, OSB, St. Thomas Aquinas on December 1, 2009
by Br. Dunstan Robidoux OSB
In conformity with Aristotle’s understanding of human cognition, Aquinas argues, with respect to human cognition, that “it is as ridiculous to say, the soul alone understands, as to say, alone it builds or weaves.” Cf. Aquinas, De Veritate, q. 19, a. 1. Knowing exists as a co-operative effort which involves both a formal principle and a material principle since human knowing occurs in a being that is formed by two principles. Soul (anima) is united to body in a way which takes a body and then converts it into a certain kind of body which lives as a result of the soul’s causality. Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 75, a. 1. The body is needed by the soul if the soul’s intellectual operations are to occur (if they are to be in act). Cf. Summa Contra Gentiles, 3, 129, 7; Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 84, a. 4. In other words, through acts of sense, human beings have something to begin to think about, ponder, and understand; and also, through sense, human beings have something to go back to when they need to ask about the validity or the probable truth of an idea that has been grasped and understood in an initial act of understanding. Cf. De Veritate, q. 12, a. 12, ad 6; q. 12, a. 3; q. 10, a. 9; Quaestio disputa De anima, a. 13, para. 7. All human understanding and knowing begins with sensing and with what is known through acts of sense. Cf. De Potentia, q. 3, a. 5, ad 1; Sententia super Physicam, 1, 1, 8; Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 12, a. 12. In the kind of language which Aquinas uses: sense knowledge functions as the matter of the cause. Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 84, a. 6, as cited roughly by Bernard Lonergan, Triune God: Systematics, pp. 577-579. For these reasons then, it can be argued that what is known initially as matter through acts of sense functions serves as a first or initial cause of knowing. As a point of departure, it can be viewed as both a remote cause and an extrinsic cause of human cognition (among other remote and extrinsic causes which can also be identified if one engages in cognitive self-reflection)
However, as one turns to thinking about material causality as one moves more closely to experiences of acts of understanding, one encounters an analysis in Aquinas which Lonergan takes up and formulates in his own way. See, for instance, Lonergan, Caring About Meaning, pp. 1-2. As Aquinas had argued: when a sense is acted upon by an external object, a phantasm or sense image is produced and this phantasm or immaterial sensible image exists in a bodily organ as an immaterial sensible trace, impression, or likeness that cannot exist without the receptivity of an incarnate, embodied sensing organ. Cf. Quaestio disputata De anima, a. 1, para. 11; Sentencia Libri De anima, 2, 24, 551. About phantasms, when Aristotle talks about the meaning of phantasia [N"<J"FÆ"], fantasy, or imagination in the De Anima, 3, 3, he notes that it is a word which derives from phaos, the Greek word for light since, of our five senses, sight is the “most highly developed.” Hence, when we think about our five external senses (our seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, and smelling) we tend to think that seeing is paradigmatic and, so, we tend to take the words which aptly refer to seeing and apply them to our other senses. In this context, “phantasm” immediately suggests an image that is derived from something that is seen although, subsequently, this term has been used to refer to any impression that has been created by the receptive activity of all our other senses. However, as Aquinas argues in the Summa Contra Gentiles, 4, 11, 4 and in the Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 78, a. 4, this sensible impression does not remain in the senses (the organs of sense). Through the impact that it makes, it touches the human imagination and, as a consequence, it passes from the imagination into the recollection of things past which is human memory.
In his analysis, Aquinas distinguishes between phantasms which are produced by sense as a receptor and phantasms which are not produced by sense but by activities which transcend sense and which are not essentially passive but active. Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 84, a. 6, ad 2. In a context that is formed by acts of inquiry and reasoning, the received matter of sense is taken and played with; its is reshaped and reconfigured in a manner which tries to encourage the reception of a possible act of understanding. In his literal expression, in the Sententia super Metaphysicam, 7, 17, 1668, Aquinas speaks about “cause of the matter” which, in Lonergan’s interpretation, can be interpreted as a cause which disposes a phantasm or image to be ordered or to have a form or structure which than acts, as a material cause, to help trigger an act of understanding within the human intellect. Cf. Lonergan, Triune God: Systematics, pp. 593-595. See also Lonergan, Topics in Education, p. 171. In other words, within a given thing which exists as a composite of matter and form, the intelligible ordering of things which exists within a given thing in terms of its form accounts for how conjoined matter is itself ordered or configured. By imaginatively attending to possible configurations of matter in a manner which works initially from one’s acts of sense, conditions are created whereby possibly apt images can be discovered.
As Aquinas and Lonergan speak about what is happening, images function as necessary points of departure. An object is imagined before it is understood. Images are sought: apt images since apt images (as constructed by our acts of imagining) readily suggest a relation of parts or elements which cannot be sensed but which can be apprehended by an act of understanding. An act of understanding emerges once one has constructed an image which moves one’s understanding to apprehend a meaning which goes beyond a particular image but which is somehow reflected by an image. Images function here as representative carriers of meaning. Cf. De Veritate, q. 2, a. 5, ad 5, ad 7. Cognitionally speaking, they differ from any datum of sense (as matter) and, as a rarefied abstracted form of matter, they also differ from any form or nature that is understood through an image. Within cognition, images communicate more than what is simply given in the likeness of an image. Cf. Summa Theologiae, 2a2ae, q. 180, a. 5, ad 2.
For a bit of corroboration and by way of examples, this symbolism of images which exists as a datum of human consciousness can be verified in aesthetic experience and in common religious practice where believers are encouraged to venerate images which function as icons to reveal an unseen, higher world of meaning. In Aquinas’s words: motus autem qui est in imaginem, prout est imago, non consisti in ipsa, sed tendit in id cujus est imago (“movement to an image does not stop at the image, but goes on to the thing it represents”). Cf. Summa Theologiae, 2a2ae, q. 81, a. 3, ad 3. In other words, an imagined object reveals an object which cannot be entirely imagined but which is grasped because it is understood as imagination works to present an object that is understood within a proffered image or phantasm. Cf. Aquinas, Quaestio disputata De anima, a. 15; Lonergan, Understanding and Being, p. 165. An act of understanding grasps a meaning or an intelligibility that exists immanently within an image. As through the medium of light, the sense of seeing beholds objects that are now seen, in the same way, through a form of intellectual light manifest in an act of understanding, a phantasm is informed by a meaning as, at the same time, this same phantasm triggers an intellectual act which grasps a meaning in the phantasm which has been imaginatively presented to it. Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 15, a. 2; Lonergan, Verbum, p. 91; Triune God: Systematics, p. 579; Incarnate Word, p. 171. The phantasm, as an agent object, moves the human intellect. Cf. Lonergan, Verbum, p. 150.
However, about speaking about the role of material causality in human cognition, Aquinas and Lonergan both argue that acts of understanding cannot be adequately explained if one only attends to experiences of matter as these can be given through the action of material causes. As Aquinas notes in the Summa Theologiae, 1a2ae, q. 26, a. 2, every act of understanding is an operation, and because it is an operation, it cannot be caused by something which is not itself an operation. What a given thing is in terms of its nature conditions its operations since the reception of a form within a given thing specifies what kind of operation can properly occur in a given subject. Cf. In 4 Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, d. 49, q. 3, a. 2 sol, cited by Lonergan, Triune God: Systematics, p. 551. However, if one wants to identify all the different causes that account for acts of understanding as they occur in human subjects, beyond noting how the inquiries and questions of agent intellect play a positive role in leading a person to acts of understanding and how apt images help to trigger acts of understanding by working through one’s imagination, one must also look for operations which are correlative for the occurrence of acts of understanding in contingent human beings. Like explains like. Like causes like since what is less in being or reality cannot explain what possesses more being or reality. What exists cannot be explained by what does not exist and so, for this reason, for a complete understanding of what happens in human cognition, other acts of understanding must be postulated and identified if human acts of understanding are to be fully accounted for: acts of understanding as these occur in teachers and instructors and the kind of understanding which already always exists in God’s understanding. As Aquinas briefly states his position (in metaphysical terms): “potency is actualized by something already in act.” Cf. Sentencia Libri De anima, 2, 11, 372. Nothing in a state of potency is able to transcend its potency through its potency. Hence, in the final analysis, since contingent acts of understanding are not able to account for themselves, a full explanation demands the postulation of an ever present non-contingent form of understanding within which all human acts of understanding participate. Human understanding always exists as a participation in divine understanding (cited by Aquinas as a “remote cause” in the Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 84, a. 4, ad 3).
Form as a Cause of Knowing in Aquinas and Lonergan
Posted by Dunstan in Cognitive Theory, Dunstan Robidoux, OSB, St. Thomas Aquinas on November 23, 2009
by Br. Dunstan Robidoux OSB
When commenting on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Aquinas repeats what Aristotle says that form (forma) is ratio. Cf. Sententia super Metaphysicam, 8, 1, 1687. Form is an “intelligible structure.” In Aquinas, species as “intelligible species” (species intelligibilis) commonly refers to form. Form as species, as Lonergan speaks about it, refers to the “intelligibility of data.” Cf. Lonergan, Collection, p. 284. Or, to use a term that originally derives from Aristotle, form is eidos or morphê. Cf. Lonergan, Caring About Meaning, p. 45; Topics in Education, p. 171. For both Aristotle and Aquinas, eidos as form refers to what is known not through sense perception but through an act of the mind, through nous. Cf. Patrick H. Byrne, Analysis and Science in Aristotle (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), p. 198, p. 200. Even if some intellects can engage in acts of understanding without using any images or phantasms, no intellect is able to understand anything apart from an intellectual species or form. Cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 3a, q. 11, a. 2, ad 1. Form, like essence, refers to a principle of explanation but in a manner which says that by first understanding a form or intelligible species, one then understands what something is in terms of its essence. Form is the quo est; it is that “by which something is” (quo aliquid est). Cf. Sententia super Metaphysicam, 5, 10, 904. As the cause or mover (movens) of understanding, it is that “by which the understanding understands” (quo intelligit intellectus). Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 85, a. 2. It exists as a principle or cause of understanding (it is a causa cognoscendi) whereby one moves from the order of knowing toward the order of being, reality. Cf. Summa Contra Gentiles, 1, 53, 2 & 4.
As a cognitive tool or, more precisely, as a reason or explanation, form is not to be identified with what is understood or known, signified as the id quod intelligitur, which is the proper object of the human inquiry and the primary object of human understanding, and which also exists outside the mind as that about which questions are being asked. In the Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 56, a. 2, ad 3, Aquinas distinguishes between the form or species of a thing that exists within somebody’s mind and the natural or real existence of a thing which exists apart from whether or not it is understood and known by anybody’s understanding (i.e., an intelligent being). The form or species of a thing, as it exists in the mind of a knower, is referred to as an “intelligible existence” which is cognitively intended. Hence, “intelligible existence” is to be associated with “intentional existence.” See also Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 85, a. 2. In discussing the difference between form as a reason or intellectual principle and what is being understood through form as a reason or intellectual principle, in “Intellectual Honesty in Aquinas and Lonergan,” (a paper presented at the Third International Lonergan Workshop, Erbacher Hof, Mainz, Germany, January 2-7, 2007), p. 11, William Murnion elaborates on Aquinas’s meaning by distinguishing between what is secondarily understood and what is primarily understood. A species or intentional likeness is what is secondarily understood while a thing to which an intentional likeness or species refers is what is primarily understood. By means of form, an embodied form is understood and this embodied form refers to a world that exists beyond the reasoning of a human intellect although this same world is encountered in a self-transcendent way through a self-transcending acts of understanding. Cf. James B. Reichmann S. J., Philosophy of the Human Person (Chicago: Loyola Press, 1985), p. 106. In attending then to what Aquinas says in the Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 85, a. 2, Aquinas draws a critical distinction which allows him to escape from a form of subjectivism that would regard the human knower as a self-enclosed subject whose understanding and knowing is a purely private affair that is disconnected from possibly understanding and knowing anything which exists outside the human mind. Form as “that by which something is understood” must be clearly distinguished from “that which is understood” since their identification would imply that what is understood exists only within the operations of the human mind and not also outside of it. Cf. Giorgio Pini, “Scotus on the object of understanding,” pp. 6-10; “Scotus on concepts,” pp. 5-6 (two unpublished papers).
To understand a bit more clearly how form functions as a principle of mediation in human knowing, in his The Divine Initiative: Grace, World-Order, and Human Freedom in the Early Writings of Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), pp. 100-102, J. Michael Stebbins discusses how Lonergan explains how quod and quo are to be clearly distinguished from each other. Quod refers to the object of a rational operation. It is, for instance, something which is grasped in terms of its meaning or intelligibility. However, quo refers to a reason which explains why something has been grasped as the term of an act of understanding or willing. For one’s initial acts of understanding, for one’s judgments, for one’s acts of faith, hope, and charity, one has reasons of some kind. Rational acts are distinguished from all other kinds of acts because of this difference in consciousness. In every rational act, there exists an awareness or an experience of reasons and an awareness or an experience of the sufficiency of one’s reasons. With respect, for instance, to ethical decision making, reasons specify a motive or purpose which explains why it is right and good that a given object should be desired and sought for in the willing which one does because of the understanding that one come to enjoy. In Phenomenology and Logic: The Boston College Lectures on Mathematical Logic and Existentialism, ed. Philip J. McShane (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), p. 105, Lonergan argues that, in both Aristotle and Aquinas, in explanatory syllogisms, one finds a middle term which refers to an act of understanding that apprehends a form or meaning and that through the mediation of an act of understanding (cognitively speaking) or through the mediation of a form (metaphysically speaking), persons move from sensible experiences of data to meanings as these are experienced in acts of conceptualization (which spring from prior acts of understanding). Form, as a metaphysical principle, is to be correlated with a species of intellectual act which refers to acts of direct understanding that detach a form as an intellectual or spiritual component from matter which exists as a material principle or material component.
In contrast thus with form, the id quod intelligitur (the “that which is understood”) is an essence. It is the quiddity of a material thing (quidditas rei materialis) which is constituted by a form joined to matter (i.e., matter as common matter). While the form of a thing can exist both within a mind and within data of sense, its embodiment as essence precludes the proper functioning of any form of human understanding which ceases to be joined to a world that exists extramentally (outside the mind).
Understanding the Proceeding of an Intellectual Emanation in its Uniqueness
Posted by Dunstan in Cognitive Theory, Dunstan Robidoux, OSB, St. Thomas Aquinas on October 30, 2009
by Br. Dunstan Robidoux OSB
Understanding the Proceeding of an Intellectual Emanation in its Uniqueness Employing a Thomist Distinction
Posted by Dunstan in Cognitive Theory, Dunstan Robidoux, OSB, St. Thomas Aquinas on October 23, 2009
by Br. Dunstan Robidoux OSB
Applying a Thomist Principle: Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur
Posted by Dunstan in Dunstan Robidoux, OSB, St. Thomas Aquinas on October 16, 2009
by Br. Dunstan Robidoux OSB
Not infrequently, in different texts, Aquinas refers to a principle which he uses as a principle of explanation–a principle which avers that “whatever is received into something is received according to the condition of the receiver.” Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur. Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 75, a. 5; 3a, q. 5. In the Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 12, a. 4, a more specific application of this principle is proposed in terms which say that “a thing known exists in a knower according to the mode of a knower.” Cogitum…est in cognoscente secundum modum cognoscentis. For further references, see Summa Theologiae, q. 14, a. 1, ad 3; q. 16, a. 1; q. 19, a. 6, ad 2; Summa Contra Gentiles, 2, 79, 7; De Veritate, q. 2, a. 3. In knowing anything, or in thinking that one knows anything, something is known by a prospective knower according to the mode of a knower’s being where what is understood and known is regulated or determined according to how a thing is known by a knower. In the context of his systematic theology of the Trinity, Lonergan takes this Thomist principle and uses it to explain why ongoing development sometimes fails to occur in theology. See Lonergan, The Triune God: Systematics, p. 25. Seminal insights are not always well understood (as these insights come from major thinkers in the theological tradition as in
To cite only one notable example as one looks back into the history of Catholic theology, in the De ente supernaturali: Supplementum schematicum (On Supernatural Being: A Schematic Supplement), Lonergan argues that the dispute which irrupted in the 16th Century between Molinists and Bannezians about the relation between grace and human freedom should be regarded as a false controversy because it proceeded on the basis of a number of shared misunderstandings. To cite a particular glaring instance, both schools adhered to a theory of human understanding which cannot be squared with Aquinas’s stated views. When human understanding is understood as a vital act, it is said that human understanding causes itself. It is essentially self-caused or self-willed. Cf. J. Michael Stebbins, The Divine Initiative: Grace, World-Order, and Human Freedom in the Early Writings of Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), pp. 107-110. But, the self-actualization of human knowing is not only a mistaken notion in itself but one which is doubly false if one tries to claim that it represents Aquinas’s understanding of human cognition. As Aquinas himself says, “the knower as such is not an efficient…cause.” Cf. Aquinas, De Veritate, q. 8, a. 6. Human knowing is not to be equated with the activity or efficient causality of the agent intellect. Human knowledge is not essentially a product of human effort (as a human knower moves from not knowing or not understanding to knowing or understanding). As essential as is the reasoning process for moving toward understanding, no one can know if understanding will ever enter into one’s conscious experience. The absence of any guarantees accordingly distinguishes understanding from any kind of human making or human producing. Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 85, a. 2. There is nothing which a person can do whose term is necessarily an act of understanding (even if an act of understanding is personally possessed by a knower when it is enjoyed). Hence, as a consequence, understanding presents itself as something which can only be elicited (and not produced) by what human beings do. It cannot be earned. While given to persons who ask questions, understanding exists as essentially a reception. It is a “being-acted-upon.” Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 79, a. 2. It is an act, not an action. Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 28, a. 3, ad 1; Sententia super Physicam, 3, 5, 320. While an action is something which is produced (it comes from a subject or agent as its source or point of origin), as an act, understanding is properly a passion (passio). It is a passive potency. It is something which a subject receives or accepts. It is the act of a subject which exists within a subject who, as a patient, undergoes and experiences what is undergone and experienced, but who can only receive certain operations according to the form or nature which specifies a subject’s operations in terms of what can be received and what cannot be received by a given subject. Cf. De Veritate, q. 26, a. 1; a. 3; Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 41, a.1, ad 2; Stebbins, p. 107. In Lonergan’s own words, “act is limited by the potency in which it is received.” Cf. Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, p. 147. Every form possesses an inclination of its own which specifies what it may properly receive. Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a2ae, q. 6, a. 4, ad 2. Hence, until understanding dawns, one must continue to work and hope for it and, until it dawns, one cannot say what one has understood. The receptive character of human understanding accordingly explains why Aquinas speaks about understanding as a “movement to the soul” from an agent object instead of a movement “from the soul” to outer things. Cf. De Malo, q. 6, a. un., arg. 14a. Intellectual knowledge is received from external things in a way which shows that understanding operates “from things to the soul,” via a rebus ad animam. Cf. De potentia, q. 9, a. 9. If the receptive character of human understanding is not properly understood, it will lead to a false notion of human autonomy (an exaggerated notion of it) and, as a result, God’s grace will not be understood with regard to its full efficacy.
By attending then to the wording of Aquinas’s principle (“whatever is received into something is received according to the condition of the receiver”)and as one thinks about its meaning, one can begin to sense that this principle probably explains why Lonergan moved into an intentionality analysis of the human subject after spending years reading into Aquinas’s thought. Aquinas sometimes explicitly refers to inner experience which human beings can have of themselves when they are engaged in certain acts. For instance, as a prime example which Lonergan often refers to in one or more various texts, in the ST, 1a, q. 84, a. 7, Aquinas avers: “Anyone can experience this for himself that when he tries to understand something, he forms certain phantasms to serve him by way of examples in which, as it were, he examines what he is trying to understand. For this reason, when we wish to make someone understand something, we lay examples before him from which he can form phantasms for the purpose of understanding.” Cf. Aquinas as cited by Giovanni B. Sala S.J., “From Thomas Aquinas to Bernard Lonergan: Continuity and Novelty,” http://www.lonergan.org/dialogue_partners/Sala/from_thomas_aquinas_to_bernard_l.htm#_ftnref10; Lonergan, Understanding and Being, p. 44. But, while Aquinas does not frequently refer to inner human experience in preferring to use a method of analysis which moves from exterior objects to inner human acts (our inner conscious experience of these acts), Lonergan prefers to work conversely through a form of analysis which moves from our inner experience of human acts toward transcendent objects that are intended by our desires and the different kinds of questions that we ask. Where Aquinas distinguishes between different kinds of acts by distinguishing between different kinds of objects, Lonergan moves from our experience of questions and the existence of different kinds of questions to objects by way of acts. By attending to questions and by distinguishing them, one can determine an order of different intended objects and then, by attending to this order of intended objects, one can specify the different kinds of acts which come into existence, or which can come into existence, in order to meet these different intended goals. Differences within the order of human intentionality reveal a normative structure and a connatural order which exists within the larger world of being or reality–a connatural order which refers to a correspondence or a proportion which exists between the order of our human knowing and the order which exists within the world of being (as this is proportionate to the order of our human knowing). Two types of analysis can be contrasted as we think about the kind of analysis that Aquinas prefers to use and the kind that Lonergan prefers to use. But, within Aquinas, one finds principles which lead from one kind of analysis to another: from the metaphysics of Aquinas to the theory of human cognition present in the work of Bernard Lonergan.