07.12.08
Posted in David Fleischacker, Marital Ethics at 7:28 pm by David Fleischacker
by Dr. David Fleischacker
Since it is the 40th anniversary of the publication of Humanae Vitae this year, I thought it might be worthwhile to explore one of the key issues linked to this encyclical, that of contraception. However, before such an issue is addressed, I thought it might be worthwhile to investigate the intelligibility of conception in order to provide a more adequate context for addressing contraception.
Part of what raises my own interest is a private letter written by Bernard Lonergan in September, 1968. It is a letter that has been in circulation in a variety of contexts, and subsequently, it needs to be carefully examined.
In this private letter to a priest, Lonergan is addressing the shifts in Catholic moral theology that he understands as taking place regarding the marital act. One of the shifts is a rejection of the Aristotelian understanding of the relationship between the marital act and conception. He is also highlighting the differentiated unity brought out in Vatican II and in Humanae Vitae between the procreative and the unitive (or mutual love) ends of the conjugal act.
Seemingly, the thrust of the private letter raises into serious question the position that the Church has taken against contraception. At least that is how I have seen some others make use of it. However, in the letter itself, there are no statements as far as I can tell that directly reject the Church teaching regarding contraception. There are statements in the letter that reject any positions based soley on the Aristotelain understanding of the relationship between the conjugal act and conception. However, it does not immediatelly follow that the position of the Church is wrong. Did Lonergan personally make this conclusion?
Whatever the case of Lonergan’s position in 1968, it would be worthwhile to remember a few points.
1. In 1968, there existed a great deal of confusion at that time regarding the issue. The new emphasis on the unitative end of the conjugal act and its relationship to the procreative end was not explanatorily clear to many people.
2. A private letter to a commrade that barely develops the issue historically, philosophically, and theologically should have virtually no weight of authority. Using this letter to justify any position without any real explanatory and scholarly support would border on a type of authoritarianism based on Lonergan’s name alone, something that I think would be a bit unsettling to him and should be to any of us.
So, what would I like to do? I would like to draw out further questions using the full weight of Lonergan’s philosophy, and some of the insights that would shed light upon the meaning of both conception and contraception. Already, I see many questions not raised in the letter which a more thorough treatment of the subject would demand. Here are just a few:
1. What precisely are the contributions of horizontal and vertical finality in understanding conception and contraception?
2. What does conception and what does contraception do to the relationship between the man and the woman psychologically, sociologically, spiritually, etc., etc., etc.?
3. The few references to the statistical relationship between the conjugal act and conception given in the letter need to be spelled out in far more detail. What could modern biology contribute to understanding this relationship?
4. In terms of the statistical relationship of conception, and its finality, what precisely at the level of decision is the liberty of the man and likewise, what is the liberty of the woman? As an observation, how natural family planning changes the statistical relationship is rather different than how a contraceptive changes that relationship, because the decisions involved are rather different. Hence, this has an existential ramification that needs to be explore.
So, in light of finding further questions, and exploring those questions, at least philosophically, I would like to proceed on a new set of blog questions starting with the intelligibility of conception and in this context, the meaning of contraception.
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06.28.08
Posted in All, David Fleischacker, Metaphysics at 7:00 am by David Fleischacker
The following thought falls under metaphysical musings.
About 14 years ago, I had written a paper for the late Fr. Stephen Happell dealing with the landscape of consciousness and the different regions and mountains where insights, judgments, and decisions take place within science and the imagination. At least that was the metaphor that came to mind in describing the layout of how various insights, judgments, and decisions relate to each other. One of the insights that had come to me at that point and has continued to grow whenever I think of higher and lower levels is how the higher directly informs a particular range of the lower, then through that directly sublated lower level, it can mediate other regions of the lower levels.
There are many examples that each of us should be able to recognize in ourselves. The farmer has insights and makes decisions immediately in relationship to certain sensate patterns, which in turn take place immediately within certain neural patterns, which in turn take place within certain biochemical and biophysical schemes. However, through the neural, biochemical, and biophysical schemes, the farmer can move muscles and turn his body, look in another direction, walk toward the barn, start the farm equipment. Within his body, these movements are mediate with respect to the conscious acts themselves. The muscle itself was not immediately part of the conscious activities. Hence, it comes to be “informed” by the consciousness in a mediated fashion.
To put this a bit more technically, Lonergan defines mediation in his essay entitled “The Mediation of Christ in Prayer” as a relationship between a property, characteristic, aspect, or feature that is immediate in one term, and mediated to another. Hence, in the case of a watch, the energy is immediate in the spring, but in the moving hands of the clock, it is mediate. Likewise in conscious things, the conscious activities are immediate in certain neural patterns, and then the features of consciousness (insights, judgments, decisions), become mediated within other parts of the body. Only mediately does my hand comes to be sublated within my conscious decision to type, but the neurons involved in this conscious decision are sublated immediately.
This is not much different than how through the immediate power and movement of the muscles in the legs, movement of the whole body takes place, hence movement is mediated in the rest of the body. However, in this case, I am simply focusing on how a lower level can become either immediately or mediately sublated into higher levels. This all takes place within a single unity-identity-whole.
Hence our entire biochemical, cellular, neural being becomes sublated into conscious life, but it does so either immediately or mediately. And there are other parallels in all living beings (beings that possess various types of self-mediating capacities).
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06.23.08
Posted in All, David Fleischacker at 8:14 am by David Fleischacker
I had been visiting the Lonergan workshop in Boston this last week, well really only about 1.5 days of it. I had to return home for family reasons, however I enjoyed my short visit and the talks I was able to attend.
In one of the talks, Karl Rahner’s notion of the anonymous Christian was raised and I would like to highlight something that seems to be missing from discussions of this Christian. The anonymous Christian, at least in its best form, is the person who has never had a true encounter with Christianity, yet, God has moved this person’s heart, and this person has responded positively to God. Hence, this person is in a graced stated. But he or she does not really know it.
There are many advocates of the anonymous Christian (which the speaker was quick to point out is not Anonymous Christianity — Christianity is a believing body that is deliberate and knowing. Christianity cannot be anonymous). And there are many detractors. I probably stand a bit toward the detractors, though I would side with Augustine on all counterpositions (or heresies). As Augustine notes, all heresies possess some truth, and manytimes a profound truth. Likewise, all counterpositions advocate some truth. Now, I am not saying the Anonymous Christian is a heresy. But, the way it has come to be used by many certainly verges on one. I would argue that there are some elements of it as a position that need to be purged.
So what is it that needs to be purged? The key purging in my mind needs to take place upon a further conclusion that regularly follows the idea of an anonymous christian. If one can be a Christian without Christianity, then there really is no pressing need to become or be a Christian, let alone a Catholic. Karl Rahner himself I do not think can be rightly accussed of this position. And there are others who avoid it as well, and they argue that it is better to become explicitly Christian because then at least one knows a bit more about what one is.
However, there is a more subtle argument rooted in a philosophical framework for which Rahner is partly responsible and which does seem to lead to this conclusion. Life is really about a transcendental response, not a categorial one. Categories define, delimit, judge, and these are all finite. These are not what life is about. In fact, if one overly adheres to the particular categories that define our experiences and judge our insights, then one has become derailed. This includes overly adhering to any type of faith, whether Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, or any other religious set of beliefs. The categories never can be made into anything definitive, anything that will hold one’s trust in any obligatory or mandatory fashion. Categories are mere pointers, suggestions, and if they take one away from the transcendental eros of the spirit, then they have become gods.
If one holds this basic position on the transcendental ground of the soul and its contrast with the categorial, then one must say that the aim of our beings is beyond all that we know, believe, and to which we respond. It is even beyond the other whom we love, because we know that other and love that other in categorial ways. Hence, the endpoint of humanity and history really is not the Catholic faith. The end point is beyond the Church, beyond Christianity, beyond all the names and person’s who we categorize in this world. Could Rahner be responsible for this ultimate rejection of Christianity and the Catholic faith?
Hence, it is not only the conclusion that needs to be purged, but a key premise. It is this categorical minimization of all categories that I would argue needs to be purged and replaced with a substantially different understanding of the relation of the transcendental element of the human soul and its realization in answers.
So, what is a better understanding of this relationship between the transcendental basis of the soul and its categorial realization? It is true that fundamental in all human beings is this transcendental ground of our being–especially if one generously understands this transcendental nature as rooted in the transcendental notions as Lonergan comprehends these. At the same time, these transcendental grounds are merely a beginning. They have aims, and these aims are answers.
In addition to the orientation of the transcendental to answers, thinking of the answers or categories as merely provisional pointers also needs to be recast. Can some insights be true, forever true? If one says yes, has one rejected transcendence? Notice, that there exists a bit of a confusion. The fact that I went to the bank today is forever true. God is three persons is forever true. God is unrestricted being, goodness, and love, is forever true. What does it mean to transcend these statments? Have I derailed my being into a categorial abyss in holding such claims?
At times, old categories do need to be released for new. Old wineskins cannot hold the new wine. Sometimes, the categories are not released and discarded, but merely transformed like Newton’s notion of mass for Einstein’s. Othertimes however, the old categories simply remain old, and never need to be revised or rejected. It will always be true that I wrote this blog.
Self transcendence does not require that all categories and all answers necessarily be overcome and rejected for something better, even if self-transcendence require that one continue to develop.
I guess, in the end, I am trying to make the case that the virtually unconditioned can be reached in certain contexts. Thus, I am trying also to make the case that there exists not only a permanence of the trancendental ground of the human soul, but a permanence in the meaning of some answers, such as dogmas (Lonergan argues this point).
Adhering to these permanent answers results in a departure from the exclusive devotion to the transcendental and thus from the anonymous Christian, and calls one to move to the sanctified soul that is increasing its sanctification via divine gifts that transform us. One can argue that we are in dire need for upholding the belief in an explicit outer Word. The outer Word mutually self-mediates the life, health, healing, and growth of the inner word and the capacity for self-transcendence. However, for this to work, we need to know that Word and its manifestation in words. This manifested Word needs to have a permanence to it. And though the manifested Word belongs to the categorial, it never needs to be rejected for something better. It can command obiligatory and mandatory trust, for the duration.
To put this a bit more descriptively and concretely, a soul animated by the Holy Spirit, moved by the heart of flesh will not go far without the mediation of the true outer Word. In other words, without being mediated by God’s entrance into the world mediated by meaning, then one will remain at best, anonymous, and probably not even that for long. Only in the united missions of the Son and of the Holy Spirit does one thrive. It is difficult enough remaining faithful to the inner call when one knows this explicitly. As well, the anonymous Christian is not going to embark on the great mission of evangelization. He or she is never going to proceed to speak or write about the profound wisdom that reorientes one’s soul. Prayer will barely be intentional and disorientingly existential. One will never write theological treatises upon the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Church, salvation history, the City of God, nor on spiritual development. One will be forever in ignorance of one’s own self and of the meaning of life and of history in any but the most rudimentary fashions. It really is a dangerous place to be, and a rather unfruitful place as well, save that it will respond with great joy at finding the true outer Word of God. This person will not be able to benefit from all the profound insights that have linked the way of achievement with the way of gift, the way of reason with the way of true faith. Thus, such individuals will be shut off from the Tradition and its catholicity. The purpose of such gifts of the Holy Spirit is to draw us to an authoritative outer word that can bring us along to our true destiny. As John Henry Newman noted well, the fact of Revelation implies the need for an authoritative carrier of that Revelation. Without that authority, no one, not even the genius of earth, will find that Revelation in the end. One will be left on the verge of despair, wondering whether there really is an answer. Without the permanence of some of these key answers, at least those rooted in the Divine entrance into the world mediated by meaning, then we really are lost. And we too can ask with Pontius Pilate, “What is truth?” It is the permanence of some answers that is missing in many of the discussions about the anonymous Christian. Anonymity needs a dressor of sycamores like Amos if it is going to bear fruit.
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06.14.08
Posted in All, David Fleischacker at 8:08 am by David Fleischacker
by David Fleischacker
In this entry, I will end up repeating some of the same conclusions as in the last two blogs, however, with a slightly different focus, and a basis from which to answer the challenge in the last blog.
I would like to refer the reader to chapter 8 in INSIGHT, section 3 on “Genus as Explanatory.” Specifically, I am looking at the section in which Lonergan addresses the possibility of the emergence of a new and higher genus of things. He is worth quoting at this point,
Consider, then, a genus of things, Ti with explanatory conjugates, Ci, and a consequent list of possible schemes of recurrence, Si. Suppose there occurs an aggregate of events, Eij that is merely coincidental when considered in light of the laws of things, Ti, and of all their possible schemes of recurrence, Si. Then, if the aggregate of events, Eij, occurs regularly, it is necessary to advance to the higher viewpoint of some genus of things, Tj, with conjugates, Ci and Cj, and with schemes of recurrence, Sj. The lower viewpoint is insufficient for it has to regard as merely coincidental what in fact is regular. The higher viewpoint is justified, for the conjugates, Cj, and the schemes, Sj, constitute a higher system that makes regular what otherwise would be merely coincidental. (Insight, 255 –256)
This point that Lonergan makes presents us with the heart of the solution that is required in order to make the case that human neurological and sensate schemes possess a regularity that cannot be explained adequately by neurological (biological) nor sensate conjugates and their schemes. Thus, what is taking place in phantasm is something that does not really make sense from standard sensate conjugates and schemes. The standard schemes are for sensing, reproducing a sensation, or creatively constructing something that could be sensed. Phantasm, though a pattern within neurological and sensate schemes, requires an appeal to the higher conscious acts of question and answers to explain it. In other words, when a person asks a question, many neural processes are triggered, and one cannot explain these with the experience of some sense object or desire for food. One has to turn to the question itself in order to explain the neural patterns and why these exist and exist as these do.
Furthermore, I would like to add some points slightly beyond Lonergan’s quote above. Self-transcendence not only explains a particular set of neurological and sensate regularities, but it brings about a horizontal development in the neurological and sensate capabilities as well. Mathematics provides an analogy. Algebra expands arithmetic in order to reach its goals. For example, one can say
8 + 10 = 10 + 8
6 + 5 = 5 + 6,
9 + 12 = 12 + 9
etc., etc., etc.,
This is arithmetic. However, in arithmetic alone, there really would not have been much reason for carrying out such activities. Only in algebra, which is looking to resolve problems in a different manner does one want to discover such laws as “A + B = B + A.”
This solution in the human being
A Thought Experiment
A thought experiment might help to create a plausible understanding of this dependence of the expansion of the lower neurological and sensate manifolds upon the higher self-transcending levels of consciousness.
Let me start with a simple statement rooted in Lonergan’s proposals regarding higher and lower levels in Insight. Every conscious act has its underpinning neural correlate. A sufficiently different conscious act will result in differences within the sensate, which in turn will have differences in neural patterns. Hence, a question about a tree will trigger different neural patterns than the experience of seeing or touching the tree.
Let us say that neural pattern X is discovered. Now, the pattern emerges whenever intelligent creature A is asked about the color of the ball present at which s/he is looking upon. Now, in the brain of this creature, there is already operative pattern Y, which results from the focused attention upon the ball. It was discovered to be a similar pattern within a dog, friendly creature B, and a monkey, curious creature C. In all three, this pattern Y is correlated with the visual perception of the ball. However, the question stirs up other patterns. When the friendly creature B and curious creature C are asked the same question, they too have certain patterns that get triggered, but there are some significant differences from that which gets stirred up in intelligent creature A. Intelligent creature A has a variety of patterns in the cerebrum that are triggered which are not found in the friendly or the curious creature. These further neural patterns are linked to questions and insights and these recur whenever the question is asked. And one never finds these patterns in the friendly or curious creature, neither of which even possess these particular neural possibilities in the first place (—as a note I would expect some significant neural differences between the dog and the monkey as well).
Let us say some further experiments have discovered a few more things about these neural patterns in the cerebrum of the human being. Normally, patterns can be explained by various types of sensate and neural “causes.” The seeing of the ball or the desire for food trigger neurological processes or sensate ones. However, in the human being, some of movements in the frontal lobes do not have such an explanation in the end. Even though these might accompany seeing and tasting, these possess a liberty of movement that cannot be reduced to these initial processes. Rather one has to appeal to higher acts of self-transcendence in order to understand these movements. One must appeal to the questions for understanding and insight, questions for reflection and reflective insight, or questions for deliberation and evaluative insight that the human subject is freely raising (as well as concepts, judgments of fact, and judgments of value, etc..).
The expansion of neural and sensate manifolds under self-transcendence.
Let us now continue this thought experiment, and turn from the coincidentality of the neural and sensate manifolds toward their development.
As was mentioned earlier, just as algebra expands the “doing of arithmetic,” so self-transcendence is going to expand the neural and sensate manifolds. This would happen not just in individuals, but in the human species over its history.
In the Individual
Once questions and answers begin to awaken in the child, the neural manifolds will shift in support of these developments. For example, prior to birth a massive growth of neural connections takes place, far beyond those connections which will be needed. During the first five or so years after birth, this growth is “weeded down.” What gets used, stays, what does not reduces. This period is a period in which the child is literally forming her or his brain through interaction with the immediate environment and culture. Maria Montessori calls this the “absorbant” sensitive period in human development. The mind can be described as a kind of sponge, but literally it is being interiorly formed from the neurons on up.
Just before adolescence another growth of neurons is taking place, similar to that which takes place before birth. The front lobes are massively being reintegrated with the rest of the brain, allowing for a new kind of absorbent period.
In the human species
Now both the structures of the first growth and the second have neurological, biochemical, and genetic grounds. However, I would like to suggest that these roots were guided by prior generations of self- transcending subjects. Over the millennia, neural patterns that allow for greater rates of self-transcendence increase the probabilities for survival and expansion, and thus, the self-transcendending species sees an evolutionary improvement over time in the neural structures of the brain that support the sensate capacities that underpin acts of self-transcendence. Thus, neural processes and their correlative sensate activities will develop in the brain that have come to be via the higher order of successful self- transcendence. Thus, from the first stage of an individual, he or she possesses developmental orders that come from the self-transcending subjects of the past. This means, that even the genetic and biochemical make-up of the first cell, the zygote, possesses this ordered development.
However, once the neural and sensate matrices arise in the individual that can support actual self- transcendence, then individuals self-transcendence comes to have a new role in shaping the neural and sensate manifolds. Then, for example, the “weeding down” in the first five years after birth and in the early years of adolescence is guided by the subject’s acts of self-transcendence (mediated within the community and its history).
So, both the neural and sensate manifolds have been guided by self-transcending subjects of the past and then further guidance comes from the self-transcending individual in conscious and intentional relation to community and its history. This is a rather differentiation way of looking at nature and nurture.
Notice, that this is not claiming that the underlying neural and sensate manifolds cause self-transcendence. But they are the matrix in which such self-transcendence takes place. As Lonergan argues, human intelligence is intrinsically independent of the empirical residue, though extrinsically dependent upon it. And it is this extrinsic dependence that calls for the kinds of neural and sensate advancements in the human species in the same way as algebra calls forth arithmetic advancements. It seems highly improbable that these advancements could be explained by neural or sensate operations alone, and thus it is highly probable that they have an intrinsic dependence for their intelligible meaning upon self-transcendence (constituted by the transcendental notions).
What does this mean for the larger question at hand?
It simply means that from the first stage of development in the human being, the prior generations of self- transcending subjects contribute the basic biochemical and genetic order that has an intrinsic relationship to self-transcendence. In other words, one cannot understand adequately the genetic and biochemical layout even of the zygote without appeal to their formation in relationship to prior generations of self- transcending subjects. Hence, though it is not “guided” by the current self-transcending acts of the zygote, simply because these have not yet emerged, the developmental orientation toward a differentiation of neural and sensate patterns require an appeal to something more in the end, and that more is an orientation toward self-transcendence brought about by an inheritance from the past.
Now, in earlier blogs I had argued that in a developing kind of thing, the first stage of development is the first moment in which that thing exists. However, in those blogs, I could not argue as directly that in stages prior to actual self-transcendence of the individual a human person existed. I did argue that a human person is a person whenever a “this” has an intrinsic (by “intrinsic” I mean it only becomes explanatorily intelligible via….) self-mediating relationship to self-transcendence. Now, in light of this blog, some further provisional statements and conclusions can be made:
1. A human person begins in the first stage of a “unity-identity-whole” that possesses an intrinsic relationship to intellectual, rational, and moral self-transcendence.
2. Since every stage of development prior to actual self-transcendence cannot be adequately explained without appealing to self-transcendence, every stage of human life has an intrinsic relationship to self- transcendence (though that relationship does change).
3. Thus, the zygote also has an intrinsic relationship to intellectual, rational, and moral self-transcendence (of past self-transcending subjects).
4. The zygote is the first stage of human development (I have not formally made this argument, but it can be done from biological studies).
5. Therefore, a zygote is when the human person begins to exist.
Actually, there are a few more premises that could be introduced and detailed, but I trust that it is sufficient to make the point. Much work can be done in detailing all of these links. I have just picked up a few new texts on brain development and the frontal lobes, which should add some of the latest discoveries. I have tried to simplify the arguments to give pointers more than thorough treatments of the brain and brain development. However, for readers interested in doing more, I would recommend starting with some introductory texts on the brain and brain development, then going to the latest research on the prefrontal cortex and its development. This usually will give more than sufficient detail to underpin some of the general statements I have made in these blogs.
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06.02.08
Posted in All, David Fleischacker at 6:42 am by David Fleischacker
by David Fleischacker
I am hoping now to return to this line of thought again, after a bit of a delay because of a busy semester and a paper and a trip to South Korea.
In the last blog, the argument lead up to a possibility. Simply possessing a potentiality for phantasm was sufficient for that which possesses this potentiality to be intrinsically linked to an intellectual nature. The reason for this is because the phantasm as such, though an operation of the imagination, has a pattern or order to it that goes beyond the imagination. Lonergan’s definition of a circle in INSIGHT illustrates this point. The cartwheel as a cartwheel is either a direct manifestation of a sense object or it is a remember recreation of the sense object. However, a cartwheel as such is not a phantasm. One has to start increasing the quantity of spokes, decreasing the width of the spokes, decreasing the hub, etc., and move each of these toward the ultimately unimaginable, toward points and lines. The imagination has to be ordered in a dynamic fashion in order to provide the materials for an insight. This dynamic ordering of the cartwheel is no longer just a cartwheel, especially as insight emerges. In fact, by then, the image of the cartwheel has all but disappeared.
Thus, when the imagination along with the underlying neural manifolds reaches a point that it is potentially formable into a phantasm, one then can say that a real potentiality has arrived. However, until questioning actually awakens, this potential in the neural manifolds and imagination, real as it may be, will not move toward phantasm and become actuated in a phantasm.
The Challenge
A simple question however challenges this view. Could such plasticity of the imagination emerge from merely sensate needs alone? In other words, could the motor-sensory integrations that arise because of typical animal sensate operators and operations (a zoological system on the move) be sufficient for a neural plasticity that then could be formed into phantasm as well? For example, would the development of the frontal lobes as found in human beings have taken place even without the emergence of intelligence? When not participating in an actual phantasm, would the neural manifolds exist as they do without any need to appeal to the capacity for self transcendence? Now notice, this is not about whether an actual phantasm requires a higher explanation, but whether the potentiality of the neural structures for participation in phantasm require more.
Next blog: my response. (originally, I had planned on putting this answer up with the above, but it is rather long, and I am hoping to shorten it.
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03.02.08
Posted in All, David Fleischacker at 9:25 am by David Fleischacker
By David Fleischacker
In the last blog, I had mentioned the final steps in reaching a conclusion. Ignore that, at least in part.
In this current installment, I have chosen to examine the relationship between the body and the mind in the matured human person. Most of us would hardly argue whether a grown, awake, intelligent adult is a human person. Yet not so clear is the relationship of the body and the mind in terms of being intrinsically related to an intellectual nature. And until this becomes a bit clearer, I cannot begin to answer the question about when the human being begins to exist.
The Human Mind as Intrinsically Independent and Extrinsically Dependent on the Empirical Residue
[As a note of profound gratitude, I would like to thank Fr. Joseph Flanagan for highlighting the meaning of the “spiritual” in INSIGHT during the year long courses I had with him in 1990 on that book. Fr. Flanagan’s pointers have been a starting point of deepening reflection for me over the years. The following discussion is simply another example of that deepening.]
In INSIGHT, Lonergan notes that human intelligence develops in relationship to the sensate, which in turn, emerges within the neural manifolds, and one could continue on down, to the chemical and sub-atomic, and even the quark. So, on the one hand, the development of human intelligence simply cannot take place without images or what St. Thomas calls phantasms, which in turn only happen within neural manifolds in particular places, times, continuums, and coincidental aggregates. At the same time, from these particular manifolds of neurons and images, human questions and insights have a liberty that stretches to the universe and beyond. Our questions intrinsically intend intelligibilities, truths, and goods, or in general the transcendentals of intelligibility, truth, and goodness. Together, the integrated intentionality constituted by these transcendental notions forms the basic human capacity for self-transcendence. What emerges from this capacity has a universal and invariant character that can include the concrete and particular. Insights and judgments abstract from the empirical residue to reach universals and the virtually unconditioned, and thus have a kind of liberty from that residue.[for more on these, see Lonergan’s account of the invariant character of insight in chapter 2 of INSIGHT and of the virtually unconditioned in chapter 9 of INSIGHT] This liberty is what Lonergan means when in INSIGHT he technically defines the spiritual as that which is “intrinsically independent of the empirical residue.” “Intrinsically independent” because the mind intrinsically intends the transcendental notions not the particularities of the images and neural manifolds. At the same time, it is extrinsically dependent, because it cannot reach its aim without that particularity.
Is the human body intrinsically independent of the spiritual capacity for self-transcendence?
All of this however points to the fact that human intellectual, rational, and moral development of the capacity for self-transcendence is intrinsically independent of and extrinsically dependent on the body–its organic and motor-sensate, and affective facets as well as its embeddedness in the empirical residue. However, this relation of the mind to the body does not allow one to understand and know whether the human body is intrinsically independent of the capacity for self-transcendence and its realization. This reminds one of St. Thomas’ point that God is intrinsically independent of us, but we are not intrinsically independent of God in our existence. At the same time, it reminds me of St. Thomas’ point that the rational nature of the human being informs the body which means the body has an intelligibility that comes from the rational nature above.
There is another way of raising this question. Is the human body intrinsically intelligible without reference to the intelligibility of “the capacity for self-transcendence” and its realization in the self-transcending acts of understanding, judging, and deciding? If the body is intrinsically independent, then one cannot say that an intrinsic link to an intellectual nature occurs in the human body. Thus, when a human being is merely an organic or zoological being, he or she is not a human person. On the other hand, if such an intelligibility exists, then one can say that “this” being who is not currently intellectual, rational, and moral is still a human person.
Phantasm and Insight
Non-heuristic sense objects
One way to develop this answer is to examine the relationship that the phantasm has to insight. The images that are phantasms are distinct from those that are merely sensate. Sensate type images are either direct integrations of neural responses to sense objects—the apple as seen–or they are creative remembrances of those objects—the apple as remembered–or creative constructions of potential sensate objects that have never actually been sensed—the cubicle apple. Notice that in each case there is a greater liberty from the material manifolds. The second is free from the actual sensation of the object in a particular physical place and time but not free from memories of the object. The third is free from both a sensation of the object and even from a memory of it though it is not free from some previous sense experiences. If one has never had eyes to see or ears to hear, then no visual or auditory creative constructs can be formed.
In all three cases, the empirical residue is a constitutive component of the images. Every actual, remembered, or potential sensate object has a particular spatial or temporal element, as well as individuality. And though the imagination has a kind of freedom to create these residues, especially as one moves to the second and third types of sensate objects, the objects it creates cannot be without these residues.
Intellectual Images - Phantasms
Images need not be limited to sense type objects, and this is precisely what takes place in the formation of a phantasm. A phantasm is an imaginative object that has become “formed” in such a manner as to allow for the emergence of an insight. For example, in understanding the algebraic law that A + B = B + A, the “data” requires that one do and then examine a series of arithmetic activities, such as 1 + 2 = 2 + 1; 4 + 10 = 10 + 4, 8 + 54 = 54 + 8, etc., etc., etc.. Thus, the “phantasm” in this case is formed by “doing arithmetic” based on symbolic representations of numerical elements and mathematical operations. Notice, that the kind of patterning of the imagination that takes place cannot be explained either as a perception of an actual sensate object, as a memory, or as a creative construct of a potential sensate object. Instead, this kind of imaginative play is ordered toward insight. And that patterning of the imagination is an intelligibility that requires an understanding of higher levels of intellectual life. The phantasm as a phantasm would not exist without the insight and it would not be what it is without the insight. Yet, it belongs to the imagination, and hence is embedded in neural manifolds and the empirical residue. Without the act of insight, the underlying phantasm is merely a strange coincidental aggregate of neural events and images. The reality is that it is not random or strange, and needs the higher order for explanation.
What this indicates is the “body,” at least that part of the body that has become informed as a phantasm, is informed by the insight, and thus cannot be understood in its form or pattern without that insight. This indicates an intelligibility of the body that intrinsically requires an appeal to intelligence itself. Thus, the phantasm is intrinsically linked to our human intellectual nature.
Intellectual Body without phantasm?
This then raises another question. Does this intelligible link between the phantasm and intelligence exist when no phantasm actually exists? If I am in a deep sleep, or in a kind of non-intellectual conscious state, does my vegetative and sensate being still exist in a manner that possesses an intrinsic form that requires an appeal to higher conscious operations? The answer in my judgment is yes.
Evidence 1: The Potentiality of the Imagination and Brain for Phantasm
What is the evidence? Well, I think in general one could point to the real potentiality of the imagination to be informed as a phantasm. When the imagination is not actually informed as a phantasm, it does not thereby become limited in its capability to form a phantasm. In other words, it does not regress to being able to rise no higher than sensate type images and constructs. This also means that the neural manifolds that underlie the potentiality for forming the phantasm have this same plasticity. I suspect that the great power of the associative regions of the brain, and the motor and sensory cortices along with the front lobes point to this plasticity as well, and as the structures of the brain become better known, this link will become clearer.
Evidence 2: The Memory of Habituation of the Imagination and Neural Patterns by Phantasm
Also, once a phantasm has been created, and the neurons and their synaptic linkages have switched into long term patterns for long term memory, then literally, the brain has become habituated to these phantasms. Even when these patterns are not operative as phantasms, the stability of the neural linkages remain. And like the phantasm, these underlying neural patterns cannot be explained except in relationship to the higher insights, reflective insights, and evaluative insights that inform them [I think the neural patterns involved in evaluative insights include a combination of the manner in which the affective/emotional dimensions of the brain are integrated into the higher parts of the brain, especially the frontal lobes. Thus the phantasm sublated by evaluative insight includes higher brain integrations of these intentional affect elements, which is what neurologically allows for the sublation of the affective into the “rationally self-consciousness,” or the “level of decision”]. Thus, even the memory patterns of these phantasms are intrinsically informed by these higher conscious operations and thus have an intrinsic link to an intellectual nature.
Thus, an intrinsic link of the body to an intellectual nature is found both in the potentiality of the human imagination and human brain for phantasm as well as in the “memory” patterns of the imagination and neural structures that had emerged as a result of phantasm.
So, even when we are in a deep sleep, or in a sensate state in which we are not thinking, understanding, judging, and deciding, our bodies are still in a neural and imaginative potentiality and state that is intrinsically linked to our capacity for self-transcendence and its realization.
Yet, we have not reached our final answer. The relation of phantasm and the higher conscious operations regards the matured human adult and not when the human person begins to exist. However we have made one further step toward the resolution of this question. One can point out that the intrinsic link to an intellectual nature can begin even when a real potentiality for phantasm begins. But a real potentiality includes development, and such finality for development can be both horizontal and vertical. The implications of this need to be explored, and that is for the next blog.
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02.23.08
Posted in All, David Fleischacker at 11:50 am by David Fleischacker
In the former 5 parts of our inquiry, we had explored the meaning of the Thomistic definition of person as a “distinct subsistent in an intellectual nature.” A person needs to be distinct from mother or father or brother or sister or friend or enemy. A person is a subsistent, a that which is, a concrete unity. A person is intrinsically linked to intelligence, reasonableness, responsibility, and love. And now to turn to the next stage, what is specifically human about this person?
The HUMAN person
As Developing:
In the former blog entry, it was noted that the intelligence of human beings develops. It starts as a mere potentiality, a mere capacity that grows through the years. In other words our questions for understanding, insights, definition and symbolic formulations of insights, our questions for reflection, reflective insights, judgments, questions for deliberation, apprehension of values, judgments of value and the good, and decisions unfold, shift, grow, and undergo transformations and even conversions over the years.These growths can be horizontal expansions of common sense, of the dramatic formation of human living, or of the artistic realms. These growths can undergo expansions into new modalities of stewarding the world mediated by meaning, such as takes place in the move into theory and explanation, and then again into a higher differentiation of consciousness that Lonergan identifies as the shift to an explanatory interiority or the “Third Stage o