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CONSCIOUSNESS
By Tad Dunne
Lonergan readers usually suffer a bout of objectivity fright. Once they
understand how knowing and deciding actually work, it dawns on them
that every truth they hold dear and every value they might die for
originated in fallible, human minds. Especially when they see that the
criterion for making a sound judgment is the absence of relevant
questions, they feel on the brink of sheer relativism
But those who persevere with Lonergan as he moves from questions
about objectivity to questions about method discover that our most
profound moral achievements and our greatest scientific advances can
be intelligibly traced back to norms in consciousness. So, to help my
students to get beyond their fright, I designed some exercises to help
them recognize these norms in themselves. While these exercises are
only a beginning, they can establish a personal base for overcoming
methodological problems they will encounter as they explore the
realms of art, science, history, philosophy, politics, or religion.
Before beginning them, however, I recommend discussing vertical
finality -- the dynamism by which the entire universe produces higher
and more complex forms over time. I have the impression that most
contemporary theologians and philosophers of science haven't realized
the explanatory power of vertical finality. To my mind, it delivers far
more understanding of evolution than Darwin's natural selection or
Spencer's survival of the fittest. I believe it's the same reality that
Jesus referred to as the "breath" of God (pneuma) blowing where it
pleases, and that St. Paul referred to as the pneuma in one great act
of childbirth. This is the very same law that governs "natural" evolution
-- the law governing the emergence, under conditions of probability, of
successively higher forms of reality, including all the truths and values
that make us who we are. One brief but comprehensive description of
it can be found in Lonergan's article, Mission and the Spirit.1
Another reason for the vertical finality setting is that, to my mind, it
was the setting Lonergan had in mind when he talked about love. As
usual, Lonergan's view of love was a network of insights that linked
world process and individual consciousness. He frequently invited his
readers to notice the differences between being attentive, being
intelligent, being reasonable, and being responsible that is, notice
how different it feels to be in these distinct modes of self-awareness.
268527096.doc / Tad Dunne / February 3, 2008
He then led them to grasp how these different levels relate to one
another, to verify what they grasped, and to deal with life more in line
with how their knowing and deciding actually work. He located love at
the top level, but did not restrict "being in love" to what a single
person does. Instead, being in love is a way of being with others; it's a
higher routine that makes being responsible, reasonable, intelligent
and attentive more effective. Being in love is not a distinct level of an
individual conscious intentionality that raises questions beyond the
other levels. Rather it is a level of vertical finality as shows in human
consciousness considered collectively, with a subconscious level below
and a network of love above the "four levels of conscious
intentionality" that he usually speaks of.2
The marvel of it is that we experience vertical finality directly. It
articulates itself in vertical ways that are noticeable, intelligible and
verifiable in our own consciousness. What is more marvelous is that
vertical finality in human consciousness provides "leads" that actually
promote the emergence of good ideas and responsible commitments.
These "leads" are normative without being automatic. What follows,
then, are exercises for noticing these leads or norms at each level of
our consciousness.
various other students look, who they are attracted to, what
opportunities present themselves -- the dramatic pattern. There may
even be some who notice their own feelings during the exercise also
the dramatic pattern, but noticing the data of consciousness rather
than the data of sense. Still another may notice the colors, textures
and arrangements of trees outside -- artistic pattern. A few may notice
something that arouses their curiosity about how a strange-looking
window lock works, or why the chalkboard is green the intellectual
pattern. And so on.
The main point here is that experience is patterned. We might notice
the hum of an air conditioner or the roar of traffic noise, but not both
together, because a hum is one pattern and a roar is another. We don't
notice buildings that are ugly or useless. When they tear one down, we
drive by the empty lot and cannot remember what was there. When
we take a picture, it isn't until we see the print that we notice a
distracting telephone pole that we didn't "see" when we took the
picture. Although everything we notice is patterned, the point here is
that our noticing is itself patterned. Noticing, paying attention,
"experiencing," is not at all like running a mental camera. Our noticing
is not an open channel for bypassing data to fall into. It is quite
selective, and it follows the inbuilt norm that the act of noticing is not
random; it follows some pattern.
There's a second point to make that will help students perform these
exercises with some objectivity. It is that our five senses are not the
only data input channels. There are also the data of consciousness,
which appear in the student who notices her feelings during the
exercises. This is important because the whole point of these exercises
is to find the normative events that occur in consciousness, not the
events of looking, tasting, smelling, etc.
inside diameter of the pipe. The boy asks the ladies to help him get
the ball out of the pipe. They have a box of Wheaties, 20 feet of string,
a wire coat hanger, and one nail file. How can they get the ball out of
the pipe? I'll give the answers at the end. What counts for the exercise
is not getting the right answer but noticing the push of curiosity and its
dissatisfaction with half-baked ideas.
Additionally, almost any joke requires insight to get the point.
Sometimes a mediocre joke -- the kind that not everyone gets -conveys even better the difference between getting a point and not
getting it because the insight is slow in coming.
For example: Joe is visiting his old friend Harry, and Harry is driving
Joe around town. Harry comes up to a red light and drives right
through it. Joe says, "Hey! That was a red light!" Harry says, "Don't
worry, my brother does it all the time." A few minutes later, Harry
drives through another red light. Joe cries out, "Watch out! That light
was red!" "Don't worry," Harry says. "My brother does it all the time."
Then they come up to a green light and Joe starts to breathe more
easily. But Harry pulls to a stop. So Joe says, "Now why in the world
would you stop for a green light?" Harry says, "My brother's in town."
As I say, not a great joke. The insight is that if Harry's brother is
coming down the street that shows red, he will be driving through it.
Because the insight may come slowly in some, it's a good way to help
student sort out the events that led to understanding -- the "aha!"
At this point, I suggest asking one student to explain the joke in a
complete sentence. As they struggle with the right words, ask what
they consulted to ensure that the words were right. It's the insight
itself, the grasp of an intelligibility inherent in the data. This is what
intellectual consciousness does here. It performs a search for "sense"
or "cogency" or "coherence" -- either in things in their relation to
ourselves or in relation to each other. And this insight is the basis for
the concepts and words that we use to talk about it.
When this happens, a singular part of evolving reality -- human
consciousness at the second level -- is grasping the "form" or
"intelligibility" of some other part of reality. That's a wonderful
phenomenon, when you think about it. That the inner dynamic
governing the functioning of this or that thing can be "grasped by" or
"contained in" another thing. The intelligibility of reality is searched out
by the intelligence of reality.
It's important to point out that we experience this norm in a certain
kind of question the question for intelligence. It shows in the words
how or why. The inbuilt norms of our intellectual consciousness seek to
I will delay telling what the spool will do until the end, just so you too
can feel the norms of your own reasonable consciousness at work.
As I say, this exercise shows "simple" functioning of the third level.
That fact that Lonergan locates the functional specialties "history" and
"doctrines" on this level suggests that the typical functioning is more
complex.
Corresponding to "history," third level wonder is about whether our
stories are correct or not. Historians aim to provide the most plausible
explanation of human events that they can. The best accounts make
sense of all the data -- all the relevant questions. For an exercise here,
one might ask students to tell "the story" of what happened to their
family at some critical point -- say, the death of a parent or the birth of
a child. If you then tell them, "I think you got that all wrong," they will
ask for your reasons. If you say, "No reason; I just think you got it
wrong," they will think this preposterous -- and it is. Then point out
that their strong objection is the work of their reasonable
consciousness that demands a further relevant question before it
allows anyone to assail a cherished belief. It is usually loaded with far
more passion than the norms at the second level.
Then, corresponding to "doctrines," third level wonder is about
whether our understanding of nature -- human and non-human -- is
correct or not. As Lonergan says, "doctrines are not just doctrines.
They are constitutive both of the individual Christian and of the
Christian community. They can strengthen or burden the individual's
allegiance. They can unite or disrupt. They can confer authority and
power. They can be associated with what is congenial or what is alien
to a given polity or culture."4 For an exercise, ask students what
"myths" they had when they grew up, and what new beliefs have
replaced those myths.
Examples: myths about the opposite sex; personal myths about how
to avoid trouble; myths about what jocks do; myths about how
romantics behave; myths about how to get ahead in life, how to be a
success, how to make money; myths about China or Islam, myths
about God and how to be holy; etc. For the sake of simplicity and
ensuring student attention, one might just take myths about the
opposite sex. After some sharing about this, have them notice how
their minds naturally scrutinized myths to make sure they were
correct, how our spirits loathe error, how we appeal to data to verify
the correctness of our beliefs etc. For example, I have suggested that
"Women forgive but don't forget, while men forget to forgive." This
nugget of pop wisdom almost always meets criticism. It's too much a
generalization. But in the urge to criticize it we experience the norms
a description of that action of the water moving into the damp sponge
-- "quiet," "easy," "subtle," "fulfilling," etc. The point here is that bad
inspirations feel like water falling on a rock, while good inspirations
feel like water penetrating a damp sponge. And, what's crucial for
spiritual guidance, this almost always holds even when the content of
the inspiration suggests otherwise. For example, suppose a young
woman keeps thinking she ought to be a nun. The content of the
thought is praiseworthy, but if it strikes her like water hitting a rock,
then she should ignore it. Contrariwise, if a father keeps thinking he
should punish his son for some misdeed -- something he is loathe to
do -- but the thought hovers in his mind like water penetrating a wet
sponge, then he should probably follow it.
Ignatius was very shrewd about the norms of consciousness. He also
noticed that ideas, concepts and words tend to upset normal behavior,
while feelings tend to secure it. Thus, in a person who is not morally
converted, the norms of pleasure and self-gratification dominate
behaviors, while conscience delivers its sting through thoughts or the
words of others. By contrast, feelings in the morally converted person
tend toward what is truly good rather than the merely satisfying, while
the source of misguided anxieties, fears and hesitations usually come
from too much thinking or listening to the warnings and scoldings of
others. So the advice, "If it feels good, do it" is the worst possible
advice for the morally unconverted, while it does carry some merit for
the converted.
example, when I look at a boat, I not only see the boat, I experience
myself as looking. I am "conscious" in the sense of being self-present
as I look. By the same token, if you and I are singing a duet, we are
present to ourselves in the plural as we follow the notes on the score.
Just as operations bring individual consciousness, so cooperations
bring common consciousness. The norm that we experience here is the
impulse toward cooperating and, with that cooperating, being a "we."
To help students see how the norm of becoming a "we" works, we
might compare a person in love to a person who is not. I'm thinking of
the highly "ethical" person who doesn't like people much. I can
imagine an exercise in which students draw pictures of two characters
in the Prodigal Son parable -- the elder brother and the benevolent
father. The elder brother is ethical but unloving; he doesn't know how
to allow fifth level operations -- which are always and essentially
cooperations --to sublate his bitter fourth level successes. He doesn't
really grasp what his father is telling him, "Son, you are with me
always and all I have is yours." That is, the father always thought of
himself as cooperating with the elder brother, while the elder brother
thought of himself as merely obeying the father. (Doesn't this give a
poignant insight into Jesus' view of Yahweh?)
Anyway, then have each student describe the consciousness of the
elder brother and the father as depicted in the drawing. I would expect
that most students will portray how alone, isolated, and subservient
the elder brother feels, while the father thinks of himself as part of his
family. They may see that the son experiences a pain of isolation,
while the father experiences a pain of frustrated love. Both feel the
impulse toward being a "we," but a self-righteousness in the son
(presuming Jesus aimed this at the Pharisees) is holding him back and
the father is helpless to eradicate it.
The natural question students will ask here is, "What really is love?
How do I distinguish it from mere infatuation?" I suggest that the
answer is simple and quite practical. Being in love is that orientation to
others which make me effectively more responsible, more reasonable,
more intelligent, and more attentive. 6 So, for a different exercise, a
teacher might simply ask for stories of how being in love made a
person more responsible that he/she would have been otherwise; then
how it makes us more reasonable; and so on.
Again, what counts here is the perspective of vertical finality. When
being responsible functions well, we appreciate and care for others.
But if these others also appreciate and care for us, then there's a new
reality ordering an otherwise coincidental manifold of individual
operations of caring and appreciating. The new reality is a community,
10
11
Conclusion
It is important to conclude with a remark about the importance of this
exercise. Point out that these norms are transcendental. That is, they
are the dynamic, operating source of any principles, truths or values
that have ever been discovered or ever will be.
12
13
See Third Collection (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), pp. 24-27 et passim.
For specifics, see my "Being in Love" in Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 13/2
(Fall 1995) 161-175.
These technical terms come from Mission and the Spirit, op. cit., pp 28-30.
Im thinking here of the healing movement in history. See Lonergans Healing and
Creating in History, in Third Collection, pp 100-109.
Ibid.