Phenomenology of Human Understanding

Cronin

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781498292832
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Phenomenology in Philosophy

The problem of human knowing has been foundational for the enterprise of philosophy since the time of Descartes. The great philosophers have offered different accounts of the power and limits of human knowing but no generally acceptable system has emerged. Contemporary writers have almost given up on this most intractable issue.In this book, Brian Cronin suggests using the method of introspective description to identify the characteristics of the act of human understanding and knowing. Introspection--far from being private and unverifiable--can be public, communal, and verifiable. If we can describe our dreams and our feelings, then, we can describe our acts of understanding. Using concrete examples, one can identify the activities involved--namely, questioning, researching, getting an idea, expressing a concept, reflecting on the evidence and inferring a conclusion. Each of these activities can be described clearly and in great detail. If we perform these activities well, we can understand and know both truth and value. The text invites readers to verify each and every statement in their own experience of understanding. This is a detailed and verifiable account of human knowing: an extremely valuable contribution to philosophy and a solution to the foundational problem of knowing.

1

From Introspection to Self-Appropriation

Streaking in Syracuse

The famous story of Archimedes is first related by Vitrovius in the following manner: King Hiero of Syracuse had received a crown of gold, which was beautifully decorated, as a tribute from a visiting dignitary. The king wanted to know whether the crown was made of pure gold or whether it was mixed with baser metal, such as silver or copper. He asked Archimedes to find out without melting down the crown. We are told that he worked on the problem to the point of exhaustion and finally decided to relax in the public baths. Floating in the water, perhaps wondering why he was floating, he suddenly realized that if he weighed the crown in water he could discover whether the crown was adulterated or not. He ran naked through the streets of Syracuse, shouting, “Eureka! Eureka! I have found it! I have found it!”

This image of the naked Archimedes streaking through the streets of Syracuse shouting, “Eureka!” has become an enduring symbol for having an insight, a eureka moment, an act of human understanding. He understood the idea of density, the relation between volume and weight, and hence the laws of what would float and what would sink. Furthermore he discovered a technique to apply these principles and solve the problem of the crown.7

Technicalities aside, it is clear that Archimedes got an idea. He understood: it came to him, not while working, but while relaxing. The moment was preceded by concentrated thinking, experimenting, and measuring. It was followed by further experimenting, formulating the concepts explicitly, checking the procedure, confirming the results, and realizing that the concepts of density and flotation applied universally to all material bodies.8

The Need for a Method

Fast forward two millennia to a philosophy lecture in a seminary in Dublin in 1961. The subject was psychology and the topic at hand was human knowing. The textbook consisted of a neo-Scholastic form of Thomism, written in Latin, which presented dogmatic theses on all aspects of human knowing, proving them summarily and firmly rebutting contrary opinions.9 The subject was being taught in Latin, which made it additionally difficult for the professor and the students. The theses were systematically presented and defined human knowing through a series of concepts, namely, active and passive intellect, phantasms and forms, impressed species and expressed species, material and immaterial reception, potentially intelligible and actually intelligible, three different kinds of abstraction, three levels of abstraction, identity and difference, and much more. The theses and arguments were justified by reference to Aristotle, Aquinas, and the Scholastic tradition. We—my peers and I—laboriously worked our way through the definitions, the connections, and the sequence, all of us trying to answer Aristotle’s simple question: what is thinking? Aristotle answered this question using the concepts of metaphysics. He understood what he was referring to when he used these concepts. It was epistemology being done by using the concepts of metaphysics. Sadly, these concepts are not part of our Western culture at large, and we have largely lost touch with the original meaning.

What is amazing is that although it was an analysis of human knowing, no one thought to refer, in any way, at any point, to actual experiences of human knowing. Studying the interrelations of concepts, one might have been studying the workings of a sausage machine, a jet engine, or a hydraulic pump. It was all purely theoretical and abstract. Imagine what might have been possible if an example like that of Archimedes was introduced and the above concepts lined up with his actual experience! But no one thought to do so—neither the textbook, nor the professor, nor the students. The reference was always back to historical texts, justifying or rebutting the definitions and arguments. We were studying human knowing without any reference whatsoever to particular, real, examples of human knowing—surely not a great pedagogical strategy! Imagine an astronomer studying the heavenly bodies without ever actually looking through a telescope, or a biologist studying frogs without ever examining an actual, live frog. But that was what we were doing!

What continues to amaze me is that philosophers continue to formulate theories about human knowing without the slightest reference to describing the actual experience of human knowing. Textbooks on epistemology regularly present five to ten different theories of knowledge on the assumption that the only way to discriminate between them is arbitrary choice. But theories are usually based on data and facts. One chooses between theories on the basis of how they account for the data and the facts. To ask the question, “Which epistemology is true?” presumably means to ask whether this theory adequately explains, orders, and accounts for the various experiences involved in the process of knowing from beginning to end. It is actually an empirical question, namely, a question about what actually occurs. Is there a real difference between images and ideas, as Hume denied? Well, is there a real difference between chalk and cheese? For the latter question one can refer to examples, experiences, and characteristics of chalk and cheese. For the former question one will refer to the experience of knowing, the activity of imagination as contrasted with the activity of understanding. One might mentally line up examples of images and line up examples of ideas. Are they the same or are they different? Plato seems to have held that understanding is really just an act of remembering. We can examine such a claim: line up real examples of remembering and note their characteristics. Then, line up real examples of understanding (such as Archimedes) and note the different characteristics. Compare the two. Are they the same?

Not only is there still a reluctance to attend to the experience of knowing, some philosophers rule out of court any reference to mental activities since they are deemed to be private and unverifiable. Introspection is deemed to be a very dubious, private, unverifiable, unreliable, and idiosyncratic method. However, the consequences of refusing to attend to mental activities are rather drastic: First, any epistemology is unhinged from any data that might verify or disprove the theory. Theories could spawn at will with no control, no criterion, and no way of distinguishing true from false. Second, the procedure of teaching neo-Scholastic epistemology in terms of a string of concepts with no reference to verifying experiences would be quite normal and unobjectionable. Repeat the words and forget about the meaning. Third, if cognitional activities are determined to be private and unverifiable, then one remains confined to studying the manifestations of such activities in words, gestures, and activities. It might become rather difficult to distinguish between a robot and a human being, a computer and a human mind. We would be condemned to studying the surface of things and not the source or cause of the origin of theories, language, art, and science. Fourth, without any understanding of human knowing, then it is hard to establish the methods, limits and conditions of knowing. It would be difficult to make any pronouncement on the method of the sciences or the possibility of a method for philosophy. The consequences of not studying the activities of human knowing are too absurd to merit further attention.

Between 1943 and 1949, Lonergan studied in great detail the epistemology of St. Thomas Aquinas, convinced that the tradition had lost touch with his thinking and had gone badly astray into a form of conceptualism. He was thoroughly familiar with Aquinas, quoting him roughly five hundred times in the Verbum articles. He became convinced of two things: that Aquinas was absolutely correct in his metaphysical treatment of the acts of sensing, understanding, and judging; and that Aquinas could do this only because he paid attention to his own acts of human understanding. Aquinas could use Aristotle as a reference, but there were times when he had to disagree with him. On such occasions, his reference was always to the experience of knowing. His argument for the unity of the human intellect was simply, hic homo intelligit: this man understands.

That was a fine historical study. But then Lonergan took another step forward. He wrote Insight on the principle that the metaphysical categories of Aristotle and Aquinas should be translated into the psychological categories of contemporary discourse. It is not enough to depend on the authority of Aquinas in order to provide an adequate account of human knowing. One must pay attention to the actual experiences of human knowing by oneself and by others. Insight is based on the principle that every statement made about the activity of the human mind must be backed up with evidence: the experience of others and oneself, real-life examples, and empirical evidence. No astronomer can make affirmations about pulsars unless they can be supported by sightings, photographs, data, calculations, and evidence. Why should epistemologists be freed from this constraint?

My aim in this chapter is to justify a method of introspection, to recognize our awareness of cognitional experience, to show how it can profitably be the locus for the foundation of philosophy, and to explain how it can be verifiable and a topic for conversation and communication. In short, the theme of this chapter is to try to nail down a methodical introspection, which will provide verifiable assertions about human knowing.

Difficulties in Studying Human Understanding

If one wants to know about frogs what must be done? It is not very difficult to realize that one has to get frogs from some source, study their activities, their eating habits, their mating, and their growth. One must observe them in all stages of life: birth, life as tadpoles, the emergence of legs and moving onto land, reproduction, and death. One has to study the parts: limbs, organs, sensitivities, diseases, croaking, aggressiveness, sociality, and so forth. Then, one collects various species of frogs, their subspecies and varieties. One must learn about the evolution and history of the species. After all of this and more, one might be an expert on frogs.

Similarly, if one wants to know about human knowing, what must be done? One begins by collecting examples of human understanding. One must study the thought process of others and compare and relate them to one’s own experiences of discovery. One must study the ways in which all acts of human understanding conform to the same structure and yet have different content, different applications, and are specific to different times and places. One will have to assemble a variety of examples of understanding and knowing in common sense, in science, and even in philosophy. Because human understanding is a different kind of reality from that of frogs, the approach will have to be appropriate to the subject matter. Human knowing can be understood in the same way that we understand frogs; however, we do have to make an allowance for the difference in subject matter. It is imperative to identify the special difficulties that would seem to arise in studying human understanding

First, the main differences are derived from the fact that understanding goes on inside our minds and not outside in the external world. Our natural orientation seems to be outwards toward the data of sense. All of our five primary senses are oriented to objects that are seen, heard, tasted, touched, or smelled. The objects are usually outside. Scientists are quite happy dealing with their various specializations on the world of the outside. We are at home studying frogs, but not so comfortable studying understanding. Mental activities are different from frogs. They take place in the head. They cannot be seen, touched, heard, smelled, or tasted. Yet they are conscious: we know what we are thinking about, dreaming about, or searching for. The instruments used in the physical sciences are not of much use in reporting on what goes on in the mind. How then does one use his or her mind in order to double back and observe the mind itself in action?

Second, frogs can be trapped, controlled, experimented on, and are still there to be observed the next day. One can easily identify what is the object of study in the case of frogs. But acts of understanding are not so easily marked off from their surroundings. Understanding seems to be involved in just about everything we do as human beings. There is no department of the university that does not embrace understanding as at least one of its aims; there are few departments where obscurantism is preferred to understanding....

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: From Introspection to Self-Appropriation
• Chapter 2: Consciousness as an Experience
• Chapter 3: The Basic Act of Understanding (Part 1)
• Chapter 4: The Basic Act of Understanding (Part 2)
• Chapter 5: Developing Understanding
• Chapter 6: How Understanding Becomes Knowledge
• Chapter 7: Understanding and Knowing Values
• Chapter 8: Cognitional Structure
• Chapter 9: Understanding Misunderstanding
• Chapter 10: Establishing Critical Realism
• Chapter 11: From Subjectivity to Objectivity
• Chapter 12: Mind Recovered
• Bibliography