LONERGAN, METAPHYSICS AND MYTHOLOGY

Published in Examined Life Vol 4 Issue 16

ABSTRACT

Metaphysics sets out to explain the world. From the time of Kant many philosophers have argued that it is not possible to understand the world. Kant argued we only have access to phenomena, not to reality. Bernard Lonergan has shown that Kant was wrong. Kant understood the acquisition of knowledge as an event. Lonergan showed that it is a process.

Lonergan’s analysis supports the view that the Cosmos is a process with a purpose. This process develops from level to level, with each new level exhibiting greater freedom than the preceding level. The human level has the freedom to restructure both itself and the world. The form of the overall process is designed, but its outcome is not pre-determined.

METAPHYSICS

Metaphysics is concerned with our knowledge of being, of reality. Being is whatever exists. For Lonergan “Being is the unknown that questioning intends to know, that answers partially reveal, that further questioning presses on to know more fully. The notion of being, then, is essentially dynamic, proleptic, an anticipation of the entirety, the concreteness, the totality, that we ever intend and since our knowledge is finite never reach.” (1974,75)

The human process of acquiring knowledge, the cognitional process, developed over time. Lonergan showed that four distinct steps are involved in the full process of human knowing. He identifies the four steps of the cognitional process as Experience, Understanding, Judgement and Evaluation. He realised that cognition is not merely experiencing or taking a good look - as if only what was sensed was real - but the whole process of attending, understanding, judging and finally evaluation and action.

Humans always move from experiencing the world, to providing an explanation of their experience. They form an understanding of the world. They can then move on to judgement, to question their understanding of the world. Then they can move on to action, based on their developing understanding. Action will then give rise to further questions, concerning the value of those actions. These four steps of Experience, Understanding, Judgement and Evaluation can be indefinitely repeated to increase our knowledge of the world.

Humans naturally pursue intelligibility. They search for complete intelligibility. They only stop asking questions about the world when they think they have all the answers, when they think that they fully understand the world. Their intentional consciousness can provide the dynamic intermediary between ignorance and knowledge, but this requires the application of the third step, judgement, to their understanding of the world.

Judgement involves the activities of reflection, doubting, marshalling and weighing the evidence. To achieve knowledge, to discern between astronomy and astrology, chemistry and alchemy, history and legend, metaphysics and mythology, judgement must be applied. The process of judgment, the third step of the process of cognition, is like scientific verification, a cumulative convergence of direct and indirect confirmations. The application of human judgement is a fairly recent phenomenon. It began within the last 3,000 years.

Experience, the first step of the cognitional process, provides us with information, or data. The second step, understanding, then seeks to grasp by insight an intelligible unity among these pieces of data, formulating a theory that can account for the data. The third step, Judgement, can ask of this theory whether it is really the case. It can seek to verify or falsify the theory by reference to the original and subsequent data.

The application of judgement is the step by which knowledge is gained of some aspect of reality. The fourth step, Evaluation, asks whether what is known is really good, or only apparently so. As humans naturally seek the good: “Evaluation is the keystone of the structure of intentionality” (Lonergan 1974,ix)

Reality becomes better known as a result of this overall cognitive process. The unknown gradually becomes better known, and our experience of the universe is ultimately an experience of reality, of some aspect of being.

Lonergan emphasises the importance of insight in understanding, the second step of the cognitional process. In the preface to his book, Insight, he says:

“In the ideal detective story the reader is given all the clues yet fails to spot the criminal. He may advert to each clue as it arises. He needs no further clues to solve the mystery. Yet he can remain in the dark for the simple reason that reaching the solution is not the mere apprehension of any clue, not the mere memory of all, but a quite distinct activity of the organizing intelligence that places the full set of clues in a unique explanatory perspective. By insight, then, is meant not any act of attention or advertence or memory but the supervening act of understanding” (1958,x)

As the act of the organizing intelligence “insight is an apprehension of relations (which) includes the apprehension of meaning.” In a sense different from Kant’s usage, Lonergan maintains that every insight is both a priori and synthetic “It is a priori for it goes beyond what is merely given to sense, or to empirical consciousness. It is synthetic, for it adds to the merely given an explanatory unification or organization” (1958,xi)

Lonergan invites us to reflect on our own thinking, and to consider whether or not we proceed in a pattern comprising the four distinct stages of Experience, Understanding, Judgement and Evaluation, in dealing with problems. Lonergan developed his approach from an initial consideration of the method of Science, which led him to understand the fundamental procedures of the human mind.

Lonergan's approach resonates with me personally, as it reflects my own experience. When I first came into contact with tribal Aborigines in 1950, I began with the conventional idea that they were the same as I was, except for their color. My experience soon showed me that they were quite dissimilar. I adjusted my approach to the experienced reality. I was accepted by the Aborigines, invited to attend their secret ceremonies and even asked to accept initiation. However, I could not say I understood them. I discussed their characteristics and read anthropological reports about them, but found no insights. When I began tertiary study in 1985, after 40 years of working life, one of my main aims was to make sense of the world that I had experienced. Bruno Snell's analysis of the Greek discovery of mind and Lonergan’s analysis of the stages of cognition, are insights that have contributed to my understanding.

The Mental Horizon: Lonergan sees the achievement of knowledge as a continual process of raising and answering questions. He distinguishes three different types of questions that can be asked in that process. First there is the range of questions that the knower can raise and answer. This constitutes the Known. Then there is the Known Unknown, the range of questions that the knower can raise, find significant and set out to solve, but as yet cannot answer. Then there is the important Unknown Unknown, concerning questions that the knower does not raise, as they are beyond the knower’s mental horizon. The story of human progress is the story of those successful horizon shifts that move part of the Unknown Unknown into the category of the Known Unknown.

A comprehensive understanding of Homo sapiens mental development, from near-animal to near-fully-human, is provided when we add Bruno Snell's insights into the Greek discovery of mind, Lonergan’s analysis of the stages of human cognitive development, Piaget’s stages of human intellectual development, and Kohlberg’s stages of human moral development.

Together these provide the keys to understanding the development of Homo sapiens since his emergence some 160,000 years ago. Clearly, mankind did not burst upon the scene all those millennia ago with the mental and moral capacities that generally obtain today. Mankind’s mental and moral development is a product of time and circumstance, but primarily of mankind’s own mental efforts. In his specifically human aspects, mankind self-creates. The stages of man’s developing consciousness can be summarised as follows:

The first stage of consciousness is the empirical, which is the level of the sensual. This is the stage of the higher animals and of the human infant. Reactions to sensual stimuli are primarily instinctive. This is the initial cognitive stage of Experience.

The second stage of consciousness, the cognitive stage of Understanding, is the specifically human level that constructs order and meaning, and which depends upon insight. As Lonergan uses the term, an insight can be other than a mental penetration into the reality of a situation. He uses “insight” in relation to any act of forming an understanding. The Australian Aboriginal understanding of the Dreamtime is an example of an insight that provides meaning, and some understanding of the world, but is no penetration of reality. This belief system provided a complete explanation of the world, but a false one. Probably because it provided such a complete understanding of the world, and it was not confronted with any alternative understanding prior to 1788 AD, the Australian Aborigines did not progress past this second stage of consciousness. They were not alone in this.

The third stage of consciousness is the level of reflection, of judgement as to the truth or falsity of the insights achieved at the previous level. Primitive man attended to the data of consciousness, and formed an understanding of the world that was generally expressed in myth. Mankind ceases to be primitive to the extent that the myths are challenged by the exercise of judgement, by asking “Is it really so?” of aspects of the traditional understanding of the world. It is only after this third stage of consciousness has been reached that it is possible to move to the fourth, evaluative stage, the stage in which we find the development of moral ideas.

The beginning of the third stage of human consciousness, involving judgement as to the truth or falsity of an existing understanding of the world, appears in the first millennium BC. Bruno Snell in his “The Greek Discovery of Mind” has examined this development. The Greek intellectual challenge to the mythic view of the world, and the associated development of a moral perspective, began with the Pre-Socratics less than 3,000 years ago.

There is also evidence of the emergence of a moral consciousness among the Hebrew, about the same time. The story in Genesis of the tree that was the source of the knowledge of good and evil, appears to reflect the transition from a pre-moral state to a state of moral awareness. The beginning of this third stage of human consciousness in many cultures, involving the application of judgement, is characterised by Karl Jaspers as the Axial Period, when: “Man, as we know him today, came into being” (Jaspers 1953,1) It would seem to be more accurate to say: It is the stage when mankind, as known today, began to come into being. This third stage, the application of judgement, is not yet fully developed. Mythical ideas still influence belief-systems.

Metaphysics, which depends upon both knowledge and insight, applies judgement to understanding. It provides a rational alternative to a mythic understanding of the world. However, mythological aspects of belief persist in most existing cultures, as a result of a reluctance to pose the question “Is it really so” to fundamental aspects of the culture, particularly to the underlying belief system of the culture. A movement towards the demythologisation of a belief system is one result of this critical question being posed.

The fourth stage of consciousness is the overtly self-conscious stage that applies our developed knowledge and values to our own actions, and to the real world. While there has always been some human self-knowledge and some application of technical knowledge to the world, the major thrust of the application of this fourth stage of consciousness to the physical world began with the scientific revolution. Like the third stage of consciousness, it is still developing.

These four stages of consciousness are distinct, but stand in a relationship of sublation, in which the earlier stages are preserved but are both transcended and completed by the successive higher stages, as these develop. The human subject does not always develop past the second stage, but can be driven to develop from stage to stage by the desire to understand the world, by the human need of intelligibility. The primary barrier to this development from stage to stage is the apparent fulfilment of this need by the achievement of a supposed certainty. Certainty does not admit the critical question.

The Question of Value: Value, for Lonergan “is a transcendental notion like the notion of being. Just as the notion of being intends but, of itself, does not know being, so too the notion of value intends but, of itself, does not know value. Just as the notion of being is the dynamic principle that keeps us moving toward ever fuller knowledge of being, so the notion of value is the ever fuller flowering of the same dynamic principle that now keeps us moving toward ever fuller realisation of the good, of what is worthwhile.” (1974,82)

Lonergan notes that: “Existential reflection, as it reveals what it is for man to be good, so it raises the question whether the world is good”. He poses the question: “Is this whole process from the nebulae through plants and animals to man, is it good, a true value, something worthwhile?” (1974, 84-5) This is a major question for metaphysics.

Culture and Development: Human development depends upon both the pursuit of knowledge, of what is real, and the pursuit of the good, of what is right as opposed to wrong. This development will vary from culture to culture. The development of a culture will reflect the hold that mythological concepts and supposed certainties have on the minds of the people of the culture. These in turn will reflect the underlying belief system of the culture. Every culture has a particular world-view at its foundation. (Dix, 1953,7-8)

Modern Western culture has its roots in Christianity and reflects the collective intellectual endeavour that Christianity initiated. This intellectual endeavour was prompted by the problem of the nature of God, and of the relationship between God and man, that lies at the heart of Christianity.

Lonergan recognises that modern culture is culture on the move. His approach is historicist. He recognises that cultures change over time, because cultures are man-made. He argues that cultures “not only can but should be changed. Modern man is not concerned simply to perpetuate the wisdom of his ancestors. For him the past is just the springboard to the future, and the future, if it is to be good, will improve on all that is good in the past and it will liquidate all that is evil.” (1974,93)

He notes that “Cultures can decline rapidly, but they develop slowly, for development is a matter of coming to understand new meanings and coming to accept higher values.” (1974,232) Only individuals within a culture can come to understand new meanings and to accept such higher values, and the perspectives of those individuals can ultimately influence the culture.

In an analysis of cultural progress and decline, Lonergan maintains that: “insight into insight brings to light the cumulative process of progress. For concrete situations give rise to insights which issue into policies and courses of action. Action transforms the existing situation to give rise to further insights, better policies, and more effective courses of action. It follows that if insight occurs, it keeps occurring; and at each recurrence knowledge develops, action increases its scope, and situations improve.” (1958,xv) But this progress is not inevitable. There is also a process of cultural decline; “besides insights there are oversights . . . there are the contrary dynamic contexts of the flight from understanding in which oversights occur regularly and one might even say systematically”. (1958,xii)

This flight from understanding “blocks the occurrence of the insights that would upset its comfortable equilibrium.” Lonergan uses the term “oversight” to describe a faulty insight, a distorted understanding of reality. To prevent such oversights he advocates the removal of “the tumour of the flight from understanding”(1958,xii-xv)

This tumour can be embedded in the world-view of a culture, its underlying belief system. In that case, Lonergan asks, how “is a mind to become conscious of its own bias when that bias springs from a communal flight from understanding and is supported by the whole texture of a civilization?” He continues: “insight into oversight reveals the cumulative process of decline. For the flight from understanding blocks the insights that concrete situations demand . . . Human activity settles down to a decadent routine, and initiative becomes the privilege of violence.” (1958,xv) This analysis has contemporary relevance.

Significant human progress only became possible with the scientific revolution. Prior to the scientific revolution a communal flight from understanding was, more often than not, the norm. The texture of pre-scientific civilizations was supported by mythological and quasi-mythological belief systems that provided established answers to fundamental questions. These answers blocked the possibility of new questions. (Note 1)

The scientific revolution initiated a pattern of conscious and intentional operations that operates on four interlocked levels: experiencing; understanding and conception; reflection and judgement; and evaluation, deliberation and decision. This pattern can be applied in every sphere. As Lonergan notes: “the transcendentals – the intelligible, the true, the real, the good – apply to absolutely every object for the very good reason that they are grounded in the successive stages in our dealing with objects. But they are one in their root as well as their application. For the intending subject intends, first of all, the good but to achieve it he must first know the real; to know the real he must know what is true; to know what is true he must grasp what is intelligible; and to grasp what is intelligible he must attend to the data of sense and to the data of consciousness.” (1974,127-8)

Lonergan recognises that in every sphere progress is difficult and decline is common. Major new insights always present a communication problem. Any significant new insight will at first be communicated imperfectly, particularly if it extends beyond the usual mental horizon. Such an insight can require a horizon shift that moves part of the Unknown Unknown into the category of the Known Unknown. A new thought-world has then to grow up around the insight before it can become accepted.

Perhaps this insight into the difficulty of achieving progress reflects Lonergan’s own situation as a Theologian as well as a Philosopher. Clearly, Lonergan’s analysis of the gradual development of human consciousness is applicable to the foundational situation of Christianity, within the thought-world of the First Century. This thought world was heavily influenced by mythology. For example Clement, a First Century Pope, uncritically adopts the myth of the Phoenix in his Epistle. This reflects the thought-world in which the Gospels were formed.

Christian Dogma was developed within a thought world that still operated in quasi-mythological terms. More importantly, it developed in a thought-world that did not possess the category of linear process. The category of process is the most appropriate category to apply to the development of man and the world. It is the category that Lonergan applies to understanding the world. Without this category cultures could not be perceived as processes of human self-creation and as human artefacts. All change had to be attributed to God, rather than to man acting in the world.

Lonergan never applies his analysis of the development of human cognition to the Biblical thought-worlds. Grant D. Miller, in the on-line Dictionary of Modern Western Theology, notes that: “while there are hints here and there of the new wine of Lonergan’s methodological reflection bursting the old wineskins of a scholastic conceptuality, for the most part these remain to be developed.” He also quotes Patrick H. Byrne to the effect that: “Lonergan is always sharpening his knife, but never cutting anything with it.” (1999)

Lonergan however does note that: “Contemporary theology and especially contemporary Catholic theology are in a feverish ferment. An old theology is being recognised as obsolete. There is a scattering of new theological fragments. But a new integration . . . a new type of integration – is not yet plainly in sight” (1974,108) He sees that some of the present feverish ferment is based on the fact that “religious studies have stripped the old theology of its very sources in Scripture, in patristic writings, in medieval and subsequent religious writers. They have done so by subjecting the sources to a fuller and more penetrating scrutiny than had been attempted by earlier methods”. There is also “a new demythologisation of Scripture . .(and) . . to the old philosophic critique of biblical statement there has been added a literary and historical critique that puts radical questions about the composition of the gospels, about the infancy narratives, the miracle stories, the sayings attributed to Jesus, the accounts of his resurrection” (1974,108-9) These changes necessitate a restructuring of theology as the “approach of the past was possible only as long as accurate and detailed knowledge was lacking” (1974,161)

UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD

Both Theology and Philosophy are ultimately concerned with understanding the world. The primary difference between them is that Theology takes account of revelation. Revelation is based on the idea that God has communicated directly to man. We can apply Lonergan’s third stage of consciousness – Judgement – to this supposition and ask; is this really so? Did God speak to man, or is a more simple account of this phenomenon now available? The application of Occam’s razor to the phenomenon suggests a more simple explanation, that revelation is simply the record of the development of human moral insights.

Once the distinction has been made between mores, as societal rules, and morality, as the human capacity to distinguish what is moral, regardless of the societal rule, it can be seen that morality is a comparatively recent phenomenon. There is no evidence of other than the most primitive stages of morality, in Kohlberg’s terms, (Note 2) prior to the first Millennium BC.

Principled moral development only began when some men began to have moral insights into situations and to perceive that some situations, previously accepted as normal and in accordance with social mores, were morally wrong. To what source could these people attribute their insights? They could well have attributed their insight to their having heard the voice of a God. Their insight also had to be conveyed to the non-moral masses in a way that would fit within the existing mental horizon. Even Socrates had difficulty in explaining his moral insights. In The Apology he attributes them to “a sort of voice”. He says: “you have often heard me say . . . that I am subject to a divine or supernatural experience . . . a sort of voice which comes to me”, (Plato, 1969, 63-4) If the word of God is simply individual moral insights the major difference between philosophy and theology evaporates.

Rachel Cory-Kuehl, inadvertently supports the view that the word of God is only a record of human moral insights. In a paper on Kohlberg’s Moral Stages she traces the development of these stages, from Kohlberg’s Stage One on, as they are reflected in Scripture. Cory-Kuehl argues that God treated man in less than a fully moral way in order to teach Israel morality. She asks: “how is God to teach moral principles to such a group of people?” She then seeks to justify apparently immoral Divine actions, such as the Plagues of Egypt, as God stooping: “to reach those people where they were. He began by using reasoning they could accept: (Kohlberg’s) level one reasoning”. A more reasonable supposition is that the Hebrew themselves were developing through the stages of morality, as described by Kohlberg, and this development is reflected in the Bible, rather than the Bible reflecting God acting immorally.

Norman Gottwald has begun the demythologisation of the origin, religion and history of Israel in his The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250-1050 BCE. He sees Israel’s religion as developing from their social situation. The recognition that the “word of God” is more probably the expression of a developing human moral sensibility may help the demythologisation of scripture.

METAPHYSICS AND MYTHOLOGY

Both metaphysics and mythology have sought to provide an understanding of the world and of the place of people in the world. Both attempt to account for what happens in nature and in human affairs. As humans interact with the world they form some view of the world. Their world-view will be a metaphysic of sorts, or a mythology, or a combination of elements of both. To act effectively in the world it is useful to have a rationally based understanding of the world, a metaphysic that is based on both science and reason and is divorced from mythology. Such a world-view requires insight and judgement.

A metaphysical system requires “a final insight that closes a long, slowly acquired, interlocking series of insights” (1974,36) As the department of human knowledge that underlies, penetrates, transforms, and unifies all other departments, metaphysics addresses the original, total question and it moves to the total answer by transforming and putting together all other answers. (1958, 390-1) Such a total system will provide a coherent world-view.

Any metaphysical system must rely upon insights that relate different areas of knowledge to one another. It should not clash with any area of knowledge, although it may well clash with belief systems. One support of the validity of any metaphysical system is its explanatory power in relation to areas of knowledge other than those upon which it is founded.

Science has provided sufficient data to enable the broad outline of such a metaphysic to be proposed, one that is final only in the sense that it has not yet been superseded or shown to be faulty. It proposes that the process of the Cosmos is a free process involving self-organization and human self-creation. (Kelly 1999)

Like all unfamiliar insights, this proposition requires a horizon shift and presents a communication problem. A new thought-world has to grow up around it before it can become accepted. It radically upsets one aspect of the conventional wisdom, the assumption that God acts in the world. This is one of the most persistent of ancient assumptions. Mythology frequently invented gods as personifications of natural events and forces. These gods were necessarily seen as active in the world. Ever since that time it has been generally accepted that God is active in the world.

A metaphysic that contradicts this ancient assumption will require a new thought-world to develop. In a world in which God is not active, the only active agent is the Existential Subject, of whom Lonergan says: “By his own acts the human subject makes himself what he is to be, and he does so freely and responsibly; indeed, he does so precisely because his acts are the free and responsible expression of himself”. (1974, 80) By making himself what he is to be, in the process of self-creation, the human subject also remakes the world.

It is mankind that is clearly active in the world. Man is the agent that can keep moving toward an ever-fuller knowledge of being and toward an ever-fuller realisation of the good. It is man who is concerned with the question whether the world is good and whether the whole process, from the nebulae through plants and animals to man, is good.

We have to ask whether the overall cosmic process has the character of an inevitable process that is determined by an omnipotent being, or, once initiated, does it have the character of a free process? Does it involve both self-organization and human self-creation, apparently free of the hand of God in its working out?

This is not to argue that there is no God. The best explanation of the existence of contingent being is the existence of a self-existent being, a God with the power to create ex nihilo. But creation does not imply continuing activity, as if any creation necessarily required maintenance. Let us consider the evidence provided by the development of the Cosmos to the present.

THE PROCESS OF THE COSMOS

The Physical Universe: The Big Bang theory appears to be the best explanation of the development of the Cosmos from an ex nihilo beginning to the present developed complexity. That complexity includes the life-friendly planet that we inhabit. The Earth developed by the interaction of a variety of physical laws that also produced other planets and planetary systems that are not life-friendly. Given the laws of nature and unlimited time, the formation of a life-friendly planet would simply be a matter of time. The physical Cosmos appears to be a freely operating process, involving self-organization in accord with laws of nature, rather than an externally directed or rigidly determined process.

The Universe of Life: Life began in its simplest form and developed in complexity. The evolution of life also appears to be a free, rather than a determined process.

Originally understood as a result of random mutation, with natural selection of small increases in fitness and the elimination of decreases in fitness, mutation is now increasingly seen as a matter of genetic self-organization and self-programming.

In the words of one biologist mutation is: “Crisis-induced, non-random, genome-wide rearrangements leading to novel genome system architectures (with) cells actively engineering their DNA” (Shapiro, 2001) John Mattick, another biologist, proposes that Introns, intervening sequences in RNA previously regarded as genetic junk, have a role in creating new species, on the model of a computer producing and installing its own new operating system. A report by Graeme O’Neill in “Australian Biotechnology News” of February 2003, states that Mattick’s paper “Programming of complex Organisms: the hidden layer of non-coding RNA” proposed that this RNA “is actually the genome’s ‘ghost in the machine’- a self-organising operating system that ultimately determines how when and where genes shall work, as well as coordinating their interactions” as “a way of diversifying and coordinating the activity of a limited repertoire of genes and facilitating the evolution of increasingly complex organisms”.

Evolution appears to be a free, rather than an externally directed or rigidly determined process. Given the biological reorganisation made possible by cells engineering their own DNA, the formation of an organism with an intentional consciousness would also appear to be only a matter of time.

The Universe of Mankind: There appear to have been at least fifteen hominid species, extending back to millions of years prior to the emergence of Homo sapiens sapiens some 100,000 years ago. Homo sapiens appears to have had the same mental hardware since the species evolved, but his intellectual development has been agonisingly slow. His mental software had to be self-developed to get full use from the hardware. As Lonergan argues: “man’s coming to know is a process, the earlier stages of the process pertain to knowing without constituting it completely” (1974,28)

Until some three thousand years ago, all humans were satisfied with mythological explanations of the world. These often involved self-contradictory concepts, which were not challenged. Many people are still satisfied with explanations based on myth. The scientific approach to the world, involving the widespread utilisation of Judgement, Lonergan’s third stage of intentional consciousness, is a very recent phenomenon.

Humans have gradually developed their mental capacity over many thousands of years, with the development of the self-consciously existential subject a very recent phenomenon.

The existential subject makes himself, individually and through his culture. He makes himself what he is to be, and he does so freely and responsibly. At this stage “rational consciousness is sublated by rational self-consciousness, when we deliberate, evaluate, decide, act. Then there emerges human consciousness at its fullest. Then the existential subject exists and his character, his personal essence, is at stake”(Lonergan 1974,80)

Each human culture is an ongoing process of human self-creation. Humans make cultures and each culture makes the humans of that culture. It is clear that human cultural evolution is a free process, dependent only upon humans.

The processes of development of the physical universe, of the universe of life and of the universe of mankind all appear to be free, self-organising or self-creating processes. They all involve growth in complexity from comparatively simple beginnings. They lead ultimately to the rational self-conscious human subject who can remake the human world. That human world “does not come into being or survive without deliberation, evaluation, decision, action, without the exercise of freedom and responsibility. It is a world of existential subjects and it objectifies the values that they originate in their creativity and their freedom” (Lonergan 1974,85)

Lonergan maintains that an affirmative answer to the question whether the whole process from the nebulae through plants and animals to man is good, is possible “if and only if one acknowledges God’s existence, his omnipotence and his goodness” (1974,85) However, the self-organising and self-creating nature of the process of the cosmos indicates quite a different God from the one portrayed in Scripture. The process of the Cosmos indicates a God who, contrary to the mythological elements of Scripture, does not control or interfere in the world, but who leaves the world to its own processes of self-organization and self-creation. I argue for this view of God in The Process of the Cosmos (1999).

A metaphysical system must rely upon insights that relate different areas of knowledge to one another. It must not clash with any area of knowledge, although it may well clash with belief systems. The system I have outlined meets those criteria. The validity of any metaphysical system is supported by its explanatory power in relation to areas of knowledge other than those upon which it is founded.

The system proposed in “The Process of the Cosmos” also resolves the problem of evil. The problem of evil only arises with a God who actively intervenes in the world. There is no problem of evil if God is not only not active in the world-process, but may not intervene in the world without frustrating the purpose of the process.

This system also justifies Leibniz’ claim that this is the best of all possible worlds, as it is the only one that can possibly meet the purpose of the process of the Cosmos, the self-creation of a communal entity that is similar to God in both goodness and creativity.

LONERGAN’S COSMOLOGY AND THE PROCESS OF THE COSMOS.

Lonergan is a Process Philosopher in the Hegelian tradition. Hegel was the first philosopher to see the world as a linear process. He saw the world as the process in which Spirit manifests itself in History, becoming realised through the actions of individuals. Lonergan’s process is more realistic. He argues that the cosmic process is open and free; “a succession of probable realizations of possibilities. Hence it does not run along the iron rails laid down by determinists nor, on the other hand, is it a non-intelligible morass of merely chance events.” (1958,126) Lonergan distinguishes between the possible, the probable and the actual outcomes of the operations of the laws of nature, as these laws affect the development of the cosmos, including the development of life on earth.

Some of Lonergan’s concepts provide support for the system I proposed in “The Process of the Cosmos”, involving self-organisation and self-creation in the evolution of the Cosmos, rather than divine intervention. However Lonergan retains his Theological orthodoxy and does not attempt to draw any conclusions, orthodox or otherwise, from his reasoning.

He understands the Cosmos as a freely developing process that moves through a series of stages, in accordance with the laws of nature applicable at each stage, and which tends towards the ever fuller realization of being. He sets out to determine “the immanent design or order characteristics of a universe in which both classical and statistical laws obtain”. He argues that: “It is not celestial necessity that assures the success of terrestrial process, but emergent probability that provides the design of all process”. (1958, 130)

Emergent probability, schemes of recurrence and conditioned schemes of recurrence are fundamental aspects of Lonergan’s cosmic process. Emergent probability is the realisation through probability of a conditioned series of ever more developed schemes of recurrence. An example of a scheme of recurrence is the circulation of water, involving evaporation, clouds, precipitation, surface water, evaporation and so on. Conditioned schemes of recurrence are those in which the existence of later schemes is dependent upon the existence of earlier schemes. For example, plants live off the earth, herbivorous animals live off plants and carnivorous animals live off herbivores.

Each of these groups follows its own scheme of recurrence but plants are the condition of herbivores, and herbivores are the condition of carnivores. The series plants- herbivores- carnivores, is an example of a conditioned scheme of recurrence.

Emergent Probability is the immanent order or design of the Cosmos. Emergent Probability is apparent in “the successive realization in accord with successive schedules of probability of a conditioned series of schemes of recurrence” (1958, 125-6) Lonergan insists that the process of the Cosmos “is not the realization of some blueprint but the cumulation of a conditioned series of things and schemes of recurrence in accord with successive schedules of probabilities.” He draws a parallel between the incomplete human knowing that heads towards fuller knowing and an incomplete Cosmos that is heading towards fuller being. While there is such a thing as finality, finality is not “some pull exerted by the future on the present” but is an affirmation that the Cosmos “is not at rest, not static, not fixed in the present, but in process, in tension, fluid.” (1958,445) The principle of finality provides “an upwardly but indeterminately directed dynamism towards ever fuller realization of being.” (1958,452)

Lonergan also introduces the concept of proportionate being. Proportionate being is that part of being which can be known by the human cognitional process. Lonergan draws a parallel between the dynamism of the human mind and the dynamism of the process that produces proportionate being. “Just as cognitional activity is the becoming known of being, so objective process is the becoming of proportionate being” (1958,445) The process that produces proportionate being could eventually include a significant development of mankind. The human stage is capable of further self-development. Of man he says: “Whatever he is at present, he was not always so and, generally speaking, he need not remain so.” (1958,470)

Lonergan implies that the Cosmos exists for a purpose, although this purpose is not directly identified. He notes that the process of the cosmos is increasingly systematic, maintaining that “No matter how slight the probability of the realization of the most developed and most conditioned schemes, the emergence of those schemes can be assured by sufficiently increasing absolute numbers and sufficiently prolonging intervals of time” (1958,126) Given unlimited cosmic time and the almost unlimited matter of the Cosmos, the emergence of any natural possibility becomes probable. A natural possibility is anything that is possible as a result of the interactions of laws of nature at particular stages of the cosmic process.

These laws of nature exist in a stratified hierarchy, extending from the laws of physics that hold for subatomic elements to the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, sensitive psychology and rational psychology that hold for humans. (1958,255) As we move up the hierarchy of laws of nature there is an increase in freedom from stage to stage above the base. While “the periodic table of chemical elements is dominated by atomic numbers and atomic weights that are explained by underlying atomic entities” a “first degree of freedom appears in the vast diversity of chemical compounds” that can result from this base. There is then a second degree of freedom in the multicellular plant, a third degree of freedom in the animal, and a much higher degree of freedom that becomes available in human understanding. Just as “sensitive appetite and perception are a higher system of the organic” at the animal stage, so “inquiry and insight, reflection and judgement, deliberation and choice, are a higher system of sensitive process” at the human stage. (1958,264-6)

Each animal species is a solution to the problem of living, and every new solution to the problem of living at the animal level requires a new species. But for mankind a new solution to the problem of living, even to the extent of a new civilization, simply requires “a new manner of attending to data and of forming combinations of combinations of combinations of data.”(1958,266) Humans have immense freedom to develop themselves and their cultures.

The free nature of the overall cosmic process makes possible enormous differentiation, including breakdowns and blind alleys. For the realization of the cosmic process to be assured the “greater must be the initial absolute numbers” and “the greater the need to invoke long intervals of time”. The effect of the factors of unlimited time and numbers “is to assure at least one situation in which the whole series of schemes will win through”. (1958,127) These factors of time and number make possible increasing stability, “stability without necessity, assurance without determination and development without chance” (1958,128)

Intelligibility is immanent in the cosmic process. Emergent probability provides “the design of all process . . . the realization through probability of a conditioned series of ever more developed schemes.” (1958,130) In any case “what is significant resides in possibilities and their probabilities, for, in all its levels, world process is the probable realization of possibilities. While the determinist would desire full information, exact to the nth decimal place, on his initial or basic situation, the advocate of emergent probability is quite satisfied with any initial situation in which the most elementary schemes can emerge and probably will emerge in sufficient numbers to sustain the subsequent structure” (1958,126-7)

At the root of the cosmic process Lonergan affirms a directed dynamism, parallel to the detached and disinterested human desire to know. This pure desire “heads for an objective that becomes known only through its own unfolding in understanding and judgement, and so the dynamism of universal process is directed, not to a generically, specifically or individually determinate goal, but to whatever becomes determinate through the process itself in its effectively probable realization of its own possibilities.” (1958,450)

So for Lonergan there is a cosmic process that develops from stage to stage, with each stage of the process exhibiting greater freedom than the preceding stage, leading to the freedom of humanity to restructure both itself and the world. The outline of the cosmic process is designed, but the outcome of the process is not.

Accepting that a self-existent entity, a God, is the best explanation of the existence of contingent entities, and that God has the power usually attributed to him by Theologians, we have to ask why God would initiate a free process involving self-organization and human self-creation. The answer appears obvious. Theologians generally agree that God’s only possible motive for action is the production of another entity that is creative, self-creative and good, and so similar to God and appropriate for God to love. To achieve that objective there is no other option but a process involving self-creation.

God cannot create a self-created entity. That is a logical impossibility. God can only create creatures. Only a self-created entity could be similar to the self-existent God. It follows that the only option available is for God to initiate a process involving self-organisation and self-creation. Self-creation would only become possible among creatures that had developed an intentional consciousness.

A process of self-creation could result in the production of a communal entity that was similar to God in its goodness and its creativity. Any such self-created entity has to be a communal entity, extending over time and generations, to enable it to gradually develop from a near-animal state to a community of fully human persons, similar to God in both goodness and creativity. God could not intervene in that self-creating process without frustrating the self-creative purpose of the process.

NOTES

Note 1: The Australian Aborigines provide an interesting case study of the impact that a system of rigidly established answers to fundamental questions can have on human development. The Aborigines arrived in Australia some 47,000 years ago, which is almost half the age of Homo sapiens sapiens as a species. Since that time the Aborigines have diversified into some 300 language-groups as they spread throughout the Australian continent. However their belief system remained remarkably uniform. This system entailed a belief that their ancestors had formed the world. They understood their initiated men as reincarnations of those ancestors. The maintenance of the world depended upon their continuing to ritually re-enact their ancestors’ actions. This was their reality. Ancestors, reincarnation and ritual are our terms, but for the Aborigines they are their own ancestors, and their ritual is reality.

As a result of their belief-system they did nothing practical to reproduce or conserve their food supplies, and they gradually ate out the continent. The cornucopia of new foodstuffs found by Europeans when they discovered the Americas was not to be repeated in Australia. Captain Cook in 1770 AD noted the remarkable absence of coconut trees from the tropical coasts, despite the fact that they propagate by sea. He planted coconuts on uninhabited offshore islands as food for survivors of shipwrecks. As recently as the 1950’s I found it impossible to convince tribal Aborigines that food could be produced in a garden, despite the visible evidence. They knew better. As an apparent consequence of the uniformity of their beliefs, and their isolation, the mental development of full-blood Australian Aborigines in Central Australia, where they had no contact with other people in the past, is lower than that of other Australians. They have never developed past Lonergan’s second stage of consciousness, the level of inquiry that leads to insights, whether valid or otherwise, which provide some meaning and some understanding of the world. Their Dreamtime stories provided meaning to their world. It was never called into question.

Note 2: Kohlberg’s stages of moral development are summarised in a short paper by Robert N. Barger (2000) Kohlberg identifies three Levels of moral development that he divides into six Stages. The first two Stages comprise the Pre-conventional Level. The third and fourth Stages comprise the Conventional Level. The fifth and sixth Stages comprise the Post-conventional Level. Very few people reach this third, Post-conventional, Level. Barger notes: “The third Level of moral thinking is one that Kohlberg felt is not reached by the majority of adults. Its first Stage (Stage 5) is an understanding of social mutuality and a genuine interest in the welfare of others. The last Stage (Stage 6) is based on respect for universal principle and the demands of individual conscience. While Kohlberg always believed in the existence of Stage 6 and had some nominees for it, he could never get enough subjects to define it, much less observe their longitudinal movement to it.” (2000,1)

Most people only ever move through to the Conventional level, involving the adoption of the rules of their society. A Kantian could well consider only Stages 5 and 6, the Post-conventional level, as essentially moral, with the four earlier stages as pre-moral. It could even be argued that stage 6, the stage of principled conscience, is the only true moral stage. Kohlberg’s investigations indicate that attainment of this stage is rare. As both morality and critical thought appear to be relatively recent human developments – within about 3,000 of the last 100,000 years of the development of Homo sapiens sapiens – this should not really surprise us.

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