The 'pure' desire to know

Shute gives a good clarification of Lonergan's often misunderstood term 'pure' desire to know: it is "intelligence unencumbered by the drag of the biases." (Shute, Lonergan's Discovery of the Science of Economics, Toronto 2010, 79 n 57) Thus he is not affirming that we have, at any time, a pure desire to know. It is rather the pure desire considered apart from the biases. It is a 'line of reference' or a first approximation, somewhat like the 'state of pure nature' in medieval theology.

Lonergan also talks of the pure theory of external human action ("Essay in Fundamental Sociology," LEER 17), of the 'pure cycle' and 'pure surplus income' in his economics, and of 'pure formulations' in his theory of interpretation (Insight CWL 3:602).

Common names and properly explanatory terms

One of Aristotle's defects, according to Lonergan is "a certain blurring" of the difference between common names and truly explanatory conjugates:

"Again, there is to his thinking a certain blurring of the difference between the common names developed by common sense and the technical terms elaborated by explanatory science." (Method in Theology 311.)

Lonergan, instead, distinguishes sharply between common names and explanatory conjugates. Common names involve 'linguistic' insights - insights into proper use of language, whereas explanatory conjugates are the fruit of science. So, properly speaking, the 'concepts' that we usually have are mostly common names; we have really very few concepts that are explanatory conjugates. When we see a tree and recognize it, we do not really obtain - 'by abstraction' - the concept of a tree in the properly explanatory sense. We are merely using the name 'tree' properly. Abstraction of the concept of tree is a matter for the botanical scientist - and even she does not come to the concept 'automatically', but only at the term of much hard work. We do not, in other words, obtain 'forms' by 'automatic abstraction' or by some sort of 'intellectual intuition' - we have to work to obtain them. Thus the nature of a free fall might descriptively be said to be a constant acceleration, but the pertinent conjugate form is given only in the relevant empirically verified law - s = gt²/2. 

Objectivity, reality, the 'already-out-there-now-real'

Phil and I talked all the way down to Mumbai yesterday, and then more during the day at Provincial House. One of the points he kept making was about the strangeness of reality: what you see is not really real; it is an illusion; try taking off your glasses. He cited Lonergan at the end of "Cognitional Structure", which I must really look up. But: I am uncomfortable with this way of speaking. I prefer to say: the data of seeing is just that - the given, the data. To say it is an illusion is already to have made a judgment! I prefer to say: we do not know the real by seeing - otherwise we would not say, "The stick in the jar of water seems bent, but it really is not." We know the real by judging.

The 'already-out-there-now-real', in my understanding is the real as a part of what is already out there now: one part is real, the other unreal; and real and unreal are fixed by relevance to biological satisfaction.

The given is valid in all its parts, but differently significant. If I am seeing, I am seeing; but I may realize, upon judging that I have been hallucinating, or, perhaps, dreaming. The given still remains valid; but it may be of interest to the psychologist or the psychiatrist rather than the physicist or chemist.

Of footballers and coaches

I have often used the example of footballers and coaches: to be a good coach, it is not enough to be a good footballer. You have to be able to talk about football. It is the difference between apprehensive and formative abstraction. The footballer, I think, grasps the universal in re; the coach grasps the universal in itself, so that the insight is no longer tied to the phantasm but the inner word has emerged and is free of the original phantasm and can be applied now to any number of other instances.

Phil made me aware yesterday, however, of another dimension: a good coach, he said, is someone who has a good memory, and is able to come to his task with a history of the game. He remembers different games, different tactics, different moves. He comes with a historical heuristic - but not merely with a heuristic, but a heuristic that is concretely filled with actual memories. He brings that dimension to his coaching.

So I guess Thomas is being updated by this kind of remark: the advertence to the historical aspect of the process of knowing / teaching.

Of course Phil also remarked several times that the goalkeeper awaiting the penalty shot, or the centre forward with the ball in his control, are WHATS. They are there with all of their memories - and good players have good memories - and they are completely alert, weighing all possible courses of action, and preparing to decide and to act.... Phil's point was that Whatting - questioning and thinking - is not something that happens only 2 inches behind one's eyes, but over the whole body. His great image was that of a child asking questions: the child tends to jump up and down. In contrast, people who have been "educated out of their minds" - which tends to include most of us sitting demurely and listening to Phil - either ask questions only with a hesitant show of hands, or not at all. But Navtej from Shelter R&D was a great exception: she just marched up to the mike and the board and asked her question.

Whatting with the whole what I am: not only a great image, but, I am beginning to see, a great truth. Every cell participates in my questioning and thinking. Every cell stores memories of the past - the Buddhist vipassana tradition recognizes this when it talks about the samskaras which are stored memories - evident when certain memories evoke a shudder or a thrill that passes through my length and breadth. And these stores of memories are completely involved in any questioning, any thinking. One way or the other. Either as completely collaborating with the process, or else as damaged by dramatic bias, individual bias, group bias, general bias....

Making judgments: practical exercises

This morning I gave a test to my Second Year BPh class on 'reflective understanding.' We were trying later to clarify how it is that we make a judgment, and I said: judging, in very simple terms, is checking whether experiencing and understanding have been done properly. 'Experiencing properly' is a question of experiential objectivity: have I been attentive? Are the 'conditions' fulfilled in the data? 'Understanding correctly' is arriving at an invulnerable insight, making sure that the 'link between conditions and conditioned' is correct.

I forget exactly how, but we got on next to the difference between playing football well, and being able to coach; it is, I said, the difference between apprehensive abstraction and formative abstraction. It is freedom from the book. It is a question of understanding so well that I am able to 'say it in my own words', to change the examples.

That got us on to finding new examples of judgments. Someone suggested the prospective judgment, "Thomas is selfish." This then is the 'conditioned.' What might be the link between conditions and conditioned? In other words, what kind of If-then premise do I usually employ? We became aware that all of us employ such premises (though without formulating them), and, further, that each of us have different premises - depending on our personal histories. We also became aware that we were not all willing to share these premises: so generalized empirical method is a 'revealing' thing - a constant interaction between subject and object. But some did share: "If X usually takes three helpings of anything, then X is selfish." "If Y does not help me, then Y is selfish."

The next question: are these 'links' sound? Are they correct? Take the second example: is that correct? No, someone said, because it might be that Y does not have the time to help me just then. So there are questions arising here, and relevant ones; the insight is not invulnerable.

Kung Fu Panda and the notion of being

Had fun yesterday and the day before in my philosophy of knowing class - I must say classes, because I had 3 each per day. The topic was uninviting: The Notion of Being. But it turned out well. What did I do? Not even sure I can remember. But I remember it flowed. The two poles: constantly appealing to experience - inviting the students to identify their experience, of curiosity, of the desire to know, of the eros of the mind - and to stories.

The stories were interesting: what came to mind was Kung Fu Panda. Why KFP? I was trying to explain how the notion of being is the fundamental heuristic notion. I remembered also how Thomas and Lonergan call it an inchoate wisdom. So: particular wisdoms - knowing 'everything' about carpentry, or electricity - and just wisdom: knowing 'everything about everything' - or at least a strategic knowledge of everything about everything.  But of course in a commonsense way we regard wise those who are masters of commonsense, or or 'life' as we call it. That's where KFP came in: the obviously wise Master Oogway. And our students, though they might not have seen KFP, are sensitive to this kind of talk: "There are no accidents in life." "Unless you believe you will never change him." "Your anxiety to avoid problems will itself cause problems." And so on.

The Notion of Objectivity: I decided that the problem had to be raised. So the reading of Descartes came in handy. What was the problem left us by Descartes? And how might we attempt to get out of it? - Only by rejecting that manner of posing the problem. Thus Heidegger: not that I know myself, and then have to know the world; but always already I am being-in-the-world. And Lonergan: the pseudo-problem of transcendence, becasue we are always heading for being, within which we learn to make distinctions between subject and objects, and some objects which are also subjects.

And the loud reading was interesting: slowing down the pace, so as to attend, give a chance to attend to the phantasm. And writing out, for the same reason. The importance then of attending to the data. And then: asking questions. "We have earlier considered..." Where? "We have earlier considered the problem of method in knowing." What is the problem of method in knowing? Und so weiter....

Rewarding to see the sparkle in the eyes...

Need for an agent intellect

Aquinas on the need for agent intellect:

Aristotle chose a middle course. For with Plato he agreed that intellect and sense are different. But he held that the sense has not its proper operation without the cooperation of the body; so that to sense is not an act of the soul alone, but of the composite. ... But Aristotle held that the intellect has an operation in which the body does not share. Now nothing corporeal can make an impression on the incorporeal. And therefore, in order to cause the intellectual operation, according to Aristotle, the impression caused by sensible bodies does not suffice, but something more noble is required, for the agent is more noble than the patient, as he says. Not, be it observed, in the sense that the intellectual operation is effected in us by the mere impression of some superior beings, as Plato held; but that the higher and more noble agent which he calls the agent intellect, of which we have spoken above, causes the phantasms received from the senses to be actually intelligible, by a process of abstraction. (STh I.84.6 c. Pegis.)

Aquinas on Plato

Aquinas rejecting the principle that like is known by like (see De Smet):

Now it seems that Plato strayed from the truth because, having observed that all knowledge takes places through some kind of similitude, he thought that the form of the thing known must of necessity be in the knower in the same manner as in the thing known itself. But it was his opinion that the form of the thing understood is in the intellect under conditions of universality, immateriality, and immobility; which is apparent from the very operation of the intellect, whose act of understanding is universal, and characterized by a certain necessity; for the mode of action corresponds to the mode of the agent's form. Therefore he concluded that the things which we understand must subsist in themselves under the same conditions of immateriality and immobility.

 But there is no necessity for this. ... the sensible form is in one way in the thing whcih is external to the soul, and in another way in the senses, which receive the forms of sensible things without receiving matter.... So, too, the intellect, according to its own mode, receives under conditions of immateriality and immobility the species of material and movable bodies; for the received is in the receiver according to the mode of the receiver. We must conclude, therefore, that the soul knows bodies through the intellect by a knowledge which is immaterial, universal and necessary. (STh I.84.1 c. Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Vol. I. Ed. Anton C. Pegis. New York: Random House, 1945.)

See also STh I.84.2 c for more on why the principle that like is known by like is to be rejected. Here Aquinas concludes that the soul does not understand corporeal things by its essence; only God does.

God's knowledge of everything

Aquinas on how God knows everything by knowing himself:

Hence many ideas exist in the divine mind, as things understood by it; as can be proved thus. Inasmuch as He knows His own essence perfectly, He knows it according to every mode in which it can be known. (STh I.15.2 c. The "Summa Theologica" of St. Thomas Aquinas. Part I. QQ. I-XXVI. Literally translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. 2nd rev. ed. London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1920)

Aquinas on knowledge of sensible things

Augustine held that there is no communication from body to soul, but only from soul to body. Thomas Aquinas instead, in the De Veritate, has the following questions:
Does the mind know material things? (q. 10, a. 4)
Can our mind know material things in their singularity? (q. 10, a. 5)
Does the human mind receive knowledge from sensible things? (q. 10, a. 6)

The epistemological staircase fallacy

Nyaya on pratyaksa: perception is "that knowledge which arises fro the contact of a sense with its object, and which is well-determined, not erroneous, and not [yet] associated with a name." (Gautama, Nyaya-sutra 1, 1, 4)

Perception is determined (savikalpa) but it is a complex process which involves a first phase (not yet a complete act) of mere sensation when it is not yet "associated with a name," hence, still indeterminate (nirvikalpa) and then a second when it is a determinate conception (cf. Kant.) (Guidelines 241)

De Smet's comment here is interesting:

Thus Nyaya avoids the fallacy of the epistemological staircase theory that we have first sense-experience, then conception, and then judgment. Perception is not a combination of three acts but a unitary perceptual judgment (yet analyzable into phases.) These phases are not perceived as such but inferred and commentators differ somewhat in explaining them. (Guidelines 241)

Is this a veiled reference to Lonergan, who De Smet was certainly familiar with? I am not sure. But this needs chewing upon. In general, the Marechalians tend to differ from Lonergan on this very point: they hold for a unitary sensitivo-rational judgment, and if pushed, tend to say that the judgment comes first: "Something is", and then, subsequently, we clarify what that something is.

Categories and predicables, mode of being and mode of thinking

De Smet makes a wonderfully clear distinction between categories / predicaments and predicables: categories belong to the mode of being, predicables to the mode of thinking. It is unfortunate, he goes on, that this distinction has not been seen clearly by Indian philosophers; and this failure vitiates many of their teachings. In particular, Kanada's table of categories / padarthas includes the predicables which it unduly ontologises. "Although he did see that they depend on thought for their discovery, he did not see that they are by their very nature purely logical. This is due to his uncritical realism as expressed in the saying, 'And there is no knowledge without an [ontological] object' (na c'avisaya kacid upalabdhih)."

Bhartrhari's Sabda-brahman and inner word

De Smet has a one page outline of Bhartrhari's Sadbadvaita, which I found fascinating. And then he ends with this even more rewarding remark:

N.B. Fascinating parallels could be made between this doctrine and the rich and varied conceptions of the internal word among Christians, especially St Augustine and the medieval Schoolmen. (Guidelines 226)

De Smet never ceases to amaze me: he knew about Augustine's doctrine of the inner word, and surely Thomas' reworking of it. But this is the first mention I have come across in the De Smet corpus.

It [the Sabda-brahman] is not to be attained through a special experience of the mystical order beyond all empirical phenomena (as the Sabda-brahman of Mandana Misra) but as the internal Word at the point of consciousness wherefrom all empirical knowledge radiates. This is why this is a philosophy for the man-in-the-world.

The Sabda-brahman is the ontological-linguistic Fullness wherefrom emanate in reciprocal harmony (a) the consciousnesses, (b) the objects with their visible or invisible potencies, (c) the Vedic word which relates these two realms. It is the Spiritual Energy (cit-sakti) of the universe.

Knowledge of self in Purva Mimamsa

For Prabhakara the self is not self-luminous, since it is not revealed in deep sleep. But every consciousness is self-consciousness [and is therefore self-luminous]. In every cognition the self is revealed as the subject of that cognition (cf. triputi-pratyaksa-vada) and never as its object. But cognition is passing; hence the self is not always revealed.

For Bhatta, as for N.V., self-knowledge is a later cognition; first comes object-consciousness. N.V. holds that the self is revealed through an introspection (anuvyavasaya) of the latter. Consciousness is never self-luminous but is inferred from the cognizedness of the object. Thus inferred, it reveals its subject as ego and we have a self-cognition in which the subject knows itself as the object of this cognition. "Against the majority of Indian thinkers who hold that the subject is never known as object, B. maintains that there is no contradiction in the self knowing himself as that object which is the subject of cognition." (Guidelines 223)

Purva Mimamsa idea of atman

There are a plurality of atmans.

Each atman is an eternal, omnipresent, ubiquitous, infinite substance which is the substratum of consciousness.

The atman is a real knower, active agent and passive enjoyer / sufferer (jnatr, kartr, bhoktr). The body is the locus of his experiences, the senses the instruments of experience, and the internal feelings and external things are the objects of his experience.

Consciousness is not the essence of the self. Prabhakara, like N.V., conceives it as an accidental static guna of the atman. The atman is by essence jada, unconscious, and, insofar as moksa is admitted, it means the isolation of the atman from all gunas, and hence also from consciousness and bliss. !!

For Bhatta, consciousness is not a static guna but a modal change (parinama) of the self. it is therefore a dynamic modification, a passing from potency to act. The atman is not simply unconscious, but unconscious-conscious (cid-acid-rupa or jada-bodh-atmaka), namely, characterized by the potency to know which belongs to his very nature (jnana-sakti-svabhava). In moksa, the self is divested of all his qualities and modes, including cognition and bliss, but remains, as in deep sleep, endowed with potential consciousness. (De Smet, Guidelines 223)

Self-knowledge in Purva Mimamsa

In the section on The Nature of True Knowledge, De Smet begins by saying:

Knowledge as such is always an immediate awareness, but of what? (Guidelines p. 220)

Once again, there seems to be a confusion here between knowledge (pratyaksa, presumably, also from what follows) and consciousness.

He goes on to outline Prabhakara's tri-puti-pratyaksa-vada. For P, knowledge is not eternal but is a self-luminous (svaprakasa) event wich arises and vanishes as a moment in the cognitive process. [Very good.] It is always a triple revelation: it reveals itself (svasamvitti of jnana); the knowable as its object (visaya-vitti of jneya); and the knower as 'I' (aham-vitti of jnatr). Thus it has simultaneously three terms.

The note that follows is interesting:

Note that the self is not self-luminous but known only in cognition and not in its absence as in deep sleep. Dream cognition, though derived only from memory, is of the same general type. To hold, like the N. Vaisesikas, that knowledge is known through another cognition would lead to infinite regress... (Guidelines 220)

K. Bhatta's theory is called jnatata-vada, because he holds, in contrast to P., that the only immediate datum in cognition is the cognizedness (jnatata) or illuminedness (prakatya) of the object., i.e. the object as cognized. Both the act/process of knowing and the knowing ego have to be inferred.

De Smet's judgment:

Prabhakara's theory seems to be closer to the fact. But he fails to distinguish the implicit (awareness of the ego and the knower) and the explicit (awareness of the object as known) in the immediate content of cognition which he erroneously considers as totally explicit. Hence, Bhatta wants to correct him but for the same reason he reduces the immediate to the explicit and thinks that the implicit is not immediate but mediate and inferable only. (Guidelines p. 221)

The active synthesizing nature of intellect in Sankara

What enables us to synthesize disparate sounds and to comprehend their meaning? Here is the solution of Prabhakara (and also Bhatta):

Words are combinations of letters or rather syllables (varna). But how can we understand words and sentences when each syllable vanishes the moment it is uttered? The solution can be found either in our intellect or in sabda itself. For Prabhakara, it is found in the latter. Varnas have each an (eternal) potency of leaving a semantic impression which, combined with that of other varnas brings about the meaning of words and sentences.... (De Smet, Guidelines p. 219)

Sankara was dissatisfied with this solution

because it is too particular to the understanding of a series of syllables. We should have a general solution which would explain our understanding of other kinds of series too (line of ants, of trees, of soldiers, etc.) Besides, in any case the impressions left by the varnas must be synthesized by the intellect. Hence, the solution must be found in the intellect. In fact, it is simpler to admit that our buddhi functions as intellectual memory, i.e., has the power of synthesizing elements apprehended at successive moments of time. This function is samasta-praty-avamarsini buddhi (intellect looking back on past experiences as a whole). Cf. Brahma-sutra-bhasya, 1,3,28. (De Smet, Guidelines p. 219)

Yet more evidence for the active nature of intellect in Sankara.

Prabhakara's dis-essentialized notion of being

Prabhakara of the Purva Mimamsa seems to imply that being is not to be regarded as yet another essence or whatness. De Smet remarks, in fact, on this dis-essentialized notion of being:

There are many jatis but no highest one, called satta (beingness), as acknowledged by Nyaya. Indeed, we can find groups of characteristics common to classes of beings but no set of characteristics common to all. Beings are ultimately disparate. When we call them all sat (being) we do not mean that they have something like a common essence but that each one is an individual "existing in its own way" as endowed with its own particular essence (svarupa-satta). Note the interest of this dis-essentialized notion of being. (De Smet, Guidelines p. 218)

Useful for a history of the notion of being in India.

Pratyaksa of the universal in Purva Mimamsa

Indian thinking seems to be Platonic also in this respect, that no clear distinction is drawn between mode of thinking (grasping something as universal, for instance) and mode of being. Thus De Smet says:

The universal (jati) is a different kind of whole than the dravyas.... The question of its perception and its nature arises as a knot of difficulties in India because, (like in Platonism), no neat distinction is generally made between mode of thinking and mode of being and, hence, the universal being valid in thought is also judged to be an ontological reality (vastu). (De Smet, Guidelines, p. 218)

Still, Prabhakara at least does not hold that jati has separate existence apart from the individuals, as Nyaya supposes.

Pratyaksa pramana in Purva Mimamsa: knowing as confrontation

Back to Purva Mimamsa in De Smet's Guidelines.

Pratyaksa, perception. Most difficult pramana, most ambiguous. Is it merely Lonergan's first level, 'experience'? or is it the three levels, so that it is, properly, the sensitivo-rational judgment (De Smet or Marechal language)?

De Smet, Guidelines p. 217:

Although we do infer after perceiving that it arises by means of senses, its immediacy is an original, underived and first-hand datum of consciousness.

Here pratyaksa is described as immediate; this immediacy is a first-hand datum of consciousness. This sounds very much like Lonergan's description of consciousness.

More complications.

Prabhakara defines it as direct apprehension (saksat pratitih). Bhatta defines it as direct knowledge arising from the contact free from defects of the sense-organs with the presented objects.... Four contacts have to be admitted: (i) of the sense-organs with the object, (ii) of the sense-organs with the qualities of the object, (iii) of the manas with the sense-organs, and (iv) of the manas with the atman.

If P's direct apprehension is still ambiguous, Bhatta's direct knowledge is not ambiguous. What is interesting is that Bhatta presupposes the Platonic theorem of knowledge as confrontation. Very interesting. (The next para reveals that P also presupposes this theorem. Also, the other theorem of like as known by like.)