The Diagram is More Important than is Ordinarily Believed

The Diagram is More Important than is Ordinarily Believed

The Challenge

• “the diagram is more important than…is ordinarily believed” as the “philosophical understatement of the century.”

• elaborating an invariant cognitional theory to underlie generalized emergent probability and thus “the immanent order of the universe of proportionate being,” as “our challenge”

• “but given the difficulty” he doesn’t “see any prospect for an immediate answer.”

• Could this have something to do with the lack of a comprehensive diagram of cognitional theory?

The Attempt

• review some of Lonergan’s attempts to diagram cognitional theory and discuss what insights they do and do not express

• elaborate and defend principles for making our formulations of insight into insight rigorous and clear

• attempt to build up a diagram which makes full use of those principles in a maximally expressive way.

The Unattempted

• Only at the level of formulation—haven’t even discovered all the further pertinent questions, let alone answered them

• Not a rigorous textual analysis—primarily based on the data of my own consciousness

REVIEW

Tabular Schema of Insight

• Data. Perceptual Images. Free Images.Utterances.

• Questions for Intelligence. Insights.Formulations.

• Questions for Reflection. Reflection.Judgment.

Patterns of Experience

• Aesthetic• Intellectual• Dramatic

Dublin I: Dynamics of Knowing

Dublin 2: Dynamics of Doing

Method in Theology

Name Question Activity Intention

1. Empirical experience Attention

imagine image

2. Intellectual what? understand intelligibility

Is it true?

2. Rational is it so? judge

2. Responsible is it good? decide

PROBLEMS AND PRINCIPLES

Judgments about Cognition

• Only with attention do phenomena become data.• Questions for understanding spontaneously arise given data.• Understanding occurs with and only with data and inquiry in

response to a question.• Questions of veracity spontaneously arise given

understandings.• Questions of veracity are answered by, and only answered by,

the elaboration and answering of further pertinent questions.• Questions about what should be done naturally arise, and are

unanswerable without knowledge of the real and the good.• Knowledge of the good requires an understanding of affect.

Questions about Cognition

• What relation between cognitional microstructure and cognitional macrostructure must obtain in order to explain the patterns of experience, compound knowing, and functional specialties?

• What cognitional elements are shared across the varied patterns of inquiry, and what differentiations are necessary in order to support those variations?

• Where does the necessary data arise for deliberations/judgments of value?

• What, if anything, lies between judgment and action?• Where might being-in-love fit within a cognitional theory?

Canons of Empirical Method

• Selection: features of the theory must have empirically verifiable consequences

• Operations: theories show their power or failure in their cumulative results

• Relevance: purely explanatory insight establishes terms and relations by mutual reference

• Parsimony: affirm the verifiable, the minimum explanation necessary

• Complete Explanation: a complete theory completely explains the data

• Statistical Residues: not all relations are systematic

Provisional Principles of Cognition

• Fully explanatory, with maximally simple elements and data flows, implicitly defined

• Orthogonally distinct (may reduce to above)• Most controversial at the edges• Scale invariant• Pre-specified

Scale-Invariant Structures

Power Functional Hyper Plane Fractal

Lectio Divina

• lectio (what does the text say in itself?) • meditatio (what does the text say to us?) • oratio (what do we say to God in prayerful

response?) • contemplatio (what conversion of mind, heart,

and life does the Lord ask of us?)

IDEAS AND DIAGRAMS

Direct Insight

Secondary Cognition

The Third Level

Principles

• P1: Any cognitional process output is in principle itself accessible phenomenally.

• P2: Inquiry at every level works by varying attention on a prior level until insights are accumulated sufficiently to answer the original question.

• P3: Events, qualities, and feelings are all primary yet phenomenally distinct types of data.

Differentiation of Data

Composition of Data

Isomorphisms

CONCLUSION

Outcomes

• Need for rigor?• Correct provisional principles?• Correct propositions?• What next?