The cognitional theory of Bernard Lonergan

The invariant structure for understanding the true and the right

      In the early 1970s, I was a recent college graduate working for the welfare department in Chicago; and I was a young man with radical ideas learning about race, war, and imperialism.  I learned of the Center for Inner City Studies, a teaching and research center forged with a degree of autonomy by black scholars; and I became one of its few white students. 

     As I explain in my intellectual autobiography, I learned at the Center for Inner City Studies a colonial analysis of the modern world, with a focus on Africa and the USA, taught principally by Jacob Carruthers, Anderson Thompson, and Elkin Sithole.  They maintained that colonialism is the fundamental fact of the modern world, which promoted economic development and material abundance for the colonizer, and resulted in the destruction of the economic systems of the colonized, thereby creating underdevelopment.  The fundamental purpose of colonialism, they maintained, was appropriation of the land, labor, and natural resources of the colonized.   They further maintained that colonialism was multidimensional, including economic, cultural and psychological components; and that it was a global phenomenon, adversely affecting the peoples of Africa, the Americas, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.  They further maintained that as the anti-colonial movements attained political independence, the colonial powers were able to maneuver to maintain control, such that what emerged was not true independence but neocolonialism.  They viewed race relations in the United States as a particular manifestation of European colonial domination of the world.  They believed that all the colonized peoples of the world, including blacks in the USA, have a common struggle against colonialism and neocolonialism. 

     I was impacted above all by the fundamental difference between the colonial analysis of black scholars and the perspective of white social scientists and historians, which drove me to the investigation of epistemological questions.  The easy resolution of the question was readily available to the cynically inclined: truth is shaped by social position, and there is no such thing as objective truth.  But I was determined to find an alternative resolution, because a community or nation cannot be built on such a radically relativist epistemological foundation.   Human communities must have some consensual basis for discerning the true and the right.

      Having initiated a career teaching sociology, I contacted in 1975 the sociology department of Fordham University, where Dr. Joseph P. Fitzpatrick, S.J., a beloved priest approaching retirement, was sympathetic to my epistemological dilemma.  He had experienced something similar as a young priest in Puerto Rico; and he believed that the Canadian Jesuit Bernard Lonergan provided a resolution to the problem of objectivity that we had encountered.  He arranged for an individualized program of study, which included study of Lonergan under the direction of Father Gerald McCool of Fordham’s philosophy department.  Father Fitz was right on target. Lonergan, it turned out, had indeed provided the key to the resolution of the neocolonial epistemological dilemma.

         In celebration of Christmas, I today post a revised version of my second commentary in this column, initially posted on April 12, 2021, with the title “The quest for the true and the right.”

Bernard Lonergan, S.J. (1904-1984)

     The twentieth century Catholic philosopher Bernard Lonergan described the process through which persons who desire to understand are able to arrive to correct understanding.  He maintained that this “invariant cognitional structure” pertains to all fields of knowing, including mathematics, the natural sciences, the social sciences, history, and common-sense understanding. 

     In order to arrive to correct understanding, the “subject,” or the person seeking to understand, must place the desire to understand above all other desires.  The “pure desire to know” must take priority over all other desires.  Affection for and identification with the perceived interests of one’s social groups must be suspended. 

     Lonergan maintains that there can be no doubt that the desire to know exists.  All of us are driven occasionally by the desire to understand, giving it temporary priority over other desires.  And there are persons who spend hours in their study or laboratory in the pursuit of truth; sacrificing other interests, pursuits, achievements, or pleasures. 

     In arriving to correct understanding, the subject moves through three levels of consciousness.  The first is the level of experience, where the subject selects from the data according to his or her orientation or focus of attention.  Because of differences in orientation or attention, two subjects may be looking at the same reality but experience different data.  At this first level, the data experienced by the subject are not operated on by the subject; they are simply given as data in experience, seen or heard and nothing more.

     On the second level of consciousness, the level of understanding, subjects operate on the data.  They attempt to make sense of what they experience, to make it comprehensible.  They grasp an intelligibility in the data, which at this second level is hypothetical; and they articulate this hypothetical intelligibility.  Lonergan calls these two moments “insight” and “formulation.” 

     But subjects seeking to understand cannot rest satisfied with hypothetical insight and hypothetical formulation.  They seek to determine if the insight is correct, which drives them to the third level of understanding, that of reflection and judgment, in which they raise questions relevant to the issue at hand and gather evidence by answering these relevant questions. 

    At first, relevant questions may revise the hypothetical insight; but subsequently, the subject may see that further relevant questions are not modifying but are reinforcing the insight.  When this occurs, the subject has consciousness that the judgment is correct, because he or she sees that the answers coalesce, that the responses to relevant questions reinforce one another.  In this situation, the subject is in a position to know that the insight has a high probability of being correct and to make the probable judgement that the insight is correct. 

     The probable judgment does not have certainty, because subjects cannot be certain that there are no further relevant questions that would modify the insight.  In future reflection, new developments and/or experiences can bring further relevant questions to consciousness, which would modify the insight.  But further relevant questions would not lead to a complete rejection of the insight, because the insight had moved beyond being merely a hypothetical insight to being affirmed as having a high probability of being correct.  That is to say, there is invariably some truth to insights that have moved beyond the hypothetical to the probable judgment, but not necessary the whole truth.

     In Lonergan’s cognitional theory, the process of knowing occurs with a continuing relation to the real.  At the level of experience, the subject sees, hears, or touches a part of reality.  When subjects select on the basis of orientation or focus of attention, they select elements from reality.  When subjects ultimately arrive to correct understanding, they have not invented data from feelings or desires.  When subjects move through the second and third levels of consciousness, they formulate hypothetical insights in relation to the real; and they make probable judgments about the real.  They desire to understand reality, in the present and the past. 

     Science, for Lonergan, is one form of knowledge, and it proceeds in accordance with these structures of cognition.  Science abstracts from empirical reality in seeking to grasp the essential, and it selects from empirical reality under the guidance of previously accumulated scientific insights and theories.  Science, therefore, is like other forms of knowing, for all knowing occurs in a perceptual context. 

     Standing in opposition to science and other forms of knowing is what Lonergan calls “group bias,” which he defines as a spontaneous feeling of identification with, sympathy for, and interest in the social group that takes priority over the demands of intelligence and the good of order.  In my commentary of April 9, 2021, I called this phenomenon “ideology,” and I pointed out the nefarious effect of ideologies on the public discourse in the United States.  Ideology is the negation of science and knowledge.  Ideologies are not based on a desire to understand; ideologies give highest priority to defending particular interests.  

     In reflecting on Lonergan’s understanding of understanding, we can see that knowledge is not independent of the subject.  The experience of the data is relative to the orientation or focus of attention of the subject; and insight and formulation are relative to the perspective of the subject.  Moreover, probable judgments, even though they are the culmination of the search for relevant questions, can be shaped by social location, because there can be relevant questions that are beyond a horizon that is grounded in the social position, occupation, culture, and period of history of the person. 

     Lonergan addressed the problem that horizon poses for understanding.  He maintained that when we seek to understand, we proceed within a particular social context, which includes a coherent set of values, facts, and assumptions concerning the world.  Stressing that this worldview is rooted in a particular social place, Lonergan calls it our “horizon,” analogous to a place from which we view a physical landscape.   He wrote, “As our field of vision, so too the scope of our knowledge, and the range of our interests are bounded.  As fields of vision vary with one’s standpoint, so too the scope of one’s knowledge and the range of one’s interests vary with the period in which one lives, one’s social background and milieu, one’s education and personal development.”  This field of vision or “horizon” shapes one’s knowledge and interests.  “What lies beyond one’s horizon is simply outside the range of one’s knowledge and interests.”

     The word “horizon,” therefore, refers to the cultural boundedness of the process of knowing.  Horizon defines the boundary beyond which the person cannot see.  Beyond horizon lie those relevant questions that, if the subject were aware of them, would modify or even transform understanding.  What lies beyond the boundary is beyond one’s orientation or comprehension.  Accordingly, what is sensible, good, or true from the viewpoint of one horizon can be nonsensical, evil, or false from the viewpoint of another horizon.  Horizon, therefore, is an obstacle to knowledge, because it blocks relevant questions from consciousness. 

     Lonergan maintains, however, that we can overcome the limitations imposed on understanding by horizon.  What is required is personal encounter with persons who live in social positions different from our own, whose horizons are different from our own.  Personal encounter involves “meeting persons, appreciating the values they represent, criticizing their defects, and allowing one’s living to be challenged at its roots by their words and their deeds.”

      Just as a person who desires to understand will move beyond hypothetical formulation to the search for relevant questions and to probable judgment, so a person who desires to understand will also ask if there possibly are questions beyond his or her horizon that are relevant to the issue at hand.  If this possibility exists, and if the subject places the desire to understand above the interests of his or her social groups, the quest for understanding will drive the subject to search for relevant questions beyond horizon.  The person who desires to understand will journey to other social contexts to meet persons, with an orientation of respect for their values, thereby permitting their own understanding to be challenged and possibly transformed.

     Accordingly, the limitations imposed on human understanding by horizon can be overcome through personal encounter with persons of different horizons.  I have coined the term “cross-horizon encounter” to refer to this process.  Cross-horizon encounter provides the foundation for attaining an understanding of particular issues that transcends the subject’s natural social and cultural context, an understanding that reflects an intercultural journey with respect to particular issues.

     At the level of cross-horizon encounter, the process of knowing retains its relation to the real.  Moving through levels of consciousness, the subject begins with the experience of the real; proceeds to an understanding of the real, initially a partial understanding rooted in horizon; and then moves to a judgment concerning the real, again possibly limited by horizon.  When the subject moves to cross-horizon encounter, culminating in an objective understanding and judgment that transcends social position with respect to particular issues, the subject has arrived to an understanding of reality.  The real is always present as a point of reference in the knowing process.

     Lonergan maintains that the same structure of understanding applies to judgements of value, or judgments concerning what ought to be done, as well as judgments of fact.  In judgments of value, the subject seeks to understand the right course of action, both at the personal and societal level.  In judgments of value, there is a fourth level of consciousness, that of decision, in which the subject decides to act in accordance with his or her understanding of the right.  Subjects decide to act in accordance with the right to the extent that they are driven not only by the desire to know but also by a desire for consistency between knowing and doing.  In judgements of value, as in judgments of fact, the movement of the subject is through the experience of reality, the formulation of insights, and a search for relevant questions that culminates in cross-horizon encounter.  The movement of the subject through levels of consciousness and culminating in cross-horizon encounter is a process that pertains to both the true and the right. 

More information on Bernard Lonergan can be found at the Website of the Lonergan Research Institute.

     That humanity is capable of arriving to a consensual understanding of the right through a sustained process of encounter and dialogue is illustrated by various documents of the United Nations, in which humanity has affirmed that all persons in the world have the rights of access to health, affordable education, adequate nutrition, and comfortable housing; and that all nations have rights to development, sovereignty, and control of their natural resources and economies.  These documents, affirmed by representatives of virtually all the governments on earth, are declaring what I call “universal human values.”  These documents reflect the implicit practical epistemology of the peoples that form humanity, which assumes that it is possible for humans, in spite of their differences in social positions and perspectives, to arrive to a consensus concerning the fundamental principles that define the right, drawing upon a consensual understanding of the relevant facts that pertain to global reality, past and present.  The truth value of these declarations is not merely a matter of personal opinion and preference.  These declarations are a result of the common commitment of a multitude of actors, acting from various cultural and political contexts, to understand and defend the right.

     In seeking to understand the particular issues that societies confront, emphasis needs to be given to encounter with the dominated and exploited, whose insights tend to be excluded from prevailing societal narratives.  With respect to understanding the structures of the world-system and the world-economy, this emphasis implies the duty, for persons of the North, to encounter persons who live and have their being in the social world of the colonized.  Further, as a result of the formation by the colonized of anti-colonial social movements, the duty to truth obligates all persons in the North who seek understanding to, more precisely, encounter the speeches and writings of leaders and intellectuals of the anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial movements of the Third World, with a desire to understand questions relevant to the issues at hand. 

    However, in the North, the prevailing tendency is to neglect encounter with the movements of the Third World.  This has had a debilitating effect on public discourse, limiting the capacity of the peoples of the North to understand the sources of global problems and the necessary changes that would make possible a more just, democratic, and sustainable world.  For persons of the North, an intellectual journey of discovering and addressing relevant questions through encounter with Third World movements, from the early eighteenth century to the present, would enable overcoming the colonial denial and arriving to a transformed understanding.

     Encountering and taking seriously the voices of the excluded does not imply accepting at face value their formulations.  Note that Lonergan’s description of personal encounter includes criticizing the defects of the formulations of persons of other horizons.  In the genuine pursuit of truth, however, this criticizing occurs in the context of an ongoing process of respectful listening.  At the same time, in a genuine process of knowing, the discovery of further relevant questions beyond horizon leads to modification of previous insights, but not their complete rejection, inasmuch as the previous insights are rooted in a quest for relevant questions and judgement in the context of one’s own horizon.  Genuine knowing does not result in the bashing of one´s own culture.

     A Lonerganian approach to knowledge is different from and opposed to post-modernism, which assumes that a subjective perception rooted in personal experience cannot be escaped. This post-modern assumption, although pretending to be a liberating force that frees the individual from social constraints, actually gives rise to authoritarianism.

     Against this post-modern assumption, we must proclaim that, although different interpretations are possible, all interpretations must be defended from the experience of the real; that is to say, a subjective perception cannot be imposed on reality.  And we must maintain that truth can be attained through reason and listening dialogue with persons of other horizons.  We arrive through this process not to certainty nor to eternal truth, but to an objective truth in relation to our epoch, a truth that can and must be the foundation for responsible political and social action. 

     Reason and dialogue are the most effective means for all social groups to advance in the protection of their rights and needs.  I do not deny that there are some nations and groups that have no interest in reason and dialogue; nations and groups that organize means of violence to impose their will on others.  This situation requires others to use force to defend themselves.  Force, therefore, is a necessary dimension of politics and human affairs.  However, force is most effective when it defends the true and the right.  So the true and the right must be discerned, for the good of one’s own nation and groups.  Indeed, the search for the true and the right is the highest form of morality.  The search for the true and the right is our highest moral duty as citizens of nations in the modern world.

     The post-modern view, that every understanding is nothing more than a construction, is in tension with the universal common-sense understanding that the world is real.  The post-modern view, therefore, is not only at variance with Lonergan’s cognitional theory, but also with the implicit epistemology of the peoples of the Third World, for whom the real world has to be attended.  The Third World peoples confront the economic and military aggressions of imperialism, and they face a social situation in which children are without adequate nutrition, housing, health care, or access to education.  They therefore find post-modern philosophical speculations to be at the periphery of their concerns in the real world in which they must live.  They have constructed in practice movements for national sovereignty, declaring with practical, commons-sense conviction that imperialism and inadequate nutrition are wrong, and everybody knows that they are wrong. 

     Thus, the implicit epistemology of the Third World, forged in practice, is against post-modernism.  Reflecting this, the Third World project takes great care in accurately describing objective reality.  It describes the current world order as neocolonial, in which the former colonial powers maintain their access to natural resources, labor, and markets through: economic structures established during the colonial period; international organizations created by the global powers; interferences in the affairs of states; the continuous threat of military intervention; and ideological distortions disseminated throughout the world, including the utilization of a façade of democracy and human rights.  This Third World description does not portray an objective reality merely from their point of view, or merely as a construction that promotes their economic or political interests.  They are exposing an objective reality hidden by imperialist ideologies; an objective reality that their position and perspective as colonized enables them to discern. 

     Moreover, the Third World implicit epistemology declares in practice not only a discernable objective reality in the realm of facts, but also in the realm of values.  It maintains that humanity ought to move to an alternative, more just and sustainable world order that respects the sovereignty of nations, enabling them to control natural resources and to defend the social and economic rights and needs of their citizens.  It maintains that an alternative world order is necessary, because the neocolonial world order is leading humanity to chaos and possibly extinction. 

     The Third World project, in addition, has faith in the future of humanity.  It maintains that the possibility for an alternative, more just world order is being demonstrated today, inasmuch as the nations of the Third World are beginning to build an alternative world order, in theory and in practice, with the cooperation of China.  In contrast to post-modernism, the leaders and intellectuals of the Third World maintain that the true, the good, and the right can be discerned and attained, but only on the condition of the presence and meaningful participation of the governments and peoples of the Third World, as an inseparable part of humanity.

     The Third World project does not reject Western values.  Third World national liberation movements have been created and developed by Western educated intellectuals of the Third World and China, who have appropriated the principles of the democratic revolutions of the West, but deepening their meaning to include the rights of all citizens to education, health care, housing, and nutrition, and to include the rights of nations to sovereignty, self-determination, and control of their economies and their natural resources.  The Third World proclaims the importance of human rights, and it considers the right to development as the most important of all human rights.

     The political practice of the Third World, grounded in its own epistemology and social theory, is seeking a more just and sustainable world order.  Meanwhile, a Lonerganian epistemology provides the philosophical foundation for the necessary cooperative participation of the persons and social movements of the North in the creation of a necessary more just and sustainable world order.  Both stand in contrast to the post-modern cynicism that pervades the North.

A free subscription option is available, with capacity to read, send, and share all posts. A paid subscription ($5 per month or $40 per year) enables you to make comments and to support the costs of the column; paid subscribers also receive a free PDF copy of my book on Cuba and the world-system.