Ethical and Epistemic Normativity : Lonergan and Virtue Epistemology [1 ed.] 9780874628104, 9780874628098

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Ethical & Epistemic Normativity

Ethical & Epistemic Normativity Lonergan & Virtue Epistemology

by

Dalibor ReniĆ

marquette studies in philosophy no. 74 Andrew Tallon, Series editor © Copyright Dalibor Renić 2012 All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Renić, Dalibor, 1977Ethical & epistemic normativity : Lonergan & virtue epistemology / by Dalibor Renić. p. cm. — (Marquette studies in philosophy ; no. 74) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-87462-809-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-87462-809-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Lonergan, Bernard J. F. 2. Normativity (Ethics) 3. Epistemics. 4. Virtue epistemology. 5. Knowledge, Theory of. 6. Virtue. 7. Ethics. I. Title. II. Title: Ethical and epistemic normativity. B995.L654R46 2012 121.092—dc23 2012004479 .

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Contents

List of abbreviations............................................................................................ 6 Acknowledgements.............................................................................................. 8 Introduction......................................................................................................... 9 1 Epistemic Normativity and Ethics: A Status Quaestionis......................... 21 1.1 General Orientation................................................................................ 21 1.1.1 Epistemic Normativity ....................................................................... 21 1.1.2 Epistemology and Other Normative Disciplines............................. 25 1.1.3 Ethics of Belief and Intellectual Ethics.............................................. 26 1.2 Analogies between Epistemic and Ethical Normativity...................... 29 1.2.1 The Fact of Epistemic Evaluation...................................................... 31 1.2.2 Epistemic Duty.................................................................................... 33 1.2.3 Epistemic Teleology............................................................................. 35 1.2.4 Virtue Epistemology............................................................................ 37 1.2.5 Epistemic Value.................................................................................... 41 1.3 Difficulties for the Ethical Models of Epistemic Normativity .......... 45 1.3.1 Autonomy of Theoretical Reason...................................................... 45 1.3.2 Voluntariness of Belief........................................................................ 47 1.4 Status Quaestionis in Lonergan Studies ............................................. 51 2 Epistemic Normativity in Virtue Epistemology......................................... 57 2.1 A Virtue Responsibilist Approach: L. Zagzebski................................ 59 2.1.1 Intellectual and Moral Virtues............................................................ 60 2.1.2 Specialty of the Intellectual Virtue.................................................... 63 2.1.3 Practical Wisdom................................................................................. 64 2.1.4 Zagzebski’s Theory of Knowledge..................................................... 66 2.1.5 Virtue Ethics and Epistemic Value.................................................... 69 2.1.6 Cognitive Agency................................................................................. 74 2.1.7 A Reorientation of Epistemology: R. Roberts & W.J. Wood......... 77 2.2 A Virtue Reliabilist Approach: E. Sosa................................................ 82 2.2.1 Sosa on Epistemic Virtue and Knowledge........................................ 82 2.2.2 Epistemic Value and Evaluation......................................................... 84 2.2.3 Desire for the Truth “As Such”?.......................................................... 87 2.2.4 Epistemic Normativity and Intellectual Ethics................................. 89 2.2.5 Intellectual Ethics and Reflective Knowledge................................... 91 2.3 Nexus........................................................................................................ 93

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3 Lonergan’s Cognitional theory ..................................................................... 97 3.1 Cognitive Self–Appropriation............................................................... 98 3.1.1 The Aim of Cognitional theory.......................................................... 98 3.1.2 Cognition and Intentionality............................................................102 3.1.3 Cognition and Consciousness..........................................................103 3.1.4 The Desire to Know..........................................................................104 3.1.5 Bias......................................................................................................107 3.2 Cognitional Structure...........................................................................108 3.2.1 The Question for Intelligence...........................................................108 3.2.2 The Question for Reflection.............................................................111 3.2.3 The Question for Deliberation.........................................................114 3.2.4 Knowing and Looking.......................................................................114 3.3 Corollaries..............................................................................................120 4 Lonergan’s Epistemology.............................................................................125 4.1 Theory of Knowledge...........................................................................126 4.1.1 The Concept of Epistemology..........................................................126 4.1.2 The Possibility of Knowledge...........................................................128 4.1.3 Knowledge and True Judgment........................................................132 4.2 Epistemic Justification..........................................................................135 4.2.1 Justification and Reflective Understanding.....................................135 4.2.2 Invulnerability and Virtue.................................................................140 4.2.3 Cognitive Authenticity......................................................................142 4.2.4 Verification and Truth–Entailment.................................................144 4.3 A Contextualization .............................................................................147 4.3.1 Lonergan and Foundationalism........................................................147 4.3.2 Coherentism?......................................................................................150 4.3.3 Lonergan and Reliabilism.................................................................151 4.3.4 Lonergan and Virtue Epistemology.................................................153 4.4 Summary................................................................................................155 5 Epistemic Responsibility and Cognitive Agency......................................159 5.1 Cognitional Structure and the Will....................................................162 5.1.1 Adjusting the Terminology ..............................................................164 5.1.2 Experience and the Will ...................................................................165 5.1.3 Intelligence and the Will...................................................................167 5.2 Epistemic Responsibility and Voluntariness in Judgment................168 5.2.1 Judgment, Act and Assent.................................................................168 5.2.2 Judgment as Personal Commitment................................................169 5.2.3 The Will and the Judgments of Fact................................................171 5.2.4 The Will and the Criteria of Invulnerability...................................174 5.2.5 Decision in Judgment?.......................................................................175 5.2.6 Can a Cognitive Subject Be Irrational?............................................176 5.3 Epistemic Responsibility and Voluntariness in Belief......................177

Contents 5 5.3.1 The Notion of Belief..........................................................................177 5.3.2 The Analysis of Belief........................................................................179 5.4 Epistemic Responsibility and Free Will.............................................181 5.4.1 Perspectives on Responsibility..........................................................183 5.4.2 Lonergan’s Notion of Freedom.........................................................184 5.5 Conclusion.............................................................................................192 6 Epistemic Value and Evaluation..................................................................199 6.1 Intellectual Good in Insight..................................................................201 6.1.1 The Objective of the Intellectual Desire..........................................201 6.1.2 Knowledge as Finality and Perfection of the Subject.....................203 6.1.3 Intellectual Good and the Ethics of Insight.....................................206 6.2 Intellectual Good in Method................................................................208 6.2.1 Ethics of Method and Its Value–Theory........................................208 6.2.2 Self–Transcendence and Conversion...............................................211 6.2.3 Intellectual Value and Intentional Feelings.....................................211 6.2.4 Cognitive Self–Transcendence and Intellectual Conversion.........213 6.2.5 Cognitive and Moral Self–Transcendence......................................215 6.2.6 Intellectual Good and Human Good..............................................218 6.3 Conclusions............................................................................................220 6.3.1 Value of Knowledge...........................................................................220 6.3.2 Lonergan’s Theory of Justification....................................................224 6.3.3 Ethical and Epistemic Evaluation.....................................................236 Conclusion........................................................................................................229 Bibliography.....................................................................................................241 1 Works by Bernard J.F. Lonergan.................................................................241 2 Works by Other Authors.............................................................................244 Subject Index....................................................................................................261 Name Index......................................................................................................267

List of Abbreviations AT Lonergan, “Aquinas Today: Tradition and Innovation” B Lonergan, “Belief: Today’s Issue” CS Lonergan, “Cognitional Structure” FEDP St. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica: Complete English Edition in Five Volumes, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province IN Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding IR Lonergan, “Insight Revisited” MH Lonergan, “Metaphysics as Horizon” MT Lonergan, Method in Theology PL Lonergan, Phenomenology & Logic: The Boston College Lectures on Mathematical Logic and Existentialism PPK Lonergan, “Philosophical Positions with Regard to Knowing” S Lonergan, “The Subject” UB Lonergan, Understanding & Being: The Halifax Lectures on ‘Insight’ V Lonergan, Verbum: Word & Idea in Aquinas

For my parents

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Acknowledgments

his book would not have been possible without the help and support of many people. First, I thank Dr James G. Murphy, for the kindness, encouragement, and academic rigor he exhibited while directing my doctoral studies. I am grateful to the staff of Milltown Institute, to Prof Santiago Sia and Dr William Mathews in particular, who helped me in both practical and scholarly issues at different stages of my research, as well as Prof Garrett Barden, Dr Andrew Beards, and the anonymous reviewer of the Marquette University Press for their scholarly evaluation of my work and courteous suggestions for improving same. I am indebted to the staff of the Jesuit Library in Milltown Park, to Dr Raymond Moloney of the Irish Lonergan Centre, and to Ms Kerry Cronin and the late Dr Joseph Flanagan of the Lonergan Institute at Boston College, who were all very helpful in providing me with the resources of their respective centres and libraries. A big thanks goes to Frs Fergus O’Keefe, Henry Grant and John FitzGerald who generously dedicated some of their spare time to read the manuscript at its various stages and to correct my English. I am most grateful to the Irish Jesuit Province for their hospitality and generous financial support during my studies in Dublin. Over the last years, I have been sustained by the encouragement and interest of many academic colleagues, my family and friends, my Jesuit confreres in Croatia and Ireland. To all of them I express my gratitude and appreciation.

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Introduction

pistemology uses some concepts which are usually understood as normative and evaluative. We talk about what a person should or should not believe or judge in certain epistemic circumstances. We evaluate beliefs or judgments with respect not only to whether they are true, but also to whether they are justified. We evaluate the person’s intellectual qualities and motivations with respect to whether she is reasonable, rational, wise, impartial, and epistemically responsible in general. In certain ways this is comparable to the way we evaluate persons and their actions in ethics. It is true that we cannot simply take it for granted that the epistemic evaluation of beliefs and subjects is one case of ethical evaluation, but they seem to be, at least, analogous. Whether or not epistemic normativity is a case of ethical normativity, there are good reasons to assume that notions like ethics of belief, ethics of inquiry or truth–ethos, which we often come across in epistemology, are relevant for understanding epistemic normativity. The question of ethical factors in epistemology has historically underlain Western epistemology, even if it was not always the main focus of attention. The interest for that topic has been revived in recent years in an unexpected setting—that of analytic epistemology. The debate has reached such a degree of liveliness that some commentators speak of a “value turn” in epistemology.1 The issues discussed are mainly the question of the validity of the traditional deontological concept of epistemic normativity, either in itself or in contrast to its consequentialist alternative, and the question of the relevance of virtue ethics in epistemology (virtue epistemology). Epistemologists try to assess which of these perspectives offer the soundest explanation of epistemic 1  See Wayne Riggs, “The Value Turn in Epistemology,” in New Waves in Epistemology, ed. Vincent Hendricks and Duncan Pritchard (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 300; and Duncan Pritchard, “Recent Work on Epistemic Value,” American Philosophical Quarterly 44 (2007): 85.

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normativity as we ordinarily conceive it, and how they cope with the general problems involved in the issue, such as voluntariness of belief and the relationship between theoretical and practical reasoning. It is important to notice that the topic of the recent debate on the nature of epistemic normativity is narrower than the more traditional (and less controversial) topic of the ethics of inquiry. The recent debate has its roots in the conceptual analysis of knowledge and its related concepts. Thus, the debate around the issue of epistemic normativity has started as a debate on whether normative knowledge–related concepts, like epistemic justification and warrant, imply a kind of normativity that can be characterized as ethical. Nevertheless, since various models of epistemic justification and warrant incorporate the notions of epistemic duty, virtue and value, there has arisen the question whether these notions can be understood without a reference to the broader ethics of inquiry. In his cognitional theory Bernard J.F. Lonergan (1904–1984) frequently uses normative concepts. In his main works, Insight and Method in Theology,2 he writes about normative patterns of cognitive operations motivated by the pure, disinterested, and unrestricted desire to know. He gives a privileged place to the transcendental precepts (be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible) in human intentionality, which includes cognitive activity. In his terminology judgment appears as an act of personal commitment, and belief is described as a free and responsible decision of the will to believe a given proposition.3 He writes about the normative horizon of cognitive functions in the self–transcendence of the subject, about objectivity as authentic subjectivity, and about responsible self–appropriation as the way to obtain it. Self–appropriation and self–transcendence can 2  See Bernard J.F. Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957), vol. 3 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, eds. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), henceforth cited in text as IN; and Method in Theology (London: Darton, Longman, Todd, 1972), henceforth cited in text as MT. 3  The term “belief ” has different meanings in Lonergan and in recent analytic epistemology. The counterpart of “belief ” in the recent (analytic) epistemology is Lonergan’s term “judgment.” In Lonergan’s terminology “belief ” usually means judgment based on testimony (see our section 5.3.1). I will give priority to the popular recent terminology and try to make clear when I am talking about “belief ” in Lonergan’s sense.

Introduction 11 be reached only through intellectual conversion. Most of the notions mentioned have both epistemological and ethical connotations. At the same time they are the most likely candidates to contain the key–elements of Lonergan’s account of the sources and criteria of epistemic normativity. The connection between ethical and epistemic normativity in Lonergan’s cognitional theory is not restricted to a set of expressions and statements. Lonergan’s philosophy as a whole emphasizes the centrality of the conscious and responsible subject in all human intentional activities. Human intentionality has an essential unity—cognition is one of its aspects. Cognitional normativity cannot be understood in isolation from a wider horizon of normativity implied in other aspects of intentionality, including that of moral deliberation. The unity of the intentional structure, as well as the priority of moral responsibility in it, is at the core of human intentionality as Lonergan pictures it in his later Method in Theology. The idea of the unity of the intentional structure is at work in his earlier Insight too, even if the position of moral responsibility in it is not yet as clear as in his subsequent works. In any case, the idea that the person must grow in integrity and responsibility in order to grow in knowledge of the world and of herself in a comprehensive and reliable way permeates the whole of Lonergan’s cognitional theory. Yet, Lonergan’s approach is not as one–sided as it may look. Lonergan is an epistemological and ontological realist determined to establish and protect the necessary connection between human cognition and the being. When he writes about the true judgments that our cognition obtains through the reflective grasp of the “virtually unconditioned,” and about the being known through them, it is the rational necessity that takes sway and little room is left for any epistemic freedom. It will be interesting to see how Lonergan harmonizes the elements of responsibility and necessity in cognition. The task of my research is to explore Lonergan’s model of epistemic normativity in view of its potential connections with ethical normativity, using the questions, categories, and terminology of the contemporary epistemological debate on the same topic. More precisely, it will be a study of Lonergan’s model of (1) epistemic evaluation, (2) epistemic value, and (3) epistemic responsibility, in the spirit of a constructive and critical dialogue with the principal positions on the same issues in the contemporary debate. Some of the positions in the contemporary

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debate are closer to Lonergan’s approach than the others. The closest ones seem to be those that seek to explain epistemic normativity in terms of the subject’s intellectual qualities and attitudes, and that is the approach typical for virtue epistemology. For that reason I have chosen virtue epistemology, both in its reliabilist and responsibilist versions represented by Ernest Sosa and Linda Zagzebski respectively, to be the principal partner in the dialogue with Lonergan. Why is such research interesting? The study of the ethical elements in Lonergan’s model of epistemic normativity is important for understanding Lonergan’s theory of knowledge, and important because of its potential relevance for the understanding of the relation between ethics and epistemology in general. Hence, this research wants to be essentially a contribution to the study of Lonergan’s cognitional theory, but also—indirectly—an indication of the value Lonergan’s cognitional theory may have for the study of epistemic normativity in general. In a dialogue each side is supposed to make its contribution to their common cause. First, it is important that there is a common cause, and in our case there is one. One of the principal philosophical interests Lonergan has at heart generally is to illuminate the role of the active and responsible subject in inquiry against the tendencies to neglect or “truncate” that subject. And he does not stop there. What Lonergan aims at is a pedagogy of self–appropriation that will make possible a new, personalist and holistic understanding of human rationality. The current debate on epistemic normativity also intends to illuminate the importance of the subject’s responsibility in knowledge, if there is any. Those epistemologists who argue that personal responsibility is important for the understanding of the concept of knowledge—most prominently virtue responsibilists—regularly combine their interest in epistemic normativity with some broader pedagogical issues in human intellectual life. The group I am talking about includes Linda Zagzebski, James Montmarquet, Robert Roberts, W. Jay Wood, and Lorraine Code. All of them have expressed some interest in (re)defining human rationality in a personalist way, like Lonergan. Although the study of the models of rationality is outside the scope of this research, it is helpful to be aware of this shared interest of theirs. What do I expect the current debate on the ethics of belief and virtue epistemology can contribute to the understanding of Lonergan’s position? I expect it will provide us with useful conceptual tools and

Introduction 13 an elaborate framework for our exploration of Lonergan’s model of epistemic normativity. The advantage of the current debate is that it has formulated the related questions with remarkable clarity, marked out the range of their answers, and developed a terminology necessary for a constructive debate. It abounds with arguments and—predictably—even more with counterarguments for each option. The latter point is important because I am also interested in the challenges Lonergan’s model has to face, and in the strategies it should adopt in order to confront them. Not least, the current debate is embedded in the context of philosophical problems that emerged after Lonergan’s work on cognition. On the other hand, I will point to the potential Lonergan’s cognitional theory has for the improvement of those positions which fundamentally agree with his own. Here I think, first, of his four–level model of cognitive operations, which can be used to account for the complexity of the cognitive state of knowledge, and for cognitional agency at the levels where there seems to be little room for it, e.g., at the level of perception. Lonergan’s criticism of what he calls “animal extrovertedness” can be used as a platform against the prioritizing of animal knowledge at the expense of reflective knowledge in some reliabilist theories. Then, I will point to the advantages of Lonergan’s idea of self–transcendence for the choice and foundation of intellectual virtues. Also, the model of responsibility and freedom that Lonergan follows, even if it may not be exclusively his, throws light on some puzzles about the voluntariness in cognition. After having pointed to the possibility of dialogue, I must warn of its limits. There is a significant difference between Lonergan’s philosophical background and the setting of the current analytic debates on epistemic normativity regarding their terminology, their conceptual framework, and their general philosophical horizons. It is true that the analytic tradition is now more open to a variety of approaches than it was fifty years ago, but the difference between the traditions remains. There is, then, the specificity of Lonergan’s particular terminology and framework. Lonergan expressed his idea of epistemic normativity in his own terms, which are not always easy to interpret in the context of current epistemological debates. As we will see, they do not even agree about the usage of basic terms like “epistemology,” “knowledge,” and “belief.” To make it more complicated, there is a development in Lonergan’s thought, partly reflected in his terminology. In addition,

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Lonergan is much more liberal than contemporary analytic epistemologists in combining epistemology with psychology and metaphysics, and swapping concepts between them. By contrast, the analytic tradition prides itself with its one–bite–at–time approach and its small– step way of arguing by examples and counterexamples. The level of criticism in this critical dialogue also has a limit. Lonergan does not follow the method of conceptual and linguistic analysis, and his way of arguing (though not necessarily the content of his arguments) would be vulnerable from that point of view. Nonetheless, although one can agree that Lonergan’s philosophical language is not always as clear and consistent as it could be, insisting on a radical application of linguistic analysis to his text would distract us from the positive contributions of his philosophy. On the other hand, the approach the analytic tradition prides itself on has been seen as its limitation by its adversaries. Lonergan would probably dismiss some basic ideas of the analytic tradition as “counter–positions” and warn of its deficient “differentiation of consciousness.”4 The differences will certainly come out as we proceed, but I am looking for the interests common to both sides. Hence, much of my research will indispensably be a work of reconstruction and interpretation, which has its risks. There are also limitations there that are specific to my topic. I have mentioned that the contemporary analytic debates on the nature of epistemic normativity stem from the problems of conceptual analysis of knowledge. The debate is not about intellectual ethics. It is not about why knowledge is good, or what is the purpose of knowledge, or why knowledge in one area is better than in other. It is, basically, the question of why knowledge is better than accidentally true belief. The side in the debate that suggests the elements of ethical normativity for the explanation of that difference is asked to show that the suggested

4  For Lonergan’s ideas on philosophical pluralism, see Gerard Walmsley, Lonergan on Philosophic Pluralism: The Polymorphism of Consciousness as the Key to Philosophy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008); Andrew Beards, Method in Metaphysics: Lonergan and the Future of Analytical Philosophy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008); Joseph Fitzpatrick, Philosophical Encounters: Lonergan and the Analytic Tradition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005); and Hugo Meynell, “Modern Philosophy and the Flight from the Subject,” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 20 (2002): 199–216.

Introduction 15 ethical elements are in some way required by the concept of knowledge itself, and not only by the practical rules of inquiry. In Lonergan’s writings there is no such explicit distinction between the normativity implied in the concept of knowledge and the normativity of inquiry. I will have to start with the analysis and interpretation of his epistemology and his intellectual ethics, with the hope they will allow us to draw some conclusions about his contribution to the more specific issue of the normative relationship between knowledge and true belief. Hence, we will proceed in a spiral from Lonergan’s cognitional theory to epistemology, from epistemology to meta–epistemology, from his model of cognitive agency to epistemic responsibility, from his model of intellectual good to epistemic value. Furthermore, my topic belongs to the field of epistemology and requires a study of Lonergan’s theory of knowledge and justification, but it would be better called a meta–epistemological study. When I make an inquiry into Lonergan’s epistemology, it will not be a systematic evaluation of the success or failure of his theory of knowledge and justification. It will be an interpretation of his epistemology in comparison with the contemporary epistemological theories, while pointing to some advantages and disadvantages of his theory where suitable. Although mine is an inquiry into the role of ethical factors in Lonergan’s model of epistemic normativity, and I will have to enter into his ethical theory (or theories), my topic is not a critical study of his ethics. My topic is not about the epistemology of the ethical judgment of value, but rather about those cases where epistemic evaluation implies at least some elements of ethical evaluation. I must point here to a controversial issue. A chronic difficulty of introducing ethical elements into epistemology is that we may have to face all the open questions about normative concepts and the nature of normativity in ethics. Epistemologists try to avoid that as much as possible and I will try to do the same. The idea is to bridge the gap towards ethics, but not to enter too deep into its grounds. We will remain in the grey zone. I will now articulate some hypotheses that will guide us through this research. Obviously, my basic presupposition is that a critical interpretation of Lonergan’s model of epistemic normativity in the light of the recent debates on ethics of belief and virtue epistemology is possible and that it is promising in view of our understanding of human knowing. I hope this presupposition will be confirmed simply as our inquiry progresses.

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There is not much doubt that Lonergan’s idea of normativity in inquiry, or in our intellectual life, is indeed an ethics of inquiry, and it can relatively easily be situated into the framework of his general ethical theory. That is clear in the context of his Method in Theology. It is a little less clear in the context of his Insight, but I hope to show that it is so. Anyway, since Lonergan does not have an explicit treatise on the ethics of inquiry, a clarification is helpful in both contexts. The study of Lonergan’s—perhaps it is safer to say Lonerganian— model of epistemic normativity in the narrow sense, i.e., regarding the difference between knowledge and true belief, is much trickier for the reasons I have already mentioned. I hope to show that the model of epistemic normativity in Lonergan’s theory of judgment and belief, both in Insight and Method, does connect it with his theories of general ethical normativity there. Both ethical and epistemic normativity are derived from the same intentional movement towards self–transcendence through self–appropriation and situated in the same normative horizon of the transcendental notion of value and being. Again, this may not be a surprise for Lonergan scholars, but we will see that the path towards that conclusion is not so smooth when we tackle the issues of cognitive agency and the autonomy of the cognitional in the context of Lonergan’s theory of the “virtually unconditioned.” Regarding the relationship between Lonergan’s and virtue–epistemological model(s) of epistemic normativity, there is a fundamental similarity between them because they all understand epistemic normativity as something that pertains to the subject of beliefs or judgments rather than to the features of beliefs alone. Lonergan’s model, however, is in fundamental agreement with the virtue responsibilist model of epistemic normativity as represented by Zagzebski, because they understand the epistemic qualities of the subject, i.e., his motivating attitudes and virtues, as personal traits of the subject in a moral sense. While doing that, neither of them neglects the objective side of the success and reliability of intellectual qualities of the subject in achieving truth. Lonergan’s and Sosa’s models of epistemic normativity agree on the necessity of the objective aspect of epistemic evaluation, which is the truth–conduciveness of intellectual abilities. Lonergan’s model, however, is in basic disagreement with the virtue reliabilist model as represented by Sosa, because the latter has, from the Lonerganian point of view, a too limited, “truncated,” picture of the subject in cognition.

Introduction 17 Regarding the source of epistemic responsibility and epistemic value, Lonergan’s approach is certainly not deontologist. He writes too much about desires and finality in the context of responsibility for, and the value of knowledge. On the other hand, he cannot be an epistemic consequentialist that reduces the value of knowledge to the achievement of true beliefs. Again, his idea of epistemic responsibility is tied to the immanent normativity of the desire to know and too personalist to allow for that sort of reductionism. The desire to know in his cognitional theory is both a personal desire and an objectively normative obligation in itself. I think this is another point where Lonergan’s theory of epistemic normativity gets closer to Zagzebski’s neo–Aristotelian eudemonist model of epistemic value, and I will propose that their theories share a similar explanatory and defence strategy there. She argues that epistemic value is an aspect of general intellectual flourishing, and the latter is a part of the general pursuit of a holistic human well–being. The later Lonergan’s emphasis on the role of intentional feelings in his value theory makes the similarity with Zagzebski’s virtue epistemology stronger, since she formulates the basic epistemic motivation in terms of the love of knowledge (or the love of truth). Regarding the sources for this research, I have relied principally on Lonergan’s Insight and Method in Theology, which contain the most complete presentations of his cognitional theory and of his philosophical thought in general. I have also benefited extensively from Lonergan’s other philosophical writings in search for clarification and more precise formulation of the ideas that appear in the two principal works. Thanks to the already published volumes of the Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, we also have at our disposal excellent editions of numerous essays and lectures, as well as major works that had not been published previously. As mine is not intended to be a historical study but rather a problem–centred one, in the matters of the development of Lonergan’s thought I mostly rely on the available historical and interpretative studies. Regarding the rest of the secondary bibliography, both from the fields of the contemporary epistemology and of Lonergan studies, more will be said in Chapter 1. Let me now outline the chapters of this study. The reader has by now encountered several new concepts and distinctions that belong almost exclusively to the recent debate on the nature of epistemic normativity. Limited space did not allow me to explain them in this introduction.

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Hence, it will be the aim of Chapter 1 to introduce the terminology, problems, and the basic positions of that debate, as well as to give an overview of the status of the issue in the context of Lonergan studies. Chapter 2 is a more thorough introduction to virtue epistemology and to its two basic branches. The virtue responsibilist position is represented by Zagzebski and, in a lesser extent, by Roberts and Wood. The virtue reliabilist position is represented by Sosa. We will focus on their theories of epistemic normativity, in particular on their models of epistemic virtue and epistemic value, and all in the perspective of their critical dialog with Lonergan’s cognitional theory. Chapter 3 is an introduction to the basics of Lonergan’s cognitional theory. Its aim is to familiarize the reader with the general context in which Lonergan’s epistemology and its underlying model of normativity are situated. Chapter 4 offers a reconstruction, interpretation, and contextualization of Lonergan’s theory of knowledge and justification in the light of the contemporary theories of knowledge. I will pay special attention to the analysis of Lonergan’s terms “epistemology” and “knowledge,” and to the conditions for knowledge and justification in his theory of the virtually unconditioned. Although that is a secondary aim of this study, I will propose that Lonergan’s epistemology is best interpreted as a version of responsibilist virtue epistemology. Chapter 5 is a study of Lonergan’s model of cognitive agency and epistemic responsibility. The principal question of that chapter is whether Lonergan’s model of cognitive agency allows for a sufficient degree of epistemic freedom, and epistemic freedom in an adequate sense that will permit us to characterize his notion of epistemic responsibility as a form of moral responsibility. There is a significant difference between Lonergan’s concept of freedom and responsibility, rooted in the Scholastic concept of voluntariness, and the one that underlies the recent debates on the relationship between the epistemic and the moral responsibility. Chapter 6 is a study of Lonergan’s notion of epistemic value. I will analyse that notion in Insight and Method separately. Lonergan’s turn towards value theory in Method situates his vision of the intellectual good in a context that is different from the one of Insight, but that does not seem to change essentially his account of epistemic value. The meta–epistemological structure that provides the background for his account of epistemic value remains the same, and allows us to see its

Introduction 19 similarities with Zagzebski’s account. After having studied the relationship between epistemic and moral virtue in Lonergan’s epistemology in Chapter 4, the relationship between epistemic and moral responsibility in Chapter 5, and the relationship between epistemic and moral value of in Chapter 6, I expect that Chapter 6 will allow us to draw some conclusions about the relationship between the epistemic and the moral evaluation in Lonergan’s meta–epistemology.

1 Epistemic Normativity & Ethics

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A Status Quaestionis

he object of our research is to investigate the role of ethical elements in epistemic normativity in the epistemology of Bernard Lonergan, explored in the light of current discussions on virtue epistemology and on the ethics of belief in general. Before we pass to the analysis of Lonergan’s concept of epistemic normativity, I will offer in this chapter a general introduction to that epistemological issue, and a presentation of its status in Lonergan studies. Hence, the aims of this chapter are to acquaint readers with the questions and terminology of the debates, to indicate the basic positions and current status of the debates on the issue, and to show that the question of ethical elements in epistemic normativity is relevant both for epistemology in general and for the understanding of Lonergan’s cognitive theory.

1.1 General Orientation 1.1.1 Epistemic Normativity We designate sciences or disciplines as descriptive when they follow their methods to describe, understand and explain phenomena, or briefly, to acquire knowledge of phenomena. We designate disciplines as normative when they prescribe norms, standards and rules that we ought to respect in order to achieve knowledge. The terms “normative” and “normativity,” however, do not refer only to norms and rules. In addition to norms and rules, they can refer to all properties indicated by ought–concepts, value–concepts, and the practice of instruction and evaluation. Here we will use the term “normative” in that broader

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sense that includes values as well as norms, the good as well as the right. Epistemology has traditionally been regarded as a normative discipline. Although most epistemologists of old first tried to describe how our cognition functions, this descriptive analysis was just an initial step in their project of instructing us how our cognition should function, or what we should do in order to achieve the best possible cognitive results.1 Their aspirations were to determine what the ultimate standard of our cognitive results should be, to enable us to evaluate our cognitive results in the light of that standard, and to provide us with the regulations for our cognitive undertakings oriented towards their objective. Thus, when we speak of epistemic normativity we have in mind the totality of the properties which make epistemic standards (norms, rules, ideals, goals) such that we value and follow them. Epistemic normativity is often linked with the evaluation of beliefs with respect to whether they reach the status of knowledge. “Knowledge” refers here to propositional knowledge, understood as a special case of true belief. Ernest Sosa, for example, represents the mainstream idea of epistemic normativity when he specifies, “Epistemic normativity is a status by having which a true belief constitutes knowledge.”2 Several concepts have been proposed as appropriate articulations of that epistemic normative status of true belief. So we will come across suggestions that in order to obtain the status of knowledge true belief ought to be justified, warranted, virtuous, reasonable, and so on. However, to say that we are studying epistemic normativity does not mean that we aim at assessing which one of these normative concepts is correct or the most suitable for the definition of knowledge. We are interested in the nature of epistemic normativity itself, that is to say, in the structure and sources of the normativeness of the normative epistemic concepts. We will see later that some epistemologists criticise the choice of propositional knowledge as the privileged epistemic good. Understanding and wisdom are the most prominent among the 1  Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, and Kant, for example, offered clearly normative epistemologies, but whoever wants to study their epistemologies has to disentangle them first from their psychological and/or metaphysical models of cognition. 2  Ernest Sosa, A Virtue Epistemology: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), 88.

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suggested alternatives. Some epistemologists criticise the choice of belief as the primary bearer of epistemic normativity and the focus of epistemic appraisal. They suggest we should focus on cognitive agents and cognitive abilities. In this study I basically presuppose the mainstream idea of epistemic normativity as represented in Sosa’s definition. I will also focus on propositional knowledge as the most prominent epistemic good. Nonetheless, when I speak of epistemic normativity that will not exclude our evaluation of other epistemic goods (e.g., understanding, wisdom, “intellectual eudemonia”), the evaluation of other cognitive states besides beliefs (e.g., insights, judgments, acts of intellectual virtue), or the evaluation of the cognitive subject qua agent. We must leave open the possibility that these different objects of evaluation in epistemology may be relevant for our understanding of epistemic normativity even in the case of propositional knowledge. The aforementioned alternative suggestions are also important for us because they may be closer to Lonergan’s idea of epistemic normativity. Let us clarify one more thing. Most epistemologists agree that there is a specific epistemic normativity, that it has to do with the demand that claims to knowledge be objectively justified or warranted, and that it supposes the truth as the fundamental or, at least, one of the fundamental epistemic values. Let us call the norms and values that pertain to the specific epistemic normativity “internal” epistemic norms and values. It is also a fact that our cognitive behaviour and cognitive results can be evaluated from the point of view of pragmatic interests. These pragmatic interests dictate what should be the object of inquiry, why some true beliefs are better than other true beliefs, or why false beliefs may be better than their correspondent true beliefs in a particular situation. For example, such pragmatic interests determine the choice whether we should invest our intellectual energy and resources in the search for the cure of a terrible disease, or rather in the search for the precise number of sand grains at the local beach. Or, suppose that a patient has a disease which scientists believe is incurable. The patient’s unjustified belief that her disease is curable may be more helpful for her recovery and, thus, more pragmatically justified than the scientists’ epistemically justified belief that her disease is not curable. The normativity these examples deal with is not representative of the specific epistemic normativity. In fact, the history of philosophy has seen it as

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a potential danger for the objectivity that the accounts of the specific epistemic normativity try to preserve. We will characterise such pragmatic concerns as “external” to epistemic normativity.3 But what if there are some ethical norms and values, and in that sense non–epistemic, the aim of which is precisely to protect the objectivity of supposedly pure epistemic norms and values? If there are such ethical norms and values, then they should be considered “internal” to the specific epistemic normativity. Our research is very much about them. Their possibility and function are still subject to debate, and we will have to cope with that tension throughout this research. Another term that we will sometimes use is “meta–epistemology.” Since there is no great agreement about its usage and it is hard to find in philosophical dictionaries, it requires some clarification. By meta–epistemology I mean, first, the question of the programmatic and methodological approach to epistemology, whether epistemology should be an analysis of the common sense concept of knowledge, a study of cognitive behaviour and cognitive physiology, a metaphysics of the rational soul, or something else. My research is not meta–epistemological in that sense. Nonetheless, we have to be aware that these different approaches do influence a study of epistemic normativity. For that reason, I want to make clear that I presuppose the common sense concept of knowledge like most of the epistemologists quoted in this research. Second, meta–epistemology sometimes refers to the study of the possible social, cultural, psychological, and political influences on our ideas about knowledge and rationality. In this sense, meta–epistemology is a section of sociological, cultural, political, or psychoanalytical hermeneutics. That is not the aim of my research. The results of these studies have implications for epistemology, but epistemologists usually hold that epistemic concepts and principles imply a specific normativity that defies social and cultural influences. In a third sense, meta–epistemology is the study of the nature and the sources of the specific internal epistemic normativity. It is the sense in which our research on Lonergan’s model of epistemic normativity can be considered meta–epistemological. The meta–epistemology we are primarily interested in is the inquiry into what kind of evaluation is 3  Such pragmatic interests may be, nonetheless, relevant for the degree of epistemic justification or warrant required in a situation.

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implied in our epistemic regulative practice and in concepts like justification, warrant, objectivity, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.

1.1.2 Epistemology & Other Normative Disciplines One of the main questions a study of epistemic normativity has to tackle is whether the “internal” epistemic normativity is merely epistemic, or whether it is possible that epistemology depends on, or overlaps with, similar normative disciplines in the matter of normativity. Logic is a normative discipline and its normativity is intertwined with epistemic normativity. In the past logic and epistemology were not always clearly distinguished. Today we agree that logic is about the formal correctness of reasoning, while epistemology is about the correctness of believing particular propositions in regard to their logical form as well as to their content. That makes epistemic normativity wider than the logical one. Aesthetics is another philosophical discipline that tends to be normative when looking for the standards of beauty and artistic quality. The ancient and medieval philosophers used to take seriously the idea of the fundamental unity of the true, the good, and even the beautiful. Intellectual desire and aesthetical desire have much in common. We will see later that Sosa notices a similarity between how we evaluate the cognitive performance and the performance in different skills and arts.4 Anyway, studying the possible connection between the true and the beautiful is not in our aim, not least because neither Lonergan nor recent epistemologists discuss that issue. More than with any other philosophical discipline, we associate normative concepts with ethics. Normativity in matters of human conduct and character is the proper object of ethical studies. Yet, ethics is not interested in every sort of normativity of human conduct, but only in the one that has to do with the specific moral quality of a person and her actions, i.e., whether they are good or bad, to praise or to blame, right or wrong in the moral sense. Moral appraisal in the strict sense is possible only where we find morally conscious, willing and responsible subjects of actions, at least in potentia. As some of our oughts and goods do not imply direct moral appraisal, they must be 4  See Sosa, Virtue Epistemology, 23, 70, 91. The aim of his comparisons is, however, to show the autonomy of these different forms of evaluations in respect to their specific underlying values.

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regulated by other normativities, like epistemic, aesthetical, sociological, psychological… or simple prudential normativity. However, the border between these different sorts of normativity is not clear and leaves room for important interconnections. One such interconnection that stands in the centre of this research is the one between ethics and epistemology. Some philosophers distinguish between the terms “ethical” and “moral,” although not always for the same reason. In some circles “moral” refers to the concrete norms of human behaviour, while “ethical” refers to the general study of the concepts and rules involved (i.e., meta– ethics). Elsewhere “moral” refers to the right, while “ethical” is about the good. The distinction goes so far as to associate the moral with the deontological appraisal (sometimes specifically with Kantian ethics), while the other ways of appraisal are qualified as ethical. In other opinions the moral concerns specifically sexual behaviour, or what affects other people, or what relates to the commandments of God, or what has to do with the sense of guilt, and so on, while the ethical concerns the good in general. Anyway, there is not much agreement about the usage of the terms “moral” and “ethical.” In our context, the terms “moral” and “ethical” will generally be treated as synonyms. They refer to what we admire and promote, praise and blame in human acts, character, and their resulting state of affairs, supposing that such acts, traits, and their consequences are under some kind of person’s voluntary control, or could become (more) voluntary in a normal human being through maturation and education. Hence, when I speak of “ethical elements,” it comprises both the traditional terminology of objective and subjective moral value. But we can speak of the objective moral value of an act or state of affairs only if that act or its resulting state of affairs can in a realistic scenario be a result of the person’s free agency. To put it roughly, in the context of this research “ethical” refers to any sort of evaluation which does not make what we normally call personal moral goodness irrelevant.

1.1.3 Ethics of Belief and Intellectual Ethics The study of the epistemological issues that apparently overlap with ethics is often called ethics of belief. Thanks to W. Clifford’s article

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with the same title,5 the expression “ethics of belief ” has been traditionally reserved for the question of the relation between evidence and assent in a judgment, i.e., what level of evidence (or epistemic justification) for a belief a subject should have to be justified in assenting to (or holding) that belief. The roots of the expression and of the debate on the ethics of belief are in Christian theological epistemology.6 The ethics of belief today is not limited to the issue of assent to religious beliefs, nor to the relation between evidence and belief. More and more frequently it refers to the question of the relationship between epistemic and ethical normativity in general. In that sense, the topic of our research on Lonergan’s model of epistemic normativity can be situated into the broad debate on the ethics of belief. Some epistemologists find the expression “ethics of belief ” problematic because of problems with the voluntariness of belief. They suggest that we should replace that expression with the similar, but less problematic “ethics of inquiry.”7 They usually argue that most epistemic norms concern the activity of acquiring knowledge rather than the state of belief and that inquiry is, in any case, more obviously an activity than belief. Eventually, justification may be a function of the quality of processes and abilities in inquiry rather than a function of evidence alone. So the shift from the ethics of belief to the ethics of inquiry may encourage the shift in the choice of the paradigmatic activity in 5  See William K. Clifford, “The Ethics of Belief ” (1877), in Lectures and Essays, eds. Leslie Stephen and Frederick Pollock (London: Macmillan, 1886), 339–363. 6  The target of the previously mentioned Clifford’s article was religious belief. Locke’s ethics of belief was formed in the context of the assent to religious faith too. See John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV, 17, 24 (1690), ed. Peter Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 687–688. 7 See Christopher Hookway, “Cognitive Virtues and Epistemic Evaluations,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 2 (1994): 211– 212; Linda Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 4; and Robert Audi, “Doxastic Voluntarism and the Ethics of Belief,” in Knowledge, Truth and Duty: Essays on Epistemic Justification, Responsibility, and Virtue, ed. Matthias Steup (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 105.

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epistemology from isolated beliefs to inquiry. Such change would be welcomed especially among virtue epistemologists, who maintain that the belief–focused epistemology has neglected much of the dynamism of our intellectual life (see below 2.3.). The ethics of inquiry also seems a suitable framework for Lonergan’s model of epistemic normativity. While analysing the cognitive acts of insight, judgment, belief, Lonergan relentlessly reminds us that they are stages in the incessant unfolding of the intellectual drive that leads the subject towards the build–up of knowledge (see IN 303, 398). Actually, I am sure that our study of Lonergan’s cognitional theory in Chapters 3–4 will show that for him inquiry is the paradigmatic intellectual activity, rather than having isolated insights, judgments, or beliefs. The aforementioned change of paradigm has been already implemented in his epistemology. Nonetheless, I do not think that we should switch our attention from belief to inquiry too quickly. It is not at all unreasonable to expect that voluntary involvement and ethical appraisal can be found at the level of singular epistemic units such as belief and judgment. Epistemological tradition abounds with voluntarist and moral terminology in reference to beliefs and judgments. Perhaps we will not have to switch from the ethics of belief to the ethics of inquiry at all. Another designation for the study of common issues in epistemology and ethics is intellectual ethics. Our study of the ethical elements in epistemic normativity in Lonergan can be seen as a part of intellectual ethics, though we will have to be careful with that designation. There is no doubt that our intellectual life has its moral aspects but, as in the case of the ethics of inquiry, the problem is that the domain of intellectual ethics may be too broad. Intellectual ethics sometimes comprises the issues that obviously do not have much to do with internal epistemic normativity. Intellectual rights in authorship, some issues in the ethics of communication and in the ethics of research, for example, are often considered a concern of intellectual ethics. We will find authors that consign some issues to the domain of intellectual ethics precisely with the intention to show that they are not necessary for the explanation of the specific epistemic normativity.8 8  See Sosa, Virtue Epistemology, 88–91; and Alvin Goldman, “The Unity of Epistemic Virtues,” in Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility, ed. Abrol Fairweather and Linda Zagzebski (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 31.

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Our research could also be described in terms of the ancient distinction between practical and theoretical reasoning. In very simple words, practical reasoning is the reasoning that guides our actions.9 By contrast, theoretical reasoning guides our thoughts, especially our beliefs. It cannot pass unobserved, however, that our thoughts and beliefs have their ends—the truth, for example. We may say, then, that our inquiry into epistemic normativity is the study of the role of practical reasoning in theoretical reasoning. Again, caution is necessary. The study of practical reasoning is a huge project—it involves all sorts of decision–making and goal–oriented reasoning. It is even wider than ethics. It aims at a general theory of rationality. We do not want to dissolve epistemic normativity in that sea of different types of normative reasoning. Practical reasoning operates in our choices about pragmatic ends and some of them refer to our intellectual activity, but we have warned earlier that pragmatic goals and norms are normally considered external to epistemic normativity (see 1.1.1.). We are not interested in all decision–making in our intellectual life, but only in the one that is relevant for the specific epistemic normativity. Having made all these terminological distinctions, we must say that Lonergan’s delimitation of the discourse on epistemic normativity is not so clear. His discourse on epistemic normativity often overlaps with his discourse on what it means to be rational, with his theory of bias, and with his ideas on the different grades of priority among the areas of knowledge. It will not always be easy to disentangle his notion of epistemic normativity from his ideas on the general nature of rationality and from his intellectual ethics in a broad sense. Yet, we will have to do that in the following chapters.

1.2 Analogies between Epistemic & Ethical Normativity There are significant indications of analogy between epistemic and ethical normativity. The first and most visible indication is the presence of some typically ethical normative concepts in epistemology. We 9  Practical reasoning can be seen as merely instrumental, i.e., it guides the subject how to reach the end of his action without determining what that end is. A broader notion of practical reason incorporates the ability to determine the end of action.

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talk about epistemic evaluation/appraisal, epistemic justification, epistemic responsibility, epistemic motivation, epistemic value, epistemic duty, epistemic obligation, epistemic permissibility, epistemic rights, epistemic rules, epistemic imperatives. The concept of intellectual or epistemic virtue has been in use from ancient Greek times. Moreover, from ancient times epistemologists have been using the language of cognitive acts when speaking about judgments, assents, decisions to believe, and the language of intellectual desires and drives. Some new concepts, like epistemic freedom, epistemic akrasia, and intellectual conversion, have been introduced into recent debates. The second indication of the analogy between epistemic and ethical normativity is the fact that we actually evaluate in epistemology and we do it in a way that very much—whether rightly or wrongly—resembles moral evaluation (see below 1.2.1). The third indication of the analogy between epistemic and ethical normativity, one which is not so obvious but has been noticed and studied more intensively in recent times, is that the principal theories of epistemic normativity share similar structures with the principal ethical theories and with the accounts of practical reasoning in ethics. When epistemologists try to answer the question how and why we evaluate in epistemology, they simply use the conceptual frameworks of main ethical theories. Ethical deontologism, consequentialism, utilitarianism, eudemonism, relativism, conventionalism, all have their counterparts among epistemological theories—not equally popular, not necessarily successful, and not always explicit.10 The question is whether the relationship between ethical and epistemic normativity or appraisal is purely terminological, illusory, even misleading, or whether there is a deeper mutual dependence, especially whether the origin and efficacy of epistemic normativity depends on ethical normativity. Several positions are possible.11 (1) Epistemic 10  See William P. Alston, “The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification,” Philosophical Perspectives 2 (1988): 257–299; Linda Zagzebski, “Virtue in Ethics and Epistemology,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 71 (1997): 3–5; and Philip Percival, “Epistemic Consequentialism I,” Supplement to the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 76 (2002): 121–151. 11  Here I partially follow the division and terminology of Susan Haack. See Susan Haack, “‘The Ethics of Belief ’ Reconsidered,” in Knowledge, Truth and Duty, ed. Steup, 21.

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appraisal can be a special case of ethical appraisal; (2) there can be a partial overlap between them; (3) they can be merely analogous; (4) they can be completely independent or irrelevant for each other; (5) they can be identical; (6) ethical appraisal can be a special case of epistemic appraisal; (7) they can be deeply associated in an unknown way. Although one might regard some of these options as barely plausible, they have all had supporters in the history of philosophy. For instance, ancient Gnostic and Neoplatonic ethics presupposed (6). Socrates’ identification of knowledge and virtue would probably imply (5). Radical empiricism would support (4). The option (7) may be true, of course, but it isn’t much help. A few epistemologists today defend (1). Many epistemologists would rather choose a cautious via media and try to find the answer between (2) and (3), though it is not easy to clarify what it means for epistemic and ethical appraisal to be analogous, where they overlap, and whether the overlap is a major or a minor one. We may be able to locate Lonergan somewhere between (1) and (2), as we will see later (Chapter 6). For the moment, our aim in this chapter is to show that the elements of ethical normativity are indeed relevant for the understanding of epistemic normativity, though we do not intend to reach an authoritative judgment on whether the relationship between the epistemic and the ethical normativity is more than just analogous. In this section (1.2) we will point primarily to the similarities between epistemic and ethical evaluation and value. In the following section (1.3) we will consider their dissimilarities.

1.2.1 The Fact of Epistemic Evaluation First, do we evaluate in epistemology? No doubt. Not only is knowledge better than ignorance, and true belief better than false, but also knowledge is better than accidentally true belief. We give credit for knowledge, but not for a lucky guess that happens to be true (though we do not hide our liking for those who seem to be particularly lucky guessers). Justified belief is better than unjustified. Warranted belief is better than unwarranted. Responsible believing is praiseworthy, irresponsible believing is blameworthy. Reliable cognitive abilities are desirable, and better than the provisional ones. We admire a person of intellectual fairness and integrity, while we deplore foolishness and

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condemn bias. We disapprove of blind certainty, but we do not like hard–line sceptics either. What do we evaluate in epistemology? We evaluate beliefs as to whether they are true or false, but also whether they are justified, warranted, responsible. We evaluate theories as to whether they are coherent or not, and inferences as to whether they are sound or not. We evaluate some cognitive capacities as to whether they are functioning properly. We praise intellectual talents, though we do not blame their absence. We evaluate cognitive subjects, as to whether they have developed their cognitive abilities enough, as to whether they are intellectually virtuous in a particular respect or in general. In many cases we also praise and blame the subjects for their beliefs, judgments, acceptances, assents. We blame them for believing a proposition without sufficient evidence, for trusting an unreliable source, or for not believing a reliable source, in particular when an important thing is at stake. We blame a person for allowing other motivations to interfere with her inquiry and for not permitting the motivation of “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” to hold sway, though we will not praise the same person if she becomes exaggeratedly doubtful. Hence, cognitive subjects, cognitive abilities and intellectual character traits, single and combined beliefs, judgments, assents and acceptances, are all subject to some kind of epistemic evaluation. When do we evaluate in epistemology? It seems that we evaluate both when the subject seems to be have control over his cognitive behaviour, and when he does not have such control (e.g., in the case of natural abilities and talents). Epistemic evaluation operates both from a subjective and an objective point of view, in proportion to the degree of the responsibility expected and actually exercised, but also in proportion to the degree in which the desired goal has been realized, whether or not there has been any responsibility on the part of the subject. Does epistemic evaluation in all these cases come close to how we evaluate in ethics? Yes and no. No, if we presuppose that moral appraisal always requires a high degree of voluntary involvement. Yes, if we allow that moral appraisal applies to a fair range of low–degree voluntary actions and qualities. The distinction between the objective and the subjective point of view that is common in ethical appraisal is one way to deal with the variety of the types and degrees of voluntariness in human behaviour. Epistemic appraisal also distinguishes

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these two points of view and operates from both of them. It may seem that epistemology tends to emphasise the objective pole of evaluation, while it is more typical for ethics to emphasise the subjective pole. Nonetheless, epistemic appraisal does operate at the subjective level of evaluation, and that is enough to take the possibility of connection between epistemic and moral responsibility seriously.

1.2.2 Epistemic Duty Every evaluation happens in view of something, in a perspective or horizon of normativity. What is the horizon of epistemic evaluation? We can approach this question from two different positions, which also indicate the two major directions in the theories of ethical normativity. First, we can understand it as a question about the values and ends that underlie epistemic appraisal. Epistemic operations, processes, states and faculties aim at some ends. Hence, the study of epistemic appraisal should start with the study of these valuable ends. We can call this approach teleological. However, a more typical approach in modern epistemology is not to ask about epistemic values and ends, but to try to explain epistemic appraisal in terms of an a priori epistemic duty or obligation from which all epistemic norms emanate in the forms of imperatives, permissions and prohibitions. Hence, epistemic operations and states are evaluated in view of their respect or disrespect of the epistemic duty. Following the now established epistemic terminology, we will call this approach deontological. Note that “deontological” is not the same as “deontic.”12 The concepts like duty, obligation, permission, prohibition, right, wrong, and justification itself, are all deontic, but that does not mean they necessarily imply a deontological model of normativity. Instead of an a priori obligation, they can be understood in personalist and eudemonist terms of good life, for example. 12  Some epistemologists do not make this distinction. For example, when Alston argues against the deontological concept of justification he actually attacks all deontic concepts of justification. On the other hand, Zagzebski rejects deontological explanation of epistemic normativity, but she keeps deontic concepts like epistemic duty and obligation, and proposes a eudemonist explanation for them. See Alston, “The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification,” 257–260; and Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 232–255.

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Somewhat anachronistically, the roots of epistemic deontologism have been traced back to Descartes and Locke because of the appearance of deontic terms in their epistemologies.13 A clearly deontological approach is more evident, though not yet worked out as a theory, in some nineteenth century epistemologies, such as the aforementioned Clifford’s ethics of belief. Clifford argued that it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. Accepting beliefs on insufficient evidence is, in his terms, “sinful” because it is a defiance of the “duty to mankind” that we have as rational beings.14 Epistemic deontologism had been, however, more a matter of presupposition than conclusion until its role was clearly recognized in the post–Gettier debates on the theory of knowledge.15 Since then it has been frequently associated with the classical internalist theories of justification, such as that of Roderick Chisholm. It still has supporters, mainly among the representatives of the various new versions of internalism.16 The starting point of the deontologist account of epistemic justification is the fact that knowledge is a form of the positive appraisal of belief and that positive appraisal is not given gratuitously. The claim 13  For an account of the history of the deontological tradition in epistemology, see Alvin Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), Ch.1. 14  See Clifford, “Ethics of Belief,” 344. Because of its history, the ethics of belief is often associated with the deontological approach in epistemic normativity. It is not uncommon for the supporters of the teleological approach to sometimes describe themselves as opponents of the ethics of belief, even if they may basically agree that there are ethical factors in epistemic justification. 15  See Edmund L. Gettier, “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” Analysis 23 (1963): 121–123. 16  See Roderick M. Chisholm, Perceving: A Philosophical Study (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1957), 6–7, 9–10, 13–14; “Firth and the Ethics of Belief,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (1991): 119–128, and Theory of Knowledge, 3rd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1989), 57–58; Carl Ginet, “Deciding to Believe,” in Knowledge, Truth and Duty, ed. Steup, 63–76; Matthias Steup, “Doxastic Voluntarism and Epistemic Deontology,” Acta Analytica 15 (2000): 25–56; John Pollock, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1986), 7–8.

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to knowledge must be justified somehow. It has come almost naturally to think of epistemic justification as a compliance with the obligation that is imposed on us in virtue of our being rational creatures. For a belief to be epistemically justified means to meet the requirements of epistemic duty. Hence, a subject is justified in believing a proposition as long as he does not violate the epistemic obligations required for believing that proposition, or as long as believing that proposition is permissible for him.17 Do epistemic deontologists hold that epistemic justification is a sort of ethical appraisal? It seems that most older–generation epistemic deontologists have understood that respect for epistemic obligation is praiseworthy in a moral sense, while its violation is morally blameworthy. That is certainly true of Clifford’s and Chisholm’s versions of epistemic deontologism. Chisholm explicitly defended the position that epistemic duty is a moral duty and, consequently, epistemic normativity is a sort of ethical normativity.18 It is possible, however, to argue for the analogy between epistemic and moral duty without subordinating the former to the latter, and without even implying their deeper connection.19

1.2.3 Epistemic Teleology A different approach to the question of the source of epistemic normativity is the one that states that epistemic norms and standards owe their normativity to the value of the epistemic end that is to be achieved. Because it defines epistemic normativity in terms of the epistemic end, we will call that approach teleological. We are aware, however, that the term “teleological” in ethics refers to some very different and often contrary theories. Both Aristotelian virtue ethics and utilitarian consequentialism are categorised as teleological ethical 17  “A justified belief is one that it is ‘epistemologically permissible’ to hold.” Pollock, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, 7. See also Ginet, “Deciding to Believe,” 75. 18  See Clifford, “Ethics of Belief,” 344; and Chisholm, “Firth and the Ethics of Belief,” 119. Compare with Roderick Firth, “Chisholm and the Ethics of Belief ” (1959), in In Defense of Radical Empiricism: Essays and Lectures by Roderick Firth, ed. John Troyer (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 143–155. 19  See Pollock, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, 7–8.

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theories, but they propose different ideas about what the primary object of evaluation is and what the end is. In the Aristotelian virtue ethics the primary object of evaluation is the character of the person, or simply the person as good or bad. The end in view of which the person is praised or blamed is the perfection of human nature, or eudemonia, traditionally understood as a life of virtue. In utilitarian consequentialism the primary object of evaluation is the consequences of actions. The end in view of which the consequences are evaluated is the best possible state of affairs, often understood as quantitatively measurable. Consequentialism has its own account of virtue, but virtue is defined as a trait or capacity that makes the person habitually successful in producing good states of affairs. The supposed intrinsic moral goodness or virtuousness of the person has a marginal role, if any. As we will see in the following sections, something similar happens in the accounts of epistemic teleology proposed by epistemic consequentialism and responsibilist virtue epistemology. Epistemic consequentialism evaluates cognitive acts in respect to the value of their cognitive results.20 Now, consequentialism in matters of cognition does not have to be committed to the objectivity of epistemic norms. It may have some other goals in view. For instance, an evolutionary theory of epistemic value may propose the survival of species as the measure of epistemic normativity. Epistemic consequentialists, however, usually defend the specificity of epistemic normativity and reject the idea that the justification of each belief is a function of that very belief ’s pragmatic consequences. What they see as the primary epistemic goal and the critical value for epistemic justification is true belief, or simply the truth. Hence, according to typical epistemic consequentialist accounts, a belief–producing act, process, or faculty is justified only if it produces a sufficiently high ratio of true beliefs over false beliefs.21

20  See Alvin Goldman, Epistemology and Cognition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 95, 97–103; and Percival, “Epistemic Consequentialism I,” 121, 129, 132. 21  See Goldman, Epistemology and Cognition, 3, 26.

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Epistemic consequentialism is a theory of epistemic normativity typical of reliabilist theories of justification.22 Reliabilism comes in the forms of process–reliabilism and faculty or virtue reliabilism. An example of process reliabilism is Alvin Goldman’s theory of justification. He argues that for a belief to count as knowledge it must be caused by a generally reliable process.23 Faculty reliabilism, analogously, argues that the crucial role in epistemic justification belongs to reliable intellectual faculties, virtues, capacities, or competence. An example of faculty or virtue reliabilism is Ernest Sosa’s epistemology, which will be one of our principal partners in dialogue in this research. Both in process and faculty reliabilism, reliability means high expectancy of successful truth–conduciveness. True beliefs are a counterpart of states of affairs in ethical consequentialism. But the fact that epistemic consequentialism uses a model of epistemic normativity that has roots in one ethical theory does not mean that epistemic consequentialism sees epistemic appraisal as a sort of moral appraisal. As a matter of fact, it typically does not. Goldman and Sosa, for example, recognize the importance of intellectual ethics as discipline, but deny the relevance of moral appraisal for epistemic normativity.24 There is, of course, the general problem in consequentialist ethical theories of finding a place for a specifically moral value that is not explainable in terms of pragmatic utility.

1.2.4 Virtue Epistemology Before I delineate the responsibilist virtue ethical understanding of epistemic teleology and epistemic value, I have to say a few words 22  There is a significant agreement among epistemologists about that. See Goldman, Epistemology and Cognition, 103; Jonathan Dancy, “Supervenience, Virtues and Consequences,” in Knowledge, Belief, and Character: Readings in Virtue Epistemology, ed. Guy Axtell (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 78, 83; Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 8–10; Percival, “Epistemic Consequentialism I,” 125. 23  See Goldman, Epistemology and Cognition, 51. In a later article Goldman also favours faculty–reliabilism. See Alvin Goldman, “Epistemic Folkways and Scientific Epistemology,” in Knowledge, Belief, and Character, ed. Axtell, 10. 24  See Sosa, Virtue Epistemology, 88–91; and Goldman, “The Unity of Epistemic Virtues,” 31.

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about the development of recent virtue epistemology. My presentation of the virtue epistemological approach to epistemic normativity in this chapter will be sketchy, because our second chapter is aimed to provide a more detailed analysis of two leading virtue–theoretical models of epistemic normativity, those of Sosa and Zagzebski. Virtue epistemology was first proposed by Sosa as a reliabilist theory of knowledge, a faculty reliabilist theory, to be precise.25 Essentially, faculty reliabilism maintains that true belief is justified or warranted when it is acquired through an apt exercise of the subject’s reliable cognitive faculties in their suitable environment. Sosa calls his version of faculty reliabilism a virtue epistemology and argues that for a belief to qualify as knowledge “it requires the belief to derive from an intellectual virtue or faculty.”26 The term “intellectual virtue” in Sosa’s usage refers to all cognitive faculties and skills, innate or acquired (e.g., perception, introspection, memory, logical reasoning), which prove to be reliable in acquiring a high ratio of true beliefs. Note that virtues in this context do not have much to do with moral virtues and virtue ethics.27 Sosa’s intellectual virtues are defined and unified exclusively by their successful truth–conduciveness. He puts the emphasis on reliability rather than on virtuousness. His approach has been rightly called virtue reliabilism and from now on we will normally refer to his theory by that name.28 25  See Ernest Sosa, “The Raft and the Pyramid: Coherence versus Foundations in the Theory of Knowledge” (1980), in Knowledge in Perspective: Selected Essays in Epistemology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 165-191. Plantinga’s proper function theory has many characteristics of a virtue reliabilist theory, but he does not accept virtue terminology. See Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1993); and “Why We Need Proper Function,” Nous 27 (1993): 78–81. 26  Ernest Sosa, “Reliabilism and Intellectual Virtue,” in Knowledge, Belief, and Character, ed. Axtell, 31. 27  When Sosa proposed his virtue epistemology the first time he suggested that there may be a parallelism between intellectual and moral virtues, but he did not follow that path later. See Sosa, “The Raft and the Pyramid,” 189–190. 28  Sosa usually calls his theory of knowledge “virtue perspectivism.” The terminological distinction between virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism was introduced first by Guy Axtell and has been accepted by

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Reliabilism is in general an externalist theory of justification. Externalism maintains that justificatory grounds or reasons do not have to be accessible to the subject’s consciousness. The subject can have knowledge without being able to give reasons why his belief is justified or warranted, nor is he obliged to do that. It is, therefore, much easier for externalists to explain why we do not have to be all epistemologists in order to have knowledge, and why little children and perhaps animals can have knowledge. It is not easy, however, for virtue reliabilists to explain why we give so much importance to epistemic responsibility in justification of our beliefs and in our cognitive behaviour generally.29 One group of virtue epistemologists finds the neglect of epistemic responsibility a major problem with virtue reliabilism. Lorraine Code argues that it is actually epistemic responsibility that should have the status of the central epistemic virtue from which all other intellectual virtues radiate. She also suggests that the best way to explain epistemic responsibility is in terms of ethical virtue theory. Accordingly, she christens her vision of virtue epistemology “virtue responsibilism.” That name now refers to all virtue epistemologies that make similar suggestions.30 many other authors afterwards. See Guy Axtell, “Recent Work on Virtue Epistemology,” American Philosophical Quarterly 34 (1997): 410–430. 29  John Greco’s “agent reliabilism” proposes a definition of knowledge that incorporates epistemic responsibility, i.e., conscientiousness, while remaining a form of virtue reliabilism. I am afraid, however, that his “agent reliabilism” may be a little too specialized to be a suitable partner in the dialogue with Lonergan’s epistemology. See John Greco, “Agent Reliabilism,” Philosophical Perspectives 13 (1999): 273 –296; “Virtues in Epistemology,” in Oxford Handbook of Epistemology, ed. Paul K. Moser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 287–315, and “Knowledge as Credit for True Belief,” in Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology, eds. Michael DePaul and Linda Zagzebski (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 111–134. 30  See Lorraine Code, “Toward a ‘Responsibilist’ Epistemology,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 45 (1984): 29–50, and Epistemic Responsibility (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1987); James A. Montmarquet, “Epistemic Virtue,” Mind 96 (1987): 482– 497, and Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993); Linda Zagzebski, “Intellectual Virtue and Religious Epistemology,” in Faith in Theory and Practice: Essays on Justifying

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Code does not, however, apply her virtue responsibilism to the traditional problems of the analytic theory of knowledge and justification. Hers is a program for a more radical reorientation in epistemology. She objects that the traditional analytic epistemology has become too narrow and has neglected the areas of cognitive life that deserve priority. She emphasises that the individual cognitive subject is a part of a community, with all the moral requirements that fact entails, and that the appropriate context for epistemological analysis is the descriptive narrative, rather than exchange of abstract examples and counter–examples, which is so typical for analytic epistemology.31 James Montmarquet also argues that epistemic responsibility, or epistemic conscientiousness, is the principal intellectual virtue. We need epistemic responsibility for understanding normativity in epistemology. Epistemic normativity presupposes that the person is responsible for making a reasonable effort in regard to truth at the motivational and practical level.32 He goes a step further towards virtue ethics by modelling intellectual virtue after Aristotle’s notion of moral virtue. Montmarquet defines intellectual virtues as acquired character traits defined by their specific motivation, which is the desire for truth. Intellectual virtues are the qualities that a person who desires truth would want to have.33 The motivational component is necessary for the intellectual virtue while, in his specific view, truth–conduciveness is not. His examples of intellectual virtues are impartiality, intellectual courage, intellectual sobriety, open–mindedness, perseverance, and so

Religious Belief, eds. Elizabeth S. Radcliffe and Carol J. White (Chicago: Open Court, 1993), 171–187; Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind (1996); W. Jay Wood, Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998); Robert C. Roberts and W. Jay Wood, Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007). Jonathan Kvanvig proposes a version of virtue epistemology which emphasizes the social aspect of intellectual virtue, but his theory cannot be called responsibilist. See Jonathan L. Kvanvig, The Intellectual Virtues and the Life of the Mind: On the Place of the Virtues in Epistemology (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992). 31  See Code, “Toward a ‘Responsibilist’ Epistemology,” 39–40, and Epistemic Responsibility, 201, 253–254. 32  See Montmarquet, Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility, 55. 33  See Montmarquet, Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility, 30.

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on. By contrast, memory and perception are not virtues, but simply cognitive faculties. Montmarquet maintains that the acquisition and exercise of intellectual virtue is sufficiently under the control of the person that the person can be praised or blamed for having or not having them, and that appraisal is of the sort we find in ethics. Epistemic virtues, hence, involve a moral element. Responsibility in thinking is not separate from responsibility in acting. He believes that it is possible to form a unified normative science that connects ethics and epistemology.34 Zagzebski’s virtue responsibilism is considered the most systematic development of a unified theory of intellectual and moral virtue.35 She argues that intellectual virtues are a subset of moral virtues, that epistemic evaluation is ultimately a special case of ethical evaluation and that normative epistemology is a branch of ethics.36 Besides, she applies her model of intellectual virtue to the conventional issues in analytic theory of knowledge and justification. Though her success in the latter enterprise has been questioned,37 the issues she raised as well as the solutions she proposed in the theory of epistemic normativity, have had a notable impact on the successive debates.

1.2.5 Epistemic Value Let us now return to the issue of epistemic teleology and value. As we have pointed out earlier, virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism both approach the issue of epistemic normativity from a teleological point of view, yet differ remarkably on the nature of epistemic value. 34  See Montmarquet, Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility, ix–x, 108. 35  See Axtell, “Recent Work on Virtue Epistemology,” 411; Jason Baehr, “Character in Epistemology,” Philosophical Studies 128 (2006): 479; and John Greco, “Virtue Epistemology,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology–virtue/ (accessed May 1, 2009). 36  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 258. 37  See John Greco, “Two Kinds of Intellectual Virtue,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (2000): 179–184; William P. Alston, “Virtue and Knowledge,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (2000): 185–189; Baehr, “Character in Epistemology,” 495–496; Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 11–15.

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There are many epistemic values. Alvin Plantinga lists twenty one of them and says there are a thousand others.38 In a broad sense, all epistemic states and results that we consider important can count as epistemic values. Among them, knowledge is the most interesting one for us, though some epistemologists, Jonathan Kvanvig most notably, would give priority to the value of understanding.39 Anyway, when we ask about epistemic value, we want to know which one is the value, the end from which all other valuable epistemic norms and goods receive their status of being distinctively epistemic. The history of epistemology is unanimous in the view that the epistemic value and goal par excellence is the truth (and avoiding error as its obverse).40 That is not, of course, the truth as a semantic or ontological issue. In the context of recent debates on epistemic value, “truth” usually means having true beliefs or true judgments. Older epistemologies often understood the truth as a value “in itself,” “for its own sake,” something more than a quality of belief. Lonergan is no stranger to the latter meaning either. Before we proceed, I have to point out that the question of the value of truth or true beliefs is different from the question of the value of knowledge. True beliefs may be valuable because of their usefulness, or in themselves, or because of their role in Aristotelian theoretical contemplation, or for some other reason. We do not have to deal with that issue here. We will have to return to it, though, in our fifth chapter in the context of Lonergan’s meta–epistemology. For the moment, we will simply follow our basic intuition that the truth is valuable, without further questions. Why do we value knowledge? Our prima facie response is clear: because it provides us with true beliefs. There is a problem, however, with this spontaneous response. Knowledge is not mere true belief. For example, we can have a true belief by a lucky guess without having 38  See Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function, 3; and Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 33. 39  See Jonathan L. Kvanvig, The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); also Linda Zagzebski, “Recovering Understanding,” in Knowledge, Truth and Duty, ed. Steup, 237–243. 40  I do not intend to enter into the controversy whether the pursuit of the truth is a different value from avoiding falsehood. For more information about that, see Paul Horwich, “The Value of Truth,” Nous 40 (2006): 347–360.

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knowledge. Knowledge must be more valuable than true belief. But why? Does this mean that there is an extra epistemic value in knowledge added to the value of true belief? This is the point where different notions of epistemic teleology come to light. The problem of the higher value of knowledge over true belief was noticed rather early in the history of epistemology. It was first formulated in Plato’s Meno where Socrates and Meno discuss “why knowledge is prized higher than correct opinion, and [why] knowledge differs from correct opinion.”41 If you have a correct opinion, i.e., true belief, about the way to Larissa, that true belief will bring you to Larissa anyway. Why bother about knowledge, then? The immediate, but not accepted response in Plato’s dialogue was that knowledge is necessarily successful and safer than mere correct opinion (i.e., true belief ). Socrates then gives a response to the question in the form of a definition: knowledge is different from correct opinion because it is “tied down” by giving “an account of the reason why,” or as he puts it in Theaetetus, because knowledge is “true judgment with an account [with lógos].”42 In recent times the question of the value of knowledge has been revived in the context of the reliabilist theory of knowledge, more precisely in the debate between the reliabilist and responsibilist versions of virtue epistemology.43 It was Zagzebski who suggested that a theory of knowledge should be able to give an account of the value of knowledge. She has been arguing ever since that the externalist theories of knowledge, virtue reliabilism included, do not give a satisfactory explanation of the nature of epistemic value.44 41 Plato, Meno, 98a6–8, in Plato: Complete Works, trans. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 895–896. 42 Plato, Meno, 98a3 (Cooper 895), and Theatetus, 201d (Cooper 223). 43  Duncan Pritchard maintains that the reasons for the increased interest in epistemic value should be looked for in the rise of virtue epistemology and in the dissatisfaction of some epistemologists with the way the work on the issue of Gettier problem has been developing. See Duncan Pritchard, “Recent Work on Epistemic Value,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 44 (2007): 85–86. 44  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 300, 312, and “From Reliabilism to Virtue Epistemology,” in Knowledge, Belief and Character, ed. Axtell, 113–123.

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Zagzebski argues that the value of knowledge cannot be reduced to the value of true belief alone. If knowledge is true belief plus something, e.g., a factor that makes true belief justified or warranted, that something must have its specific value that makes it worthy of pursuit. As we will see in the second chapter, she finds that added element in the motivational component of the intellectual virtue, which is the desire of knowledge or the love of the truth and, ultimately, the intellectual eudemonia. Since Zagzebski holds that the cognitive subject as agent is responsible (in a limited but sufficient degree) for his epistemic motivations and cognitive self–formation, he is also praiseworthy or blameworthy for that in a moral sense. Zagzebski accepts deontic moral evaluation in epistemology, though it is not based on an a priori deontology, but on an eudemonist virtue ethics. Also, she argues that hers is an agent– based model of epistemic normativity, which explains why knowledge is a credit given to the knower, rather than a praise of a single act of belief, or a praise of a cognitive ability separated from the knower. By contrast, epistemic deontologism and epistemic consequentialism are both act–based. Zagzebski’s virtue theory is Aristotelian, but her account of epistemic evaluation is not. Aristotle is reluctant to apply moral appraisal to intellectual virtues.45 In his theory, moral and intellectual virtues have different functions, i.e., practical and theoretical, in relation to character and to knowledge, respectively. Zagzebski is aware of the differences and argues against Aristotle’s strict separation between the realms of the theoretical and of the practical.46 The position that the (internal) value of knowledge consists in something added to the value of the truth is often called epistemic value pluralism. The position that the truth is the value that underlies any other (internal) value of knowledge is called value monism.47 45  Aristotle writes, “We divide judgments into false and true, not into bad and good, whereas decisions we divide more in the latter way.” Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 3.2.1111b33, trans. Christopher Rowe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 126. Aristotle is aware that judgment is also praised, but, “the judgment is praised by reference to how true it is.” Nicomachean Ethics 3.2.1112a7 (Rowe 127). 46  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 137–164. 47  See Michael DePaul, “Value Monism in Epistemology,” in Knowledge, Truth and Duty, ed. Steup, 170–186.

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Sosa responded to Zagzebski’s epistemic value–pluralist challenge by reaffirming his value monism. Though Sosa recognizes that different values are involved in the value of knowledge, in one way or another, they all depend on the value of truth, so that truth remains the fundamental epistemic value.48 Whether the pursuit of truth has a moral value and how the value of truth relates to other values is a question that belongs to the domain of intellectual ethics, which means that it is not necessary for the explanation of the specific normativity which is implied in the concept of knowledge.49 Since it deals primarily with the relation between acts and consequences, assuming that they can be abstracted from their agents, epistemic consequentialism tends to be neutral regarding cognitive voluntarism and moral appraisal of cognitive activity.50 Reliabilism is fairly successful in avoiding the issue of epistemic responsibility and so it can avoid the question of its relationship with moral responsibility. Virtue responsibilists’ tendency to enter more deeply into the field of ethics makes it more entangled with the problems of what is and what is not a specific moral value (and whether there is one), with the problem of cultural and historical relativity of virtue, with different concepts of eudemonia, and with a bunch of other expected and unexpected thorny ethical issues. Of course, it’s worth it, if virtue responsibilism is plausible.

1.3 Difficulties for the Ethical Models of Epistemic Normativity 1.3.1 Autonomy of Theoretical Reason I have pointed to some similarities between ethical and epistemic evaluation which may support the case for a close connection between them. Let us now have a look at some difficulties for that position. First difficulty is the established conviction in western thought that epistemology concerns theoretical reason while ethics concerns 48  See Ernest Sosa, “The Place of Truth in Epistemology,” in Intellectual Virtue, eds. DePaul and Zagzebski, 177. 49  See Ernest Sosa, “For the Love of Truth?” in Virtue Epistemology, eds. Fairweather and Zagzebski, 49, 52–53; and Virtue Epistemology, 88–91. 50  See Percival, “Epistemic Consequentialism I,” 121–122.

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practical reason, and these two domains should be kept apart. At the base of this conviction is an ancient faculty psychology that distinguishes the intellect and the will as two different faculties of the soul, often as two different metaphysical parts of the soul. Many ancient and medieval philosophers (including Aristotle, who gave that faculty psychology a scientific format) warned that this distinction should not be regarded as a separation, but that did not remove a certain unease about mixing epistemic and ethical normativity together. The Enlightenment reaffirmed and strengthened the division between the will and the intellect, an important reason being the protection of the autonomy of science. Thus, although faculty psychology has been abandoned as a theory, it is still alive as a part of mentality and a common assumption. Our commonsense reluctance to introduce ethical, and hence practical normativity into epistemology is not unfounded. We are suspicious that subordinating theoretical reasoning to practical normativity may weaken the objectivity of theoretical reason. The idea that theoretical reason has an objective aim seems more likely than the idea that practical reason as such does so. Whatever difficulties we have with reaching the agreement on what is the fact, reaching the agreement on what is good looks even trickier: Why risk it? Of course, our common sense is no stranger to moral evaluation of cognitive activity either, and not without reason. One possible response to the aforementioned suspicion is that even if we accept that theoretical reason is more successful in obtaining objectivity in cognition, still theoretical reason alone cannot explain the imperative of epistemic objectivity for the subject. We may need ethical normativity in order to protect the objectivity of theoretical reasoning against the unjustified or harmful meddling of pragmatic subjective motivations. But are ethical factors necessary for the understanding of knowledge and similar epistemic normative concepts? Does a proposition of the type “S knows that p (and not only truly believes that p)” contain moral praise for S? Is it necessary to be a good person to know that p? Our first intuition is that knowledge does not have to be a moral appraisal. First, it is true that we give a person credit for knowledge, but we give her the same credit for her intelligence and good memory, and this does not necessarily imply moral praise. Second, an excellent knower can be a bad person that lacks important virtues like intellectual honesty and integrity, and hardly shows any love for truth. The

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defenders of the moral nature of the epistemic appraisal of knowledge will have to show that a person who lacks virtuous motivation for her belief to be true and justified does not deserve credit for knowledge even if her true beliefs are produced in an otherwise reliable way. Put in that way, that does not look like an easy task. It is not impossible, though, but our tendency to give the title of knowledge too quickly in some areas rather than in the others, as well as our assumption of reliability of some forms of cognition might be put in question. We will return to this issue in Chapter 2.

1.3.2 Voluntariness of Belief The next problem, though not separated from the previous ones, is that there seems to be a crucial difference between ethical and epistemic appraisal regarding the voluntariness of their respective objects of evaluation. Ethical “ought” implies “can.” We will not blame a person (subjectively) for an action that was not sufficiently under her control. The counterpart of action in epistemology is belief. But it does not seem that our beliefs, nor any of relevant similar propositional attitudes (judgment, doubt, assent, withholding of assent, opinion, wish, fear, and hope that p), are wholly under our control. Perceptual beliefs, introspective beliefs, and simple inferences—which make up the largest part of our beliefs—do not seem to be under our control at all. Therefore, if we have control over our beliefs at all, its range must be rather restricted. If an epistemic “ought” contains a moral “ought” at all, it contains it in a quite limited sense.51 Furthermore, though in the history of epistemology beliefs and judgments were regularly referred to as cognitive or mental acts, that classification has been put in question.52 The language of mental acts is not problematic in the case of judgment, but mid–twentieth century analytic epistemologists found it problematic in the case of belief, while at the same time judgment lost its popularity. It is true that we can begin to believe that p and cease to believe that p. The emphasis is on “we can,” because it is not only possible but it is frequent to simply 51  For this sort of argument against the moral evaluation in epistemology, see H.H. Price, “Belief and the Will,” Supplement to the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 28 (1954): 1–27. 52  See H.H. Price, Belief: The Gifford Lectures (London: George, Allen, Unwin, 1969), 20.

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find yourself believing something. On the other hand, sometimes a belief unnoticeably evaporates. In the meanwhile the belief that p is somehow there. We know it is there because we can activate it every so often, and because it affects our behaviour even when we do not think about it explicitly. That is why belief is now usually categorized as a propositional disposition, i.e., a dispositional mental state or attitude in relation to the truth or falsity of a proposition. Of course, this new understanding of belief does not prove that belief is involuntary. It does not exclude the assent or the decision to believe at the moment of its acquisition or reaffirmation. Actually, even if one acquires a belief without explicit conscious participation, one will be required to affirm it sooner or later. The recognition that belief is a dispositional state does, however, call attention to that foggy side of belief when it appears and vanishes without explicit decision of its “owner.” When we talk about deliberating on beliefs, deciding to believe, assenting to beliefs, we presume that our beliefs are voluntary and that we can choose to believe or not to believe in specific circumstances. The epistemological position that believing is voluntary is called doxastic voluntarism.53 According to the type or level of voluntary control in beliefs, epistemologists usually distinguish direct and indirect doxastic voluntarism. A subject has direct voluntary control over an act if he can do it or not do it by a simple intention, at will. For instance, he can control his conduct as to raising his hand or not, according to his intention. A subject has indirect voluntary control over an act if he cannot do it at will, but can do it after a series of interventions in the process of its realization. For instance, he cannot directly control his weight, but can control it indirectly through a special diet. The arguments against doxastic voluntarism point, first, to the problem with the concept of voluntary belief and, second, to the psychological difficulties with the voluntariness of belief. Regarding the concept of voluntary belief, Bernard Williams argues that belief by definition aims at truth. If voluntariness of belief means that we can believe any 53  The expression “doxastic” follows the (somewhat simplified) translation of the Greek dóxa as belief. Sometimes the term “volitionism” is used in epistemology to distinguish it from “voluntarism” in ethics. See Louis P. Pojman, Religious Belief and the Will (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), xi–xii.

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proposition irrespective of its truth, it seems that the concept of belief is irreconcilable with the concept of voluntariness. He writes: One reason [against doxastic voluntarism] is connected with the characteristic of beliefs that they aim at truth. If I could acquire a belief at will, I could acquire it whether it was true or not; moreover, I would know that I could acquire it whether it was true or not. If in full consciousness I could will to acquire a ‘belief ’ irrespective of its truth, it is unclear that before the event I could seriously think of it as a belief, i.e., as something purporting to represent reality.54

This argument has got some support, but it has not been found as clear and strong as Williams intended it to be.55 Nevertheless, there is always the psychological argument, suggested by Williams too, but older than that, and later more systematically exposed by William Alston.56 That argument says that it is a psychological matter of fact that we do not and cannot acquire beliefs voluntarily. The evidence simply imposes a belief on us and we cannot not believe. We cannot just wish to believe and believe independently of the evidence. This is obvious in perceptual and inferential beliefs. Alston argues that we do not have direct control over any of our beliefs, not even in the case where, after weighing it up, the evidence remains uncertain or is completely lacking. One simply cannot “bring himself into a state of belief that p,” not even in philosophical, political, religious, scientific matters, or other people’s witness. The deliberation process did not mean that the belief which resulted was voluntary. The subject simply had to accept the result of the deliberation process. Alston allows some distant indirect voluntary influence on the process of belief forming, e.g., a voluntary selection of the directions and sources of evidence, or developing habits of inquiry, but he does not

54  Bernard Williams, “Deciding to Believe,” in Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 148. 55  See the criticisms of this argument in Ginet, “Deciding to Believe,” 71–73; Richard Feldman, “Voluntary Belief and Epistemic Evaluation,” in Knowledge, Truth and Duty, ed. Steup, 79–80; Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003), 342–346. 56  See Williams, “Deciding to Believe,” 148–149; Alston, “The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification,” 277–279.

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consider it strong enough to support an ethical model of epistemic evaluation.57 I must say that I have not found any epistemologist who defends direct doxastic voluntarism. Even those epistemologists from the past who are said to have held it (such as Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Newman, and Lonergan) probably would not agree with its most radical form. They believed that cognitive acts are human acts, and therefore acts of will, but for them an act of will was not necessarily an act at will. We will return to this point in Chapter 5. Those epistemologists who defend a stronger connection between ethical and epistemic appraisal have found different strategies against the psychological counter–argument. One way is to argue that deciding to believe is indeed psychologically and conceptually possible.58 The other way is to argue that even an indirect influence of the will in the belief–forming process is a sufficient reason to talk about an ethical appraisal in epistemology. So, instead of doxastic voluntarism, it may be more adequate to speak of cognitive agency. On this line virtue responsibilists (Zagzebski, Montmarquet) argue that the epistemic appraisal depends on the intellectual virtue, and the virtue is sufficiently under our control.59 For this reason the debate about the ethical factors in epistemic normativity between virtue responsibilists and virtue reliabilist does not focus on the voluntariness of belief but on the nature of epistemic value. Both virtue reliabilists and responsibilists agree that knowledge is a form of credit given to the person for her virtuous belief, even if they do not agree as to whether that credit is of a moral nature or not. Giving credit implies some voluntary involvement of the subject in the acquisition of knowledge in both cases. When we give credit to an excellent ballerina we premise that her excellence is in an important measure a result of her own hard work even if the appraisal of her excellence is not a moral one. Some epistemologists noticed that different positions regarding the freedom of the will and regarding the concept of responsibility 57  See Alston, “The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification,” 260. 58  See Ginet, “Deciding to Believe.” 59  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 58–72; James A. Montmarquet, “The Voluntariness of Virtue—and Belief,” Philosophy 83 (2008): 373–390.

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in ethics result in different positions on the voluntariness of belief. Hence, if we show that a direct or strong libertarian voluntarism is not necessary for the ethical appraisal proper, we should not demand it for the ethical model of epistemic appraisal either.60 Henry Price and Jonathan Cohen are among those epistemologists who argue that belief cannot be voluntary, but still allow voluntariness in other cognitive attitudes, such as assent and acceptance.61 Their concession, however, may not be necessary. Their notion of belief may have been too involuntary from the very beginning. For example, they define belief as a “cognitive feeling” (Price) or “credal feeling” (Cohen),62 but these notions of belief are disputable, in particular from a Lonerganian point of view.

1.4 Status Quaestionis in Lonergan Studies We have introduced earlier the distinction between different sorts of meta–epistemological study, one of which is focused on the “external,” sociological or cultural influences on our understanding of epistemic normativity (see 1.1.1). Lonergan also dedicates much attention to explaining how historical, psychological and sociological factors, as well as various metaphysical systems influence our ideas of cognition and dictate different models of epistemic normativity. He develops his own philosophy of history in order to provide a meta–epistemological background for his position. His theory of bias and the distinction of the “position” and the “counter–position” in metaphysics are good illustrations of that attempt. That type of meta–epistemology has attracted much interest on the part of Lonergan scholars. The reason for that interest probably lies in the popularity of similar issues in the contemporary philosophy, namely, in the rise of hermeneutics. From a study of historic influences in the interpretation of the meaning of old texts, hermeneutics turned into general study of external historical influences on any sort of normativity, epistemic normativity included. Epistemic normative rationality started to be defined as relative to culturally and historically 60  See Stump, Aquinas, 342–349; and Steup, “Doxastic Voluntarism and Epistemic Deontology.” 61  See Price, Belief, 206–207, 298; and L. Jonathan Cohen, An Essay on Belief and Acceptance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). 62  See Price Belief, 291; and Cohen, Belief and Acceptance, 11.

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determined non–epistemic values. In some postmodern theories of knowledge this relativization has gone so far as to reject most of our common–sense beliefs about the normative nature of knowledge and of truth. Some scholars found Lonergan’s theory of epistemic normativity helpful against the relativist and nihilist tendencies of such postmodern epistemologies, whereas others found it too “classicist” and “modern.”63 In contrast to the “external,” the role of ethical elements in Lonergan’s model of “internal” epistemic normativity was rarely a direct subject of research. The presence of such elements has been noticed (Terry Tekippe calls it “intellectual morality”),64 accepted without major disagreements, and applied in many ways. Parallels between Lonergan’s theory of epistemic normativity and ethics have often been studied in ethics in the context of the problems of practical reason.65 Yet, very few authors have discussed the implications of the involvement of ethical elements in Lonergan’s epistemology and on the problems it has to face there. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has yet worked out on a larger scale the details of the ethical elements in Lonergan’s 63 See, e.g., Ronald H. McKinney, “Deconstructing Lonergan,” International Philosophical Quarterly 31 (1991): 81–93; James L. Marsh, “Post–Modernism: A Lonerganian Retrieval and Critique,” International Philosophical Quarterly 35 (1995): 159–173; Frederick G. Lawrence, “Lonergan, the Integral Postmodern?” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 18 (2000): 95–122; Russell Snell, Through a Glass Darkly: Bernard Lonergan & Richard Rorty on Knowing Without a God’s–eye View (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2006). 64  See Terry J. Tekippe, What is Lonergan up to in Insight? A Primer (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996), 88–89. 65  I have found three philosophical dissertations that have a similar topic to the one I propose, but all of them approach the problem from the ethical point of view, focusing on Lonergan’s theory of moral judgment and decision. See Joseph P. Cassidy, “Extending Bernard Lonergan’s Ethics: Parallels between the Structures of Cognition and Evaluation” (PhD diss., University of Ottawa and St Paul University, Ottawa, 1995); Margaret M. Welch, “A Critical Realist Assessment of the Moral Realism Debate: Objectivity as Authentic Subjectivity and the Epistemology of Bernard Lonergan” (Ph.D. diss., Loyola University of Chicago, Chicago, 1998); Robert J. Fitterer, Love and Objectivity in Virtue Ethics: Aristotle, Lonergan, and Nussbaum on Emotions and Moral Insight (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008).

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epistemology from the epistemological point of view. For example, all studies of Lonergan’s concept of intellectual conversion deal with the relationship between ethics and epistemology, but I have not found yet a study on whether the concept of intellectual conversion is appropriate in epistemology, having in mind the problems with the voluntariness in cognition and with the ethics of belief. Some authors have indeed, though not in a major way, worked on the ethical elements in Lonergan’s epistemology. Edward Miller wrote an article on the role of the moral dispositions of cognitive subjects in the cognitional theories of Lonergan and John Henry Newman.66 In that article Miller does not analyse Lonergan’s and Newman’s normative epistemic concepts, but he diagnoses the difficulty of situating their agent–centred responsibilist approach in the context of modern, Enlightenment epistemology which prefers to separate the realms of morality and knowledge. Miller’s analysis affirms that epistemic responsibility has a crucial role in Lonergan’s epistemology and that epistemic responsibility there is a sort of moral disposition. Another work that introduced the problems of the connection between ethical and epistemic normativity into Lonergan studies, and vice versa, is Joseph Fitzpatrick’s analysis of Lonergan’s notion of belief and of his version of doxastic voluntarism.67 Lonergan has been labelled a direct doxastic voluntarist in the worst sense of the word by Rodney Needham and Louis Pojman.68 Lonergan’s vocabulary can in fact give some grounds for that judgment. Some of Lonergan’s commentators also at times, with best intentions, repeat his oversimplified terminology.69 Fitzpatrick warns, first, that Lonergan’s usage of the term “belief ” is limited to the social character of knowledge, and he does not use it for the propositional attitude of believing in the general sense in which contemporary epistemologists do; and second, that Lonergan’s doxastic voluntarism is not actually as direct as his 66  See Edward J. Miller,“The Role of Moral Dispositions in the Cognitional Theories of Newman and Lonergan,” Thought 67 (1992): 128–147. 67  See Joseph Fitzpatrick, “Lonergan’s Notion of Belief,” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 1 (1983): 101–113, and Philosophical Encounters, 52–63. 68  See Rodney Needham, Belief, Language and Experience (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972), 81, 85; and Pojman, Religious Belief and the Will, 90–91. 69  See Vernon Gregson, “The Desire to Know: Intellectual Conversion,” in The Desires of the Human Heart: An Introduction to the Theology of Bernard Lonergan, ed. Vernon Gregson (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), 20–22.

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vocabulary seems to imply because his concept of free will is different. We will return later to all these points and expand them. The importance of intellectual virtue in Lonergan has been noticed, as well as its connection with the Aristotelian account of intellectual virtue. Hugo Meynell notices the importance of moral virtuousness for the methodical acquisition of knowledge in Lonergan’s epistemology. Thomas McPartland mentions in the context of Lonergan’s theory of cognition the “virtue of radical attachment to the desire to know.” Patrick Byrne draws attention to the importance of intellectual virtue for the judgments on the correctness of insights. He connects Lonergan’s account of common–sense judgment with the Aristotelian phronesis but, again, in the context of moral judgment.70 Correlating Lonergan’s model of epistemic normativity and the virtue responsibilist model may be a somewhat controversial issue among Lonergan scholars. The reason is that Lonergan distanced himself from the virtue ethics of his time. By contrast, his favourite ethical model (in Method) is the value theory based on the intentionality analysis.71 First, whether or not Lonergan is a virtue ethicist, as I mentioned earlier, the fact that an epistemologist uses an ethical theory of epistemic normativity does not mean that he or she uses that same theory in ethics. Second, I actually believe that Lonergan is a virtue ethicist in the sense most contemporary virtue ethicists understand it. There 70  See Hugo A. Meynell, Redirecting Philosophy: Reflections on the Nature of Knowledge from Plato to Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 266–267; Thomas J. McPartland, “Consciousness and Normative Subjectivity: Lonergan’s Unique Foundational Enterprise,” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 13 (1995): 112; Patrick H. Byrne, “Phronêsis and Commonsense Judgment: Aristotle and Lonergan on Moral Wisdom,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Society 71 (1997): 171. 71 See MT 268, 340; “Insight Revisited,” in A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., eds. William F.J. Ryan and Bernard J. Tyrell (London: Darton, Longman, Todd, 1974), 277, henceforth cited as IR; and “The Subject,” in Second Collection, 73, 81–83, henceforth cited as S. Lonergan affirms that in he already applies intentionality analysis in Insight as well. See Lonergan’s foreword to Bernard Lonergan’s Philosophy of God, by Bernard J. Tyrell, in Shorter Papers, vol. 20 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Robert C. Croken, Robert M. Doran, and H. Daniel Monsour (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 290–291.

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are places in later Lonergan’s writings that support that interpretation, but as that is not a topic of my research I will not insist on it.72 What Lonergan rejects is not virtue ethics but faculty psychology. To be more precise, he reject the tendency of that psychology to separate the faculties and their underlying parts of the soul from each other (see 1.3.1) and to give priority to the intellect over the will.73 The unity of the soul is found in the intentional desire manifested through consciousness. What is distinct are not the parts of the soul, but the aspects or levels of the intentional consciousness. Consequently, he cannot accept any virtue theory that considers virtues to be mere operational extensions of different faculties, neglecting the motivation for the virtuousness that stems from the unified self. He can affirm, though, that Aquinas’s virtues as operative habits are acceptable if understood in the sense of the Greek arête as excellence and if due care is given to the moral feelings that promote it.74 As we will see, most contemporary neo–Aristotelian virtue theorists, and Zagzebski among them, understand virtue as an emotionally motivated and operationally successful character habit.

72 See IR 277; MT 35, 41. For a comparative study of Lonergan’s ethics with the ethics of Aristotle and Martha Nussbaum, see Fitterer, Love and Objectivity in Virtue Ethics, Ch 3. Fitterer notices more similarities than differences between them. K. Melchin also calls his own Lonergan–based ethics a virtue ethics. See Kenneth R. Melchin, Living with Other People: An Introduction to Christian Ethics Based on Bernard Lonergan (Ottawa: Novalis, 1998), 72. 73 See S 73; MT 268, 340; and Joseph Flanagan, Quest for Self–Knowledge: An Essay in Lonergan’s Philosophy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 195–196. 74  See “Aquinas Today: Tradition and Innovation,” in A Third Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., edited by Frederick E. Crowe (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 52, henceforth quoted in text as AT.

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he aim of our research is to analyse the model of epistemic normativity in Lonergan’s philosophy in the light of the contemporary debate on the same issue. The contemporary debate on the nature of epistemic normativity is lively and complex and it owes much of that liveliness to the recent development of virtue epistemology. My initial thesis has been that of similarity between Lonergan’s and virtue–epistemological model of epistemic normativity. Although we have already introduced the basic ideas of virtue epistemology in our first chapter, the virtue–epistemological approach to the issue of epistemic normativity deserves a more thorough presentation. For our purpose I have chosen three approaches in virtue epistemology, the responsibilist virtue epistemology of Linda Zagzebski, the reliabilist virtue epistemology of Ernest Sosa, and Robert Roberts’ and W. Jay Wood’s more radical development of virtue responsibilism. I am interested particularly in how they understand (1) epistemic value, (2) epistemic responsibility, and (3) epistemic evaluation. Our topic and space, however, do not permit a critical comparison and a judgment on which one of the three representative theories may be better than the others. I am reading them in the perspective of a critical dialogue with Lonergan’s model of epistemic normativity. Hence, I will treat all three as reasonable and well–founded proposals. When it seems helpful, I will indicate their respective advantages and disadvantages as well as some of the challenges they have to face. More attention will be given to Zagzebski’s theory, because of the widespread agreement that it is at present the most developed, and in some questions a ground–breaking attempt to argue for the inclusion

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of epistemic normativity in ethics. The positions of Sosa, Roberts and Wood show that virtue epistemology can also go in different directions from the one suggested by Zagzebski. Virtue epistemology can be broadly defined as an approach to epistemology that applies the elements of virtue theories to epistemological problems. It is a contemporary approach in analytic epistemology, but virtue epistemologists often find similarities between their project and the epistemologies of Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Reid, Dewey, Pierce. The range of issues to which contemporary virtue epistemologists have contributed now includes the theory of knowledge and Gettier problems, the theory of justification, the foundationalism vs. coherentism debate, the internalism vs. externalism debate, the response to the challenge of scepticism, the unified theory of epistemic and ethical value, and the question of epistemic normativity. What unites the variety of virtue epistemologies is their belief that crucial to all these issues is the role of the cognitive abilities of the knowing subject. They fundamentally agree, as Greco puts it, “that the normative properties of beliefs are to be defined in terms of the normative properties of agents, rather than the other way around.”1 What distinguishes different virtue epistemologies is, principally, how they understand intellectual virtue, whether it is an excellence of reliable cognitive faculties (Sosa), or an intellectual and moral character trait (Zagzebski). As we have already noted in our first chapter, the former view is often called virtue reliabilism, while the latter is called virtue responsibilism. Consequently, these virtue epistemologies differ in regard to whether there is a weak or a strong connection between ethics and epistemic normativity. It seems, however, that the difference between virtue reliabilists and virtue responsibilists does not stop at their different understanding of the notion of virtue. Neither is their different view regarding the relationship between ethics and epistemic normativity merely a consequence of their different understanding of virtue (it rather seems that it was vice versa). There is a much deeper difference between them regarding the scope of virtue epistemology altogether. The principal representatives of virtue responsibilism (here I think of Code, Montmarquet, Zagzebski, Wood, Roberts) have in one way or another 1  Greco, “Virtue Epistemology,” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-virtue/#Scop (accessed June 22, 2009).

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expressed their dissatisfaction with the conceptual analysis that was the focus of analytic epistemology in the second half of the twentieth century and expressed their intention to use the virtue responsibilist approach to reorient epistemology. Thus, Code suggests that epistemology should focus on persons as responsible cognitive agents and on their cognitive activities in the context of their membership in a community and in the context of their life narrative.2 Wood and Roberts propose a similar turn from conceptual analysis towards “regulative epistemology,” the ultimate goal of which is to facilitate the improvement of intellectual character, again in social and narrative context.3 Montmarquet and Zagzebski do not propose such a radical departure from the traditional twentieth–century epistemology, but they share the vision of the cognitive agent in whom cognition and morality are (or should be) deeply integrated. Also, all five cited authors share an interest in the role of emotions in intellectual life, as well as in the pedagogical function of epistemology. By contrast, Sosa and other virtue reliabilists tend to divide the study of cognition from the study of morality and prefer to concentrate on the conceptual analysis of knowledge rather than to enter into the analysis of its personal narrative milieu. In fact, they suggest that epistemic normative concepts can be better explained without the association with ethics. I suspect that the differences between virtue reliabilism and responsibilism are deeper than they appear and are rooted in their different views of what the philosophical paradigms of personhood and rationality should be.

2.1 A Virtue Responsibilist Approach: L. Zagzebski With her responsibilist model of virtue epistemology Zagzebski intends to address at least three major issues in epistemology. First, she wants to provide a detailed unified theory of moral and intellectual 2  William Mathews made similar suggestions a few years earlier, though not in the context of virtue epistemology. See William A. Mathews, “Personal Histories and Theories of Knowledge,” Milltown Studies 8 (1981): 58–74. See Code, “Toward a ‘Responsibilist’ Epistemology,” 39–40; and Epistemic Responsibility, 201, 253–254. 3  See Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 8–9, 21, 28, 58, 323.

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virtues. Then, she applies that theory to some traditional problems in analytic theory of knowledge and justification, such as the Gettier– problem and the internalism–externalism debate. Finally, she applies the virtue–ethical model of normativity to the meta–epistemological questions of epistemic value and evaluation, as the ethical theories of deontology and consequentialism have already been used for their respective meta–epistemological theories. The last issue is in the centre of our interest here, though we will have to return to some points from her unified theory of virtue and mention, at least, her new definitions for some traditional concepts in theory of knowledge. Zagzebski’s thesis in the matter of epistemic normativity is clear and bold: epistemic normativity is a part of ethics. She suggests that epistemic virtues are a subset of moral virtues, that the epistemic values of knowledge and understanding overlap with the ethical value of holistic eudemonia conceived as “good life,” and that epistemic evaluation is a sort of moral evaluation. Note that the claim that the ethical absorbs the epistemically normative altogether depends on how wide one extends the domain of ethics. Her claims do not sound so exorbitant if that domain comprises everything that concerns the holistic well–being of human persons. In fact, that is what Zagzebski’s neo– Aristotelian virtue ethics implies.

2.1.1 Intellectual and Moral Virtues Zagzebski defines a virtue “as a deep and enduring acquired excellence of a person, involving a characteristic motivation to produce a certain desired end and reliable success in bringing about that end.”4 According to the consequentialist notion of virtue in ethics, and according to the parallel reliabilist notion of virtue in epistemology, virtue is any ability that reliably produces a desired consequence. The element of reliability is included in Zagzebski’s definition of virtue, but it is not the crucial element. Zagzebski opts for a narrower notion of virtue, typical of recent neo–Aristotelian virtue ethics, where virtue is by definition an excellence of a person or of “the soul,” that is to say, a character trait, and an acquired character trait. Furthermore, it must be acquired in such a way that takes a certain amount of time and effort on the part of the person, so that it allow us to think of the person 4 Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 137 (printed in bold and italics in original).

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as responsible (in different degrees) for the acquisition of that virtue. Zagzebski argues that the notions of virtue and, mutatis mutandis, of vice, as we ordinarily understand them, are evaluative notions that imply the sort of evaluation that we typically find in ethics.5 Thus, the moral aspect is already included in the definition of virtue and vice. Though enduring, reliable and praised in their own way, natural instincts, functions, faculties, and talents are not virtues. Moreover, virtues in Zagzebski’s theory are also different from skills, though they can easily be confused (such confusion is particularly common in the case of intellectual virtues, she finds).6 She recognizes that skills are responsibly acquired excellences similar to virtues in many ways. Actually, virtuous persons often have to develop the associated skills in order to be effective in the realization of the external consequences of their virtuousness. Yet, Zagzebski’s position is that skills are more defined by their external effectiveness in action, whereas virtues have an intrinsic value which adds something specific to the person qua moral agent. That intrinsic value is more connected with the motivational component of virtue. Zagzebski’s definition distinguishes two elements in a virtue, a motivational element, and an element of reliable success in bringing about the end of the motivational element.7 Being virtuous combines the intrinsic value of the goodness of the person which is reflected in her motivations, and the extrinsic value of making the state of affairs good according to her virtuous motivations. Zagzebski emphasises that motivations are dispositions to have certain motives, and motives are emotions or feelings that initiate and direct actions.8 This is to remind us that the emotional world of the person is indeed active in recognizing certain traits as virtues, and making and applying moral judgments. It is clear that Zagzebski models her concept of virtue very much on the model of the Aristotelian concept of moral virtue. How does, then, 5  6  7  8 

See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 104. See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 115–116. See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 136–137. Zagzebski defines motive as “an emotion that is operating to produce action.” Linda Zagzebski, “The Search for the Source of Epistemic Good,” Metaphilosophy 34 (2003): 17. See also Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 131–132.

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the traditional Aristotelian distinction between moral and intellectual virtues9 fit into her theory? Zagzebski’s concept of intellectual virtue excludes intellectual faculties and skills, so we are left with intellectual virtues in a narrow sense, such as intellectual courage, humility, curiosity, creativity, open–mindedness, fairness, perseverance, insight, trustworthiness, epistemic responsibility, intellectual integrity, theoretical and practical wisdom. Zagzebski argues that when we compare these with the Aristotelian moral virtues, we will see that the division between moral and intellectual virtues in Aristotle’s theory of virtue is exaggerated. The best option is to treat intellectual virtues as a subset of the moral virtues in the Aristotelian sense of the latter. She writes, Although there are some rough differences in the degree to which these two kinds of virtue involve strong feelings and desires … an intellectual virtue does not differ from certain moral virtues and more than one moral virtue differs from another, that the processes related to two kinds of virtue do not function independently, and … it greatly distorts the nature of both to attempt to analyse them in separate branches of philosophy. Intellectual virtues are best viewed as forms of moral virtue.10

To summarize Zagzebski’s arguments for this position, she shows that Aristotle’s distinction between the rational and non–rational parts of the soul, and the subsequent division between the virtues that govern them respectively, is not as sharp as he thought. The truth is that feelings are involved in intellectual virtues and intellectual virtues are involved in handling feelings. The desire for truth is different from strong passions, but it is more like the management of the desire for good and similar “mild” passions. Moral virtues, on the other hand, are often about handling our cognitive activities and almost all moral virtues demand some sort of cognitive contact with reality and intellectual activity within their specific area of life. There are quite a few virtues and vices that have both intellectual and moral form, like perseverance, courage, humility, discretion, autonomy, trust, integrity, and vices like laziness, prejudice, obtuseness, hypocrisy. If there is a difference between intellectual and moral virtue, and Zagzebski shows 9  For Aristotle’s division between the rational and non–rational parts of the soul and the corresponding division between intellectual and moral virtues, see Nicomachean Ethics 1.13.1102a5–2.1.1103a19. 10 Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 139.

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that there is some, then it cannot be on the ground that one handles feelings and the other does not.11 Neither is it true that intellectual and moral virtues are acquired in different ways, she shows. Both require learning and training, and in both cases there are contrary inclinations and akrasia to be overcome. “One learns how to believe the way she should rather than the way she wants in a way parallel to her learning how to act the way she should rather than the way she wants. And just as ultimately she learns to want to act the way she should, ultimately she learns to want to believe the way she should.”12 This also introduces us to her way of dealing with the problem of doxastic voluntarism (see 2.5.6). A frequent counterargument to the idea that intellectual virtue is a form of moral virtue is the observation that there are people who have intellectual virtues but are immoral, and vice versa, who are intellectually honest but lack (other) intellectual virtues. Zagzebski’s first remark is that intellectual virtues are more easily confused with skills than moral virtues, and that confusion may be sometimes hidden in the aforementioned counterargument. Still, the counterargument would have some strength if it could be shown that there is a much higher degree of independence between the possession of the intellectual virtues and the possession of the moral virtues, than there is between the possession of one moral virtue and another. Yet, Zagzebski does not find such evidence.13

2.1.2 Specialty of the Intellectual Virtue What makes intellectual virtues special, or different from (other) moral virtues? We have seen that Zagzebski finds two components in a virtue, its specific motivation and its reliability in attaining the aim of the motivation. Every virtue is, thus, definable in terms of a particular motivation. For example, benevolence can be approximately defined as the virtue according to which a person is characteristically motivated to bring about the well–being of others and is reliably successful in doing so. The intellectual virtues are defined in terms of their motivation for knowledge, or for intellectual goods connected with knowledge (truth, understanding), and their reliable success in attaining the 11  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 148–149, 159–160. 12  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 151. 13  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 156–157.

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end of that motivation.14 Their common motivation for knowledge, i.e., to operate cognitively in a way that is believed to be knowledge– conducive, is what unites them as a group and makes them different from other virtues, so that we can continue to call them “intellectual” virtues. Knowledge–conduciveness does not mean that intellectual virtues produce justified true beliefs in every instance. Some intellectual virtues produce a high proportion of true beliefs in their field (e.g., a careful and sober inquiry), while others produce few true beliefs and many false ones on their way towards knowledge (e.g., inventiveness, creativity, originality). Zagzebski suggests that even the slow–working intellectual traits are legitimately called truth–conducive as long as they are self–correcting, and we need them because they may be the best we have at our disposal to handle different epistemic situations.15

2.1.3 Practical Wisdom Following Aristotle, most virtue ethicists reserve an important role for the virtue of practical wisdom or phronesis. For Aristotle practical wisdom is an intellectual virtue, but concerned with practical reasoning, with the knowledge of how to apply the principles of right conduct in particular instances.16 According to Aristotle’s account, however, phronesis is not necessary for theoretical knowledge. Practical wisdom concerns the knowledge of particulars, of things that change and can be changed. It is the virtue of theoretical wisdom or sophia that is concerned with universals and with the principles of theoretical knowledge.17 Theoretical knowledge in Aristotle (and his later followers) is about the necessary “first principles” that regulate the unchangeable things, which includes not only the laws of logic and metaphysics, but

14  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 165–166, 176, 184–194. By contrast, Montmarquet does not deem the success element necessary for an intellectual virtue. See Montmarquet, Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility, 24–25. 15  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 181–182. 16  For Aristotle’s doctrine on practical wisdom, see Nicomachean Ethics 6.5.1140a25–1140b29, and the rest of the Book 6 passim. 17  See Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 6.1.1138b35–1139a18; 6.5.1140b32– 1140b4; 6.9.1142a24–31.

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also physical laws and much of semantics, which we consider contingent knowledge today. Zagzebski extends the regulative authority of practical wisdom to the dynamics of intellectual virtues in general, Aristotle’s theoretical virtues included. Practical wisdom is a mediating virtue between moral and intellectual virtues, and it combines the characteristics of both. Zagzebski argues that practical wisdom does not relate to the intellectual virtues differently than it relates to the traditional moral virtues, and it has a similar function in both.18 First, practical wisdom measures the middle between the extremes in moral virtues, and so it does in intellectual virtues. For example, in the case of intellectual carefulness, it takes practical wisdom, not speculative wisdom or some other virtue, to tell how much evidence is enough to support a belief in different instances. Second, practical wisdom mediates between different virtues in respect to different values, e.g. between intellectual courage and intellectual humility or fairness. Third, it coordinates different virtues in the single act, since the rational procedures are not fully determinate in singular judgments and the judgment cannot be always suspended. Furthermore, practical wisdom is learned both in regard to moral and intellectual agency. We learn how to think rationally as we learn how to act morally, mostly by imitation of other intellectually admirable wise people (phronimoi).19 But there are at least two difficulties with relying so heavily on phronesis and other intellectual virtues. First, having in mind the cultural contingency of intellectual virtues, how can we define them? Zagzebski believes that there is a trans–cultural kind of rationality, not in the much maligned procedural sense of reason, but in the sense that there are ideally rational qualities of mind that transcend all cultures and which we discover when we investigate the qualities of mind we admire in exemplars—attentiveness, open–mindedness, fairness to opponents, vast knowledge, good memory, good judgment, good counsel, and so on.20 18  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 78, 221–224. Zagzebski also offers her versions of definitions of knowledge and justified belief in terms of practical wisdom. See Virtues of the Mind, 246. 19  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 230. 20  Linda Zagzebski, “Ideal Agents and Ideal Observers in Epistemology,” in Epistemology Futures, ed. Stephen Hetherington (Oxford: Clarendon

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Hence, it is better to begin with defining intellectually virtuous phronimoi rather than phronesis. As Zagzebski doubts the existence of a single ideal normative structure of mind, it is the critical dialogue between phronimoi of different cultures and the imitation of their phronesis that should make up for the absence of other universal epistemic standards. The second difficulty the virtue–based theories have to address is whether and how our intellectual virtues entail truth. According to the sceptical scenario, rationality may not align with truth and we do not have means to check whether it does. Zagzebski does not intend to close the theoretical gap between truth and rationality. Actually, I have not found that she addresses the challenge of scepticism. She seems to suggest that we do not have a better choice but to accept that our best guide to truth is convergence of beliefs among virtuous exemplars. She writes, “If motive for truth were not a reliable mechanism for attaining truth, we would be in much more serious trouble than simply having difficulty in defining knowledge! There would be little point in doing philosophy at all, or engaging in any other intellectual endeavour.”21 The gap is still there, but the empirical reliability of intellectual virtues makes it narrower—and that is as good as it gets.

2.1.4 Zagzebski’s Theory of Knowledge As we have seen earlier, Zagzebski is not the first person to point to the connection between moral and intellectual virtues. She takes, however, a further step by applying ethical virtue theory to the conventional analytic debates on the theory of knowledge and justification. Zagzebski defines knowledge as “a state of cognitive contact with reality arising out of acts of intellectual virtue.”22 Alternatively, she says, knowledge can be defined as “a state of true belief arising out of acts of intellectual virtue,” and also as “a state of belief arising out of acts of

Press, 2006), 145. See also Linda Zagzebski, “Phronesis and Christian Belief,” in The Rationality of Theism, eds. Godehard Brüntrup and Ronald K. Tacelli (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999), 187, 190; Divine Motivation Theory, 376–377; and Virtues of the Mind, 337. 21 Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 312; see also 333. 22 Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 270.

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intellectual virtue” because an act of intellectual virtue entails that the belief which it produces is true.23 The first novelty in her definition is the preference for the expression “cognitive contact with reality” instead of the more usual “true belief.” Although the two expressions correspond roughly to each other, Zagzebski favours the new term and gives two reasons for that choice. First, the term “cognitive contact with reality” is noncommittal on such questions as the object of knowledge, the nature of truth, and the existence of propositions, and, second, it permits a broader concept of knowledge since “knowledge may include cognitive contact with structures of reality other than propositional.”24 She does not elaborate the first point because it goes beyond the aim of her study, but she returns several times to the second. The expression “cognitive contact with reality” indicates Zagzebski’s insistence that epistemology should pay more attention to what she calls “high–grade states of knowledge,” which we pursue in science, philosophy and art, for example, instead of focusing disproportionately on “low–grade” knowledge, i.e., perceptual and short–term memory beliefs. The high–grade states of knowledge include other, not exclusively propositional cognitive states, like certainty, wisdom and understanding, the last of the three being particularly important. Zagzebski points out that the ancient, medieval and early modern notion of knowledge required that the truth be understood, rather than merely “perceived” or “held” somehow.25 She endorses the same view and argues that the high–grade states of knowledge should be considered paradigmatic in epistemology. The second novelty in her definition of knowledge is the concept of the act of intellectual virtue. In an act of virtue, the agent has a virtuous motivation (disposition to have a virtuous motive), the act is motivated by such a motive, the agent acts in a way that a virtuous person would (probably) act in the same circumstances, the agent is successful in bringing about the state of affairs that a virtuous person desires, and the agent gets credit for bringing about such a

23 Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 271. 24 Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 271. 25  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 43–51, 167–168, 273–283, 332; and “Recovering Understanding.”

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Notice that Zagzebski—like Sosa—defines knowledge, among other things, as the credit given to the person for the true belief (or cognitive contact with reality) that she obtained as a result of her intellectual virtue. The distinctiveness of Zagzebski’s notion of intellectual virtue is that it implies the moral evaluation of the internal motivation for intellectual virtuousness, and not just reliability in providing the (external) product of knowledge. No credit for knowledge is given, according to her theory, if there is no virtuous motivation to desire truth as well as reliability in obtaining it. It is the disposition to desire truth that must give rise to conscious and voluntary acts in the process leading towards the acquisition of true belief. Zagzebski recognizes that her definition may look too rigorous in the case of low–grade states of knowledge. We give credit for knowledge for correctly acquired perceptual beliefs without demanding that the knower have a good, praiseworthy intellectual character. Besides, we expect virtue to develop later in life and we often idealize the virtuous person, but that does not hinder us from giving the credit of knowledge to the virtuous–in–training. Zagzebski’s definition, however, does not require that the knower have intellectual virtue. It is enough that in that particular case she exercises her cognitive abilities in the way and with the motive a person with the intellectual virtue would do. Though they do not have intellectual virtue, even little children (and possibly animals) can have knowledge based on perception and memory because their behaviour in forming them imitates the behaviour of an intellectually virtuous person. She says that “there may not even be any discernible difference in their motives,” though there is a difference in their behaviour in counterfactual circumstances.27 Zagzebski also points out that relying on perception as a normal way of forming simple beliefs can be considered a virtuous attitude; we can and should question its reliability at some stage, but to question it all the time would be a case of paranoia.28 She also leaves open the possibility that we may be more active in forming our perceptual 26 Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 270; see also 281, and “The Search for the Source of Epistemic Good,” 12. 27  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 280. 28  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 280.

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beliefs than we assume. We should not take for granted that beliefs arising from perception put us into cognitive contact with reality in a straightforward and uncontroversial sense. The traditional position in the history of epistemology tends not to consider simple perceptual beliefs knowledge, and in particular not to consider mere perceptual apprehensions commendable of the credit of knowledge. Zagzebski allows, therefore, that the definition of knowledge she proposes can be interpreted in a way that includes the perceptual beliefs, and it can be interpreted in a way that excludes them, depending on what we get to know about the relationship between the perception and concept, and on empirical studies of how our perception works.29 Zagzebski argues that her definition is immune to Gettier problems, though we cannot here enter that debate.30 She also argues that her virtue epistemology harmonizes the internal and external aspects of epistemic justification. We need an internalist element, because beliefs based on reliability without any consciousness of that reliability should not be considered knowledge at all.31 The motivational element in her definitions of virtue and knowledge involves some conscious awareness and control. Motivation is internally accessible in the weak sense that motives and desires are internally accessible. They do not have to be explicit all the time. The component of success in reaching the ends of the motivational component is an externalist element in Zagzebski’s theory. The component of success is not (always) internally accessible. An internal justification is not available at the crucial point where we should respond whether or not our intellectual desires and abilities to realize them are conformed to reality, but Zagzebski’s theory does not require internalist justification at that point. We can justifiedly claim to knowledge even if we cannot theoretically defeat all sceptical scenarios concerning the truth entailment of intellectual virtues.

2.1.5 Virtue Ethics and Epistemic Value A major criticism Zagzebski raised against externalist theories of knowledge, virtue reliabilism included, was that they did not give a 29  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 282. 30  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 298. 31  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 312, 329–334.

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satisfactory explanation of the nature of epistemic value.32 While virtually all epistemologists agree that knowledge is a more valuable state than true belief, virtue reliabilists like Sosa regularly defend the value–monist position, which states that the possession of true beliefs remains the fundamental value in the pursuit of knowledge. We have seen in the first chapter that the virtue reliabilist account of epistemic value follows closely the consequentialist model of evaluation in ethics. The epistemic value is fundamentally the value of the consequences of the knower’s cognitive operations, i.e., the value of true beliefs. Zagzebski argues that if knowledge is true belief plus something, that something must have a specific value that makes it worthy of pursuit. Even the more sophisticated versions of virtue reliabilism that define knowledge as credit given to the subject for his virtuously acquired true belief do not improve the value monist position significantly as long as they define virtue in terms of mere truth–conduciveness. The reliability of a coffee–machine does not add any extra value to the quality of the coffee it makes. There must be an additional value in the cause of true belief that is independent of its reliability or truth conduciveness.33 What she finds deeply problematic with the externalist accounts of the value of knowledge is the whole “machine–product” model of the relationship between cognition and belief in knowledge, where knowledge is treated as a “state of affairs” that cognitional faculties and processes produce. “Not only is the reliability of the machine insufficient to make the coffee in the cup any better; nothing about the machine makes the product any better. So if knowledge is true belief that is made better by something, knowledge cannot be the external product of the believer in the way the cup of espresso is the external product of the machine.”34 She maintains that every machine–product model of knowledge where the product (true belief ) is external to the cause (cognition) will have the same problem with explaining epistemic value.

32  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 300; and “From Reliabilism to Virtue Epistemology.” 33  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 304, 323; and “The Search for the Source of Epistemic Good,” 13. 34  Zagzebski, “The Search for the Source of Epistemic Good,” 15.

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Zagzebski agrees with Sosa, Greco and Riggs that the extra value of knowing in addition to true belief is the state of affairs of the epistemic agent’s getting credit for the truth that is acquired, but she adds that their approach solves the problem only if we reject the machine– product model of knowledge.35 She finds that the machine–product paradigm is the reason why Sosa, Greco and Riggs do not give due regard to the place of motives and to the subjective side of epistemic value which pertains to the cognitive agent qua agent. Though it is true that virtue reliabilists give a crucial role to the subject in the matter of warrant or justification, they are still more faculty–centred than agent–centred. Zagzebski believes that the strength of her responsibilist virtue epistemology is precisely in the fact that it combines the state of virtuous motivation for the truth, which is a state valuable in itself for the subject, and the success in obtaining its goal, i.e., the state of true belief. Knowing is a successful achievement of the agent, but it is a state of the cognitive agent at the same time. Instead of the machine– product model, Zagzebski suggests that knowing is related to knower as act to agent in ethics: “The properties of true believing that make it better than mere true believing are properties that it obtains from the agent in the same way good acts obtain evaluative properties from the agent.”36 These are all very fine distinctions. I will try to give an example of what she might have in mind here. An act of Lucy’s generosity has as its consequence the happiness of another person, which is a state of affairs, a product of Lucy’s action external to Lucy. The happiness of another person is good, but if it had been just an accidental consequence of Lucy’s actions, and not the result of her act of generosity, we would not have given Lucy the credit for it, and we would not have praised Lucy as a generous person. The happiness of the others may have well been a result of her vice. What makes Lucy a generous person is not the fact that her action made other people happy, but that the happiness of those people is a result of her generous act, the act motivated 35  See Zagzebski, “The Search for the Source of Epistemic Good,” 14–15, and Virtues of the Mind, 332. Compare with Greco, “Knowledge as Credit for True Belief,” 111–134; Wayne Riggs, “Reliability and the Value of Knowledge,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64 (2002): 79–96; and Sosa, Virtue Epistemology, 80–82. 36  Zagzebski, “The Search for the Source of Epistemic Good,” 18.

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by generosity. It is the act of generosity that makes that “internal” effect on Lucy. The relationship between Lucy and the happiness of others could be seen as a machine–product relationship, if there were none of Lucy’s intentional acts in between. The relationship between Lucy and her act of generosity is not a machine–product relationship. Of course, we will rightly say that Lucy is generous only when her generosity has become a stable character trait, but we allow some lack of precision in our ordinary speech because the acquisition of virtue and the exercise of virtuous acts are interdependent and often concurrent. According to Zagzebski’s position that knowing is related to knower as act to agent in ethics, true belief should not be considered a state of affairs produced by intellectual acts, analogous to the happiness of other people from our example with Lucy. Zagzebski insists that true belief is an intellectual act, or at least, it is strongly analogous to an act. It may be in part generated by a series of previous acts, but it is “enough like an act to make a comparison with overt acts illuminating.”37 Belief is “attached” to a cognitive agent in the same way the agent’s act are attached to her in general,38 and this may be the case with other epistemic states as well. When a true belief is knowledge, it is a virtuous act, and the virtuous motivation is what makes it better than a mere true belief. Belief is an act that can be a virtuous or vicious act, depending on its motivation, in addition to the value it may have in being true. Obviously, this demands an explanation and we will have another look at Zagzebski’s theory of cognitive agency in the next section (2.2.5.). Let us return to the issue of epistemic value. If truth is not the fundamental epistemic value, what is, or what are, then, the other values involved in the epistemic evaluation? Zagzebski suggests we should look for the answer in the motivational component of the pursuit of knowledge. Motives can add to the value of the acts they motivate. An act motivated by compassion is better than an act that merely has the consequence that the suffering of another is relieved.39 She proposes that, in a similar way, the desire, appreciation, or love of true belief, is the motive that confers value on acts of belief in addition to any other 37  Linda Zagzebski, “Intellectual Motivation and the Good of Truth,” in Intellectual Virtue, eds. DePaul and Zagzebski, 153. 38  Zagzebski, “The Search for the Source of Epistemic Good,” 15. 39  See Zagzebski, “Intellectual Motivation and the Good of Truth,” 148–151.

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value such acts might have. Virtuous motivation puts the knower in a qualitatively different valuable relation with the truth. This relation is a credit to the knower, something that the cognitive agent can pursue as an epistemic value, connected with the truth, but more valuable than true belief.40 The love of truth is the primary epistemic motive. Zagzebski argues that this position gives the answer to the question why we value knowledge more than true belief. It also shows us where to look for the answers about intellectual ethics in general. The love of truth indicates a higher–order motive, one that is the general motive of the agent. That higher–order motive is the happiness, eudemonia, or well–being of the person, understood as the good life in itself. Intellectual flourishing, which is realized through the achievement of our epistemic aims, is a component of holistic well–being. “An epistemic agent gets credit for getting a true belief when she arrives at true belief because of her virtuous intellectual acts motivated by the love of truth. She gets credit for a desirable true belief when she arrives at a desirable true belief because of acts motivated by love of true beliefs that are components of a good life.”41 The value of knowledge is the flourishing of intellectual life, and the life of flourishing is a life that includes knowledge. Eventually, the epistemic evaluation takes place in the same horizon of value in which our ethical evaluation, as virtue ethics conceives it, happens in general. The common view that epistemic good is independent of moral good is “largely an illusion.”42 We should keep in mind that Zagzebski shares Aristotle’s idea that eudemonia is an active state. Eudemonia is not valuable as a consequence of the virtuous life. It is the life of virtue. The motivational component gives something that is valuable in itself. The virtue of love, for example, is not valuable because it makes its possessor happy. As a motivation in an act of virtue, its attractiveness, worth does not depend on its external consequences. It is enough that it makes the person good because she is virtuous, loving. 40  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 260, 311; “Intellectual Motivation and the Good of Truth,” 149–151; and “The Search for the Source of Epistemic Good,” 18. 41  Zagzebski, “The Search for the Source of Epistemic Good,” 24. See also Linda Zagzebski, “Epistemic Value and the Primacy of What We Care About,” in Philosophical Papers 33 (2004): 368. 42  Zagzebski, “The Search for the Source of Epistemic Good,” 12.

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In view of our later study of the role of virtues in Lonergan’s epistemology, I have to point out that Zagzebski’s notion of virtue, as well as the one prevalent in the recent virtue ethics, does not presuppose faculty psychology. The intellect and the will are not different parts of the soul, nor are they two separate faculties. Moreover, Zagzebski emphasizes the role of intentional feelings, like love of truth or love in general, in being motivations for our intellectual activity as much as for our moral life. Her version of teleologism certainly is not a matter of consequentialist measuring of the amount of eudemonia that is to be obtained, nor is it a simple application of theoretical reasoning in the field of decisions—the two positions that the later Lonergan rejected.43 In Zagzebski’s theory of virtue intentional feelings seem to be important not only in moving our intellectual activity towards its goal, but also in recognizing what that goal is.

2.1.6 Cognitive Agency According to Zagzebski’s meta–epistemology, epistemic value is a moral value, epistemic evaluation is a form of moral evaluation, epistemic normativity is an aspect of ethical normativity. A theory of epistemic normativity not only can use the structure of an ethical theory, but works best as “a branch of ethics.”44 But ethical evaluation implies responsibility, and responsibility requires that the person has some 43  Zagzebski distinguishes between good–based and agent–based virtue theories, according to how they relate the concept of virtue and the concept of the good. In good–based theories a trait or motivation derive their goodness from some prior concept of good. In Aristotle’s happiness–based ethics, for example, the goodness of virtue is derived from its constituent or instrumental role to eudemonia. In agent–based theories a virtuous trait with its motivation is good or bad in itself. Virtue is always good for a person to have, even if it does not automatically follow that a virtue is good for its possessor in the sense of benefiting her or being desirable. Zagzebski proposes a form of agent–based theory that she calls motivation–based, where the concept of motivation is ethically fundamental. See Virtues of the Mind, 80–83, 202–211. She develops her virtue theory comprehensively in Linda Zagzebski, Divine Motivation Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 44  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, xv, 6, 336, 339; “Virtue in Ethics and Epistemology”, 2; and “The Search for the Source of Epistemic Good,” 12, 26.

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voluntary control over her behaviour. How does Zagzebski handle the problem of doxastic voluntarism? Zagzebski prefers to speak of cognitive agency, rather than about the voluntariness of belief. Virtue reliabilism has already transferred the focus of epistemic evaluation from beliefs to the faculties of the cognitive subject. The epistemic evaluation of belief depends on the evaluation of the epistemic qualities of the subject. Agent–centeredness, as opposed to belief–centeredness, becomes one of the main characteristics of Zagzebski’s virtue epistemology too. But her virtue responsibilism emphasises that the cognitive subject is more than cognitive faculties. It is the subject (in an epistemic community) that has to judge the reliability of the cognitive faculties and to coordinate their exercise in particular cases. Consequently, more than the voluntariness of singular beliefs, it is the broader issue of agency in cognition that becomes relevant. Agency in cognition comprises a variety of types and degrees of (voluntary) involvement of the subject, and Zagzebski argues that the same is true of agency in other sorts of activities that we nonetheless evaluate morally. First, Zagzebski’s inclusion of intellectual virtues in the set of moral virtues requires that the acquisition of the intellectual virtues be voluntary. As we have already mentioned, there is little reason not to consider some of the intellectual virtues as moral virtues (e.g., intellectual courage, perseverance, honesty, impartiality). It is different with others that seem to depend more on natural abilities and less on education and training (as examples Zagzebski mentions here perceptiveness, thinking up coherent explanations of facts, insights into persons, problems and theories). Obviously, there are good reasons to distinguish between the intellectual virtues on a scale of voluntariness, but Zagzebski finds that the same is true of the moral virtues (and vices). They are not under our complete control, but they are sufficiently voluntary to be objects of moral evaluation.45 What about knowledge and belief, which Zagzebski describes as virtuous (or vicious) acts? Whatever sort of appraisal it may be, knowledge is a credit given to the knower, something we praise, consider admirable and worth pursuing. Zagzebski emphasises that knowledge “is not something that simply happens to us, but it is something to which we contribute through our own efforts and skills, and this 45  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 59–61, 128–129.

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leads us, at least in some moods, to think of ourselves as bearing responsibility for having or not having it.”46 Hence, she insists, epistemic credit is earned by an agent only through the exercise of agency. Now, Zagzebski’s analysis of cognitive agency is much more sophisticated than my summary of it can depict it here.47 The area is notoriously difficult to analyse, and it relies heavily on psychological and metaphysical assumptions. We can start with the distinction that agency is more than the causal sequence that we find in the relation between inanimate substances and the effects they produce. Zagzebski calls it “event causation.” “Agency causation,” then, seems to refer to the causal impact animate beings produce with the powers they have in virtue of being animate, but it is controversial whether agency should be ascribed to animals or to little children. When we talk of agency we are interested in the behaviour of adult human beings, and such that is considered relevant for ethics. Yet, even here the opinions range from Kant’s narrow view of agency as the deliberate exercise of the will, to Aristotle’s wider position where agency includes all intentional acts, whether or not preceded by deliberation and choice, and even some non–intentional acts, which are nevertheless subject to moral evaluation according to Aristotle’s ethics.48 Zagzebski argues, first, that knowledge is certainly better explained on the model of agency, rather than on the model of simple event causation. Second, her analysis states that the way we normally evaluate in epistemology is explained better if we presuppose a wider notion of agency. The cognitive agency her theory of epistemic normativity deals with does not require that the agent intentionally aim at her end, or that she act on a deliberate voluntary choice that would require alternate possibilities.49 Zagzebski argues that the evaluation of beliefs in knowledge requires that the person be an active agent in believing, either in the initial acquisition of the belief, or in later reflective endorsement of 46  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 261. 47  See Linda Zagzebski, “Must Knowers Be Agents?” in Virtue Epistemology, eds. Fairweather and Zagzebski, 142–157. 48  See Zagzebski, “Must Knowers Be Agents,” 143–144. 49  See Zagzebski, “Must Knowers Be Agents,” 154–155; and Virtues of the Mind, 62, 66, 73.

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the belief or beliefs like it. That requirement does not go against what we normally believe happens in cognition. Our mind is not a passive information processor, not even at the level of perceptual beliefs. We have to admit that our beliefs often come unexpectedly through causal processes that are out of reach of our consciousness. In this, they are similar to our desires. The cognitive agency is still in operation, however, at the reflective level. “If an intellectually virtuous agent had indications that her perceptual ability or her perceptual situation was in some way deviant, she would withhold or withdraw perceptual judgment until she could investigate. … A sudden belief that comes out of nowhere, like a sudden urge, ought to be either endorsed or repudiated.”50 We should not do this kind of reflection constantly and obsessively with our spontaneous beliefs, but sometimes, when perceptual beliefs are seriously important, we have to. Our general acceptance of perception as a reliable cognitive faculty is not unreflective, but an epistemic virtue, and relying on the perception yields knowledge because it is an act of intellectual virtue. Not only complex beliefs, but also many simple beliefs are sufficiently voluntary to be subject to moral evaluation, though few, if any, are the objects of direct choice. Now Zagzebski is launching a counterattack: “There is no special [b]order between thinking and acting. We do both most of the time. It takes tremendous philosophical ingenuity to devise a theory that separates these activities enough to permit a division in normative theory between ethics and normative epistemology. It is my position that this ingenuity is misplaced.”51 My fifth chapter will be dedicated almost entirely to the problem of cognitive agency and epistemic responsibility in Lonergan. For the moment, I can say that Zagzebski–style counterattack looks a plausible strategy in facing the problem of cognitive agency. Instead of defending doxastic voluntarism, it looks more promising to start from the position that radical doxastic involuntarism is wrong.

2.1.7 A Reorientation of Epistemology: R. Roberts & W.J. Wood Much of the criticism of Zagzebski’s project in virtue epistemology has been directed at her attempt to introduce the notion of moral virtue and motivation into the traditional conceptual analysis of 50  Zagzebski, “Must Knowers Be Agents,” 152. 51  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 231.

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knowledge. The critics often find her requirements for knowledge too strong.52 They find many cases (usually from the area of “lower–grade” knowledge) where we grant credit for knowledge despite the fact that the subject lacks the virtuous motivation and control in his intellectual performance. Later in this chapter we will consider Sosa’s alternative explanation of the credit for knowledge that does not employ the concept of virtuous motivation, nor implies any strong connection between epistemic and ethical normativity. Nonetheless, even the critics have welcomed Zagzebski’s epistemology (and virtue responsibilism in general) as a positive development, recognizing its contribution in particular in the broader issues of epistemic normativity. By contrast, some virtue epistemologists, most notably Robert Roberts and W. Jay Wood, hold that Zagzebski has not gone far enough in the application of virtue ethics in epistemology. They argue that a more radical broadening of epistemology is necessary, towards what they call “regulative epistemology.”53 Roberts and Wood remind us that, although some form of conceptual analysis is necessary as the first step in an epistemological inquiry, epistemology has a broader practical and social regulative aim. The ultimate goal of epistemology, as they see it, is to facilitate the improvement of intellectual character. Hence, epistemological analysis should be understood as a “cartography” of the intellectual life, a “mapping” of the intellectual virtues that are practiced or desired in different areas of inquiry.54 Roberts and Wood are critical of mainstream late twentieth–century analytic theory of knowledge, but not simply for programmatic reasons. Not only the focus on conceptual analysis of knowledge (preoccupied with Gettier–style problems) was too narrow, they argue, but the attempts to find suitable definitions of knowledge, justification, and warrant were regularly unsuccessful.55 Far from being sceptics, Roberts and Wood maintain that the problem is rather in 52  See Greco, “Virtues in Epistemology,” 12–14; and Baehr, “Character in Epistemology,” 495–496. 53  They borrow this term from N. Wolterstorff. See Nicholas Wolterstorff, John Locke and the Ethics of Belief (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), xvi. For their criticism of some elements of Zagzebski’s theory, Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 11–15. Nevertheless, their agreement with Zagzebski is much broader. 54  See Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 21, 27, 28, 58. 55  See Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 6–20, 84–112.

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what mainstream analytic epistemology takes for the paradigm of knowledge (i.e., simple, often trivial, “low–grade” cognitive states) and how it understands the cognitive agent. (We have seen that Zagzebski proposed roughly the same diagnosis.) The reason why simple definitions fail is the complexity and diversity within the concept of knowledge. Even the concept of propositional knowledge is not univocal, and knowledge relevant for epistemology is more than propositional. Knowledge is “the richly intertwined bundle of understanding, acquaintance, and propositional knowledge.”56 Roberts and Wood suggest that faculty epistemology needs to give priority to the notion of epistemic practices, like “observation, hypothesis formation, hypothesis testing, critical discussion, teaching, interviewing, reading, and prayer,” and be broadened to encompass a more complete range of positive cognitive dispositions.57 It seems that at the heart of their dissatisfaction with mainstream analytic epistemology stands the idea of the cognitive agent. Roberts and Wood reject the separation between the will and the intellect, and recover the idea that the will is an intellectual faculty, while the intellectual life is as much a matter of practices as any other part of life. Indeed, they argue that a virtue epistemology that does full justice to the functioning of the epistemic faculties in producing the most interesting and important kinds of knowledge will have to make the will the central intellectual faculty. The reason is that the epistemic goods are acquired, ultimately, not by faculties but by agents, and the will is the locus of our identity as agents.58

Human epistemic faculties are not given as ready–to–use products. The epistemic faculties are in constant development and they must reach a certain level of maturity and excellence in order to function with full intensity and efficiency. The intellectual virtues include and presuppose natural abilities and drives that tend to deliver specific epistemic goods, but fundamentally they are acquired traits. The levels 56  Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 110. See also 34, 42, 55–57, where they demand a concept of knowledge that is “broader, richer, and deeper” than the one on which most English–speaking epistemologists focused in the second half of twentieth–century. 57  Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 113. 58  Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 111–112; see also 153–154.

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of cognitive maturity and excellence cannot be reached without a lasting effort and the proper motivation of the agent. Hence, the formation of the will is crucial to an agent’s intellectual functioning. It starts with the mature disposition of the will towards knowledge, but is perfected by the love of knowledge. Roberts and Wood dedicate seven of twelve chapters in their book to the analysis of specific intellectual virtues. The love of knowledge, firmness, courage and caution, humility, autonomy, generosity, and practical wisdom are given a chapter each. They reserve the most prominent place for the virtue of intellectual practical wisdom, so that they present their epistemology “as an attempt to formulate intellectual practical wisdom.”59 Roberts and Wood make some other radical suggestions. First, they point to the fact that the object of inquiry is not irrelevant for the issue of epistemic normativity since there is no such thing as simple love of truth. That virtue is always oriented to truths of different kinds.60 Epistemic obligations do not apply to all questions in equal measure. The higher the importance of one area, or the more one cares for a particular issue, the more obliged will one be to examine critically his or her beliefs about that issue. This is a version of epistemic contextualism that we regularly apply in common sense knowledge. The cure for the obvious temptation of relativism is to be looked for in the intellectual virtues of the love of knowledge and practical wisdom. Something, though, has to be left to the broader ethical and anthropological debates on what sort of knowledge has priority for individual persons and for the society. The charge of relativism has been articulated more clearly against the position of Roberts and Wood that intellectual virtues are “indexed to world views” or to moral or “metaphysical outlooks.”61 This position can be understood in the stronger relativist sense which claims that what counts as an intellectual virtue is tradition–relative, so that if a given trait is regarded as an intellectual virtue within a certain tradition, then it is an intellectual virtue (at least for members of that tradition). Baehr remarks that Roberts and Wood seem, at times, tempted by 59  Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 324. 60  See Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 41–42, 157–160, 180. 61  Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 180, 318.

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this form of relativism.62 A similar objection has been raised against virtue ethics in general as some virtue ethicists have endorsed such tradition–based relativism.63 Roberts and Wood, however, affirm that the needed rationality constraint is in the motivational component of intellectual virtue. The love of knowledge is required for intellectual practical wisdom. They allow that the genuine human intellectual integrity may be sufficient to attribute the intellectual virtue to a person, even if she is not successful in obtaining truth in that case.64 They reject the strong relativist interpretation of their virtue epistemology, but they avoid—it seems intentionally—any definite formulations of the rationality constraint. Roberts’s and Wood’s proposals do sometimes sound revisionist, but their epistemology is very much in continuity with the analytic epistemology they criticise, and they recognize that fact. Rather than the extent of their distancing from conceptual analysis, it is the pedagogical aim of their epistemology that should be appreciated and emphasised. They are certainly right that the pedagogical aspect has been neglected in recent epistemology. Also, on condition that we agree about our common epistemic values, regulative virtue epistemology promises a fresh way of defining what it means to be rational in the matter of more reflective beliefs, e.g., in politics, science and religion. Their regulative virtue epistemology has the potential of giving a framework to the teaching of critical thinking and informal logic, as well as bridging the gap that often exists between the subjects of critical thinking and analytic epistemology proper. Nevertheless, that does not mean that our questions on the conceptual analysis of knowledge related terms will lose their appeal.

62  See Jason Baehr, review of Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology, by Robert C. Roberts and W. Jay Wood, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews ( July 1, 2007), http://ndpr.nd.edu/review. cfm?id=10223 (accessed May 7, 2009). 63  Most prominently Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue. A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (London: Duckworth, 1985). 64  See Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 307–308.

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2.2 A Virtue Reliabilist Approach: E. Sosa 2.2.1 Sosa on Epistemic Virtue and Knowledge When Sosa first proposed that epistemic virtues should be given a prominent place in the theory of knowledge,65 his proposal was not motivated by the meta–epistemological issues in epistemic normativity and the concept of virtue he used (and continues to use) was not that of recent virtue ethics. In Sosa’s usage the term “virtue” is virtually interchangeable with terms like “faculty,” “skill,” “aptitude,” and “competence.” Sosa defines that an “intellectual virtue or faculty … is a power or ability or competence to arrive at truths in a particular field and to avoid believing falsehoods in that field.”66 Or, shorter, it is “a quality bound to help maximize one’s surplus of truth over error.”67 Intellectual virtue is, thus, an ability, natural or acquired, that reliably achieves an intellectual good, in matters of its appropriate object and in an appropriate environment. As he argues that the fundamental intellectual good is the truth (see below 2.3.2.), the defining feature of an intellectual virtue is, hence, its truth–conduciveness. Sosa’s examples of intellectual virtues are innate faculties of perception, memory, deductive and inductive reasoning, as well as acquired intellectual skills that constitute the excellent epistemic performances of, for example, successful scientists, detectives, or shoppers.68 Although innate cognitive faculties are not considered virtues in the ordinary sense of the word, Sosa argues that his concept of virtue also has roots in the philosophical tradition, because the ancient Greek concept of virtue allowed that virtue could be understood as an excellence of a faculty or function. So, if sight is a cognitive faculty, excellent sight can be considered an intellectual virtue.69 Intellectual conscientiousness, courage, modesty, and impartiality, which are more common representatives of intellectual virtues in the ordinary sense, are not excluded, though they are not given much attention in Sosa’s writings (possibly 65  See Sosa, “Raft and the Pyramid.” 66  Sosa, “Reliabilism and Intellectual Virtue,” 25. 67  Ernest Sosa, “Knowledge and Intellectual Virtue,” in Knowledge in Perspective, 225. 68  See Sosa, Virtue Epistemology, Ch 4. 69  See Ernest Sosa, “Intellectual Virtue in Perspective,” in Knowledge in Perspective, 271; and Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics, 2.6.1106a16–24.

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because the former have a higher ratio of cognitive success than the latter). Sosa argues that justified belief is belief that is grounded in epistemic virtue, i.e., justified belief is “believing out of intellectual virtue.”70 Yet, he makes a couple of important distinctions. First, he distinguishes between “animal knowledge” and “reflective (or fully human) knowledge.” To put it briefly, animal knowledge is the knowledge we are pretty much certain to have about our first–order empirical beliefs or simple logical inferences. We are sometimes ready to ascribe it to little children and even to animals, though we do not expect them to give justification for their true beliefs. Reflective knowledge is the knowledge we humans claim or desire to have about more complex beliefs and systems of beliefs in science and philosophy, for example. Reflective knowledge requires a fair amount of understanding and coherence about its constitutive beliefs, while the potential reflective knower must be able to explain and justify his claim to possess that form of knowledge. Second, Sosa distinguishes between “aptness” and “justification.”71 Aptness is the condition that makes our correct (or true) beliefs animal knowledge. Beliefs count as apt when their correctness is attributable to a competence exercised in appropriate conditions, i.e., when they achieve truth by an exercise of epistemic virtue. It is important to notice that animal knowledge requires apt beliefs without requiring defensibly apt beliefs. For example, our beliefs do not have to respond to the challenge of scepticism in order to be considered animal knowledge. Hence, most first–order beliefs that are based on perception and simple logical operations can be considered knowledge, that is to say animal knowledge, in virtue of our general (I would use the adjective “instinctive”) acceptance that perception and simple logical reasoning are truth–conducive. By contrast, it is much more difficult for our beliefs to obtain the status of reflective knowledge. Besides being true and apt, they have to be justified as well. Beliefs are justified when they are defensibly apt, i.e., when they fit coherently within the network of other beliefs that form the epistemic perspective of the believer. That means the 70  Sosa, “Knowledge and Intellectual Virtue,” 242. 71  See Sosa, “Reliabilism and Intellectual Virtue,” 31; and Virtue Epistemology, 24, 92–93.

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epistemic perspective in question has to withstand all relevant philosophical challenges. In our ordinary epistemic perspective we suppose that our cognitive faculties like perception and logical reasoning are reliable providers of animal knowledge. But in order to explain and defend our perceptual beliefs, to secure for them the status of reflective knowledge, we have to face the sceptical scenarios against the reliability of perception. Sosa argues that we can defend the fundamental reliability of our cognitive faculties, that is to say the epistemic perspective that supports the reliability of our ordinary cognitive faculties, through a kind of circularity that is not vicious.72

2.2.2 Epistemic Value and Evaluation Sosa accepts that knowledge, both animal and reflective knowledge, is an evaluative notion. To grant a belief the title of knowledge is an expression of positive epistemic evaluation of that belief. He goes even further: it is a positive evaluation of the subject. It is a credit given to the knower for his cognitive success, because it is thanks to his epistemic virtues that his beliefs deserve their positive evaluation.73 A belief is knowledge because it is true and apt; it is apt when it is true because it is produced by a competent or virtuous cognitive subject. We praise the knower not only because he brought about the true belief, but because he did it reliably, aptly, virtuously. Knowledge is not just hitting the truth, but hitting it aptly, virtuously—and receiving credit for that. Sosa often compares our praise of the subject who has knowledge with our praise of a good tennis player, or a good archer, or a good ballerina.74 When we say that the archer’s shot is not only accurate but skilful, we are not just praising the shot, but giving credit to the archer for that shot. An archer who makes a good shot by mere luck is not necessarily a good archer. A cognizer who hits the truth by luck is not a knower.

72  See Ernest Sosa, “Reflective Knowledge in the Best Circles,” in Knowledge, Truth and Duty, ed. Steup, 197–201; and Virtue Epistemology, 112 and Ch 6. 73  See Sosa, Virtue Epistemology, 80–82. 74  See Ernest Sosa, “The Place of Truth in Epistemology,” in Intellectual Virtue, eds. DePaul and Zagzebski, 173; “Reflective Knowledge in the Best Circles,” 194; and Virtue Epistemology, 23.

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What sort of evaluation is applied in such giving credit to a knower? What are the parameters for the evaluation of knowledge? Sosa is clear: the credit given to a knower is not much different from that given to a good archer, tennis player, or ballerina. All of them are praised because of their skilful performance from the point of view of the specific domain of archery, tennis, or ballet, respectively. The aesthetics of shot in archery may be valued, but it is virtually irrelevant for our judgment of the quality of the archer qua archer, as is the moral evaluation of the archer as person. Similarly, a knower is praised for his effective epistemic virtuousness from the epistemic point of view, while his moral qualities as well as the aesthetics of his epistemic performance are irrelevant to his positive epistemic appraisal. They cannot make up for one’s lack of epistemic skilfulness. There is certainly room for intellectual aesthetics, intellectual ethics, and practical interests in our intellectual life, but they are not necessary for the understanding of epistemic evaluation of knowledge. Sosa seems to maintain that this is true both for animal and reflective knowledge. We notice, however, that it is not so obvious in the case of the latter. But what is that specific epistemic value, the parameter of evaluation in the epistemic domain? Sosa argues that the fundamental value in the evaluation of knowledge is truth. “Truth” in this case means having true, correct, or accurate beliefs about things we find interesting for some reason. Sosa does not want to speculate whether truth has an absolute intrinsic value “as such;” it may or may not have.75 In any case, we will soon see that he does not think we have to introduce the motivation for truth “as such” as a necessary condition for knowledge. We have already encountered Plato’s question why knowledge of the road to Larissa is better than a true guess about the road to Larissa, and how this question challenges the position that true belief is what makes knowledge valuable. Sosa does not say that the value of knowledge can be reduced to the value of true belief. The credit of knowledge is also a positive evaluation of the competent knower. He argues, nevertheless, that the evaluation of the epistemic virtuousness of the knower depends on the fundamental value of truth and he is an epistemic value monist in that sense (see 1.2.4).

75  See Ernest Sosa, “For the Love of Truth?” in Virtue Epistemology, eds. Fairweather and Zagzebski, 49; and Virtue Epistemology, 72.

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Responding to the challenge of epistemic value pluralists, Sosa identifies four epistemic values connected with the specific value of knowledge, but all of them valuable because of their fundamental connection with the truth.76 First, there is the value of bare true believing. We prefer to be given truth rather than falsehood for whatever reason, even when the truth comes through luck, or is imposed on us by a completely external agency (which we are not aware nor in control of ). The second epistemic value involved in the value of knowledge is the “praxical, extrinsic value of true believing.” It is the instrumental value of the state or operation of true believing in view of the true belief it brings about. For example, bringing about of pleasure has its own distinctive value different from the value of pleasure in itself, though the value of bringing about pleasure depends on the value of pleasure. In a similar way, bringing about true beliefs has its own value different from the value of true beliefs, though it depends on the value of true beliefs it acquires. The third one is the “eudemonist, intrinsic value of true believing.” It is the value of my bringing about the true belief in the sense that this achievement is my own attributable deed. Acquiring the true belief is creditable to the subject as his own doing, thanks to his epistemic virtuousness, and this credit contributes to the subject’s intellectual eudemonia. The fourth epistemic value involved in the value of knowledge is what Sosa calls “the performance value of a deliverance–induced believing,” which is there even when the belief induced is false. We value beliefs that are a result of an apt or virtuous cognitive performance even if their truth or falsehood does not depend on our performance. Sosa gives the example of two victims of a demon who happens to be less malevolent than the Cartesian one, and gives us true beliefs though he could give us false ones. The first victim did everything to have his beliefs formed in an apt way; the second victim formed his beliefs negligently. The fact that their beliefs are true does not depend on their performance at all. Yet, Sosa says, we certainly value the performance of the first victim. Why? A deontologist would answer that it is because the first victim did his epistemic duty, he fulfilled his epistemic responsibility in regard to his epistemic obligation. Sosa offers a consequentialist–style explanation. 76  See Sosa, “The Place of Truth in Epistemology,” 170–177.

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He says that we measure the value of the performance of a system by how well the performance would provide its expected goods in its proper environment, even if in that particular occasion the system cannot provide the expected good.77 We care about our devices and systems performing well only because that shows them to be devices suitable for delivering the goods, but it is the goods to be delivered that we really care about. Thus, the performance value of a cognitive operation depends, again, on the fundamental value of the truth it would achieve were it not hindered by uncontrollable obstacles. Hence, all four epistemic values that are implied in our evaluation of knowledge are based in the value of having truth as the fundamental epistemic value, even if the last three transcend the value of mere true belief.

2.2.3 Desire for the Truth “as Such”? We have seen that Zagzebski requires the knower’s desire or love for truth as a necessary condition for the credit of knowledge. Hence, as an in itself valuable and praiseworthy virtuous motivation, the desire for truth adds something to the value of true belief in knowledge. In Sosa’s view, there is no need to introduce other motivations, like desire or love of truth, that would add some extra value to the value of truth in knowledge.78 First of all, he maintains that the only relevant attitude to the truth is believing it. Truth is the quality of the propositions about what the fact is. There is nothing to love in the fact that a proposition corresponds to a fact. In loving the truth we love having true beliefs, believing the truth, and not the being true of the truths, i.e., their “correspondence” with the facts.79 Sosa does not think that we pursue true beliefs as such, either. We want our beliefs to be true, but we do not want to have all possible true beliefs. Many truths are not interesting for us, or are trivial, or useless, or harmful. What we want to know is motivated by our interest, by our questions. The desire for truth is a desire for the correct answer, not the desire for truth as such.80 77  See Sosa, “The Place of Truth in Epistemology,”177–178. 78  Nonetheless, Sosa says that it is hard for him to distinguish his and Zagzebski’s position. See Ernest Sosa and His Critics, ed. John Greco (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 321. 79  Sosa, “For the Love of Truth,” 49. 80  See Sosa, “For the Love of Truth,” 49–51.

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Furthermore, it is not necessary to be motivated by the disinterested desire for truth as such in order to have knowledge, to know the answer to a question. We can know the answer to our question so long as we accept the answer on good enough evidence (which includes its aptness). Actually, it is possible to interpret the desire for truth as such in a drastic sense that, if taken as a requirement for knowledge, it would make knowledge practically impossible.81 What about the idea that the desire for truth as such is one that bears directly not on true beliefs, but on truth–conducive practices (methods, rules, policies, virtues)? In that case, the subject adheres to a practice to believe propositions that are of sort F, and does so because of the belief that F propositions are true or likely to be true. Sosa finds that the problem here is that the belief “Propositions of sort F are true or likely to be true” must be knowledge itself, and so we end up in a vicious circle.82 The F–producing practices are reliable because the F– beliefs are true, and the same F–beliefs are guaranteed as true because they are produced by F–producing practices. We can try to break the vicious circle by choosing one of three possibilities Sosa offers. We can simply choose the master–practices arbitrarily (a). This move will not provide us with the truth connection required for knowledge. In fact, it is what traditional epistemology has been struggling against for centuries. The other options are to appeal (b) to the virtues/abilities constitutive of our presumably reasonable non–acquired nature, or (c) to the virtues of an ideal intellectual character that we are to acquire as our “second nature.” The options (b) and (c) correspond roughly to the positions of virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism respectively. As expected, Sosa supports option (b). In order to have animal knowledge we do not have to explain how these natural cognitive abilities got there. When we realize that they work, the acquisition of knowledge is a matter of their proper application. In order to have reflective knowledge about their reliability, well, we have to suppose their fundamental truth–conduciveness: “this first nature had better be in proper touch with the truth if what ultimately depends upon it is to be epistemically in good admirable order.”83 Sosa recognizes 81  For Sosa’s distinction between the sensitivity and the safety requirement, see “For the Love of Truth,” 52; and Virtue Epistemology, 25. 82  See Sosa, “For the Love of Truth,” 54. 83  Sosa, “For the Love of Truth,” 55.

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that the connection between our cognition and the truth requires a deeper metaphysical grounding, but that is not directly relevant for epistemology.84 Regarding option (c), Sosa does not see how we could evaluate the acquisition and sustainment of the intellectual virtuous qualities of our “second nature” without relying at some stage on the cognitive qualities of our “first nature.”85 The evaluation of epistemic qualities concerns primarily how well they lead the subject to grasp the truth in certain circumstances. He finds problematic any position that requires that our cognitive qualities and practices be freely, voluntarily chosen by the subject. Sosa writes, “It has been my contention that one important requirement on justified or reasonable belief is an appropriate truth connection, which cannot be secured through essential dependence on absolutely autonomous, free choice.”86 The more room left for the arbitrary freedom of choice in cognitive practices, the weaker will be their connection with the truth and our trust of their truth– conduciveness. We need stable, dependable cognitive constitution, not arbitrary volitions that can too easily change direction unforeseeably. To be clear, Sosa does not exclude that responsibilist–style intellectual virtues are important in the process of inquiry, but the basis for the justification of knowledge must be in the reliability of our natural cognitive abilities.

2.2.4 Epistemic Normativity and Intellectual Ethics In Sosa’s view the epistemic domain is the one that has truth as its distinctive and fundamental value. Evaluation is distinctively epistemic when it is concerned with truth.87 The pursuit of truth may have an 84  “Our relation to the environment with whose truth our nature puts us reliably in touch cannot itself be wholly accidental. It can be accidental in some respects. … But these accidents are all compatible with it being no accident, not relevantly, that one is now in an environment, on the surface of our planet, wherein one’s perceptual organs are well adjusted to tell it like it is.” Sosa, “For the Love of Truth,” 58. 85  See Sosa, “For the Love of Truth,” 55. 86  Sosa, “For the Love of Truth,” 58. Notice that Sosa speaks here in terms of “absolute freedom“ and “arbitrary freedom.” Most doxastic voluntarists, including leading virtue responsibilists, do not argue for “absolute” or “arbitrary” freedom in epistemic issues. 87  See Sosa, Virtue Epistemology, 88–89.

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absolute intrinsic value, or it may be valuable from other points of view, but we do not need to ask why truth is valuable in order to explain epistemic normativity. True beliefs may be evaluated pragmatically, but we must distinguish the normative status of knowledge as knowledge from the normative status that knowledge about specific things may have in virtue of its usefulness or explanatory value. There is no need to mix the epistemic domain with other normative domains. Sosa recognizes that both theory of knowledge and intellectual ethics are parts of epistemology. The difference is that intellectual ethics concerns which true beliefs to pursue and why in view of the full span of intellectual values, while theory of knowledge concerns whether the pursuit of truth is done aptly or poorly. Sosa’s example may be helpful.88 Suppose that Paul forms a belief about the number of motes of dust on his desk by consulting an Ouija board. From the point of view of theory of knowledge (a), we evaluate Paul’s belief as poor, because it is unsafe in respect to the truth of the matter. From the point of view of intellectual ethics (b), we criticize Paul because there are better ways he should be spending his time. Now, a critic of Sosa’s distinction may say that even in (a) we do not just criticise Paul from the mere performance point of view, but we find him in some sense blameworthy for forming his belief in such an unjustified way. He has somehow let us down, regardless of his choice of the trivial object of inquiry. Sosa replies that the situation seems rather like that of a hunter in a hunting society who used energy and resources, in a condition of scarcity, shooting at trivial targets, and did so carelessly and poorly. He is blameworthy for letting his hunting society down, but that evaluation goes beyond what makes his shots poor shots. Similarly, the concern of intellectual ethics with other values besides truth involved in our intellectual life is not constitutive of epistemic evaluation proper. It is true that the evaluation of knowledge involves a social element, which may include some moral praise or blame, but moral praise or blame are not a necessary element in the evaluation of knowledge. All that matters for epistemic evaluation is the competence or incompetence of the subject in his epistemic practice. And that competence is not diminished or increased by the choice of the object or of the purpose of inquiry.

88  See Sosa, Virtue Epistemology, 89–90.

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2.2.5 Intellectual Ethics and Reflective Knowledge The picture is not complete yet. We praise stability in apt epistemic practices (epistemic virtues) and award aptly formed beliefs the credit of knowledge. Why? If the credit given for knowledge is not a sort of moral praise, what kind of appraisal is it? If Sosa is right, the answer to this question is not relevant for epistemic normativity stricte dictu, but it is important for Sosa’s vision of normativity in intellectual life, and he has dealt with that question. Sosa maintains that we can explain the credit given to a knower in the wider picture of our human collaborative efforts to obtain truth. We praise and admire epistemic virtues because they make the cognitive subject a reliable collaborator in our common epistemic efforts.89 Sosa tends to take the ideals of intellectual ethics from the heaven of higher “pure” motivations, down to earth. That approach seems to work well in explaining our appraisal of what Sosa called animal knowledge. Our basic innate cognitive functions are reliable, and those among us who possess them in an excellent degree are more reliable than others (the ethics of communication is a different issue). It is not crucial that “animal” knowers can give reasons why they trust their abilities. Giving reasons is a task for reflective knowers. The title of reflective knowledge goes to those beliefs that belong to and are supported by an intellectually virtuous system.90 The virtues of that system are coherence, comprehensiveness, unity, simplicity, integrity, explanatory power, and so on. They are not easy to obtain. The faculties required for its formation are not only perception, memory and simple logical operations, but also reflective reason and the testimony of the epistemic community. Moreover, comprehensive coherence is no guarantee of truth, as the problems with brains in vats and the Cartesian evil demons illustrate. If reflective knowledge is so difficult to acquire, why do we desire it? What does motivate us for that enterprise? Sosa here recognizes the value of understanding.91 The value of reflective knowledge is partly in the value of understanding. Partly it is in its truth–conduciveness. He does not explore the connection between understanding and truth 89  See Sosa, “Reflective Knowledge in the Best Circles,” 194. 90  See Sosa, “Reflective Knowledge in the Best Circles,” 194–197. 91  See Sosa, “Reflective Knowledge in the Best Circles,” 197–201.

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yet. Anyway, in order to justify the truth–conduciveness of reflective understanding he goes back to the idea of the non–vicious, indeed, virtuous epistemic circularity, where we have to presuppose the fundamental connection between our cognition and the truth in our world because it works. His animal and reflective knowledge do not require infallibility, but only a high level of reliability—and that is what we have. This, again, opens the door to the question about an adequate metaphysics of our relationship with the world. One would expect that there is more room for epistemic value pluralism in the value of reflective knowledge. Reflective knowledge includes understanding, which is a cognitive state that might have its own value, and other qualities of virtuous systems may have their own values too. Yet, it seems that Sosa believes that even in reflective knowledge the truth, understood as relevant true beliefs and as truth– conduciveness, maintains its role as the fundamental and distinctive value in the epistemic domain. As we have seen, Zagzebski distinguishes between low–grade and high–grade states of knowledge, which correspond roughly to Sosa’s animal and reflective knowledge, although her distinction is not as sharp. However, she rejects the idea that animal knowledge should be taken as a paradigm of knowledge, and argues that an overemphasized interest in animal knowledge is a hindrance to finding an adequate solution to the problem of epistemic normativity. She suggests that Sosa’s epistemology is an example of such a mistaken approach (in his earlier works, at least).92 Sosa does appear a bit ambiguous about which of the two kinds of knowledge deserves priority in epistemology, but I think that Greco makes a correct interpretation when he says that for Sosa animal knowledge is ultimately of a lesser kind than reflective knowledge.93 Nonetheless, it cannot pass unnoticed that, in comparison to the question of epistemic normativity in animal knowledge, Sosa pays less attention to the question of epistemic normativity in reflective knowledge. But the debate on the issue is not over yet.94 I must agree with Zagzebski that a sharp dualism between animal and reflective knowledge does not help in solving the problem 92  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 278–280. 93  See Greco, “Virtues in Epistemology,” 299. 94  See Ernest Sosa, Reflective Knowledge: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge, Volume II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009).

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of epistemic normativity. Furthermore, Sosa’s view that even in the matter of reflective knowledge the fundamental epistemic value has to be the possession of true beliefs is a bit too austere. It may be easier to give a satisfactory definition of knowledge if we drop the bar low enough, but it does not do justice to how our knowledge develops. The great scientists and scholars probably would consider their pursuit of knowledge more like a passion or devotion rather than a skill, while many of them would consider respect for the truth a moral demand. The scientific and philosophical pursuit of knowledge is better characterized as noble, rather than useful. And that characterization is not romanticism. Having in mind the dialectics of the historical and personal development of our knowledge of the world through so many incomplete and sometimes simply wrong paradigms, the virtuous motivation for knowledge and truth looks as the best guarantee available that the self–correcting improvement of knowledge will continue in the future.

2.3 Nexus Before we proceed with the analysis of Lonergan’s model of epistemic normativity, I will briefly indicate what seem to be the common issues that open up virtue epistemological perspectives towards Lonergan and vice versa, and to which we will have to pay more attention in the following chapters. The first result of the development of virtue epistemology has been its articulation of the question of the relationship between ethical and epistemic normativity, as well as a respectable success in clarifying the basic concepts involved in the same issue. It has crystallized that any attempt to approach the issue of epistemic normativity must deal with the questions of epistemic responsibility, cognitive agency and epistemic value before it can explain on which basis we instruct and evaluate in epistemology. This is a challenge both for those who deny and for those who affirm the dependence of epistemic normativity on ethics. It will also be a challenge to Lonergan’s cognitional theory. It has been assumed that Lonergan’s cognitional theory implies a deep connection between epistemic and ethical normativity, and I will try to show in the following chapters that that assumption is basically right, but Lonergan’s position needs clarifications and is not without internal tensions.

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I will try to show later that Lonergan’s approach has one fundamental thing in common with virtue epistemology in general and that is the recognition of the cognitive subject as the centre of epistemic appraisal. Lonergan has more in common with the virtue responsibilist approach of Zagzebski, Roberts and Wood, as they together try to locate the centre of epistemic appraisal in the cognitive subject as agent in which different normative aspects intertwine and amalgamate, rather than in the subject’s cognitive faculties on their own. They also agree in rejecting the machine–product model of cognitive agency. Regarding the relationship between Lonergan’s and Sosa’s models of epistemic normativity, the model of epistemic normativity in Lonergan’s theory of judgment in Insight looks closer to Sosa’s model of epistemic normativity which emphasizes the autonomy of the epistemic domain based on the truth–conduciveness of cognitive operations. Epistemic justification there seems to be accounted for in terms of evidence and veridical reliability, ignoring the element of moral integrity. We will see in our fourth chapter, though, that Lonergan’s theory of judgment is not as simple as it may look if viewed in the wider context of his cognitional theory. Lonergan’s criticism of the “visual paradigm” and “animal extrovertedness” which, he argues, most modern theories of knowledge presuppose applies very much to Sosa’s theory of knowledge, probably more than to virtue responsibilist theories (although the latter are not immune to Lonergan’s criticism either). On the other hand, Sosa’s externalist approach can be helpful as a platform from which we can critically consider Lonergan’s emphasis on the necessity of the consciousness in the cognitive operations, as well as his rather strong demand for the “purity” of intellectual desire in the process of the acquisition and justification of knowledge. In general, I believe that Lonergan would see Sosa’s epistemology more as a rival than an ally to his own. I hope that will become clearer as we proceed with the analysis of Lonergan’s position. By contrast, regarding the relationship between Lonergan’s and virtue responsibilists’ models of epistemic normativity, Zagzebski’s in particular, I expect they will prove to be more allies than rivals. Since Lonergan’s model of epistemic normativity has not been formulated as clearly and systematically as Zagzebski’s theory, her model is obviously at an advantage. Nevertheless, I anticipate that Lonergan’s cognitional

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theory has a potential to improve the responsibilist position at a few points. First, we have seen that virtue responsibilism is in difficulty when it has to explain epistemic responsibility in the case of low–grade knowledge. Lonergan’s criticism of “animal extrovertedness” can be used as a platform from which the choice of animal knowledge as the paradigm for epistemology can be criticized. Also, Lonergan’s complex model of knowledge (knowledge as a compound of experience, understanding and judgment) offers an explanation of why knowledge in epistemologically interesting sense should be considered a function of a complex cognitive contact with reality rather than a function of simple perceptual beliefs. Second, recent virtue ethics and, consequently, the virtue responsibilist model of epistemic normativity suggest that we detect and define moral and intellectual virtues through the example of virtuous persons, i.e., through the analysis of the personal and social narratives of virtuous persons as they appear in the historical experience of humanity. On that line Zagzebski suggests that virtues are identified and assimilated through a dialogical imitation of wise persons, phronimoi (see 2.2.3). The problem is not just that different traditions have had different ideas about which character traits are virtues, but some virtue ethicists have accepted the relativist stance that virtues are bound to tradition. The application of such relativism in the matters of epistemic normativity would not be acceptable for mainstream epistemologists. As we have seen, Zagzebski is not a relativist, but I do not think Lonergan would consider the historical evidence of virtuous exemplars strong enough to be the foundation for ethics and epistemic normativity. He chooses a different path. In his ethics and his epistemic normativity the source of the qualities that characterize the virtuous or authentic person are transcendental values and emanating from them transcendental precepts.

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efore we go into the analysis of the relation between epistemic normativity and ethics in the philosophy of Bernard Lonergan, the natural way of proceeding is to become acquainted with his epistemology. It would not be advisable, however, to deal with his epistemology without an introduction to his cognitional theory. It is a kind of Lonerganian slogan that questions are as important as answers (or even more important), because they determine the horizon of answers (see MT 164), and the questions of his epistemology have been formulated in the context of his cognitional theory. Lonergan’s cognitional theory is the most original part of his philosophy and provides the framework for all his philosophy. Another reason why Lonergan’s cognitional theory is important for epistemology is that the correct and authentic functioning of human cognition plays a crucial role in his notion of epistemic justification. “Authenticity” is an important word in Lonergan’s cognitional theory as it ties together the natural reliability of the cognitive operations with the responsibility of the subject in their critical adoption. Lonergan’s emphasis on the authentic functioning of cognition is one of the main arguments in support of the thesis about the closeness between Lonergan’s epistemology and the responsibilist version of virtue epistemology (more about it in Chapter 4). Lonergan’s cognitional theory is based on an elaborate analysis of human cognitive activity in different areas of knowledge, from common sense and science, to history and metaphysics. That analysis involves issues in cognitive psychology, sociology of knowledge and the theory of scientific knowledge. Following Lonergan into these areas would take us too far afield. Hence, when I am talking about cognitional theory, I am dealing with Lonergan’s “cognitional structure”

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as he sees it at work in our scientific and commonsense knowledge and, only when necessary, in metaphysical knowledge. Again, among the notions and questions that emerge in his cognitional theory, those that are more important for the issue of epistemic normativity (such as judgment, belief, self–appropriation, and intellectual desire) will be studied more thoroughly in the subsequent chapters.

3.1 Cognitive Self–Appropriation 3.1.1 The Aim of Cognitional Theory Lonergan’s cognitional theory can be seen as a theory in cognitive psychology, but from the very beginning it is clear that he does not aim to stay at the level of psychology. Lonergan studies human cognition in order to construct a general normative methodology. He is in search of a “generalized empirical method” (IN 268) or “transcendental method” (MT 13) that should be normative for all areas of knowledge. For Lonergan cognition is never something that simply “happens” or “works.” In his writings, cognition is described as an activity or, better, as a set of activities—knowing is a kind of “doing.”1 He does not ask merely what happens in our cognitive apparatus when we think, but what role a conscious human subject has in performing his cognitive operations when trying to obtain valuable cognitive results such as understanding and knowledge. From the very beginning his theory of cognition has in view a general methodology, which can also be called a general normative epistemology in the broad sense of the word. All areas of knowledge interest Lonergan, but there is one that is especially close to his heart. That one is metaphysics, because he considers it the sphere that unites all other areas of knowledge (see IN 415). The programmatic statement of his Insight acknowledges his focus on epistemology and metaphysics: “Thoroughly understand what it is to understand, and not only will you understand the broad lines of all there is to be understood but also you will possess a fixed base, an invariant pattern, 1 See MT 25; “Theories of Inquiry: Responses to a Symposium,” in Second Collection, 37; and “Philosophical Positions with Regard to Knowing,” in Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958–1964, volume 6 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, eds. Robert C. Croken, Frederick E. Crowe, and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 215, henceforth cited as PPK.

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opening upon all further developments of understanding.”2 Traditional metaphysical themes dominate roughly one half of Insight (Chapters 8, 14–17, 19–20), but Chapters 9–13, which are considered epistemological par excellence and stand at the core of Insight, after dealing with knowledge in common sense and science turn to the knowledge of being. The notion of objectivity in the summing–up Chapter 13 refers principally to what we can call metaphysical objectivity, i.e., the question of the real distinction between the subject and the object in cognition, and the related questions of the knowledge of reality, of the thing–in–itself and of being. Lonergan calls it “the problem of transcendence” and the “epistemological” or “Kantian” problem.3 Lonergan’s focus on metaphysics (which is, by the way, a typical characteristic of the neo–Scholastic epistemologies of his time) may generate some difficulties in reading his epistemology in the light of contemporary debates in epistemology, because the latter have a narrower horizon, usually restricted to our commonsense and scientific claims to knowledge. It is not an insurmountable obstacle, however. Lonergan’s interest in metaphysics has not diminished the central place of the conscious and responsible cognitive subject in his philosophy. The point of departure of Lonergan’s metaphysics is the subject. His metaphysics remains subject–centred even when he writes on the traditional metaphysical issues like being and its structure, finality, causality, and natural theology, as well as when he writes on more modern metaphysical issues like philosophy of history, hermeneutics, and philosophy of science. Lonergan begins his exploration of the human way of knowing with a first–person analysis of our cognitive activity. He emphasises that we must be consciously and responsibly engaged in the cognitive process, if we want to understand and critically adopt its functions and norms. Lonergan’s name for such conscious and responsible involvement in our cognitional process is the “appropriation of one’s own intellectual and rational self–consciousness” (IN 753) or, shorter, 2  IN 22. The italics are in the original. See also IN 753. 3 See IR 268, 275. The Kantian problem of the possibility of metaphysical realism influenced Lonergan’s interest in the philosophy of knowledge from an early stage. It also gives programmatic unity to Chapters 9–13, which were the first chapters of Insight Lonergan wrote. See William A. Mathews, Lonergan’s Quest. A Study of Desire in the Authoring of Insight (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 37, 287–288, and 510n5.

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“self–appropriation.” He writes that “Insight may be described as a set of exercises in which, it is hoped, one attains self–appropriation.”4 Actually, self–appropriation is necessary for (1) understanding, (2) verifying, and (3) adopting cognitive functions and norms. First, our cognition operates, and its operates in pre–conceptual ways. Lonergan argues that a theory of cognition must begin as a phenomenology of cognition, and self–appropriation is the method of engaging with the realm of the pre–conceptual. Second—and this is particularly interesting for epistemologists—the success and reliability of cognitional operations is verified through their performative self–reference (more in Chapter 4). There is no way to that verification other than self–appropriation. Finally, self–appropriation is a necessary element for any pedagogy of human intellectual life. Self–appropriation is a laborious process and it is never fully completed. More than just becoming conscious of one’s cognitive operations, it also requires the integration of different aspects of human consciousness (biological, cognitive, practical, aesthetic, religious) in the perspective of human self–knowledge and self–development. Thus self–appropriation becomes one of the central and the most distinctive notions of Lonergan’s philosophy. The necessity of self–appropriation for the study of the human mind cannot be overemphasised and is reaffirmed many times in Lonergan’s writings.5 Lonergan’s emphasis on self–appropriation seems to be related to the Cartesian choice of introspection as the starting point of philosophy.6 That is not far from the truth because Lonergan accepts and follows the “turn to the subject” in philosophy. But even if Lonergan’s philosophy is partly a Cartesian armchair meditation, it is not only 4  Bernard Lonergan, Understanding and Being: The Halifax Lectures on ‘Insight,’ vol. 5 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, eds. Elisabeth A. Morelli and Mark D. Morelli (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 3, henceforth cited as UB. See also IN 11. 5 See IN 13-14, 22; UB 14–21; MT 7, 83–85. See also “An Interview with Fr. Bernard Lonergan, S.J,” interview by Philip McShane, in Second Collection, 213; and Frederick E. Crowe, “Insight: Genesis and Ongoing Context,” in Developing the Lonergan Legacy. Historical, Theoretical, and Existential Themes (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 51. 6  In Lonergan’s later writings the term “introspection” has got a specific meaning of the “objectification of the contents of consciousness,” MT 8–9. He insists that it is not the same as the Cartesian introspection.

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that. Although Lonergan keeps repeating that self–appropriation is a personal enterprise and that no one else can do it for you, self–appropriation does not stop there. More than a half of Insight is dedicated to the study of how our cognition works in mathematical, scientific, common sense and metaphysical inquiries. Much of this is a historical study of the development of scientific theories and their relation to our common sense explanations. The reason for this widening of the horizon of self–appropriation from the first–person view to inter– subjectivity is the fact that our cognition manifests its nature through the acquisition of knowledge, and the acquisition of knowledge is not merely an individual enterprise, but a product of collaboration and of accumulation of common knowledge throughout history.7 The development of knowledge through history is not linear, but dialectic. Not only do we discover that some of our beliefs were biased and wrong but, while some theories of cognition have stimulated the progress of knowledge, others have led to dead ends. Also, some of them seemed to encourage progress in one field, but neglected it in others. Lonergan wants to find the characteristics of a theory of cognition that will encourage the progress of knowledge in all areas.8 Such a theory should be able to explain the development of scientific knowledge, to provide a transcultural basis for a critical approach to our common sense, and to facilitate human self–understanding in the world, which is also a world of being, meaning, history, and value. That theory of cognition should be able to go beyond its own formulations, because cognitional process itself evades formulations and because formulations are liable to various socio–historical limitations (see IN 369–370; UB 14; MT 282). Thus, one of the first characteristics of Lonergan’s theory of cognition is that it should be, well, less theoretical. The only way we can get such a “non–theoretical” theory of cognition is through the continuous self–appropriation of the cognitional process. 7  See Bernard Lonergan, “Belief: Today’s Issue,” in Second Collection, 87, henceforth cited as B. 8  The emphasis on development and progress figures prominently in Lonergan’s theory of the ideal society based on bias–free knowledge, called “cosmopolis,” IN 263-267, and in his theory of “position” and “counter–position,” where “positions invite development and counter–positions invite reversal” in knowledge, IN 412.

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Of course, Lonergan is aware that his reconstruction and explanation of the cognitional process can be criticized like any other. That is the reason why he wants to give us “an essay in aid of self–appropriation” (IN 16), signposts for a method, and not just another theory of cognition. Self–appropriation should not be understood as a theory, but as the subject’s own responsible involvement. Lonergan is persuaded that the initial steps of our self–appropriation, i.e., the analysis of the cognitive process in each of us, will reach basically the same results as his.

3.1.2 Cognition and Intentionality What has Lonergan learnt about cognition through self–appropriative introspection? First, our cognitive process functions as a pattern of operations which are recurrent and interrelated. The operations include “seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting, inquiring, imagining, understanding, conceiving, formulating, reflecting, marshalling and weighing the evidence, judging, deliberating, evaluating, deciding, speaking, writing” (MT 6; see IN 299). In the normal human way of knowing none of these operations happens without connection with some of the others from the list. Furthermore, our cognitive operations are intentional. “Intentional” is an important term in Lonergan’s philosophy. He defines his approach to the study of human consciousness as “intentionality analysis.”9 In Lonergan’s theory of cognition, “intentional” is used in a psychological and a metaphysical sense. Let us first consider intentionality in the psychological sense. Later we will return to how intentionality facilitates our metaphysical knowledge of transcendental notions. Intentionality is the characteristic of our cognitive operations in virtue of which they are transitive, i.e., directed to the objects of cognition (see MT 7–8). We cannot experience, understand, believe or know without experiencing, understanding, believing or knowing something. There are no cognitive processes without any content. The operations, however, do not intend the objects alone. The cognitive operations occur consciously. The subject through the exercise of the operations intends himself cognizing as well as the objects cognized. Hence, intentionality is the basis for the organic unity and for the distinction between the subject and the object in cognition. Neither 9 See IR 277; S 73, 81–83; MT 41, 268, 340.

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subjectivity nor objectivity should be neglected, but Lonergan argues that is exactly what has happened in modern philosophy. Lonergan, first, complains that fascination with objectivity has led some philosophical traditions, including empiricism and scholasticism, to neglect the subject.10 The consequences of this neglect have been serious oversights in the understanding what it means to be human and misunderstandings of the relationship between natural science, humanities, and metaphysics. Lonergan argues that theory of cognition, theory of science, and metaphysics must take the intentional analysis of subjectivity as the point of departure. The warning against the reduction of human cognition to “animal extrovertedness” is an adage of almost all Lonergan’s philosophical works. Yet, if we emphasize the subject, as he does, will that cause the neglect of objectivity and lead us into epistemic and metaphysical immanentism? Lonergan is an epistemic and metaphysical realist (though a critical realist, see 3.2.4) and he does not intend to make any concession to subjectivism and immanentism. He argues that the way out of immanence also leads through intentionality, this time as the basis for the distinction between the subject and the object. But in order to find the way out that will not overemphasize either, we have to correct our ideas about consciousness, about the structure of cognition and about being. Finally, we have to abandon “picture–thinking,” i.e., the visual paradigm of knowledge, which he calls a myth: “The myth is that knowing is like looking, that objectivity is seeing what is there to be seen and not seeing what is not there, and that the real is what is out there now to be looked at” (MT 238). We have to turn away from the world of images and the world of immediacy, to the universe of being and the world as mediated by meaning (more in 3.1.5).11

3.1.3 Cognition and Consciousness Lonergan emphasizes the fact that we are conscious cognitive subjects. The object is present to the subject and the subject is present to himself at the same time. But they are present in different ways. The 10  See, for example, S 69–73. 11 See, IN 276–279, 437–441, 523–525, 669; UB 159; S 77; MT 238; and “Cognitional Structure,” in Collection, vol. 4 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, eds. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 207, henceforth cited as CS.

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subject is present to himself as intending, while the object is present to the subject as intended (see MT 8–9). This is important: the subject is conscious of himself only as intending. Contrary to our common imagination, consciousness is not a look inside, imagining yourself looking at yourself from outside. Lonergan defines consciousness as “an awareness immanent in cognitional acts” (IN 346), and “a quality of cognitional acts” (IN 350). It is not a separate cognitive act (“inward inspection”) that inspects my first–person inner space. Neither is there such an inner space, except as a reconstruction of our imagination. Because consciousness cannot be isolated as an intended object, the appropriate approach to consciousness is its “heightening” or objectification (see MT 14), and that, again, means self–appropriation. For this reason, the suggestion that the adequate approach to consciousness, from the Lonerganian point of view as well as in general, is ultimately the phenomenological analysis of the life narrative seems plausible.12 Of course, empirical sciences are also a part of our self– understanding in the world, but their method is not fully adequate in the matters of consciousness and intentionality. Rather the opposite is true. The methods of different sciences, as well as their unification, should be grounded in the objectification of the cognitive processes that happen in our intentional consciousness.13

3.1.4 The Desire to Know The next thing that Lonergan notices in the dynamics of our cognitive operations is that they are not only intentional and conscious, but also (more or less consciously) driven. They can be driven by different forces, instincts, desires, but there is one driving force that gives them their specific status of being cognitive. This driving force is the desire to know, or the desire to understand, or simply intellectual desire. Lonergan’s other names for this intellectual desire are “the eros of mind,” “the eros of human understanding,”14 “the inquiring and critical 12  For the importance of narrative approach to the study of self–appropriation and of the unity of the self in Lonergan, see William A. Mathews, “On Journaling Self–Appropriation,” Milltown Studies 7 (1981): 96–134, and “The Fragmented Self/Subject,” Journal of Macrodynamic Analysis 3 (2003): 205–223. 13 See IN 504–505; MT 24, 95, 248. 14  : See IN 97, 247, 355-356, 372, 498; MT 13.

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spirit of man”, and (in Method) “the intentional dynamism of human consciousness,” or simply “intentionality.”15 The intellectual desire is partly a drive to be informed, to collect cognitive material. We want to see, to hear, to touch. We are curious beings in the same sense as cats are curious. But the intellectual desire is more than that. Human cognition does not end with the collection, production and storage of information–bearing structures (images, concepts and propositions). We ask questions about that cognitive material. We question sense data in order to understand them and formulate concepts and propositions. We question these concepts and propositions in order to verify whether they correspond to the reality, and to accept or reject them accordingly. Intellectual desire is not only the source of energy that moves our inquiry, but also the source of epistemic norms that control the inquiry. Intellectual desire is epistemically normative. Lonergan writes that “intelligence contains it own immanent norms and these norms are equipped with sanctions which man does not have to invent or impose” (IN 259). “The normative aspect [of cognition] is not any set of rules that has to be invented; it results from intelligent inquiry and the restrictive reasonableness that are the unfolding of the pure desire to know” (IN 408). Normativity is simply in the nature of the intellectual desire. In Lonergan’s writings the desire to know is usually accompanied by the adjectives “natural” and “spontaneous,” but also by “pure,” “unrestricted,” “detached,” “disinterested,” “cool,” “critical,” and “normative.” This does not mean that the desire is always “pure” or “disinterested,” but it is like that when it is authentic, and it has an innate predisposition to be authentic. When speaking about the normativity of the intellectual desire, Lonergan uses the term “normative objectivity” without further distinction (see IN 404). We can, however, distinguish two aspects of the normativity of the pure desire to know in his cognitional theory. Let us distinguish them as structural and motivational normativity. First, intellectual desire determines the structure of our cognition at its intentional levels. Intellectual desire is not something that merely accompanies our cognitional processes as their motivation. Human 15  The intentional dynamism of human consciousness, or intentionality, in Method in Theology comprises the desire to know as well as the yearning of the moral and the religious value. When Lonergan speaks of the eros of mind in Insight, that is principally about the desire to know, even when it appears in the context of ethics and theology.

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cognition as a structured dynamism is an expression of the desire to know. The structure (“software”) of cognition is the structure of the desire to know. Through the structure of the questions it asks, the intellectual desire imposes the type and the structure of the answers. In this sense, the pure desire to know is the source of our logical and epistemic rules about how to form concepts, propositions and judgments correctly. I think it is that structural normativity that Lonergan has in mind when he asserts that the “detached and disinterested desire to know and its unfolding in inquiry and reflection … impose a normative structure upon man’s cognitional acts.”16 Second, the desire to know is epistemically normative as an appeal to the epistemic responsibility of the subject as an active inquirer. In virtue of its being pure, detached and unrestricted, the intellectual desire motivates the subject to actually adhere to the logical and epistemic rules in concrete inquiries. Lonergan formulates four “transcendental precepts,” be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible, that are active in the dynamism of human intentionality implicitly, i.e., before being formulated (see MT 20). Their function is to direct our intentional dynamism so that it can function authentically. I think that the motivational normativity of the intellectual desire is the one implied in the imperative “Be…!” of the transcendental precepts. Thus, by covering both structural and motivational aspects of epistemic normativity, Lonergan’s language about intellectual desire seems to indicate the unity of logical, epistemic and ethical elements of cognition in that one dynamism. The dynamism itself is preconceptual (hence the choice of the expression “eros of mind”), while the questions and precepts we derive from it are its (mere) formulations. In fact, we do not have other ways to establish the epistemic norms except through the application and objectification of the intellectual desire. Note that the procedure is from application to objectification. Lonergan’s epistemology and theory of logic are a posteriori derived from the concrete exercise of the intellectual desire, but the method

16  IN 420. See also IN 404–405; and Phenomenology and Logic: The Boston College Lectures on Mathematical Logic and Existentialism, vol. 18 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, ed. Philip McShane (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 120–121, henceforth cited as PL.

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implicit in the desire, on which epistemology and logic are grounded, is a priori, or transcendental.17

3.1.5 Bias The pure desire to know has its adversaries. Other desires, with their own agendas, can interfere with our inquiry and render it biased at individual and social level.18 In negative terms Lonergan defines the pure, detached and disinterested desire to know as “the absence of interference from other desires that inhibit or reinforce and in either case distort the guidance given by the pure desire” (IN 573). Non–intellectual desires can restrain the field of our interest and censure the acquisition of new insights by blocking some otherwise pertinent questions. Lonergan names this intellectual blockage a “scotosis” (IN 215). Non– intellectual motivations can induce us to lower our epistemic criteria by proclaiming unquestionable some principles that do not deserve that status. The opposite, hypercritical tendency is also possible, and equally wrong (see IN 353–357). Bias happens frequently in the area of commonsense knowledge, but Lonergan warns that sophisticated methodologies are not immune to it either.19 The difficulties do not stop there. Lonergan may sound a bit over– optimistic when he asserts that the “intellect functions properly inasmuch as the detached and disinterested desire to know is dominant in cognitional operations” (IN 723). Even if we could liberate our “pure” intellectual desire from the antagonistic interferences of other desires, that would not make us unmistakable. There is a contingency in our cognition that we cannot overcome by cognitive self–discipline and 17  For this reason logic is rationally valid (not just pragmatically), but its revision is not excluded, although it cannot be a radical revision. See IN 405, 599. 18  A significant portion of Insight is dedicated to the problems of bias and evil, where evil is described in intellectualist terms too. See IN 214–231; 244–263; 410–415; 560–569; 710–715; MT 231. 19  It is in particular “scotosis” that is a temptation of the more sophisticated scientific and philosophical theories. The normative cognitional structure is violated when intentional acts are directed “not to increasing human understanding, but to satisfying the ‘objective’ or the ‘scientific’ or the ‘meaningful’ norms set up by some logic or method that finds it convenient to leave human understanding out of the picture,” MT 351.

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education. This is an epistemological problem caused by a natural limitation in our cognition. We are neither infallible nor omniscient. Lonergan’s negative solution to this problem of epistemic contingency is the unmasking of the fallacious assumptions and myths that make it a problem, while it does not have to be a problem at all (see IN 366–371). His positive solution will be the introduction of the concept of the self–corrective process of learning (see IN 311). In both cases it seems that in order to “function properly” the pure intellectual desire has to include mechanisms that will enable it to cope with the natural limitation of cognition, as well as with the difficulty of finding the right measure of the “purity” between hypercriticism and laxity. I suppose it will be some sort of prudence or wisdom, and Lonergan gives indications in that direction (see IN 311–312). Note that Lonergan’s project is not defined only, nor even principally in negative terms of fighting bias or eliminating uncertainty. The paradigmatic cognitive activity in Lonergan’s philosophy is inquiry. Cognition in Lonergan’s context usually does not refer to a particular mental state, but to the process of acquisition and elaboration of information in inquiries (to the “procedures of the human mind,” or to the “cognitional enterprise,” MT 4). Knowledge is always the acquisition of new knowledge. He is rather critical of our common sense certainties and he stresses the hypothetical nature of scientific theories (see MT 304). In Lonergan’s works cognitive structure regularly appears as the equipment for new inquires, rather than a warrant of certainty for what we already (think we) know.

3.2 Cognitional Structure 3.2.1 The Question for Intelligence Lonergan describes cognition as a dynamic structure, or a structured dynamism. The best thing is to consider those two expressions as synonyms. What are the elements of that structure/dynamism? The elements of the cognitive structure are detectable through the cognitive operations that form the process of inquiry. Namely, some cognitive operations are similar to each other so that they can be assembled in sets. Lonergan identifies four sets of operations, which indicate four underlying levels of the cognitional structure.

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The operations of experience (e.g., seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting, imagining) happen at the empirical level or at the level of experience. The operations of intelligence (inquiring, understanding, conceiving, formulating) indicate the intellectual level or the level of intelligence (sometimes called the level of understanding). The operations of reflection (reflecting, marshalling and weighing the evidence, judging) indicate the level of rationality or reflection (also called the level of judgment). The operations of decision (deliberating, evaluating, deciding) indicate the level of deliberation or responsibility.20 As the process of inquiry involves operations at all the levels, human intellect “moves” from one level to another in both directions, but always in the regular sequence of experience–understanding–judgment–decision. Understanding grasps in given or imagined presentations an intelligible form emergent in the presentations. Conception formulates the grasped idea along with what is essential to the idea in the presentations. Reflection asks whether such understanding and formulation are correct. Judgment answers that they are or are not (IN 300). The process moves in both directions, forwards in order to explore data, backwards for the verification of the results. In the human way of knowing none of the levels would work alone. So, because of its fixed levels, cognition is a structure. Because the cognitive process of inquiry moves from one level to another in an intelligible and regular sequence, cognition is a dynamism, a structured dynamism. The operators of the passages from one level to another in the cognitive process of inquiry are questions. Since questions are the expression of one intellectual desire, the operator of the cognitional dynamism as a whole is the intellectual desire (see IN 372). This explains why Lonergan defines human knowing as “a compound of experiencing, understanding and judging” (MT 181) and “an organically integrated 20  For the threefold structure of experience, understanding and judgment, see IN 298–300. For the fourfold structure, see MT 9. After Insight, deliberation is presented as a separate fourth level in CS 219 and in PPK 222. In S 84 the fourth level obtained primacy in Lonergan’s philosophy. This shift in his philosophy was fully accomplished in Method. Later Lonergan clearly introduced a fifth level of consciousness, the level of unrestricted love (or religious level), as separate from the fourth. “I think of it quite explicitly now as fifth level,” he responds to a question during the Boston College Lonergan Workshop on June 20, 1977. See http://bernardlonergan.com/pdf/28870DTE070.pdf (accessed June 20, 2011).

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activity” (CS 207). He says that human cognition is a dynamic pattern “just as a dance is a pattern of bodily movements, or a melody is a pattern of sounds … [and] just as a growing organism puts forth its own organs and lives by their functioning” (MT 13). Let us return to the role of questions as operators. Lonergan specifies two principal types of questions, “What is this?” (Quid sit?) and “Is it so?” (An sit?).21 The former is the question for intelligence or for understanding, the latter is the question for reflection. The question for understanding operates the passage from the level of experience (sense data and introspection data) to the level of intelligence. The question for understanding can be formulated as “What is this?” but it comprises questions like “How often?” and “Why is that?” Their common feature is that they ask about the understanding, the definition, the concept, the meaning of something which is simply given in the experience. The answer to the question for intelligence comes in the form of insight (i.e., direct understanding). Insight is a preconceptual act (or event, if you like, because it usually arises unexpectedly and is hardly controllable) in which the subject grasps intelligible connections between the phenomena and situates them in the context of a larger hypothetical intelligible perspective. Insight is what we mean when we say “Aha! I understand!” Insight mediates between the concrete and the abstract, between sense data and concepts, but insight itself is something that escapes visualization and abstraction. Its singular formulations are concepts and propositions, but clusters of insights and of their formulations grow into generalizations, definitions, explanations, theories, and eventually into our understanding of the world. 21  See Bernard Lonergan, Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, vol. 2 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, eds. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 10–11, 70, 100, 105, henceforth cited as V. See also IN 297–298; and MT 335. This distinction of two kinds of questions is fundamentally an Aristotelian and Thomist idea, but in Lonergan’s philosophy it has been improved and it has got a much more important role. Aquinas distinguishes, “Dicendum, quod duplex est cognitio qua aliquid cognosci potest. Una qua cognoscitur de re an sit (…). Alia est qua cognoscitur de re quid est (…).” Aquinas De Veritate 18.5c, vol. 3 in S. Thomae Aquinatis Opera Omnia, ed. Roberto Busa (Stuttgart: Frommann—Holzbog 1980), 113. See also Aristotle Posterior Analytics 2.2.89b21–36.

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Lonergan’s analysis of insight is unique and it certainly deserves much more space than I can give it here.22 For the moment, let us note that insight is founded on the data and depends on them, but there is an element of our creative participation in noticing and defining the relations between the phenomena and our broader understanding of the world. To understand data is to place them into a network of existing concepts, i.e., into an intelligible world–view.23 Note also that the underlying cognitional structure operates without being analysed and formulated. Lonergan frequently warns that we should not oversee these preconceptual factors which remain “lost–in–abstraction,” but do not lose their importance. The results of insights at the level of intelligence are hypothetical. Concepts, propositions and explanations can be adequate or inadequate, correct or incorrect, true or false, but the insight itself does not include the claim of their adequacy, correctness or truth. To paraphrase Lonergan, a bright explanation is not always a correct explanation (see IN 308). I can believe that I understood something for a moment, only to realize later on that my idea was wrong. Insight is not a complete product of the cognitional process—almost immediately, the mind looks for its verification: “Have I understood correctly?” or “Is this proposition true?”

3.2.2 The Question for Reflection The question “Is that so?” is the second principal operator of the human cognitive dynamism, the question for reflective understanding (or for judgment). This is the question about the correctness or truth of the proposition we acquired through the insight at the level of intelligence. To answer this question is the function of the operation called reflective understanding. In a wide sense, it is also an insight, but a 22  Bibliography on insight and on its applications in different disciplines is rich. For general introduction, see Flanagan, Quest for Self–Knowledge; and Tekippe, What is Lonergan up to in Insight. 23  Lonergan would never say that we are simply or completely creative in producing these networks of intelligibility. There is a fundamental isomorphism between the intelligibility of the universe and the human mind. The quidditas, the intelligibile in sensibili that we grasp, or the “conjugate” that we reach, is real. Our cognitive apparatus is made to understand this world. But, obviously, it is made to understand it step by step, and that is where our creativity enters the scene.

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reflective insight. The expression of reflective understanding is judgment. Judgment is a proposition affirmed as true or false. It is only at this stage that the concepts of truth and falsity, certainty and probability appear (see IN 298-299). Lonergan strongly emphasises that there is a radical difference between the act of understanding (insight, thought) and the act of judgment. We make a proposition when we put a subject and a predicate together in a meaningful context. Judgment is more than predication or synthesis of a subject and a predicate. It is an affirmation of that synthesis (see V 48–50). The same proposition can be an object of thought, i.e., a “mere consideration,” and an object of judging, i.e., an affirmation (see IN 296). “The cat is on the mat” as a concrete judgment is radically different from “The cat is on the mat” as a mere proposition. Passing from one to the other is like passing from two–dimensional to three–dimensional space. Lonergan writes that one important characteristic “of the act of judgment is that it transforms a proposition from an object of thought into an object of knowledge” (UB 111), and that judgment is “a total increment in cognitional process … it brings to a close one whole step in the development of knowledge” (IN 301). If knowledge is a (justified) assertion of a proposition as true, then it is only at the level of judgment that we can rightly speak of knowledge in the epistemological sense. A proposition can be true or false independently of the subject—Lonergan is an epistemic and metaphysical realist—but we cannot claim that we know it without making a judgment which has that proposition as its content. Many epistemologists would rather speak of beliefs instead of judgments at this stage. Lonergan uses the term “belief ” in a different way, but probably would not be against their usage, if they agreed that belief includes some affirmation and acceptance, and does not refer only to the content of belief, i.e. to a proposition alone. Lonergan’s insistence that judgment is an act is important for his solution to the problem of metaphysical realism. It will also be important for his meta–epistemic theory of justification. In order to explain what happens in a judgment, Lonergan introduces the complex and difficult concept of the “virtually unconditioned.”24 24  Tekkipe mostly ignores this term in his introduction. Flanagan mentions it rarely. We can discuss whether “virtually unconditioned” is the best

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He says that “a prospective judgment will be virtually unconditioned if (1) it is the conditioned, (2) its conditions are known, and (3) the conditions are fulfilled” (IN 305). A prospective judgment is a proposition which is a candidate to be affirmed true or false. That such proposition is conditioned means that the proposition requires some support, some justification in order to be affirmed. That its conditions are fulfilled means that we, through our reflective understanding, grasp sufficient support to affirm the proposition justifiedly. That such a judgment is virtually unconditioned means that it is now justified fully, but only in the measure it actually needed justification in the first place. The support it has got through epistemic justification does not satisfy all possible requirements for its justification, but only those that were needed to affirm it rightly as a matter of fact in that concrete case. Now, what I have just said refers to the epistemological function of the virtually unconditioned and, frankly, from the epistemological point of view the concept of the virtually unconditioned looks as an unnecessarily complicated concept of epistemic justification. The virtually unconditioned has an important epistemological function and we will return to it later to analyse it as Lonergan’s concept of epistemic justification, but it is not a merely epistemological concept. It is a bridge between epistemology and metaphysics. When Lonergan wants to explain the virtually unconditioned, he says that it is different from the “formally unconditioned,” which is the absolute being that does not have any conditions, and adds that the virtually unconditioned is “a de facto absolute” (IN 402; see MT 76). What is perplexing here is that Lonergan mixes up the “order of knowing” and the “order of being.” However, he has a reason for doing that. We can understand the concept of the virtually unconditioned only if we situate it in the context of Aristotelian and Thomist metaphysics of identity, which has as one of its basic presuppositions the isomorphism of the structures of being and the structures of cognition, and that is also one of the basics of Lonergan’s metaphysics (see IN 424). The reason why he blends the order of knowing with the order of being is because being is known in the judgments based on the reflective grasp of the virtually unconditioned or, shorter, virtually unconditioned judgments. As we will see term possible, but Lonergan remained faithful to it. See IN Ch. 10; and MT 75, 213.

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in Chapter 4, the reliability of the cognitional process is ultimately guaranteed by the transcendental grasp of the isomorphism between the cognitional and the ontological.

3.2.3 The Question for Deliberation Let us go briefly to the question for the fourth level of intentionality. It is the question for deliberation or the value–question. It operates the passage from the level of reflection to the level of decision, from the answer “It is so,” to: “What we are to do about it?” “Is it valuable?” “Is it truly valuable?” From the value–question Lonergan derives the transcendental notion of value and thus establishes a foundation for ethics (see MT 9, 34). The operations of the fourth level are more characteristic of practical reasoning, although they are not completely absent from the process of theoretical reasoning either. Lonergan’s transcendental precepts, as we have mentioned before, are each addressed to a specific level of intentionality: be attentive is the transcendental precept for our ability to have experience, be intelligent is the precept for intelligence, be rational is the precept for reflection, be responsible is the precept for deliberation. Yet, all four levels belong to one and the same intentionality of the eros of mind. Hence, they must also have a common source of normativity. What the source of normativity it is, and how it unites the different levels of intentionality, is the matter for our subsequent chapters.

3.2.4 Knowing and Looking An important corollary of Lonergan’s idea that our knowing is a structured set of operations at different levels is that in the epistemologically relevant sense (i.e., what concerns knowledge as justified belief, as credit for true belief ) human cognition cannot be identified with intuition of any kind, neither sensory nor rational. Intuitions are any simple, atomistic, undivided cognitive acts or events, the content of which is usually claimed to be self–evident and self–justifying. Lonergan denies that intuitions are bearers of truth. They cannot be true or false, they are merely given. It is propositions that can be true or false, but only when affirmed as such, i.e., when they take the form of judgment. But even in the latter case judgments are not justified only in virtue of their correspondence to the intuitions they are about (more in 4.2).

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According to Lonergan’s cognitional theory, we may imagine that animal cognition works as a shortcut between experiencing and acting, but human cognition, in the epistemologically relevant sense, does not. Lonergan does not deny the validity or truth–conduciveness of our experiential cognition, but he argues that our epistemological questions do not arise at the empirical level and cannot be resolved at that level (see IN 276). We can speak of knowledge only at the level of judgment, and judgment is a complex operation that presupposes experience and understanding. Lonergan is not less critical of rationalist intuitionism either. Examples of rational intuitions are those which claim to grasp directly the essences in things, as well as those which claim to obtain the immediate knowledge of self–evident truths. Lonergan doubts the existence of the former and the alleged self–sufficiency of the latter (see IN 294 on philosophical intuition, and IN 414 on Descartes’ cogito). In any case, both rational and sensory intuitions proper are only the raw material that has to be understood and, when understood, the propositions derived from them have to be reflectively understood in order to be judged true or false. When the resulting judgments are justified (or verified), they cannot be justified (or verified) only on account of their perceptual giveness (in empiricism), nor only on account of their rational self–evidence (in rationalism), because the procedures of reflective understanding are justificatory factors as well.25 Lonergan finds that intuitionist models of cognition and justification are based on the visual paradigm of knowledge, where “knowing is a kind of looking” (see IN 669; MT 238). He also calls those models “picture–thinking” (S 76, 77) and “elementary” or “animal” knowing (IN 276). Although the visual paradigm of knowledge is pretty much spontaneous (as the etymology of our epistemic vocabulary shows— the term “insight” is one example), it is defective and unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for human way of knowing. Lonergan is particularly keen to show that the visual paradigm of knowledge cannot explain the metaphysical concepts of reality, truth and being. In fact, he is sure that picture–thinking is the origin of some oddities that puzzle epistemologists and metaphysicians, such as the stubborn persistence of metaphysical idealism. 25  For Lonergan’s critique of empiricism and rationalism, see IN 437– 441; CS 214; MT 238–239; PPK 227–230.

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Lonergan’s examples of defective metaphysics based on the visual paradigm of knowledge are our commonsense naïve–realism, and phenomenalist and rationalist versions of idealism.26 The visual, naïve–realist paradigm of cognition induces us to imagine the reality as something “already–out–there–now,” something to be seen outside our consciousness through a supposedly transparent medium, the lens called cognition. In order to examine critically whether that medium really is transparent, and whether what we think about the world corresponds to its reality, we need a god’s–eye–view, a “super– look” from outside–above.27 Of course, it does not take long to realize that such “super–look” is not available and that causes the puzzles with Cartesian demons and similar creatures, the puzzles on which idealists base their view of reality. Now, if reality is not the appearance of things, what is it? If reality does not appear, neither through sensory nor through rational intuition, how do we get in cognitive contact with it? As an answer, Lonergan proposes his version of critical realism. The core of his critical realism is the view that reality is not a picture–world but “the universe of being” (see IN 276, 437; S 79). Reality is the being, and not the world as seen by the Laplacean Demon. If reality is the matter of being, and not (only) a matter of appearances, then the answer to the question what reality is cannot be found through experience alone. All three cognitive levels of the human intentional structure combined are involved in how we get to know the reality. Reality is “given in experience, organized and extrapolated by understanding, posited by judgment and belief ” (MT 238).

26  For Lonergan’s change of cognitive paradigm and its consequences, see IN 275–280, 437–441, 449–450, 523–524, 669; UB 159; CS 207; S 79; MT 238. 27 See IN 658. For this reason, Lonergan’s view has been compared with much later Richard Rorty’s criticism of the visual paradigm of knowledge in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979). Nonetheless, although their terminology and ideas sometimes look similar, their programs are completely different, even contrary. See Hugo A. Meynell, “Reversing Rorty.” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 3 (1985): 31–48; Garrett Barden, “Insight and Mirrors,” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 4 (1986): 105–107; Fitzpatrick, Philosophical Encounters, 147–171; Snell, Through a Glass Darkly.

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Lonergan returns to the Aristotelian and Thomist idea that being is the act of being (actus essendi), the act of things that are (there). By definition an act cannot be visualized—it must be affirmed. We do not and cannot see being, but can only affirm it. Hence, being, reality is what is affirmed in correctly produced judgments, those based on the reflective grasp of the virtually unconditioned. Since our knowledge of reality is open to improvement, reality involves also what remains to be known. Reality, being is “what is to be known by the totality of true judgments” (IN 374). The real is the verified and what can be verified.28 Lonergan’s critical realism is a realism because he believes that our cognition achieves the knowledge of reality, truth, and being whenever our judgments are virtually unconditioned, and he believes that our judgments actually do sometimes reach that status. The fundamental metaphysical judgments can be so unconditioned as to be non–revisable.29 The virtually unconditioned judgments of fact and scientific judgments reach reality and are knowledge, even though the prospect of discovering new data opens the possibility for their further understanding and improvement.30 Lonergan’s epistemological realism is critical, first, because reality is known in different ways at different intentional levels, so that the higher levels critically examine the lower levels and, second, because of the possibility of the improvement of our knowledge of reality through the discovery of new data and through new insights. We have said earlier that judgment is an act of affirmation, and not a propositional content alone. Being is to a proposition and sense data like the third dimension to a two–dimensional world of a comic. In a judgment that virtually unconditionally affirms “S is p,” the act of 28 See IN 230, 277, 374, 450, 504–505. Lonergan’s view that the real is the “verifiable” and some of his expressions may give the impression that Lonergan’s is an anti–realist verficationist position, similar to the one of Michael Dummett. So we can read in Lonergan, “If, in fact, there are no further relevant questions then, in fact, a certain judgment would be true.” MT 191. However, Lonergan is not an anti–realist, but a critical realist. For more on that issue, see Andrew Beards, “Anti–Realism and Critical Realism: Dummett and Lonergan,” The Downside Review 113 (1995): 119–155. 29  See IN 302, 359, 575, 757. 30  See IN 328, 366–371; UB 124–125.

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affirmation “is” indicates that S and p do not belong to the picture– world but to the world of being. How have we got to know about that new dimension in the first place? At this stage, we have to go back to Lonergan’s idea of the intentionality of human cognition. We have first spoken of intentionality in the psychological sense (see 3.2.1); now we have to consider Lonergan’s idea that cognition is intentional in a metaphysical sense too. What “being” means and how to recognize it when we get in cognitive contact with it, is known through the question for reflection, “Is it (so)?” that is constitutive to our desire to know. Our intentionality, our intellectual desire to know already manifests the notion of being when it asks “Is it so?” about the data and propositions it encounters (see pp. 142-143). Lonergan’s privileged gates into metaphysics are questions. Not any questions, but the questions that underlie all our questions. As we have already seen, these are the questions for intelligence, for truth/ being, and for value. Lonergan argues that through these questions we implicitly, pre–conceptually intend the notions of the intelligibility, of the truth/being, and of the good (see MT 11–12, 35). These notions are transcendental because without having some cognitive contact with them we would not be able to ask the questions on intelligibility, truth, and value at all, nor recognize their answers. In other words, we cannot look for something if we do not already have some idea about what we are looking for.31 31  See Plato, Meno, 80d. Lonergan is sometimes labelled a “transcendental Thomist” in the tradition of Joseph Maréchal. Lonergan acknowledges that he was influenced by Maréchal, but insists that his (Lonergan’s) transcendental method is different from the transcendental method of the Maréchal school of Leuven, Innsbruck, and München. See MT 13n4. Yet, the dialogue between Lonergan and Emerich Coreth shows that their agreement is greater than their differences. See Bernard Lonergan, “Metaphysics as Horizon,” in Collection, 188–204, henceforth cited as MH; Emerich Coreth, “Immediacy and the Mediation of Being: An Attempt to Answer Bernard Lonergan,” in Language, Truth and Meaning: Papers from the International Lonergan Congress 1970, ed. Philip McShane (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1971), 33–48; Giovanni B. Sala, “Seinserfahrung und Seinshorizont nach E. Coreth und B. Lonergan,” Zeitschrift für Katholische Theologie 89 (1967): 294–338; Giovanni B. Sala, “Immediatezza e mediazione della conoscenza dell’essere: Riflessioni sull’epistemologia di E. Coreth e B. Lonergan,” Gregorianum 53 (1972): 45–87; and Paul Kidder,

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Note that intending is not intuiting. In Lonergan’s words, intending is the intermediary between ignorance and knowing, and what is intended is an unknown that is to be known (see MT 22). Through the intention (or “heuristic anticipation”) of the transcendental notions we get to know something implicit but firm about the reality and the value, and so have the built–in norms and criteria for our judgments on propositions and values. Such intentional or heuristic anticipations are not an actual content of knowledge (like Plato’s ideas), but they provide the subject with the basic procedure for reaching and recognizing the goal. Lonergan is aware of the criticism that any attempt to found metaphysical knowledge of being departing from the subject’s intentionality may end up in some sort of immanentism and idealism. He is, nonetheless, certain that through rejecting the visual paradigm of knowledge and accepting that judgment is an act he defeats the idealist position. It is the intentional act of judgment that pierces the imaginary membrane which divides the subject and the object, thus connecting our cognition with the realm of being, and resolving the metaphysical problem of transcendence.32 How can we verify Lonergan’s explanation of metaphysical knowledge and metaphysical realism? Lonergan writes, “We want to move in there where the ideal [of knowledge] is functionally operative prior to its being made explicit in judgments, concepts, and words. Moving in there is self–appropriation; moving in there is reaching what is prepredicative, preconceptual, pre–judicial” (UB 14–15). The metaphysical judgments are verified through a descent into the preconceptual area of transcendental notions. The only method to reach that area is self–appropriation. Furthermore, the myth of picture–thinking and picture–world is so stubborn that the self–appropriation which will defeat it has to include an “intellectual conversion.”33 Intellectual conversion is a particularly interesting notion for our study of epistemic normativity in Lonergan and we will return to it in Chapter 6.

“What Could Metaphysics Be? The Lonergan—Coreth Debate,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 66 (1995): 557-572. 32 See MH 196; CS 214–219. 33 See MT 238; IN 508, 604; PL 110–111; IR 269; S 79.

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3.3 Corollaries I have indicated at the end of Chapter 2 that Lonergan’s cognitional theory may have a potential to provide a model for the complex cognitive contact with reality which Zagzebski, Roberts and Wood believe is the substratum of the mental state of knowledge in psychological terms, and the adequate definiendum of knowledge in semantic terms. Zagzebski argues that the concept of knowledge appropriate for our ideas about epistemic normativity must be broad enough to connect knowledge with some other valuable cognitive states besides truth–belief, such as understanding and wisdom.34 That concept of knowledge would also presuppose a more complex concept of belief, the concept of belief as a cognitive contact with reality that accommodates the attitude towards understanding and similar virtuous attitudes which are not always, or not exclusively propositional. Roberts and Wood postulate a similar thing: the concept of knowledge suitable for the purposes of regulative epistemology should be a compound of acquaintance, understanding, judgment.35 According to Lonergan’s theory, it is only judgment that is true or false. Perceptual states are not bearers of truth at all, though they can be mediators of reality. Propositions are bearers of truth only when affirmed, otherwise they are veridically neutral. Thus, judgment is Lonergan’s counterpart to the analytic notion of belief as veridical propositional attitude. If low–grade perceptual beliefs are identified with the momentary perceptual apprehensions, as Zagzebski, Roberts and Wood maintain often happens in analytic epistemology, then according to Lonergan’s cognitional theory such low–grade perceptual beliefs cannot be the sort of veridical propositional attitude needed for knowledge in the epistemological sense. They may be some attitudes (experiential attitudes), but these attitudes are not propositional and not veridical.36 Propositions proper are the formulations of the mental 34  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 49–50, 167–168. 35  See Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 153. 36  That non–propositional states are not veridical, i.e., not bearers of truth, does not mean that they do not put us in contact with reality. See IN 278. They do provide some non–conceptual information about reality, which still can—even consciously—condition our decisions, though it is not knowledge in the sense we prefer to deal with in recent epistemology. Although Lonergan sometimes uses the adjective “animal” in somewhat

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attitude of understanding in Lonergan, but still they are only potentially or provisionally veridical. Only judgment is a veridical propositional attitude in the sense required by epistemology as the theory of propositional knowledge. Yet, that does not mean that judgment is only a veridical propositional attitude. Reflectively understood judgment needed for the mental state of knowledge is more complex. The results of the operations at the first two cognitive levels do not disappear when the judgment is made. The mental state of empirical acquaintance and the non– propositional part of the mental state of understanding (insight) are the components of the mental state of reflective understanding and continue to be there in the state of knowledge. We will see that when first–person acquaintance and understanding are missing in one’s reflective understanding, Lonergan speaks of “belief ” rather than knowledge, where “belief ” means judgment based on trust. As such, belief is opposed to knowledge. Lonergan’s concept of knowledge is rich, but also rigorous. It certainly points to the ideal cognitive state we humans long for, in agreement with Zagzebski, Roberts and Wood, but I expect that Lonergan’s notion of knowledge will need a further clarification in order not to become too rigorous for the purposes of science and common sense (more in Chapter 5). As regards Sosa’s distinction between animal and reflective knowledge, the Lonerganian position is that the animal, elementary way of knowing can be and often is a reliable contact with reality, but it should better be called “cognizing” rather than “knowing” in the epistemological sense. Knowledge, if it is a special case of judgment, must contain a reflective moment—actually, two reflective moments: the one of direct understanding (insight) and the one of judgment (reflective understanding). The same is true even if we continue to use the analytic terminology of beliefs: there are no beliefs that do not contain some reflection. Beliefs, perceptual beliefs included, are complex cognitive pejorative sense when referring to this “instinctive” or “short–cut” non– conceptual cognitive contact with reality, he sometimes displays a more positive attitude towards that kind of contact with reality, in particular in the case of religious experience and its function in faith. The mystery, the religious experience, Lonergan says, happens at the level of experience, in the world of immediacy as the apprehension of the value of absolute love. See MT 112. To become a reasonable decision, however, it has to pass the procedure of the value judgment. See MT 115–117.

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states (not only from the neurophysiological, but also the phenomenological point of view). If animal knowledge is supposed to exclude any sort of reflection regarding the truth of the belief it is about, then it does not deserve the title of knowledge. If we reserve the term “knowledge” for the valuable human way of being in cognitive contact with reality, which implies some sort of credit being given to the knower, then animal knowledge should be simply referred to as “cognition.”37 Moreover, though I will speak more on the nature of belief in Chapter 5 (see 5.1.1), I think we have enough information about Lonergan’s cognitional theory to realize that his position would be against any machine–product model of cognition which is the model Zagzebski alleges Sosa’s epistemology presupposes (and Sosa does not seem to deny it). Let us use an example in order to illustrate the difference between Lonergan’s complex model of judgment or belief (in analytic terminology), and the model of belief as a simple (passive) veridical attitude. Imagine that our cognition works like a data–processing machine, a true–belief producing machine, and the attitude of belief is the indicator of the truth of the data–representing proposition the machine has produced. That indicator reacts with a green or a red light to the truth or falsity of the proposition respectively (or, alternatively, indicates its probability–ratio). The subject is not consciously involved in the belief–producing process. All we want from the cognition in that case is to give us the final indication of the truth or falsity of the data, and that is what belief gives us—just red or green light. Belief can abstract and, indeed, does abstract from the data and the operations of their processing. The mental state of knowledge, of possessing (supposedly) reliably produced true belief, does not include the mental states of experience and the operations that preceded judgment. When this model is applied in the theory of the epistemic value, it is clear that the 37  Sosa does, actually, sometimes match animal knowledge (“apt belief ”) with cognitio, and reflective knowledge (“coherent belief ”) with scientia in Descartes’ sense. See Sosa, Virtue Epistemology, 130. I do not think, however, that cognitio should be translated as “knowledge” if “knowledge” refers to creditably true belief, whether that credit is given for “aptness” or for “coherence.” In Latin medieval and modern terminology cognitio generally refers to any cognitive state whatsoever, even unreliable and false ones. Hallucination is a cognitio, for example, and it is far from what Sosa normally calls apt belief.

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cognitive states and attitudes of experience (acquaintance) and understanding are not relevant for the value of the state of knowledge. The whole of its value is veridical, i.e., the red or the green light. This illustrates exactly what judgment and knowledge are not in Lonergan’s cognitional theory. According to Lonergan’s theory, judgment is more than an indicator of truth and falsity of proposition, reflective understanding is more than a truth–calculating machine, and knowledge is more than the state of having (reliably produced) true proposition. When Lonergan speaks of knowledge, i.e., of reflectively understood and virtually unconditioned judgment (we will deal with the reconstruction of his definition of knowledge in Chapter 4), the states of empirical acquaintance and understanding do not get lost in the process of abstraction, but are still there as elements of the mental state of knowledge. Even though knowledge is propositional in this case, it still contains something more than just yes or no to the truth of proposition. When this model is applied to the issue of epistemic value, the result is that that “something more” contributes to the epistemic value of knowledge in addition to its purely veridical value. We will study Lonergan’s idea of the intellectual good and epistemic value later in Chapter 6.

4 Lonergan’s Epistemology

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fter having introduced the basic elements of Lonergan’s cognitional theory, in this chapter we will pay more attention to Lonergan’s epistemology, i.e., to his theory of knowledge and justification. The first step of our analysis will have to be a terminological clarification. The meaning of the epistemological terms in Lonergan’s context is often different from the meaning of the same terms in their contemporary epistemological context. Even the two most basic ones, “ epistemology” and “knowledge,” have more than one meaning in Lonergan’s writings, some of them not coinciding with those of recent English–speaking epistemology. Our second step will be to reconstruct Lonergan’s theory of epistemic justification. I have not found the term “justification” itself in his writings. Instead, terms like “grounding” and “verification” carry out its function. When analysing Lonergan’s model of epistemic justification we will pay special attention to how he connects the element of truth–conduciveness and the element of epistemic responsibility, which are often called the objective and the subjective pole of justification. We will leave the analysis of the meta–epistemological aspect of his model of epistemic justification, whether or not it is a case of ethical normativity, for our subsequent chapters. Eventually, we will try to classify Lonergan’s epistemology into some contemporary categories, always with caution for the reasons mentioned earlier in the Introduction. I remind, again, that comparing Lonergan’s theory of knowledge and justification with similar contemporary theories is not our primary aim and neither is its critical assessment. The aim of our analysis of Lonergan’s epistemology is the recognition of the normative elements it implies. Nevertheless, we cannot avoid seeing similarities as well as differences between Lonergan’s epistemology and some more recent approaches. If we are looking for

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Lonergan’s closest contemporary counterpart, I suggest to look for it in responsibilist virtue epistemology.

4.1 Theory of Knowledge 4.1.1 The Concept of Epistemology In Lonergan’s usage the term “epistemology” refers to his second basic question. The first basic question, the one for cognitional theory, is “What do I do when I know?” The epistemological question follows, “Why is doing that knowing?” The third question, the question for metaphysics is, “What do I know when I do that?”1 In that sense Lonergan’s usage of the term “epistemology” generally concurs with the analytic one, which emphasises the question of the conditions of knowledge.2 However, frequently and consistently the terms “epistemology” and “epistemic problem” refer in Lonergan to the problem of the justification of metaphysical realism (“problem of transcendence” or “Kantian” problem),3 which is a rather specific epistemological issue by today’s standards. Lonergan offers a conceptual analysis of the conditions of knowledge indeed, but its formulation may not be familiar to a reader coming from the analytic tradition. The expression “Lonergan’s epistemology” in the title of this chapter refers to his theory of the general conditions of knowledge, and not to the “Kantian problem.” A few words on Lonergan’s transcendental method and epistemology. Lonergan’s transcendental method is a method in the sense that it is “a normative pattern of recurrent and related [cognitive] operations yielding cumulative and progressive results” (MT 5). He insists that the method is the application of the cognitive functions themselves and not a set of rules. The method is transcendental, first, in the sense that it is “concerned with meeting the exigencies and exploiting the opportunities presented by the human mind itself ” (MT 14). Here “transcendental” refers to the procedures and principles that are 1  See “Theories of Inquiry,” 37; and MT 25, 83, 261, 316. 2 In PL 311 Lonergan uses the term “epistemological” in the meaning we need here: it is about why a judgment is true, how we know it is true, what it has to do with evidence. 3  See section 3.2.4 and p. 95. See also Lonergan’s texts V 71; IN 278, 701; UB 159; CS 211.

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regularly and necessarily reaffirmed in every instance of human cognitive activity as the preconditions of that activity and, hence, cannot be consistently doubted nor denied. It is the sense in which Aristotle’s argument against sceptics is transcendental, though Lonergan’s form of transcendental argument is not a simple retorsion.4 Second, the method is transcendental in the sense that it is not limited to one specific field of inquiry, as are other methods. Since the dynamism of the human mind underlies any cognitive activity, “transcendental” means general or omni–disciplinary (see MT 14, 282). Third, the method is transcendental in the sense that it is the “prior normative pattern of operations from which the rules may be derived.”5 We get to know the structures of cognition through their operation, but before they operate they exist as the structures of human cognition inaccessible to our direct experience. They are transcendental in the sense that they are prior to our experience. Nevertheless, in Lonergan’s method they are not simply postulated or deduced. We have some indirect preconceptual awareness of these structures while they are in operation and that makes their explication and objectification possible a posteriori. To summarize, Lonergan’s transcendental method is the implicit transcultural and omni–disciplinary way of obtaining knowledge (see MT 282). No epistemic or logical set of rules can be a complete and definitive explication of the transcendental method, but such rules are valid insofar as they are a continuous authentic application and, hence, a reconfirmation of the implicit pattern of the transcendental method. Transcendental method is nothing other than human cognitional dynamism as normative. It is the way our cognition should work in order 4  Lonergan’s is a performative transcendental argument. That means, the emphasis is not on the content or on the conceptual framework of its premises, but on the argumentative performance itself. The crucial moment of the argument is the performative self–contradiction of its denial. See Frederick E. Crowe, “Transcendental Deduction: A Lonerganian Meaning and Use,” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 2 (1984): 21–40; and William R. Rehg, “Lonergan’s Performative Transcendental Argument Against Scepticism,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 63 (1990): 257–268. 5  MT 6. See also “Philosophy and Theology,” in Second Collection, 207. There Lonergan explains why his method is transcendental in both Scholastic and Kantian meanings of the word.

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to bring about the best possible results, and that is knowledge. Right, correct, or authentic acquisition of knowledge and transcendental method are the same thing. When transcendental method is objectified, then we have a normative epistemology in the sense of the theory of knowledge and justification. Hence, epistemology in the sense I am talking about in this chapter is very much to be identified with the cognitive aspect of Lonergan’s transcendental method. The limitation is that I am concerned primarily with how transcendental method works in the acquisition of categorial knowledge (science, common sense) and less with its application in metaphysical knowledge, ethics and religion.

4.1.2 The Possibility of Knowledge Lonergan’s usage of the terms “knowing” and “knowledge” is not uniform and it covers the whole variety of meanings these terms have in ordinary, non–epistemological language. Of course, we should keep in mind that the analytic epistemologists of the second half of the 20th century were spending most of their energies on the conceptual analysis of knowledge. Lonergan’s Insight was written only at the beginning of that era and has a different background. “Knowing” and “knowledge” in Lonergan’s usage are not restricted to propositional knowledge (“knowing that p”). They are often synonymous with “cognizing” and “cognition.” Thus Lonergan can say that “knowing is a dynamic structure” (IN 302) and “a compound of experiencing, understanding and judging” (MT 181). On other occasions, “knowledge” denotes the aggregate or totality of all the true judgments we affirm, something to be increased through a cyclic and cumulative self–correcting inquiry, but never fully reached.6 Finally, “knowledge” sometimes means “an ontological perfection of the subject” that knows (UB 159), a usage with Aristotelian and Scholastic roots which I find particularly interesting (see 6.2.2). Even when Lonergan speaks of propositional knowledge, that propositional knowledge is not a form of merely propositional attitude. The non–propositional elements of experience and understanding are still present, amalgamated into a virtually unconditioned judgment and that makes the mental state of knowledge complex and rich. 6 See IN 302–303, 373, 374, 399; UB 153, 372, 383; MT 43.

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First, before we attempt to reconstruct Lonergan’s (epistemological) definition of knowledge, let us consider his approach to the question of the possibility of knowledge. The contemporary concern over the opposition knowledge vs. true belief has developed mainly under the influence of the modern pursuit of certainty, of the guarantee that what we think we know is really so. That pursuit has been epitomized by A.J. Ayer’s definition of knowledge as “the right to be certain.”7 That is not Lonergan’s characteristic approach to the problem of knowledge. The concept of knowledge as justified true belief that is opposed to accidentally true belief is present in Lonergan’s main works, but he is intentionally trying to avoid dealing with it in terms of doubt and certainty. Lonergan rejects the principle of universal doubt as the starting point in epistemology (see IN 433–436; PPK 224). He is more amazed by the fact that our knowledge can be improved, rather than being afraid of the possibility of mistake (see IN 11, 370). He is critical regarding the possibility of knowledge,8 but for him being critical means distinguishing the authentic development of the pure desire to know from the tendencies that hinder such development (see IN 6), and not confusing the specific modes of how intentionality operates at its different levels (see IN 278). On the first reading Lonergan’s position on the possibility and limits of knowledge looks ambiguous. He sometimes sounds quite frugal in regard to our ability to attain knowledge, while elsewhere he seems to be fairly charitable concerning the same issue. His vision of knowledge as the hardly achievable totality of all the true judgments does not sound like optimism. Neither does his distinction between knowledge (judgment based on first–person evidence) and belief (judgment based on testimony). He says—controversially—that “the 7  A.J. Ayer, Problem of Knowledge (London: Macmillan, 1958), 34. 8  Tekippe argues that Lonergan does not ask whether knowledge exists, but how it is acquired. Lonergan, he argues, “agrees with every boy and girl who know that they know.” See Terry J. Tekippe, Bernard Lonergan’s Insight: A Comprehensive Commentary (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003), 15. Lonergan’s position is probably more complex than that, but I agree that Lonergan’s attitude towards our ability to have knowledge is positive. For Lonergan’s response to the challenge that his theory is not critical enough, see “Bernard Lonergan Responds,” in Foundations of Theology: Papers from the International Lonergan Congress, 1970, ed. Philip McShane (Dublin: Gill and MacMillan, 1971), 230–231.

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reasonableness of belief does not make it knowledge” and that “there are extraordinarily few items of immanently generated knowledge that are totally independent of beliefs.”9 By contrast, Lonergan much more frequently speaks of knowledge as a fact. Some of our judgments are real knowledge. He does not require indubitability nor infallibility as conditions for knowledge and is strongly against the “relativists” who affirm that correct judgments do not occur (see IN 366–371). He says that, despite its complexity, his notion of objectivity can be the notion of objectivity that common sense presupposes and utilizes (see IN 408). He affirms that our knowledge in the judgment of self–affirmation of the knower and, more generally, about the principles of logic and metaphysics is firmer than our knowledge in science and common sense, but he does not say that we do not have knowledge in science and common sense. Many of our commonsense and scientific claims deserve the title of knowledge and factual certainty (see IN 368; UB 124–125). He continues to speak of fairly certain knowledge in science that approximates the truth: scientific generalizations are probable, but “truly probable” (IN 328). The possibility of knowledge is proved by the fact of knowledge (see IN 663). Lonergan’s way of resolving the aforementioned ambiguity is summarized in the expression “self–correcting process of learning.” This is one of his key concepts and occurs frequently in his writings.10 It is one of the concepts that best illustrate Lonergan’s choice of inquiry for the paradigmatic human cognitive activity. There is little stability in the cognitive state of knowledge. Knowledge is continuously being acquired, accumulated, corrected, and increased. The cognitive process is recursive, self–correcting and cumulative both at the micro– and micro–level. At the micro–level, judgements are produced through the reflection on experience and insights, then verified in the backward direction, and the process repeats until the virtually unconditioned is reached. At the macro–level, we gather new empirical data all the time, we question them, and so our insights into the data multiply. The multitude 9 See IN 453 and IN 728 for the respective quotations. We will return to Lonergan’s theory of belief in 5.4.1. 10  See, for example, IN 197, 311–329 (passim), 735–739; MT 81, 159– 160, 208–209.

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of insights cluster together forming conceptual frameworks and theories.11 As cognitive process goes on, new data and new insights improve or abrogate our current theories. New theories force us to revise the formulations of our previous insights. Thus the process of understanding the world seemingly is limitless, while the web of concepts and theories inevitably gets more and more complicated. One may be tempted to ask how we can know anything now if so many of our insights will probably be corrected in the future. Lonergan insists that the self–correcting process of learning breaks the vicious circle of incessant revisions (see IN 311). He is sure that the self–correcting process of learning really improves our knowledge and reliably approximates the comprehensive truth about the world.12 Because our individual correct judgments make contribution to the comprehensive knowledge of the world, even if partial, they are real increments of knowledge and, hence, knowledge themselves (see IN 301, 302-303). Whenever the conditions for correctly made judgment are fulfilled we have a case of real knowledge. We will soon see what these conditions are, but comprehensive omniscience and infallibility will certainly not be among them. Lonergan is aware of the modern preoccupation with scepticism, doubt and certainty, but he is trying to show that the critical question does not have to be identified with the question of how we can ever be certain that we know anything. His epistemology and metaphysics can be understood as an attempt to approach the modern critical problem with a refreshed perspective on the pre–modern epistemology and metaphysics of identity between being and truth that can be found in Aristotle and Aquinas.13 What makes Lonergan’s approach 11 See IN 36–38; V 56–59. 12  Crowe makes a witty remark that there may be a fifth transcendental precept: Be patient. Having in mind the importance Lonergan ascribes to the self–corrective process of learning, that precept may have a serious epistemic function. See Frederick E. Crowe, “The Task of Interpreting Lonergan: A Preliminary to the Symposium,” in Religion and Culture: Essays in Honor of Bernard Lonergan, S.J., ed. Timothy P. Fallon and Philip Boo Riley (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1987), 7. 13 See IN 768–770; AT 35–54; “Insight: Preface to a Discussion,” in Collection, 142–145; “The Future of Thomism,” in Second Collection, 43– 54. Lonergan’s philosophy cannot simply be called Thomist. In his theory of cognition there are important non–Thomist influences, from Plato and

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different from traditional Thomism is, first, that he reformulates the pre–modern theory of identity in view of the modern “turn to the subject” and abandons the old faculty psychology in favour of intentionality analysis. Second, he breaks with the pre–modern scientific background of Aristotle’s and Aquinas’ philosophies that trusted the stability and uniformity of nature, and substitutes it with the modern scientific world–view that treats our knowledge of nature as probable and open for future corrections.

4.1.3 Knowledge and True Judgment What does Lonergan’s definition of knowledge look like? Much of our contemporary preoccupation with knowledge is about the difference between propositional knowledge and true belief, where belief is a veridical propositional attitude. Although Lonergan’s terms “knowledge” and “knowing” often have a broader meaning, he does write on knowledge in the sense of a propositional attitude (“S knows that p”) different from other propositional attitudes like opinion, belief, thought or understanding (“S thinks, believes, understands that p”). The difference is that he defines propositional knowledge in terms of judgment, reflective understanding and the virtually unconditioned, instead of belief, warrant, and justification to which we have been used. Augustine to John Henry Newman. Nevertheless, Lonergan’s critical realism in the matters of epistemology and metaphysics relies firmly on the Thomist heritage. The principal element of that heritage is Thomist and Aristotelian metaphysics of identity, i.e., on the isomorphism of being and cognition. Paul Kidder calls the omnipresent intertwining of cognitional and ontological in Lonergan a “gnoseo–ontological circularity.” See Paul Kidder, “The Relation of Knowing and Being in Lonergan’s Philosophy” (PhD diss., Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, 1987), 70–84, 140–142. On Thomist roots in Lonergan’s philosophy, see Patrick H. Byrne, “The Thomist Sources of Lonergan’s Dynamic World– View,” Thomist 46 (1982):108–145; Gerald A. McCool, “History, Insight and Judgment in Thomism,” International Philosophical Quarterly 27 (1987): 299–313; Giles Montgeau, “Bernard Lonergan as Interpreter of Aquinas: A Complex Relation,” Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 63 (2007): 1049–1069. Crowe emphasizes the earlier non–Thomist influences. See Frederick E. Crowe, Lonergan (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1992), 39– 40. For Newman’s influence on Lonergan, see Mathews, Lonergan’s Quest, 43–48, 138.

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According to the traditional definition, in order to have knowledge, the subject must believe a proposition, that proposition must be true, and the subject must have justification (or a similar kind of support) for believing it. In Lonergan’s terms, in order to have knowledge of a proposition, the subject must make a judgment as to whether the proposition is true or false, and that judgment must be reflectively understood as virtually unconditioned. If we associate judgment with belief and the virtually unconditioned with justification, Lonergan’s notion of knowledge will correspond to the traditional one in broad lines. It can be said that knowledge is a judgment that we reflectively grasp as true, or that can be assented to as true because justified through reflective understanding. Needless to say, an accidentally true judgment cannot be an ideal result of cognitive operations. He writes, for example, “if you do not grasp the sufficiency of the evidence and nevertheless say, ‘It is’ or ‘It is not,’ you are just guessing, you do not know, you are making a rash judgment” (UB 112; see IN 304). “To say that one knows presupposes the labor of coming to know” (CS 220). There is a demand for sufficient reason within our critical reflection (see MT 18). Besides being true, judgments should be, in his terms, reasonable, reasoned, rational, objective, responsible, sound, and not arbitrary, biased, rash, indecisive. It is the function of reflective understanding to add that something which makes the difference between knowing and (lucky) guessing. Let us briefly return to the expression “desire to know.” In the “desire to know,” “to know” can mean both to acquire true judgments (accidentally or non–accidentally) and to reflectively (and responsibly) acquire true judgments. I am sure that Lonergan would give priority to the latter interpretation as the paradigmatic meaning of “knowledge” in his epistemology. Desire to know is desire to make and hold justified true judgments. Again, the initial divergence between the contemporary usage and Lonergan’s usage of the term “knowledge” is not insurmountable. Following the simple method of term–comparison I have been trying to identify Lonergan’s counterparts to the elements of the traditional analytic definition of knowledge. I have found them for “knowledge,” “belief ” and “justified.” There is one condition for knowledge that the justified–true–belief definition puts forward which does not figure explicitly among the conditions Lonergan poses for knowledge.

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That one is the truth of belief or judgment. It seems that for a judgment to be granted the status of knowledge suffices its being virtually unconditioned. It seems that Lonergan does not require the truth of judgment as a condition for knowledge separate from justification. That does not mean that the truth is not a necessary condition for knowledge. The condition of truth is included within the condition of justifiedness. Lonergan seems to imply that the fulfilment of the conditions for the virtually unconditioned entails truth. Thus, in Insight the virtually unconditioned is both the criterion of truth and the criterion of justification.14 Elsewhere the condition for the justification of judgements on the correctness of insights (which is the absence of further relevant questions) clearly entails the truth of these judgments: “If, in fact, there are no further relevant questions then, in fact, a certain judgment would be true” (MT 191). Finally, Lonergan explicitly identifies the real and the true with “the verified.”15 The truth–entailment of justification, or of epistemic warrant, is one of the fundamental problems of epistemology. In our Chapter 2 we have seen that virtue epistemologists, whether reliabilists or responsibilists, sooner or later have to face that problem too. Lonergan’s response is to be looked for in his concept of the virtually unconditioned. But how does the grasp of the virtually unconditioned entail the truth of judgment? The elements of his answer to that question include the ontological theory of truth and the rejection of the “super– look” approach to reality (see 3.2.4). But let us first consider his model of epistemic justification in general.

14 See IN 573, 612. In Phenomenology and Logic (PL 73–75) Lonergan clearly distinguishes between the definition of truth and the criterion of truth. Truth is defined in its relation to being, things, while the criterion of truth is defined in terms of the virtually unconditioned. G. Barden has noticed that the expression “true judgment” can have two meanings in Lonergan: “First, a ‘true judgment’ is a judgment which states what is the case, which has reached its limit. Secondly, a ‘true judgment’ is a judgment for which I now consider to have sufficient evidence.” Barden, “Insights and Mirrors,” 101. 15 See IN 230, 277, 450.

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4.2 Epistemic Justification 4.2.1 Justification and Reflective Understanding How are claims to knowledge to be justified—or grounded, or verified—according to Lonergan’s theory of judgment? Generally, we say that a judgment is justified when the subject has sufficient reason to affirm the truth of the proposition in question. Somewhat spontaneously, we formulate sufficient reason in terms of sufficient evidence. Lonergan, at least initially, does the same. It is reflective understanding that makes judgment a judgment, i.e., a proposition affirmed as true or false, and distinct from a proposition that is merely thought of as a hypothesis. Reflective understanding is correctly exercised when it grasps as sufficient the evidence for the judgment on which the subject has been reflecting.16 In terms of the virtually unconditioned, it means that the subject grasps the fulfilment of the conditions for the prospective judgment. If the subject does not grasp the evidence as fully sufficient, if he does not grasp the complete fulfilment of the conditions, the judgment will have to be qualified as an opinion. In order to claim justifiedly that he knows, the needed conditions should be fulfilled completely.17 Obviously, one condition of justification in Lonergan’s epistemology is the sufficiency of the evidence. Evidence refers primarily to the data of experience (sense data, introspection, memory).18 Is evidence also a sufficient condition for justification? No, Lonergan is unambiguous that it is not. Evidence is necessary for the verification of the propositional content of the prospective judgment, but judgment is not justified on the basis of the data alone. Verification is not the same as experience nor is judgment verified only in virtue of its correspondence to experience (see IN 351, 694). 16 See IN 304–305; UB 112; MT 35, 102. 17  Lonergan handles this issue under the title of “absolute objectivity:” “Finally, there is a third, terminal, or absolute type of objectivity, that comes to the fore when we judge, when we distinguish sharply between what we feel, what we imagine, what we think, what seems to be so, and, on the other hand, what is so.” S 76; see also IN 402–404. 18  Lonergan says, for example, “A judgment that has no relation to any data of experience, no connection with it, is just ‘in air’; it is apart from matters of fact.” PPK 216.

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Lonergan usually speaks of grasping the evidence as “weighing and marshalling of evidence.”19 Whether the evidence will be grasped as sufficient or not, depends on the correctness of the subject’s “weighing.” Whether that “weighing” will be done correctly, depends on the subject’s cognitive abilities. How the norms of “weighing” are recognized and applied depends, again, on the subject. Hence, the given data themselves cannot be a guarantee of knowledge without first being processed correctly by appropriate cognitive operations. When Lonergan speaks of the virtually unconditioned, he points out that there is a link between the conditioned (the prospective judgment) and the fulfilment of its conditions (on the basis of the evidence). The link is the operation of reflective understanding, of judging. Epistemic justification is the function of that link. Judgment is grounded, verified, or justified in virtue of the correctly exercised reflective grasp of the fulfilment of the conditions for the judgment as virtually unconditioned (see IN 305, 694). The crucial factor of epistemic justification in Lonergan’s theory of judgment is the quality of cognitive operation and not the empirical evidence itself. What happens in the operation of reflective understanding when it is exercised properly? Reflective understanding is a complex operation, and Lonergan’s description of it is no less complex. Lonergan writes, “Before the link between conditioned and conditions appears in the act of judgment, it too was present in a more rudimentary state within the cognitional process itself ” (IN 306). Then he goes on to say that the link consists in unanalysed structure, procedures and laws that are immanent and operative within cognitional process: “The link between the conditioned and the fulfilling conditions is a structure immanent and operative within the cognitional process. It is not a judgment. It is not a formulated set of concepts, such as a definition. It is simply a way of doing things, a procedure within the cognitional field” (IN 307). Lonergan subsequently analyses how the pattern of the virtually unconditioned works in the concrete judgments of facts, judgments on the correctness of insights, scientific generalizations, probable judgments, common–sense judgments, analytic and mathematical judgments (see IN 306–339). The reflective link has something specific in each of them, but it always includes some unanalysed, preconceptual procedures, structures and laws. 19 See IN 304; UB 14, 112; MT 6, 101.

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Let us try to clarify this. Reflective understanding follows the procedures set by the intentionality itself. These procedures should not be understood as some previously formulated principles, definitions or preliminary judgments. The rules, laws, or principles of reasoning are already implicitly operating through cognitive functions, and operating successfully without being objectified and formulated. Lonergan writes, “Prior to such an investigation and formulation, the structures and procedures exist and operate; nor, in general, do they operate any better because the analysis has been effected” (IN 307). Our elementary certainty about the successfulness and reliability of the immanent cognitive procedures seems to come included in the same package. It even seems that the link does not have to be objectified, nor does the subject have to give an account of how the virtually unconditioned was brought about in order to justifiedly make the judgment.20 On the other hand, Lonergan persistently speaks of “grasping” the link between the conditioned and its conditions (IN 305–306), even in those judgments that seem to be formed spontaneously. Reflective understanding is often “an almost automatic procedure of intelligence” (IN 313), but we should not overlook the “almost.” When Lonergan says that the immanent laws and structures are “grasped” that means they are not simply unconscious, the subject has some preconceptual cognitive contact with them. They can be made explicit through the process of self–appropriation and, theoretically, everybody should be able to do that. Lonergan suggests that the subject has at his disposal some insider knowledge of the criteria of the correct functioning of the cognitive process and an insider certainty that the cognitive functions themselves are reliable. That “insider information,” together with the given evidence, allows reflective understanding to fulfil its justificatory function.

20  There are places where Lonergan seems to affirm the contrary. For example, he writes, “… to know the truth we have to know ourselves and the nature of our knowledge, and the method to be employed is reflection.” V 55. Later he explains that in order to “know what knowing is, you have to have immediate experience of each one of the activities that occur in the structure.” PPK 220. I think, however, that in these cases, where Lonergan requires a direct internalist justification, he writes about the objectification that is needed for an ideal epistemological theory and not about our ordinary claims to knowledge.

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Another way of explaining how the subject’s reflective understanding gets all that “insider information” is by going back to what we have said earlier about the intentionality of the normative desire to know. Reflective understanding is an answer to the question for reflection, “Is it so?” In Lonergan’s philosophy, questions are not empty. To be precise, they are empty structures, but the emphasis is on the fact that they are some kind of structures. That means that their shape determines the general shape of the material they scoop up. The question for reflection contains already (“intends”) the norms whereby it evaluates its answer, although it does not determine the content of the answer. The content depends on the data of experience, which the subject does not create but discovers.21 Since the question for reflection is an expression of the pure normative intellectual desire, ultimately, to that desire the subject must be faithful in order to implement the reflective process correctly.22 That is why Lonergan can say in Insight that the “intellect functions properly inasmuch as the detached and disinterested desire to know is dominant in cognitional operations” (IN 723). In Method the attitude of responsibility in respect of the desire to know gets its own more specific names: cognitive authenticity, cognitive self–transcendence, intellectual conversion. These are so important that in one form or another they appear in almost every section of Method.23 One implication of Lonergan’s latter emphasis on the subject’s attitude of intellectually responsible involvement is that the intellect can function improperly and that the subject should take care of how it works. It seems that, at the end of the day, the spontaneity of the reflective procedures cannot guarantee epistemic justification alone without the subject’s fundamental option to follow the normativity of the pure desire to know. The idea is not extravagant. It is in the nature of any desire that it is often conscious but preconceptual, and that its mechanisms can be understood through a process of heightening and objectification. It is also in the nature of any desire that even if we are 21  For “experiential objectivity,” see IN 405–407. 22  For “normative objectivity,” see IN 404–405; PPK 229. 23  See also “Self–transcendence: Intellectual, Moral, Religious,” in Philosophical and Theological Papers 1965–1980, vol. 17 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Robert C. Croken and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 313–331.

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not explicitly conscious of it all the time, we are still obliged to control its influence on our activity and we believe that normal human beings can train themselves to be able to exercise such control. Reflective understanding and, thus, epistemic justification in Lonergan is a function of the exercise of cognitive operations, but that includes some— not absolute—epistemic responsibility for the exercise of the same cognitive operations. Thus, a correct exercise of reflective understanding includes the implicit, non–objectified, spontaneous cognitive procedures as well as a more explicit willingness to submit to the demands of the pure desire to know. Although the objectification of the spontaneous procedures is not necessary for the virtually unconditioned judgments to be justified, the fundamental option to respect the norms inherent in the desire to know seems to be indispensable for a justified claim to knowledge. Lonergan’s distinction between the proximate and the remote criteria of truth seems to confirm that conclusion. The proximate criterion of truth is the reflective grasp of the virtually unconditioned. The remote criterion of truth is the proper unfolding of the detached and disinterested desire to know (see IN 573). I think that the “criteria of truth” should be interpreted as the criteria for the justification of our claims to be in cognitive contact with the truth, or simply as the criteria of knowledge. In that sense the remote criterion would correspond to what is often called the objective pole of epistemic justification or, in other words, what guarantees the truth of judgment. The remote criterion would correspond to the subjective pole of epistemic justification, the one that gives the subject some right to claim to possess knowledge concerning the judgment in question. We will return later to the question of how the subjective and the objective poles are connected. Just to give a hint, the answer is to be looked for in Lonergan’s frequently quoted maxim that objectivity is the fruit of authentic subjectivity.24 I think that Lonergan’s position on epistemic justification can be summarized in this way: The subject can justifiedly claim that her judgment that p is knowledge if and only if (a) the judgment that p is virtually unconditioned (it results from the reflective grasp that the conditions for its being virtually unconditioned are fulfilled) and (b)

24 See MT 104, 265, 292, 352; CS 211.

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she can responsibly agree to have followed the demands of the pure desire to know (in the measure they were available to her).

4.2.2 Invulnerability and Virtue While the element of spontaneity and necessity is emphasized in the matter of judgments of fact, the importance of epistemic responsibility is unambiguously emphasized in Lonergan’s theory of judgments on the correctness of insights. I have mentioned earlier that Lonergan finds that different immanent laws and procedures are in operation in different kinds of judgments. In the case of concrete judgments of fact, a proposition about a fact is the conditioned, and its fulfilment is in its correspondence to the empirical data. If the proposition is satisfyingly well understood and formulated, and if reflective understanding is exercised correctly, Lonergan does not hesitate to call the resulting judgments factual knowledge (see IN 306–308). In judgments on generalizations, whether in science or in common sense, the law immanent and operative in cognitional process is inductive reasoning (see IN 313). If inductive reasoning is correctly exercised, and the rest of dynamics of reflective understanding worked properly, a generalization based on induction is knowledge. The problem is that one step in the formation of these and other sorts of judgments is always insight and the subject has to make a judgment on whether the insight was correct and correctly formulated. Lonergan calls it judgment on the correctness of insights (see IN 308–312). Normally we simply assume that we have understood the given data or the given situation, and there is no need to judge each insight each time. The difficulties begin when we realize that we can always look for a better understanding and a better formulation of an insight and that the process of redefining things may extend ad infinitum. The temptation is to demand that in order to justifiedly claim to know anything, one has to know everything about everything, as we saw when we introduced Lonergan’s concept of the self–correcting process of learning. I have already mentioned that Lonergan’s terminology may occasionally hint at such demand (see 4.1.2). However, knowing everything about everything is not Lonergan’s main concept of knowledge nor is comprehensive understanding a general requirement for epistemic justification. Lonergan’s criterion of

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justification for the correctness of insight is called invulnerability. We can justifiedly affirm the truth of a judgment on the correctness of an insight when the insight in question is invulnerable. An insight is invulnerable when there are no further pertinent questions about its correctness (see IN 309, 340). It is questions that stimulate insights and questions determine when the understanding is obtained. But when can we responsibly stop asking further questions? It is not enough to say that no further questions occur to me, because my desire to know may have been obstructed by an irrational cause. On the other hand, it is too much to require the exclusion of the very possibility of further questions. How to establish the right ratio? Lonergan maintains that invulnerability is always factual. “If, in fact, there are no further questions, then, in fact, the insight is invulnerable; if, in fact, the insight is invulnerable, then, in fact, the judgment approving it will be correct” (IN 310). But who is to recognize the fact? The burden of decision whether the insight is factually invulnerable or not falls on the subject who asks questions, presumably in consultation with the epistemic community to which she belongs to. When the subject can judge responsibly that she has enough familiarity with the issue and enough mastery of it, the insight is invulnerable. This is the point where intellectual virtues get involved. Familiarity and mastery in a specific issue are not innate and not acquired over night. They are intellectual virtues and their acquisition presupposes other intellectual virtues. Lonergan mentions the virtues of intellectual alertness, intellectual curiosity, intellectual maturity, the rich experience of judging, the temperament that is neither rash nor indecisive, the virtue of detached judgment (which is openness to the collaboration with other inquirers) and, what unites them all, the virtue of good judgment (see IN 311–312). As long as a judgment on the correctness of insight is produced by a procedure of reflective understanding based on the evidence, arising from the virtues needed for the mastery of the issue in question, and epistemically responsible in respect to the disinterested and unlimited desire to know, the judgment in question deserves the status of knowledge. Lonergan’s treatment of the intellectual qualities that are important for the correct functioning of the reflective understanding does not end with the section on the correctness of insights. Although the language of intellectual virtues is not typical for his epistemology, intellectual abilities and qualities that have some characteristics of virtue

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appear all over his writings and some of them are given prominent, even crucial roles. The most significant are cognitive authenticity (or genuineness), cognitive self–transcendence, cognitive self–appropriation, objectivity, wisdom (in Verbum), and the qualities indicated by the transcendental precepts (attentiveness, intelligence, reasonableness, responsibility). These attitudes and qualities represent one and the same virtuous intellectual attitude of respect for the inherent normativity of the intellectual desire. Some of them represent individual aspects of that attitude, but some of them are simply other names for it.

4.2.3 Cognitive Authenticity In the following two sections I will try to give answers to two questions concerning Lonergan’s model of epistemic justification. First, how does Lonergan determine the normative characteristics of an intellectually correct, authentic or virtuous procedure or trait? Second, how does he obtain the guarantee that they are truth–conducive? Actually, the answers to these questions can be derived from what I have said in the previous sections. I will nevertheless, for the purpose of clarity, ask them once again in the context of the similar epistemological problems we have encountered in Chapter 2. At the end of Chapter 2 I anticipated the difference between Zagzebski’s exemplarist virtue epistemology and Lonergan’s epistemology concerning the way how we get to know what the normative characteristics of intellectual qualities and cognitive operations are. Lonergan does not rely on the learning of epistemic standards and norms by imitation of admirable intellectual models. The norms of cognitive procedures and the standards of the intellectual qualities are all immanent to the unlimited and disinterested desire to know and can be known through the objectification of their more or less spontaneous exercise. Every normally functioning human cognitive subject bears the norms and standards of proper cognitive functions and abilities in his or her cognitive intentionality. We learn epistemic and logical norms, of course, but if they were not already operating, it would not be possible to recognize them through learning. Reliabilist theories, and Sosa seems to follow that model, basically suppose that we determine epistemic norms and standards through the methods of cognitive psychology, cognitive sciences or common

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sense. We adopt them, then, because of their demonstrated truth– conduciveness. Again, that is not how Lonergan sees the acquisition of the epistemic norms and standards. Yes, he insists that the normative cognitional theory is a posteriori, empirically discovered (“generalized empirical method”), but it is not discovered through a third–person externalist method, nor can it be discovered in any other way except through the conscious intentionality analysis and self–appropriation. That does not exclude a subsequent comparison and assessment of the results among the members of an epistemic community, although, in my opinion, in the case of a conflict Lonergan would give priority to the individual—if the individual is convinced that she has satisfied the conditions for self–transcendence. Moreover, the cognitive norms and standards are not assimilated for consequentialist reasons of their successful truth–conduciveness, but because they are grasped as transcendental. The source of epistemic norms is in the transcendental precepts of the intentionality itself. Lonergan formulates the transcendental precepts as “be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible,” each corresponding to its respective level of intentionality—experience, intelligence, reflection, and decision.25 It would not be wrong if we said that there is only one transcendental precept and that one is to respect the immanent normativity of the pure desire to know.26 The epistemic norms and standard, according to Lonergan’s cognitional theory, are in the subject, but as something that the subject discovers as transcending and objective in herself. If Lonergan’s position on normativity, both epistemic and moral, can be synthesized in one sentence, that sentence is, objectivity is in authentic subjectivity.27 The authentic subject is the self–transcending subject, one that recognizes and accepts the lead of the transcendental precepts.28 It is in the subject that the objective and the subjective pole of epistemic justification

25 See MT 20, 53; IN 726. 26  Thus, B. Cronin writes that perhaps all the precepts could be summed up in the simple precept, “be authentic.” See Brian Cronin, Value Ethics: A Lonergan Perspective (Nairobi: Consolata Institute of Philosophy Press, 2006), 270. 27 See MT 104, 265, 292, 352; CS 211. 28 See MT 35, 37, 45.

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are connected through the normativity that the subject discovers as something that goes beyond herself.

4.2.4 Verification and Truth–Entailment We have seen earlier that those theories of knowledge that pose the justificatory function in the cognitive abilities of subjects sooner or later must face the question about what makes these cognitive abilities truth–conducive, or how these cognitive abilities entail truth. Descartes deemed it necessary to presuppose that the omniscient and non–deceiving God created human intellect and attuned it with reality. More recent evolutionary theories argue that the success of the evolutionary process indicates that there is an adequate alignment between human cognition and the structure of the world. Lonergan, on the one hand, never says that we must assume the truth–conduciveness of our cognitive operations as a mere act of trust. His position is that the general truth–conduciveness of our cognition should and can be experimentally verified.29 On the other hand, the experiment in question does not mean that we can borrow God’s eye for a day. Neither is it the experiment of our daily successful survival, although the advance of science is a serious indication of the truth– conduciveness of our cognition.30 Lonergan’s position is that the general truth–conduciveness of our cognition is guaranteed transcendentally through the coincidence of the subjective and the objective pole of justification in our intentionality. We have already seen that the metaphysical judgment on the possibility of knowledge of being is transcendentally verified through the intention in actu of the preconceptual notion of being (see 3.2.4.). The fundamental principles of logic are transcendentally guaranteed because we cannot reason without them nor deny them consistently (see IN 575). What about our categorial knowledge in common–sense and scientific judgments?

29  Lonergan explains, “I had to have a true judgment, one true judgment at least, so I had to have chapter XI, ‘I am a knower’.” IR 222. 30  Lonergan writes, “… if empirical science is no more than probable, still it truly is probable. It if does not attain definitive truth, still it converges upon truth. … The self–correcting process of learning is palpably approaching a limit.” IN 328.

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A judgment that Lonergan uses as the crucial experiment in categorial knowledge is the judgment on the self–affirmation of the subject, “I am a knower.” “Knower” means “cognizer” here, i.e., “I am a concrete unity–identity–whole who is performing certain cognitive acts” (see IN 343). In Chapter 11 of Insight Lonergan meticulously describes how that judgment fulfils all the conditions to be a virtually unconditioned correct judgment of fact. Finally, when the conditions are fulfilled, this judgment cannot be consistently doubted nor denied (see IN 356). Any attempt to deny this judgment presupposes it. It is also an invulnerable judgment on the correctness of insight because the self–understanding of a conscious subject escapes further pertinent questions and higher view–points (see IN 359). Lonergan’s judgment of the self–affirmation of the knower should not be confused with Descartes’ “Cogito ergo sum.” They may be based on the same insight, but Lonergan interprets that insight in a different way and uses it with a different purpose. The judgment of self–affirmation of the knower is not a self–evident judgment that would not need the procedure of reflective understanding. It is not a necessary judgment either. It is only a judgment of fact, based on the reflective understanding of the introspective empirical data of self–consciousness (see IN 353). Moreover, although it is a privileged judgment, Lonergan does not use it in the Cartesian way as the foundation for all other judgments via a deductive or a causal connection. It is simply a judgment of fact that happens to be apposite to factually confirm that human cognition works in the way Lonergan describes it and that it works successfully that way. The judgment of the self–affirmation of the knower is a privileged case of knowledge, but not because it is indubitable per se or infallibly produced. It is not infallibly produced, and defeats doubt only because it is de facto virtually unconditioned. It is privileged only because the empirical data of introspection are always at hand when we need its verification. The epistemological importance of the judgment of self–affirmation of the knower is not in its warranting that I exist nor that anything else exists (actually, on its own it does not guarantee either, see IN 399–402). Rather, its success in affirming my being a knower is a guarantee that other judgments that follow the same procedure are made by a correct truth–conducive process and, hence, can be considered knowledge.

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I do not argue, however, that Lonergan’s foundation for the truth– conduciveness of human cognition stops at this de facto success of the judgment of self–affirmation. Lonergan also explains its metaphysical background. As I have pointed out earlier, Lonergan does not argue that we have to accept the isomorphism between cognition and being just because it explains our common–sense beliefs. He argues that the isomorphism is a transcendental demand of our whole intentionality and it is proven a posteriori through intentionality analysis. I do not intend to enter further into his arguments for that position. I must indicate, however, the importance of what Lonergan calls the notion of being for the a posteriori foundation of the truth–conduciveness of cognitive operations. In the context of knowledge of being Lonergan prefers speaking of the “notion” of being to the more ordinary “concept” of being. He seems to understand “notion” as a preconceptual, transcendental, but still intentional cognitive contact with some reality, in this case with the being itself. By contrast, “concept” would denote mental content that has been understood and formulated, or that can be easily verbalized. Being is, Lonergan says, “what is to be known by the totality of true judgments … It is the complete set of answers to the complete set of questions” (IN 374). When he argues that we grasp the notion of being that does not mean, however, that we know everything about everything (without knowing that we know). But it does mean that we “heuristically anticipate” the cognitive and metaphysical foundations of what it means to know, i.e., to know the truth. Lonergan writes, “The self–correcting process of learning is palpably approaching a limit” (IN 328). The limit is that ideal of the totality of true judgments that we heuristically anticipate in the notion of being. We can recognize that science, though it does not attain comprehensive truth, still “converges upon truth” because of the heuristic anticipation of the limit through the intentio of the notion of being. Because we anticipate the structure of the limit, we can recognize when we are on the right path towards it. We do not know exactly what the limit includes, but we can have some certainty that we are approaching it through the achievement of knowledge in scientific generalizations and in ordinary judgments of fact. The judgment of self–affirmation of the knower is Lonergan’s experimentum crucis for this theory. Since I cannot give more room to Lonergan’s metaphysics here, I hope what I have said will be enough to give us some idea of

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what it means to say that the reliability of cognition and the features of truth–conducive intellectual qualities are known transcendentally in Lonergan.31

4.3 A Contextualization 4.3.1 Lonergan and Foundationalism Any reconstruction of Lonergan’s position concerning some more precise issues in contemporary (mainly analytic) epistemology must be done with prudence. A few general labels, though, can be helpful and that is what I intend to do here. First, in the debate between foundationalism and non–foundationalism, what is Lonergan’s position? I agree at this point with Ulf Jonsson, who distinguishes between foundationalism “in the broad sense” and foundationalism “proper.” He finds that Lonergan is a foundationalist in the former sense, but not in the latter, and I agree with that position.32 Foundationalism in “the broad sense” is a general approach to epistemology, or to philosophy in general, which argues that there is one universal basis of all knowledge claims and that we need such a basis in order to avoid relativism and scepticism. Its most prominent adversaries are pragmatism and the postmodern philosophy of deconstruction. It is, in fact, the position that is more often called epistemological realism. What Jonsson calls foundationalism “proper” is an epistemological theory in the narrow sense, one that, roughly, argues that knowledge is justified on the basis of some basic, self–justifying beliefs. Its contrary epistemological theory is coherentism. 31  Tekippe argues that “Lonergan is not making an argument for the objectivity of truth of knowing, because it is unproblematic for him,” and that “one has impression that Lonergan does not so much solve it as ‘dissolve’ it.” See Tekippe, Comprehensive Commentary, 180, 210. I would rather say that Lonergan’s intention was to show that the truth–conduciveness of cognition does not have to be problematic if it is combined with an adequate metaphysics, like his. Lonergan is perfectly right that the question of truth and of the truth–conduciveness of cognition is a metaphysical issue. As we saw it in Chapter 2, epistemic reliabilists, including Sosa, recognize that fact. 32  See Ulf Jonsson, Foundations for Knowledge of God: Bernard Lonergan and the Challenge from Antifoundationalism (Frankurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1999), 238, 315.

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There are elements in Lonergan’s philosophy that make it different from what is perceived as the traditional epistemic realism of modern philosophy (exemplified by the philosophy and the science of the Enlightenment). Lonergan’s philosophy of science relies considerably on the philosophical implications of Quantum Theory and from that position criticises classical mechanist reductionism and determinism. The counterpart of Laplace’s Daemon in classical modern science is the ideal of a god’s–eye–view in metaphysics. Lonergan rejects both. We are also familiar with Lonergan’s rejection of the search for infallibility and indubitability. His theory of inquiry is, in some sense, fallibilist: our knowledge of the world is a constant self–correcting process of learning.33 The necessity of learning is not just a requirement of our limited reason. It is not only our knowledge of the world that develops, but the universe itself is not a closed and stable system (see IN 149–151, 157–161). We cannot even guarantee that there will not be any changes in the nature of human cognition either (see IN 359). Quoting these and similar positions of Lonergan, some commentators try to interpret his philosophy in a non–foundationalist, i.e., anti–realist key.34 I believe that such interpretations, however, do not 33  Lonergan is not a fallibilist in Popper’s sense. For the differences between them, see Philipp Fluri, Einsicht in Insight. Bernard J.F. Lonergans kritisch–realistische Wissenschafts– und Erkenntnistheorie (Frankfurt am Main: Haag und Herchen, 1988), 141–143. 34  H. Meynell considers Lonerganian epistemology to be foundationalist, basically in agreement with Descartes at the level of the broad foundationalism. See Hugo A. Meynell, “Faith, Foundationalism, and Woltersdorff,” in Rational Faith: Catholic Responses to Reformed Epistemology, ed. Linda Zagebski (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), 7, 81, 84, 97; and Meynell, Redirecting Philosophy, 266–267. By contrast, D. Tracy maintains that Lonergan is a non–foundationalist. See David Tracy, “The Uneasy Alliance Reconceived: Catholic Theological Method, Modernity, and Postmodernity,” Theological Studies 50 (1989): 566–567. But some caution is needed in interpreting both Meynell and Tracy since they do not have the same idea of foundationalism. See the following debates, Ronald H. McKinney, “Beyond Objectivism and Realism: Lonergan Versus Bohm,” Modern Schoolman 64 (1987): 97–110; Andrew Beards, “Lonergan’s Relative Relativity: A Response to Ronald McKinney,” Modern Schoolman 65 (1987): 255–263; Ronald H. McKinney, “Deconstructing Lonergan,” International Philosophical Quarterly 31 (1991): 81–93; James L. Marsh, “Reply to McKinney on Lonergan: A Deconstruction,” International Philosophical Quarterly 31 (1991): 95–104. See also

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do full justice to Lonergan’s position. Lonergan is looking for the universal, inter–subjective, transcendental, transcultural principles of epistemic and metaphysical realism that can stand as the basis of all human inquiries. While he stresses the de facto limitations of a purely human development, he is “far from making any concession to irrationalism” (IN 755). He excludes any “radical revision that involves a shift in the fundamental terms and relations of the explanatory account of human knowledge underlying existing common sense, mathematics and empirical science” (IN 359). Lonergan’s idea of knowledge and of the world is the one of a continuous development, but he believes that the development is intelligible and for that reason he looks for the foundation of its intelligibility with the certainty that it can be found. When Lonergan rejects some of the principal traits of the traditional modernist worldview in science and philosophy, he does not do that in order to reject its epistemological realism, but to protect the majority of our realist beliefs from the “counter–positions” (see IN 411–414) and exaggerations (see IN 370–371) which the traditional modernist worldview implies, and which are exploited by anti–realists. Lonergan is a critical realist, but still a realist. He writes, There is then a rock on which one can build. … The rock, then, is the subject in his conscious, unobjectified attentiveness, intelligence, reasonableness, responsibility. The point to the labour of objectifying the subject and his conscious operations is that thereby one begins to learn what these are and that they are (MT 19–20).

This quotation illustrates with clarity what kind of foundationalist Lonergan is. Foundationalism in “the broad sense,” in Jonsson’s terms, requires that beliefs should and can be justified, which is Lonergan’s position too—“there is the rock.” Foundationalism “proper” holds that knowledge claims are justified as long as they are based on specific self–justifying beliefs that, hence, do not require further justification. Lonergan is not a foundationalist in such “proper” sense.35 “The rock” is the subject, not any basic belief. Frederick G. Lawrence, “Lonergan, the Integral Postmodern?” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 18 (2000): 95–122; and James L. Marsh, “Post–Modernism: A Lonerganian Retrieval and Critique,” International Philosophical Quarterly 35 (1995): 159–173. 35  See Jonsson, Foundations for Knowledge of God, 307, 311, 317.

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According to Lonergan’s theory, judgments are not justified—at least not sufficiently—in virtue of sense perception or rational intuition, and even less in virtue of some prior propositions. He explicitly rejects both rationalist deductivism (see IN 427–433) and empiricism (see IN 437–441). In the case of the judgment of self–affirmation, Lonergan is careful to avoid presenting it as the basis for other knowledge claims. The ultimate instance of epistemic justification is the correct exercise of cognitive operations, in accordance with the demands of the unrestricted and detached desire to know. Eventually, epistemic justification, in both its objective and subjective poles, is the function of the subject in his striving for authenticity.

4.3.2 Coherentism? As I have mentioned foundationalism as a theory of justification, I must briefly comment on the possibility of the connection between Lonergan’s theory of justification and coherentism. Coherentist theory of justification states, basically, that belief is justified if it fits in coherently with the set of other beliefs that the subject holds. There is a variety of positions on how broad that coherence should be and how it is to be understood. All of that is irrelevant for us because Lonergan clearly has not chosen the coherentist way of explaining epistemic justification. Epistemic justification in his theory is not a matter of relationship among beliefs. Justification is neither a function of the relationship between basic beliefs and their superstructure, nor of the relationship between beliefs themselves. To paraphrase Sosa, Lonergan’s model of justification is neither a pyramid, nor a raft. Lonergan’s theory of concept formation can be interpreted as a coherentist theory of concepts (though I do not want to enter into that issue). So we might expect that he would use some form of coherentist theory of justification for his theory of judgment on the correctness of insight. As we have seen, he does not do that. The correctness of insight is not grounded in its coherence with other already accepted insight–based judgments, but in the intellectual virtues of the subject who has to judge whether and when the insight is invulnerable.

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4.3.3 Lonergan and Reliabilism I agree with Jonsson, again, that in the matter of epistemic justification Lonergan is close to reliabilism.36 Jonsson, however, denies that Lonergan can be a reliabilist. Namely, Lonergan’s theory of justification is internalist, while reliabilism is externalist. Externalism does not require the subject’s conscious involvement in the procedure of justification, so it can be impersonal and mechanist. Lonergan is too much of a personalist and responsibilist to accept such implications. Lacking a more suitable term, Jonsson labels Lonergan’s theory “intentional operationalism.”37 As I do not think that the term “intentional operationalism” nor any similar new coinage is of much help for our aim of the contextualization of Lonergan’s epistemology, I will start with classifying Lonergan as a reliabilist, a kind of. I will define reliabilism in this case as any theory that grounds knowledge claims in the reliable truth–conducive intellectual abilities of the subject (whether or not the subject is aware of that reliability). From what we have seen until now, there should not be any doubt that Lonergan locates the needed epistemic justificatory functions in the truth–conducive cognitive operations and dispositions of the subject. The question whether his is an internalist or externalist theory of justification remains to be answered, though. Lonergan puts so much emphasis on the need of conscious objectification of intentional processes and denies emphatically any mechanical reductionism in his anthropology that it makes any purely externalist interpretation of his theory of knowledge impossible. I would even object that he does not pay sufficient attention to the unconscious side of the cognitional processes. He is an internalist to such a degree that he sometimes does not classify as knowledge beliefs based on testimony, but only those reached through direct personal inquiry (see IN 452). Lonergan’s version of internalism, however, is a bit more interesting than the ones we have been used to. It is important to notice that Lonergan’s internalism does not demand that the norms and standards of intentionality nor the reliability of cognition be explicitly known in order that our knowledge claims be justified. Neither is it clear in what sense those “rudimentary,” 36  See Jonsson, Foundations for Knowledge of God, 311. 37 Jonsson, Foundations for Knowledge of God, 312.

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“almost automatic” processes, which are relevant for the justification of judgments (see 4.2.1), can be made explicit at all. As Barden states, “intelligence, rationality, reasonableness and responsibility do not become foundations by being known, they are foundations by being exercised.”38 We have to take this seriously if we want to understand Lonergan’s internalism properly. In order to justifiedly claim to know, the person must not be completely unaware of why she made her judgement in the way she did, but she does not have to be able to objectivise them either. What she has to do is to be epistemically responsible in affirming the judgment regarding the faithfulness to the inherent normativity of the intellectual desire. Without self–transcendence, be it implicit or explicit, but certainly in some sense responsible, a person cannot be an objective, reasonable and, hence, justified knower. So, if we understand Lonergan properly, the reflective understanding operates and achieves the virtually unconditioned inadvertently but still somehow consciously, and the person is supposed to exercise some epistemic responsibility in the course of that procedure. How these elements square together is not immediately clear, but we will defer the analysis of his notion of epistemic responsibility to our next chapter. We can, of course, ask whether the distinction internalism vs. externalism is adequate for transcendental arguments. Transcendental precepts are, at the same time, internal and external to consciousness. They are internal because the only way the subject can know them is by more or less conscious intention. They are external because they escape full objectification and their imperatives transcend the subject. Finally, reliabilism and internalism may not be irreconcilable after all.39 I do not intend to enter into these more general issues. For our study of Lonergan’s epistemology it is important to notice that he somehow combines internalist and externalist elements, even if the internalist factors of consciousness and responsibility seem to hold sway.40 38  Barden, “Insight and Mirrors,” 100. 39  See Matthias Steup, “Internalist Reliabilism,” Philosophical Issues 14 (2004): 403–425; and Zagzebski, Virtue of Mind, 329–334. 40  It is also interesting to note that the commentators on Aquinas’ epistemology have to face a similar challenge: some define Aquinas as an internalist, others as an externalist. It is understandable that Aquinas and Lonergan, while sharing the basics in their cognitional theories, also share

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Because of that emphasis on consciousness and responsibility, to my categorization of Lonergan’s epistemology as a form of reliabilism I must add that it is a responsibilist reliabilism.

4.3.4 Lonergan and Virtue Epistemology Can Lonergan’s epistemology be categorized as a virtue epistemology? There seem to be a couple of problems with such a categorization. First, Lonergan speaks of operations, processes and procedures much more than of intellectual abilities and traits. Would not it be more adequate to interpret his theory as a sort of responsibilist process reliabilism? I do not think so. More than cognitive operations themselves, Lonergan emphasises the role of the subject and his influence on how the operations are exercised. Lonergan’s epistemology is not operation–centred, nor process–centred, but subject–centred. And it is so subject–centred that the subject is imputed some liability for how the cognitive operations are exercised even when they are not fully explicit. But can the mechanisms of how the subject controls the cognitive procedures be characterized as intellectual virtues? It seems they cannot. Cognitive self–appropriation is a set of operations and a long– term process, not a stable trait. Cognitive self–transcendence does not have to be an ability or a stable trait either. It can simply be a quality of certain acts that the subject performs without necessary continuity nor stability. Nonetheless, I do not agree that these characteristics hinder us from considering these mechanisms virtues. Although the language of intellectual virtues is not typical for Lonergan’s epistemology, intellectual states, attitudes, and qualities like cognitive authenticity or genuineness, cognitive self–transcendence, cognitive self–appropriation, objectivity, wisdom, attentiveness, intelligence, reasonableness, responsibility, and so on, have so many characteristics of intellectual the problems of their interpretations. For S. McDonald, Aquinas is an internalist of a pretty much Cartesian style. T. Hibbs argues that Aquinas’ epistemology is close to Zagzebski’s virtue epistemology. In the interpretation of E. Stump, Aquinas’ epistemology resembles Plantinga’s externalist reliabilism. See Scott McDonald, “Theory of Knowledge,” in The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, eds. Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 187; Thomas Hibbs, “Aquinas, Virtue, and Recent Epistemology,” Review of Metaphysics 52 (1999): 580; Stump, Aquinas, 235.

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virtues that they are easily and probably best understood as intellectual virtues. These qualities represent one and the same virtuous intellectual attitude of respect for the inherent normativity of the intellectual desire. All the attitudes or qualities mentioned contribute to the subject’s acquisition of the trait of intellectually self–appropriated, self–transcending, and authentic person. I cannot but agree with McPartland who writes about the “virtue of radical attachment to the desire to know.”41 Wisdom, attentiveness, intelligence, reasonableness, and (epistemic) responsibility are usually found in the traditional lists of intellectual virtues. For cognitive authenticity Lonergan himself uses the language of virtue.42 Regarding the cognitive self–appropriation, it is a process that needs a proper motivation and that leaves a lasting impact on the person. It changes the person so that she becomes progressively more self–appropriated, as well as increasingly habitually self–appropriating in the long run. The same happens with the cognitive self–transcendence. As much as it is a quality of a single act or a set of operations, it is also an attitude and a motivation that changes the person and tends to become her habit.43 Lonergan regularly describes cognitive authenticity, self–transcendence and self–appropriation as dynamic states that have to develop and reach maturity. They are natural predispositions and capacities, but their correct function depends heavily on the subject’s self–formation. The thrust towards authenticity and self–transcendence is partly a natural process that begins in childhood (at age of three to six, see MT 121). Then it gradually demands a higher and higher degree of self–formation similar to the process of adoption of virtues. Actually, we will create unnecessary problems for Lonergan’s epistemology if we do not interpret cognitive authenticity and self–transcendence as stable virtuous traits. Being partly spontaneous and 41  McPartland, “Consciousness and Normative Subjectivity,” 112. 42 See IR 277; MT 35, 41; IN 723. 43  Lonergan writes, “Now if this desire [to know] is to be maintained in its purity, if it is not to suffer from the competition of the attached and interested desires of man’s sensitivity and intersubjectivity, if it is not to be overruled by the will’s connivance with rationalizations, then it must be aided, supported, reinforced by a deliberate decision and a habitual determination of the will itself.” IN 723. The emphasis of the word “habitual” is mine.

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inadvertedly exercised, the procedures of reflective understanding need stable habitual traits that will guarantee their correctness even when the subject is not fully aware of each step in the performance of reflective understanding. By presupposing that the subject should start the process of discernment and of its application always from zero we may impose an excessive burden on the subject. Zagzebski argues for the necessity of epistemically virtuous motivation as a condition for knowledge. Would Lonergan’s epistemology imply the same position? I am pretty sure it does. Epistemic responsibility, or the faithfulness to the pure desire to know, is in Lonergan both the warrant—the ultimate warrant—of the objective truth conduciveness of our cognitive operations, and the explanation for the subjective appraisal of the knower. Let me explain. Since there is no room for animal knowledge in Lonergan, knowledge claims must be supported by some awareness of the subject of why his judgment is not completely out of touch with reality. There is no view from “out–there” that would confirm the success of our cognitive operations. So, the warrant must be available to us here. Neither the automaticity of our cognition nor the obviousness of evidence are sufficient warrants of the truth. The best warrant that can guarantee our general improvement towards the totality of the knowledge of the world and the reliability of our cognitive performance in particular judgments is our cognitive self–transcendence. On the other hand, our way of acquiring the truth about the world is through the self–correcting process of learning. The history of ideas and of science shows that what looks clear and obvious sometimes has to be corrected because it is incomplete and, sometimes, simply wrong. Self–transcendence is truth–conducive because of its transcendental connection with the notion of being. Without self–transcendence, i.e., epistemic responsibility, there is no guarantee of the reliability of our cognition on the long run. To conclude, epistemic responsibility is necessary not only for subjective justification, but also for objective justification since it is the ultimate warrant of the truth–conduciveness of our cognitive performance.

4.4 Summary In this chapter I have offered an analysis and reconstruction of Lonergan’s epistemology in terms of contemporary theories of knowledge and justification. I have found that the epistemological definition

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of knowledge Lonergan deals with can be reconstructed in a way comparable with the definitions of knowledge that are used by contemporary epistemologies. Lonergan formulates conditions for knowledge in terms of judgment, reflective understanding and the grasp of the virtually unconditioned. Knowledge can be defined as judgment based on the reflective grasp of the virtually unconditioned. What is the reflective grasp of the virtually unconditional? The grasp of the virtually unconditional is the understanding that the conditions for the justification of judgment are fulfilled according to the norms inherent to the desire to know. The norms proceed from the transcendental notion of being, which is also inherent to the desire to know. (This is the moment where the isomorphism between the cognitive and the ontological implicitly happens and where it can be pre–conceptually grasped.) Since “virtually unconditioned” means always a reflective grasp that the judgment is based on the virtually unconditioned, we could even define knowledge simply as virtually unconditioned judgment. Nevertheless, I prefer emphasizing the fact that judgment should be reflectively understood because in Lonergan’s theory knowledge is a complex and involving cognitive state. Reflective understanding is a function of the exercise of cognitive operations which combines an element of spontaneous truth–conduciveness of the cognitive operations based on the heuristic anticipation of the transcendental notion of being, with some epistemic responsibility for the exercise of the same cognitive operations in respect of the pure desire to know. The crucial factor of epistemic justification in Lonergan’s theory of judgment is the quality of cognitive operations and not the empirical evidence itself nor any connection among the judgments that form a framework of intelligibility. The quality of the exercise of cognitive operations depends, eventually, on the virtuous attitudes and traits of the cognitive subject which Lonergan formulates as cognitive authenticity, cognitive self–transcendence, cognitive self–appropriation. There is no guarantee for objectivity and, hence, reliability of cognitive operations without the involvement of responsible subjectivity. Authentic or virtuous subjectivity is necessary for the correct exercise of reflective understanding and, hence, one necessary condition for knowledge. The reliability of the cognitional dynamism which is warranted by the grasp of the notion of being is another condition for knowledge. Together they are sufficient conditions for knowledge.

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As the principal characteristic of virtue epistemology, whether reliabilist or responsibilist, Greco specifies “that the normative properties of beliefs are to be defined in terms of the normative properties of agents, rather than the other way around.”44 I believe I have shown this is also Lonergan’s position. Is his position closer to virtue reliabilism or virtue responsibilism? Reliabilist and responsibilist virtue epistemologies disagree most conspicuously in regard as to whether intellectual virtues are cases of moral virtues. In the background of that disagreement is their difference in regard to whether there is a weak or a strong connection between ethical and epistemic normativity. We have to see yet whether and in what sense Lonergan’s virtuous attitudes in respect of the intellectual desire can be assigned moral value and how he handles the meta–epistemological question of the relationship between the ethical and the epistemic normativity. Nevertheless, it is clear that Lonergan reserves an important role for epistemic responsibility in his model of epistemic justification. His vision of the self–correcting process of learning hinders any atomist interpretation of his theory of justification and allows for a major role of the subject of inquiry in the justificatory process. He also combines internalist and externalist elements in justification in a way similar to that of Zagzebski. I have shown in Chapter 3 that Lonergan’s notion of knowledge is richer than the analytic one and matches a great deal with what virtue responsibilists are looking for. I believe that even at this stage much of what we anticipated about the possible alliance between Lonergan’s epistemology and virtue responsibilism has been confirmed. Lonergan’s epistemology differs from Zagzebski’s virtue epistemology on the important issue of how we get to know which intellectual attitudes and traits are virtuous. Instead of relying on learning virtues by imitation of virtuous exemplars, Lonergan demands a transcendental foundation for them. I consider Lonergan’s reliance on the transcendental mechanisms of human cognition—as a point of departure, at least— to be an advantage of his theory over purely exemplarist virtue theories, but I do not intend to defend that opinion here. It would require a demonstration that Lonergan’s transcendental method can cope with the challenges posed to transcendental arguments 44  Greco, “Virtue Epistemology,” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-virtue/#Scop (accessed June 22, 2009).

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in general, and that demands a comprehensive study of Lonergan’s ontology. William Rehg has argued, in my opinion successfully, that Lonergan’s performative transcendental argument resists Barry Stroud’s influential criticism.45 As I have said at the beginning of this chapter, I did not aim at the assessment of the validity of Lonergan’s epistemology in the light of contemporary debates. This chapter was rather a step in our study of his meta–epistemology. The next steps are a more thorough analysis of Lonergan’s notion of epistemic responsibility (Chapter 5) and, then, an analysis of his notion of intellectual value (Chapter 6). That should give us a sufficiently elaborate picture of Lonergan’s model of epistemic evaluation and enable us, eventually, to give a founded judgment on the relationship between the ethical and the epistemic normativity in his meta–epistemology.

45  See Rehg, “Lonergan’s Performative Transcendental Argument,” 257– 268; and Barry Stroud, “Transcendental Arguments,” Journal of Philosophy 65 (1968): 241–256.

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ur inquiry is about the ethical elements in Lonergan’s model of epistemic normativity, where the adjective “epistemic” refers to anything that has to do with the valuable cognitive state that we call knowledge. Is the appraisal of knowledge a case of moral appraisal? Or, as virtue epistemologists put it, does the credit for knowledge have an ethical nature? Virtue responsibilists Zagzebski, Roberts, and Wood argue that it does. They understand knowledge as the credit given to the knower for her virtuously acquired belief, where intellectual virtue is morally motivated and not essentially different from what is ordinarily understood as moral virtue. What are the necessary conditions for the credit for knowledge to be characterized as a moral credit? First, we have to show that the acquisition of knowledge can be ascribed to the knower as a result of her responsible cognitive agency. We normally presume that responsibility implies a certain degree of the agent’s voluntary control over her decisions and over their realization, that is to say, the free will. That is not enough, though. As Sosa points out, a skilful ballerina gets credit for her successful performance, but that does not have to be a moral credit. In order to characterize epistemic appraisal as moral, we should show that cognitive agency is a sort of moral agency. Besides freedom, moral agency implies a horizon of evaluation that can be characterized as moral. The freedom involved, then, is not only the ability to control one’s behaviour, but the agent’s ability of self–determination in regard to the ethical horizon of evaluation. In this chapter we are interested in whether the degree of the voluntary involvement Lonergan allows in cognitive activity comes

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sufficiently close to the one implied in moral responsibility. It will be basically an analysis of how Lonergan deals with the classical problems of doxastic voluntarism, cognitive agency, and epistemic freedom. We will leave the question of the horizon of epistemic evaluation for the next chapter. As we have seen in the previous chapters, there is no doubt that Lonergan reserves an active role for the subject in the exercise of cognitive operations. That subject’s active involvement in cognitive operations is not a marginal matter and it is not a handicap of the human cognition. Our cognition would not function better if it was completely spontaneous. On the contrary, if Lonergan is right, our cognition cannot realize its full potential, i.e., it cannot acquire the state we call knowledge, without the subject’s active and responsible involvement. The subject’s epistemic responsibility is a necessary warrant of knowledge (though it is not a sufficient warrant). In order to justifiedly claim to know something, the subject must be sure to have displayed the required degree of epistemic responsibility in the general pursuit of authentic cognitive attitudes and traits, as well as in the concrete performance of cognitive operations in regard to the transcendental normativity of the intellectual desire.1 Consequently, epistemic evaluative terms appear often in Lonergan’s writings and it is not easy to discern the boundary between the ethical and the epistemic evaluations of the cognitive agency. Contemporary debates on the voluntariness of belief and similar cognitive acts or states regularly start with the analysis of single cognitional acts or states. In Lonergan that would primarily be judgment. Knowledge is defined in terms of judgment. Knowledge is reflectively understood virtually unconditioned judgment. The things are not so simple, however, if we approach Lonergan’s idea of cognitive agency from the point of view of the voluntariness of judgment. The problem is that Lonergan does not allow easily that judgment is a free voluntary act and when he does that has to be explained. Even if the normative qualities of judgment are expressed in the normative qualities of the 1  The required degree of epistemic responsibility is not one a sceptic would demand, but one that a virtuous knower, i.e., an authentically self–appropriated and self–transcending knower, would display. The authentic virtuous epistemic traits are those that lead to correct factual judgments and judgments of self-affirmation par excellence (see p. 149). I thank Dr Andrew Beards for advising me to make this clarification.

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subject, and so the cognitive agency may reduce to the voluntariness in the acquisition of intellectually virtuous attitudes and traits, that does not absolve us from asking about the voluntariness of concrete acts of judgment. There is another, a more general difficulty we will have to handle throughout this chapter. Not only is epistemic responsibility problematic; there is not much agreement about the nature and the possibility of moral responsibility either. The relation between responsibility, freedom and voluntariness in philosophy is somewhat circular. In order to qualify a person as responsible for her actions, we demand that she have some free voluntary control over those actions. On the other hand, when we face difficulties in proving that a person can have such voluntary control, we turn to the fact that we actually consider persons responsible for some of their actions. No wonder that the meanings of these terms frequently overlap or are subsumed under the category of moral agency. Without entering into different ways in which philosophers deal with this circularity, I will assume—together with Lonergan—that, in general, personal responsibility is possible and so is free will. Thus, the question we will put to Lonergan’s epistemology can be formulated in this way: supposing that responsibility, voluntariness and free will are realities in the human way of acting and, hence, the basis of ethical appraisal of human activities, in what sense and in what measure do they characterize human cognitive activities? Are they present in human cognitive activities in the measure sufficient to allow us to categorize epistemic appraisal as some sort of ethical appraisal and the cognitive agent as a moral agent? A few words on freedom in epistemological context, or epistemic freedom. The expression “epistemic freedom” would probably sound rather controversial to many ears, Lonergan’s included, because it is not rare that people identify freedom and voluntariness with arbitrariness. It is important to clarify at the very beginning that neither the mainline contemporary epistemologists, nor Lonergan, nor myself, understand it in that way. J.D. Velleman proposes this definition, “Epistemic freedom is the freedom to affirm any one of several incompatible propositions without risk of being wrong.”2 The important qualifica2  James David Velleman, “Epistemic Freedom,” in The Possibility of Practical Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 32.

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tion in Velleman’s definition is “without risk of being wrong.” We accept the fundamental importance of rationality (although it is not easy to define and delimit it precisely). Arbitrariness and manipulation (self–deception, wishful thinking, etc.) are neither an expression nor a fruit of epistemic freedom, but epistemic pathology. The notion of epistemic freedom (and perhaps any notion of freedom) based on mere arbitrariness, i.e., one that does not presuppose a horizon of an objective value (leaving aside the question what that value is), is nonsense. I hope that our analysis and interpretation of Lonergan’s notion of freedom and moral agency will reaffirm that position.

5.1 Cognitional Structure and the Will That the will has an important role in our intellectual activities is not in question. Neither is our ethical responsibility in the intellectual life in question. Our common sense teaches us that we can and should be conscientious in the process of inquiry and of learning, or in our intellectual self–formation. “Search for the truth! Avoid falsity! Don’t be quick at drawing conclusions! Test your premises! Listen to the other side! Be careful with fallacies! Don’t misrepresent the counterarguments!” We believe that we can follow or not follow these and similar norms according to the inclinations of our will. People who do not respect these and similar norms risk not only being considered uncritical or silly in a morally neutral sense, but sometimes morally bad. Both in Insight and in Method, Lonergan seems to take for granted that we have much room to act according to our moral dispositions in our intellectual life in general, and thus agrees with the common sense view. However, it is not always clear how the voluntary and the rational are integrated. It is even less clear when we ask how the voluntary and the rational interact in the exercise of particular cognitive operations. In Lonergan’s Insight, the will is presented as the faculty typical of the “rational self–consciousness.” Do not let his terminology confuse you: rational self–consciousness is not the level of reflective reasoning, but the level where deliberation and decisions to act are made. These two levels sometimes seem to be quite separated from each other. Thus, he writes that “one can be a rational knower without an act of willing, and one cannot be a rational doer without an act of willing” (IN 638). When he mentions the possible influence of the will on our

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cognitive operations, he usually describes it as something dangerous, to be avoided. On the other hand, the regularity of Lonergan’s appeals in Insight to respect the normativity of the detached and disinterested desire to know indisputably attests that the free reign of the desire to know depends very much on the person’s willingness to facilitate it, both in intention and in act: Now just as the pure desire to know, which is spontaneous, can be aided, supported, reinforced by a free decision of the will in which one determines to be quite genuine in all one’s investigations and judgments, so also the spontaneous procedures of the mind can be submitted to introspective analysis, formulated as methods, and reinforced by free decisions in which one wills to be faithful to methodological precepts (IN 726).

Lonergan takes a similar position when he speaks of the “volitional appropriation of truth” (IN 584). If this position of Lonergan seems to be in opposition to the aforementioned quotation from IN 638, well, it is. The tension between allowing that the pursuit of knowledge be voluntary and protecting the realm of the rational from too much voluntariness is present throughout Insight. In Method, the boundary between the cognitive and the volitional is hazier and it is beyond any doubt that our intellectual life is subject to ethical evaluation. Lonergan writes that the fourth level of intentional consciousness bears responsibility for the proper functioning of the first three levels. “A life of pure intellect or pure reason without the control of deliberation, evaluation, responsible choice is something less than a life of a psychopath.”3 It is still not clear, however, in what degree the will exercises its control over the cognitive operations in their particular acts. We can compare the relation between particular judgments (and beliefs) and inquiry to the relation between single steps and the walk that they constitute. The voluntariness of the walk certainly influences the voluntariness of single steps, but indirectly. Single steps, watched in isolation, often seem to happen without a direct voluntary control. Our aim in the following sections is to examine whether something similar happens in our cognitive operations as Lonergan describes them. Before we venture into that exploration let us first, as usual, clarify some terminological issues. 3  MT 122. See also MT 121, 316–317, 340.

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5.1.1 Adjusting the Terminology The expression “doxastic voluntarism” means voluntarism in belief or in believing. Thus, doxastic voluntarism in the full sense is usually defined as the position that affirms that we can produce beliefs “at will.” The distinction is, then, made between direct and indirect doxastic voluntarism (see 1.3.2). In now established philosophical usage, belief is defined as a veridical propositional attitude. That notion of belief does not imply any reflection upon the matter it is about, nor does it imply any uncertainty (as ordinary usage of the term “belief ” suggests). I have already mentioned that some epistemologists emphasize the passivity of believing describing it as a cognitive or credal feeling (see 1.3.2). This is how the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy presents the representationalist idea of belief: “In one way of speaking, the belief just is the fact or proposition represented, or the particular stored token of that fact or proposition; in another way of speaking, the more standard in philosophical discussion, the belief is the state of having such a fact or representation stored.”4 This empiricist representationalism has somehow become a commonsense idea about the nature of belief. If we try to compare this understanding of belief with the elements of Lonergan’s cognitional structure, we will face several difficulties. The nature of belief is an open question altogether, but belief in the contemporary analytic understanding seems to embody the characteristics of experience, insight and judgment without differentiation. It comprises perceptual beliefs as well as much more complicated scientific and philosophical beliefs, despite their big differences. Perceptual beliefs are frequently seen as an almost automatic result of the exposure of the subject to some sense data. Thus some philosophers maintain that beliefs are prelinguistic and preconceptual, so that animals and infants can have them as well as adult humans.5 Inferential beliefs, on the other hand, require complex conceptual and logical structures. To make the confusion complete, everybody agrees that belief is a veridical attitude, which means it should involve taking a position regarding the truth of the proposition they are about. How one term 4  Eric Schwitzgebel, “Belief,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/#1.1 (accessed June 25th, 2009). 5  See Cohen, Belief and Acceptance, 8, 49–53.

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“belief ” in its contemporary analytic usage can cover all these features is a mystery. We have seen that Lonergan strongly insists on the distinction between experience, conceptualization and judgment (see 3.2). His critique of the empiricist notion of “objectivity as extroversion” is very much directed against the ideas that stand behind the aforementioned prevailing concept of belief (see IN 437–441). The other difficulty is the realization that belief is not (only) a mental act, but (also) a disposition (see 1.3.2). The subject believes a proposition even when he does not think of it. Beliefs are only episodically activated. Lonergan, on the contrary, stands deeply rooted in the tradition of cognitive acts. For him the fundamental epistemological category is judgment, and judgment is an act. Even when he speaks of beliefs in his proper sense of the term, i.e., as judgments based on testimony (it will be explained later in this chapter), they are considered acts, not dispositions. He does not say that opinions and knowledge disappear in the period between two moments of judging, but he does not pay much attention to the fact that they somehow persist either. Actually, when the epistemologists from the tradition of cognitive acts, including Lonergan, speak of “holding” and “possessing” judgments and beliefs, that is probably a sign that they are aware of the dispositional nature of judgment and belief. Some epistemologists distinguish between belief and acceptance. Cohen regards belief as a sort of causally induced feeling. By contrast, acceptance is voluntary, being an explicit assent to a proposition displayed in the consent to use that proposition as a premise in further arguments.6 One might be led to think that this distinction corresponds to Lonergan’s distinctions between experience and judgment or between insight and judgment, having in mind that the acts of experience and insight are more spontaneous than judgment. Our next sections will show that it does not, although it could be helpful to distinguish the levels of assent in judgment.

5.1.2 Experience and the Will Whatever philosophical question arises, Lonergan students almost instinctively try to look at it in the perspective of his four–fold intentional structure. So it seems methodically useful to start with the analysis 6  See Cohen, Belief and Acceptance, 1, 21–23.

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of the role of the will at the levels of experience and intelligence before we pass on to judgment. Lonergan has transcendental precepts for the first two intentional levels, be attentive and be intelligent, as well as for the third, be reasonable, and the fourth, be responsible (see MT 20). If we are told to be attentive and intelligent, that might imply we have volitional control over our attentiveness and intelligence. Yet, it does not work quite that way in this case. First of all, we must keep in mind that the complete product of the cognitive process is judgment. We cannot say that we know a proposition, nor that we have an opinion or doubt about it, nor even that we presuppose it as a hypothesis, without having made some judgment about that proposition. Whatever we say about experience and intelligence, we say it as subjects who make judgments, speaking retrospectively from the point of view of the third and the fourth level. Lonergan does not normally speak of the subject’s responsibility at the first two levels. Experience simply happens. One can imagine what one pleases (though that ability is not without its limits), but one cannot both be normal and see as one pleases.7 The subject does not have a direct voluntary influence on what he is experiencing when the experience happens. Whether the given data are a result of hallucination or of properly working sensual organs, the subject is, speaking strictly at the first level, helpless. The sensitive and conscious flow of experience can be controlled only indirectly, in the sense that we can voluntarily activate or deactivate the source of information, as when we close our eyes to avoid seeing a horror scene in a movie. What is, then, the message of the transcendental precept to be attentive? The first message is that understanding and knowledge happen through the perception of the data in our external and internal experience: “the image is necessary for the insight” (IN 8). If a situation seems unintelligible, going back to data might help. The second message of the precept to be attentive is that we cannot be all–attentive. Our senses have a limited range. It is crucial that our attention be intelligent and, in fact, as human beings we are in normal circumstances intelligently attentive. We can dedicate more attention to some phenomena and less to others, but that selection is done in view of a question. Questioning is a business of the subsequent intentional levels. The given experience itself is beyond question and doubt, prior to 7 See IN 354, 405–407, 483; MT 15.

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questioning and independent of any answer (see IN 406). Therefore, the influence of the will at the first level of intentionality is very indirect. If producing beliefs “at will” in contemporary epistemology refers to producing non–conceptual “perceptual beliefs” at will, Lonergan would certainly say that that is psychologically impossible in normal circumstances. He cannot be judged as a doxastic voluntarist in that sense.

5.1.3 Intelligence and the Will What is the role of the will at the level of intelligence? Because the level of intelligence is under the influence of the question for intelligence (Quid sit?), and it seems that we can ask or not ask that question on particular occasions, the influence of the will at the second intentional level is probably more direct than at the first level. Moreover, Lonergan speaks of the “flight from insight,” he pays much attention to the dangers of bias that can put unjustified limits to the question for intelligence, and he formulates a transcendental precept for the level of intelligence, be intelligent. The will, however, seems again to have a direct influence on the intellectual activity of inquiry in general and not on the particular acts of insight. Lonergan does not speak of taking responsibility for insights. Insights are not final products of the cognitional process. They are hypothetical conceptualizations and formulations of propositions and their correctness has yet to be questioned (An sit?) and verified. Before the subject has made any judgment about the correctness or probability of an insight, he does not assume any responsibility for it. Propositions and definitions as hypotheses can be produced at will with more or less ground in reality, but those are attempts, exercises of the inquirer’s creativity, and do not say anything about the position the subject has taken. We may be tempted to speak of the epistemic responsibility of the subject when making judgments on correctness of insights as if that act were at the second level of intentionality. That would be wrong, because these judgments are the exercise of reflective understanding. Though open for revision from higher view–points, they are real judgments. Again, the transcendental precept “be intelligent” means that we cannot simply be unintelligent (see IN 354). Having thoughts is

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inevitable and questioning them is inevitable (see PPK 224). It is a spontaneous activity of the desire to know to look for understanding and it is a spontaneous operation of our intelligence to read the intelligibility in the data, or to give them meaning in the framework of existing intelligibilities. The energy we put into the inquiry and our intellectual habits (natural and acquired) influence the final result of the process of understanding, but they do it indirectly. Bright insights often do not come when we want them and frequently come when we least expect them. Having in mind that, at least in some important aspects, our capacity to understand is biologically and socially determined, Lonergan’s “be intelligent” can be translated as, “Be prepared to take more relevant factors into consideration and pray that a correct insight happens,” or shorter, “Think twice, and good luck.” In any case, the role of the will is more important than at the first level—because we have more influence on asking questions for intelligence—but a person’s responsibility for the resulting insights remains indirect. The appeals to be attentive and intelligent are retrospective appeals made from the point of view of our capacity to judge and to verify the result of judgment by returning to the data and to their understanding, or to remain reserved. They are more effective as guidelines for education and self–formation of the person as a whole. If the person cannot be considered responsible for each case of their application, she can be considered responsible for their adoption.

5.2 Epistemic Responsibility and Voluntariness in Judgment 5.2.1 Judgment, Act and Assent Let us now have a closer look at what Lonergan says on the will and responsibility in reflective understanding and judgment. As we have seen in the second chapter, Lonergan emphasizes that judgment is an act (see IN 297; UB 110–111). This does not yet tell us much about its voluntariness. That something is an act does not imply more than that it has been performed by a subject. It can be simply an actus hominis, to which we do not ascribe voluntariness and responsibility. Moreover, “act” is not a synonym for the term “action.” It is better to reserve “action” as the translation for the traditional Aristotelian actus transiens (an act that produces effects “external” to the subject’s mind),

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while “act” better translates actus immanens (an act that produces effects that remain “internal” to the mind). Cognitional acts are traditionally defined as immanent acts. Anyway, neither act nor action necessarily imply voluntariness. What makes judgment different from a proposition (which is for Lonergan a formulation of insight) is affirmation and assent. Generally speaking, affirmation and assent are not the same thing, but in an act of judgment they both express the subject’s “yes” to the truth of the proposition in question. Their difference becomes more important when we ask about the voluntariness of each of them. While affirmation simply states that something is the fact, assent, at least lexically, implies that the subject takes the judgment as his own in some measure. In what measure exactly, is debatable. Assent can be a simple “yes” to the truth of the proposition that is not explicit nor reflected over. Judgment can produce an (almost) automatic assent, e.g., in perceptual cognition. In this case the assent is voluntary only in the sense that the will executes the judgment as its efficient cause. There is no voluntariness in the sense of choice. This may be the reason why Lonergan sometimes identifies judgment, and thus affirmation, with assent (see UB 109). Sometimes Lonergan seems to reserve the term “assent” for the assent of belief as different from judgment (see IN 731). The assent of belief comes as the result of a decision to believe. It seems to have all the characteristics of an actus humanus, and noticeably more of such characteristics than a simple judgment can have. In most cases, however, “assent” means that the subject is involved in the act of judgment, and Lonergan does not specify the degree of its voluntariness.

5.2.2 Judgment as Personal Commitment Lonergan indisputably speaks of judgment as something more than a mere actus hominis. Judgment is repeatedly described as a personal act, an act of personal commitment, and the person is responsible for her judgments: “A judgment is the responsibility of the one that judges. It is a personal commitment” (IN 297). Or, “Judgment is something that is entirely yours; it is an element in personal commitment in an extremely pure state. Because it is so personal, so much an expression of one’s own reasonableness apart from any constraint, because

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all alternatives are provided for, it is entirely one’s own responsibility.”8 Lonergan also says that, although we frequently complain about our memory, we are reluctant to confess our wrong judgments. That is, he argues, because judgment is under our control, unlike memory, which is not completely under our control (see IN 297; UB 113). The aforementioned statements are clear and strong. They could give us an impression that Lonergan thinks that our judgments are fully under our command and that we are, consequently, free to make them or not make them simply at will. The extreme implications of these statements would be that the person could judge independently of, or even against the evidence and the norms of rationality. Such radical conclusions, however, would not do justice to Lonergan’s theory of judgment. The above quoted statements of Lonergan have to be explained. What kind of voluntary control does the subject have over his judgments? We will start with Lonergan’s simple definition that says that judgment is an affirmed proposition (see IN 296). We can also say that judgment is an assented proposition. Anyway, it is important that there are two elements in judgment, the content expressed in the proposition and the affirmation. Hence, we will first explore whether the content of judgment can be under the voluntary control of the subject and, then, whether the affirmation can be under such control. Of course, this division is a bit simplified, but it may be helpful for methodical reasons.9 Let us specify immediately that whatever conclusion we reach about the psychological possibility of the voluntary control over judgments Lonergan is clear that the judgments made arbitrarily (“at will”), i.e., independently of the grasp of the virtually unconditioned, cannot be epistemically justified. The subject is under a “rational obligation” (UB 112) to judge according to the evidence and to the norms implicit in 8  UB 113; see also IN 297, 574; UB 110; PL 107; MT 10 for “self–surrender” in judgment; Topics in Education: The Cincinnati Lectures of 1959 on the Philosophy of Education, in Collected works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 10, ed. Robert M. Doran and Frederick E. Crowe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 87; and “Method in Catholic Theology,” in Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964, 38, 51. 9  Aquinas does the same when he writes on judgment and voluntariness he distinguishes the exercise of the act of reason and the object of the act of reason. See Aquinas Summa Theologiae IaIIae.17.6c.

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the reflective consciousness. There are judgments that have to be made despite the deficiency of evidence, but even they should not be passed arbitrarily.

5.2.3 The Will and the Judgments of Fact First, we will consider the relation between the content of judgment and the voluntariness in Lonergan’s theory of judgment. The content of judgment consists in the proposition and in the data it is about. The voluntariness of judgment definitely does not mean that the subject can make up the content of judgment “at will.” The principal function of the reflective understanding is to weigh the evidence for the proposition as “prospective judgment” and to pronounce the corresponding judgment. The proposition as hypothesis is already there. Judgment ascertains the truth–value of the proposition, if there is sufficient evidence to do that, or simply ascertains the degree of the sufficiency of evidence. In Lonergan’s words, “You do not have to say yes or no; you can say, ‘I don’t know.’ You do not have to say, ‘It certainly is so;’ you can say, ‘It probably is so’ or ‘It possibly is so’” (UB 113). Judgment is not a creation ex nihilo, but affirmation of something. Judgment is an exercise of the subject’s choice in the sense that the subject has to make up his mind about the sufficiency of evidence. We have already seen that the evidence in the form of empirical data is simply given. A normal cognitive subject psychologically cannot manufacture the data. The only thing he can do is to be selective by paying attention to some other data (“I do not want to see”). The issue with the propositional part of the content of judgment is a bit more complicated. We have seen that insights are spontaneous products of our intelligence. There can be an indirect “flight from understanding,” but when the insight is there all the judging subject can do is to affirm it as correct or incorrect. This affirmation is not something the subject can do simply at will because he is conditioned by his intelligence and reasonableness. He can, however, indirectly influence the motivations of inquiry and his intellectual skills and virtues. This last issue will be clearer if we return to Lonergan’s distinction between the concrete judgments of fact and the judgments on the correctness of insights. The concrete judgments of fact do not involve explicit questions for intelligence but take the understanding of the data for granted and jump from the data directly to the affirmation of the fact (see IN

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306–307, 361). The criterion of their epistemic justification is the reflective grasp of the sufficiency of evidence which is found in the data of experience. When the data are grasped as sufficient, the conditions for the virtually unconditioned are fulfilled, and there is no demand for further inquiry. Judgments on the correctness of insights are needed when the subject is not sure that the data have been understood or formulated correctly. Their criterion of epistemic justification is invulnerability. These judgments are invulnerable when the subject through the self–correcting process of learning reaches the point where there are no further pertinent questions about the correctness of the insight in question (see IN 311). What Lonergan says about judgment as a responsible personal commitment applies to judgments on the correctness of insights as well as to concrete judgments of fact, because they are all affirmed by a conscious reasonable subject. Yet, Lonergan rarely uses the voluntarist language in specific reference to the judgments of fact. More typically, he speaks of the rational necessity with which a fact imposes itself on the judging subject. He describes the judgments of fact (and sometimes judgments in general, without much differentiation) as a result of rational compulsion: “Reflective insight grasps the pattern, and by rational compulsion there follows the judgment” (IN 306). Or, “… when a proposition is grasped as virtually unconditioned, there arises a rational necessity that leads us to affirm or deny the proposition as certainly or probably true.”10 Lonergan even says that the act of judgment is caused by the act that grasps the sufficiency of the evidence (see UB 112). Everything happens spontaneously and the subject has no other choice but to submit himself to the fact. The content of judgment is independent of the judging subject when it reaches the virtually unconditioned (see IN 573). There is no voluntary control of the content nor of the act of affirmation and assent in the judgments of fact. The necessity of rational commitment is manifest in the judgement of self–affirmation of the knower, “I am a knower,” which is Lonergan’s privileged example of a judgment of fact. The virtually unconditioned in this judgment is attained and the subject does not have choice in the matter. It is simply a natural spontaneity and inevitability; it is the 10  IN 729. See also IN 317, 346, 355, 356, 731; PL 109; S 70–71; MT 35.

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way our mind works (see IN 354). The judgment of self–affirmation cannot be revised nor consistently denied. The subject must assent to this judgment and even accept it, lest he decides to sacrifice his sincerity or his rationality. Lonergan strongly emphasises the involuntariness of the virtually unconditioned judgments when he writes about the difference between the (immanent) acts of reasoning and (transient) practical actions: I cannot prevent questions for reflection from arising; once they arise, I cannot set aside the demand of my rationality that I assent if and only if I grasp the virtually unconditioned; and once I judge that I ought to act in a determinate manner, that I cannot both be reasonable and act otherwise, then my reasonableness is bound to the act by a link of necessity. … The rationality that imposes an obligation is not conditioned internally by an act of will. The rationality that carries out an obligation is conditioned internally by the occurrence of a reasonable act of will (IN 637).

Lonergan’s insistence that rational necessity conditions the reason should not surprise us. Several times he has reaffirmed his position that the truth is independent of the subject who judges and assents (see IN 402, 573, 729). The truth transcends and conditions the knower. Lonergan’s metaphysics is founded on the grasp of being and not on the will, and he does not want to concede too much to voluntarism because of the ontological issues. Knowing being is not a free choice (see UB 160). The link between the conditioned and conditions in the virtually unconditioned is a law of cognitive process and not an act of will. Otherwise, it would be impossible to establish the connection between the reason and being and to ground the reliability of the whole cognitive process. Lonergan’s theory of judgment is the point of encounter between epistemology, metaphysics and ethics. Being is defined as the objective of the pure desire to know (see IN 374). Being is the content of true judgments. Judgment mediates between the order of being, the order of knowing and the order of willing. As an act of the cognitive subject every judgment is a contingent act, liable to some voluntary control, but when it affirms the truth of a proposition, it places the proposition in the “absolute realm.”11 There is no easy solution for the ten11 See PL 106–107; IN 403; S 70–71.

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sion between the contingent and the absolute in judgment. Its further understanding should be looked for in Lonergan’s notion of freedom.

5.2.4 The Will and the Criteria of Invulnerability If all judgments were virtually unconditioned concrete judgments of fact, the will would be just an instrument of the rational necessity. Responsible personal commitment would be reduced to the necessary commitment.12 The fact is, however, that few judgments fully satisfy the criteria of the virtually unconditioned. Most judgments we affirm, assent to and accept are not perfectly evident concrete judgments of fact, or deductive inferences from them, but judgments on the correctness of insights and judgments of belief (see IN 727–728; MT 42). Judgments on the correctness of insights depend on the rather flexible criteria of invulnerability, and beliefs lack evidence by definition. To make the situation even more complex, all judgments of fact presuppose some (though implicit) judgments on the correctness of insights. Understanding is a constitutive component in knowledge and before one can pass judgment on any issue, one has to understand it. One can put in question almost every judgment of fact by putting in question its formulation, the definitions of the terms it contains, or its general grounding premises. We have seen that the criteria of invulnerability depend very much on intellectual skills and virtues and on the motivational horizon of inquiry.13 The will is operative both in the development of the virtues and in choosing the final goal of inquiry. Often it is a direct act of the will that suspends additional questioning after having established that such additional questioning would be impertinent. On the other hand, the subject is psychologically able to continually put supplementary questions to an insight, so that whats and whys can go on ad infinitum. Obviously, the subject has much more voluntary control in judging when an insight is invulnerable than he has in making single judgments of fact. Is that a case of voluntary control of the propositional content of judgment? Whats and whys lead to the formation of a proposition, and so are in charge of its content. If they are under the control of 12  The responsible commitment and the necessary commitment do not have to be in contradiction to each other. We will return to that issue soon. 13 See IN 308–312, and our Chapter 5.

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the will, then the proposition as the content of judgment is under the control of the will. Is that a direct or indirect voluntary control? It looks pretty much like a direct voluntary control, but only by way of negation. The subject is psychologically able to ask additional questions and to refuse acceptance to the proposition. It is not a direct voluntary control of the whole of the content of judgment, because the data on which the proposition is based are not under such control. Also, the subject is able to refuse the acceptance of the proposition, but is not able to refuse the provisional simple assent. Of course, the acceptance or refusal of the proposition depends, in the end, on the indirect inclination of the will to accept or reject the established norms of rationality.

5.2.5 Decision in Judgment? Thus we have reached the question of the voluntary control of the act of judgment, i.e., of affirmation, assent, acceptance, or whatever represents the subject’s taking a position on the truth or falsity and certainty or probability of a judgment. Most of the answer has already been given, so we just need to draw the conclusions. The subject does not have direct voluntary control over the affirmation of a fact in the concrete judgments of fact. The subject cannot simply at will give his “Yes” or “No” to a known fact. The fact imposes itself with rational necessity. Nonetheless, Lonergan would not say that in this case the subject ceases to be a moral agent. The use of the language of responsibility in reflective understanding retains its relevance in the matters of judgment of fact (we will consider this anomaly soon, see 5.4.2). The cognitive subject has the capacity to avoid voluntarily the full acceptance of a proposition, even if it obviously describes a fact, by calling in question the invulnerability of its antecedent insight. Sometimes he will need much sophistication to defend the reasonableness of the procedure, but it is not impossible. Thus an intelligent conspiracy theorist has plenty of possibilities to use his creativity and his theories do not look totally crazy. When should the subject stop asking additional explanations? Sceptics would say that permanent questioning and suspension of judgments is the best way to avoid wrong judgments. Lonergan has a different opinion. The desire to know is unrestricted, but Lonergan

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believes that the cognitional structure is fundamentally reliable and the progress of knowledge is real. He clearly states that waiting for a judgment to be necessitated, “until the force comes over” the subject, is a fallacy (see PL 107). In traditional scholastic terms, the subject is not justified in waiting for absolute rational necessity but has to assume the responsibility of judging when he has the physical or natural certainty for the truth of the judgement. In matters of belief, when the subject does not reach the virtually unconditioned for a judgment but for some reason has to judge, even the moral certainty will do. Lonergan agrees with Newman that it is better to believe everything than to doubt everything.14

5.2.6 Can a Cognitive Subject Be Irrational? I have pointed out a few times that although Lonergan does not allow much room for a direct voluntary control over our judgments, especially not in the matter of concrete judgments of fact, he leaves open the possibility of indirect voluntary control. In most cases indirect voluntary control is a matter of the genuine and conscientious respect involved in the pure desire to know. In the final instance, indirect voluntary control manifests itself in the possibility of refusing the norms of epistemic rationality altogether. Lonergan speculates about what happens when a sceptic refuses a virtually unconditioned judgment of fact, such as the self–affirmation of knower (see IN 356). His answer is that the sceptic cannot avoid assenting to it. The sceptic’s recognition of the assent is a matter of intellectual honesty. But will anything change if the sceptic decides to be irrational? Can we be irrational at all? The same question arises from Lonergan’s third transcendental precept, “be reasonable.” No doubt, human beings can behave unreasonably, i.e., act in dissonance with the known obligation or goodness (see IN 644). But does the third transcendental precept imply that we can think, judge and assent unreasonably? Lonergan says that “the subject is effectively rational if he does not allow other desires to interfere with the functioning of the pure desire to know” (IN 636). We sometimes do allow other desires to interfere with the pure desire to know and so harm our rationality. 14 See IN 737; MT 223; John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870; repr. London: Longmans and Green, 1930), 377.

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But elsewhere he says that the “disjunction between rationality and non–rationality is an abstract alternative but not a concrete choice” (IN 356). I think that the latter sentence better represents Lonergan’s position. Human beings are capable of selective switch–offs of rationality, and able to decide to be irrational, but not of being completely irrational in practice. (Involuntarily caused pathology is a different issue.) Rationality is the constitutive part of human nature and of our very dignity. Ironically, Lonergan notices, it would need the best of reasons for abandoning it (see IN 356). The subject could try to make judgments against the evidence, but that would be a forced violation of the human psychological structure. Of course, the whole debate on doxastic voluntarism in epistemology presupposes the fundamental option for rationality (regardless of the nuances in its definition). The real question of the debate is what constructive role the will can have in order to help the subject avoid those selective switch–offs of rationality. Although we do not seem to be free to reject simply our rational nature, I still think that Lonergan’s transcendental precept, “be rational,” is a moral appeal and implies moral appraisal, and not only in the meaning of the indirect control of reasoning. Making judgments is an activity that implies the subject’s personal responsibility. In order to explain this, we will have to see what Lonergan says on responsibility, choice and the free will. But, first, let us study what he say on epistemic responsibility in beliefs.

5.3 Epistemic Responsibility and Voluntariness in Belief Our job will be easier in this section because Lonergan regularly and clearly speaks of belief in ethical terms. The judgments of belief have much in common with practical judgments, and a decision to believe has all the characteristic of a practical decision.

5.3.1 The Notion of Belief I have already pointed out the difference between the usage of the term “belief ” in Lonergan and in contemporary epistemology. Lonergan’s notion of belief is closer to the commonsense meaning of the term. It implies some uncertainty (to believe means not to know), as well as the requirement of a more explicit reflection and deliberation on the

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part of the subject. Finally, “to believe” means to believe somebody, it is a judgment based on testimony. It has a communitarian character. Human coming to know is an enterprise that requires collaboration (see B 87). We have to trust other people’s cognitive abilities and much of the information we receive from them. “Belief ” in Lonergan’s epistemology is reasonable acceptance of the judgment of another person, if we cannot verify it on our own, for the purpose of the attainment, dissemination and advancement of knowledge.15 Lonergan says that the issues he deals with in his theory of belief could be considered a part of the sociology of knowledge (see MT 41n15). Where is the place of belief in Lonergan’s model of cognitional structure? Belief is a judgment (see MT 336) or, to be more precise, a combination of judgments (see IN 729–730), although Lonergan sometimes distinguishes between belief and judgment (in MT 238 we find the sequence experiencing–understanding–judging–believing). It is also a source or a foundation for a judgment because judgement of belief is not really a judgment founded on the sufficiency of evidence for a proposition (that evidence is not accessible), but on the reasonableness of trusting the source of information (see MT 42, 244). Lonergan sharply opposes belief to knowledge in the more precise epistemological sense.16 Knowledge is directly and immanently acquired information, based exclusively on one’s own first–person experience, insight and the grasp of the virtually unconditioned. We resort to belief when we cannot grasp the unconditioned to the proposition by ourselves. Thus, many of the scientific and commonsense truths that we consider knowledge in virtue of their content (regardless of who is their author), in Lonergan’s terms are considered beliefs:

15 See IN 317, 452–453, 725–739; B 87–90; MT 41–43. 16  To say that “the reasonableness of belief does not make it knowledge,” IN 453, sounds like an exaggeration that contradicts Lonergan’s optimism regarding the real development of human knowledge of the world. Of course, we can seek to explain why he puts them in such a strong opposition. He writes on belief in the chapters that are mostly dedicated to religious epistemology, natural theology, and theology of history. The term “knowledge” might not have the same meaning there as in the previous chapters. The problem remains, nonetheless, and I suggest that his division between knowledge and belief should be taken with caution as it is not representative of his generally optimistic epistemology.

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If a moron reads in his newspaper that energy is equal to the product of the mass by the square of the velocity of light, we are not inclined to say that his acceptance is mere belief, for after all what Science says is not belief but knowledge. However, if we care to be accurate, the difference between knowledge and belief lies not in the object but in the attitude of the subject. Knowing is affirming what one correctly understands in one’s own experience. Belief is accepting what we are told by others on whom we reasonably rely (IN 452; see also IN 736–737).

The judgments founded on belief do not grasp the virtually unconditioned for the proposition and, hence, are not bound with the same force of the rational necessity we have spoken of in the previous sections. Lonergan is clear that beliefs should be formed rationally and not psychologically motivated by desire or fear or sentiment or by the mere will (see IN 737). However, the reasonableness in a judgment of belief does not impose itself with the same force as in a judgment of fact. The judgments of belief are not a result of theoretical reasoning alone.

5.3.2 The Analysis of Belief Lonergan offers two precise and very similar analyses of the belief– forming process in Insight and in Method. In both of them the judgments of value and the voluntary decision to believe have a prominent role. In Insight (see IN 729–730), he distinguishes five stages in the process of the formation of a true belief. The subject (1) makes preliminary judgments on the value of belief in general (the collaboration for the increase of knowledge), on the reliability of the source for a specific belief (that the source was truthful and reasonable in judging), and on the accuracy of the communication from the source. What follows is the key element: (2) the act of reflective understanding that grasps the value of deciding to believe some particular proposition as virtually unconditioned. The conditions have been fulfilled in (1). The next step (3) is the consequent judgment on the value of deciding to believe with certainty or probability that the proposition is true or false. This judgment is made in view of a good, and that good is the good of the intellect. The subject then (4) makes the free and responsible decision of the will to believe the given proposition, and (5) gives the assent that is the act of believing.

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In Method (see MT 45–46), Lonergan divides the belief–forming procedure into five steps, again. (1a) The person who makes the judgment originally must respect the ideal of truth, must be objective and sincere. Thus, the possibility of belief is in the nature of truth, which is detachable from personal opinions and communicable. The next step (2a) is the preliminary general judgement on the value of promoting truth and combating error, made by the person who accepts the belief. Then, a particular judgment follows (3a) on the trustworthiness and competence of the source in comparison with other sources, including the self–examination of the objectivity of the person who accepts the belief. As the criterion of credibility of a statement, Lonergan takes the position of virtue ethics: the statement is credible if it can be believed by a reasonable and responsible person (see MT 46). The fourth step (4a) is the decision to believe, in view of the good of believing. The fifth step (5a) is the act of believing. There is no substantial difference between these two analyses. (1a), (2a) and (3a) are included in (1), and (4a) comprises (2), (3) and (4). The analysis of Method just makes the ethical factors more noticeable. Are we free in our choices of beliefs? According to what Lonergan says, the decision to believe is not different from other decisions to which we ascribe an ethical importance and which we morally evaluate. Whether we are free in giving assents of belief depends on the definition of a free act. Lonergan writes that “if the reflective act occurs, there will follow with rational necessity the judgment of value, with free responsibility the decision to believe, and with natural necessity the act of believing.”17 We will have to return to the question of the relation between freedom and rational and natural necessity, but we can

17  IN 731. I have not found in Lonergan a precise explanation of what “natural necessity” is. It certainly does not mean naturalistic determinism. According to the traditional Thomist terminology, natural necessity is the obligation imposed by the ends that are inherent to human nature, as natural goods for human beings or natural perfections of our particular faculties. Thus, there are natural goods of the reason (truth) and of the will (happiness). A reasonable act of believing is ultimately motivated by the natural good of the human intellectual life and the disregard of that good does serious harm to the intellectual life. “Rational” in “rational necessity” does not have anything to do with pragmatism, but it refers to the logical order of the nature.

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already surmise that “free” in “free decision to believe” cannot mean “at will” or “arbitrary.”18 Neither can it have that meaning in any decision. Lonergan uses lots of voluntarist terminology in the context of beliefs. When he writes on mistaken beliefs and how to correct them, all the burden seems to fall on the person. The person can be culpable for her beliefs: “For the basic problem lies not in mistaken beliefs but in the mistaken believer. Far more than they, he is at fault” (IN 738). Of course, not all our beliefs are consciously accepted; most of them we simply adopt through socialization. Neither does Lonergan think that we should start doubting everything (see IN 710). But he wants the person to be ready to subject any of her beliefs to the scrutiny of the critical mind if necessary. He believes that such scrutiny is possible in the same way as the scrutiny of any of our decisions is possible. The reason for Lonergan’s doxastic voluntarism about beliefs is his idea that mistaken beliefs are one part of the problem of evil and the person should use her capacities to liberate herself from mistaken beliefs through detachment and the unrestricted devotion to the pure desire to know.19 He does not defend the possibility of the voluntary control over beliefs in order to justify human irrational choices, but to secure that these irrational and unconscious choices can be corrected. That is the key in which Lonergan’s doxastic voluntarism should be interpreted.

5.4 Epistemic Responsibility and Free Will Lonergan speaks of rational necessity, compulsion and causality that make a person affirm certain judgments and, at the same time, of the responsibility the person has when affirming these judgments. 18  Fitzpatrick has already pointed to the misunderstandings about this kind of doxastic voluntarism that considers belief a voluntary act, but still demands its reasonableness as a necessary condition for its justification. See Fitzpatrick, “Lonergan’s Notion of Belief,” 105–106. 19 See IN 709, 735–736. Lonergan writes, “If man’s will matched the detachment and the unrestricted devotion of the pure desire to know, the problem of evil would not arise.” IN 739. What an intellectualist optimism! Lonergan, however, does not believe that the liberation from evil can be realized by human strengths alone. This is where he points to the need of “Special Transcendent Knowledge” and expects the solution for the problem of evil from a higher cooperation between human persons and God. See IN 741.

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Contrary to what we are accustomed to think, the former and the latter do not seem to exclude each other there. To be clear, the responsibility for judgments does not pertain only to the judgments on the correctness of insights, or to the cases where the evidence is not overwhelming or sufficient, but we have seen that Lonergan speaks of epistemic responsibility also in the matter of the judgments of fact where there is sufficient and even overwhelming evidence (e.g., in the judgment of self–affirmation of the knower). We are responsible for assenting to them even if we cannot actually do otherwise but assent to them. Furthermore, the desire to know and its precepts command us to pursue reasonableness and avoid irrationality, but it seems that effectively a person cannot choose to be irrational without committing some sort of intellectual suicide. Also, the decision to believe a proposition is unambiguously described as free and responsible, but it relies on the rational necessity grasped in the judgment of value and the assent of belief eventually results with “natural necessity” (IN 731). On the other hand, Lonergan accepts that the measure of freedom is the measure of responsibility (see IN 642). How can we, then, understand Lonergan’s thesis that the person is responsible for some acts that happen with rational or natural necessity? Lonergan does not offer a simple and direct answer to this question. When one reads his texts, it seems that he did not find it problematic at all. One explanation may be that Lonergan speaks of causal responsibility and not of moral responsibility. Causal responsibility would be the one a stone has for having broken a window. Moral responsibility is the one the boy who throws the stone with the intention of breaking the window has. Yet, this explanation is improbable, because it is hard to imagine that such a personalist as Lonergan would talk of responsibility referring to morally unconscious agents. Another explanation could be that the responsibility in judgment refers to its acceptance and not to affirmation or simple assent. Acceptance is full explicit assent, displayed in the consent to use that judgment as a premise in further arguments.20 Simple assent is the one (involuntarily) given because the proposition cannot simply be rejected. Should we perhaps assume that there is no judgment before the acceptance or full assent has happened? Lonergan does not clearly dis20  See Cohen, Belief and Acceptance, 1, 21–23.

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tinguish between simple assent and acceptance, so assent in his usage could mean acceptance, which makes this explanation possible. It may even be probable in those strong affirmations of epistemic responsibility in judgments (see UB 113). It seems to me, however, that this explanation would not do justice to the complexity of Lonergan’s theory of judgment. To reduce judgment to acceptance would make it too narrow. Also, the coercion of the rational and natural necessity happens in the act of acceptance as well. The problem of the voluntary and the necessary remains. Besides, the anomaly that we are obliged and responsible to follow the norms of epistemic rationality even if we cannot really not follow them remains to be elucidated. Another, a more comprehensive explanation, could be found in Lonergan’s usage in the term “responsibility” and in his notion of freedom.

5.4.1 Perspectives on Responsibility The terms “responsibility” and “responsible” can be used in two ethically relevant ways. First, that a person is responsible means that she is blameworthy or praiseworthy for an act in virtue of being its cause. Responsibility is, in this case, similar to answerability, accountability, liability or culpability. An example can be the sentence, “Local teenagers are responsible for the graffiti on the walls.” Second, that a person is responsible means that she has a stable disposition to conform her actions to her duties or to the right hierarchy of values. So we hear sometimes, “In the past teenagers used to be much more responsible.” In this case being responsible has all the characteristics of a virtue, similar to being conscientious. The term “epistemic responsibility” comprises both meanings. It can mean both epistemic answerability and an epistemic virtue (or even “the” epistemic virtue). Some philosophers do not like the idea of epistemic responsibility if it implies culpability. They argue—rightly—that the last thing we need is blaming each other for how we direct our thoughts.21 In that mood Needham attacked Lonergan’s doxastic voluntarism for what he understood as opening the way for thought inquisition.22 The notion 21  See Price, “Belief and Will,” 23; and Pojman, Religious Belief and the Will, ix. 22  See Needham, Belief, Language and Experience, 81, 85.

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of epistemic responsibility as epistemic conscientiousness is better received. It is important to notice that these two “kinds” of responsibility should not be separated. One is the condition for the other and we need both of them to make the notion of epistemic responsibility intelligible. The responsibility in the sense of “who is to blame” implies a horizon of evaluation in respect to which the person is responsible. Praiseworthiness and blameworthiness have sense only from the point of view of some good, duty or moral authority. In virtue ethics, for example, that horizon is the ideal of the virtuous person, in our case the epistemically responsible or conscientious person. The person is responsible for her cognitive acts only in respect to her being or not being an epistemically responsible person. Lonergan speaks of epistemic responsibility in both meanings, but primarily in the context of the effort in the pursuit of knowledge, and only indirectly in a judgmental way. Being epistemically responsible means, above all, respecting the normativity of the detached and unrestricted desire to know, in order to acquire new knowledge and to avoid the reductive “scotosis.” It is, actually, synonymous with being epistemically rational or reasonable. Lonergan does speak of the fault of the person who uncritically accepts problematic beliefs. That should not be strange, though. We generally praise persons who have formed their convictions through an honest and diligent intellectual activity and can give reasonable justification for those convictions, even if we do not agree with them. The persons themselves want to be considered responsible for their convictions. Becoming praiseworthy (or even blameworthy) is in itself praiseworthy. It is not a great compliment to consider a person non– accountable at all. Lonergan would say that being considered responsible for one’s own cognitive acts is an aspect of one’s personal dignity (see IN 356). If we give priority to the notion of epistemic responsibility as virtue—as I believe Lonergan does—we will have a different perspective on epistemic responsibility as praiseworthiness or blameworthiness. Epistemic responsibility as virtue, on its part, gives finality to epistemic responsibility in the sense of liability.

5.4.2 Lonergan’s Notion of Freedom According to Lonergan’s theory of emergent probabilities, the world is not deterministically organized. The universe is a series of events

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that develop or emerge with probability, so that they are not fully determined, without being undetermined either (see IN 161, 672–673). Thus, there is no obstacle to Lonergan allowing the general possibility that the free will can be a real cause of events.23 Lonergan defines freedom as the ability of human persons to determine themselves by their choice of motive and the course of action that they recognize as possible (see IN 715; UB 229; MT 121). The self–determinative choice is possible, first, because the probabilistic indeterminism sometimes allows alternative courses of actions. This is what we usually call freedom of action. Second, because the rational and moral self–consciousness allows that knowledge (of obligation, goodness, usefulness) does not necessarily determine the decision. This is the freedom of the will.24 We do not know whether Lonergan would allow the possibility of free will if the world was deterministic. Hence, it is not certain whether he can be labelled compatibilist or incompatibilist (to use these contemporary categories) regarding the relation between determinism and the free will. Judging from his exclusion of determinism and affirmation of the reality of the free will, it seems that he might support an incompatibilist libertarian position. Several times Lonergan’s term “free” in “free will” means “the possibility of inconsistency between human knowing and doing” (IN 644), or that “reasons do not settle the choices” (UB 227), and sometimes it simply means the ability to choose “at will” (see UB 136, 174). But soon, often immediately, he corrects this position by insisting that free will is not arbitrariness, that free choice cannot mean being unreasonable in one’s choices (see IN 645, 679), that free will is not an unguided or indeterminate will (see UB 227). What is, then, free will? Is 23  At one stage, Lonergan speaks of freedom in different beings, from chemical compounds, plants and animals, to human beings, at different levels, of course. Freedom looks like a synonym for his notion of probabilistic indeterminism there. This sort of “freedom,” however, is clearly distinguished from the free will in rationally and morally conscious human beings. Lonergan recognizes that the freedom of moral subjects, which we postulate in ethics, cannot be reduced to a mere degree of indeterminism. Compare IN 287–292, with IN 631–632. 24  Lonergan writes, “Because man determines himself, he is responsible; because the course of action determined upon and the process of determining are both contingent, man is free.” IN 715.

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it being undetermined, or being determined, or being determined by something in particular and not by something else? It seems that free will is not simply the ability of self–determination, but an ability of self–determination that has already some intrinsic orientation. Lonergan distinguishes between essential and effective freedom. Essential freedom is the capacity of self–determination that human beings have in potency. Effective freedom is the “operational range” of this capacity. Effective freedom is the actual capacity to make a free decision and to accomplish it, and this capacity comes in a greater or lesser degree (see IN 643). Essential freedom does not guarantee effective freedom. Effective freedom is limited by the metaphysical and physical nature of the person. It is, and this has a major moral significance, also limited by developed habits (so one may be essentially but not effectively free to give up smoking, see IN 643). Moral impotence is the reality as much as effective freedom, or even more (see IN 650–651). Effective freedom has to be won and can be increased. We can increase it by controlling more and more external factors (such as the forces of the nature and our technical skills), but also by developing our moral habits. We can say that effective freedom, especially in the latter case, is itself a praiseworthy personal trait, a virtue (supposing that it is used for reasonable goals). It is not a neutral capacity, but has a positive content which is connected with what we humans consider our ideal, dignity and well being. Lonergan’s discourse on freedom in Insight is more moralist than controversialist, being situated in the section under the title “The Problem of Liberation,” whose main concern is how to increase effective freedom in order to obtain a higher degree of harmony between knowing and doing. In Insight, Lonergan describes the will as the intellectual appetite and its object is what the reason knows as good. Good is what is intelligible, what is reasonable to choose in accordance with our rational nature. The will is good as far as it follows intellect.25 There is no radical division between the intellect and the will, although the intellect is given priority. Lonergan does not think of the will and the intellect in terms of a separation between two realms, as we have been used to 25 See IN 624, 690–691, 720; UB 226. The opposite of moral good, sin, is also defined in intellectualist terms, “What is basic sin? It is the irrational. Why does it occur? If there was a reason, it would not be sin.” IN 690. Principal sins are flight from moral self–consciousness, rationalization and moral renunciation, i.e., giving–up of moral struggle. See IN 622.

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think of them under the influence of the Enlightenment and post– Enlightenment Philosophy. Even the shift in Method, where the voluntary gains more autonomy from the strictly intellectual (or better, its object becomes wider than the intelligible), should not be interpreted as if the voluntary and the intellectual were separated and divergent. Free will, then, is not a capacity of the will alone, but of the will and the intellect. Without the guidance of the intellect the will is not free but disoriented. Although Lonergan rejects essentialism in epistemology,26 he is an essentialist in metaphysics. There is a human nature and it is characterized (in Insight) principally by the desire to know.27 Free will is a rational capacity, rooted in our rational nature and directed towards the goods of that rational nature. Effective freedom has a direction, its finality, and that is making progressively more rational decisions. That is why Lonergan does not allow the possibility that freedom includes a freedom from rationality, although some of his provisional definitions would imply that. Lonergan insists that freedom is not an unreasonable arbitrariness. It is the opposite: the more rational a person is in her decisions, the freer she is. If human beings have capacity to switch off their rationality in particular decisions, these decisions cannot be called free. In fact, the decisions which are not a result of reasoning are not decisions at all—they are involuntary impulses. Lonergan writes that “freedom possesses not only the negative aspect of excluding necessity but also the positive aspect of responsibility” (IN 642), that is respect for the recognized value of being a reasonable agent. The principle that the measure of freedom is the measure of responsibility can also be understood as vice versa, i.e., that the measure of respect for the rational normativity is the measure of freedom. Hence, there should not be any conflict between rational necessity and freedom in practical reasoning, because a person cannot be free if not rational. Rational necessity does not restrict freedom, but it makes it possible. Epistemic freedom when it is exercised in full agreement 26  Essentialism in epistemology is the view that the essences of things can be apprehended by means of intuition. See IN 294. 27  Already in Insight, Lonergan’s notion of the human nature should not be perceived as something ossified, but something that emerges in the dialectic between metaphysics and history (Chapters 15 and 17).

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with the natural end and first principles is not abolished but confirmed. There can be a conflict between natural necessity and freedom, but if there is such a conflict, it regularly has negative consequences for human well–being. To have to reason in one way and to decide in accordance with the person’s rational nature, without a practical option to do otherwise or not to do it, does not abolish the person’s freedom. It reaffirms it. Human self–determination is intrinsically determined by human rationality. This notion of freedom and voluntariness could also be explained through an analysis of the relation between choice and motivation. Unluckily, that would lead us too far from our topic. Let us just state that there is no choice without motivation. Lonergan says, “‘not to choose’ is not the object of a possible choice” (IN 625). So the question is not whether to choose something or not, but what to choose. Freedom is not the capacity to remain undetermined forever, but to choose what to be determined by.28 Again, the notion of freedom as rational ability, and the notion of responsibility that does not demand the possibility of the agent’s choosing otherwise than suggested, are not strange to our ordinary experience of freedom and responsibility nor to the recent English–speaking philosophy.29 To use Ginet’s example, it is not in my power now to acquire, just by deciding, the intention to run over pedestrians with my car at the next opportunity.30 The impossibility of having such an intention is still praiseworthy, and the person in this case is still considered a free responsible moral agent. Something interesting happens with voluntariness and responsibility in the acquisition of virtues. The pursuit of virtue is voluntary. But virtue, like all habits, reaches the stage when its exercise is not 28  As M. Vertin points out, the initial acts of a concrete subject are acts of discovery, not acts of decision. Freedom is in taking position in face of the giveness. See Michael Vertin, “Judgments of Value for the Later Lonergan,” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 13 (1995): 225. 29  See the influential article by Harry Frankfurt, “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,” Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969): 829–839; as well as Susan Wolf, Freedom Within Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Stump, Aquinas, Ch. 9. 30  See Ginet, “Deciding to Believe,” 74.

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voluntary anymore. In ordinary situations, a sincere person performs her acts of sincerity almost automatically. The lack of voluntariness, nonetheless, does not make the virtuous person less praiseworthy for her virtuous acts. Yes, one can counter–argue that the person is praiseworthy because of the previous efforts to acquire virtue, when she had the ability to choose otherwise. Virtue, however, often has a curious nature in which it is difficult to distinguish in different people what has been achieved and what inherited or picked–up in some other effortless way. Though what I have said on Lonergan’s notion of freedom was mainly based on Insight, it does not seem to be radically different in Method. Freedom is not indeterminism and irresponsibility but responsible self–determination (see MT 50). Lonergan maintains that his turn towards intentionality analysis puts an end to “the notion of will as an arbitrary power indifferently choosing between good and evil” (MT 121). Although the horizon of responsibility in Method is not the reasonableness of the end but the apprehended (and judged authentic) transcendental moral value, still freedom is not abolished with the person’s acceptance of or submission to the demand of the transcendental value but, indeed, realized (see MT 51–52, 309–310). Freedom is the “ever advancing thrust towards authenticity” (MT 240) and for that reason Lonergan can speak of “the easy freedom of those that do all good because they are in love.”31 By contrast, the rejection of transcendental value is a failure of self–transcendence, which diminishes the ability of future self–transcending, and thus freedom. If my presentation in this section is correct about Lonergan’s model of practical reasoning, then it helps us to understand why he sometimes expresses epistemic appraisal in terms of responsibility, blameworthiness and praiseworthiness, which are typical for ethics, even when the cognitive subject has much less voluntary control than we (in theory) require for ethical appraisal.32 31  MT 107.This is an echo of Aquinas’s example with the blessed in heaven who love God with a perfectly free consent, despite the fact that they cannot not love him. See Aquinas De Veritate 22.6c; 22.9c; 24.8c; 24.8, s.c. 32  B. Cronin seems to restrict the cognitive agency in Lonergan’s cognitional theory to indirect doxastic voluntarism. Cognitive acts need decision, but as intellectual activity, not as single acts. See Cronin, Value Ethics, 329, 344, 439–440. I think that restriction is not necessary, having in

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I must say that there is a text where Lonergan does not seem to confirm what I have said about the relationship between freedom and necessity in this section, in which I relied on Insight and Method. In the theological text Grace and Freedom,33 Lonergan expresses his disagreement with Aquinas’s idea that natural necessity does not take away the freedom of the will.34 Besides the fact that Tekippe has argued convincingly—in my opinion—that Lonergan misunderstood Aquinas and that Aquinas is basically right,35 I think that Lonergan’s criticism of Aquinas in Grace and Freedom should be read in the theological context to which it refers, regardless of whether Lonergan’s interpretation of Aquinas is correct there or not. From what I have found in Insight and Method, Lonergan’s ideas about freedom and natural rational necessity in the matter of our intellectual life are fundamentally in agreement with Aquinas’s view.36 Aquinas argues that free will has its given natural finality (happiness) and the person cannot but pursue it.37 Freedom of choice, then, mind that Lonergan says that judgment is a personal act, if we return to Lonergan’s notion of freedom. 33  Lonergan argues that Aquinas’s view that “non–coercion makes necessary acts free,” and that “the will is necessitated but non coerced and therefore free,” which Lonergan finds in De Veritate, De Potentia and Summa Theologiae Ia, is wrong and that it was a “momentary aberration” repudiated in De Malo. See Bernard Lonergan, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, eds. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2000), 95, 130. The issue is the distinction between libertas a necessitate and libertas a coactione, not in the context of ethical appraisal, but in the context of the doctrine of grace. 34  See Aquinas Summa Theologiae Ia.82.1, ad 1; and De Veritate 22.5, s.c. 3. 35  See Terry Tekippe, Lonergan and Thomas on the Will: An Essay in Interpretation (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993), 5, 49, 50, 54, 140. 36  To be precise, it is not only a Thomist account. Kant, for example, also considers freedom a rational capacity. To be autonomous means to be rational, in fact, “orthonomous,” fully under the command of the reason. See Philip Pettit and Michael Smith, “Freedom in Belief and Desire,” Journal of Philosophy 93 (1996): 442. 37  See Aquinas Summa Theologiae Ia.82.1c. Aquinas also writes, “to will evil is not freedom or any part of it, though it is a sign of freedom,” De Veritate 22.6c, in St. Thomas Aquinas: Truth, 3 vols., trans. Robert W.

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is a matter of choosing the instruments for the realization of the natural end. But despite the fact that the person cannot but pursue that natural end, her decision to pursue it is still a free decision. Choosing the natural end is the fulfilment of free will and, therefore, does not diminish it. Applied to our intellectual life, when the intellect must of necessity adhere to the ends of truth and reasonableness, that does not make the person less free and less moral agent in the exercise of her intellect.38 I think this is pretty much the picture that stands in the background of Lonergan’s discourse on epistemic freedom. Lonergan and Aquinas agree that freedom is a rational capacity and that the reasonableness of an act is a necessary condition for its moral justification.39 It follows that even if there may be a conflict between freedom and some other necessities, there is no conflict between rational necessity and freedom, whether in regard to cognitive agency or any other agency. Of course, since both Lonergan’s and Aquinas’s ideas of freedom demand a more thorough study, and since that is not a major aim of my inquiry, I will not insist too much on my opinion about their relationship. If my analysis is correct, that will elucidate the apparently conflicting statements about rational necessity and the voluntariness in the matters of judgment and rationality in general.

Schmidt for vol. 3 (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1954), 3:59. But “from the necessity which is in the voluntary appetite in regard to the end, there is not imposed upon it any necessity in regard to the means,” De Veritate 22.6, ad 4c (Schmidt 3:59). 38  I must confess that the question of the freedom of choice in the matters of thinking in Aquinas as well as in Lonergan is thornier than the general question of the freedom of the will, but I am afraid that the study of that topic would make my inquiry unnecessarily longer and more complicated. For Aquinas’s approach to the problems of doxastic voluntarism, see De Veritate 14.1–3; and Summa Theologiae IaIIae.17.1 and IaIIae.17.6. In this analysis I also relied on Stump’s Aquinas, Chapters 9 and 12. 39  Aquinas defines the free–will as “the faculty and will of reason,” Summa Theologiae IaIIa.1.1c, in St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica: Complete English Edition in Five Volumes, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1948; repr. London: Sheed and Ward, 1981), 2:583. See also Summa Theologiae Ia.59.3c, and Ia.83.1c.

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5.5 Conclusion We began this chapter with the question whether the degree of voluntariness Lonergan finds in the cognitive activities involved in knowledge comes sufficiently close to the one that we usually find in moral responsibility. We have reconstructed Lonergan’s definition of knowledge as reflectively understood virtually unconditioned judgment. In order to justifiedly claim to know that p, i.e., to be justified in judging that p, judgment should be based on the reflective understanding of p as virtually unconditioned. The virtually unconditioned represents the element of necessity with which the transcendental metaphysical structure imposes itself on the person’s intentionality. The requirement of the virtually unconditioned rules out the possibility that honest justified knowledge claims can be made at will. The second element of the definition, that is reflective understanding, employs both the person’s natural cognitive capacities and acquired intellectual virtues and virtuous attitudes. A similar combination of the natural and acquired qualities is found in moral virtues too. There is not much doubt that according to Lonergan’s cognitional theory the person is held responsible for her intellectual self–formation in very much the same flexible degree in which we consider her responsible for her self–formation in the matter of moral character. That does not mean that the evaluation of reflective understanding is a form of moral evaluation yet. An excellent ballerina deserves the credit for her excellence because her success is a result of her dedication and hard work to develop her skill (leaving her natural talent aside). We have to see whether the horizon of the motivation for intellectual virtuousness in reflective understanding is a moral value (see Chapter 6). Nonetheless, it remains that the element of responsibility in cognitive agency which we have been looking for in this chapter has been found. Lonergan, however, goes a step further. While he undoubtedly foresees much more room for free will in the choice of the direction and means of intellectual formation and in the choice of the objects of inquiry, he does not reduce epistemic responsibility to indirect self–formation. Even if the crucial moment of epistemic evaluation in his cognitional theory is in the intellectual qualities of the person, he goes on speaking of the evaluation of single cognitive acts too, and describes some of these acts as responsible. Most notably, judgment, as the final

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result of cognitive operations, is clearly characterized as a responsible personal commitment. The question is whether judgment—not as utterance, but as an honest mental act—can be psychologically voluntary or free in such a way that we still remain rational. Does Lonergan say that the person can affirm any one of several incompatible propositions without risk of being wrong? We are not talking about propositions for which we have no evidence whatsoever, like “All unicorns are white” vs. “Some unicorns are non–white.” Lonergan holds that all rational judgments, including the metaphysical, must have their ultimate basis in some experience. Since experience is simply the given, there is no room for the person to exercise her freedom in the matter of the empirical content of judgment. In order that her judgment be reasonable, the person has to submit to the given data. Consequently, Lonergan speaks more of necessity than of voluntariness in the virtually unconditioned judgments of fact. What about the acceptance of the judgments of fact that seem well grounded in the evidence? Perhaps we are free to delay using such judgments as premises for further inferences. I think that even in the cases where some hesitation is possible, like “I can’t believe my eyes,” and “I don’t want to believe what I see,” Lonergan would give the empirical data the benefit of doubt. Even if it looks psychologically possible, long–term delays of the acceptance of the judgments that impose themselves as virtually unconditioned are not acceptable as rational. Can the judgments on the correctness of insight be freely affirmed or not affirmed without danger of being wrong? The person seems to have much more room for her voluntary choice there, but not an absolute choice. She can ask about virtually any insight whether it was correct and correctly formulated, but when it comes to the concrete judgments of fact, reasonable questioning reaches its limit quickly. Generalizations based on induction also have their fixed rules so that when the conditions for the virtually unconditioned are fulfilled their denial or prolonged non–acceptance will not be reasonable. Can beliefs be accepted or not accepted freely without danger of being wrong? Beliefs are more suggested than imposed and the rational compulsion of suggested beliefs is much weaker than the one of the judgment based on the first–person evidence. According to what Lonergan says both in Insight and in Method, the justification of belief depends on a judgment of value: the crucial moment in an

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act of belief is the reflective act grounding the judgment on the value of belief. In comparison with the judgment based on the direct evidence, it is certainly easier from the psychological point of view not to believe somebody, even if believing looks more justified than non–believing. Finally, Lonergan clearly speaks of the exercise of free will in the process of belief acceptance. Nonetheless, although Lonergan puts more emphasis on the value of believing rather than on the standards that make believing reasonable, he does not ignore the latter. Besides, even the judgement of value has its rational constraints. There is more room for voluntary choice in accepting beliefs, but voluntariness is restricted, while arbitrariness is unacceptable. On the whole, Lonergan speaks more of the rational constraints on our reasoning than of epistemic freedom. The expression “epistemic freedom” would hardly be welcome at all in Insight. Nonetheless, that does not stop Lonergan implying epistemic responsibility on the part of the person regarding both the exercise of cognitive operations (even in the judgments of fact) and the acquisition of habitual virtuous abilities and attitudes. How does he manage to put together the rational compulsion of the virtually unconditioned and the epistemic responsibility? The question of doxastic voluntarism as I have presented it in Chapter 1 has been formulated in the terminology and conceptual framework of a tradition whose ideas about the basic epistemic state (belief ) and about moral responsibility have been under the strong influence of radical empiricism. Some mainstream analytic concepts of belief tend to identify believing with seeing and (justified) belief with the given data, thus silently removing the cognitive subject from the equation. On the other hand, when it is said that ought implies can and responsibility implies freedom, freedom is too often understood as the ability of arbitrary choice in empiricist style. Lonergan’s ideas about the basic epistemic state (belief or judgment) and about freedom are very different. First, according to Lonergan’s cognitional theory, there is no such state as purely perceptual belief. Beliefs, in the sense that matters for the definition of knowledge, are never simple. There are raw empirical data but, in order to become beliefs, the data have to be processed through the operations of direct and reflective understanding. Only after the processing are they suitable to be the constituents of the complex mental state of knowledge.

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Moreover, according to Lonergan’s cognitional theory, knowledge cannot be simply caused. Although some components of knowledge (i.e., empirical data and the laws of reasoning) are caused, knowledge itself is not—there is a “because” in knowledge that has to be reasonably supported. Knowledge is always partly reflective. The consequence is that there is no animal knowledge. There is animal cognition, and it can be a true cognitive contact with reality, but if there is no “because,” no credit called knowledge is awarded. Animals and little children cognize, often cognize the truth, but they do not know (see 3.3). Lonergan’s cognitional theory is a criticism, I believe a correct and well–founded one, of the empiricist understanding of belief. No belief, whether perceptual or more complex, is merely an empirical datum or empirical impression. The common definition of belief says that belief is veridical propositional attitude. Though the nature of proposition is a complex metaphysical issue, it should be clear that proposition is not empirical impression and it is not the same as fact. Proposition is a conceptual representation of a fact. Hence, belief is the attitude of a cognitive subject regarding the truth of a conceptual representation of a fact. Perceptual belief is the attitude of a cognitive subject regarding the truth of a conceptual representation of a fact based on perceptual data. Hence, prior to the understanding and formulation of the data we cannot speak of belief. There is only experience there. The definition of belief as veridical propositional attitude has another important corollary. Since belief is an attitude, there is no belief without believing, and there is no believing without its believer. There are no attitudes that are not had by somebody. For example, doubt is a propositional attitude. Doubt and doubting always go together: doubt is somebody doubting. The same applies to belief and believing. Belief is somebody believing. Belief and believing have different meaning (the former emphasizes the content, the latter the activity), but refer to the same thing. They have different intension, but the same extension. Of course, the fact that belief is an activity (of having that certain propositional attitude, or being disposed to affirm the truth of a proposition) does not imply that it is a morally appraisable activity. It does, however, make the talk about its moral appraisal more plausible. Lonergan’s position also differs from the common conception regarding the relationship between voluntariness and responsibility. According to the common conception of responsibility, a person is

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responsible only for something she could have done otherwise. By contrast, Lonergan states that a judgment of fact is made by rational compulsion and that does not prevent him from saying that the judgment in question is a personal and responsible act. For Lonergan, free will is a rational capacity. If the will is not rational, it is not free. In order to be rational, it has to respect the normativity of the natural desire to know. That normativity is something that is imposed on our cognitive functions. Hence, in order to be free, the will has to submit to the norms of human rational nature. Even if we substitute the rational with the later Lonergan’s transcendental notion of value, the result is the same. The will is free if it submits to the transcendental notion of value.40 If it does not, it is neither free, nor the will, but an instinctive impulse. According to this view, freedom is a capacity that is given to rational human beings, but it has to be developed in a way similar to the development of a virtue. Freedom is not an unchangeable capacity that can be taken for granted (as if it were only essential freedom), but a capacity that must be actualized and increased (the effective freedom). Responsibility, and moral agency with it, is not something that should be minimized because it might provoke the unpleasant feeling of guilt, but something that can and should be increased because it is an element in human dignity. Growing in responsibility means growing in reasonableness, and the cognitive agent is capable of that growth. The growth in reasonableness does not diminish epistemic freedom, but reaffirms it and fulfils it. The next step should be an analysis of how rational or natural necessity and free will interact in singular actions, and how one distinguishes between actus hominis and actus humanus in concrete actions, but I have restricted my inquiry to how Lonergan manages to reconcile free will and rational necessity. I will conclude this chapter with the statement that Lonergan considers judgment a responsible act in a sense that is hardly discernible from the notion of responsible act 40  We will speak more about Lonergan’s notion of value in Chapter 6. It may sound surprising for our modern ears, but for the tradition of Augustine, Aquinas, and Lonergan, the will is free when it is good. The choice of evil is a result of the freedom of the will, but it abolishes the freedom of the will. If the will is not good, it is not free. Whether the good is defined as the rational or as the transcendental moral value, freedom is always determined by the good.

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he employs in his ethics. We cannot say that thinking is just one case of behaviour like any other—Lonergan puts more rational constraint on cognitive assents than on other forms of decisions—but thinking does not seem to be completely out of the categories of acting, deciding and choosing. That is the first condition to consider knowledge, a responsible judgment, something for which the person deserves credit which may also imply moral praiseworthiness. I have already mentioned that other authors have more recently criticized the notion of freedom as the possibility to do otherwise, or as the possibility of arbitrary choice. When their approach is applied to epistemic freedom, the conclusion is that if we do not require a direct or strong libertarian voluntarism for the ethical appraisal proper, we should not demand it for the ethical model of epistemic appraisal either. Lonergan’s approach to epistemic freedom would follow the same line of arguing. We have seen in Chapter 2 that Zagzebski and other virtue ethicists emphasize that the measure of praiseworthiness should not be reduced to the measure of blameworthiness, i.e., the degree of voluntariness required in one case is not the same as in the other. In general, we should be more quick to praise than to blame. The purpose of morality is not only to keep people in line, but even more to stimulate and direct the development of natural abilities and personal qualities. Lonergan’s discourse on the will, responsibility and ethics should be read in the same key. He also seems to understand moral agency as the person’s quality to be consciously directed towards the horizon of moral evaluation, so that she can understand and determine herself (and her social group) in respect to that horizon, regardless of her partial incapacity to actually execute her self–determinative decisions.

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ur task in this chapter is to analyse Lonergan’s position on the proper good of intellect in Insight and Method in Theology, the role of intellectual good in his epistemology and the relation between his position on the intellectual good and his ethics. I expect that the results of that analysis, together with the results of the previous chapters, will permit us to draw some conclusions about Lonergan’s idea of the specific value of knowledge, about his theory of epistemic justification and about the relation between epistemic and ethical evaluation in his model of epistemic normativity. Like other human activities, human intellectual life has its goals. We learn and we investigate in order to obtain some desirable results. Epistemology as a discipline can be defined in terms of the values or goods it pursues. Roberts and Wood, for example, identify epistemology as “the study of human knowledge and related epistemic goods.”1 The related epistemic goods involve a variety of things, such as truth (true beliefs), understanding, acquaintance, justification, probability, certitude, intellectual virtuousness, or even experience. In our first chapter we distinguished between internal and external values in human intellectual life. External values in this context are non–epistemic goals (e.g., power, money, intellectual pleasure, tolerance and peace in the world, and a myriad of other things) that motivate and direct our inquiries because the results of inquiries (e.g., knowledge, understanding, true beliefs) may be useful for the achievement of such non–epistemic goals. Internal values, or epistemic values in the strict sense, are those that make some goals of intellectual activity valuable apart from their non–epistemic usefulness. In traditional terminology, some of the internal epistemic values, or perhaps 1  Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 3.

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only the principal one, are intrinsically valuable, i.e., valuable in themselves independently of any other goal whatsoever. The other internal epistemic values are extrinsically or instrumentally valuable because they are subordinated to the intrinsically valuable internal epistemic value(s). We make this distinction between the external and internal values of intellectual activity because some epistemologists, like Zagzebski, argue that some values that look external to epistemic good (e.g., intellectual well–being or eudemonia) are in fact internal (necessary for the explanation of our pursuit of epistemic values “in themselves”). Their position opens further questions on the relation between the intellectual well–being and the holistic well–being of the person. When I speak about the intellectual good in this chapter, it is not about the value of the acquisition of ever new knowledge about everything, nor about what makes knowledge of something more valuable than knowledge of something else. I will try to focus on the questions about the internal goods of the intellect and what makes them valuable, relying on the old and established belief of many epistemologists that the epistemic values proper do not depend on the value of their non–epistemic utility. Our analysis is not about why we should pursue and accumulate new knowledge or new true beliefs, but rather about what makes knowledge more valuable than true belief, why are justified beliefs better than unjustified, and why should we give reasons for our beliefs and knowledge claims at all. Lonergan belongs to the tradition that defends the autonomy of the internal epistemic values. However, when he writes on the good of intellect, the distinction between external and internal intellectual values is not always precise. At the beginning we will simply have to follow Lonergan’s somewhat broad approach to the question of the proper intellectual good, which includes dealing with the metaphysics of Insight and the value–theory of Method, and only later try to condense his answers to our specific questions. Lonergan does distinguish two kinds of knowledge, which roughly correspond to our distinction between external and internal intellectual goods. He writes that there is “knowledge for its own sake without paying any attention to the practical utility that may arise from it,” and knowledge for its practical utility, which is the specialization of common sense (UB 94–95). His epistemology is predominantly about how to protect the former from the limitations of the latter.

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Knowledge is generally considered the most interesting epistemic good. That explains why most of the debate on epistemic values has been focused on the question of the value of knowledge. It has been discussed whether our appreciation of knowledge depends only on its truth–conduciveness and whether epistemic justification—which also comes out as a necessary condition for knowledge—gives its own special contribution to the value of knowledge. There are, however, epistemologists who argue that other epistemic products, such as understanding (Kvanvig) and practical reasoning (Hawthorne), may be more valuable than knowledge.2 I think that Lonergan is among those epistemologists who value knowledge, understood as reflectively made virtually unconditioned judgment, more than other potential candidates. He sometimes uses the expressions “desire of understanding” and “desire of truth” to denote the moving power of our inquiries. Certainty (see IN 724–725) and probability (see IN 328) sometimes appear as highly valued epistemic goals too. But it is usually “desire to know” that denotes the principal drive of our intellectual life, and we have seen in Chapter 3 that “to know” in this case means pretty much the same as in contemporary epistemology. The cognitive states of acquaintance (which stops at the level of experience without asking about its intelligibility and truth) and understanding (which is happy with the grasp of coherence of concepts, again, without reflecting on their truth), would not be defined in Lonergan’s epistemology as epistemic values in their own right, because they represent only the mid–points of the process of inquiry.

6.1 Intellectual Good in Insight 6.1.1 The Objective of the Intellectual Desire Lonergan writes in Insight that “the proper good of intellect is the attainment of the objective of the detached, disinterested, unrestricted 2  See Kvanvig, Value of Knowledge; and, “Truth is not the Primary Epistemic Goal,” in Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, eds. Matthias Steup and Ernest Sosa (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 285–296. Hawthorne argues for the principle that one should use a proposition p as a premise in one’s practical reasoning only if one knows that p. See John Hawthorne, Knowledge and Lotteries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 30.

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desire to know” (IN 723). What is that objective? Well, it is knowledge. Yet, knowledge can mean several things, and that is what makes our study interesting. Knowledge is the possession of virtually unconditioned true judgments—the emphasis is on truth. Knowledge is, then, the totality of virtually unconditioned true judgments—the more of them, the better. Knowledge is also the satisfaction of the intellectual desire, and that desire has its own desirable attributes (detached, disinterested, unrestricted, pure, and so on). All these things are somehow connected with the issue of the proper good of intellect in Lonergan. The objective of the desire to know is truth, in the sense that knowledge is knowing truth.3 “Knowing truth” may sound like a pleonasm in the ears of contemporary epistemologists—as if believing a false proposition could be considered knowledge at all—but we have already come across different meanings of the term “knowing” in Lonergan’s usage in our Chapter 3. Besides, “truth” can also have two meanings. Truth is an attribute of true judgments and the propositions they are about, but also an attribute of being. Thanks to his theory of identity (isomorphism) between the realm of the cognitional and the realm of the metaphysical, the epistemological and the ontological notion of truth frequently intersect in Lonergan’s philosophy. The desire to know is all permeated by the notion of being. Thus we reach Lonergan’s position that the objective of the pure intellectual desire is being: not an idea, not any quality of a proposition, not something in the mere realm of the cognitive, but simply being (see IN 372, 375). In the last chapters of Insight Lonergan reveals the theological implications of his metaphysics. Consequently, the proper good of intellect becomes ultimately the knowledge of God, “who is at once the transcendent idea of being and the transcendent reality of being” (IN 723). It cannot pass unnoticed that Lonergan believes this ultimate intellectual good, despite its being the end of a natural desire, practically cannot be reached by means of a simple human endeavour (though he suggests that theoretically that would be possible) because of the deeply rooted presence of the intellectual evil, i.e., of oversight, bias, error, counter–positions. The pursuit of the ultimate intellectual good requires “a new and higher collaboration” among the members of the human community and with God (see IN 741). Fortunately, 3  See, e.g., IN 404, 581–585, 740–741; and Topics in Education, 87.

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the difficulties with obtaining the ultimate intellectual good are not an obstacle to reaching the intellectual goods at the ordinary level of common sense and science. Lonergan believes that our cognitive dynamism is basically reliable and we can obtain genuine knowledge in many of our judgments. And it is the intellectual good at this ordinary level that is the object of our study. Let us return to the issue of intellectual desire. Lonergan defines intellectual good in terms of the satisfaction of the intellectual desire. The satisfaction in question is not the satisfaction the cognitional acts themselves may give to the subject. It is not some sort of intellectual pleasure. As Lonergan puts it, “The satisfaction of mistaken understanding, provided one does not know it is mistaken, can equal the satisfaction of correct understanding” (IN 373). The objective of the desire to know is in the content of knowledge, in the truth of the subject’s judgments. Hence, the intellectual good should be at the same time the good of the cognitive subject, in virtue of satisfying his intellectual desire, and the objective content of judgments, which is not subordinate to the subject’s preferences. It is obvious, even banal, but easy to overlook, that the intellectual good is a good of the knowing subject. By defining the intellectual good in terms of desire, Lonergan ensures that the person will not be omitted from the equation. While saying that we keep in mind that Lonergan is strictly against the idea that the proper good of intellect is in the usefulness of the obtained knowledge. Most errors of common sense and of philosophical counter–positions have their root in “scotosis,” in restraining inquiries to what is in the interest of an individual or a group. What kind of good can knowledge bring to the person, then, if it is not simply the pleasure of intellectual activity, nor the usefulness of the obtained true propositions? Lonergan does not give a direct response to this question. I think that we should look for the answer in Lonergan’s notions of finality and of knowledge as perfection.

6.1.2 Knowledge as Finality and Perfection of the Subject First, on finality. Lonergan is aware of the challenges the notion of finality has faced in modern philosophy. He emphasises that by finality he does not mean “some expedient of a lazy intelligence attempting to make amends for the deficiencies in its account of efficient causality,” nor “some pull exerted by the future on the present” (IN 470). In

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consonance with his dynamic metaphysics and his theory of the development of the universe through emerging probabilities, he defines finality as “the direction immanent in the dynamism of the real” (IN 475). He explains, I have been indicating a parallel between incomplete knowing heading towards fuller knowing and an incomplete universe heading towards fuller being, and now I propose to employ the name, finality, to denote the objective member of the parallel … Basically, then, finality is the dynamic aspect of the real. To affirm finality is to disagree with the Eleatic notion of change. It is to deny that this universe is inert, static, finished, complete (IN 471).

Lonergan wants his notion of finality to be a “weak” finality:4 it is the fact that our universe is in process and that this process is some development. The process of knowing grows towards fuller knowing, the development of the entities in the world shows an improvement towards a fuller realization of their nature. Lonergan does not allow any deductivist predictions about the development either of the world, or of knowledge. The direction and the actual success of the development are a matter of probability (see IN 473). He, nonetheless, allows that the knowledge we gain about different developments can be used in transcendental inferences about their general ultimate goals. So we can conclude that the development heads towards “an effectively probable realization of possibilities” (IN 473), without speculations on the ultimate fate of the universe. Questioning the world and acquiring knowledge is the fulfilment of the finality inherent in the intellectual nature of human beings. What I see in the theory of intellectual good in Insight is pretty much the classical Aristotelian notion of good as the realization of natural goals, though the notion of finality has been modernized. The satisfaction of the desire to know is a good of the person because it is the realization of the end proper to the human reasonable nature. There is a notion in Lonergan’s philosophy that can be used for the explanation of how the achievement of this natural end adds to the good of the cognitive subject. It is the notion of knowledge as an 4  In the last chapters of Insight Lonergan distinguishes “internal finality” and “external finality.” The former is the fact of the directed development of the world processes. The latter corresponds to the classical Aristotelian and Thomist notion of final cause. See IN 687–688.

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ontological perfection of the subject who knows. I have not found the notion of knowledge as perfection in Insight, but Lonergan assigns it an important role in Understanding and Being.5 He uses it there to represent his own position in contrast to the notion of knowing as looking, but I believe it is also helpful for the understanding of the intellectual good in Lonergan’s Insight. Unfortunately for us, Lonergan does not consider it necessary to clarify the term “perfection,” apart from the remark that he uses it in its ontological meaning. He obviously uses that term in the meaning familiar to his audience. The Latin perfectio is a frequent technical term in Thomist metaphysics. It usually refers to the achievement of an end or a goal that an entity has by its nature, and the entity achieves that end or goal by means of actualizing its potentialities and realizing its specific form.6 Perfection is, in this sense, the realization of a capacity or potentiality in a particular instance. The capacity in question does not have to be realized “perfectly” in the sense of completely or faultlessly. It is enough that the capacity has successfully accomplished its goal in that particular instance, so that it be one step closer to its full realization. The term is sometimes used in the plural, as perfectiones, which indicates that it can refer to some qualities of the entity (or of the subject) and not only to the degree of the realization of its capacities. When an entity realizes a certain capacity, the result becomes a quality of the entity in question. Because they mark the steps in the progress towards the fullness of being that is characteristic for the essence of that entity 5 See UB 159–160; 179–180. Insight was published in 1957, while the Halifax Seminar on Insight, later published as Understanding and Being, took place in August 1958. See UB xiii–xiv. 6  Aquinas writes, “The truth is itself the good of the intellect, since it is its perfection.” See Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, IIaIIae.4.5, ad 1 (FEDP 3:1188). Perfectio is one of the terms that translate the Aristotelian entelecheia, but it also has its own rich history. See H.P. Owen, “Perfection,” in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 8 vols., ed. Paul Edwards (London: Collier– Macmillan, 1967), 6:87; and G. Di Napoli, “Perfezione,” in Enciclopedia filosofica, 4 vols., ed. Centro di studi filosofici di Gallarate (Venice: Istituto per la collaborazione culturale, 1957), 3:1282–1290. For its usage in Aquinas, see “Perfectio,” in Thomas–Lexikon, 3rd ed., eds. Ludwig Schütz and Enrique Alarcón (Pamplona: University of Navarra, 2006), http:// www.corpusthomisticum.org/tlp.html#perfectio (accessed May 20th, 2009).

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(and that fullness is what we call perfection in our ordinary language), the new qualities acquired through the actualization of capacities are called perfections. Hence, when Lonergan says that knowing or knowledge is an ontological perfection of the subject, that can mean two things: first, that knowledge is a perfection of the subject’s cognitive capacity as the realization (actus) of that capacity and, second, that knowledge is a perfection of the subject as a newly acquired quality which makes the subject closer to his ontological fullness of being, both in respect to that specific capacity and in respect to the fullness of his essence in general. The intellectual goods, such as knowledge and truth, are also ontological goods of the subject. In a similar way as other activities and their perfections, knowledge and truth contribute to the development of the subject towards the fullness of his being.

6.1.3 Intellectual Good and the Ethics of Insight Are intellectual good and moral good in Insight connected? The proper good of the intellect is at the same time in the content of judgments and in the good of the person. By obtaining truth and knowledge in judgments, the person is one step closer to the ideal of her intellectual development, which we called intellectual perfection. Intellectual perfection is one aspect of ontological perfection and so the intellectual good contributes to the ontological good. In Thomist philosophy when one reaches being, one is not far from other transcendentals since being is also true, good, and beautiful. The area of ontological perfections and the area of moral perfections do not overlap completely, but there is a wide zone where they do. Ontology is relevant for ethics in the sense that the entities which have some ability of self–determination—in our context these entities are human beings—also have a moral responsibility to form themselves towards the goal of the fullness of being that is specific to their nature. To be is good, and to realize one’s own capacities in the direction of the fullness of being is, among other things, a moral imperative. That gives a moral relevance to all aspects of the individual and social development of human persons. As a part of the holistic efforts of the person towards the fullness of her being, the pursuit of intellectual goods (knowledge, truth, being, and the instrumental goals that lead to them) is a part of the moral

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endeavour of the person in her self–formation, both in the quantitative sense of knowing more (according to the virtue of wisdom that distinguishes the valuable from the less valuable areas of inquiry) and in the qualitative sense to have her claims to knowledge justified through reflective understanding. I think that this elementary Thomist account underlies Lonergan’s notion of the proper good of the intellect in Insight.7 In Chapter 18 Lonergan distinguishes three levels of good (IN 619–621). At the first level, the good is the object of desire (the pleasant, enjoyable, satisfying); at the second, the good is the good of order (the intelligently and systematically planned good of society, economy, family); at the third level, the good is the value (“the possible object of rational choice,” IN 624). Lonergan is usually suspicious of the attempts to define the moral good as the object of desire. In such attempts he sees the danger of the reduction of the good to its first level. The moral good, on the contrary, is what is reasonable in the perspective of the good of order and of the intelligible value, and the will is good as far as it follows intellect (see IN 622). Thus he hardly leaves any positive role for the emotional aspect of consciousness in earthly moral life.8 For the same reason Lonergan refuses to characterize his ethics in Insight as eudemonist. The concept of eudemonia is ambiguous and can be understood in an individualistic and hedonist sense.9 7  Instead of starting with Chapter 18 of Insight, which is on ethics, the study of Lonergan’s notion of the intellectual good should begin with the passages on the intellectual desire, truth and being. See IN 372–381, 572– 576, 581–585; UB115, 145–155, 241; S 70–71. Compare it, then, with the section on “The Ontology of the Good,” IN 628–630. 8  Lonergan writes, for example, “Accordingly, it will not be amiss to assert emphatically that the identification of being and the good by–passes human feelings and sentiments to take its stand exclusively upon intelligible order and rational value.” IN 629. Lonergan’s ethics in Insight has often been criticized as too intellectualist, “highly idealistic, but quite austere.” See Terry J. Tekippe and Louis Roy, “Lonergan and the Fourth Level of Intentionality,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 70 (1996): 228– 229. It was, anyway, soon abandoned by Lonergan himself. See IR 277. 9 See UB 309–310. Nevertheless, if we clarify that eudemonism is different from hedonism and pragmatism, Lonergan’s ethics in Insight can be characterized as a form of eudemonism, perhaps “ontological eudemonism,” because it clearly defines the good of person in terms of her striving towards the fullness of human (ontological, moral, intellectual) perfection.

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The good of intellect is an exception. Although it is based on intellectual desire, the good of intellect is safe because the intellectual desire strives unlimitedly towards the attainment of the unconditional and is by its nature less bribable by limited goods (see IN 619). Let us conclude this section. Lonergan of Insight would be rather reluctant to subordinate the intellectual good to some other good. The intellectual good is an objective good which has truth and being as its core, and truth and being are not a matter of decision nor they have their goal in any particular personal good. The intellectual good, however, must somehow be also a good of the person. One solution is to define the intellectual goals of knowledge, truth and being as perfections (or the perfection) of the subject’s intellectual capacity. As such, the intellectual good contributes to the fullness of being of the subject as a whole. For the philosophers who are comfortable with the idea that ontological goals motivate human intellectual and moral life (we can call this approach “ontological eudemonism”), this looks an attractive notion of the proper good of intellect. For those who are looking for more empirical, more experienceable motivational drives, Lonergan’s idea of the intellectual good in Method may be more attractive.

6.2 Intellectual Good in Method How does Lonergan understand the nature of the intellectual good in his Method in Theology? What is, in particular, its relation with the moral good of the person? In Insight, Lonergan says that the good of intellect is in the fulfilment of the desire to know, and I have interpreted that in the sense that knowledge and truth are contributions to the fullness of being of the cognitive subject. What Lonergan says there will not be denied in Method. Nonetheless, the changes in his ethics in Method will influence the way he delineates the intellectual good there.

6.2.1 Ethics of Method and its Value–Theory In general, Lonergan’s interest in Method turns towards action, responsibility and the affective side of the human existence.10 He emphasizes the specific features of the fourth level of intentionality. That results 10  See, for example, Frederick E. Crowe, “Exploration of Lonergan’s New Notion of Value,” in Appropriating the Lonergan Idea, ed. Michael Vertin (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1989),

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in its clearer distinction from and, eventually, its priority over the first three levels. One of the important novelties in Method is Lonergan’s view that value–judgments are based upon the apprehension of values through intentional feelings (in a similar way as fact–judgments are based upon cognitive empirical data).11 In Lonergan’s terminology “values” is not a synonym for “goods.” Goods, as objects of desire and goals of our actions, can belong to the category of the agreeable or disagreeable (the satisfying or dissatisfying), and Lonergan does not call them values in that case. What he lists as examples of values are the ontic value of persons, the qualitative values of the beauty, understanding, truth, virtuous acts, noble deeds, and the sets of vital, social, cultural, personal and religious values. He explains that the difference between these values and the agreeable or disagreeable lies in the fact that the apprehension of value (or, more precisely, the “intentional response” to the apprehended value) carries the subject towards self–transcendence, while the apprehension of the agreeable or disagreeable is “ambiguous” (see MT 31). Later he clarifies that “ambiguous” means it is not certain whether agreeable objects are truly or only apparently good (see MT 38). Hence, it seems that values are something that regularly manifests itself as truly good. Whenever the person apprehends them, she is invited to self–transcendence. The values are defined by their appeal to self–transcendence and they indicate what self–transcendence is in more concrete terms. Because of their essential connection with self–transcendence, they are worthy of pursuit on their own, though their actual goodness in concrete application is subject to the hierarchy of values (see MT 31). The issue becomes more complicated when Lonergan introduces the transcendental notion of value as something different from values in the plural and, indeed, on a higher level in respect to values in the plural. Value, Lonergan says, is a transcendental notion “intended in 51–55; as well as Tekippe and Roy, “Lonergan and the Fourth Level of Intentionality,” 225–230. 11 See MT 37. Lonergan distinguishes non–intentional and intentional feelings. Non–intentional feelings, like fatigue, hunger, anxiety, bad humour, do not arise out of some representing or perceiving of their cause. Intentional feelings are an answer to something perceived, apprehended, represented. Intentional feelings respond to two classes of objects: the agreeable/disagreeable (or satisfying/dissatisfying) and values. See MT 30–32.

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questions for deliberation, just as the intelligible is what is intended in questions for intelligence, and just as truth and being are what is intended in questions for reflection” (MT 34). We do not know its content, but we intend it. As a transcendental notion it motivates our aspiration to make good decisions and it contains the criteria to judge the value of particular goods when they appear. It seems that the transcendental notion of value is what gives worth to moral objects that are worthwhile as such (values in the plural), and what makes us able to judge the value of objects whose moral quality depends on their goals (the agreeable goods). We can say that the transcendental notion of value is the notion of moral goodness in itself. It is useful to call to mind here Lonergan’s insistence that a transcendental notion is not just a concept, an idea, but an empirical intentio intendens, or anticipation of a reality. In this case the reality is the moral goodness itself. As other values are intended in feelings, and thus empirically anticipated, so the transcendental notion of value is anticipated (not experienced, not understood, not known) in the desire for moral goodness. Though Lonergan remains a cognitivist in his ethics,12 he definitely gives feelings a much more positive role in motivating human actions than he did in Insight, and the intentional feeling that anticipates the transcendental value best is love. The goal of human actions and of the human development is still the achievement of the fullness of person’s natural possibilities, becoming a true or authentic self, but in Method its concrete goal is ultimately “being–in–love.”13 “Being–in–love” gives an eudemonist tone to Lonergan’s ethics in Method. Notice, however, that the happiness of the state of “being–in– love” is not the motivation for moral acting on its own. The motivation is the intentional response to the transcendental notion of value. “Being–in–love” is a concretization of the transcendental notion of value (the concretization, eventually). Lonergan uses the term “love” in its personalist meaning, where it does not mean only the emotion of benevolence, but the voluntary and lasting attitude of selfless and 12  Value–judgments are still there to mediate between the apprehension of values and the decision to act, and value–judgments have their truth– value. See MT 37, 242. 13  Lonergan’s ethics in Method in Theology is imbedded in a theological vision of reality. “Being–in–love” is ultimately “being–in–love–with–God.” See MT 105–107.

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responsible care motivated by that emotion. Thus the authenticity, as the pure moral goodness of the person, has a conceptual priority over its resulting state of happiness. In reality, they go together. “Being–in– love” is the state in which moral authenticity and happiness merge. As in Aristotle, happiness is in Lonergan the life of moral virtuousness, where the principal virtue is love.

6.2.2 Self–transcendence and Conversion Lonergan finds that the essential feature of the human spirit is its inherent quest for, and its capacity of, self–transcendence. Again, self– transcendence has its goals, i.e., values that transcend us and attract us, which are specific for each level of intentionality. These are the values of intelligibility, truth, and knowledge at the cognitive levels, and the ontic and the qualitative goods of persons and things at the moral level (see MT 31–32, 37–38). Thus, if there is an ideal of the authenticity of the human being—and Lonergan is sure there is—that authenticity must be defined as the achievement of self–transcendence, i.e., the achievement of those values that are intended in our self–transcending quests. The way to self–transcendence in Lonergan’s ethics is conversion. We do not reach self–transcendence and authenticity through a linear series of reasonable decisions, but through a dialectic process of qualitative changes in the person, which is called conversion.14 Conversion can be intellectual, moral and religious, but they are connected with each other because of the unity of the intentional dynamism and because they together lead the person towards the unique project of holistic authenticity. Conversion does not simply happen; it is a result of a prolonged free and responsible effort towards self–transcendence, though it includes moments of crucial judgments and decision. Needless to say, self–transcendence is by definition never a secure possession.

6.2.3 Intellectual Value and Intentional Feelings Let us now return to the realm of the cognitional, which is to say to the normativity in theoretical judgments, not in the judgments of value. In Method Lonergan continues to speak of truth as the proper good 14  MT 52, 238–241, 357, and passim.

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of intellect. As in Insight, “truth” should be read as “true knowledge,” “real knowledge,” or simply knowledge. Truth almost regularly appears as a value among other values in the new sense of Method, and almost always in connection with cognitive self–transcendence. Truth is the value intended in the quest for cognitive self–transcendence.15 We have seen that the intellectual good in Insight should not be considered the good of an abstract intellect, but always as a good of the knower. The language of value–theory in Method makes that fact even more obvious. The proper end of intellectual activity is in the cognitive self–transcendence of the knower. Should not we, then, speak of cognitive self–transcendence as the principal intellectual value instead of truth and knowledge? I think that nothing hinders us from doing so. The difficulty might arise if we understood cognitive self–transcendence as mere subjective responsibility, while truth or knowledge is objective. Everybody knows that the fulfilment of epistemic obligation alone cannot protect us from false judgments. However, there cannot be any conflict between truth or knowledge and cognitive self–transcendence in Lonergan’s terms. On the one hand, cognitive self–transcendence is achieved in knowledge (see MT 289). On the other hand, knowledge claims are justified in virtue of their reliance upon the grasp of the virtually unconditioned performed by a responsible self–transcending subject (see 4.2). Cognitive self–transcendence is not mere subjective responsibility for the operations performed. It includes the grasp of the transcendental guarantee of the reliability of the cognitive process. Hence, cognitive self–transcendence is realized in knowledge, though its value may go beyond the mere possession of true, virtually unconditioned judgments. Now, if Lonergan categorizes the intellectual good as a value among other values, two questions arise. First, knowing that values are apprehended through intentional feelings, what intentional feeling is the value of truth intended through? Besides the usual attitudes of “desire of truth” and “desire to know,” Lonergan also speaks of “single–minded concern for truth” (MT 10), “devotion to truth” (MT 242) and “dedication” to scholarship, science and knowledge (MT 122). Whichever of

15 See MT 31–32, 38, 45, 47, 94, 289.

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these names we choose, the attitude they represent should be understood as an intentional feeling.16 Feeling does not necessarily include emotional involvement, but it is difficult to believe that Lonergan, especially the Lonergan of Method, would think of feelings without some kind of emotional involvement. The person is not only driven towards truth, but she feels something about it. In their ideal form in the mind of a scientist or a philosopher “desire to know” or “devotion to truth” resemble a feeling of a passionate attraction mixed with respect, or even with awe. I have not found the popular virtue–responsibilist term “love of truth” in Method. Some of its variants appear in the context of religious conversion, as an effect of religious conversion on the intellectual life (see MT 111, 122, 242). But I do not think Lonergan would be against the use of the term “love of truth” in a non–religious context either. Our second question is, How does the value of cognitional self– transcendence relate to the transcendental notion of value? We have seen that Lonergan makes all values desirable in themselves, but dependent on the transcendental notion of value. If the transcendental notion of value has a moral character, is then the proper intellectual value also a moral value? If cognitional self–transcendence is a good of the person, how does it relate to the moral quality of the person? We will try to answer these questions in the following sections by analysing the relationship between intellectual and moral conversion, between cognitive and moral self–transcendence, and between the cognitive intentional levels and the intentional level of responsibility.

6.2.4 Cognitive Self–transcendence & Intellectual Conversion We have seen in our fourth chapter that cognitive self–transcendence is an attitude that tends to become an established quality of the subject, the lasting trait of readiness for and capacity of, self–transcendence (see MT 35). The ability of self–transcendence is achieved 16  Crowe states that in Lonergan’s theory of intentionality feelings accompany the cognitional on every level, that they are as pervasive as the cognitional. See Frederick E. Crowe, “Lonergan on the Edges of Understanding,” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 20 (2002): 184. Cronin contends that the desire to know in the context of Method must be named feeling, an “intentional feeling,” a “feeling orientation towards the value of knowing.” See Brian Cronin, “Deliberative Insights: A Sketch,” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 22 (2004): 31–32; and Value Ethics, 262–263.

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through the acts of self–transcendence in a similar way as a virtue is achieved through repeated acts of virtue. Lonergan believes that both the procedure of self–transcendence and the goal it points towards are within reach of everybody who embarks on the journey of self–appropriation. The obstacles one has to overcome are different myths, “scotosis,” or simply error. Some of them can be eliminated by uncovering fresh data. Some of them are a matter of perspective. But some are dialectically opposed horizons, so well entrenched in the historicity of human condition that the only solution for overcoming them Lonergan sees is an intellectual conversion (see MT 235, 247; S 79). We have seen that conversion is the method of moral self–transcendence. Now it appears in the context of cognitional self–transcendence too. The special issue where Lonergan requires an intellectual conversion is the shift from naïve (epistemological) realism to critical (epistemological) realism. We have given more attention to that topic in our third chapter.17 Our interest here is different. We are interested in the relation between intellectual conversion, cognitive self–transcendence and moral conversion. Lonergan writes that “intellectual conversion is to truth attained by cognitional self–transcendence” (MT 241). We could interpret this sentence in the sense that intellectual conversion happens in every responsible judgment. That, however, may lead to an inflation of intellectual conversion. Intellectual conversion is better understood as prolonged practice of cognitive self–appropriation rather than a single event. In that sense, the single acts of cognitive self–transcendence in virtually unconditioned judgments are elements in that longer process of intellectual conversion. Barden distinguishes three kinds or three stages of intellectual conversion.18 First intellectual conversion is the spontaneous psychological development of mature conscious cognitive activities from infancy to adulthood. Third intellectual conversion is the one from naïve to critical realism, in ordinary Lonergan’s terminology. Second intellec17  Intellectual conversion is the clarification and elimination of the myth that knowing (and objectivity) is like looking, the transition from the picture–world into the universe of being or, in other words, from the world of immediacy to the world mediated by meaning. See MT 238; PL 110–111; S 79; IR 269. 18  See Garrett Barden, “On Intellectual Conversion,” Journal of Macro­ dynamic Analysis 3 (2003): 122-125.

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tual conversion—and this one is the most interesting for us—takes the intrinsic orientation towards truth as a deliberate goal. It is the moral conversion to truth as a value.19 I will not enter into the issue of how the first and the third stage of intellectual conversion are connected with moral conversion. It is more important to notice that the pursuit of truth demands a moral conversion. As we will see, to state that moral conversion precedes cognitive conversion or that moral self–transcendence precedes cognitional self–transcendence may sometimes seem contrary to the letter of Lonergan’s Method. I will nevertheless, agree with Barden. Let us see why.

6.2.5 Cognitive and Moral Self–transcendence The reader of Lonergan’s Method will notice two apparently contrary tendencies there regarding the relation between cognitional and moral self–transcendence. First, Lonergan stresses the difference between them, giving us the impression that the tension between the urgency to protect the autonomy of the cognitive order, so typical for Insight, and the need to integrate the cognition and emotion in Method, still has not been resolved. He makes the distinction that cognitional self–transcendence is involved in true judgments of fact, while moral self–transcendence is involved in true judgments of value (see MT 45). Cognitional self–transcendence concerns the order of knowing, moral self–transcendence concerns the order of doing (see MT 104, 94). Cognitional self–transcendence achieves knowledge, moral self–transcendence achieves what is worthwhile (see MT 289, 241). Eventually, cognitional self–transcendence is “easier” than moral self– transcendence (see MT 122). Moreover, when Lonergan writes about the production of concrete judgments of fact and of value, the usual sequence of the intentional dynamism is from the cognitional towards the moral. Fact–judgments precede value–judgments, and cognitional self–transcendence precedes moral self–transcendence. Judgments of value presume some factual knowledge of the object of value–judgment and of its circumstances (see MT 9). By contrast, Lonergan does not mention value–judgments in the process of acquisition of what he calls “immanently generated knowledge.” He does mention value–judgments 19  See Barden, “On Intellectual Conversion,” 123.

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in the process of belief acceptance (see MT 45). The other case where he allows that the intentional dynamism may go the other way around, i.e., from the moral to the cognitive, is in falling in love, and more specifically in religious conversion, but these are “extraordinary” cases of cognitive activity.20 However, Lonergan exhibits a different tendency when he speaks about the order of priority among the levels of intentionality. There he clearly gives the level of deliberation and responsibility a priority over the first three cognitive levels, and subordinates cognitive self–transcendence to the general ethical project of holistic self–transcendence. It is the tendency that prevails in Method and I think that it better explains what Lonergan writes there about the pursuit of intellectual value: The fourth level, which presupposes, complements, and sublates21 the other three, is the level of freedom and responsibility, of moral self–transcendence and in that sense of existence, of self–direction and self–control. … As the fourth level is the principle of self–control, it is responsible for proper functioning on the first three levels. It fulfils its responsibility or fails to do so in the measure that we are attentive or inattentive in experiencing, that we are intelligent or unintelligent in our investigations, that we are reasonable or unreasonable in our judgments. Therewith vanish two notions: 20  When Lonergan writes on the dynamics of religious faith as falling in love with God (and also in the case of human falling in love), the order of the levels of intentionality is overturned. Love in that case precedes knowledge. See MT 106–107, 122–123, 240–241, 283. But he points out that this is an exception to the “ordinary” proceeding of the dynamism of intentionality (from empirical towards the responsible level). Lonergan’s distinction between “ordinary” and “extraordinary” proceeding of the dynamism of intentionality allows us to speak of ethics without immediately implicating theological issues. I follow F. Crowe in the opinion that handling the exceptional cases simultaneously with the “ordinary” cases would be a mistake. See Crowe, “Exploration of Lonergan’s New Notion of Value,” 56–57. 21  “To sublate” is the translation of the German aufheben. Lonergan explains, “I would use this notion [sublation] in Karl Rahner’s sense rather than Hegel’s to mean that what sublates goes beyond what is sublated, introduces something new and distinct, puts everything on a new basis, yet so far from interfering with sublated or destroying it, on the contrary needs it, includes it, preserves all its proper features and properties, and carries them forward to a fuller realization within a richer context.” MT 241.

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the notion of pure intellect or pure reason that operates on its own without guidance or control from responsible decision; and the notion of will as an arbitrary power indifferently choosing between good and evil.22

We saw in Chapter 5 how the notion of the will as an arbitrary power vanished. Now we see why the notion of pure reason has also vanished. Operations at all four levels of intentionality belong to one dynamism of consciousness and it is the fourth level that leads and dictates the rhythm of the whole dynamism. This leads Lonergan to refuse the notion of a pure theoretical or purely speculative reason, a step that the Lonergan of Insight would hardly dare. The overthrowing of the notion of pure reason is so important that Lonergan considers it the core of his turn towards intentionality analysis (see MT 340). In Insight Lonergan promises us the liberation of our “purely intellectual activities” from “other, ‘existential’ concerns that invade and mix and blend with the operations of intellect to render it ambivalent and its pronouncements ambiguous” (IN 14). In Method the “existential” gets a positive meaning and becomes the very foundation for understanding normativity in intellectual activities. Of course, the change is not as drastic as it looks, because the subject has already been placed in the centre of attention in Insight. Objectivity as authentic subjectivity is already at work in Insight—the difference is that in Method the subjectivity has become little more “existential.” Lonergan’s insistence that the responsible subject should be given priority in all aspects of conscious life, both moral and cognitional, has been repeated so many times and in such a strong way that we have to take it as the norm in Method, even in regard to those cases when Lonergan affirms the independence of the cognitional. It is difficult to imagine how Lonergan’s demand to be conscious and responsible knowers in the process of cognitive self–transcendence and in the intellectual conversion could be possible if moral self–transcendence did not precede cognitional self–transcendence in regard to the value of truth. It is true that we do not have to make an explicit judgment on the value of truth before or during ordinary pursuit of knowledge. The apprehension of the value of truth, understanding its implications, the judgment on the value of truth, and the decision to be epistemically responsible are implicitly assumed in our pursuit of knowledge. But 22  MT 121; see also MT 316–317, 340; S 80; AT 46.

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we must make them explicit when the conflicts of interests demand a clarification, or when we simply want to understand the nature of epistemic normativity. Cognitional self–transcendence does not demand an encompassing moral self–transcendence, just the one in respect to the value of truth. But Lonergan believes that the improvement in moral and religious conversion in different areas of human life helps improvement in cognitional self–transcendence. Moral conversion, by liberating the subject from bias, protects the purity of cognitional self–transcendence so that the pursuit of truth becomes more secure, more meaningful and significant “because it occurs within, and plays an essential role in, the far richer context of the pursuit of all values” (MT 242). Furthermore, religious conversion is not there to stop intellectual endeavour but to encourage it. “Religious conversion is to total being–in–love as the efficacious ground of all self–transcendence, whether in the pursuit of truth, or in realization of human values.”23 Through the apprehension of the personified religious nature of the transcendental value the value of truth becomes personified as well. The subject discovers its “face,” and that makes it easier for him to evolve the attitude of intellectual responsibility.

6.2.6 Intellectual Good and Human Good What is the place of the value of truth among the other values in Method? The pursuit of truth is integrated in the pursuit of other values towards the realization of the authenticity of the person. Intellectual well–being is a part of the person’s well–being. The pursuit of truth, therefore, shares the same normative horizon of the human good in general. The good of intellect is in the authentic—self–transcending and loving—attitude of the subject to the value of truth. Through the intentional feeling of the value of truth the person anticipates something of the transcendental reality of the value of truth and that is more than obtaining virtually unconditioned judgments about the world. Of course, Lonergan would not say that such intellectual well–being is reserved for some mystical contemplation of the truth itself, but it happens through our acquisition of knowledge about the world and 23  MT 241. See also “Natural Knowledge of God,” in Second Collection, 129–130.

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ourselves. No wonder that Lonergan in his dictum “objectivity is authentic subjectivity” (see MT 265, 292) does not mention the moral and the epistemic objectivity separately. They have the same criterion in one holistic self–transcendence of the subject, in which moral self– determination in respect to the transcendental value has the leading function. But what about the protection of the autonomy of theoretical reason that has been at heart of the Western philosophy for centuries? The subordination of the intellectual good to the ultimate human good does not diminish its autonomy or put in danger epistemic objectivity. We have seen in Chapter 4 that objectivity can be based in subjectivity only because subjectivity is capable of authenticity through the contact with the transcendental. The transcendental notion of being that is the foundation of metaphysics emerges as the transcendental notion of value in later Lonergan’s ethics. There is no risk in subordinating the intellectual value to the moral value in an ethical system that is objectivist. Instead, the foundation of intellectual value in holistic moral value has the advantage of explaining the fact that we are active agents in our intellectual life and that we impose norms and standards on our intellectual agency in a similar way to any other form of human agency. I conclude that in a similar way to Insight, Lonergan in Method understands the intellectual good proper as a contribution to the fullness of being of the cognitive subject. What happened in the meantime was the general turn from the ontological eudemonism of Insight towards the eudemonism of intentional feelings, of the “being–in–love” in Method. The result of that turn is that the intellectual good has also been placed in that new perspective. The motivation for responsible intellectual activity is the same as for any other activity. It is the holistic flourishing of the person who “is–in–love.” What has been said does not diminish the intrinsic value of truth. The value of truth is not subordinate to any other interest or authority except to the transcendental moral value itself. The existence of the specific intellectual well–being as an aspect of the holistic moral well–being of the person is just a consequence of our being persons in the cognitive dynamism directed towards the value of truth.

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6.3 Conclusions 6.3.1 Value of Knowledge Human beings certainly value true beliefs in whatever way they are acquired. A lucky guess can save lives as well as make one a millionaire. Of course, we value non–accidentally true beliefs even more. I must recall that when Lonergan speaks of the intellectual good and the value of knowledge he does not distinguish directly between the pursuit of knowledge as the acquisition and accumulation of new information about the world, and the pursuit of knowledge as something different (and more valuable) than mere possessing true judgments and beliefs. It is important to notice that even when he writes on the pursuit of knowledge in the sense of the accumulation of true beliefs he does not follow a pragmatist approach. Any pragmatic motivation for inquiry is in a danger of “scotosis.” New true beliefs about the world are not to be pursued primarily because of their usefulness for our survival or for some plans of ours with this world. They are pursued primarily because we have an unlimited desire to know and the fulfilment of that desire is best understood as a contribution to the holistic perfection of the human being. The answer to the question of the value of true beliefs derived from Lonergan’s meta–epistemology is that true beliefs are valuable primarily because of their connection with our intellectual perfection. Practically, since our intellectual openness seems to be unlimited, that connection is best understood in the sense that true beliefs are desirable as such.24 What is Lonergan’s answer to the more specific question of the value of knowledge as it appears in contemporary debates, i.e., what makes knowledge more valuable than mere true belief? As I have said above, he does not explicitly distinguish that question from the one on the value of true belief. His answer is there, indeed, but it has to be reconstructed from what Lonergan says on epistemic justification and intellectual good. 24  I think that Lonergan believed that we desire truth as such, even in trivial matters, but our interests and needs determine our priorities in knowledge because of the brevity of life. He certainly thought that self– knowledge or metaphysical knowledge is more valuable and urgent than knowledge about the physical universe—a position that not all philosophers would favour.

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The traditional definition of knowledge as justified or warranted true belief indicates that the notions of justification and warrant may hold the answer we are looking for. However, virtue responsibilists have suggested that to define justification and warrant exclusively in terms of their relation to the truth, e.g. in terms of their reliable truth–conduciveness (“epistemic value monism”), does not provide a satisfactory answer. There should be something else in justification and warrant, besides their truth–conduciveness, that gives knowledge its specific value (the position called “epistemic value pluralism”). That “something else” could be a feeling of certitude, a sense of having fulfilled one’s epistemic duty, an intellectual eudemonia, a credit for successful performance, or similar states and qualities that were proposed in the course of the history of epistemology. In Lonerganian terms, the question of the value of knowledge can be formulated as, what makes reflectively understood virtually unconditioned judgments better than unreflective (presumably) virtually unconditioned judgments? Certainly, the process of reflective understanding is important because it is truth–conducive, but can its importance be reduced to its truth–conduciveness? It does not seem so. The factor of the subject’s responsibility in the process of reflective understanding points to another goal integral to reflective understanding and that goal is something that affects the subject as a cognitive agent. I have suggested that in Insight the general goal of intellectual activity can be identified as the realization of the intellectual perfections of the subject. Reflective understanding realizes its perfections when it obtains virtually unconditioned judgments after responsible cognitive performances. The realization of intellectual perfections is also one step towards the realization of the subject in general towards the fullness of his being. Thus, through the reflective acquisition of the virtually unconditioned the subject does not only reach the unconditioned, but reaffirms himself as a responsible knower who, in that way, grows towards the fullness of his intellectual being. In Method the specific goal of reflective understanding is, besides reaching the truth of judgment, also reaching the cognitive authenticity of the self–transcending subject in respect to the value of truth and, more broadly, to the transcendental value of morality itself. Hence, what makes reflectively understood and affirmed virtually unconditioned judgments better than unreflective virtually unconditioned judgments is the subject’s attainment of the intellectual

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well–being related to reflective understanding (besides the fact that epistemic responsibility is a better guarantee of truth than the givenness of evidence). The nature of the intellectual well–being pertaining to reflective understanding is anticipated through the requirements of epistemic responsibility and cognitive self–transcendence that are imposed upon the subject in his intellectual desire. Eventually, that anticipation points to the same good which motivates other human activities, and that is the moral good. Obviously, epistemic value in Lonergan cannot be reduced to the value of true beliefs in the sense in which these notions are understood in the contemporary debate on the issue. Lonergan’s theory is not a version of epistemic monism in the contemporary sense. If we had had an opportunity to ask Lonergan about his theory of epistemic value, he would have probably answered that it is the truth, but “the truth,” as we have seen, can refer both to true beliefs and to “knowing truth” in his context. Responsibly obtaining the truth is better than mere obtaining the truth. We could, however, ask about the relationship between the value of true belief and the value of justified true belief in his epistemology. Since they both find the ultimate source of their desirability in the intellectual perfection of the cognitive subject, Lonergan may indeed be a sort of value–monist, though not in the contemporary sense of the word. There is ultimately one value that motivates all intellectual inquiry, and that is the holistic eudemonia of the human fullness of being. This interpretation obviously puts Lonergan’s position regarding epistemic value, in Insight as well as in Method, close to Zagzebski’s responsibilist position. She describes the specific value of knowledge as a contribution to the person’s intellectual flourishing and, thus, to the person’s holistic well–being. The way Lonergan describes the relationship between value, motivation, and feelings in Method comes even closer to Zagzebski’s vision of how emotions motivate moral (including intellectual) actions.25 But how does Lonergan’s position relate to Sosa’s alternative, non– moral account of epistemic value? Sosa’s position is that epistemic value is indeed more than the value of true belief, but what is added to 25  See Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 80–83, 202–211, and Divine Motivation Theory.

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the value of true belief is credit for reliability in obtaining true beliefs, analogous to the credit given to a skilful tennis player for his reliably excellent performance. The value of knowledge (of both animal and reflective knowledge) rests ultimately in its consequences, i.e., in the value of true belief it reliably provides. Why true beliefs are valuable, is a separate issue. Intellectual life may have other goals, relevant perhaps for intellectual ethics, but not relevant for the account of the value of knowledge. From a Lonerganian point of view there are several problems with Sosa’s meta–epistemological account. One may say that Sosa’s idea of epistemic perspective is too compartmentalized, and that he does not pay sufficient attention to the unity of the subject and the connections that exist between the cognitional level of intentionality and other levels. One may also say that animal knowledge is not knowledge in an epistemologically relevant sense, but simply a level of cognition. Sosa’s dualism of animal and reflective knowledge is sharp, probably too sharp. The fundamental objection would be that of the “truncation” of the subject. Although Sosa does not neglect the subject (knowledge is credit for the apt knower), still he measures the value of the subject by his productivity, by the consequences of his operations, while he does not deem the value of motivation relevant. Do these objections indicate the incoherence of Sosa’s account of epistemic value? It is not self–evident that the omission of the person from the account of epistemic normativity would make a theory of knowledge defective. The debate between Zagzebski and Sosa has shown that criticizing Sosa’s account on the battlefield of conceptual analysis is not easy, and I did not promise to do that here. If Zagzebski’s attempt is successful, it will also be helpful in defence of Lonergan’s model of epistemic normativity. But the Lonerganian objections themselves are directed against the elements of the cognitional theory that underlie the externalist theory of knowledge and its consequentialist theory of epistemic value rather than the coherence of their conceptual analysis. (Some would say the same about Zagzebski’s argument based on what she calls the machine–product model of knowledge in epistemic consequentialism.) Lonergan doubts that any inquiry into human cognition can produce correct results if it does not apply intentionality analysis. The models of epistemic normativity are indirectly influenced by the choice of method in the study of cognition, and philosophers enjoy considerable freedom in choosing their methods. No

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wonder that Lonergan appeals to intellectual conversion as a necessary step in the study of human intentionality. Hence, whether or not Zagzebski’s criticism of epistemic consequentialism at the level of conceptual analysis proves successful, a defender of Lonergan’s model of epistemic normativity can always rely— as a reserve option—on Roberts’s and Wood’s suggestion that the turn towards epistemic responsibilism should be regarded as a part of the wider project of the turn towards regulative epistemology. In that case a Lonerganian can argue that that the omission of the person from the account of epistemic value and epistemic normativity in general would make that account of epistemic normativity (and the epistemology that relies on it) defective, if not on the basis of its conceptual or logical inconsistence, then on the basis of its dissociation from the historical and personal dynamics of the intellectual life.

6.3.2 Lonergan’s Theory of Justification The task of a meta–epistemological theory of justification is to answer why our claims to knowledge, assents to, and acceptances of beliefs should be justified or warranted. In the first chapter I have shown how the principal theories of justification can implicitly or explicitly be modelled after similarly structured theories in ethics. I have limited myself to talk about deontological and teleological theories of justification. In the latter group we distinguished between the consequentialist theories of justification (usually associated with epistemic reliabilism) and those which resemble Aristotelian and Thomist eudemonism in ethics (proposed by some contemporary virtue responsibilists, especially Zagzebski). Does Lonergan’s theory of justification fit in any of these groups? For the deontological theories of justification epistemic justification is the a priori obligation imposed by reason itself. A person is justified in believing a proposition as long as she fulfils her epistemic duty, or does not violate the epistemic obligations required for believing that proposition. Lonergan rarely speaks of epistemic normativity in terms of duties and obligations.26 What directs and powers the intellectual dynamism is the intellectual desire. Although there is an a priori nor26  I have found only one term, “rational obligation,” that hints at a deontological explanation of epistemic normativity in Lonergan’s context. See UB 112.

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mativity at the same time inherent in and transcendent to the intellectual desire, its demands are not simply obligations. Epistemic norms are normative not because they oblige as a formal duty, but because they lead towards the fulfilment of the intellectual desire. Epistemic justification in Lonergan is not a matter of pure rightness, but of holistic success. This applies to the norms of reflective understanding in particular operations as well as to the norms of inquiry in general. Lonergan’s theory of justification is not a deontological one. Perhaps Lonergan’s transcendental precepts can be interpreted in deontological key? The terminology of “Be!” may bring to mind some similarity with the Kantian categorical imperatives, but that is where the analogy stops. Transcendental precepts are deontic, but not deontological.27 The transcendental precept to be reasonable, to take one of them, is not a formal demand of the reason, but the demand of the desire to know. Epistemic teleologists define epistemic normativity in terms of desirable epistemic goals. Normally, the principal epistemic goal is truth. Thus, in epistemic reliabilism justification is defined as a guarantee that beliefs will achieve their goal, i.e. truth. A subject is justified in believing a proposition as long as his belief is acquired in a way that reliably warrants truth of the proposition. This epistemic reliabilist principle sounds attractive, since we have seen that Lonergan’s project can be understood as a sort of reliabilist project. Nevertheless, Lonergan would probably respond that we need to modify this theory so that it can account for the demand of epistemic responsibility and authenticity of the subject. The truth of the believed proposition cannot be the only epistemic goal. In Lonergan’s epistemology cognitive authenticity is at the same time the instrument and the goal of justification. A theory of justification appropriate to his epistemology should be able to explain both how justification relates to the epistemic goal of truth and how justification perfects the subject regarding his responsibility. These demands are an indication that Lonergan’s theory of justification is much closer to how virtue responsibilists like Zagzebski understand it, as we have seen above when we spoke about their theories of epistemic value.

27  See p. 28.

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6.3.3 Ethical and Epistemic Evaluation I hope at this stage I have shown that Lonergan’s meta–epistemology can be interpreted and situated in the context of the contemporary debates on the nature of epistemic normativity. As the sides in the mentioned debates often use ethical theories and terminology to distinguish their positions, I have attempted the same with Lonergan’s meta–epistemology in the last three chapters of this study. First, I identified the elements of Lonergan’s model of epistemic normativity. Then I looked for their position in the frameworks of his ethical theories (in Insight and Method). Finally, I tried to locate his meta– epistemology in the context of other theories of epistemic normativity. My experiment has confirmed that the structures of certain ethical theories can be borrowed in order to formulate Lonergan’s meta–epistemology. I have found that the eudemonism of the Aristotelian and Thomist–style virtue ethics serves particularly well to that purpose. The next question is how epistemic appraisal according to Lonergan’s meta–epistemology relates to ethical appraisal. In Chapter 1 I suggested that a few options should be contemplated.28 (1) Epistemic appraisal can be a special case, an instance of ethical appraisal. (2) There can be a partial overlap between them. (3) They can be merely analogous. (4) They can be completely independent or irrelevant for each other. (5) They can be identical. (6) Ethical appraisal can be a special case of epistemic appraisal. (7) They can be deeply associated in an unknown way. I have already indicated that not all of them are equally plausible or helpful. Where can we situate Lonergan’s model of epistemic appraisal? We have said that epistemic appraisal concerns mainly the appraisal implied in epistemic justification. If epistemic appraisal is to be qualified as a case of ethical appraisal, whether partially or fully, the horizon of its evaluation (epistemic value) should have its place among moral values, and the subject should be capable of self–determination in respect of that value in a sufficient degree. Lonergan’s approach is not unilateral in either of these two questions. Nevertheless, the intellectual good is clearly connected with the moral good of the person as Lonergan conceives it. The faithfulness to the desire to know 28  I have been following, partially, the distinctions of Haack, “‘The Ethics of Belief ’ Reconsidered,” 21.

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is a factor in the moral praiseworthiness of the person as person, in the sense we reserve only for human beings and in what concerns the deepest human dignity. It is not just a matter of the person’s neutral skill, but a matter of her dignity in respect to transcendental moral value. The level of responsibility that Lonergan implies in our cognitional activity also allows for the moral qualification of the cognitive acts of belief (in a clearly sufficient degree) and judgment (less, but in a sufficient degree). In the matter of the acquisition of intellectual virtues, moral responsibility is even less problematic. One simply cannot neglect the importance the virtuous attitude of self–transcendence has in human cognitive activity. That self–transcendence is a requirement for cognitive acts in the same sense and in the same measure as for all other intentional acts, which we identify as moral with much less fuss. From what Lonergan says, we can infer that we can hit the truth on isolated occasions even without self–transcendence, but we cannot know the truth without self–transcendence. We certainly do not have other warrant for the truth–conduciveness of our cognitive operations in the long run. Obviousness is not a sufficient guarantee of the truth. Virtuous motivation for cognitive self–transcendence is a necessary element for knowledge because it is the ultimate warrant of truth–conduciveness (objective justification), and because it explains why knowledge is a credit given to the knower (subjective justification). I think that we can conclude with certainty that Lonergan would not consider ethical and epistemic evaluation irrelevant to each other (4). Also, saying that they are only analogous in his model of epistemic normativity (3) would be too little because the subject is at least indirectly involved in both areas, and the subject is one. There must be some dependence between them. While reading the ethics of Insight, we may be tempted to conclude (6) that ethical appraisal is a special case of epistemic appraisal, but Lonergan is aware even there that there is akrasia, and that essential freedom is not the same as effective freedom. Hence, (6) is not Lonergan’s position. They are certainly deeply associated (7), but that is not in a completely unknown way. Lonergan describes with precision how cognitive self–transcendence is an aspect of the holistic self–transcendence. There are too many places where Lonergan emphasises the distinction between the realm of cognition and the realm of the practical to consider them simply identical (5). Can epistemic appraisal be, then, a

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special case of ethical appraisal (1), or is their relationship just a matter of overlap (2)? A safer solution would be to opt for (2), and it is highly plausible. But what of the position of Zagzebski, Roberts, and Wood, which say that epistemic evaluation is an instance of ethical evaluation (1)? Are their positions exaggerated from a Lonerganian point of view? I do not think so. Ethical appraisal is not univocal. The same sort of activity can on occasions be subject to moral appraisal and then again not if the circumstances are slightly different. Any sort of activity has situations when it is more and situations when it is less voluntary and, hence, less a responsible human act. Besides, we have seen in Lonergan that freedom is also an ability that is intended to grow and can grow. Ethics does not consist in merely avoiding blame—in that case we would be much happier as morally unconscious animals. Ethics is about growing in praiseworthiness. Hence, although there is (only) an overlap between ethical appraisal and other sorts of appraisals, including epistemic appraisal, that overlap tends to be larger and larger, up to the ideal point of absolute freedom, which coincides with the point of absolute goodness. In the sense that ethics concerns that growth, the position of the virtue responsibilists is not exaggerated.

T

Conclusion

he task of this research was to explore the role of ethical factors in Lonergan’s model of epistemic normativity. The question of epistemic normativity is the question of the normative horizon of epistemic justification as a condition for knowledge. If (true) beliefs ought to be justified or warranted in order to qualify as knowledge, does that “ought” have anything to do with the moral ought? If knowledge is a kind of credit given to the knower for his beliefs, does that credit have anything to do with moral appraisal? If knowledge is better than accidental true belief, does the specific value of knowledge have anything to do with moral value? Epistemologists hope to find the answers to these questions through the study of those epistemic concepts that seem to be shared by ethics and epistemology, such as epistemic responsibility, epistemic obligation, epistemic value, and epistemic virtue. In this research I intended to follow a similar path. I studied what Lonergan says on epistemic responsibility, epistemic virtue, epistemic value, and epistemic evaluation in general by following the questions, categories, and terminology of the contemporary epistemological debate on the same topics. The principal partner in that dialog was virtue epistemology represented by the virtue responsibilism of Linda Zagzebski and the virtue reliabilism of Ernest Sosa. In order to accomplish my task I had to reconstruct and contextualize Lonergan’s epistemology and meta–epistemology into the terms of recent epistemology. The ground was prepared in Chapters 1 and 2, which introduced us to the contemporary debate on the relationship between the epistemic and the ethical normativity, and its potentials for the reception of Lonergan’s cognitional theory. Although Chapter 3 was intended as an introduction to Lonergan’s cognitional theory, it could not pass unnoticed that Lonergan’s choice to start with the phenomenology of human cognition before articulating his epistemology must have had relevance for his theory of knowledge and justification. Lonergan’s theory of cognition is not only descriptive of how our cognitive states are obtained, but also prescriptive

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of how our cognition should work in order to obtain best results. His cognitional theory is already the first step towards his epistemology. The centrality of cognitive operations and of the desire to know in Lonergan’s cognitional theory is an indicator that they will have the central role in Lonergan’s theory of knowledge and justification. Hence, I was able to conclude in Chapter 4 that Lonergan defines the normative properties of knowledge in terms of the normative properties of the cognitional dynamism by which knowledge is produced, rather than in terms of the evidence for the judgment or belief which is produced. Epistemic justification in Lonergan’s theory of knowledge is a function of authentic cognitive performance. Lonergan’s notion of authenticity, however, does not allow for an externalist reliabilist interpretation of his model of justification. Cognitive authenticity cannot be obtained except through the conscious and responsible, self–transcending involvement of the subject in the intentional dynamism of his cognition. Objectivity cannot be reached except through subjectivity. That is to say that our cognition is simply not reliable without the continual responsible self–appropriation of its inherent normativity. The subject that is not habitually self–transcending in cognition (which does not mean that he has to be able to formulate that, and how he is self–transcending) is not reliable. The authentic motivation for knowledge, as dictated by the natural desire to know, is a necessary condition for knowledge. Nonetheless, Lonergan clearly would not allow that knowledge claims be justified only in virtue of subjective epistemic responsibility. One’s faithfulness to the subjective requirements of the normative desire to know, however certain one may be of having fulfilled these requirements for her part, is not sufficient for knowledge. There must be an objective reliability of the general truth–conduciveness of the cognitional dynamism which transcends personal and historical limitations. Lonergan does not simply postulate such truth–conduciveness, but finds its foundation in the isomorphism (or alignment) between the cognitional dynamism and the transcendental notion of being, the isomorphism which is implicitly affirmed (not experienced, not intuited, not known) through the performance of the cognitive act of judgment. Hence, besides the subjective, there is also the objective necessary condition for knowledge. Notice that they are both internally available to the subject, although the latter escapes conceptualization.

 Conclusion 231 In the context of Lonergan’s cognitional theory knowledge can be defined as reflectively understood virtually unconditioned judgment. Since “virtually unconditioned” means always a reflective grasp of the judgment as virtually unconditioned, we could even define knowledge simply as virtually unconditioned judgment. Nevertheless, I prefer emphasizing the fact that judgment should be reflectively understood because in Lonergan’s theory knowledge is a complex and engaging cognitive state. The element of the virtually unconditioned in the definition emphasizes the objective aspect of the justification of knowledge. Although virtually, the judgment is still unconditioned. The subjective aspect of justification is more noticeable in the element of reflective understanding. Reflective understanding does not work as a spontaneous cognitive performance, but demands the lead of the subject’s epistemic responsibility in individual judgments, as well as responsible self–formation for authentic intellectual attitudes and skills. Obviously, Lonergan’s theory of knowledge leaves much room both for the appraisal of particular judgments in regard to their content and the appraisal of the subject for his knowledge–obtaining performance. The justification of the content of judgment, however, still for the most part depends on the authenticity of the performance. What is the nature of the appraisal of the cognitive performance? If one fulfils the demands of epistemic normativity and responsibly achieves knowledge, does it result with the approval of a clear conscience as it does in morally admirable actions? If the subject lacks epistemic responsibility, will we blame him in a similar way as we would blame him for the lack of responsibility in what we ordinarily consider morally appraisable actions? In order to answer these and similar questions, I first studied in Chapter 5 whether the degree of responsibility Lonergan implies in the performance of cognitive operations, especially in judgment, reaches the level of responsibility that we ordinarily demand for our moral evaluations. Then, in Chapter 6 I explored whether epistemic responsibility has its horizon of self–determination in the realm of morality, i.e., whether Lonergan connects epistemic value and moral value in such a way that the epistemic value can ultimately be located in the realm of the moral value. Thus, if epistemic responsibility turns out to be a sort of moral responsibility, then we can speak of epistemic evaluation in Lonergan as a form of moral evaluation. Our voluntary involvement in self–formation for virtuous intellectual attitudes and abilities does not seem to be a problem in

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Lonergan’s theory. The intellectual development is under our control in very much the same way as the development of moral qualities or, for that matter, the development of practical skills. The situation is a bit more complicated with the voluntariness of singular acts of judgment. Lonergan often speaks of judgment as a responsible personal commitment, but when we look for his ideas about the voluntariness of judgment, he seems to speak more about the rational constraints on our theoretical reasoning than about freedom, which we normally presuppose as a condition of responsibility. There is an element of rational necessity with which the notion of being imposes itself on the judging subject through the grasp of the virtually unconditioned. Also, there are spontaneous rules and mechanisms that cognitive structure simply imposes and we have to follow. There is more room for the voluntariness of beliefs (in Lonergan’s meaning of the term), but that voluntariness is restricted by rational constraints too. I found in Chapter 5 that the answer lies in Lonergan’s notion of cognitive agency, which does not consider epistemic freedom and rational compulsion as contradictory to each other. In Lonergan’s view, which is also the traditional Thomist view, freedom is not any ability of self–determination, but an already qualified ability of self–determination. It is qualified, first, by its instrumental rationality and, second, by its natural end. First, rationality is a condition for freedom in general. Arbitrariness is not freedom, but its negation. In the matter of theoretical judgment, any attempt to choose irrationality would not be an affirmation of epistemic freedom but its cancellation. Second, freedom is conditioned by its natural end—supreme good—and, in that case, it does not require an absolute ability to choose otherwise. In the matter of theoretical reasoning, the reaffirmation of the natural desire for knowledge and of the rational structure of the mind does not diminish but reaffirms epistemic freedom, even if they cannot consistently be rejected (without serious consequences for the mental health). In practical terms, freedom as the ability to choose otherwise in particular situations where that choice is possible is an ability that has to be trained. “Essential freedom” has to become “effective freedom.” So we are in a situation where moral responsibility for one’s concrete action depends on the degree of one’s effective freedom, but the development of effective freedom is itself a moral demand. Even in the matter of what we ordinarily consider moral evaluation without much questioning, the relationship between freedom, voluntariness, and

 Conclusion 233 responsibility is not as straightforward as the principle “ought implies can” would like us to think. Lonergan’s model of doxastic voluntariness is able to avoid both radical voluntarism and mechanical cognitivism because it presupposes a model of cognitive agency that is more flexible than the one that has influenced the positions on doxastic voluntarism in the contemporary debate. If it is possible to be responsible in epistemic agency in a similar sense to being responsible in moral agency, it remains to show whether epistemic responsibility shares the normative horizon of the latter. Lonergan defines intellectual good in Insight as well as in Method in relationship to the desire for knowledge. First, the desire is for knowledge. That allows us to make a relatively easy passage from what Lonergan says on the intellectual good to the question on the value of knowledge. The fact that Lonergan often speaks of truth as the primary end of cognitive activity should not confuse us. When Lonergan writes of truth as the good to be pursued, that regularly refers to knowing truth, i.e., to knowledge. That something is the fact does not have any value it itself. Knowing that it is the fact is what matters. When truth is said to have value in itself, it is the knowledge of the truth that has value in itself. Second, it is important to notice that the intellectual good is defined in terms of a desire, i.e., the desire to know. The intellectual good is not described as the fulfilment of an intellectual duty, nor is it described in terms of the value of true beliefs on their own. The specific epistemic value of knowledge is not only in its being warrant for true beliefs, nor in its implementation of epistemic duty, but in the fulfilment of the desire to know. The focus on the desire to know prevents us from ever letting the subject out of the equation. Obtaining knowledge has an impact on the subject, changing the subject. The fulfilment of the desire to know is a good of the person and, as such, an aspect of the holistic good of the person. By borrowing the term “perfection” from Understanding and Being, I described the notion of the intellectual good in Insight as a perfection that contributes to the ontological perfection of the human being. The moral good is described in similar intellectualist and ontological terms there. In Method the intellectual good is defined as the value intended in the quest for cognitive self–transcendence. As the cognitive level is one among the other levels of intentionality, and the level of moral responsibility has priority and control over them all, it follows that cognitive

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self–transcendence is an aspect of the holistic self–transcendence of the person in view of transcendental value. Since the best concretization of transcendental value is the state of being–in–love, the motivation for cognitive self–transcendence is best understood as the intentional feeling of love for truth or for knowledge. To return to the questions from the beginning of this Conclusion, does epistemic “ought” have anything to do with the moral “ought” in Lonergan? Yes, it does. Judgments ought to be justified or warranted in order to qualify as knowledge because, besides warranting the truth of judgments in question, justification contributes to the moral good of the person. Knowledge is better than accidental true belief not only because it warrants that a belief is true, but primarily because it contributes to the holistic good of the person in view of transcendental moral value. Knowledge is a form of credit given to the knower for her successful cognitive self–transcendence and it is similar to moral appraisal, even if moral appraisal in the full sense requires self–transcendence at other levels too. Does epistemic normativity fit into the boundaries of ethical normativity? The realms of the cognitional and of the moral overlap largely in Lonergan’s philosophy, but not completely. However, having in mind the importance and the nature of responsibility required for the cognitive state of knowledge, I cannot see how the normativity pertaining to the state of knowledge could be understood without the association with Lonergan’s ethics. Epistemic normativity in the strict sense is situated in one of those areas where the cognitional and the moral overlap, so that it essentially belongs to both of them. In that sense, epistemic normativity is a branch of moral normativity. Let us now return to the hypotheses regarding the relationship between Lonergan’s epistemology and virtue epistemology. I suggested in Chapter 4 that Lonergan’s epistemology is best understood as a version of virtue epistemology, i.e., of virtue responsibilism, to be more precise. The principal reason for that suggestion is the subject–centeredness of Lonergan’s epistemology. Lonergan formulates the epistemic normative properties of judgment and belief in terms of the normative properties of the cognitive subject, where the cognitive subject is conceived as one, conscious, and responsible throughout different levels of intentionality. I also suggested that Lonergan’s concepts of cognitive authenticity, self–transcendence, and with them connected qualities, are best understood as morally motivated intellectual virtues.

 Conclusion 235 In similar way to Zagzebski, he requires both the objective reliability of cognition and the subjective virtuous motivation as necessary conditions for knowledge. The motivation for cognitive self–transcendence is the love for truth or knowledge. As Lonergan describes them, their acquisition is similar to how virtues are acquired, and their evaluation is similar to how we evaluate virtues. Actually, only as lasting habitual dispositions are they able to guarantee that the self–correcting process of learning is a real and continuous improvement of knowledge. I also indicated that Lonergan’s cognitional theory supports the virtue responsibilist demand for a complex and rich model of the cognitive state of knowledge. Lonergan’s epistemology differs from Sosa’s virtue reliabilism regarding the importance for the justification of knowledge of epistemic responsibility and virtuous motivation. The roots of that difference are in their disagreement regarding the choice of the paradigmatic model of knowledge. While Sosa focuses on low– grade or animal knowledge, Lonergan would hardly consider such low–grade cognitive states knowledge in the epistemological sense. They are forms of cognition, even successful in their own way, but for Lonergan only judgment is a total increment of the cognitional process and as such qualified to be a candidate for knowledge. According to Lonergan’s theory, there is no knowledge without the elements of the subject’s reflection (actually, two of them: direct insight and reflective understanding). Moreover, judgment is not an abstract yes or no to the truth of proposition, but comprises, “sublates,” the lower levels of experience and understanding. That makes knowledge a rich, complex, and demanding cognitive state. (I hinted that Lonergan’s distinction between knowledge as “immanently generated” and belief as trust–based may make the requirements for knowledge even too demanding. It stands in contrast with Lonergan’s prevailing optimism regarding the advancement of knowledge.) Lonergan’s epistemology differs from Zagzebski’s virtue responsibilism in respect to the source of objectivity of intellectual virtue. Zagzebski proposes a dialogical intercultural exemplarist approach in the search for authentic virtue. Lonergan looks for a safer ground. He does not seem to be satisfied with any purely a posteriori foundation. According to his cognitional theory, we can derive and verify the features of cognitive authenticity and self–transcendence from the desire to know through a first–person self–appropriation. The characteristics of authentic epistemic virtue are transcendentally dictated

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by intentionality itself. Self–appropriation does not exclude interpersonal exchange of the knowledge acquired, but the return to intentionality is indispensable. Zagzebski, as well as the other virtue responsibilists, gives a central place to the virtue of practical wisdom, not only in practical, but also in theoretical reasoning. Lonergan agrees with her that, contrary to what Aristotle and Aquinas believed, most of our knowledge—including science—is contingent. Somewhat surprisingly, he rarely mentions wisdom in his cognitional theory in Insight and Method (there is more about it in Verbum, though). Nonetheless, reflective understanding—and not only in commonsense judgments, but also in scientific generalizations—does include the essential elements of phronesis, though it is more than phronesis. Ultimately, wisdom—practical and theoretical—is not to be learned from concrete historical examples, but through authentic self–appropriation of the transcendental normative dynamism of the desire to know. The fact that the features of authenticity are transcendentally dictated does not imply that they can be easily deduced and conceptualized. Lonergan’s transcendental method is based on acts, on performance, and not on conceptualization of the transcendental contents. Any reconstruction of the transcendental method is subject to concrete verification in actu, and the strength of that verification is also shown in its operational incontestability. Though I did not argue here for the validity of Lonergan’s transcendental method in specific epistemological issues such as scepticism, I do believe that the potentials of the transcendental way of arguing have not been exhausted, in particular the ones that regard performative transcendental arguments. Regarding Lonergan’s and Zagzebski’s models of the relationship between the epistemic and the ethical normativity, I have suggested they are so similar that they can share explanatory and defence strategies. Lonergan’s meta–epistemology cannot be categorized as deontologist or consequentialist. It gives best results if correlated to Zagzebski’s neo–Aristotelian eudemonist model of epistemic normativity. That is valid for Lonergan’s approach in Insight, and even more for Method. Lonergan’s insistence on a holistic approach to the cognitive subject that takes into account the unity of the levels of intentionality and the historical and narrative ambient of the subject’s intellectual life is in consonance with the programme of the virtue responsibilists. Lonergan’s criticism of the virtue theory of his age does

 Conclusion 237 not affect recent virtue ethics because the latter has in the meantime moved away from faculty psychology and accepted many elements of the narrative and intentionality analysis. Lonergan’s criticism of eudemonism does not affect Zagzebski’s virtue–responsibilist version of it because the latter takes seriously Aristotle’s recommendation that eudemonia is life of virtue. The intellectual flourishing or well–being as Zagzebski describes it is not a state of intellectual pleasure or a theoretical contemplation. It is the active state of love for knowledge which has all the qualities of a personal good for the person in question and of the transcendent objective good the person is oriented towards. Lonergan’s view that cognitive self–transcendence and intellectual conversion are aspects of holistic self–transcendence in the state of being–in–love fundamentally agrees with Zagzebski’s view that epistemic value is an aspect of intellectual flourishing, while the latter is a part of the general pursuit of a holistic human well–being. Later Lonergan’s emphasis on the role of intentional feelings in his value theory just makes the similarity with Zagzebski’s virtue epistemology stronger. In the context of Lonergan’s value theory, the unrestricted, detached, and disinterested desire for knowledge is best understood as love for knowledge. I mentioned at the beginning of this work the common cause that Lonergan and virtue responsibilists share. The neglect of and the truncated ideas about the subject are what Lonergan sees as the greatest danger for philosophy, with consequences in the theory of science and ethics. The neglect of the respective aspects of the consciousness is the cause for its reduction to the “animal extrovertedness,” for “scotosis,” and for “counter–positions” in general. A paradigmatic type of rationality should not be deduced from one type of cognition nor from the success of cognition in certain areas. Lonergan is looking for rationality in its integral setting. Both the search for, and the application of the criteria of integral rationality demand a responsible involvement of the subject. Contemporary virtue responsibilists seem to have a similar view. Code, Montmarquet, Zagzebski, and other representatives of virtue responsibilism have pointed to the connection between epistemology and ethics. It is interesting to see that virtue reliabilists—Sosa is one example—often come back to the questions about the relationship between metaphysics and epistemology. Reliability itself begs for an explanation. Lonergan’s “gnoseo–ontological circularity” (Kidder) that

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gives a headache to students who try to translate it into contemporary epistemological terms may become fashionable again. I hope that this analysis of Lonergan’s epistemology and meta–epistemology has made a helpful contribution to the efforts to make the results of Lonergan’s cognitional theory more available and relevant to the future development of mainstream epistemology. As I said earlier, some work has been done on the critical evaluation of the central elements of Lonergan’s epistemology and metaphysics in exchange with the contemporary streams in these disciplines, but the project is far from being over. One area where there is gap in Lonergan studies, and a conspicuous one, is the critical comparison between Lonergan’s theory of judgment and the contemporary theories of belief. Although much of the study of the way how human beings enter into contact with reality has moved into the field of neuroscience, the phenomenological approach to the same issue has not lost its relevance for the questions of epistemology and meta–epistemology. I have dedicated almost one full chapter to the issue of cognitive agency in Lonergan, but I still think that a more thorough work should be done on its contextualization. There remains the whole area of the study of understanding as a specific cognitive state with its specific value. The attention of epistemologists in the last century was almost completely focused on knowledge. It was recent virtue epistemology that reminded us about the relevance the study of understanding may have for the study of knowledge, but also in itself. Lonergan’s Insight has been one of the most important contributions to the phenomenology of understanding and it still has much to say about it. I have indicated that understanding as a component of the complex state of knowledge contributes to the value of knowledge, but I did not intend to study the dynamics and the value of understanding in itself. Finally, even if we agree with her critics that Zagzebski’s virtue responsibilist theory might not work in some questions of conceptual analysis, she and other virtue responsibilists are right about the need for more awareness of what Roberts and Wood call “regulative epistemology.” Meta–epistemology deserves at least its own chapter in textbooks of epistemology. That is where Lonergan’s method of self–transcendence through self–appropriation towards the integral picture of the subject should find its place. Virtue epistemology and regulative epistemology is certainly a promising perspective and a

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fertile environment for further development of the ideas Lonergan has introduced in epistemology, as well as a suitable framework in which Lonergan’s epistemology can be taught.

Bibliography 1 Works by Bernard J.F. Lonergan “Analysis of Faith.” 1951–1952. Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 20 (2002): 125–154. “Aquinas Today: Tradition and Innovation.” 1974. In A Third Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., edited by Frederick E. Crowe, 34–54. New York: Paulist Press, 1985. “Belief: Today’s Issue.” 1968. In A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., edited by William F.J. Ryan and Bernard J. Tyrell, 87–100. London: Darton, Longman, Todd, 1974. “Bernard Lonergan Responds.” In Foundations of Theology: Papers from the International Lonergan Congress 1970, edited by Philip McShane, 223– 234. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1971. “Bernard Lonergan Responds.” In Language, Truth and Meaning: Papers from the International Lonergan Congress 1970, edited by Philip McShane, 306– 312. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1971. “Cognitional Structure.” 1964. In Collection, vol. 4 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, 205–221. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988. Collection. Vol. 4 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988. “Dimensions of Meaning.” 1965. In Collection, vol. 4 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, 232–245. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988. Foreword to Bernard Lonergan’s Philosophy of God, by Bernard J. Tyrell. 1974. In Shorter Papers, vol. 20 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Robert C. Croken, Robert M. Doran, and H. Daniel Monsour, 290–291. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007.

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“The Form of Inference.” 1943. In Collection, vol. 4 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, 3–16. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988. “The Future of Thomism.” 1968. In A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., edited by William F.J. Ryan and Bernard J. Tyrell, 43–54. London: Darton, Longman, Todd, 1974. Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St Thomas Aquinas. 1940–1942. Vol. 1 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2000. “Horizons.” 1968. In Philosophical and Theological Papers 1965–1980, vol. 17 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Robert C. Croken and Robert M. Doran, 10–29. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. “The Human Good.” 1976. In Philosophical and Theological Papers 1965– 1980, vol. 17 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Robert C. Croken and Robert M. Doran, 332–351. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Insight: A Study of Human Understanding. 1957. Vol. 3 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992. “Insight: Preface to a Discussion.” 1958. In Collection, vol. 4 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, 142–152. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988. “Insight Revisited.” 1973. In A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., edited by William F.J. Ryan and Bernard J. Tyrell, 263–278. London: Darton, Longman, Todd, 1974. “An Interview with Fr. Bernard Lonergan, S.J.” Interview by Philip McShane. In A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., edited by William F.J. Ryan and Bernard J. Tyrell, 209–230. London: Darton, Longman, Todd, 1974. “Is It Real?” 1972. In Philosophical and Theological Papers 1965–1980, vol. 17 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Robert C. Croken and Robert M. Doran, 119–139. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. “Lectures on Religious Studies and Theology.” 1976. In A Third Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., edited by Frederick E. Crowe, 111– 165. New York: Paulist Press, 1985. “Metaphysics as Horizon.” 1963. In Collection, vol. 4 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, 188–204. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988.

 Bibliography 243 “Method in Catholic Theology.” 1959. In Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958–1964, vol. 6 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Robert C. Croken, Fredrick E. Crowe, and Robert M. Doran, 29–53. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. Method in Theology. London: Darton, Longman, Todd, 1972. “Method: Trend and Variations.” 1974. In A Third Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., edited by Frederick E. Crowe, 13–22. New York: Paulist Press, 1985. “Natural Knowledge of God.” 1968. In A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., edited by William F.J. Ryan and Bernard J. Tyrell, 117– 134. London: Darton, Longman, Todd, 1974. Phenomenology and Logic: The Boston College Lectures on Mathematical Logic and Existentialism. 1957. Vol. 18 of Collected Work of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Philip McShane. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964. Vol. 6 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Robert C. Croken, Fredrick E. Crowe, and Robert Doran. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. Philosophical and Theological Papers 1965–1980. Vol. 17 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Robert C. Croken and Robert M. Doran. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. “Philosophical Positions with Regard to Knowing.” 1964. In Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958–1964, volume 6 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Robert C. Croken, Frederick E. Crowe, and Robert M. Doran, 214–243. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. “Philosophy and Theology.” 1971. In A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., edited by William F.J. Ryan and Bernard J. Tyrell, 193– 208. London: Darton, Longman, Todd, 1974. A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J. Edited by William F.J. Ryan and Bernard J. Tyrell. London: Darton, Longman, Todd, 1974. “Self–transcendence: Intellectual, Moral, Religious.” 1974. In Philosophical and Theological Papers 1965–1980, vol. 17 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Robert C. Croken and Robert M. Doran, 313–331. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Shorter Papers. Vol. 20 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Robert C. Croken, Robert M. Doran, and H. Daniel Monsour. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007.

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“The Subject.” 1968. In A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., edited by William Ryan and Bernard Tyrell, 69–86. London: Darton, Longman, Todd, 1974. “Theories of Inquiry: Responses to a Symposium.” In A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., edited by William F.J. Ryan and Bernard J. Tyrell, 33–42. London: Darton, Longman, Todd, 1974. A Third Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J. Edited by Frederick E. Crowe. New York: Paulist Press, 1985. Topics in Education: The Cincinnati Lectures of 1959 on the Philosophy of Education. Vol. 10 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Robert M. Doran and Frederick E. Crowe. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988. Understanding and Being: The Halifax Lectures on ‘Insight.’ 1958. Vol. 5 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Elisabeth A. Morelli and Mark D. Morelli. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990. Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas. 1946–1949. Vol. 2 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.

2 Works by Other Authors Alston, William P. “The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification.” Philosophical Perspectives 2 (1988): 257–299. ———. “Virtue and Knowledge.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (2000): 185–189. Aquinas, St. Thomas. Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Opera Omnia. 7 vols. Edited by Roberto Busa. Stuttgart: Frommann–Holzbog, 1980. ———. Summa Theologica: Complete English Edition in Five Volumes. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. 1948. Reprint, London: Sheed and Ward, 1981. ———. Truth [De Veritate]. 3 vols. Translated by Robert W. Mulligan (vol. 1, questions 1–9), James V. McGlynn (vol. 2, questions 10–20), and Robert W. Schmidt (vol. 3, questions 21–29). Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1954. Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Christopher Rowe. Commentary by Sarah Broadie. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. ———. Posterior Analytics. In The Basic Works of Aristotle, edited by Richard McKeon, 110–187. New York: Random House, 1941. Arndt, Stephen W.“The Justification of Lonergan’s Cognitional and Volitional Process.” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 65 (1991): 45–61.

 Bibliography 245 Audi, Robert. “Doxastic Voluntarism and the Ethics of Belief.” In Knowledge, Truth and Duty: Essays on Epistemic Justification, Responsibility, and Virtue, edited by Matthias Steup, 93–114. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. ———. “Epistemic Virtue and Justified Belief.” In Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility, edited by Abrol Fairweather and Linda Zagzebski, 82–97. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Axtell, Guy. “Recent Work on Virtue Epistemology.” American Philosophical Quarterly 34 (1997): 410–430. Axtell, Guy, ed. Knowledge, Belief and Character: Readings in Virtue Epistemology. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. Ayer, Alfred J. The Problem of Knowledge. London: Macmillan, 1956. Baehr, Jason. “Character in Epistemology.” Philosophical Studies 128 (2006): 479–514. ———. Review of Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology, by Robert Roberts and W. Jay Wood. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, July 1, 2007. http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=10223 (accessed May 7, 2009). ———. “Virtue Epistemology.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2006 Edition. http://www.iep.utm.edu/v/VirtueEp.htm (accessed June 11, 2009). Barden, Garrett. “Insight and Mirrors.” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 4 (1986): 105–107. ———. “On Intellectual Conversion.” Journal of Macrodynamic Analysis 3 (2003): 117–141. Beards, Andrew. “Anti–Realism and Critical Realism: Dummett and Lonergan.” Downside Review 113 (1995): 119–155 ———. “Lonergan’s Relative Relativity: A Response to Ronald McKinney.” Modern Schoolman 65 (1987–88): 255–262. ———. Method in Metaphysics: Lonergan and the Future of Analytical Philosophy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008). ———. “Moral Conversion and Problems in Proportionalism.” Gregorianum 78 (1997): 329–357. Blackburn, Simon. “Reason, Virtue and Knowledge.” In Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility, edited by Abrol Fairweather and Linda Zagzebski, 15–29. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

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Subject Index A Acceptance 50, 77, 83, 112, 165, 175, 178, 182–183, 189, 193, 215 Activity, cognitive 10–11, 27–29, 45–46, 59, 62, 68, 74–75, 77, 97–99, 108, 110, 126–127, 130, 137–138, 159, 161–162, 167–168, 177, 184, 189, 191, 195, 199–200, 203, 206, 212, 214, 216–217, 219, 221–222, 227–228, 233 Aesthetic 100 Agency 13, 15–16, 18, 23, 26, 39, 44–45, 50, 53, 58–59, 61, 65, 67, 71–77, 79–80, 86, 93–94, 156, 159–162, 175, 182, 187–189, 191–192, 196–197, 219, 221, 232–233, 238 Analytic philosophy 9–10, 13–14, 40–41, 47, 58–60, 66, 78–79, 81, 120–122, 126, 128, 133, 136, 147, 157, 164, 194 Arbitrariness 89, 133, 161, 180, 185, 187, 189, 194, 197, 217 Assent 27, 30, 32, 47, 50, 165, 169, 172–176, 179–180, 182, 196, 224 Attentiveness 10, 65, 106, 114, 141, 143, 149, 153, 166, 168, 216 Authenticity, authentic 10, 95, 97, 105, 127, 129, 138–139, 141– 143, 150, 153–154, 156, 160, 189, 210–211, 217–219, 221, 225, 230–231, 234–236

B Being-in-love 210, 218–219, 234, 237

Belief analysis of 10, 27, 48, 50, 53, 75, 120, 160, 164, 177, 232 ethics of 9, 12, 15, 21, 26–28, 34, 52 Bias 29, 31, 51, 101, 107–108, 167, 202, 218

C Coherentism 58, 147, 150 Consciousness 38, 48, 55, 69, 77, 94, 99–100, 102–105, 116, 145, 152, 162–163, 170, 185–186, 207, 217, 237 Consequentialism 9, 17, 30, 35–37, 44–45, 60, 70, 74, 87, 143, 223–224, 236 Contextualism 80 Conversion 10, 30, 52, 119, 138, 211, 213–218, 224, 237 Counter-position 14, 51, 101, 149, 202–203, 237 Critical problem 131 Critical realism 116–117, 132, 214

D Decision to believe 47, 169, 177, 179–180, 182 Deliberation 11, 49, 76, 109, 114, 162–163, 177, 209, 216 Deontic 33, 44, 225 Deontologism 9, 16, 26, 30, 33–35, 44, 60, 87, 224–225, 236 Desire to know 10, 17, 30, 53, 69, 94, 98, 104–109, 118, 129, 133, 137–143, 149, 151, 153–157, 160, 163, 168, 173, 175–176, 181–182, 184, 187, 195,

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201–204, 207–208, 212–213, 220, 222, 224–226, 230, 233, 235–236 Differentiation of consciousness 14 Duty, epistemic 10, 30, 33, 35, 87, 221, 224, 233 Dynamism, cognitional 27, 104–106, 108–109, 111, 127, 156, 203–204, 211, 215–217, 219, 224, 230, 236

E Emotion 59, 61, 207, 210, 213, 215, 222 Eros of Mind 104–106, 114 Eudemonism, eudemonia 17, 23, 30, 33, 36, 43–45, 60, 73–74, 86, 200, 207–208, 210, 219, 221– 222, 224, 226, 236–237 Externalism 38, 43, 58, 60, 69–70, 94, 142, 150–152, 157, 223, 230 Extrovertedness 13, 94–95, 103, 237

F Faculty psychology 45, 54, 74, 132, 237 Feeling 17, 51, 55, 61–62, 74, 164–165, 196, 207, 209–210, 212–213, 218–219, 221–222, 234, 237 Finality 17, 99, 184, 187, 190, 203–204 Flight from insight 167, 171, 186 Foundationalism 58, 147–150 Freedom 13, 18, 50, 89, 159, 161, 173, 180, 182–191, 193–194, 196–197, 216, 223, 227–228, 232 Freedom, epistemic 11, 18, 30, 160–161, 191, 194, 196–197, 232

G Generalized empirical method 98, 142 Genuineness 141, 153 Goals, epistemic 36, 199, 201, 225 God 116, 147 Good intellectual 15, 18, 63, 82, 123, 199–208, 211–212, 218–220, 226, 233 moral 26, 36, 73, 186, 206–208, 210–211, 222, 226, 233–234

H Habit, habitual 154, 194, 235 Habits, habitual 49, 55, 154, 168, 186, 188 Happiness 71–74, 180, 190, 210 Heightened consciousness 104, 138 Heuristic anticipation 119, 146, 156

I Idealism 115–116, 119 Imperative 30, 33, 46, 106, 152, 206, 225 Indubitability 130, 145, 147 Infallibility 92, 108, 130–131, 147 Inquiry, ethics of 9–10, 15, 27–28 Insight 23, 28, 53, 62, 75, 107, 110– 112, 115, 117, 121, 130–131, 134, 136, 139–141, 144–145, 150, 164–169, 171–172, 174–175, 178, 181, 193, 235 Integrity, integration 11, 31, 46, 62, 81, 91, 94, 100 Intellectual ethics 14–15, 28–29, 37, 45, 73, 85, 90–91, 223 Intelligence 46, 105, 109–111, 114, 137, 141, 143, 149, 151, 153, 166–168, 171, 203

 Index 263 Intelligibility 111, 118, 149, 156, 168, 201, 211 Intentionality 10–11, 16–17, 54–55, 72, 74, 76, 102–107, 114, 116–119, 129, 132, 136–137, 142–145, 150–151, 163, 165–167, 189, 192, 208–213, 215–219, 223, 227, 230, 233– 234, 236–237 Internalism 34, 58, 60, 69, 137, 150–152, 157 Intuitionism 115 Invulnerability 14, 140–141, 144, 150, 172, 174–175 Irrationality 140, 176–177, 181–182, 186, 232 Isomorphism 111, 113, 132, 145, 156, 202, 230

reflective 13, 67, 83–85, 88, 91–93, 121–122, 223 visual paradigm of 94, 103, 115–116, 119

L Levels of consciousness 109

M

Meta-epistemology 15, 18, 24, 42, 51, 60, 74, 82, 125, 157, 220, 223–224, 226, 229, 236, 238 Metaphysics 14, 22, 24, 45, 51, 64, 76, 80, 89, 92, 97–99, 101–103, 112–113, 115–119, 126, 128, 130–132, 144–148, 173, 186– 187, 192–193, 195, 200, 202– 203, 205, 219–220, 237–238 J Motivation 9, 17, 29, 32, 40, 44, 46, 55, 60–61, 63, 67–68, 71–74, 78, Judgment 80, 85, 87, 91, 93, 105, 107, 154, act of 112, 119, 136, 161, 169, 171, 188, 192, 210, 219–220, 172, 175, 230, 232 222–223, 227, 230, 234–235 as affirmation 112, 117, 145, 160, Myth 103, 108, 119, 214 169–172, 175, 182, 185, 232 as synthesis 112 N of fact 117, 136, 139–140, 144–146, 171–172, 174–176, Narrative 40, 59, 95, 104, 236 179, 181, 193–195, 215 Necessity 11, 16, 94, 100, 139, 148, truth of 11, 42–43, 117, 128– 154, 172–176, 179–183, 187, 129, 133–134, 139, 144, 146, 189–193, 196, 232 173, 202, 215, 220–221, 234

K Knowledge animal 13, 67–68, 79, 83–84, 88, 91–92, 95, 120–122, 155, 194, 223, 235 definition of 22, 39, 65, 67, 69, 79, 93, 123, 128, 132–133, 155, 192, 194, 221 love of 17, 80–81, 237

O

Objectivity 10, 23–25, 36, 46, 99, 102–103, 130, 135, 138–139, 141, 143, 146, 153, 156, 165, 180, 214, 218–219, 235 absolute 135 normative 105, 138 Obligation 17, 30, 33–35, 80, 87, 170, 173, 176, 180, 185, 212, 224, 229

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Ontology 11, 42, 114, 128, 132, 134, 156–157, 173, 202, 204– 209, 211, 219, 233, 237 Ought 21–22, 25, 47, 77, 173, 194, 229, 233–234

P Perception 13, 38, 40, 49, 67–68, 77, 82–84, 89, 91, 95, 115, 120–121, 149, 164, 166, 169, 194–195 Perfection 36, 128, 180, 203–208, 220–222, 233 Personalism 12, 17, 33, 150, 182, 210 Pragmatism 23–24, 29, 36–37, 46, 147, 180, 207, 220 Preconceptual 106, 110–111, 119, 127, 136–138, 144, 146, 164 Prudential normativity 26

Q Question basic questions 126 for deliberation 114 for intelligence 110, 118, 167–168, 171, 209 for reflection 173, 210

R Rationality 12, 24, 29, 51, 59, 65–66, 81, 109, 151, 162, 170, 173, 175–176, 183, 187–188, 191, 232, 237 Reason practical 10, 29–30, 45–46, 52, 64, 114, 187, 189, 201 theoretical 28, 45–46, 74, 114, 179, 219, 232, 236 Reasonableness 10, 29, 81, 105– 106, 114, 129, 133, 141, 143, 149, 151, 153, 166, 169, 171, 173,

175–180, 182, 189–191, 193, 195–196, 225 Reliabilism 12–13, 16, 18, 36–39, 41, 43, 50, 57–60, 69–71, 75, 88, 134, 147, 150–153, 156, 224– 225, 229–230, 235, 237 Religion 27, 49, 81, 100, 105, 109, 120, 128, 178, 209, 211, 213, 216, 218 Representationalism 164 Responsibilism 12, 16, 18, 36–41, 43, 45, 50, 53–54, 57–59, 71, 75, 78, 88–89, 94–95, 97, 125, 134, 150, 152–153, 156–157, 159, 213, 221–222, 224–225, 228–229, 234–238 Responsibility epistemic 11, 15–16, 18, 29, 39–40, 45, 53, 57, 62, 77, 87, 93, 95, 106, 125, 138–139, 152, 155–158, 160–161, 167, 177, 181–184, 192, 194, 222, 225, 229–231, 233, 235 precept 10, 106, 114, 143, 166, 233

S Scepticism 31, 58, 66, 69, 79, 83–84, 127, 131, 147, 160, 176, 236 Scholasticism 103, 175 Scotosis 107, 184, 203, 214, 220, 237 Self-affirmation 130, 144–146, 149, 172, 176, 182 Self-appropriation 10, 12, 16, 98–102, 104, 119, 137, 141–142, 153–154, 156, 214, 230, 235– 236, 238 Self-correcting process of learning 64, 93, 128, 130–131, 140, 144, 146, 148, 155, 157, 172, 235

 Index 265 Self-transcendence 10, 13, 16, 138, 141, 143, 151, 153–156, 189, 209, 211–219, 222, 227, 233– 235, 237–238 Social 24, 40, 53, 59, 78, 90, 95, 107, 197, 206, 209 Spontaneity 42, 77, 105, 115, 138– 139, 142, 154, 156, 160, 163, 165, 168, 171–172, 214, 231–232 Subject truncated 16, 237 turn to 100, 132 Subjectivity 10, 101–103, 139, 143, 156, 217, 219, 230 Synthesis judgment as 112

T Teleology 33–37, 41–42, 224–225 Theology 27, 99, 105, 178, 190, 202, 210, 216 Transcendental method 98, 118, 126–128, 157, 236 Transcendental precepts 10, 95, 106, 114, 131, 141, 143, 152, 163, 166–167, 176–177, 182, 225 Truth as epistemic value 42, 44, 86–87, 212, 217–219, 221 as such 88, 220 criterion of 134, 139 definition of 134 love of 17, 73–74, 80, 87, 213 ontological notion of 134, 202 Truth-conduciveness, entailment 16, 37–38, 40, 64, 69–70, 82, 89, 92, 94, 115, 125, 134, 142–146, 155–156, 201, 221, 227, 230

U Unconditioned formally 113

virtually 11, 16, 18, 112–113, 117, 123, 128, 130, 132–137, 139, 144–145, 152, 155, 160, 170, 172–174, 176, 178–179, 192–194, 201–202, 212, 214, 218, 221, 231–232 Understanding as epistemic value 42, 92, 238 reflective 92, 111, 113, 115, 121, 123, 132–133, 135–137, 139–141, 145, 152, 154–156, 167–168, 171, 175, 179, 192, 194, 207, 221, 225, 231, 235–236

V Value epistemic 11, 15–18, 23, 29, 33, 36–37, 41–44, 50–51, 57, 60, 70–72, 74, 81, 85–87, 92–93, 122–123, 199–201, 221–226, 229, 231, 233, 237 judgment of 179, 194, 209–211, 215 moral 19, 26, 37, 45, 58, 60, 74, 157, 189, 192, 196, 213, 219, 226, 229, 231, 234 Verification 100, 109, 111, 115, 117, 119, 125, 130, 134–136, 144–145, 167, 236 Virtue epistemic 13, 18, 23, 30, 38–41, 43–44, 50, 53, 58–69, 75, 77–78, 80, 82–84, 89, 91, 95, 141, 150, 153–154, 156, 159, 183, 192, 227, 229, 234–235 moral 19, 38, 40–41, 60–63, 65, 75, 78, 156, 159, 192 Volitional appropriation of truth 163 Voluntariness 10, 13, 18, 26–28, 32, 47–50, 52, 68, 75–77, 159–163, 165–166, 168–176, 179–181,

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183, 186, 188–195, 197, 210, 228, 231–232 Voluntarism, doxastic 28, 45, 48– 50, 53, 63, 75, 77, 89, 160, 164, 167, 172–173, 177, 180–181, 183, 189, 191, 194, 197, 233

W Will 10, 45, 50, 55, 74, 76, 79–80, 154, 162–163, 166–169, 173–174, 177, 179–180, 186, 190, 195–197, 207, 217 freedom of 50, 53, 159, 161, 177, 184–185, 190–193, 195–196 Wisdom practical 54, 62, 64–66, 80–81, 95, 236 theoretical 64

Name Index A

DePaul, Michael, 39, 44, 72, 84, 248250, 256, 259 Alston, William P., 30, 41, 244 Descartes, René, 22, 33, 49, 115, 122, Aquinas, St. Thomas, 8, 190–191, 242, 143, 145, 148, 251 244 Dewey, John, 58 Aristotle, 22, 40, 44–45, 52, 54, 58, 62, 64–65, 73–74, 76, 82, 110, 126, 131– F 132, 211, 236–237, 244, 246, 248 Feldman, Richard, 49, 248 Audi, Robert, 27, 244 Firth, Roderick, 35, 246, 248, 258 Augustine, St. , 22, 49, 131, 196 Axtell, Guy, 36, 38, 245, 248–249, 251, Fitterer, Robert J., 52, 248 Fitzpatrick, Joseph, 14, 53, 248 253, 256–257, 259 Flanagan, Joseph, 55, 249 Ayer, A.J., 129 Fluri, Philipp, 148, 249

B

G

Baehr, Jason, 41, 81, 245 Gettier, Edmund L., 34, 249 Barden, Garrett, 116, 214, 245 Beards, Andrew, 14, 117, 148, 160, 245 Ginet, Carl, 34, 249 Goldman, Alvin, 28, 36–37, 249 Byrne, Patrick H., 54, 131, 246 Greco, John, 39, 41, 87, 249–250, 259–260 C Gregson, Vernon, 53, 250 Cassidy, Joseph P., 52, 246 Chisholm, Roderick, 34–35, 246 H Clifford, William K., 26, 246 Haack, Susan, 30, 250 Code, Lorraine, 12, 39, 246 Hibbs, Thomas, 152, 250 Cohen, Jonathan, 50, 246, 255 Hookway, Christopher, 27, 250 Coreth, Emerich,, 118, 246 Horwich, Paul, 42, 250 Cronin, Brian, 143, 212, 247 Crowe, Frederick E., 10, 55, 98, 100, J 103, 110, 127, 131, 169, 190, 208, 212, 241–244, 247 Jonsson, Ulf, 147, 251

D Dancy, Jonathan, 36, 247 David, Marian, 248

K Kant, Immanuel, 22, 26, 76, 99, 126-27, 190, 225, 256 Kidder, Paul, 118, 131, 251

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Epistemic & Ethical Normativity

Kvanvig, Jonathan, 39, 41–42, 251

L Laplace, Pierre-Simon, 116, 147 Lawrence, Frederick G., 51, 148, 251 Locke, John, 27, 78, 251

M MacIntyre, Alasdair, 81, 251 Marsh, James L., 51, 148, 251 Mathews, William A., 59, 99, 104, 252 McCool, Gerald A., 131, 252 McDonald, Scott, 152, 252 McKinney, Ronald H., 51, 148, 252 McPartland, Thomas J., 54, 252 Melchin, Kenneth R., 54, 252 Meynell, Hugo A., 54, 116, 148, 253 Miller, Edward J., 52, 253 Montmarquet, James A., 39, 50, 253

N

Roberts, Robert C., 39, 81, 255

S Sala, Giovanni B., 118, 255 Schwitzgebel, Eric, 164, 256 Snell, Russell, 51, 256 Socrates, 31, 42–43 Sosa, Ernest, 12, 22, 37–38, 44–45, 57, 82, 84–85, 87, 93, 201, 229, 247, 250, 256–257, 259–260 Steup, Matthias, 27, 34, 152, 201, 244, 248–250, 257, 259 Stump, Eleonore, 49, 152, 251–252, 257

T Tekippe, Terry J., 52, 129, 207, 257–258 Tracy, David, 148, 258

V

Velleman, James David, 161, 258 Needham, Rodney, 53, 254 Vertin, Michael, 188, 208, 247, 258 Newman, John Henry, 52, 131, 176, W 254 Walmsley, Gerard, 14 Welch, Margaret M., 52, 258 Percival, Philip, 30, 254 Williams, Bernard, 48, 258 Pettit, Philip, 190, 254 Wolf, Susan,, 188, 258 Plantinga, Alvin, 33, 38, 41, 254 Wood, W. Jay, 12, 39, 57, 78, 81, 245, Plato, 22, 41–43, 54, 58, 85, 118–119, 255, 259 131, 156, 164, 249, 253–254, 256 Z Pojman, Louis P., 48, 254 Pollock, John, 34, 254 Zagzebski, Linda, 12, 27–28, 30, 39, Price, H.H., 47, 254 42, 57, 61, 65, 72–74, 76, 229, 245, 248–251, 253, 256, 259–260 R

P

Ravizza, Mark, 188, 248 Rehg, William R., 127, 255 Reid, Thomas, 58 Riggs, Wayne, 9, 71, 255