Lonergan, Bernard Joseph Francis (1904–84)

The Canadian philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan approached the problems of philosophy by inviting his readers to attend to the mental acts in which they engage when they come to know anything. He claimed that these acts are of three fundamental kinds: ‘experience’ of the data of sensation, feeling or mental activity; ‘understanding’ possible explanations of that experience; and ‘judgment’ that one such explanation is in each case certainly or probably so. Denial that we engage in these three types of mental activity is actually self-destructive, since we have to engage in them in the very act of justifying such denial. In getting to grips with what it is to come to know, we also gain a vital clue as to the overall nature of the world which is to be known; and light is thrown on the relation between the natural and the human sciences, and on the questions of ethics and religion.