The Levels of Intellect

The idea of self appropriation is that intellect should be able to note itself in its different operations and become as familiar with them as we are with seeing when we open our eyes in daytime. The idea is that consciousness might be conscious of itself in a full way. By contrast would be the approach which thought that everything should be understood by studying the brain, with consciousness being indicated by a certain measureable sort of brain activity, valuable as such an approach might be.

To man belongs animal extroversion and the fringe of intelligence found in animals. So we move to the shade when it is too hot. There is pleasure and pain. This is the world of the nursery but it stays with us throughout life, for the most part helping us but also sometimes leading us astray. It is helpful to recall this basic level, for it is constantly operative. Without it scientists could not measure, historians could not read, artists could not paint and philosophers could not learn or communicate. Without it, the vast world of commonsense could not operate technology, make a living, or promote justice and welfare. So important is this world that one might imagine the only task of intellect is to see that things are working – this would be the pragmatic philosophy. David Hume tends to confine us to this world. It is the world most men live in most of the time it seems to them, though there may be a tinge of respect for science or religion.

In fact, the normal experience of man is to learn a language and move into a world which is wider and deeper than the world of animal extroversion. In the world mediated to us by meaning not everything can be seen, and though imagination may try to escort everything, it falters at mathematical infinity or for that matter, at geological time spans.

The world into which we grow up is mediated by meaning, motivated by value, charged with feeling. We are enormously shaped by a people we come to belong to, usually so that we should be upright and useful citizens, and sanctioning and encouraging our development there may be a religious tradition. Belief plays a huge part in this appropriation, and we cannot possibly verify everything we come to believe concerning fiction and history, science and philosophy, religion and morals.

In addition to the world of animal extroversion, we move into a world of truth and being, where truth in the mind corresponds with reality lying usually beyond the mind. To some sorts of truth, generalisation belongs – so the heartbeat causes circulation of the blood in all bodies- while other truths are unique, so William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066. Self appropriation is to do with noticing and understanding one’s own cognitional operations. Similarly, we find here that some things are generalisations and some things belong to us alone. So we all have questions from time to time – it is a general state of affairs like the heartbeat – but coming to dedicate our life in love is usually a unique story I imagine.

Animals have sorts of questions belonging to their extroversion – which way did the fox go? – but most human questioning goes on in a thought process which has become interior, so that we think using words, concepts, and images trying to find the answer to our question. Aquinas refers to “phantasm” and Lonergan to “schematic image” as part of the matter being used when we have a question.

Perhaps it is helpful to distinguish phantasm and schematic image in the following way. Phantasm provides us with all the materials which might be helpful in answering the question and we work on them, dismissing this, focussing on that until we find a perspective which is illuminating and which gives an insight which might be helpful. The perspective which is illuminating is the schematic image. The Greeks realised that diagrams were helpful. I think it was Socrates who asked a child to double a square but the child’s efforts produced four squares because he doubled each side. There was a person who wondered why the car wouldn’t start when the garage had checked everything. Attention focussed on the key. A different key had been used. I would love to know how to irrevocably evangelise England anew, and through England, pioneer in so many things, the world, but here is a question so huge that in each generation one can only add a mite to the solution. I recall recusant Catholics who found their way forward was “to show charity to their non-Catholic neighbours”. There are questions to which you do not have the complete answer.

Insight though might yield several different possible answers to a question. If it is a question about ontology, there is only one possible answer. If it is about conduct there may be several answers of increasing difficulty. I think an element here is that the more heroic path may have a greater risk of failure because of weakness. So St Thomas More decided not to be a priest for some reason (perhaps there is more than one reason?!) he felt attracted to marriage. This was a way forward he thought he had the grace to carry out.

I have been piling three intellectual levels together. One is the level of question and possible answer. So a possible answer to doubling the square is to double the sides. The next is the level of answers which are sure, in which the true judgement gives one a hold on reality. The next is the level of answers which relate to conduct – what should I do?

The modern world relates closely to the third level, but without the second level, so that charismatic, loving, and affectionate people would guide the world forward with an enthusiasm which blinds them to the importance of truth and reality. For such questions take one into the philosophic miasma. That miasma has to deal with modern science and modern history. It brings in thought in a heavy and life demanding way. So easily it is dismissed. All you need is goodness, all you need is love. If a person is brought to you in the jungle with appendicitis, certain medical knowledge and skill would assist love to express itself, but it is to be acquired only through a process of training.

In ordinary language, idealism is what belongs to youth before a cynical realism breaks in on one’s living. In philosophic terminology, idealism is the idea that there is the life of the mind, there are meanings and values man cares for, but they are not related to reality since what is real lies beyond us. Critical realism is the position that we can know what is real. It sees in scientific truth sometimes the absolute attainment of truth and sometimes an asymptotic approach to the truth. Science is espoused in its positions and developments, and history in its succession of narratives. Certain absolutes are attained in the process of self appropriation including the capacity to be absolutely certain.

This then is human nature with the precepts to be attentive, intelligent, reasonable, and responsible. Providence places human nature in the context of a love which coming from God raises the whole level of meaning and value. Stirred by such love, the individual and the group must account for it and keep it alive. Theology is thus reflection on conversion, but it is this reflection going on in a new context. So in 1800, before the geologists, no one guessed at the age of the earth. The new idea emerging raises huge questions about the Bible and its Babylonian cosmology. With the benefit of a certain hindsight, one can say that the written Word of God is concerned with revelation, with giving to man a revelation which he could not attain by his own natural powers. So we praise three persons in one God, Father, Son, and Spirit.