Lonergan and Kant: Five Essays on Human Knowledge by Giovanni B. Sala

Author:Giovanni B. Sala [Sala, Giovanni B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PHI022000; PHI026000; PHI000000
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 1994-03-19T16:00:00+00:00

5 Consciousness Is (Only) Experience of Oneself as Subject

Because neoscholastic intuitionism takes as its starting point the iudicia conscientiae, it assigns an important role to consciousness. In his response to my article, de Vries discusses this topic repeatedly. This problem, too, can be treated here only briefly. From the thesis that human knowledge in the full sense of the word (knowledge of reality as such) is a structure, it follows that consciousness is not knowledge, not even knowledge of self. We know ourselves as beings through the rational judgment ‘I am,’ which concludes the process of introspective knowing, just as we know the external world through the judgment that concludes the process of direct knowing.

Consciousness provides data insofar as it is experience of oneself. But experience is not knowledge of being; it is knowledge of the object as given. To experience must be added an insight into the given and, further, the unconditional positing of the mental synthesis, before the reality of the self (and of its operations) is known; prior to this, the self is known only as self-experiencing. There is no ‘percipere se esse,’ just as we do not perceive that things exist in space and time – unless one means by percipere the operation of rationality in the judgment.

The expression ‘accompanying consciousness,’ which de Vries too uses, is, precisely speaking, a redundancy21 – and often a misleading one. Consciousness is always and only concomitans. For every psychic act aims in two directions, towards the object as that which is experienced, understood, known (in the full sense of the word), desired, and willed, and towards the subject as that which experiences, understands, judges, desires, and wills. Hence, consciousness is experience of the self as subject. When I sit on a grandstand and watch soldiers march by, I see the soldiers: they are the object of the act of watching. But I cannot see the soldiers unless I am present to myself by the same act, and not, indeed, as another object alongside the soldiers, but as the one who is watching the soldiers (the objects) – precisely as the subject. Knowledge of the object without the opposite, complementary self-presence of the subject (that is, without consciousness) is impossible. It would be knowledge without a knower.

This example makes clear that consciousness is not a special, additional psychic act, but characterizes the same act of knowing, of sensible conation, of willing, of feeling, directed toward the subject, by which the subject is present to itself or illuminated to itself. The qualitative difference of the various modes of consciousness – sensible, intelligent, rational, and moral – corresponds to the qualitative difference of the various psychic acts through which consciousness arises. Consciousness is not reflection on oneself. Indeed the spectator in our example need not reflect on himself; he simply looks at the soldiers, and for this reason alone he is aware of himself. Besides, on what should he reflect? On himself! But if he is not already aware of himself, then

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.