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Panentheism. Revisionism. Anarchocapitalism.
Process, Insight, and Empirical Method
An Argument for the Compatibility of the Philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead and Bernard J. F. Lonergan and Its Implications for Foundational Theology.
A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Divinity School, The University of Chicago, for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
December 1983
Thomas Hosinski, C.S.C.
Volume One
I. Whitehead’s and Lonergan’s Interpretations of Empirical Scientific Method and Philosophic Method
o The Summary View
o The Detailed Discussions: The Debate with Positivism
o Understanding, Knowledge, and Scientific Method
o The Nature of Scientific Knowledge
o Summary
o The Grounding of the Fundamental Assumptions of Science
o Discovering the Limitations of Science
o The Method of Metaphysics: Its Relation to Empirical Scientific Method
o The Method of Empirical Science
§ The Summary View
§ The Detailed Discussions: The Analysis of Insight
§ Understanding, Knowledge, and Scientific Method
§ The Nature of Scientific Knowledge
o The Method of Empirical Science and Philosophy
§ Cognitional Theory, Epistemology, and the Method of Philosophy
§ Transcendental Metaphysics and Its Relation to Science and Scientific Method
§ Emergent Probability, Metaphysics, and Science
o The Method of Empirical Science
o The Method of Empirical Science and Philosophy
II. The Tenability of Whitehead’s and Lonergan’s Interpretations of Empirical Scientific Method
o The General Context
o The Problem and Criterion of Demarcation
o The Two Problems of Induction
o The Method of Empirical Science
o The Nature and Growth of Objective Knowledge
o Metaphysics and Its Relation to Science
o The Nature of Scientific Discovery
o Scientific Method: The Transcendence of Subjectivity in Personal Knowing
o The Problem of Induction
o The Structure of Tacit Knowing
o The Structure of Empirical Scientific Method
o The Nature of Knowing and Knowledge
III. The Influence of Empirical Method in Whitehead’s and Lonergan’s Analyses of Human Subjectivity
o Human Experience: The Source and Proving Ground of Philosophy
o Sense Perception and Causal Efficacy: The “Withness” of the Body and the Persistence of Personal Identity
§ The Analysis of Human Subjectivity: The Dative Phase
§ The Metaphysical Hypothesis: The Theory of Concrescence, Initial Phase
o Valuing and Purposing: Conceptual Prehensions, Subjective Aim, and the Rise of Novelty
§ The Analysis of Human Subjectivity: The Responsive Phases
§ The Metaphysical Hypothesis: The Theory of Concrescence, Responsive Phases
o Consciousness, Rationality, and Knowing
§ The Fundamental Problem of Epistemology
§ Propositions and Propositional Feelings: Simple Comparative Feelings
§ Intellectual Feelings and Consciousness: Complex Comparative Feelings
§ Knowing and Concrescence
- Lonergan’s Analysis of Human Subjectivity
o The Dynamic from Knower to Known: Cognitional Theory and Epistemology
§ The Self-Affirmation of the Knower
§ Epistemology: Knowing, Being, and Objectivity
o Transcendental Metaphysics
§ The Method of Metaphysics
§ The Elements of Metaphysics
§ The Metaphysical Elements as Ontological
§ Emergent Probability
- The Compatibility of Whitehead’s and Lonergan’s Analyses of Human Subjectivity
o Cognitional Theory and Epistemology
§ Experience and Knowing
§ Insight, Judgment, and Self-Affirmation
§ Epistemology: Self-Transcendence and Objectivity Metaphysics: Similarities
o Metaphysics: Similarities
§ Methodological Similarities
§ The Correlation of Lonergan’s Metaphysical Elements with Whitehead’s Categories
§ Similar Features of their Metaphysical Interpretations
o Metaphysics: Differences
§ The Subjectivity of the “Final Real Facts”
§ Value, Feelings, Purpose, and Decision
§ Time and the Stability of Metaphysics
o Summary
Volume Two
IV. God and the Philosophical Foundations for Theology
- Whitehead’s Philosophy of God
o Empirical Method and the Discovery of God
o God as Ground of Actuality and Possibility: The Primordial Nature
§ The Ultimate Metaphysical Problems
§ The Primordial Nature of God as Ultimate Ground
o God as Unity of Actuality: The Consequent Nature
§ The Originating Questions
§ The Consequent Nature of God as the Concrescing Unity of the World
o God as Subject-Superject
o God, Eternal Objects, and Creativity
o God, Metaphysics, and Religion
- Lonergan’s Philosophy of God
§ The Existential Subject and the Question of God
§ The Ground of the Question of God in Religious Experience
§ The Notion of Conversion
o The Characteristics of God as Cognitively Known
§ God and Moral Self-Transcendence
§ God and Cognitive Self-Transcendence
- The Compatibility of Whitehead’s and Lonergan’s Philosophies of God
o Methodology and the Discussion of God
§ The Methodological Clue
§ The Actual Methodological Difference
o The Idea of God
§ Similarities: The Unrestricted Act of Understanding and the Primordial Nature of God
§ Differences: Religious Experience, General Empirical Method, and the Philosophy of God
- Summary and Conclusions
V. General Empirical Method and the Relation between Science and Religion
- The Relation between Science and Religion
o The Ground of Relation in Subjectivity
o The Ground of Relation in the World
o The Ground of Relation in God
- The Interaction between Science and Religion
- Epilogue: Theology and General Empirical Method
Selected Bibliography