Truth

I. The Desire for Perfect and Unconditional Truth

In his famous work Insight: A Study of Human Understanding,^[8] Bernard Lonergan presents an argument substantiating the existence of our desire for (and awareness of) perfect and unconditional truth (which he terms “complete intelligibility”). The argument may be set out in seven steps:

(1) Lonergan begins with the frequently experienced phenomenon of asking further questions immediately upon arriving at answers. We may remember our childhood when we besieged our parents with questions such as: “Why is this?” And our parents would respond, “Oh, because of that,” and we would immediately ask, “Well, why is that?” And they would respond with yet another answer, to which we would ask another question. This ability to continuously ask questions reveals our awareness that an answer is incomplete, that is, that the answer is not completely intelligible; that it does not explain “everything about everything.” If we did not know that an answer was incompletely intelligible, we would not ask any further questions “What?” “Why?” “How?” etc. We would be very content to know our names, and to respond to biological opportunities and dangers – nothing more. It is the awareness of “something more to be known” at the very moment when something is known that drives the further question.

(2) Lonergan affirms that he has a pure unrestricted desire to know, that is, he desires to know all that is to be known; and that he has the capacity to ask further questions when he has not yet grasped “all that is to be known.”

(3) Now, the question arises, how could I have the power to ask a question every time I understand something that does not meet the expectation of “all that is to be known?” It would seem that I would have to have some awareness (at least a tacit awareness) of “all that is to be known” sufficient to know that whatever I have grasped has not yet met this objective. Thus, I might move from analytical geometry, to the calculus, to non-Euclidean geometries, to the tensor, and know that the tensor does not adequately describe the whole of mathematical intelligibility – and it truly does not. Similarly, I can attain an understanding of space-time fields, electromagnetic fields, quantum fields, the grand unified field, etc., and realize that the grand unified field still does not exhaust all that is to be known – and it truly doesn’t. This applies to every area of inquiry and every field of knowledge, and I would know if my idea did not explain everything about everything.

(4) The question again arises, how would I always know that there is more to be known when I have grasped even the highest ideas through the highest viewpoints? How would I know that those ideas and viewpoints did not explain everything about everything? How do I know what qualifies for an explanation of everything about everything? How can I have a “pre-knowledge” (an awareness) of the explanation of everything about everything sufficient to keep on asking questions, and to know what will fail to meet the objective of an explanation of everything about everything? This last question presents an essential clue to our transcendentality. How would I be able to continuously recognize incomplete intelligibility (even in the highest and most grandiose ideas) if I did not have some tacit awareness of those ideas failing to qualify for complete intelligibility? Wouldn’t I have to have some sense of what complete intelligibility is in order to recognize the limits of the intelligibility of the idea I have already grasped? Doesn’t the recognition of a limit mean that I have to be beyond the limit? If I weren’t beyond the limit, how could I recognize it to be a limit? A limit of what?

Therefore, it seems that I must have a tacit awareness of “what is sufficient to qualify for an explanation of everything about everything.” Obviously, I cannot explicitly know all the contents that I do not know; but I could have a tacit awareness of what would be sufficient for an explanation of everything about everything. This would explain how I could reach very high viewpoints of mathematics, physics, and metaphysics, and still know that I did not have an explanation of everything about everything – and even have a sense of where to turn to find such an explanation.

(5) What could be the origin of this awareness? It cannot be a physical or restricted source (empirical data, finite data, or the contents of restricted acts of understanding) because the tacit awareness of “what is sufficient for an explanation of everything about everything” is always beyond every “intelligible reality which leaves a question unanswered,” and every restricted intelligible always leaves a question unanswered. Why?

Any restricted intelligible must leave a question unanswered because the intelligibility (information) available to answer questions about it is restricted. Thus, there can always be more questions about a restricted reality than there will be intelligibility (information within the restricted reality) available to answer them. Why? Inasmuch as the answers from a restricted intelligible have an intrinsic limit (i.e., they do not keep on going indefinitely), they will eventually be open to further questions which cannot be answered by the restricted intelligible itself. Thus, we might say that every restricted intelligible is more questionable than answerable. There will always be a domain of answers which give rise to more questions than the intelligibility of the restricted reality can answer. Therefore, the tacit awareness of “what is sufficient for an explanation of everything about everything” is always beyond any restricted intelligible.

Therefore, the source of this “tacit awareness which is always beyond restricted intelligibility” must be unrestricted intelligibility. Lonergan asks himself what unrestricted intelligibility could be. He knows it cannot be a physical reality, because the intelligibility of physical reality is restricted by space, time, and other algorithmically finite structures. He therefore settles upon a trans-physical or transmaterial reality such as an unrestricted idea (within an unrestricted act of understanding). Needless to say, such an unrestricted act of understanding cannot be viewed as a brain (which is material and restricted by space, time, and other algorithmically finite structures); so Lonergan refers to it as a “spiritual” reality. This spiritual reality, this unrestricted act of understanding which is the ground of the idea of unrestricted intelligibility, would seem to be the source of my tacit awareness of “what is sufficient for an explanation of everything about everything.”

(6) Even though the idea of complete intelligibility is the source of my tacit awareness of “what is sufficient for an explanation of everything about everything,” I cannot say that I understand this idea, because it must be grounded in an unrestricted act of understanding, which I, evidently, do not have.

But how can this be? Lonergan uses the terminology of “notion” (“the notion of being,” or what I would term, “the notion of complete intelligibility”). What is a notion? It is a presence to consciousness – not a presence that is held or controlled by my consciousness, but one that is held or controlled outside of my consciousness while still being present to it. Now if I don’t understand this presence, then how am I aware of it? I must be aware of it as something on the horizon; as something beyond my understanding, but, nevertheless, something which can act as a backdrop over against which I compare the ideas which I have understood. This would explain how I would know that there is more to be known at the very moment I have understood something new, and would explain how I would know that the tensor is not the complete explanation of mathematics, and that mathematics is not the complete explanation of intelligibility itself. I am comparing it to a backdrop that is so much more than the highest possible viewpoints, so much more than any restricted intelligible, so much more than any content of a restricted act of understanding.^[9]

Now, as I said, I do not understand, hold, or control this idea; it is, as it were, held and controlled for me as a backdrop to compare the intelligibility of the ideas that I have understood. But what is holding and controlling this idea for me as a backdrop? I must adduce that It would be Its source, namely, the unrestricted act of understanding.

(7) This would mean that the idea of complete intelligibility, that is, the content of an unrestricted act of understanding, that is, the divine essence, is present to me as a horizon, that is, as a backdrop which can be compared to every intelligible content I grasp through my restricted acts of understanding. The presence of the divine essence, therefore, must be the impetus for my awareness of incomplete intelligibility, the impetus for every question, the impetus for every act of creativity.

If the divine essence were not present to me, I would only be capable of recognizing objects of biological opportunity and danger, such as food, snakes, my name, affection, etc., but nothing more, for I would not ask questions about intelligibility (such as “What?” “Why?” “How? – which penetrate the nature of reality). My curiosity would be limited to biological opportunities and dangers, to discerning the mood of my master, to detecting whether an herb smells right, or a creature is dangerous. Intelligibility (the nature of things, heuristic contexts, “What?” “Why?” “How?”) would be quite beyond me – totally unrecognized by me. Therefore, I would not have a pure desire to understand – let alone a pure, unrestricted desire to understand. Without the notion of complete intelligibility (the presence of the idea of complete intelligibility, the presence of the divine essence), I would find fulfillment through a fine piece of meat and ignore the tensor.

The above argument for the existence of our transcendental awareness of complete intelligibility (and the presence of its trans-physical, unrestricted source to our consciousness) is remarkably probative. Regrettably, the cost we must pay for this probity is the nuance and complexity of the argument. The reader will be relieved to know that the other arguments for the existence of our desire for perfect and unconditional love, goodness/justice, beauty, and being/home are less nuanced and complex, but consequently have less probity. Perhaps it is best for the reader to use the above argument as a foundation for and a light through which to see the other four transcendental desires, which express the fullness of our communion with their trans-physical source.