Thesis advisor: Patrick H. Byrne / In this dissertation, I attempt to contribute to Lonergan scholarship by bringing greater clarity to his notions of general and group bias. By applying these notions to a concrete event, the subprime mortgage crisis, I intend to shed light on their meaning and significance in a new way. Over the course of this dissertation, I will investigate and employ other theoretical tools that Lonergan provides, such as his notions of transcendental method, self-appropriation, common sense, and values, and especially the destructive impact of group and general bias upon the good of order. The theoretical ideas that are examined in this dissertation have a heuristic value, for they have the potential to help individuals notice areas and respond to issues that might have otherwise been overlooked. The subprime mortgage crisis, which arguably began when American house prices dropped in July of 2006, was the product of an accumulation of biased decisions over time. Lonergan's notion of the general bias of common sense afflicted many of the central parties involved in the subprime mortgage market leading up to the crisis, prompting them to conclude that house prices would interminably rise. Institutional relationships that were impaired by this biased orientation toward the housing market came to be further plagued by Lonergan's notion of group bias. Ultimately, I argue that subprime mortgage crisis was a manifestation of a breakdown in the good of order, which is a component of Lonergan's notion of the invariant structure of the human good. Chapter One consists of a presentation and explication of the set of Lonergan's theoretical tools that are utilized in this study. The chapter begins with an exploration of his transcendental method and then proceeds with a discussion that includes his notions of cognitional structure, self-appropriation, common sense, values and judgments of value, conversion, self-transcendence, authenticity, bias, and the invariant structure of the human good. Chapter Two serves a bridge between these theoretical terms and my analysis of the parties that were involved in the subprime mortgage crisis. In addition to arguing that the general bias of common sense distorted the decision making processes of many of the significant players in the subprime mortgage market, I will also contend that group bias was operative leading up to and during this crisis. The emphasis in this latter section will be on instances of "co-opted" group bias, or arrangements in which different parties cooperated with one another in mutually advantageous ways in the short-term, but to the detriment of the good of order. Chapters Three through Six each focus on one of the parties that played an instrumental role in the development and outbreak of the subprime mortgage crisis: subprime lenders (Chapter Three), arrangers (Chapter Four), credit rating agencies (Chapter Five), and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (Chapter Six). I examine key regulatory relationships in these chapters as well and note that, in many cases, they were ensnared by general and group bias. My concluding analysis is that, as an accumulation of biased decisions, the subprime mortgage crisis was an avoidable outcome, for individual submission to bias is not inevitable. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

<p> This dissertation examines Bernard Lonergan' s understanding of value, its assumptions and its development, for the sake of determining the role of human nature and human historicity in the experience of value. The categories of nature and history reflect a specifically modem form of the long-standing question of the relationship between physis and nomos- i.e., nature and convention, or 'nature and nurture'-for modernity has made us accutely aware of the historicity of cultural conventions. We ask of Lonergan: how or to what extent is the experience of value determined by human nature, and how or to what extent is it historically conditioned?</p> <p> To understand Lonergan' s position one must appreciate both the difference and the continuity between his earlier and later thought. Lonergan' s earlier thought reflects a rather Kantian fonnalistic account of value as the rational good, but his later thought embraces Scheler' s non-fonnal, material account of value-i.e., the good is an object of natural appetite-a position in which affectivity plays a role in revealing value. In spite of this development, there yet remains an underlying unity: there is a fundamental opposition of affect and intellect that precludes the possibility of understanding value as both rationally and materially good. Lonergan associates affect with natural spontaneity, and intellect with the deliberate:, progressive dynamic of history. Because of this, in his earlier work he presents value as rationally, and therefore historically, determined; yet in his ma1ure position value is grasped primarily in affective apprehensions, which are ahistorical intuitions, grounded in human nature and the 'reasons of the heart'.</p> <p> In response, it will be argued that this dichotomy of feeling and rationality can be transcended without sacrificing Lonergan' s account of self-transcendence.</p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis advisor: Frederick G. Lawrence / This dissertation seeks to answer the question, arising from Bernard Lonergan's 1972 lectures on philosophy of God and systematic theology, of why he thinks philosophy of God, or natural theology, should be included within the functional specialty Systematics. The author argues that a key to the answer is an analysis of the concrete operations performed by philosophers as they pursue the question of God. Relevant to the distinction between and unity of philosophy of God and Systematics are both natural knowledge of God, which consists of affirmations and negations that can be immanently generated, and supernatural knowledge, which consists of affirmations and negations that cannot be immanently generated and thus require belief in divine revelation in order to be made by humans in this life. There is a way in which Systematics presupposes truths unknowable without revelation that the natural knowledge of philosophy does not, since Systematics includes hypotheses that attempt to account for how those truths could be so, doing so in a way that goes beyond what natural knowledge alone provides. However, even if philosophy results in natural knowledge, when the philosopher is Christian, it often performatively presupposes supernatural knowledge of revelation inasmuch as its inquiry into the question of God often in fact is preceded by and originates from the philosopher's horizon of Christian faith, which is partially constituted by affirmations of truths unknowable without revelation. Performatively, Christian philosophers often seek to understand the Christian God in whom they already believe. This explains Lonergan's practical recommendation to transfer philosophy of God to the theology department, as well as his comment in the essay "Dimensions of Meaning" that once philosophy becomes "existential and historical...the very possibility of the old distinction between philosophy and theology vanishes." Sublated by Systematics, philosophy of God is the aspect of faith seeking understanding that results in analogical understanding and affirmation of God as an unrestricted act of understanding, affirming, and loving. This knowledge provides an explanatory (though analogical) understanding of the God in whom Christians believe through faith. It is even included in theological hypotheses, such as Lonergan's possibly relevant explanation of the Trinity, which takes its starting point from the psychological analogy in which the one unrestricted act of understanding gives rise to a judgment of value and decision. Philosophy also contributes to the control of meaning in systematic theology by ruling out explanations of revelation that are incompatible with natural knowledge. Incorporating philosophy of God into the functional specialty Systematics such that philosophy of God attains "its proper significance" and "effectiveness," the theologian can answer the question of God in a more complete way than is possible through philosophy alone. The dissertation begins in Chapter 1 by giving an account of the distinction between natural and supernatural knowledge of God--as well as the more basic distinction between nature and supernature--in a way that attempts to be adequate to the "the third stage of meaning," in which metaphysical distinctions must have a basis in self-knowledge and self-appropriation. Chapter 2 then explains Lonergan's approach to philosophy of God as that which results in natural knowledge, as in chapter 19 of Insight. Chapter 3 provides an overview of the functional specialty Systematics, which pursues understanding of truths affirmed in the light of faith, including truths unknowable without revelation. Chapter 4 discusses why philosophy of God, when considered in terms of its concrete performance by the Christian philosopher, often is preceded by and emerges from a horizon of faith (and belief) and so is an exercise in faith seeking understanding, with its natural knowledge contributing to Systematics' task of explaining the conditions for the possibility of truths unknowable without revelation. The Conclusion raises and begins to answer further pertinent questions, such as whether Lonergan's understanding of philosophy of God as Systematics holds for non-Christian philosophers. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: Frederick G. Lawrence / Taking as its mandate the expansive vision suggested by the integral ecology of Laudato Si’, in conjunction with the insights of contemporary ecological and evolutionary theologians, this dissertation proposes a framework for an integral, planetary, and cosmic theology of grace. It draws from and builds upon many of the insights of the leading Catholic contributors to ecological and evolutionary theologies, including especially John Haught, Elizabeth Johnson, Denis Edwards, and Celia Deane-Drummond. Through their various approaches, each emphasizes the created, cosmic effects of both the universal invisible mission of Holy Spirit and the visible mission of Christ’s Incarnation, intended from all eternity and culminating in his passion death and resurrection. Noting the strong resonances with traditional accounts of the economy of grace in human redemption, this dissertation seeks to provide a unitive account of God’s healing and elevation of all of creation through a creative and redemptive economy of grace. This project is also carried out in intentional dialogue with both with traditional understandings of grace, especially as articulated in the speculative and systematic synthesis of St. Thomas Aquinas, and with contemporary scientific understandings of world process. To facilitate this larger conversation, this dissertation also explores Bernard Lonergan’s transposition of grace, nature, and sin from the Medieval theoretical framework into a framework based on interiority, and it relies especially on Lonergan’s explanatory account of the dynamic orientation of nature as “upwardly but indeterminately directed,” as laid out in his generalized emergent probability. However, as Lonergan and his students have only attended to grace in relation to human contexts, the constructive part of this dissertation lays out an understanding of grace as “God’s created relationship of transformative love and care for all creatures that opens them up to ever deeper relationships with God and with each other.” This broad definition makes possible the identification of God’s grace throughout all of creation: humans, other animals, plants, and even “inanimate” matter are caught up in the networks of grace that bring them to greater perfection along three axes: According to their absolute finality, all creation may be observed as existing in a state of ontological praise of its Creator and Redeemer and in a state of eschatological expectation. According to their horizontal finality, each creature is empowered to realize its particular, fleshly excellences in line with its dynamically conceived nature, the account of which nature is described by the vast array of modern sciences. According to their vertical finality, each creature exists in networks of interconnection that undergird the possibility and, sometimes, the reality of surprising and irreducible inbreaking of renewal and emergence. At the same time, this framework also recognizes the elevation of human beings to not only these forms of relative supernaturality, but also to the absolute supernaturality of sanctifying grace and the habit of charity in which we are adopted into the intra-trinitarian life of friendship. By situating this theology of grace in relation to Lonergan’s transposition of nature in the form of his account of generalized emergent probability, the specifically theological character of this account of world process is both distinguished from and related to the other explanatory accounts offered by the whole range of the human, social, and natural sciences. To clarify these relationships and the particular role of theology in dialogue with these other sciences, the final chapters explore the hermeneutical and heuristic value of this theology of grace in relation to the larger conversations around emergence, convergence, and cooperation in evolutionary theory. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: Jeremy D. Wilkins / This dissertation draws upon the work of Thomas Aquinas and Bernard J. F. Lonergan in order to put forward an integrated theorem of the imago Trinitatis. The theorem of the imago Trinitatis, in Catholic theology, is a theorem about how human persons imitate and reflect the triune God. In Aquinas and Lonergan, the imago Trinitatis is identified with the intelligent emanations of word and love that occur within the human mind. But, according to Aquinas, the imago Trinitatis can be considered in two respects: first, as a likeness by analogy—that is, an analogical likeness—and, second, as a likeness by conformity between the human and the divine. The first two chapters explain each of these likenesses in Aquinas, and the next two chapters explain each of these likenesses in Lonergan. The final chapter of this dissertation proposes a complementary analogical likeness of the Trinity in humans: an analogical likeness based upon shared intentionality. It further explains how this likeness is related to the analogical likeness based upon intelligent emanation in Aquinas and Lonergan. In doing so, this dissertation defends an integrated conception of the analogical likeness of the Trinity in human beings, as it unites the analogical likeness based upon intelligible emanation occurring in the human mind and the analogical likeness based upon shared intentionality as interpersonal, coordinated activity. The imago Trinitatis, then, is at once personal and interpersonal, and the analogues for the Trinity in humans are both psychological and communal. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

No description available.

It has been long known that groups of adults learn and enact their learning in certain ways; what is little known is how groups learn and how they develop in cognitive complexity. This dissertation proposes a theory of group cognitive development by arguing that intentional adult groups are complex and dynamic, and that they have the potential to evolve over time. Groups are complex in that they are made up of individuals within different orders of consciousness (Kegan), and they are dynamic in that different orders of consciousness interact and conflict (Lonergan) during the formation and enactment of group vision, values, and procedures. Dynamic complexity theory of group development as it is referred to in this study is grounded in Robert Kegan’s constructive developmental theory and in Bernard Lonergan’s transcendental method. While both Kegan and Lonergan attend to the growth of individuals, their theories are adapted to groups in order to understand the cognitive complexity of groups, intragroup and intergroup conflict, and the mental complexity of leader curriculum. This theory is applied to two case studies, one from antiquity in the case of the first century Corinthian community engaged in conflict with its founder, St. Paul, and in one contemporary study of American Catholic parishioners engaged in contentious dialogue with diocesan leaders from 1994 to 2004. The parish groups experienced a series of dialogues during a ten year period over the issues of parish restructuring and the priest sexual abuse crisis yielding cumulative and progressive changes in perspective-taking, responsibility-taking, and in group capacity to respond to and engage local and institutional authority figures. Group development is observed against a pedagogical backdrop that represents a mismatch between group complexity and leader expectations. In Corinth, Paul’s curriculum was significantly beyond the mental capacity of the community. In the case of Catholic parishioners the curriculum of diocesan leaders was beneath the mental capacities of most of the groups studied. It is proposed that individuals sharing the same order of consciousness, understood as cognitive constituencies, are in a dynamic relationship with other cognitive constituencies in the group that interact within an object-subject dialectic and an agency-communion dialectic. The first describes and explains the evolving cognitive complexity of group knowing, how the group does its knowing, and what it knows when it is doing it (the epistemologies of the group). This dialectic has implications for how intentional groups might be the critical factor for understanding individual growth. The second dialectic describes and explains the changing relationship between group agency, which is enacted either instrumentally or ideologically; and group communion, which is enacted ideationally. The agency-communion dialectic is held in an unstable balance in the knowing, identity, and mission of groups. With implications for the fields of adult education and learning organizations, dynamic complexity theory of group development notes predictable stages of group evolution as each cognitive constituency evolves, and notes the significance of internal and external conflict for exposing the presence of different ways of knowing and for challenging the group toward cognitive growth. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2008. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry.

The thesis explores the nature of organization and governance by applying a method of intentionality analysis as elaborated by the Canadian philosopher and theologian, Bernard Lonergan, in his two monumental works, Insight – a study of human understanding, and Method in Theology. The project arose from the writer’s own experience in management education and consultancy. Admittedly, intentionality analysis has not been a major theme in the management literature. However, the late Sumantra Ghoshal drew attention to the consequences of neglecting the dimension of intentionality in business education and management theory, such consequences as unethical practices and even the collapse of corporations, as was the case with Enron. In a paper published by the Academy of Management Learning and Education in 2005, Ghoshal raised a number of crucial and epistemological questions, though he offered no easy answers. In the effort to rise to Ghoshal’s challenge, this thesis argues that Lonergan’s method of intentionality analysis opens new ways to approach the theory and practice of management. It thereby suggests a model relevant to all managerial tasks. Hence, it repeatedly stresses the value of asking questions and of attending to data. It indicates what is involved in the understanding of a given situation, in the making of judgments based on experience, and in the deciding on particular courses of action. In so doing, the thesis clarifies a number of intricate epistemological questions, while emphasising throughout, the vital role of self-knowledge and self-possession. The thesis is essentially a step-by-step discussion of the various elements in intentionality analysis in the context of corporate management. Hence, for the sake of brevity, it designates its “intentionality analysis method” with the acronym, IAM (and in reference to organisational operations, IAMO). To illustrate various aspects of intentionality analysis for the purposes of management education, the author draws on exercises previously used in his involvement in executive workshops. The usefulness of the IAM developed in this thesis is highlighted by comparing and contrasting it with selected management theories on learning and strategy as found in the writings of, for example, Belbin, Janis, Kegan, Revans, Argyris, Nonaka, Takeuchi, Senge, Mintzberg, Ansoff, Lewis and Jaques. The project concludes with a discussion of the pedagogical challenges involved in presenting such material to managers, with reference to some contemporary developments in business education.

No description available.

The goal of this doctoral thesis is to take a close look at the process of human understanding as foundations of theological method in postmodern age. In the very center of my research is so called "dynamic cognitional structure" presented by Canadian thinker, Bernard Lonergan. The purpose of the study is to analyze his epistemology in the context of the "generalized empirical method" and to investigate the relevance of this method for contemporary theology. The thesis also focuses on the question if theological epistemology could be based on intellectual knowledge only, or how far it requires authentic spiritual life of an existential subject. Key words: transcendental theology, cognitional structure, method in theology, Bernard Lonergan, authenticity