Beards, Andrew. Method in Metaphysics: Lonergan and the Future of Analytical Philosophy.
Monsour, H. Daniel
BEARDS, Andrew. Method in Metaphysics: Lonergan and the Future of
Analytical Philosophy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. ix +
383 pp. Cloth, $75.00.--The purpose of the book, Beards writes, is to
examine some recent work on metaphysics among philosophers working
within the analytic tradition in light of the thought of someone outside
the mainstream of that tradition, Bernard Lonergan. Lonergan's
major philosophical work, Insight, was first published in 1957. At the
time, the reviewer in Mind chided Lonergan for not attending to family
resemblances among the different types of sentences in which
"know," "understand," and "recognize"
occur. He judged Lonergan's entire project to be wrongheaded; for
in omitting any consideration of the logic of such words in ordinary
language, Lonergan had committed an error characteristic of
"arm-chair" philosophers: he mistakenly assumed that these
words stand for activities. The reviewer's remarks reflected the
then dominance of linguistic analysis as a style of investigation in
many of the philosophy departments of universities in the
English-speaking world. In the intervening fifty years, that dominance
has gradually weakened to the point where, as Beards points out (p. 11),
a surviving generation of academics who cut their philosophical teeth
when linguistic analysis was viewed as the royal road for dissolving
away alleged philosophical problems are now lamenting the metaphysical
turn within present-day analytic philosophy. Given this recent revival
of metaphysical concerns among analytical philosophers, Beards believes
"that a critical dialogue between Lonergan's approach to
metaphysics and that taken by analysts working in the area today is
singularly opportune" (p. 14), and he argues that the focus around
which the envisaged dialogue can fruitfully occur is the question of the
method of metaphysics.
Throughout the book Beards characterizes metaphysics as knowledge
of reality acquired through philosophical analysis and reflection, and
as "a basic semantics." He identifies critical realism as the
"key factor" for coherent metaphysics, and the central theme
of the book, he says, "is the way incoherence and mistakes in
metaphysics result from an overt or covert empiricist epistemology, on
the one hand, and from an uncritical idealism, or rationalism, on the
other" (p. 5).
After the introduction and an initial chapter that provides an
"overview" of the revival of metaphysics among analytic
philosophers, nine more chapters and a conclusion follow. The pivotal
second chapter attempts to explain and defend critical realism, as
Lonergan understands it, by first presenting Lonergan's
phenomenology of the process of coming to know things and some arguments
in favor of it and for the possibility of objective knowledge. This
provides the basis for the discussion of method in metaphysics in the
chapter that follows. In this third chapter, Lonergan's method of
deriving the metaphysical elements from the elements brought to light in
cognitional theory is briefly compared and contrasted with the
methodologies inherent in approaches of philosophers such as W.V.O.
Quine, Alex Oliver, David Lewis, C.B. Martin, Michael Dummett, Hilary
Putnam and Alfred North Whitehead. Also included in the chapter is a
sidelong glance at phenomenology.
Six of the remaining eight chapters consider some recent work in
analytic philosophy on a particular topic or set of related topics and
the possible contribution Lonergan's thought can bring to the
discussion. The topics include: the philosophy of mind, with a
particular focus on the metaphysics of the self (chapter 4); recent
criticism of the Frege-Russell position on naming, meaning and reference
by Saul Kripke and others, and John Searle's subsequent defense of
the position (chapter 5); natural and nonnatural or
"artificial" kinds, their ontological status, and the role of
description and explanation in knowing them (chapter 6); universals,
tropes, substance, and events (chapter 7); causality (chapter 8);
dispositions, development, reductionism, and supervenience (chapter 9).
Chapter 10 takes up what Beards calls the metaphysics of the
individual and the social in Lonergan's thought. Having argued
earlier in the book that for Lonergan knowledge of mind comes not
through unmediated or direct intuitive access to our thoughts or to our
conscious self but through the activities of mind embedded in human
intentional activities such as speech, and that therefore Lonergan
stands in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas, not Descartes, he argues in
this chapter that "Lonergan has much to say on the social,
intersubjective dimensions of human experience, and [that] his treatment
of epistemology and metaphysics are situated in that larger whole"
(p. 298). Included in this chapter are brief indications of
Lonergan's thought on ethics, the differentiations of
consciousness, the functions of meaning and the role of instrumental
acts of meaning, the ontology of language, mutual self-mediation, and
the ontology of history.
Beards contends throughout the book that Lonergan's thought
offers a Viable way forward on fundamental issues in metaphysics, and
his discussions of a wide range of topics is meant to provide concrete
evidence for this claim. He has written an illuminating book and labored
to be clear in his presentation of the material. Even so, it seems
likely that those readers who are knowledgeable in analytic philosophy
but unacquainted with Lonergan's writings will at times find his
arguments puzzling or unconvincing. I suspect that Beards hopes that
they will be at least sufficiently intrigued with Lonergan's
approach to metaphysics to be moved to give Lonergan a serious hearing
and so begin to engage in the "critical dialogue" that Beards
considers as being now "singularly opportune."--H. Daniel
Monsour, Regis College, Toronto.
