If we become aware of our “biases” we can catch ourselves ignoring the evidence at hand, and upon reflection, wonder and question in a way, that looks at all of the relevant data, thereby allowing one to make true and accurate judgments. Reading Tad Dunne’s" On Being A Teen" illustrates how persons develop the biases without being aware of them. Reading that article helps make sense of this one!
First, there is the bias of the unconscious, what Lonergan calls the "dramatic bias." Dramatic bias operates at the level of elementary feelings and passions. Dramatic bias affects a person’s or a people’s outlook, it is shaped by their neurosis. Because of this, dramatic bias generates an unconscious, but truncated worldview. There are things that cannot, and will not be seen.
“Individual bias” entails a loss of sympathy with others so one looks only to self interest in work and family and so does not share the burdens of ordinary life or seek the common good.
Group bias leads to a failure to appreciate others, to nationalism, class hatred, ignorance of science or philosophy, of scholarship or religion.
General bias entails the common sense solution to all problems and so leads to religious decline, cultural decline, social decline and a failure to address personal or group spontaneous disorder. General bias leads to a general decline which can accelerate surprisingly. This aspect of egocentrism resists testing one's insights, to the extent that they exist, against the criterion of other's insights and experience. Intelligence and reason are not engaged and one flies by the seat of one’s pants.
Individual bias manifests itself in egoism. Egoism sabotages intellectual operations in order to serve the self-interest of the egoist. The egoist deliberately, but often unconsciously, or at least not responsibly, arranges events in order to satisfy his or her desires. At its most extreme, individual bias is manifested in the criminal and in crime's deteriorating effect on society. At a less extreme level, individual bias leads to a kind of dis-ease in the individual, causing alienation.
Group bias is individual bias writ large. It is self-interest at the level of a particular group. Because the criteria for satisfaction has shifted from the individual to the group, it is easy to be deluded into thinking the bias is for a seemingly "good" order.
"Group bias operates in the very genesis of common-sense views." Although intelligence thrives on continuous progress, the sensibility is embedded in a particular social order. Change is not easy and development at the level of a group is possible to the degree a group can intelligently respond to situations as they occur. Self preservation, however, precipitates blind spots as a group struggles to maintain its usefulness and its advantage. Intelligence, therefore, is compromised as it is forced to take a secondary position to the group interest. If the strong group, the group with advantage and power, those who have managed to use progress and social development for their own interests, are able to use the insights of operative ideas to there own advantage, there are always those who are unable to do this and so "fall behind in the process of social development." The oppressive injustice that emerges from group bias creates within its very orientation or operation a self-corrective. Ultimately distortions created by group bias surface in such an obvious manner that the group is destined for defeat. Thus, the nature of group bias creates its own ultimate reversal. For, not only is the group's bias revealed by the surfacing of neglected ideas, the revelation is accompanied by the power to realize those ideas. This is why Lonergan calls group bias the shorter cycle of decline: built into its very distortion is its self-corrective reversal.
General bias is a deeper, more pervasive bias the corrective or reversal of which, unlike group bias, is in no way guaranteed. What Lonergan calls the "general bias of common sense," (I 226) because of its pervasiveness, depth and insidiousness, generates the longer cycle of decline. For Lonergan, the particular danger of common sense, and hence its general bias, is in its extending "its legitimate concern for the concrete and the immediately practical into disregard of larger issues and indifference to long-term results." (I 226) Humanity turns to common sense to deliver it from individual and group bias which are motivated by self-interest, however, common sense is unable to rise above this general bias. Consequently, for Lonergan, common sense must be led, at a deeper level, by a human science. General bias prevents common sense from acknowledging and embracing ideas which consider the longer view or a higher viewpoint. This incapacity on the part of common sense is not only a lack of ability, it is also a refusal. The general bias of common sense cumulatively deteriorates the social situation. The possibility of a detached and disinterested intelligence becomes more remote as it shifts from mere irrelevance to complete surrender. The ramifications of this shift are disastrous for society; no longer is there a way to distinguish between what is social achievement and what is social surd, (I 230-1) no longer is there a possibility of a criterion of truth or a possibility of authority, in short, human intelligence has become radically uncritical. Existence is ravaged by a shifting that has no parameters and no points of reference. What is judged as progress is based on parameters that become completely turned around a generation (or less) later. Unless theory is related to practice, unless it takes its data from the empirical reality of humanity and not from separate, independent norms, it is deemed by the general bias of common sense as useless.
For Lonergan, the only hope for reversal of the longer cycle of decline stems from his notion of emergent probability.
What drives decline. Again, we experience a situation and an impulse to improve it. But we do not, or will not, spot what’s missing. We express our oversight to others, making it out to be an insight. If they lack any critical eye, they take us at our word rather than notice our oversight. We make a plan, put it into effect, and discover later the inevitable worsening of the situation. Now the odds of spotting ways to improve things decrease, owing to the additional complexity and cross-purposes of the anomalies. With each turn of the cycle, less and less makes sense. Such is the nature of situations that worsen.
Lonergan proposed that such oversights might be rooted in any of four biases endemic to consciousness: (1) Neurosis resists insight into one’s psyche. (2) Egoism resists insight into what benefits others. (3) Loyalism resists insights into the good of other groups. (4) Anti-intellectualism resists insights that require any thorough investigation, theory-based analyses, long-range planning, and broad implementation. In each type, one’s intelligence is selectively suppressed and one’s self-image is supported by positive affects that reinforce the bias and by negative affects toward threats to the bias.
Third Approximation: What drives recovery. GEM offers an analysis of love to show how it functions to reverse the dynamics of decline.
Love liberates the subject to see values: Some values result not from logical analyses of pros and cons but rather from being in love. Love impels friends of the neurotic and egoist to draw them out of their self-concern, freeing their intelligence to consider the value of more objective solutions. Love of humanity frees loyalists to regard other groups with the same intelligence, reason and responsibility as they do their own. Love of humanity frees the celebrated person of common sense to appreciate the more comprehensive viewpoints of critical history, science, philosophy and theology. Love of a transcendent, unreservedly loving God frees a person from blinding hatred, greed and power mongering, liberating him or her to a divinely shared commitment to what is unreservedly intelligible, reasonable, responsible and loving.
Love brings hope: There is a power in the human drama by which we cling to some values no matter how often our efforts are frustrated. Our hopes may be dashed, but we still hope. This hope is a desire rendered confident by love. Those who are committed to self-transcendence trust their love to strengthen their resolve, not only to act against the radical unintelligibility of basic sin, but also to yield their personal advantage for the sake of the common good. Such love-based hope works directly against biased positive self-images as well as negative images of fate that give despair the last word. To feel confident about the order we hope for, we do not look to theories or logic. We rely on the symbols that link our imagination and affectivity. These inner symbols are secured through the external media of aesthetics, ritual, and liturgy.
Love opposes revenge: There is an impulse in us to take an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. While any adolescent can see that this strategy cannot be the foundation of a civil society, it is difficult to withhold vengeance on those who harm us. It is the nature of love, however, to resist hurting others and to transcend vengeance. It is because of such transcendent love that we move beyond revenge to forgiveness and beyond forgiveness to collaboration.