PO 1029

Seminary 6. Motivation: Conscious and unconscious

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Weve already learned humans are the only specie capable of wondering about the world,
about themselves and how do we function in order to be able do what in fact we do. After
Rene Descartes(1696-1659) the way we look at humanity changed, he proposed a concept of
humans as machines, and in this sense the investigation of human nature was affected in its
development.

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A fundamental question about humans is the origin of behavior and which is the motivation of
each act. In our investigation, there are essentials concepts like consciousness, unconscious,
self-appropriation that will be fundamental. In this seminary we will be able to understand
more about their functions, performances and importance in our live.

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Conscious
As always, an important thing in our study are the definitions, sometimes to be conscious of
something o somebody is understood just like to watch that there is something present, but in
our point of view is much more. When we say consciousness, we must not think just in some
sort of inward look because in consciousness are involved knowing and awareness. (1)
Knowing not just like to watch but like to gaze, to intuit and contemplate; awareness
because consciousness implies an immanent cognitional act that is unfolded. This means that
cognitional processes are really acts because are made with consciousness, even thou this
doesnt mean are per se deliberate. (2)In this sense its necessary clarify some biological acts
(metabolism, maintenance of ones organs) that are not conscious because occur outside
consciousness (not aware, not knowing), from other acts of which we are conscious and cant
be put aside (breath, growth of ones bear) even thou are not deliberate.

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In the cognitional act as part of the consciousness process there is an element that makes
possible that the aware of the cognitional act occur, as Lonergan said:

But one cannot deny that, within the cognitional act as it occurs, there is a factor or element or component
over and above its content, and that this factor is what differentiates cognitional acts from unconscious
occurrences. (Lonergan, 1954 p.321)
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Knowing one object

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Gazing, !
intuiting,
contemplating

Consciousness Awareness immanent!

Act Conscious
in cognitional act

Object Act

Conscious

Just sense, perceive;

merely presentes

In content
Not always!
deliberate

Unconscious
Biological acts like !
metabolism

* Basic elements of process of consciousness, conscious

and unconscious

In his article Lonergan affirms that not only cognitional acts are conscious, but also said that
by consciousness is meant an awareness immanent in cognitional acts. Such acts differ in kind
and also in level of awareness. Taking this in consideration he made a difference in the
consciousness: empirical, intelligent and rational. (2b)
Empirical consciousness: Characteristic of sensing, perceiving, imaging; in this case, is just
an awareness immanent act.
Intelligent consciousness : Characteristic of inquiry, insight and formulation.

Here the

cognitional process begins exhibiting its intelligence and operating intelligently, the
awareness is present but its awareness of what strives to understand.
Rational consciousness: Its the emergence and the effective operation of a single law of
sufficient reason, where the sufficient reason is the unconditioned. Its a refusal to assent
unreservedly on any lesser ground.
An example about the presence of intelligent and rational consciousness is a student who must
understand the process of condensation, the change of the physical state of matter from gas
phase to liquid phase, while he search the answer and made experiments he uses intelligent
consciousness; when he finally understands and further questions do not appear, he satisfies
intelligent consciousness and a sufficient reason for the consciousness appear (rational
consciousness).

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(3)These consciousnesss levels make evident the reality of our consciousness, the one, I,
especially in the humans relations, when my seeing and my hearing or your seeing and your
hearing are compared, we can compare them because is one I who actually experiments,
reflects and is rational.

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This ability of consciousness to compare itself with another one its the door to reflection
related to ones inner processes. (4)The first act is being aware of something, an object or an

idea (how we see above), the latter lie in adverting you are present to yourself when you are
aware of something else. It consists in empirical, intelligent, rational and rational selfconsciousness. It is adverting the fact that, when you are absorbed in the object, you are also
present to yourself.

Respect the I consciousness the case of Helen Keller is very symbolic, she was blinded and
deafened by scarlet fever when she was 19 months old, she lived in an empirical level, until a
good teacher explain her (7)the finger-language, the meaning of I arrive and with it, her
fully consciousness. Lonergan explains something I consider interesting in this sense

The words mean something, then there are concepts in mind, acts of meaning. If you or I hold that the words
mean something that is true, then there is a judgment. It is in judgments, concepts, and words that you make
your goal in knowledge. (Lonergan, 1990)

Taking into consideration the definition of motivation: the process of starting, directing, and
maintaining physical and psychological activities(Psychology&Life, 20th ed.), (8b)we can
think that the consciousness its motivated to increase, and do it, unless exists some repression
like we just saw in the case of Helen Keller. Mc Curdy explain it, in four examples of the
natural life: (8)
1- The baby goes from not distinguishing between its body and surrounding objects to
discover the I and increase self-awareness.
2- Distinction between sensed and imagined.
3- Moral or intellectual awakening, questions about the origin of his own actions.
4- Capacity of experiences of infinite and eternal order transcending.

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Unconscious
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At the beginning of this document we saw briefly how Descartes change the mood of
understanding the person, but soon investigators realized that things are different, not only by
the function of conscious, but also conscious decisions that doesnt seem to take care of
everything: obsessive thought, impulses, emotions that dont correspond to personal aims.
Slowly the concept of unconscious begins to rise. Jean Piaget explains that cognitive
unconscious consist in an ensemble of structures and of functions unknown by the subject
except in their results.

(9)Some observations that support the existence of processes not conscious are the power of
the hypnosis that make that some physics (increase of secretion of milk in woman, a man
called Louis V and the production of bleeding stigmata), and psychic (mesmerizing process
of surgery).

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(11)In some cases, like multiple personalities, the communication between conscious and

unconscious appear (Azams Flida: scribbled notes of herself when she felt that she would
shift at other state; she developed four personalities and Achille demon possesion)

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Self-appropriation
Above we talk about consciousness and how this able us to be aware of ourselves, if we wish
to reflect about self-appropriation is necessary to recognise that the conscious needs to be
present no to others objects or persons but to oneself.

Self-appropriation is advertence - advertence to oneself as experiencing, understanding and judging.

Secondly, it is understanding oneself as experiencing, understanding, and judging. Thirdly, it is affirming
oneself as experiencing, understanding and judging. (Lonergan, 1990)

This process of self appropriation is not automatic, its required to make an effort, we are
called to do it but we can find some troubles in the way; now well see an explanation of
Kierkegaard that has been taken by Mc Curdy to express this difficulties.

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In this process of ones realisation, Kierkegaard recognises that: the more consciousness, the
more self. But also in this way of ones realisation there are sources of despair or spiritual
imperfection, caused by a lack of balance in consciousness and willing to be oneself; this may
result from excess in the direction of finiteness or infinity, or of possibility or necessity.

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(10)A first source it is about infinity, man can be lost in infinity, because he not can focus or
limit his feelings, knowing and willing, is unable of knowing himself, either he lives outside
of himself or lost in his thoughts. The second source is about possibility,

to know that

everything can be possible, is a uncurbed possibility! And because everything its possible,
the self would always be searching; if he elects something he feels desperate. The opposed
source its the despair of necessity where all is seen as iron laws: God is seen with suspicious
Theres no law above God, in front of him they are persons that feel that there is no

freedom (fatalism) and others that think that there are only insignificant possibilities
(Philistinism), they live in a trivial way without determinant spirit. The third source it is about
the self, in the spiritual scale the man with despair conscious imagine that one could be and
wish to be another self, or the man conscious of himself and of the eternal, irrevocable nature
of self that accepts himself in a spiteful mood of defiance, because he denies God or wishes to
reject him, to brace himself on himself.

(10)In each source we could see how the conscious man has been braked in one way or
another, pushed outside of himself, provoking him an incapacity of accepting the life like it is
or rejecting the natural required effort to increase our humanity and reach the self
consciousness.

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On the other hand, throughout history, we have had some persons that speak and affirm that
they have experienced moments of special I-consciousness: St.John of the Cross,
Wordsworth, Richard Jefferies, St. Augustine, So Pope Gregory the Great, Blas Pascal; some
of them are religious people mystics; others not, but each one expresses in one way or
another this experience.
Conclusion
Thinking about consciousness in the way that we did is to assume that humans are always in a
process of knowing and awareness, but also is to recognise that there are one reality
underlying in us, the unconscious, that we need to come to therms with it and use it, to
continue a process of self-appropriation in our lives; a marvellous fact that is necessary to
value is how we were made to improve ourselves and from an anthropological religious point
of view we are called by God to one realisation that we call theocentric self-transcendence.
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P. Jos Francisco Gallardo Viera.

Bibliography
-Gerrig R.G; Psychology and Life, 2013,20th
-Lonergan B.J.F Excerpts from The notion of judgment, the notion of consciousness and The unity of
consciousness in Insight. A study of human understanding, London: Longmas Green, 1958, pp. 272-274,
320-325.
-Lonergan B.J.F. (1990) Understanding and being. The Halix Lectures on Insight, Collected works of Bernard Lonergan, Toronto: Self-appropriation, pp. 14-17; The value of self-appropriation, pp. 33-35; The unity of the
subject as given, and Self-affirmation, pp. 137-141.
-McCurdy H.G. (1961) The personal World, New York: Harcourt,Brace & World: Chapter 6; Consciousness and
the conscious self, pp. 178-207; Chapter 7: The Unconscious: preliminary view, pp. 208-237.
-Piaget J. (1978) The affective unconscious and the cognitive unconscious, journal of the American
Psychoanalytic Association, 21, pp249-261