Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Intelligibilität der Wahrscheinlichkeit = per accidens = kata symbebekos; Lonergan, Aristoteles

Kurzinhalt: What is the intelligibility of probability? Aristotle's conception of the terrestrial process is that it is a coincidental process. Any event presupposes a cause acting *now*

Textausschnitt: Now with regard to the intelligibility: What is the intelligibility of probability as I affirm it? Well, probability as I affirm it is the intelligibility in what Aristotle would call the per accidens - that's St Thomas - the kata symbebekos. Aristotle's conception of the terrestrial process is that it is a coincidental process. Any event presupposes a cause acting now. Why does this cause act now? Well, you have to invoke some other cause to account for the 'now.' And why does that cause act now? You have to invoke some further one. And the cause that accounts for this other agent acting now is a cause per accidens. There is no nature that is such that it will cause other things to act now. Its nature is some universal property.

This is the Aristotelian theory.a Consequently Aristotle deduces the eternity of the world, and the fact that this terrestrial process is a coincidental process. To account for the regularity and continuity of terrestrial process he goes on to his theory of the influence of the heavens. That's where the theory of the influence of the heavens comes in, in Aristotelian theory.

Where does probability make a difference between Aristotle's account and the coincidental process? It's insofar as probability is the assertion of an intelligibility in the coincidental itself. Probability as conceived in Insight is an affirmation of an intelligibility within a field that classical law is not capable of handling.

So probability is not simply unintelligible as we conceive it. It presupposes the inverse insight that classical law cannot handle certain types of event, cannot provide a systematic general explanation of certain types of event. But through probability theory, you get the next best: you get something that's general, regards all cases, and so on.