Anthony Flood New York City June 27, 2010
Bernard Lonergan not only used a notion of "scotosis" (blind spot) in the 1950s, as I noted in comment no. 66, but in his 1959 Cincinnati lectures on education referred to "the unknown unknown," by which he meant "the range of questions I do not raise at all, or that, if they were raised, I would not understand, or find significant, or, if I understood what is meant, I would see no point in asking them. I would not consider it worthwhile finding out what the answer was. I could not care less whether there is an answer to such questions or not. This is the realm of the unknown unknown, the field of indocta ignoranta. And how big it is we do not know." Collected Works, Topics in Education, p. 89. Dunning's 2005 book is "Self-Insight," and the key affirmation of Lonergan's 1957 "Insight" is self-affirmation, i.e., affirmation of oneself as a unity of experience, understanding, and judging. If the index of "Self-Insight" is any indication, Lonergan's work lies somewhere beyond Dunning's horizon.