Using Lonergan and Logic to Avoid the Hermeneutic Circle

Philosopher, Hans Georg Gadamer has pointed out that a person can only know reality through the use of sense experience, mediated by meaning. Thus, what we know is both limited, and made possible through the cognitive use of meaning categories. Gadamer points out, however, that if it were not for certain, "forestructures of knowing," that we would be caught in a type of "analytic spin" (Spann), were we can not really know anything objectively because there is no objective way of grounding our meaning categories, other than other meaning categories, which of course would involve an invalid, logically circular way of knowing.
I have found two diferrent ways of using "forestructures of knowing" which provide a way out of the analytic spin of the hermeneutic circle of logic circularity. First, you can use sense experience and concrete logic to ground logic itself, and then use logic as a way of critiquing meaning categories. Thus, any meaning framework that is used must not involve a logical contradiction. Additionally, a modified form of the Lonerganian Cogntional Structure can be used as well. Thus, the following cognitive approach can be used: Experience, Analytical Logic Understanding, and then Analogical Logic Understanding or Reflection. Ordinarily, a person might find that analytic logic at Level 2 of Understanding might involve some logical circularity or analytic spin. However, since a person can take the ideas of analytic logic and then use them with analogical logic (intuition), analytic spin is avoided, and a form of authentic subjectivity or objectivity is achieved. With analytic logic, one might assert that A is not B, or that the Apple is not a Banana, however, with analogical logic, one might assert that A is not like B, or that an Apple is not like a Banana. However, one migh also say that an Apple is like a Banana, since they are both pieces or fruit. In any event, the foregoing meets the requirements of Logical Positivism, since analytic logic and analogical logic, while different, are analogous, and are equally valid.

(C)Copyright 2011 by Anthony J. Fejfar