In this text we have at least an indication of the complexity of conscious intentionality. Although Lonergan often wrote about the four levels as experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding, this was not to suggest that the process of knowing involved only these operations as a fourfold 'staircase' approach to knowing and doing. Rather, this was a short hand reference to a more complex process of knowing and doing. Further on in Method Lonergan indicates the complexity of knowing and doing that takes the pedological process one step further. This involves the way higher levels sublate lower levels.
Lower levels provide the content for the operations of the higher level.
However, it does not indicate how operations of lower levels might be operative in the higher level. In fact, the above quote indicates that the higher level introduces operations NOT found on the lower levels. So one could say that operations of inquiry are introduced on the second level but not operative on the first level. However, this quote does not refer to whether, for example, operations of the first level are operative on the second level. If we take the above quote within a first step pedagogy as articulated in the first position, we might get something like the following.