The prevailing interpretation of Kant’s _First Critique _in Anglo-American philosophy views his theory of a priori knowledge as basically a theory about the possibility of empirical knowledge, or the a priori conditions for that possibility. Instead, Robert Greenberg argues that Kant is more fundamentally concerned with the possibility of a priori knowledge—the very possibility of the possibility of empirical knowledge in the first place. Greenberg advances four central theses: the _Critique_ is primarily concerned about the possibility, or relation to (...) objects, of a priori_,_ not empirical knowledge, and Kant’s theory of that possibility is defensible; Kant’s transcendental ontology must be distinct from the conditions of the possibility of a priori knowledge; the functions of judgment, in Kant’s discussion of the Table of Judgments, should be seen according to his transcendental logic as having content, not as being just logical forms of judgment making; Kant’s distinction between and connection of ordering relations and reference relations have to be kept in mind to avoid misunderstanding the _Critique_. At every step of the way Greenberg contrasts his view with the major interpretations of Kant by commentators like Henry Allison, Jonathan Bennett, Paul Guyer, and Peter Strawson. Not only does this new approach to Kant present a strong challenge to these dominant interpretations, but by being more true to Kant’s own intent it holds promise for making better sense out of what have been seen as the _First Critique_’s discordant themes. (shrink)

"Analytic philosophy has leveled many challenges to Kant's ascription of necessary properties and relations to objects in his Critique of Pure Reason. Some of these challenges can be answered, it is argued here, largely in terms of techniques belonging to analytic philosophy itself, in particular, to its philosophy of language. This Kantian response is the primary objective of this book. It takes the form of a compromise between the real existence of the objects that we can intuit and that get (...) our knowledge started - dubbed initiators - and the ideality of the necessary properties and relations that Kant ascribes to our sensible representations of initiators, which he entitles appearances. Whereas the real existence of initiators is independent of us and our senses, the necessity of these properties and relations of appearances is due to their origins in the mind."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

This monograph is a new interpretation of Kant’s àtemporal conception of the causality of the freedom of the will. The interpretation is based on an analysis of Kant’s primary conception of an action, viz., as a causal consequence of the will. The analysis in turn is based on H. P. Grice’s causal theory of perception and on P. F. Strawson’s modification of the theory. The monograph rejects the customary assumption that Kant’s maxim of an action is a causal determination of (...) the action. It assumes instead that the maxim is definitive of the action, and since its main thesis is that an action for Kant is to be primarily understood as an effect of the will, it concludes that the maxim of an action can only be its logical determination. Kant’s àtemporal conception of the causality of free will is confronted not only by contemporary philosophical conceptions of causality, but by Kant’s own complementary theory of causality, in the Second Analogy of Experience. According to this latter conception, causality is a natural relation among physical and psychological objects, and is therefore a temporal relation among them. Faced with this conflict, Kant scholars like Allen W. Wood either reject Kant’s àtemporal conception of causality or like Henry E. Allison accept it, but only in an anodyne form. Both camps, however, make the aforementioned assumption that Kant’s maxim of an action is a causal determination of the action. The monograph, rejecting the assumption, belongs to neither camp. (shrink)

Adopting a Quinean criterion of ontological commitment, I consider the question of the ontological commitment of Kant's theory of our a priori knowledge of objects. Its direct concern is the customary view that the ontology of Kant's theory of knowledge in general, whether a priori or empirical, must be thought in terms of the a priori conditions or representations of space, time, and the categories. Accordingly, this view is accompanied by the customary interpretation of ontology as consisting of Kantian "appearances" (...) or "empirical objects." I argue against this view and interpretation. My argument turns on the opposition between the necessity and universality of the a priori and the particularity and contingency of the existent. Its main point is that the a priori can remain necessary and universal only if the existence of objects is kept distinct from it. (shrink)

This paper presents an interpretation of Kant’s understanding of the concept of an action of a subject as an instance of a causal way he has of understanding certain other concepts as well, including his concept of appearance and that of event. I will call this way of understanding a concept “a causal theory” of the object so conceived, e.g. a causal theory of an action, an appearance, or an event, because the indicated concept logically requires the existence of an (...) object as the cause of the existence of the object so conceived. The argument is that the theory I am attributing to Kant as his causal theory of action provides the basis for an interpretation of his theory of the freedom of the will that is integral to his moral philosophy. The paper thus starts with a general way of understanding his use of causal theory, continues with his understanding of the concepts of appearance, event, and action, thence to his theory of freedom, and concludes, briefly, with his theory of morality. (shrink)

Adopting a Quinean criterion of ontological commitment, I consider Kant’s theory of our a priori knowledge of objects. I am directly concerned with the customary view that the ontology of Kant’s theory of knowledge in general, whether a priori or empirical, must be thought in terms of the a priori conditions or representations of space, time, and the categories. Accordingly, the customary view is accompanied by the customary interpretation of the ontology as consisting of Kantian“appearances” or “empirical objects.” I argue (...) against this view and interpretation. The argument turns on the opposition between the necessity and universality of the a priori and the particularity and contingency of the existent. Its main point is that the a priori can remain necessary and universal only if the existence of objects is kept distinct from it. (shrink)

A new book by Stephen Engstrom repeats a criticism of Bruce Aune's of Kant's derivation of the universalizability formula of the categorical imperative. The criticism is that Kant omitted at least one substantive premise in the derivation of the formula: ‘Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.’ The grounds for the formula that are given in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, however, are said to support (...) only a weaker requirement, namely, that a maxim conform to a universal law. Hence, Kant omits at least one necessary substantive premise of the derivation. This paper attempts to show that nothing substantive is omitted from the argument. It only needs two principles of inference that it is assumed add nothing substantive to the premises. (shrink)

The role of transcendental idealism in Kant's theory of knowledge has been both deliberately underrated and inadvertently exaggerated. If conceivably not necessary, its role in Kant's explanation of the possibility of a priori knowledge in the Critique of Pure Reason is at least pivotal to the success of the explanation. On the other hand, though transcendental idealism depends on Kant's epistemological criterion of an existing object, or, simply, his criterion of existence, the criterion for its part is actually independent of (...) the idealism. In fact, it may be because this independence has hardly been recognized that commentators have been unaware of the role the criterion may actually be playing in the continuing controversy over the correct interpretation of the idealism. Altogether, this article addresses both shortcomings – the underestimation and the exaggeration of the role of the idealism in Kant's epistemology. While it places the idealism at the centre of the epistemology, it also separates the criterion of existence from the idealism. In highlighting this contrast, the article explains how the criterion may actually be contributing to the persistence of the ongoing dispute over the correct interpretation of the idealism. (shrink)

The present article attempts to evaluate various tenets of moral philosophy by reviewing empirical data from the field of organizational justice bearing on: (a) people''s concerns about fairness in organizations, and (b) the consequences of following or not following rules of justice. With respect to concerns about fairness in organizations, utilitarian claims that people believe that fairness requires distributions of reward based on merit were assessed. Similarly, evidence was reviewed bearing on the claim of psychological egoists that judgments of fairness (...) reflect a self-interested bias. Finally, Kant''s view that people should never lie was evaluated in light of evidence describing people''s actual attitudes toward lying. In all three cases, the underlying philosophical premises were concluded to be overly simplistic in view of complexities about human nature revealed in empirical research. In addition, evidence was reviewed that shed light on the teleological claims of utilitarians regarding the purported benefits of following two common organizational practices — using merit-based pay, and punishing harmdoers. Here, too, the empirical evidence (findings that these techniques do not consistently yield the greatest good for the greatest number) suggests that the premise underlying utilitarian thought is based on unfounded, overly simplistic assumptions about the effects of following various allegedly moral ideas. It is concluded that our analyses provide a useful first step toward the desired goal of business ethicists of integrating prescriptive and descriptive approaches to justice. (shrink)

We further develop a recent new proof (by Greenberger, Horne, and Zeilinger—GHZ) that local deterministic hidden-variable theories are inconsistent with certain strict correlations predicted by quantum mechanics. First, we generalize GHZ's proof so that it applies to factorable stochastic theories, theories in which apparatus hidden variables are causally relevant to measurement results, and theories in which the hidden variables evolve indeterministically prior to the particle-apparatus interactions. Then we adopt a more general measure-theoretic approach which requires that GHZ's argument be modified (...) in order to produce a valid proof. Finally, we motivate our more general proof's assumptions in a somewhat different way from previous authors in order to strengthen the implications of our proof as much as possible. After developing GHZ's proof along these lines, we then consider the analogue, for our proof, of Bohr's reply to the EPR argument, and conclude (pace GHZ) that in at least one respect (viz. that of most concern to Bohr) the proof is no more powerful than Bell's. Nevertheless, we point out some new advantages of our proof over Bell's, and over other algebraic proofs of nonlocality. And we conclude by giving a modified version of our proof that, like Bell's, does not rely on experimentally unrealizable strict correlations, but still leads to a testable “quasi-algebraic” locality inequality.“... to admit things not visible to the gross creatures that we are is, in my opinion, to show a decent humility, and not just a lamentable addiction to metaphysics.”J. S. Bell. (shrink)

Emotion-Focused Counselling (or Therapy) is one of the newer therapies that emerged in the 1980's. It uses a Person-Centred framework but integrates elements of other therapies, mainly Gestalt, attachment thoery and principles of emotion theory. It is mainly short-term. It is therefore a slightly more directive, skills based therapy than Person-Centred. Significantly it also has a robust evidence base to it, which gives it a weight and credibility that perhaps other recently emerged therapies have lacked. Robert Elliott and Les (...) Greenberg developed Emotion Focused Therapy and their names are synonymous with the approach. This book is simple, practice-focused and takes a textbook approach. (shrink)

What follows is a cursory response to Graham Harman’s article “Materialism is Not the Solution.” It seeks to branch out his conception of ‘form’ and more specifically, ‘aesthetic form’ whilst expanding on Harman’s principal objections to the materialist account of change, and how this may challenge the contemporary aesthetic trajectory of relational encounter: particularly Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics. Quite generally, Harman’s Object Oriented Ontology might be understood through two chief aesthetic mechanisms; the contingency of counterfactuals complimented with the preliminary development of (...) a nonmodern formalism. The latter is briefly cashed out in a philosophical juxtaposition to Greenberg and Fried’s modernist principles. (shrink)

It has been suggested that a reporting channel administered by a third-party may represent a stronger procedural safeguard of anonymity and avoids the appearance of impropriety. This study examines whistleblowing intentions among lower-tier employees, specifically examines whether an externally-administered reporting channel increases whistleblowing intentions compared to an internally-administered one. In contrast to the findings of an earlier study by Kaplan et al. :273–288, 2009), our results suggest that whistle-blowing intentions are higher when the reporting channel is administered externally than when (...) it is administered internally. We also find that an externally-administered reporting channel mitigates the negative effect of bystanders on whistleblowing intentions. Implications are discussed. (shrink)

Over the course of his distinguished career, Edward Weinshel has been a moral and intellectual force in contemporary psychoanalysis and an outspoken opponent of current trends in and out of the field toward dehumanization and deindividualization. _Commitment and Compassion in Psychoanalysis_, under the editorship of Robert Wallerstein, brings together 14 of Weinshel's major papers. The six clinical papers reprinted in this collection address the kaleidoscope of common personality organizations and propensities which, in their extreme variants, motivate individuals to seek (...) psychoanalytic assistance, covering topics that include "neurotic equivalents" of necrophilia, negation, lying, "gaslighting", perceptual distortion during analysis, and inconsolability. These clinical expositions are supplemented by eight theoretical papers in which Weinshel gives expression to the metapsychological paradigm of ego pyschology as it existed in the 70s and 80s. Four of the papers from the early 70s cover "the ego in health and normality," the transference neurosis, and various aspects of the training analysis. The remaining four papers, published between 1984 and 1992, chronicle Weinshel's notion of resistence as the clinical unit of the psychoanalytic process, his elucidation of specifically "psychoanalytic change" as it grows out of the psychoanalytic process, and his affirmation of modern conflict theory in the face of theoretical pluralism. Carefully edited by Robert Wallerstein and including an introductory essay by Leonard Shengold, _Commitment and Compassion in Psychoanalysis_ brings to contemporary debates the voice of a principled exemplar of the psychoanalytic calling. Balancing intellectual acuity with a profoundly caring temperament, and augmenting respect for the psychoanalytic tradition with a flair for original ideas, Edward Weinshel speaks to all who wrestle daily with the burdens, challenges, and healing promise of the impossible profession. (shrink)