Developing consciousness in organizations: The transcendental meditation program in business

This paper reviews retrospective, prospective, and case research on workplace applications of Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation technique for developing consciousness and human potential. The distinctive psychophysiological state of restful alertness produced by the Transcendental Meditation technique appears to improve employee health, well-being, job satisfaction, efficiency and productivity, in turn influencing organizational climate, absenteeism, and financial performance.This research has been supported by a grant from the Schweisfurth Foundation of Munich, Germany. The authors also wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and Sheila Swanson for editorial assistance.     

Meditation and flexibility of visual perception and verbal problem solving

This study investigates the effects of the regular practice of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique on habitual patterns of visual perception and verbal problem solving. The study’s predictions were expressed in the context of Norman’s model, which suggests that meditation reduces conceptually driven processes. It was specifically hypothesized that the TM technique involves a reduction of habitual patterns of perceptual and conceptual activation, resulting in (1) more effective application of schemata to new information and (2) less distracting mental activity during performance. This was predicted to result in improved task performance on task conditions in which either (1) habitual patterns of performance hinder or do not aid performance or (2) habitual patterns aid performance. Subjects began the TM technique, relaxed, or added nothing to their daily schedule for 2-week periods. In addition to generalized effects of the interventions, the immediate effects of the TM technique, relaxation, and reading were compared on a letter perception task. The general hypothesis was supported for tasks of tachistoscopic identification of card and letter-sequence stimuli, but not for the verbal problem solving task of anagram solution.     

Systematic changes in perceptual reactance induced by physical fitness training

The effect of life-change events on perceptual augmentation-reduction was studied in 72 subjects (40 men, 32 women). In three experiments the kinesthetic figural aftereffect was measured prior to and after either a physical fitness program, a course in yoga, or training in Transcendental Meditation. Each program lasted a minimum of 8 wk. Subjects completing fitness training, all of whom were initially classified as augmenters, became reducers by the end of their program. Subjects enrolled in yoga and meditation courses remained relatively stable in their perceptual tendencies.     

Physiological anxiety responses in transcendental meditators and nonmeditators

In Exp. I, the spontaneous GSR of seven Transcendental Meditators and seven nonmeditators was measured in a sequence of five conditions: stress (shock avoidance)--rest--meditation (meditators) or rest/eyes closed (nonmeditators)--stress (shock avoidance)--rest. In Exp. II, the spontaneous GSR of a similar group of subjects was measured in a sequence of three conditions: rest--meditation or rest/eyes closed--rest. Analysis of variance did not yield significant differences between meditators and nonmeditators although analysis did verify that the shock-avoidance task effectively produced anxiety. It was concluded that Transcendental Meditation is not an effective means of reducing autonomic responses to stress under the present testing conditions.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Books reviewed:
Julia Driver, Uneasy Virtue.
Michelle Grier, Kant's Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion.     

Transcendental Arguments,Conceivability, and Global Vs. Local Skepticism

Philosophia - In this paper, I argue that, if transcendental arguments are to proceed from premises that are acceptable to the skeptic, the Transcendental Premise, according to which “X is a...     

The Ethical Subject and Willing Subject in the Tractatus: an Alternative to the Transcendental Reading

Philosophia - The Transcendental Reading of the Tractatus argues that Wittgenstein endorses, under the notion of ‘metaphysical subject’, the existence of a willing subject as a...     

胡塞尔现象学的历史主义批判及其启示

该文从胡塞尔在《哲学作为严格的科学》中对历史主义的批判入手,继而分析他在《欧洲科学的危机与超越论的现象学》中对历史主义问题的阐述,最后对胡塞尔的历史哲学观点及其对我们的启示进行简单的总结。     

Kant and Kantian Themes in Recent Analytic Philosophy

This article notes six advances in recent analytic Kant research: (1) Strawson's interpretation, which, together with work by Bennett, Sellars, and others, brought renewed attention to Kant through its account of space, time, objects, and the Transcendental Deduction and its sharp criticisms of Kant on causality and idealism; (2) the subsequent investigations of Kantian topics ranging from cognitive science and philosophy of science to mathematics; (3) the detailed work, by a number of scholars, on the Transcendental Deduction; (4) the clearer understanding of transcendental idealism sparked by reactions to Allison's epistemic account; (5) the resulting need—prompted also by new studies of the thing in itself—to face up to the old question of the philosophical defensibility of such idealism; and (6) the active engagement with Kant's ethics and political philosophy that derives from Rawls's and others' work.     

Scepticism and the Development of the Transcendental Dialectic

Kant's response to scepticism in the Critique of Pure Reason is complex and remarkably nuanced, although it is rarely recognized as such. In this paper, I argue that recent attempts to flesh out the details of this response by Paul Guyer and Michael Forster do not go far enough. Although they are right to draw a distinction between Humean and Pyrrhonian scepticism and locate Kant's response to the latter in the Transcendental Dialectic, their accounts fail to capture two important aspects of this response. The first is that Kant's response to Pyrrhonian scepticism is also a response to Hume. The second is that aspects of this response are decidedly positive. In particular, I argue (1) that Kant believed Hume's scepticism manifested important elements of Pyrrhonian scepticism and (2) that both Pyrrhonian scepticism and Hume had a significant positive influence on the development of the Transcendental Dialectic.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Richard Eldridge, The Persistence of Romanticism: Essays in Philosophy and Literature
Robert Stern, Transcendental Arguments: Problems and Prospects
Linda LeMoncheck and James P. Sterba (eds), Sexual Harrassment: Issues and Answers
Margaret A. Crouch, Thinking About Sexual Harrassment: A Guide for the Perplexed     

On Kant's Conception of Inner Sense: Self‐Affection by the Understanding

Among the extensive literature on the first Critique, very few commentators offer a thorough analysis of Kant's conception of inner sense. This is quite surprising since the notion is central to Kant's theoretical philosophy, and it is very difficult to provide a consistent interpretation of this notion. In this paper, I first summarize Kant's claims about inner sense in the Transcendental Aesthetic and show why existing interpretations have been unable to dissolve the tensions arising from the conjunction of these claims. Secondly, I present my own reconstruction of Kant's model of inner sense, relying essentially on Kantian considerations found in the B‐version of the Transcendental Deduction. My main idea is that inner sense, for Kant, is a passive faculty that gets affected by the understanding performing its figurative synthesis on material given in outer sense. In the remainder of the paper, I highlight a few consequences of my interpretation and outline ways to deal with some objections.     

The significance of kierkegaard's interpretation of Don Giovanni in relation to Hegel's philosophy of art

Kant's Intuitionism: A Commentary on the Transcendental Aesthetic. Lorne Falkenstein. Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1995. pp. xxiii + 465. £45–50. ISBN 0–8020–2973–6.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Christopher Hookway, Truth, Rationality and Pragmatism: Themes from Peirce
Robert Stern, Transcendental Arguments and Scepticism
Robert B. Brandom, Articulating Reasons: an Introduction to Inferentialism
Samuel Guttenplan, Mind's Landscape: an Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind
G. Lynn Stephens and G. Graham, When Selfconsciousness Breaks: Alien Voices and Inserted Thoughts
Andrea T. Baumeister, Liberalism and the 'Politics of Difference'
Allen Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment: the Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture     

Book Reviews

Michele M. Moody Adams, Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture, and Philosophy
Béatrice Longuenesse, Kant and the Capacity to Judge: Sensibility and Discursivity in the Transcendental Analytic
Annabel Patterson, Early Modern Liberalism
Anthony O'Hear, Beyond Evolution: Human Nature and the Limits of Evolutionary Explanation
Patricia Curd, The Legacy of Parmenides: Eleatic Monism and Later Presocratic Thought
D.M. Armstrong, A World of States of Affairs
Jens Cavallin, Content and Object: Husserl, Twardowski, and Psychologism     

A Developmental Approach to Social Science: A Model for Analyzing Charles Alexander's Scientific Contributions

A seven-paradigm developmental model of social science is presented (behaviorism, gestalt sociologism, empirical positivism, multi-method eclecticism, postmodern interpretivism, cooperative ecological inquiry, and developmental action inquiry). Charles Alexander's research is interpreted as bridging aspects of several paradigms, using third-person empirical positivist experiments to demonstrate the effects of a first-person research/practice called Transcendental Meditiation. The author suggests the possibility of complementing current research on TM with explicit double- and triple-loop research on the second- and third-person practices within the TM movement.     

Reviews

Books reviewed:
Vincent Descombes, trans. Stephen Adam Schwartz, The Mind's Provisions: A Critique of Cognitivism
Steven Galt Crowell, Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning: Paths Toward Transcendental Phenomenology
Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch, Hegels Begriff der Arbeit
Katherine Hawley, How Things Persist
John Campbell, Reference and Consciousness
Peter Carruthers, Phenomenal Consciousness: A Naturalistic Theory
Joseph Levine, Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness
John Perry, Knowledge, Possibility, and Consciousness
Mark Rowlands, The Nature of Consciousness     

Radical Scepticism,How-Possible Questions and Modest Transcendental Arguments

According to radical scepticism, knowledge of the external world is impossible. Transcendental arguments are supposed to be anti-sceptical, but can they provide a satisfying response to radical scepticism? Especially, when radical scepticism is cast as posing a how-possible question, there is a concern that transcendental arguments are neither sufficient nor necessary for answering such question. In light of this worry, I argue that we can take a modest transcendental argument as a stepping stone for a diagnostic anti-sceptical proposal, and I use a Wittgensteinian modest transcendental argument to illustrate my point.     

THE POINT OF KANT'S AXIOMS OF INTUITION

Abstract: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason makes important claims about space, time and mathematics in both the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Axioms of Intuition, claims that appear to overlap in some ways and contradict in others. Various interpretations have been offered to resolve these tensions; I argue for an interpretation that accords the Axioms of Intuition a more important role in explaining mathematical cognition than it is usually given. Appreciation for this larger role reveals that magnitudes are central to Kant's philosophy of mathematics and to the part that intuition plays in it.     

Philosophy and the ‘anteriority complex’

The project of naturalising phenomenology is examined within the larger context of the philosophy of science. Transcendental phenomenology, as defended by Husserl, in opposition to the naturalistic enterprise, reflects a particular way of thinking about philosophy and its relationship to the empirical sciences that stands as an obstacle to the project of naturalisation. This paper develops a critique of a basic assumption made in this conception of philosophy, namely that it is possible to ask and answer questions concerning knowledge in the abstract, prior to and independently of the various investigative contexts which are the immediate concern of practicing scientists. To successfully naturalise phenomenology, we need to abandon this conception of philosophy.