AN AAI8527639

AU Ross, Kelley Lee.

TI THE ORIGIN OF VALUE IN A TRANSCENDENT FUNCTION (METAPHYSICS, EPISTEMOLOGY, ETHICS, MIND, RELIGION).

IN Thesis (PH.D.)--THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN, 1985, 307p.

DD Order Number: AAI8527639.

SO Dissertation Abstracts International. Volume: 46-10, Section: A, page: 3058.

AB A theory is presented of the ontological ground and the epistemology of value. The theory continues and develops a type of theory that is characteristic both of the work of Immanuel Kant and of that of two particular post-Kantian traditions. Those traditions began with the near contemporaries Jakob Fries and Arthur Schopenhauer. In this century, the Friesian tradition is represented by Leonard Nelson and Rudolf Otto, while themes from Kant, Schopenhauer, and the Friesians are seen to come together in the suggestive psychological theories of Carl Gustav Jung.

This theory follows the precedent of Plato and Kant in distinguishing the cognitive grounds of factual and evaluative knowledge on the basis of a certain ontological dualism. That dualism is established by the use of the concept of intentionality to distinguish between a relative, or phenomenal, existence within consciousness and existence as such. Existence as such is further divided into existence as emptiness, contrasted with the phenomenal content of experience, and existence as the plenum of Eleatic Being. These divisions are set out in the Theories of Immanence, of Negative Transcendence, and of Positive Transcendence. The cognition of value is approached by a general theory of change, which may be applied to both causal change determined by natural law and purposive change determined by acts of will. Value is said to occur intuitively in causal occasions of pleasure and pain and non-intuitively, or unconsciously, as the purposive occasions of acts of free will, the cognitive content of which can then be recovered, Socratically, by reflection on the deeds. Following Nelson, then, the theory of knowledge is Platonic, that knowledge of value is in our possession and is used by us without our being immediately aware of it.

In metaphysics, in epistemology, and in topics relevant to philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and other philosophic disciplines, the result of the theory is to provide and account for the possibility of a variety of given kinds of value, the moral, the ethical, the aesthetic, and the religious.

DE Philosophy.

UP 9400. Revised: 931008.

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