The health care needs of rural populations often differ from those of their urban counterparts. And the ethical dilemmas that caregivers face are distinctively shaped in rural settings, not only by resource constraints, but by the nature of life in small, close-knit communities as well.

Like _Beyond All Appearances_,_ _which it supplements, Paul Weiss’s new book is a fundamental work which faces all the hard issues which are not only at the heart of philosophy but at the core of our entire culture. Readers of Mr. Weiss’s phenomenology of religion will need no introduction to this new work which expands and clari­fies many of the issues raised in _Beyond All Appearances. _However, no knowl­edge of Paul Weiss’s previous books is required to understand (...) and appreciate this brilliant new exposition. Weiss’s plain style makes his ideas accessible to all intelligent readers, whether or not they have been trained as professional philosophers. Here in _First Considerations _Mr. Weiss addresses himself to such topics as actuality, internalization, evidence, names, substance, being, natures and possibilities, existence, unity and the cosmos—issues which have engrossed him as a moral philosopher and meta­physician throughout his distinguished career. In his progress through the ideas and issues expounded in this new book Mr. Weiss is concerned with the human condition distinctive of this species of ours. Rigorously applied, his moral philosophy is as complete and thorough as that of any of the major thinkers, and provides as complete a guide as, for example, that of Buddhism. A highly original work, no doubt well in advance of current trends in philosophy, _First Considerations _will provoke further thought and discussion and will be regarded as a seminal work in modern philosophical approaches. (shrink)

Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

HEIDEGGER tells us "to think is to confine yourself to a single thought that one day stands still like a star in the world's sky." This is a theme to which Heidegger keeps returning in his late writings when he searches for various "pathways" that will enable us to elicit and disclose thinking in its purity. It is the mark of genuine thinkers to possess and be possessed by a single thought that shines like a star and radiates throughout their (...) work and the pathways they pursue. Paul Weiss is such a thinker. Or to put the issue slightly differently, from his earliest work until his most recent book, there is a theme and variations that pervades all his speculative thinking. With nuanced subtlety he has persistently pursued the theme of the one and the many. Explicitly or implicitly, it is evident in everything he has written and is manifested in the entire range of his concerns whether they deal with the most speculative metaphysical and ontological issues or the most intimate aspects of human life. (shrink)

During the first week of June 1970, Marquette University sponsored a symposium to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of Hegel’s birth. For many of us who attended the symposium, it was a memorable week. It was among the very best meetings that I have ever attended - the very model of what civilized speech can be. The symposium was beautifully organized by our hosts at Marquette. A rare group of international scholars were invited to participate. In addition to Hegel scholars (...) from the United States and Canada, Otto Pöggeler from Germany, Eric Weil and Jean-Yves Calvez from France, David McLellan from England, Nathan Rotenstreich and Shlomo Avineri from Israel were present. Papers were distributed to all participants, and there was plenty of opportunity for formal and informal discussion. But what made the symposium so unusual was the spirit that pervaded it. There was a collective sense that we were on the threshold of a new era of Hegel scholarship in the Anglo-Saxon world. As Frederick G. Weiss reported in his “Critical Survey of Hegel Scholarship in English: 1962–69,” there was already clear evidence of a renaissance of serious interest in Hegel. If we consider the works bearing on Hegel that have been published since 1970, the evidence is now overwhelming. (shrink)

This book is an expanded catalogue of an exhibit of mid‐fifteenth‐ through seventeenth‐century drawings, woodcuts, engravings, and etchings emphasizing hands as objects of study, as teaching tools, and as reflections of the human being. In addition, it contains an extended introduction by the curator of the exhibit, Claire Richter Sherman, and four essays by other contributors on pertinent topics: the hand as an instrument of the intellect, manual reckoning, music, and chiromancy . These essays, which precede the catalogue itself, are (...) only loosely connected to the exhibit, but each deals with its subject clearly and crisply.In his composition on the hand as a means of expression, Martin Kemp traces the legacy of ancient thought as reflected in the various anatomical drawings from Leonardo through the detailed Bidloo prints. Kemp concludes that the hand remains “a prime mechanism for personal expression—for the manifestation of individual character and identity.” In the following essay Sachiko Kusukawa provides a succinct sketch of finger numeration, noting that a system alluded to by ancient authors was fully described by the Venerable Bede in the eighth century. Bede also wrote of a method of using the hand as a mnemonic aid in determining the proper date for Easter and other movable feasts. Finger counting remained popular throughout the Middle Ages but gradually fell into disuse in the West by the sixteenth century and was merely quaint by the eighteenth. Kusukawa does not, unfortunately, suggest a reason for the decline, but the spread of computation with Arabic numerals was surely a major factor.Next, Susan Forscher Weiss discusses the use of the hand in teaching music theory and scales. Although there are some indications of this practice in antiquity, variations on a system developed in the eleventh century by Guido of Arezzo were used to teach music through the sixteenth century. Finally, Brain P. Copenhaver discusses the history of the pseudoscience chiromancy . Already in existence in antiquity, palmistry, and other forms of divination, flourished despite the prohibitions of the church. Copenhaver concludes with a witty discussion of the hard times on which palmistry has fallen recently in California.As for the catalogue, it consists of eighty‐three monochrome illustrations, each with an extensive commentary about the artist, the subject, and the reason the item was included in the exhibit. These descriptions are frequently fascinating short essays in themselves, enticing the reader to investigate further. The organization is thematic rather than chronological, with six divisions : “Reading the Writing on Hands,” “Handiwork of the Creator,” “Messengers of the World,” “Knowledge on Hand,” “Whole World in the Hand,” and “Guiding Hands.” The faults are minor. Although the themes of the divisions themselves are clearly described in Sherman's introduction, several of the illustrations seem to have only a general association with the stated theme. A few are filled with details too small to be legible in the necessary reduction of plates to fit the book. Most of the illustrations, however, are excellent examples of the main subject of the exhibit and are fascinating studies in their own right.Generally, this volume is a valuable work for anyone interested in the history of the hand in science and the arts. The four prefatory essays are particularly instructive, and the prints are reproduced clearly, with elaborate descriptions of their historical context and their meaning. Accordingly, this book is much more than merely a catalogue; it is an important work in its own right. Throughout, the substantial references to other works indicate directions for further study. One only regrets that the exhibit itself was shown in only two venues. (shrink)

This volume is an introduction to both newer and more established ideas in the growing field of critical phenomenology from a number of disciplinary perspectives.

Combining the philosophy and musicology of T.W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Gilles Deleuze, Joseph Weiss makes an original contribution to the field of aesthetics and critical theory. Highlighting previously hidden connections between these philosophers' work brings into focus a new perspective on the dynamic relationship between music, nature, history, and technology. Musical expression in this study is presented as one of the core ways in which human beings are able to escape their more base natures and instincts. The complex (...) ways in which song is taken up across time and place is viewed through the prism of different technologies and histories. This historical process, which Weiss refers to as the 'instrumentalization of the voice', following Deleuze, is illuminated though a wide-ranging analysis encompassing lullaby, jazz, classical music, and the electroacoustic avant-garde. Deepening the aesthetic analysis of music in relation to the conceptual problems of continental philosophy, Weiss reveals enlightening theoretical consequences. By engaging with an eclectic range of 20th century theorists, including Primo Levi, James Baldwin, Édouard Glissant, Fred Moten, and Angela Davis, Weiss makes the argument that advanced music remains a refuge for political hopes that are as yet blocked from realization. Speaking to contemporary debates on post-humanism, memory, and the threat of neo-fascist social relations, the author outlines a bold new aesthetics of music. (shrink)

Roslyn Weiss offers a new interpretation of Platonic moral philosophy based on an unconventional reading of the Republic. Her basic argument begins with the point that Plato means for us to react badly to the philosopher-rulers of Book 7. She then makes the case that there are two distinct kinds of philosopher in the Republic--one that is ideal and one that is farcical--and that each represents a separate type of justice. Finally, she argues that Plato recognizes this dualism and (...) points the way toward a resolution"--Publisher's Web site. (shrink)

In On the Trinity 15.12.21, Augustine appears to endorse the KK principle (that if one knows that φ, then one knows that one knows that φ) in the course of giving an argument – the Multiplicity Argument – against the Academic skeptics. Gareth Matthews has disputed Augustine’s endorsement of the KK principle and presented a different reading of the Multiplicity Argument. In this note, I show that Matthews’s construal of the Multiplicity Argument is both interpretively and technically defective and defend (...) the attribution of some form of the KK principle to Augustine. (shrink)

Without directly addressing the Demarcation Problem for logic—the problem of distinguishing logical vocabulary from others—we focus on distinctive aspects of logical vocabulary in pursuit of a second goal in the philosophy of logic, namely, proposing criteria for the justification of logical rules. Our preferred approach has three components. Two of these are effectively Belnap’s, but with a twist. We agree with Belnap’s response to Prior’s challenge to inferentialist characterisations of the meanings of logical constants. Belnap argued that for a logical (...) constant to exist, its rules must be conservative over a previously given consequence relation and guarantee the uniqueness of the constant. The twist is that we require logical vocabulary to be provably conservative, not over a previously given formal consequence relation, but over a previously given meaningful vocabulary of a language. Uniqueness is also a feature defined in terms of provability: if two syntactically distinguished expressions are governed by the same rules, then formulas with them as main operators are interderivable. Belnap’s criteria are not only those for the existence of a logical constant, but more: they are what distinguishes logical vocabulary from all other expressions. It is the defining mark of a logical constant that it is provably conservative over the fragment of the language which excludes it and that its rules guarantee its uniqueness. The third component is the topic neutrality of logic. The provable conservativeness of logic over a previously given vocabulary of a language is motivated, in part, by appeal to molecularism in the theory of meaning. Molecularity is a feature endorsed by the theory of meaning as a whole, so it does not distinguish logical constants from other expressions. The same is true for conservativeness. We argue that molecularity, and hence conservativeness, are implicit presuppositions of speakers’ use of language: the addition of new vocabulary to a language is presupposed to be conservative. But this presupposition is one that we should be able reflectively to endorse (such as when attempting a rational reconstruction of the use of the vocabulary). Thus, where conservativeness is found to fail, this defect should be remedied and the use of the vocabulary corrected (as in classical negation) or excised altogether (as in pejoratives). We go on to characterise a notion of topic neutrality, which we argue applies to logical vocabulary. We then note that reflective endorsement of the conservativeness of a topic neutral vocabulary requires a proof that the vocabulary is conservative relative to any base vocabulary. Thus we require that logical vocabulary be demonstrably conservative. Allying this requirement, distinctive of logic, to a general consideration about the commitments of assertion yields a mode of justification for logical constants akin to some conceptions of Harmony, i.e., to the idea that the consequences of assertion of a logical complex need to be warranted by the grounds and ought to be the strongest consequences warranted by the grounds. Intuitionistic logic acquires a somewhat familiar justification but emanating from a new motivation. (shrink)

Perverse Desire and the Ambiguous Icon analyzes the limits of the applicability of psychoanalytic theory to aesthetic discourse, and in doing so expands the range of non-normative paradigms of spectatorial identification and sexual identity. These considerations are based on the epistemological premises that the ideal seldom coincides with the empirical, and that identification is always partial, fragmented, heterogeneous, mixed, such that total identification would be tantamount to delirium. The imagination is but the ephemera of partial objects torn from culture and (...) history, the transgression by fragmentation of a contemporary cosmos all too unified and all too controlled to admit the most singular, and idiosyncratic, phantasms of our desires. Thus we must posit an aesthetics where theory and interpretation are juxtaposed to, or traced above, the effects of the passions, where a muscular contraction or spasm is worth as much as a concept. It is here, at the fragile limit between iconophilia and iconoclasm, that the ironies and exigencies of poetic justice reside. (shrink)

This volume argues that Wittgenstein’s philosophy of religion and his thought in general continue to be highly relevant for present and future research on interreligious relations.

Modern Jewish Philosophy and the Politics of Divine Violence Is commitment to God compatible with modern citizenship? In this book, Daniel H. Weiss provides new readings of four modern Jewish philosophers - Moses Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and Walter Benjamin - in light of classical rabbinic accounts of God's sovereignty, divine and human violence, and the embodied human being as the image of God. He demonstrates how classical rabbinic literature is relevant to contemporary political and philosophical debates. (...) class='Hi'>Weiss brings to light striking political aspects of the writings of the modern Jewish philosophers, who have often been understood as non-political. In addition, he shows how the four modern thinkers are more radical and more shaped by Jewish tradition than has previously been thought. Taken as a whole, Weiss' book argues for a fundamental rethinking of the relationship between Judaism and politics, the history of Jewish thought, and the ethical and political dynamics of the broader Western philosophical tradition. (shrink)

Among Dunn’s many important contributions to relevance logic was his work on the system RM (R-mingle). Although RM is an interesting system in its own right, it is widely considered to be too strong. In this chapter, I revisit a closely related system, RM0 (sometimes known as ‘constructive mingle’), which includes the mingle axiom while not degenerating in the way that RM itself does. My main interest will be in examining this logic from two related semantical perspectives. First, I give (...) a purely operational bisemilattice semantics for it by adapting previous work of Humberstone. Second, I examine a more conventional algebraic semantics for it and discuss how this relates to the operational semantics. A novel operational semantics for J (intuitionistic logic) as well as its conventional Heyting algebraic semantics emerge as special cases of the corresponding semantics for RM0. The results of this chapter suggest that RM0 is a more interesting logic than has been appreciated and that Humberstone’s operational semantic framework similarly deserves more attention than it has received. (shrink)

The Exchange of Words is a philosophical exploration of human testimony, specifically as a form of intersubjective understanding in which speakers communicate by making themselves accountable for the truth of what they say. This account weaves together themes from philosophy of language, moral psychology, action theory, and epistemology, for a new approach to this basic human phenomenon.

Star Trek becomes an ideal vehicle for modern narratives exploring the nature of being human in a technological age. In its fifty years of robots, androids, cyborgs, and alien others on the small and big screens, Star Trek has played a function not unlike that of Greek myth. Whether dealing with Greek gods such as Apollo, salt‐craving beasts and Hortas, or hive minds and androids, Star Trek fashions moderns’ myths that provoke reflection on what it means to be human and (...) transformations that either preserve or destroy one's humanity. It is seen that the feminist model in the long processes of development of the android Data, liberated Borg drone Seven of Nine, and Voyager's holographic Doctor, and their struggle to understand, if not finally attain, humanity. As children who were insufficiently socialized into their own families, these three characters face the difficult task of reconstituting families aboard Enterprise or Voyager. (shrink)

The paper argues for the centrality of believing the speaker (as distinct from believing the statement) in the epistemology of testimony, and develops a line of thought from Angus Ross which claims that in telling someone something, the kind of reason for belief that a speaker presents is of an essentially different kind from ordinary evidence. Investigating the nature of the audience's dependence on the speaker's free assurance leads to a discussion of Grice's formulation of non-natural meaning in an epistemological (...) light, concentrating on just how the recognition of the speaker's self-reflexive intention is supposed to count for his audience as a reason to believe P. This is understood as the speaker's explicitly assuming responsibility for the truth of his statement, and thereby constituting his utterance as a reason to believe. (shrink)

Judaism is often described as a religion that tolerates, even celebrates arguments with God. In Pious Irreverence, Dov Weiss has written the first scholarly study of the premodern roots of this distinctively Jewish theology of protest, examining its origins and development in the rabbinic age (70 CE-800 CE).

Few would contest the fact that analytical philosophy has dominated philosophical practice in the English speaking world for about the last century. But dispute continues about both its origins and nature; whilst others question its value. Michael Dummett wholly embraced the analytical approach to philosophy, as he conceived of it. For him analytical philosophy marked itself off from its precursors and its alternatives, embodied in the Continental tradition, by taking the linguistic turn. And Frege was unequivocally the first philosopher to (...) take that auspicious turn, which ushered in a new method in philosophy. Henceforth philosophers were to approach the business of analyzing thought via the enterprise of analyzing language. So Dummett is presenting us with both a history lesson and a recommendation about how we ought to do philosophy. But is his reading of the history accurate? And is his conception of the nature of analytical philosophy viable? In order to reflect on these questions this collection brings together eight scholars who have made a serious business of reading Dummett. (shrink)