Jewish texts from Late Antiquity, as well as culturally affiliated sources, contain three different traditions about the creation of the world from alphabetic letters. This observation, which contradicts the common assumption that the myth of creation from letters stems from the holiness of the Jewish language, calls for comparative study. A structural approach to the letter as a founding ontological element is corroborated by the ancient Greek word stoicheion , which refers to both physical foundations and alphabetic letters. To analyze (...) this attitude to the letter in the ancient world, I draw on the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, which addresses the question of the letter in the framework of human discourse. I use Lacan's concepts to describe and illuminate the inherent connection between letters and the very foundations of the world. (shrink)

Counter storytelling, used in critical race theory and narrative ethics, is a tool used to contradict and expose the oppression in a dominant narrative, by focusing attention on the stories of the...

This monograph is divided into four parts: 1. AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY: Unlike the philosophies of other countries today, it does not pivot about a particular authoritative university or school. Most positions, though, agree in acknowledging a plurality of irreducible ultimate principles and realities. 2. PROCESS PHILOSOPHY: This has been of primary interest to theologians, and is occupied mainly with pointing up differences with Thomism. The strength and weaknesses of both these positions is outlined, and alternative views indicated. 3. THE MODAL PHILOSOPHY: (...) A summary account is given, justifying and describing five irreducible, conditioning realities which govern individual substances, severally and together. 4. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: These have mainly to do with the problem of the One and the Many, raised by the audience. Each finality, it is held, is a One for the Many actualities; each actuality is a One for the Many finalities. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Drawing upon Edmund Husserl’s concept of the natural attitude, our taken-for-granted understandings of what is normal, natural, and what should be the case, I argue that when one’s everyday routines are radically disrupted in a sustained way, as has happened with the COVID-19 global pandemic, adjustments are also needed in our natural attitudes so that the latter accurately reflect our actual situation. And yet, the tendency to resist altering one’s natural attitude in response to major changes in one’s life (...) is very strong, as we see with Gregor Samsa in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and Vashti in E. M. Forster’s story, “The Machine Stops.” Both characters, I suggest, offer important cautionary tales as we assess the impact of the “new normal” that has come to characterize daily existence during a global pandemic as well as nostalgic appeals to return, as quickly as possible, to the “old normal” of our pre-pandemic lives. This critical analysis is an especially urgent task given the fact that this pre-pandemic normal was clearly not as positive an experience for some people as for others. (shrink)

In his critique of Anselm’s ontological argument for God’s existence, William Rowe introduces the concepts of “magico” and “magican” — defining “magicos” as magicians that do not exist, and “magicans” as magicians that do exist — to help diagnose what may have gone wrong in Anselm’s argument. As I made my way through Rowe’s intriguing article, I found myself waiting for “Godo” — and for “Godan.” I expected Rowe to invoke these counterparts to his “magico” and “magican” — a non-existing (...) God to correspond to his non-existing magician, and an existing God to correspond to his existing magician — to complete his argument. Alas, like Vladimir and Estragon, I waited in vain: neither Godo — nor Godan — ever appeared. In what follows I shall argue that their inclusion in Rowe’s argument would have settled the matter against Anselm far more decisively than do Rowe’s forays into the murky waters of question-begging. (shrink)

This is the first of two special issues and the articles are grouped according to two themes: This first issue will feature articles that share a theme we call Technologies and the Political, while the second issue will feature the theme Subjectivities. However, we could equally consider them exercises in provincialization in the (counter)factual register in the first issue, and by affective historiography as conceptual-empirical labor(atory) in the second issue. What we have generally asked of all authors is to consider (...) that the relation between science and society is often heavily influenced by and identified in the intermediary figurations portrayed in the genre of science fiction. (shrink)

Many organizations must manage institutional complexity – the presence of competing “logics,” or patterned sets of beliefs, rules, and actions. Some of this management occurs within organizations, such as when managers recruit workers who align with a preferred logic. Often, however, institutional management occurs at the boundaries between organizations that work together despite adhering to competing logics. Boundary-spanners – actors belonging to one organization but interfacing with others – must know how to speak the language of their organizational partners in (...) order to secure resources and accomplish their host organization’s goals. Existing literature on boundary-spanners’ institutional management strategies focuses on organizational elites like executives, top managers, and technical experts. As organizations, particularly social service organizations, become increasingly decentralized, however, boundary-spanning occurs at lower-levels of organizational hierarchies. Drawing on 30 months of participant observation and 20 in-depth interviews in a rape crisis center, I show how low-level organization members like volunteers, who frequently interact with organizational partners including law enforcement and medical professionals, learn to navigate institutional complexity. This advances neoinstitutional theory by showing how in decentralized, diffuse organizations, both organizational elites and members at low-levels of the organizational hierarchy must competently manage their institutional environments. (shrink)

This text examines the philosophy of Paul Weiss. Much of Dr Weiss's impact has come through his example, discussions, and such activities as founding and editing the Review of Metaphysics and founding and leading the Metaphysical Society of America.

An interview with Gail Weiss concerning her interests and influences, especially the body and embodiment.

In this article, I provide Urquhart-style semilattice semantics for three connexive logics in an implication-negation language (I call these “pure theories of connexive implication”). The systems semantically characterized include the implication-negation fragment of a connexive logic of Wansing, a relevant connexive logic recently developed proof-theoretically by Francez, and an intermediate system that is novel to this article. Simple proofs of soundness and completeness are given and the semantics is used to establish various facts about the systems (e.g., that two of (...) the systems have the variable sharing property). I emphasize the intuitive content of the semantics and discuss how natural informational considerations underly each of the examined systems. (shrink)

Leibniz developed several arithmetical interpretations of the assertoric syllogistic in a series of drafts from April 1679. In this article, I present what I take to be one of his most mature articulations of the arithmetical semantics from that series. I show that the assertoric syllogistic can be characterized exactly not only in the full divisibility lattice, as Leibniz implicitly suggests, but in a certain four-element sublattice thereof. This refinement is also shown to be optimal in the sense that the (...) assertoric syllogistic is not complete with respect to any smaller sublattice using Leibniz’s truth conditions. (shrink)

The essays presented here by Olkowski and Weiss attempt to situate Merleau-Ponty in the larger context of feminist theory, while impartially evaluating his contributions, both positive and negative, to that theory.

In a wide-ranging study of unusual interest, Paul Weiss, Sterling Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, applies the principles and methods of philosophy to athletics. Every culture, he notes, has games of some kind; few activities seem to interest both children and young men as much as sports do; and few attract so many spectators, rich and poor. Yet none of the great philosophers, claiming to take all knowledge and being as their province, have made more than a passing (...) reference to sport, in part, Professor Weiss suggests, because they thought that what pleased the vulgar was not worth sustained study by the leisured. This seminal book breaks new ground and explores new paths: psychological and sociological forms of human behavior exhibited in games; the physiology of athletics, and the efforts of training and conditioning; and the motivation of athletics—the rhythm and aims of contests and games, and the meaning of team play. More importantly, however, Professor Weiss’s unique contributions lie in his discussions of the distinct contributions that sport makes to civilization. Professor Weiss discusses at length such topics as the Olympic Games and men and women as amateur and pro­fessional athletes—and their sacrifices, defeats, and humilia­tions. And he delineates the stages the athlete must go through in his progress toward self-completion. (shrink)

Author note: Penny A. Weiss, Associate Professor of Political Science at Purdue University, is the author of Gendered Community: Rousseau, Sex, and Politics. Marilyn Friedman, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Washington University, is the author of What Are Friends For? Feminist Perspectives on Personal Relationships and Moral Theory.

Putting laypeople in an active role as direct expert contributors in the design of service robots becomes more and more prominent in the research fields of human–robot interaction and social robotics. Currently, though, HRI is caught in a dilemma of how to create meaningful service robots for human social environments, combining expectations shaped by popular media with technology readiness. We recapitulate traditional stakeholder involvement, including two cases in which new intelligent robots were conceptualized and realized for close interaction with humans. (...) Thereby, we show how the robot narrative together with aspects of power balancing stakeholders, such as hardware constraints and missing perspectives beyond primary users, and the adaptivity of robots through machine learning that creates unpredictability, pose specific challenges for participatory design processes in HRI. We conclude with thoughts on a way forward for the HRI community in developing a culture of participation that considers humans when conceptualizing, building, and using robots. (shrink)

Wiredu argues intriguingly that some philosophical questions only arise in certain linguistic settings. So philosophical questions are, on occasion, linguistically relative or, more vividly, Tongue Dependent. The phenomenon however does not rest on expressive differences between languages, or, better, on failures of translation. Though rejecting his example, I endorse the general possibility he constructs. I do so provided that there is a solution to the Paradox of Analysis. Indeed I point out that the possibility of Tongue Dependency is both necessary (...) and sufficient for a solution to the Paradox of Analysis. I then offer a solution to the Paradox of Analysis in a Fregean setting, by distinguishing within the cognitive value of a claim between cognitive accomplishment and cognitive significance. The results of analysis involve cognitive accomplishment, though have no cognitive significance. I recommend my account as dealing well with a problem Salmon raised for the Church-Frege account. Finally, I direct my account on vocabularies rather than claims and note that, though possible, actual cases of Tongue Dependency within natural languages are highly doubtful. The phenomenon does not have the cultural significance Wiredu claims for it. (shrink)

In her recent book, Russell (2023) examines various so-called “barriers to entailment,” including Hume’s law, roughly the thesis that an ‘ought’ cannot be derived from an ‘is.’ Hume’s law bears an obvious resemblance to the proscription on fallacies of modality in relevance logic, which has traditionally formally been captured by the so-called Ackermann property. In the context of relevant modal logic, this property might be articulated thus: no conditional whose antecedent is box-free and whose consequent is box-prefixed is valid (for (...) the connection, interpret box deontically). While the deontic significance of Ackermann-like properties has been observed before, Russell’s new book suggests a more broad-scoped formal investigation of the relationship between barrier theses of various kinds and corresponding Ackermann-like properties. In this paper, I undertake such an investigation by elaborating a general relevant bimodal logical framework in which several of the barriers Russell examines can be given formal expression. I then consider various Ackermann-like properties corresponding to these barriers and prove that certain systems satisfy them. Finally, I respond to some objections Russell makes against the use of relevance logic to formulate Hume’s law and related barriers. (shrink)

In Socrates Dissatisfied, Weiss argues against the prevailing view that the personified Laws in the latter part of the Crito are Socrates' spokesmen. She reveals and explores many indications that Socrates and the Laws are, both in style and in substance, adversaries. Deft, provocative, and compelling, with new translations providing groundbreaking interpretations of key passages, Socrates Dissatisfied challenges the standard conception of the history of political thought.

_In _Broader, Bolder, Better_, authors Elaine Weiss, of the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education campaign, and Paul Reville, former Massachusetts secretary of education, make a compelling case for a fundamental change in the way we view education._ The authors argue for a large-scale expansion of community-school partnerships in order to provide holistic, integrated student supports (ISS) from cradle to career, including traditional wraparound services like health, mental health, nutrition, and family supports, as well as expanded access to opportunities such (...) as early childhood education, afterschool activities, and summer enrichment programs. The book builds on nearly a decade of research by the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education, a national initiative endorsed by more than sixty policy experts and leaders from across the country, and draws on the work of Harvard’s Education Redesign Lab. It pulls from case studies of effective ISS efforts in twelve diverse communities to illustrate the variety of strategies that can be adopted locally. A call to action that also provides examples of communities that are successfully leveling the playing field for poor children, this book offers a detailed vision for building—through field work, mobilization, and financing—comprehensive systems to prepare all children for success. (shrink)

In his Outlines of Pyrrhonism 2.110–113, Sextus Empiricus presents four different accounts of the conditional, presumably all from the Hellenistic period, in increasing logical strength. While the interpretation and provenance of the first three accounts is relatively secure, the fourth account has perplexed and frustrated interpreters for decades or longer. Most interpreters have ultimately taken a dismissive attitude towards the fourth account and discounted it as being of both little historical and logical interest. We argue that this attitude is unwarranted (...) and demonstrate that the conditional expressed in the fourth account can profitably be understood as a precursor of analytic entailment, familiar from containment logics such as those developed by Parry and Angell. Exploiting recent work by Fine, we present a formal truthmaker semantics for this conditional and show how it sheds light on a number of longstanding issues in the interpretation of this passage. (shrink)

Essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy of language and mind, Reading Brandom is also an excellent companion volume to Reading McDowell: On ...

If social, political, and material transformation is to have a lasting impact on individuals and society, it must be integrated within ordinary experience. Refiguring the Ordinary examines the ways in which individuals' bodies, habits, environments, and abilities function as horizons that underpin their understandings of the ordinary. These features of experience, according to Gail Weiss, are never neutral, but are always affected by gender, race, social class, ethnicity, nationality, and perceptions of bodily normality. While no two people will experience (...) the ordinary in exactly the same way, the multiplicities, possibilities, overlaps, and limitations of day-to-day horizons are always intersubjectively constituted. Weiss turns her attention to changing the conditions and experiences of oppression from ordinary to extraordinary. This book is an impressive phenomenological, feminist reading of the complexities of human experience.M. V. Marder, University of Toronto, Feb. 2009. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:108 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Ellyn Weiss Anna U. Davis: An Introduction Anna U. Davis is a Swedish American mixed-media artist who was born in Lund, Sweden, and currently resides in Washington, DC. Her work draws frequently on the challenges she has faced living in the United States, particularly those related to her gender and racial position. Her husband, who spent (...) most of his childhood in the same Swedish town as Davis, was born to an African American man and a white Swedish woman. When Anna, who is also white, was pregnant with her own son, now in his early twenties, she began drawing what she terms “Frocasians,” people who are neither black nor white and who cannot claim automatic acceptance from either group. As her work explores, the outsider status of Frocasions both presents opportunity and exacerbates insecurity. Davis’s Swedish roots are central to her brand of feminism. She remembers growing up in an environment where notions of gender justice were firmly embedded in the legal framework and norms of the community. Her struggles with inadequate childcare and family leave as a young mother in the United States, then, form a strong undercurrent shaping her critical perspective. Davis also narrates growing up in a household that was emotionally unstable and sometimes difficult to navigate. As an outgrowth of these varied struggles, her art both values and aims to project strength. Davis’s graphic skills anchor her work; she always starts with detailed pieces in black and white. These pieces are then sometimes All images shown in this art essay courtesy of Anna U. Davis. Anna U. Davis, The Modern Plague, 2012. Acrylic, ink pen, and paper collage on canvas, 30 × 26 inches. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT Anna U. Davis, Bull’s-eye, 2009. Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 38 × 4 inches. Anna U. Davis, The Edge of Transit, 2008. Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 12 × 10 inches. Anna U. Davis, Houseman, 2018. Acrylic and ink pen on cut-out birch plywood, 46 × 3 inches. Anna U. Davis, Black Velvet, 201. Inkjet print, 60 × 80 inches. Anna U. Davis, Black Velvet, 201. Inkjet print, 60 × 80 inches. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT Anna U. Davis, Drop Dead Gorgeous, 2008. Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 48 × 96 inches. Anna U. Davis, Delivered Agenda, 2009. Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 20 × 20 inches. Anna U. Davis, Anonymous Was the Woman, 2014. Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 12 × 10 inches. NEXT PAGE Anna U. Davis, Dr. Jekyll & Mrs. Hyde, 201. Acrylic, ink pen, and paper collage on canvas, 2 × 96 inches. LEFT TO RIGHT Anna U. Davis, Equilibrium, 201. Acrylic, ink pen, and paper collage on canvas, 40 × 40 inches. Anna U. Davis, Second Class, 201. Acrylic, ink pen, and paper collage on canvas, 2 × 96 inches. CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT Anna U. Davis, Shark-cuteri, 2016. Acrylic, ink pen, and paper collage on canvas, 2 × 96 inches. Anna U. Davis, Face-it (part ), 2009. Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 18 × 24 inches. Anna U. Davis, Love, 201. Acrylic, ink pen, and paper collage on canvas, 2 × 96 inches. CENTER Anna U. Davis, Last Call, 2019. Acrylic, ink pen, and paper collage on canvas, 10 × 10 inches. NEXT PAGE Anna U. Davis, Tripping, 201. Acrylic, ink pen, and paper collage on canvas, 2 × 96 inches. LEFT TO RIGHT Anna U. Davis, The Anonymous Celebrity, 2009. Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 8 × 44 inches. Anna U. Davis, Tug of War, 2019. Acrylic, ink pen, and paper collage on raw linen, 41 × 31 inches. Anna U. Davis, Undertaker, 2009. Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 4 × 2 inches. Anna U. Davis, Lena, 2009. Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 32 × 32 inches. Ellyn Weiss 125 enlarged, either remaining in black and white, becoming the underpinning of a collage, or more recently, turning into a sculptural wall relief. The color in her pieces is typically derived from the brilliant tones of glossy illustrations in so-called “women’s magazines,” which she cuts up for collaging. The content is also influenced by the articles and advertisements in such magazines. Implicit in some of Davis’s... (shrink)

In this short intellectual biography, we chronicle Saul Kripke’s involvement in the development of modal logic, focusing on the decade beginning in 1953 and ending in 1963, during which time he ranged in age from 12 to 23. We also describe the state of modal logic before Kripke, Kripke’s correspondence with other modal logicians, and Kripke’s early influential publications on the semantics of modal logic as well as several later and lesser known contributions.

The paper is interested in likely routes for the evolution of normative practice, which, it is here assumed, is a necessary precursor to the development of language. It argues that each normative practice requires a policing practice, consisting of, at least, moves of commendation, condemnation, and retraction, and it contrasts policing with mere monitoring practice. So the evolution of norms can be seen to be the development of policing from mere monitoring practice. It conjectures that a likely site for such (...) a development to take place is in the active transmission of technology, notably, toolmaking technology. Using data and observations drawn from the archaeological record and the psychology of mimicry, it attempts to illustrate the likely emergence of policing practices. (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)

Conditional logics have traditionally been intended to formalize various intuitively correct modes of reasoning involving conditional expressions in natural language. Although conditional logics have by now been thoroughly studied in a classical context, they have yet to be systematically examined in an intuitionistic context, despite compelling philosophical and technical reasons to do so. This paper addresses this gap by thoroughly examining the basic intuitionistic conditional logic ICK, the intuitionistic counterpart of Chellas’ important classical system CK. I give ICK both worlds (...) semantics and algebraic semantics, and prove that these are equivalent. I give a Gödel-type embedding of ICK into CK and a Glivenko-type embedding of CK into ICK. I axiomatize ICK and prove soundness, completeness, and decidability results. Finally, I discuss extending ICK. (shrink)

Weiss, Propen, and Reid gather a diverse group of scholars to analyze the growing obsolescence of the human-object dichotomy in today's world. In doing so, Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman brings together diverse disciplines to foster a dialog on significant technological issues pertinent to philosophy, rhetoric, aesthetics, and science.