As SOPHIA’s mission is to build communities of philosophical conversation, one thing we’ve begun to do with many new members is to create “introduction videos,” asking people to introduce themselves, in video, to our group. We generally ask: 1) Tell us about yourself, 2) Why are you interested in philosophy in general and in SOPHIA in particular? and 3) What’s something unusual or unique about you?
Our newest member is Dr. William (Bill) Irwin of King’s College in Pennsylvania. Bill’s case is a little different, because you can be introduced to Bill in a special way — Check out his interview on CNN! This is a fun introduction to Bill and to some of his work in and on popular culture. Check it out!
By the way, Dr. Irwin is a member of SOPHIA’s Editorial Board for Civil American and has agreed to come on Philosophy Bakes Bread sometime this fall!
Check out Bill’s profile page, where you can learn more about him, and find his Facebook and Twitter info.
SOPHIA is still working on the technical system that we will use to manage our chapters. For now, we will announce our chapters with a post like this one, for chapters that we’ll have made official, such as the Oxford MS Chapter. We have groups around the country, who’ve been working with SOPHIA for years, but we are just now formalizing our new system and mechanisms for making these chapters official. More information will be coming out soon about what’s involved. We will also be offering mini-grants to initial chapters who apply for the support. Here’s info about the chapter in Oxford, MS!
The University of Mississippi chapter of SOPHIA held its inaugural event of “The Great Debate” on April 27th, 2017. Each year, students from the UM Ethics Bowl Team will address a difficult question and debate the issues for an audience of students, faculty, staff, and all members of the community. This year’s question was “Should the governor of the state of Mississippi declare April ‘Confederate Heritage Month’?”
Governor Phil Bryant has declared April to be ‘Confederate Heritage Month’ in both 2016 and 2017. In 2016, the proclamation was on the Governor’s website with the purpose of the designation: “it is important for all Americans to reflect upon our nation’s past, to gain insight from our mistakes and successes, and to come to a full understanding that the lessons learned yesterday and today will carry us through tomorrow if we carefully and earnestly strive to understand and appreciate our heritage and our opportunities which lie before us” [CNN]. In 2017, the Governor’s office did not post the proclamation on the website, but a copy was posted on the Mississippi Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans website [MDSCV and now on their Facebook page]. As stated on the website, the purpose of the organization is “to encourage the preservation of history, perpetuate the hallowed memories of brave men, to assist in the observance of Memorial Day, to aid and support all members, widows and orphans, and to perpetuate the record of the services of every Southern Soldier” [MDSCV’s About page]. In addition, the home page explains that “The citizen-soldiers who fought for the Confederacy personified the best qualities of America. The preservation of liberty and freedom was the motivating factor in the South’s decision to fight the Second American Revolution. The tenacity with which Confederate soldiers fought underscored their belief in the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. These attributes are the underpinning of our democratic society and represent the foundation on which this nation was built” [MDSCV].
In The Great Debate, audience members were presented with a case with pertinent details, arguments, and concerns on both sides of the issue, along with a copy of common fallacies made in arguments. The UM Ethics Bowl Team each took a side of the issue and presented careful arguments, which were projected on screens via PowerPoint to help the audience follow the intricacies of their position. After the debate presentation, the team members fielded questions first from three guest judges (who modeled the kind of civil and insightful inquiry of the event) and then from the audience designed to clarify their initial arguments and to press follow-up points. After the Q and A and discussion, everyone was invited to a catered reception to continue the conversation informally. Through the clear presentation of claims and civil dialogue, we hope to institute this as a yearly event to demonstrate how to make progress on thorny ethical and political questions in our society through civil dialogue.
For more information about the Oxford MS Chapter of SOPHIA, contact Chapter President Mower.
SOPHIA now has some more CafePress gear ready for sale, featuring the Philosophy Bakes Bread logo. Each item purchased via CafePress contributes about $5 to our activities. So, when you show your support for SOPHIA, you’ll be supporting SOPHIA on several levels! If there are any items that you’re interested in, but that are not presently in our store, let us know by emailing the Executive Director! Or, tweet to us @SOPHIAchirp.
The Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA) welcomes proposals for a variety of conferences in 2018. In accordance with our mission, we especially encourage topics of contemporary and public concern, as well as engagement with scholars in other fields or with communities beyond the academy. Select panels and panelists may be featured on SOPHIA’s Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show and podcast, which airs on WRFL Lexington, 88.1 FM.
Interested persons can either submit a proposal for a panel at one of the following conferences, or they may individually submit to SOPHIA with the intent of joining with other SOPHIA presenters on a panel to be developed. Note that individual papers can often be submitted directly to a larger conference, but some events, such as SAAP’s, specify that “multiple submissions will not be accepted and that persons participating in invited sessions may not submit to the regular program.”
All submissions should be prepared for anonymous review, and be accompanied by a second document with contact information for each presenter. Please email your submission to danieljamesbrunson@gmail.com by 11:59 PM ET for each deadline below.
1: American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division, 01/03/18 – 01/06/18 in Savannah, GA,
Proposal Submission Deadline is Monday, July 3rd. Individual Papers or Presentations: An Abstract of 300-500 words; Panels: An Abstract of 600-1200 words, with titles.
2: Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, 03/08-03/10 in Indianapolis, IN. Proposal
Submission Deadline is Monday, August 28th. Individual Papers or Presentations: 600 word abstract; Panels: A panel abstract of 450-600 word and at least 600 word abstracts per paper. For the SAAP event, our invitation is open, yet we encourage contributions that address the conference theme, “Ethos and Creativity.” The theme comes from a philosophically significant essay about the host city, Indianapolis, written by Indianapolis poet Mari Evans (1923–2017) about race and artistic practice.
3:4th Conference of Public Philosophy Network, 02/8/18 – 02/10/18 in Denton, TX
Proposal Submission Deadline is Monday, September 11th. Individual Papers or Presentations: An Abstract of 300-500 words; Panels: An Abstract of 600-1200 words, with titles. The 2017 conference theme is philosophizing impact: What philosophical practices improve the uptake of philosophy, both across the disciplines, and throughout society?
4: American Philosophical Association, Central Division, 02/21/18 – 02/24/18 in Chicago, IL, Proposal
Submission Deadline is Monday, September 23rd. Individual Papers or Presentations: An Abstract of 300-500 words; Panels: An Abstract of 600-1200 words, with titles.
If you are interested in proposing a paper or a panel for an event not listed here, contact Dr. Brunson at the email address above. For more information about SOPHIA, visit our About page, “like” our Facebook page, and “follow” us on Twitter.
Skeptics (e.g., Thomas Rid, 2013) have cast doubt on the notion of authentic cyber warfare. Cyber conflict consists, the skeptics argue, solely of activities which fall well short of full scale warfare: e.g., crime, vandalism, “hacktivism” (political activism by individuals and organizations carried out in the cyber domain), industrial espionage, and military espionage. Talk of cyber “warfare,” they complain, is largely conceptual confusion, coupled with misplaced metaphorical exaggeration.
(U.S. Air Force Photo/Raymond McCoy)
Against such criticisms, I have argued by contrast that there is a distinctive category of cyber conflict that qualifies as warfare – or, more correctly, which rises to the level of the “use, or threat of use, of force by states; or, the equivalent of an armed attack” in international law (Lucas 2017). This new kind of warfare has thus far manifest itself in two distinctive forms:
effects-based weapons (such as Stuxnet) which can be deployed to damage or destroy military targets; and
weapons and attacks in the cyber domain intended to produce political effects similar to those usually sought as the goal or objective of a conventional use of force by states against one another.
I have labeled this second class of cyber hostilities “state-sponsored hacktivism” (SSH). SSH is one of the principle tactics of a wider phenomenon, recently dubbed “soft war,” or unarmed conflict (Gross & Meisels, 2017) [Note]. It qualifies as warfare because it is deployed to compel an adversary to yield to the political aims of the state utilizing it. SSH is perfectly capable of achieving the equivalent of occupying an enemy’s cities, destroying his army, and breaking his will to fight. It is fully capable of moving a political center of gravity from a given posture prior to the attack, to one more in keeping with the attacker’s own political aspirations vis á vis the victim’s in the aftermath. In short, this form of cyber conflict satisfies the classical definition of Clausewitz (1830) regarding war as politics carried out by alternative means.
SSH is not identical to, nor can it be merely reduced to acts of vandalism, crime, or espionage, although it utilizes such components within the framework of an SSH attack. One might say that SSH is either none of the above, or else it involves all of the above “on steroids.” Considerations of scale and magnitude, as well as of ease of access, are important in understanding this category of warfare, much as such considerations have been, in the past, for differentiating between “private” and domestic uses of conventional lethal force (e.g., as criminal acts by individuals or organizations), and those of “public” warfare that are state-sponsored. (more…)
