Posted on Thursday, June 1, 2017

Call for Proposals for SOPHIA Panels in 2018

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.

In case it is desired, you can download a printable, Adobe PDF version of this call for proposals here.

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.

Posted on Wednesday, May 31, 2017

021: Ep17 – The Wisdom in Humor

Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show & podcast

In this seventeenth episode of the Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show and podcast, co-hosts Dr. Anthony Cashio and Dr. Eric Thomas Weber interview the New York Times Best-selling authors of Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar, Tom Cathcart and Daniel Klein.

Danny Klein has written comedy for Lily Tomlin, Flip Wilson, and others, and published scores of fiction and non-fiction books—from thrillers to entertaining philosophical books, such as his London Times bestseller, Travels with Epicurus, and his most recent book, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life They Change It.

Tom studied theology and managed health care organizations before linking up with Danny to write Plato and a Platypus, Aristotle and an Aardvark, and the Heidegger and a Hippo books. Tom is also the author of The Trolley Problem, or Would You Throw the Fat Guy Off the Bridge? an entertaining philosophical look at a tricky ethical conundrum.

Listen for our “You Tell Me!” questions and for some jokes in one of our concluding segments, called “Philosophunnies.” Reach out to us on Facebook @PhilosophyBakesBread and on Twitter @PhilosophyBB; email us at philosophybakesbread@gmail.com; or call and record a voicemail that we play on the show, at 859.257.1849. Philosophy Bakes Bread is a production of the Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA). Check us out online at PhilosophyBakesBread.com and check out SOPHIA at PhilosophersInAmerica.com.

(1 hr 10 mins)

Click here for a list of all the episodes of Philosophy Bakes Bread.

Subscribe to the podcast!

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Notes

Epicurus and Epicurean Philosophy on the Web.
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (New York: Grove Press, 1954).

You Tell Me!

For our future “You Tell Me!” segments, Tom and Danny proposed the following question in this episode, for which we invite your feedback: “Why are there things that are, rather than nothing?” What do you think?

Let us know! Twitter, Facebook, Email, or by commenting here below!

Transcript

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Posted on Thursday, May 25, 2017

State-Sponsored Hacktivism and “Soft War”

Civil American, Volume 2, Article 2 (May 25, 2017), https://goo.gl/R55J4V.

| By George R. Lucas |

A Moral and Legal Challenge in the Cyber Domain |

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…)

Posted on Wednesday, May 24, 2017

SOPHIA Trustee Dr Jackie Kegley Featured in CSU Profile

California State University has recently released a great profile of SOPHIA Trustee Dr. Jackie Kegley in its “Impact of the CSU” online newsletter. Jackie has been an influential leader at CSU Bakersfield for 48 years, on top of her immeasurable influence on SOPHIA.

Check out this great profile of Jackie and the impact she has had on a generation of students and her institution. She serves as an inspiration for many first-generation college students, furthermore, at an institution that teaches a high percentage of such students. She was the first in her family to earn a bachelor’s degree, and she kindly came on SOPHIA’s radio show and podcast, Philosophy Bakes Bread, to talk about teaching philosophy to first-gen students in episode 15.

Posted on Wednesday, May 24, 2017

020: Ep16 – On Disability & American Philosophy

Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show & podcast

This sixteenth episode of Philosophy Bakes Bread aired on WRFL Lexington, 88.1 FM, on Monday, April 17th of 2017, and was a special episode on the subject of disability and American philosophy. It was another special episode recorded on location at a conference, except for Eric Weber, who skyped in from a closet in Ohio. This episode features four guests who were all on a panel at the annual gathering of the 2017 Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy in Birmingham, AL.

Our guests included:

Dr. Justin Bell , a.k.a. “Papa J.B.,” of the University of Houston Victoria;

Friend of the show and returning guest, Dr. Daniel Brunson of Morgan State University, who was featured also in Episode 6, on philosophy for first-generation college students;

Dr. Nate Jackson of Capital University;

Dr. Sarah Woolwine of the University of Central Oklahoma;

(56 mins)