Spring 2014 Newsletter

NASSP Conferences and Sessions

Please join us this summer for the Thirty-First International Social Philosophy Conference, to be held from July 17-19, 2014, at Southern Oregon University, in Ashland, Oregon. The theme will be: “Power, Protest, and the Future of Democracy.”

Please join us at the Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, to be held from April 16-20, 2014, in San Diego, California. On Thursday, April 17, from 8-10 PM, we proudly present the following session:

Topic: Author-Meets-Critics, Elizabeth Brake, Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law

Chair: Jeff Gauthier (University of Portland)

Critics: Ronald C. Den Otter (California Polytechnic State University), Lori Watson (University of San Diego), Ralph Wedgwood (University of Southern California)

Respondent: Elizabeth Brake (Arizona State University)

We hope to see you at both conferences!

Members’ Announcements

Jami Anderson announces a conference on “Free Will,” to be held in mid-October (please see accompanying flyer).

Sid Axinn announces that he has, with a co-author, published a paper, “The Morality of Automatic Robots/Drones,” in THE JOURNAL OF MILITARY ETHICS. This is in the August, 2013, issue. If anyone is interested, please contact Sid and he’ll send you a copy. He and his co-author are pressing to have an international conference ban these automatic robots. Automatic drones, distinguished from “un-manned” drones, decide to kill someone based on decisions made by computers, not by any human.

Jay Drydyk sends this Call for Papers: Globality, Unequal Development, and Ethics of Duty, Ottawa, October 17-18 2014. Co-sponsored by the School of International Development and Global Studies (EDIM), University of Ottawa, and the Centre on Values and Ethics (COVE) and the Department of Philosophy at Carleton University. Proposals due June 30, 2014. For more information see the Call for Papers.

Jeffrey Flynn announces his new book, Reframing the Intercultural Dialogue on Human Rights: A Philosophical Approach (Routledge 2014).

Jacob Held announces that his new book, Roald Dahl and Philosophy: A Little Nonsense Now and Then, will be released by Rowman and Littlefield in May. It’s a follow up to his Dr. Seuss and Philosophy: Oh, the Thinks you Can Think! (Rowman and Littlefield, 2011).

Bill McBride informs us that Revolutionary Hope, a Festschrift in his honor, was published in 2013 by Lexington Books.

Nancy Snow received a three-year grant from the Templeton Religion Trust. She will co-direct this project with Darcia Narvaez, a developmental psychologist at the University of Notre Dame. The grant will fund 10 research projects on “The Self, Motivation, and Virtue.”

Jim Sterba received a grant from The John Templeton Foundation to work on applying contemporary moral theory to the problem of evil. Drawing on two conferences he is organizing at the University of Notre Dame on the topic, he hopes to have some significant results to report by the end of the year.