The article states the core thesis about two asymmetric modes of existence of war – physical and discursive. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the analytical and practical necessity of distinguishing between two modes of existence of hybrid warfare as a phenomenon of physical reality and as a discursive construct, as well as to raise questions about the value specificity of the relationship between them. The methodology of work represents the implication of two asymmetric modes of war (...) existence – physical and discursive. The relationship between the two modes can be described in particular through modern cognitive-semantic and communicative approaches. Analysis, synthesis, description, distinction, historical perspective, forecasting and hermeneutic tools of comprehension are the core methods of this work. In the military dimension, any military confrontation in general is localized, while the discourse of this hybrid war has become global. The interpretive component of hybrid warfare is implemented through discursive verbal-semiotic means. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the concept of victory. The Ukrainian dimension embodies the postmodern practical representation of the analysis of the problem of hybrid warfare as a war of interpretations. (shrink)

It has frequently been observed in the literature on hybrid wars that there is a grey zone between peace and war, and that hybrid wars are conflicts which are not clear cases of war. In this paper, I attempt to illuminate this grey zone and the concept and nature of war from the philosophical discussions of vagueness and institutional facts. Vague terms are characterized by the fact that there is no non-arbitrary boundary between entities which lie in their (...) extension, and entities which do not lie in their extension. I apply a theory of vagueness to notions such as “war” and “peace” and go on to suggest that the exact boundary for what counts as a war or not is arbitrary. However, the context in which the conflict occurs determines a range of possible locations for this boundary. The most important contextual parameter is in this respect how the parties to the conflict themselves conceptualize the conflict. I suggest that this can in various ways help us understand grey-zone conflicts. (shrink)

In one common type of hybrid war states intervene on behalf of insurgents who represent a repressed identity group, but without ‘putting boots on the ground’. Such cases may be regarded as hybrids which contain elements of both ‘old’ and ‘new wars’. In ‘old wars’ victory in combat is sought and non-combatants do not need to be targeted. ‘New wars’ are identity conflicts in which civilians on the opposing side themselves become the hated objects of attack. This poses problems (...) for an intervening state which would not wish to tolerate such behaviour. One question to ask is whether the state owes the insurgents medical assistance if they require it. While they have a prima facie claim as combatants, their bad behaviour, it is argued, leads them to forfeit it. In ‘old wars’ civilians expect those fighting on their behalf to avoid attacks on enemy non-combatants, and states will wish insurgents to do likewise. Were military medics to treat insurgents who breach the laws of armed conflict and return them to service and probable re-offending they would arguably be accomplices. Medics should not be placed in this position for their role is not only ‘to conserve the fighting strength’ and to mitigate the horrors of war but also to facilitate its being fought justly. For, were they not to be deployed to treat wounded civilians and prisoners when possible, more suffering would ensue than necessity required, contrary to the cardinal principle of jus in bello. But similarly, if they allowed this sort of suffering to occur by treating lawless insurgents who go on to cause it, then the same principle is breached. Therefore, they should not be deployed when this would happen. (shrink)

Posudok si pokladá Otázku: Je ruská armáda moderná? a v prostredí vojny odohrávajúcej sa na Ukrajine v roku 2022 analyzuje tri témy, ktoré poskytujú odpoveď. Prvou témou, ktorú analyzujeme, sú konvenčné sily: venujeme sa skúmaniu slabých aj silných stránok ruského letectva, námorníctva a pozemných síl. Aby sme dokázali vykresliť obraz ich schopností, určujeme si dva protipóly, s ktorými ich porovnávame: americkú a ukrajinskú armádu. Druhou hlavnou témou je informačný sektor, kde skúmame využitie informačných technológií a umelej inteligencie vo vojne. Tretím (...) aspektom je ekonomická stránka vojny, kde opisujeme zdroje financovania ruskej armády, obchody prebiehajúce vo vojenskom sektore, ale aj dopady opatrení spojené s konfliktom na Ukrajine: sankcie, zákaz využívania SWIFT systému a podobne. Tieto tri faktory boli zvolené na základe definície hybridnej vojny uvedenej v texte článku, ktorá sa na území Ukrajiny už od anexie Krymu v roku 2014 odohráva. Práca sa zameriava až na udalosti od 24. februára 2022. (shrink)

The alleged use of “Hybrid Warfare” by the Russian Federation in the annexation of the Ukrainian territory, Crimea, in 2014, thrust the term into the media spotlight and raised concerns over the lack of effective measures available to counter its use. This article investigates the use, development, impact, and legality of state-directed “Hybrid Warfare” campaigns. The first section of which examines the use and relevance of military force and strategy in the conduct of such a campaign, with further (...) sections focusing on the importance and integral nature of information, disinformation, and cyber capabilities, along with the resulting legal implications contemporary conflict faces. Hybrid strategy, capability, and doctrine will not replace traditional interstate maneuver warfare or the utilization of irregular modes of conflict. However, it does provide regional powers with a unique ability to insidiously challenge hegemonic or greater powers in such a way that better economizes their own capabilities and strategic assets. (shrink)

The article examines a number of issues related to the specifics of information dissemination under the conditions of communicative practice of both an individual level and the functioning of mass media. The main attention is paid to the issue of the deliberate spread of disinformation. In this context, the phenomenon of "hybrid war" and the place of the information component in it, the issue of using narratives as an effective means of mass information damage, and the specifics of the (...) process of "devaluation of the word". The need to develop mechanisms to counteract the phenomena of "abuse of freedom of speech" and "simulative democracy" to ensure the survival and sustainable development of democratic societies is substantiated. (shrink)

This study analyzes the domestic political, economic, and social conditions in the Western Balkans that provide fertile ground for hostile and maligned actors to manipulate and exploit governments and societies with hybrid war measures, namely cyberattacks and cyber intrusions and disinformation and fake news. It begins with a review and assessment of the prevailing empirical and theoretical literature on hybrid warfare. It then describes two leading empirical indices that measure degrees of permeability and structural vulnerability that elevate or (...) reduce the risks associated with maligned and hostile interventions. The article also examines leading indicators measuring resilience levels in cybersecurity and media/information literacy, highlighting political, social, and economic vulnerabilities. It concludes by suggesting that domestic conditions in the region encourage maligned and hostile actors, especially Russia and for different reasons and to a lesser extent China and Turkey, to use hybrid measures to exploit the region. The article proposes that in addition to strengthening institutions and trust, membership in NATO and the E.U. are directly related to mitigating structural vulnerability and reducing uncertainty and insecurity in the Western Balkans. (shrink)

In the article, I examine the relevance of Just War Doctrine to contemporary conflicts. Just War Doctrine, which grew out of Western Christian thinking, presupposes that evil might be confronted with force, if there is no alternative way to restore a just order. But modern trends call into question the certainty and universality of this doctrine. On the one hand, ideas of moral relativism and comparative justice have become more widespread, potentially undermining the use of the notions “just” and “justified” (...) in relation to military conflicts. On the other hand, the nature of war is changing, as warfare is no longer only kinetic in character. I offer examples of how the evolving character of warfare challenges the traditional understanding of Just War Doctrine. For example, there is the growing threat of cyber warfare, but the ethical criteria for its use are not defined. In relation to Just War Doctrine, questions of whether and when pre-emptive cyber attack is permissible arise, what should constitute legitimate targets of cyber warfare and to what degree collateral damage could be acceptable. Another challenge to the traditional understanding of Just of War Doctrine was the putative doctrine of humanitarian intervention.Prima facie,humanitarian interventions do not comply withius ad bellumcriteria of Just War Doctrine, because of the absence of a direct military threat to the intervening state. The justification of humanitarian intervention is based on the assertion of an intolerable violation of accepted values. The weakness of such approach, as discussed in the article, is that it implicitly assumes that one protagonist’s values are superior to others. A further example of emerging challenges to Just War Doctrine is the phenomenon of hybrid war, a term used to describe a type of conflict that is multi-faceted and in which kinetic warfare is not dominant. The orchestration of several strands of conflict, each designed to be below the threshold to provoke a military response, exploits the absence of legal and ethical norms regulating such activity. I conclude the article by suggesting that, firstly, for Just War Doctrine to remain relevant, it should be expanded to include harms caused by non-kinetic actions, and, secondly, the distinctions between the states of war and peace should be redefined to reflect the changing character of war more accurately. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the phenomenon of interstate confrontation known as “hybrid war.” It attempts to consider this phenomenon in relation to pankration, the ancient Greek martial art with minimum limitations. The paper defines the philosophical and historical preconditions for hybrid war, its epistemological and ideological aspects. The author assesses the statement declaring Russia guilty of waging this type of war. Analysis of relevant sources allows us to answer the question of the theoretical prerequisites for the formation (...) of the concept of hybrid wars and to name the authors who first expressed ideas of the transformation of war into a new type of military confrontation. An attempt is made to perform a comparative analysis of various interpretations of the concept of “hybrid war.” The place of this concept among others that are related to the so-called “new wars” is considered. The author questions a negative connotation to the concept of hybrid war and the legitimacy of attempts by Western countries to attribute the conduct of this type of military action exclusively to Russia. A number of countries attempt to use Russia as a “scapegoat,” and this complex has been described by the French philosopher R. Girard. A broader interpretation of this mechanism leads to sacralization of collective aggression, but not in relation to an individual but in relation to a participant in international relations. Comprehension of the essential features of hybrid war, of its tendencies towards eliminating restrictions and regulating forms and methods of achieving military and political goals makes it possible to identify the possibilities of resisting aggressive aspirations of some countries trying to impose their scenarios for resolving international contradictions on other states. (shrink)

The article examines the provisions of the catechisms of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church regarding the war and its challenges, as well as the defense of the Motherland. A comparative analysis of relevant thematic instructions in the Catechism “Christ is our Easter” (published in 2011), the Catechism for youth “We walk with Christ” (published in 2021) and the “Catechism of the Christian Warrior” (published in 2022) was carried out. It was determined that the provisions of the UGCC's own fundamental doctrinal (...) documents, its Catechisms, regarding the problems of war and defense of the Motherland, were formed, clarified and supplemented according to the circumstances and needs of the time. The catechism of the UGCC “Christ is our Easter” contains general Christian considerations on the subject under consideration, which are principled, establishing, and refer to how civilized peoples should conduct themselves. The catechism for youth, created in the previous years of the undeclared Russian Federation's “hybrid” war against Ukraine, covers the issues related to the war and the defense of the Motherland in a substantive way and closer to current Ukrainian realities, although it still has some idealistic approach. The Catechism of the Christian Warrior, the preparation of which was completed and the publication was carried out during the full-scale military offensive of the aggressor, is a set of thorough and competent advises for Ukrainian soldiers, where things are called by their names, and there are no provisions that can cause doubts due to experience and be problematically achievable for implementation. Therefore, it is concluded that especially this Catechism, together with and in addition to the two previous ones, is a useful and timely contribution of the UGCC to the instruction of Ukrainians during the war, and therefore to Ukraine's victory over the enemy. (shrink)

Abstract:This article compares the idealism underwriting both the survival of Odysseus' family in Homer's Odyssey and hybridity in Suzan-Lori Parks' Father Comes Home from the Wars (2015). Building upon an instance of indirect transmission from Homer to Fagles to Parks, it argues that Parks' creation of a hybrid human canine figure not only queries hybridity's role as the telos of Black liberation and racial justice but also sheds new light on the role of Argos and Telemachus for the idealized (...) image that concludes the Odyssey. Reflecting on Parks' nuanced rejection of the idea that Father Comes Home from the Wars is an adaptation of the Odyssey, this article closes by explaining the urgency of directly addressing the challenges of being a racialized teacher in the Classics classroom rather than idealizing those teachers as the self-evident resolution of the racism in the field. (shrink)

Introduction. War occupies a special place in the mankind development because it is an integral part of its history. Thousands of researchers have been engaged in the problem of war from the standpoint of various sciences. The confrontation of nations and individual social groups as a social and political fact has been seen in philosophical thought since the epoch of the first major civilizations. However, at the present stage of society’s development, the problems of war are closely connected with the (...) national security phenomenon because the state protection from internal and external threats actually prevents the risks of damage to manpower, civilian population, infrastructure, and economy. The purpose of the study is to determine to what degree the leading characteristics of the three main war forms influence the national security transformation at the present stage of society development. Methods. To achieve the study purpose and solve the tasks set, the logical method of analysis for structuring materials, the historical method for correct and chronologically consistent presentation of facts, the comparative method for identifying distinctive parameters in the compared judgments and the deductive method for determining conclusions based on the results of the study are used. Scientific novelty of the research. The study provides a detailed analysis of modern wars and their impact on national security. The author has studied the interrelationships between various forms of military conflicts and their consequences for the stability of the state. Special attention is paid to the methodology of analyzing hybrid and asymmetric wars, which allows a deeper understanding of their characteristics and impact on the national security system. This approach helps to better understand the dynamics of modern threats and strategies to counter them. Results. The author gives the definition of national security through the war phenomenon, determines the features of conventional war that influence the formation of the national security of the state and the requirements for transforming security, analyzes the influence of asymmetric warfare methods on national security, determines the features of hybrid warfare in opposition to the fundamentals of national security, and makes the conclusion on the influence of various war forms on national security transformation and stability. Conclusions. At the present stage of the world community development, various war forms require an individual state to transform methods and mechanisms of national security that would not keep up or catch up with the war technologies but prevent threats based on a stable national identity, the coordinated work of all actors of national security, the construction of mechanisms that serve the stability of social and economic activity. (shrink)

This book sheds light on various ethical challenges military and humanitarian health care personnel face while working in adverse conditions. Contexts of armed conflict, hybrid wars or other forms of violence short of war, as well as natural disasters, all have in common that ordinary circumstances can no longer be taken for granted. Hence, the provision of health care has to adapt, for example, to a different level of risk, to scarce resources, or uncommon approaches due to external incentives (...) or requirements. This affects the practice of health care as well as its ethics. This book offers a panoramic overview on various challenges healthcare faces in extraordinary situations and provides new insights from practitioners’ as well as from academic scholars’ perspectives. (shrink)

In recent years, scholars have identified a political formation that mobilizes the emancipatory energies of feminism in the service of the expansion of the carceral state. ‘Carceral feminism,’ as it has come to be known, is often portrayed by these scholars as a product of feminist-conservative convergence. Here, I argue that the rise of the SlutWalk movement suggests a more complex genealogy for carceral feminism. By situating SlutWalk in the historico-theoretical context of feminism’s sex wars, I reveal the carceral–feminist impulses (...) roiling beneath its progressive ‘sex-positive’ surface. With its tendency to reduce sexual freedom to expressive freedom, valorize conventional forms of femininity and sexuality, and promote a fundamentally carceral paradigm of sexual freedom, the SlutWalk movement, I argue, is descended from anti-censorship/pro-sex feminism, a liberal-feminist hybrid that emerged out of the convergence of sex-radical feminism and liberalism during the sex wars. When viewed in this light, SlutWalk no longer appears as a sign that feminism’s ‘pleasure’ and ‘danger’ factions have negotiated a long-awaited ‘sex-détente.’ Rather, it stands as a testament to the extent to which feminism’s once radical aspirations in the domain of sexual politics have been supplanted by a tepid, heteronormative, and disquietingly carceral liberal project. (shrink)

In the aftermath of 9/11, world leaders addressed the nation as a body under threat and hastened in new policies to bolster border protection and ‘securitize’ immigration. While the terrorist attacks cast new forms of public attention on the risks posed by mobile agents, the link between national security and regulating migration has always been at the forefront of the constitution of the nation state. Despite this persistent anxiety towards the social impact of migration and the status of people on (...) the move, a more general understanding of mobility is not only missing in public debates, but has been a lacunae in the social sciences. What is mobility — a state, a force, a set of shifting co-ordinates? How does the definition of mobility shape social attitudes and personal experiences? This article examines the use of organic and mechanistic metaphors that have underpinned the classical paradigm for understanding of mobility in the social sciences. It argues that the global patterns of migration and the contemporary forms of hybrid subjectivity do not fit well with this paradigm. The limits and kinetophobic associations generated by the classical paradigm are examined through Harald Kleinschmidt’s theory of residentialism. The final part of this article outlines an alternative conceptual frame that is based on key terms from complexity theory. (shrink)

This article critically engages with the work of Bruno Latour and, in particular, his book We Have Never Been Modern. Looking beyond the wit and brevity of Latour's writing, the article focuses on some of the non-innocent aspects of his vision of a non-modern world. Rather than completely rejecting the `Great Divides' between Nature and Culture, Westerners and non-Westerners, Latour is seen as only interested in erasing these major fault lines of modernity in order to draw them anew. Ultimately, Latour (...) is not asking his readers to doubt the superiority of Western science but only to understand this superiority differently — as contingent and uncertain rather than necessary and secure. Latour is not as alone as he would have us believe in bringing a non-modern world into focus and the article devotes the bulk of its attention to comparing Latour's thoughts with those governing the Euro-American discipline of international relations before and after the end of the Cold War. Latour's particular account of the non-modern condition, it is argued, corresponds well with the shift from realism to neo-realism within international relations and the replacement of bi-polarity by global technological competition as the dominant feature of the international system. Although Latour continues to be regularly attacked in the so-called `Science Wars' as an enemy of Western science, he actually joins forces with leading Euro-American security experts today in contending that the future of both `Science' and the `West' hinges on the careful monitoring and management of hybrid networks of humans and non-humans and not on uncompromising acts of `purification' as has been the strategy in the past. (shrink)

The Russian invasion of 2022 was based on an organized process of influence on the Ukrainian population, aimed at obtaining their support or neutralizing their possible resistance, in concert with the state apparatus. We find, in the backdrop of this process, the memorial conflict between these two countries and their neighbours, concerning World War II and the Soviet Union. This war of influence, or political warfare, which falls within new forms of contemporary hybrid warfare, profoundly has to do with (...) images, especially moving images. The cinematic images, the debauchery of their propaganda during the Second World War and throughout the existence of the USSR, still weighs on the bodies and minds; the new media has in many ways inherented them and their way of reenacting or extending propaganda on an individual or group scale. We will then question the place of images, and in particular those in motion, in the war between Russia and Ukraine since 2014 to describe the way in which they have served or still serve the military-memorial device deployed by the Russian invader. (shrink)

In this article the author continues his philosophical research of aggressive manipulative influence on mass consciousness, which is a basic component of the "hybrid war" Russian Federation against the Ukraine. It identifies the system and components of political mythmaking during the military phase of the war. This system, according to the author, includes at least five basic mythologycal components: Russian and Russian-separatist troops, Ukrainian armed, forces of confrontation "secret patrons" and the social background in which the conflict of people (...) and "quasi-gods" occurs. This complex of interrelated myths gets the name "hybrid mythologycal war", and the parties of it are painted polar attributes - it is used as the sacralization and infernalization both individual persons and supraindividual entities. The author thinks that the introduction into the mass consciousness of citizens of the Russian Federation, Ukraine and the world political community of this mythology and the substitution of its reality is a way of manipulating the mass consciousness. It also details the means of implementation of this method - the introduction of channels of mythology and numerous instrumental techniques, approved at the time by J. Goebbels propaganda machine. The targets of manipulation are allocated, which probably sets the aggressor within the same paradigm - strongly facilitate military phase undeclared war of aggression. In addition, on the basis of existing reality material scientists previously studied the manipulation of the mass consciousness, analyzed the characteristic changes transformed the picture of mental processes and states. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that the notion which Michael Walzer calls jus ad vim might improve the moral evaluation for using military lethal force in conflicts other than war, particularly those situations of conflict short-of-war. First, I describe his suggested approach to morally justifying the use of lethal force outside the context of war. I argue that Walzer’s jus ad vim is a broad concept that encapsulates a state’s mechanisms for exercising power short-of-war. I focus on his more narrow (...) use of jus ad vim which is the state’s use of lethal force. Next I address Tony Coady’s critique of jus ad vim. I argue that Coady highlights some important problems with jus ad vim, but these concerns are not sufficient to dismiss it completely. Then, in the final section, I argue that jus ad vim provides an appropriate “hybrid” moral framework for judging the ethical decision-making outside of war by complementing other conventional just war distinctions. A benefit of jus ad vim is that it stops us expanding the definition of war while still providing the necessary ethical framework for examining violent conflict outside that context. (shrink)

The article defines the nature of the Russian war against Ukraine in the context of social and state transformations of the 20th — 21st centuries. It is emphasized that this is a war of different worlds, mentalities, worldviews, ways of life, values, etc., which has been going on for many centuries in various forms (direct and mediated, open and veiled, hot and cold). The role of the religious-legal factor in the Russian war against Ukraine at various stages of Ukrainian state (...) formation (periods of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, Soviet, modern) is revealed. It is emphasized that it was during the time of the Ukrainian People’s Republic that the legal basis for the organization of the Ukrainian Local Orthodox Church, confessional differentiation and the establishment of freedom of conscience and interconfessional tolerance in Ukrainian society was created. Emphasized attention is paid to the fact that in the Soviet period, the Russian war against Ukraine continued in a new, veiled, hidden, invisible (at first glance) form with the active use of the religious factor. The results of this period have been determined, namely: rampant militant/ scientific atheism, radical extermination, Russification of Ukrainian Orthodoxy, liquidation of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, etc. Special attention is paid to the Soviet secular/political religion (Marxism-Leninism) as a key basis for the implementation of an aggressive policy regarding the historical memory and cultural identity of the Ukrainian people and a manipulative tool for the destruction of Ukrainian history, culture, worldview, nation, state and law in the information, hybrid, total, full-scale and other Russia’s wars against Ukraine. The article substantiates that improved legislation with an effective legal mechanism for its implementation, a strong civil society with developed institutions, including the institution of religion (church), adequate guarantees of religious rights and freedoms are important factors in ensuring state, national, religious security and victory of Ukraine (at the current stage) in the war waged against it by the Russian Federation. (shrink)

While current doctrines try to separate conflicts within two distinct categories – conventional versus irregular, there are, however, a series of contemporary conflicts that challenge this western view on war showing that the disjunctive manner of classification in ‘big and conventional’ versus ‘small and irregular’ is limited and simplistic. The military strategists as well as the academics used a series of concepts in order to describe the main shifts in the character of war – from the Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) (...) and ‘new wars’ to hybrid wars. This article aims to identify these mutations in war evolution in the new, post-Cold War international context. The traditional image we have on this well-known ‘labor division’ within the military field no longer reflects reality. (shrink)

In an age when the geopolitical dynamics are shifting from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the reception of Asian sources in Europe could be seen as primarily of historical interest. At first sight, the interpretation of Chinese and Buddhist wisdom traditions in early twentieth-century Germany appears to bear little significance for contemporary concerns. In Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought, Eric Nelson proves this assumption wrong and demonstrates that the short-lived cosmopolitan glimmers in between the two world (...) wars set a standard for intercultural dialogue. The Sino-German philosophical encounter presents an exception to the cultural provincialism that has plagued... (shrink)

This article is devoted to the phenomenon of hybrid war. Based on the fact that the military actions can be represented as the particular process, it is proposed to analyze the phenomenon on the technological approach. In addition, the study of the phenomenon does not occur within the traditional "democratic paradigm", and based on the assertion that in modern Ukraine the model of social and political order with an oligarchs in the center was formed. All state institutions and segments (...) of civil society are in a tough financial and economic dependence from the social group of oligarchs. The goals, objectives, principles, directions, forms, methods and techniques of conducting hybrid warfare are discussed. The general and the particular to the phenomena of the conventional war and the hybrid war is determined. Focuses on the complex nature of the phenomenon, its layered structure. In this connection, emphasizes the fact that the main actors of the war at different levels perform different roles, which is fixed by experts who analyze the situation. In particular, Ukraine can be considered as the subject of a hybrid war at the regional level, but it also becomes the purpose and the object as to the subjects of higher geopolitical level. In general, the phenomenon of hybrid war characterized by a lack of principles in building of the technological process. In the specific case of Ukraine, the lack of clear principles in the organization of the process dictated by economic interests of oligarchic clans that joined the struggle for the redistribution model in securing ownership of tools and means of production. Other elements of the process of the hybrid war are serve the implementation of the corporate interests of the oligarchs. In addition, the Ukrainian oligarchic structures are the link, the conductor for the interests of oligarchic structures of higher global level. The main tool in this struggle is the information - the main resource of the era, on which the oligarchs try to win a monopoly. Thus, we can talk about the oligarchic discourse of the hybrid war in Ukraine, as invariably present oligarchic component in all its elements. (shrink)

Стаття присвячена філософському осмисленню теорії війни та миру. Висвітлено гібридні форми інформаційного впливу з метою розпалювання ворожнечі між народами, через підміну смислів формування необхідної для агресора реальності, взяття під контроль наративу властивому соціальному середовищу Східної України, встановлення деформованих світоглядних орієнтирів. Розглянуто поняття "мир" в методологічній парадигмі конфліктології, теорії насильства, теорії війни та інших теоріях. Запропоновано інформаційний інструментарій встановлення миру на Сході України: забезпечення домінування України в інформаційній сфері регіону досягається шляхом впливу за принципом "soft power"; організація стратегічної комунікації принципово відмінної (...) від пропагандистських методів інформаційного впливу агресора; асиметрична проактивна інформаційна позиція держави забезпечить встановлення домінування українських інформаційно-психологічних впливів, технологій політичного та суспільно-культурного характеру. (shrink)

Introduction. The lexeme “myth” is ordinary for a modern person, but its meaning is a vague circle of definition. The author sets the question — how does modern man understand the myth, how does he use it, and what approaches to studying the manifestations of the mythological are used in modern science. But in order to correctly answer these questions, it is necessary to clarify the concept of “modernity”. According to the author, it is possible to correctly substantiate the concept (...) of modernity by using the method of paradigm analysis by A.G. Dugin. In line with this approach, the concept of “modernity” is conceptually identical to the postmodern paradigm. The purpose of the study is to conduct a revision of modern literature (literature of the postmodern paradigm) devoted to the scientific study of the myth and the manifestations of the mythological in human existence, to analyze it in line with the paradigm approach. Introduce new sources into scientific circulation and, on the basis of a combination of new and existing sources, offer a detailed historiographic review of the literature. Methods. The main method used in this work is the paradigm analysis by A.G. Dugin. In addition to it, a systematic approach and general scientific methods were used — analysis and synthesis, induction, deduction, abstraction. Scientific novelty of the research. The main scientific novelty of the study is the use of the method of paradigm analysis in the study of the mythological. In addition, a number of new sources (published in the period from 2020 to 2022) dedicated to the topic of myth are being introduced into scientific circulation. Results. Within the framework of this article, more than 60 works were analyzed and, on their basis, an exhaustive historiographic review of the existing modern literature devoted to the study of myth and manifestations of the mythological in human being was made. Conclusion. Considering the presented literature in line with the paradigm approach, the author explicates the main aspects of the study of the mythological, which are characteristic of this paradigm and suggests further vectors of its development. According to the author, the myth is increasingly integrated into the digital and virtual environment, which actualizes the need to study it already in the mainstream of digital anthropology. The author also puts forward the thesis that digital literacy skills can help reduce the ideological load of the myth, which manifests itself in the digital environment in the form of fake news and other tools of hybrid wars. (shrink)

The article examines the national worldview codes as a prerequisite for national revival. The urgency of studying world outlook codes in modern Ukraine is primarily due to the actualization of powerful manipulative anti-Ukrainian processes that often take the form of “hybrid wars”. The purpose of the article is to show how and based on what principles the main national world outlook codes function during important historical transformations. For this purpose, the article investigates two information and cultural fields, which are (...) based on world-view structures of the mythological type – national and imperial myths. These structures have their branched code systems, which are updated and described in the form of mythology, symbols and signs. Two important issues are additionally considered: encoding information through the codes of other systems and the use of different languages for transmitting the message, which may cause its distortion. The components of Ukraine’s image as the main mythological image with the national code base are analyzed. Much attention is paid to describing the basic code in the national unconscious of the Ukrainian people and its differences from the imperial view of the world. The historical retrospective is depicted on the example of the “Cossack era”, the activities of the “Central Council”, the “Time of Independence”, the “Orange Revolution – 2004”, the “Dignity Revolution – 2013–2014”, military operations in the ATO-zone, etc. Modern examples show the influence of actualization of relevant world outlook codes on political, social, and cultural life. The mechanisms of combining and enhancing world outlook codes, actualized in various spheres – politics, religion, culture, in particular, mass culture, social life – are discussed. The author also considers the distribution of influence of these codes on other areas of life for describing the surrounding world by ordinary citizens. The idea of three waves of national revival in modern Ukraine is proposed. Attention is drawn to the possible risks of ceasing the nation-building processes in the present, as well as numerous perspectives should this “wave” be as productive as possible. (shrink)

The actuality of research paper is the integration of Ukraine into the European Union and the achievement of victory over Russia in the "hybrid war" of the XXIst century, the need to unite Ukrainian people around common goals based on national pride. The Ukrainians study two important concepts - the Ukrainian the national idea and the national identity, the means of their evaluation and development. The aim of the research is a critical analysis of common and distinctive concepts of (...) the UNI and national identity. The purpose of the research is to define the main difficulties for spreading the victorious UNI in present conditions; to research the practice of studying and measuring the numerous characteristics of national identification by sociologists and the other Ukrainian scholars. The research methodology has a modern system and multidisciplinary character. The method of dialectical analysis is taken from philosophy, evolutionary approach - from historical sciences, comparative analysis - from linguistics and pedagogics, etc. We will be constantly turning to the latest scientific discoveries in ethology, cognitive science, noohistory and the other “young” sciences, that is necessary for predictions in the topic of "national identification”. Particularly we are going to borrow foreign experience in the protection of the national language and in effective teaching of foreign languages. The main result of the research is the need to create and apply the UNI as a strategic means on consolidation of Ukraine. UNI-21 should rely on a combination of noohistory as the sum of exact dates of archaeological findings and the decoding of the DNA of their organic part. The facts about the Great Trypillya and the other ancestors’ achievements of Ukrainians for over 15,000 years have already raised national pride and created a scientific outlook. The noohistorians have created a new theory on the of the Indo-European languages’ family origin. Besides they confirmed the hypothesis of German linguists of the XIXth century about the extension of Indo-European languages’ family from Ukraine's forest steppes. These and other facts are forming a high national pride, which greatly facilitates the solution of language problems. Conclusion: We have proved that the experience of Ireland on the language issues has special significance for modern Ukraine. It is known that Ireland has been colonized by the United Kingdom for 800 years. The Irish were suffered from a linguistic split and separation of a part of the nation, but they did not lose their native language. And even after the “economic victory” over the colonialists in circumstances of a very high standard living they started to restore the Irish language position of the main state language. (shrink)

The main purpose of the study is to determine the key aspects of the mechanisms of state management of the exchange of information about cyberattacks, cyber incidents, and information security incidents. The methodology includes a set of theoretical methods. Modern government, on the one hand, must take into account the emergence of such a new weapon as cyber, which can break various information systems, can be used in hybrid wars, influence political events, pose a threat to the national security (...) of any state. As a result of the study, key elements of the mechanisms of state management of the exchange of information about cyberattacks, cyber incidents, and information security incidents were identified. (shrink)

У статті розглядаються найбільш часто вживані в публіцистиці поняття, що претендують на узагальнене найменування подій, які відбуваються на Сході України. Аналізується зміст понять "криза", "війна", "гібридна війна", "агресія", "конфлікт". Доводиться, що з урахуванням наявності чинників внутрішнього розколу та зовнішньої агресії гібридного характеру найбільш коректним буде використовувати категорію "конфлікт". Це дозволить задіяти потенціал конфліктологічної парадигми сучасної соціології та уточняти цілі й засоби, суб'єкти й об'єкти східноукраїнського конфлікту. При цьому залежно від рівня одні й ті самі соціальні спільноти, групи, інститути й особистості (...) можуть виступати як суб'єкти і як об'єкти конфлікту. (shrink)

The author continues the philosophical study of manipulative influence on the mass consciousness, which is the basic component of the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. The article is devoted to the identification of miscalculations that have been admitted by technologists of this manipulative effect. It was revealed that the mistakes amount to unqualified approach in forming the image of the key person of mythology. It was established that classics of cultural studies, religious studies and philosophy studied in detail (...) the stages of formation of the person of a cultural hero in the epic of different peoples. These stages, in general similar, are traced to all ethnic groups and provide a compulsory and invariable algorithm for transforming an ordinary person and turning it into a Hero. Also, the classics of science insist that mythology is the basis of any cultural activity of a modern human being - it is its background. In addition, they point to the danger of unskilled myth-making. The author of the article has established that Russian technologies of manipulation by consciousness have neglected all the advice of scientists and ignored the basic stages of the formation of the Hero in political myth-making. Therefore, the author of the article makes a number of conclusions about the possible imminent collapse of the negativism of the people of Russia in relation to its unsuccessfully mythologized President - with all the resulting political consequences. Also, the article reveals other miscalculations of manipulators, which concern mistaken assessments of the Ukrainian mentality and technical miscalculations. (shrink)

The author analyzes three waves of the crisis of democracy during the 20th and early 21st centuries. The first crisis of democracy in the early 20th century is caused by the emergence and development of public politics, which challenged the possibility to govern the masses having conflict potential, it balanced the power of the people and universal suffrage with the control of the media in order to maintain the stability of political system. The second wave of the crisis of democracy (...) (the last third of the 20th century) is associated with the destruction of the conventional world and the weakening of the nation-state; and its markers were: the imbalance between the branches of government, the domination of economics over politics, the predominance of equality over freedom, the problematic implementation of human rights, and, as a consequence, the inability to put into practice the national form of democracy. The third wave of crisis (early the 21st century) is accompanied by the transformation of democracy into post-democracy, in which the power of the people is replaced by the power of global capital, and the illusion of consent is reinforced by the prohibition of alternative points of view and the narrowing of the space of issues allowed for discussion in the name of public security. The crisis of the policy to achieve peace through the transformation of the balance of powers into a balance of interests called into question the principles of democracy. On the contrary, post-democracies justify the use of force to spread democracy around the world, and they take an active part in contemporary military conflicts, which can rightly be defined as hybrid proxy wars. Drawing on J. Habermas’s concept of communicative rationality, the author concludes that to overcome the crisis of democracy it is necessary to accept the very possibility of an alternative to this form of government and allow to discuss these previously marginalized issues as well as to maintain the return of the majority to genuine communication and politics, contribute to its enlightenment. (shrink)

The modern information age brings changes to all phenomena of human life. For example, the natu re of wars change. They are transferred from the actual battlefield to the information space, i.e. they become hybrid. The winner is the one whose narrative becomes dominant in the global information space. The Russian-Ukrainian war is a vivid example of the latest confrontation. It takes place between two absolutely opposite positions, a compromise between which is impossible. This conflict is deeply existential, because (...) Russia sharply denies the existence of Ukraine as an independent state and as a nation in general. This is evidenced by the rhetoric of the aggressor state and numerous war crimes. However, this war is not only between two sides. By denying Ukraine its existence, Russia is also at war with the values that Ukrainians uphold and on the basis of which they strive to build their own country. And these are the values of the free democratic world. Therefore, Russia opposes not only one country, but all those who also share them. That is why the information war begins to reach far beyond the borders of Ukraine. Already today, we can see the influence of Russia, whose propaganda influences the agenda of many leading Western countries. Using both classic mass media (newspapers, radio, television) and new ones (communities in social networks, bloggers, etc.), it intervenes in the global information space. The Internet only further complicates the dissemination of reliable information and promotes propaganda, because now there is almost no control over the flow of information. Habermas states this problem, noting that everyone is now a potential author without editorial control. Therefore, in conditions where the mass media gravitate towards entertainment and most of the information flows in an uncontrolled stream, there is a war for human minds. That’s why the current situation becomes a challenge for communicative theory, which has learned to make a correct diagnosis, but has not yet offered its option for exiting the crisis. Habermas’ post “War and In dignation” is so far only a testimony to the failure of his philosophy in the face of real challenges. Therefore, modern war is also a direct test for communicative theory, which must either find a way out of its limits or confirm its defeat. (shrink)

This thesis examines the key moral principles that should govern decision-making by police and military when using lethal force. To this end, it provides an ethical analysis of the following question: Under what circumstances, if any, is it morally justified for the agents of state-sanctioned security institutions to use lethal force, in particular the police and the military? Recent literature in this area suggests that modern conflicts involve new and unique features that render conventional ways of thinking about the ethics (...) of armed conflict, and the use of lethal force, as inadequate or redundant. In particular, there is an increased concern with the moral difficulties created by “non-standard” cases. This is where the police or military are obliged to operate outside their conventional contexts. In such non-standard cases, on what moral basis can (or should) state actors – especially the police and military – use lethal force? One approach argues that there is nothing morally exceptional about the use of lethal force by police or military. This says the only available moral justification for using lethal force is killing in self-defence or defence of others. In contrast, I use an institutional approach to develop a moral framework for the state’s morally exceptional use of lethal force. The institutional approach is concerned with the ends (telos) or purpose of a social institution. It says that the moral purpose of a social institution alters the moral responsibilities of its agents; what is referred to as role morality. My analysis demonstrates that there is an important moral distinction between justified killing in self-defence and state-sanctioned uses of lethal force. My claim is that police and military uses of lethal force are not morally justified in the same way as the average person’s use of lethal force (i.e. self-defence or defence of others). Instead, I argue that the state-sanctioned institutional role of police and military give these state actors special moral duties, and therefore exceptional moral justification, for using lethal force. I argue that the institutional end of the police is the preservation of public safety. This includes using lethal force where it is necessary to protect life and prevent serious injury to jurisdictional inhabitants. In contrast, a morally responsible state uses military force to defend the “common good.” That is, when it is necessary to defend the peaceful functioning of a state from armed threats or other forms of political violence. I then conclude that non-standard cases require the addition of jus ad vim (or the just use of military force short-of-war) as a hybrid element to the moral framework for the state-sanctioned use of lethal force. This provides a better way of applying ethics to the use of military force when defending the common good against serious threats in non-standard cases. This is because jus ad vim complements the conventional military paradigm by permitting the use of military capabilities to defend the common good. But, at the same time, it inhibits the move towards the more destructive levels of violence characteristic of conventional warfighting. (shrink)

A culture war has been brewing in Singapore since 2009 when a conservative Christian group conducted a reverse takeover of a feminist civil society organization and was subsequently expelled from the organization in a publicized meeting between the two groups. Since then, the state has mediated the contestation of values between religious conservatives and liberal groups allied around issues of gender and sexuality. The culture war between the two sides has revolved around creative protests that have evaded state prohibitions against (...) public contestations over what is legally considered private beliefs and affairs. They involve innovative hybridizations of American discourses on values and rights mixed with Asian emphases on family traditions and sentiments. The COVID-19 pandemic has, however, laid bare the adaptation of the American culture war into the Singaporean public sphere. This article looks at and analyzes COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among conservative Christians in Singapore and their incorporation of anti-vaccination views from American Christian nationalism into secular framings, invoking legal rights and responsibilities aligned with the state’s nationalist discourse. I argue that this represents a new phase of contestation by conservatives, refashioning their religious views into secular frames of public good and morality serving the secular nation. By doing so, they implicitly challenge the state’s regulation of religion as private interests and beliefs. This altered religious activism has shifted the terms of secularism and loosened the hegemony of the state in defining these terms. (shrink)

Moral reasoning traditionally distinguishes two types of evil:moral and natural. The standard view is that ME is the product of human agency and so includes phenomena such as war, torture and psychological cruelty; that NE is the product of nonhuman agency, and so includes natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, disease and famine; and finally, that more complex cases are appropriately analysed as a combination of ME and NE. Recently, as a result of developments in autonomousagents in cyberspace, a new (...) class of interesting and importantexamples of hybrid evil has come to light. In this paper, it is called artificial evil and a case is made for considering it to complement ME and NE to produce a more adequate taxonomy. By isolating the features that have led to the appearance of AE, cyberspace is characterised as a self-contained environment that forms the essential component in any foundation of the emerging field of Computer Ethics. It is argued that this goes someway towards providing a methodological explanation of whycyberspace is central to so many of CE's concerns; and it isshown how notions of good and evil can be formulated incyberspace. Of considerable interest is how the propensity for anagent's action to be morally good or evil can be determined evenin the absence of biologically sentient participants and thusallows artificial agents not only to perpetrate evil but conversely to `receive' or `suffer from'it. The thesis defended is that the notion of entropy structure,which encapsulates human value judgement concerning cyberspace ina formal mathematical definition, is sufficient to achieve thispurpose and, moreover, that the concept of AE can be determinedformally, by mathematical methods. A consequence of this approachis that the debate on whether CE should be considered unique, andhence developed as a Macroethics, may be viewed, constructively,in an alternative manner. The case is made that whilst CE issues are not uncontroversially unique, they are sufficiently novel to render inadequate the approach of standard Macroethics such as Utilitarianism and Deontologism and hence to prompt the search for a robust ethical theory that can deal with them successfully. The name Information Ethics is proposed for that theory. Itis argued that the uniqueness of IE is justified by its beingnon-biologically biased and patient-oriented: IE is anEnvironmental Macroethics based on the concept of data entityrather than life. It follows that the novelty of CE issues suchas AE can be appreciated properly because IE provides a newperspective. In light of the discussion provided in this paper, it is concluded that Computer Ethics is worthy of independent study because it requires its own application-specific knowledge and is capable of supporting a methodological foundation, Information Ethics. (shrink)

Robots today serve in many roles, from entertainer to educator to executioner. As robotics technology advances, ethical concerns become more pressing: Should robots be programmed to follow a code of ethics, if this is even possible? Are there risks in forming emotional bonds with robots? How might society--and ethics--change with robotics? This volume is the first book to bring together prominent scholars and experts from both science and the humanities to explore these and other questions in this emerging field. Starting (...) with an overview of the issues and relevant ethical theories, the topics flow naturally from the possibility of programming robot ethics to the ethical use of military robots in war to legal and policy questions, including liability and privacy concerns. The contributors then turn to human-robot emotional relationships, examining the ethical implications of robots as sexual partners, caregivers, and servants. Finally, they explore the possibility that robots, whether biological-computational hybrids or pure machines, should be given rights or moral consideration. Ethics is often slow to catch up with technological developments. This authoritative and accessible volume fills a gap in both scholarly literature and policy discussion, offering an impressive collection of expert analyses of the most crucial topics in this increasingly important field. (shrink)

Moral reasoning traditionally distinguishes two types of evil:moral (ME) and natural (NE). The standard view is that ME is the product of human agency and so includes phenomena such as war,torture and psychological cruelty; that NE is the product of nonhuman agency, and so includes natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, disease and famine; and finally, that more complex cases are appropriately analysed as a combination of ME and NE. Recently, as a result of developments in autonomous agents in cyberspace, (...) a new class of interesting and important examples of hybrid evil has come to light. In this paper, it is called artificial evil (AE) and a case is made for considering it to complement ME and NE to produce a more adequate taxonomy. By isolating the features that have led to the appearance of AE, cyberspace is characterised as a self-contained environment that forms the essential component in any foundation of the emerging field of Computer Ethics (CE). It is argued that this goes someway towards providing a methodological explanation of why cyberspace is central to so many of CE's concerns; and it is shown how notions of good and evil can be formulated in cyberspace. Of considerable interest is how the propensity for an agent's action to be morally good or evil can be determined even in the absence of biologically sentient participants and thus allows artificial agents not only to perpetrate evil (and fort that matter good) but conversely to `receive' or `suffer from' it. The thesis defended is that the notion of entropy structure, which encapsulates human value judgement concerning cyberspace in a formal mathematical definition, is sufficient to achieve this purpose and, moreover, that the concept of AE can be determined formally, by mathematical methods. A consequence of this approach is that the debate on whether CE should be considered unique, and hence developed as a Macroethics, may be viewed, constructively,in an alternative manner. The case is made that whilst CE issues are not uncontroversially unique, they are sufficiently novel to render inadequate the approach of standard Macroethics such as Utilitarianism and Deontologism and hence to prompt the search for a robust ethical theory that can deal with them successfully. The name Information Ethics (IE) is proposed for that theory. Itis argued that the uniqueness of IE is justified by its being non-biologically biased and patient-oriented: IE is an Environmental Macroethics based on the concept of data entity rather than life. It follows that the novelty of CE issues such as AE can be appreciated properly because IE provides a new perspective (though not vice versa). In light of the discussion provided in this paper, it is concluded that Computer Ethics is worthy of independent study because it requires its own application-specific knowledge and is capable of supporting a methodological foundation, Information Ethics. (shrink)

Expressivists have a problem with collectives. I initially illustrate the problem against the background of Allan Gibbard’s expressivist theory, where it is especially stark. I then argue that the problem generalizes. Gibbard’s account entails that judgments about what collective agents ought to do are contingency plans for what to do if one is in the circumstances facing the relevant collective agent. So, for example, my judgment that the United States ought not to have invaded Iraq is a contingency plan for (...) what to do if I find myself in the circumstances facing the United States on the eve of the Iraq war. I argue that, given plausible functionalist assumptions in the philosophy of mind expressivists would struggle to reject, such contingency plans are impossible for individual agents. Since normative judgments about collectives are possible, Gibbard’s theory is unacceptable. Having demonstrated the basic problem for Gibbard’s view, I then argue that the problem has a much wider scope. In particular, I argue that traditional forms of expressivism cannot simultaneously provide a plausible account of both agent-relative normative judgments and judgments about what collectives ought to do. Fortunately, all is not lost; hybrid or ‘ecumenical’ forms of expressivism can disarm the dilemma, or so I argue. I conclude by briefly sketching some further challenges ecumenical expressivism must overcome for its treatment of judgments about collectives to be fully satisfactory and indicate possible lines of argument to be pursued in future work on these challenges. (shrink)

Societies of the East are often contrasted with those of the West in their stances toward technology. This paper explores these perceived differences in the context of international ethics guidance for artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. Japan serves as an example of the East, while Europe and North America serve as examples of the West. The paper’s principal aim is to demonstrate that Western values predominate in international ethics guidance and that Japanese values serve as a much-needed corrective. We recommend (...) a hybrid approach that is more inclusive and truly ‘international’. Following an introduction, the paper examines distinct stances toward robots that emerged in the West and Japan, respectively, during the aftermath of the Second World War, reflecting history and popular culture, socio-economic conditions, and religious worldviews. It shows how international ethics guidelines reflect these disparate stances, drawing on a 2019 scoping review that examined 84 international AI ethics documents. These documents are heavily skewed toward precautionary values associated with the West and cite the optimistic values associated with Japan less frequently. Drawing insights from Japan’s so-called ‘moonshot goals’, the paper fleshes out Japanese values in greater detail and shows how to incorporate them more effectively in international ethics guidelines for AI and robotics. (shrink)

If, as asserted by the French collective Tiqqun, we are essentially living in a global colony, where the 1% control the 99%, then it follows that the revolutionary struggle should strategically reorient itself as guerrilla warfare. The agents of this war, Tiqqun characterize, in part, by drawing on ethnologists Pierre de Clastres and Ernesto de Martino, specifically their figures of the Indigenous American warrior and the Southern Italian sorcerer, respectively. Hybridizing these two figures into that of the “warrior-mage,” the present (...) article posits an actionable exemplar thereof in players of the massively popular trading and online card game, Magic: The Gathering (MTG). More specifically, I propose a strategic mapping of MTG’s five colors of magic onto the five divisions of a coalition against late capitalist Empire, which I call the “Warrior-Mage Guild,” including liberation clerics, animal rights activists, propagandists, anti-psychiatrists, hackers, saboteurs, and those who threaten decolonizing force contra Empire. (shrink)

James Lorimer Halliday pioneered the development of the concept of psychosocial medicine in Britain in the 1930s and 1940s. He worked in Glasgow, first as a public health doctor, and then as part of the corporatist National Health Insurance scheme. Here he learned about links between poverty, the social environment, emotional stress and psychological and physical ill-health, and about statistical tools for making such problems scientifically visible. The intellectual development of his methodologically and epistemologically integrated medicine – a hybrid (...) of biomedical and psychological approaches – was embedded in the context of this practice with its particular medical culture and socio-economic circumstances. Halliday’s ideas are part of the wider, heterogeneous turn towards medical modernism and holism within mainstream medicine in Britain, western Europe and the United States in the inter-war period, and their evolution underlines the varied nature of contemporary anti-reductionist thinking in medicine. It also points to the diversity of the sources of holism and the many routes by which psychological and especially psychosocial discourses about health and illness entered professional and public arenas in Britain in this period. (shrink)

Moral reasoning traditionally distinguishes two types of evil: moral and natural. The standard view is that ME is the product of human agency and so includes phenomena such as war, torture and psychological cruelty; that NE is the product of nonhuman agency, and so includes natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, disease and famine; and finally, that more complex cases are appropriately analysed as a combination of ME and NE. Recently, as a result of developments in autonomous agents in cyberspace, (...) a new class of interesting and important examples of hybrid evil has come to light. In this paper, it is called artificial evil and a case is made for considering it to complement ME and NE to produce a more adequate taxonomy. By isolating the features that have led to the appearance of AE, cyberspace is characterised as a self-contained environment that forms the essential component in any foundation of the emerging field of Computer Ethics. It is argued that this goes some way towards providing a methodological explanation of why cyberspace is central to so many of CE’s concerns; and it is shown how notions of good and evil can be formulated in cyberspace. Of considerable interest is how the propensity for an agent’s action to be morally good or evil can be determined even in the absence of biologically sentient participants and thus allows artificial agents not only to perpetrate evil but conversely to ‘receive’ or ‘suffer from’ it. The thesis defended is that the notion of entropy structure, which encapsulates human value judgement concerning cyberspace in a formal mathematical definition, is sufficient to achieve this purpose and, moreover, that the concept of AE can be determined formally, by mathematical methods. A consequence of this approach is that the debate on whether CE should be considered unique, and hence developed as a Macroethics, may be viewed, constructively, in an alternative manner. The case is made that whilst CE issues are not uncontroversially unique, they are sufficiently novel to render inadequate the approach of standard Macroethics such as Utilitarianism and Deontologism and hence to prompt the search for a robust ethical theory that can deal with them successfully. The name Information Ethics is proposed for that theory. It is argued that the uniqueness of IE is justified by its being non-biologically biased and patient-oriented: IE is an Environmental Macroethics based on the concept of data entity rather than life. It follows that the novelty of CE issues such as AE can be appreciated properly because IE provides a new perspective. In light of the discussion provided in this paper, it is concluded that Computer Ethics is worthy of independent study because it requires its own application-specific knowledge and is capable of supporting a methodological foundation, Information Ethics. (shrink)

If neoliberal globalization was a regime of American economic unilateralism, has this been succeeded by or combined with political and military unilateralism? This discussion probes the emerging features of a hybrid formation of neoliberal empire; a mélange of political-military and economic unilateralism, an attempt to merge geopolitics with the aims and techniques of neoliberalism. This is examined in relation to government, privatization, trade, aid, marketing and the occupation of Iraq. A further question is what kind of wider strategy is (...) taking shape amid the turmoil of the new wars. (shrink)

In 300 BCE, the tutor of the heir-apparent to the Chu throne was laid to rest in a tomb at Jingmen, Hubei province in central China. A corpus of bamboo-strip texts that recorded the philosophical teachings of an era was buried with him. The tomb was sealed, and China quickly became the theater of the Qin conquest, an event that proved to be one of the most significant in ancient history. For over two millennia, the texts were forgotten. But in (...) October 1993, they were unearthed. The discovery of the Guodian texts, together with other recently discovered Warring States manuscripts, has revolutionized the study of early Chinese intellectual history. Kenneth Holloway argues that the Guodian corpus puts forth a political philosophy based on the harmonious interconnection of individuals engaged in moral self-cultivation. This unique worldview, says Holloway, cannot meaningfully be categorized as "Confucian" or "Daoist," because it shares important concepts and vocabulary with a number of different textual traditions that have anachronistically been characterized as competing or incompatible "schools" of thought. He finds that within the Guodian corpus familiar philosophical concepts and texts are applied in distinctive ways, presenting a worldview that is quite different from the received textual traditions. In the corpus, the most important function of government is to assist in the harmonization of state and family relations. It sees the relationship between these two entities - the family and the collection of families that ultimately constitute the state - as being inherently conflicting social groupings. The texts posit an interesting solution: State and family disharmony can be overcome by developing a hybrid government that employs both meritocratic and aristocratic methods. Without knowledge of the emphasis on hybridization found in the Guodian texts, however, scholars were unable to understand the interrelationships between these two methods of government. This new understanding illuminates central issues of government, religion, and philosophy in early China that were overlooked in received texts. As part of the contribution to our understanding of this particular body of texts, Holloway proposes a methodology for assessing a corpus of texts without relying on assumptions and definitions that derive from two thousand years of scholarship. The Guodian corpus, and Holloway's analysis of it, are now absolutely indispensable to any student or scholar of ancient Chinese intellectual history. (shrink)

The Russian invasion of 2022 was based on an organized process of influence on the Ukrainian population, aimed at obtaining their support or neutralizing their possible resistance, in concert with the state apparatus. We find, in the backdrop of this process, the memorial conflict between these two countries and their neighbours, concerning World War II and the Soviet Union. This war of influence, or political warfare, which falls within new forms of contemporary hybrid warfare, profoundly has to do with (...) images, especially moving images. The cinematic images, the debauchery of their propaganda during the Second World War and throughout the existence of the USSR, still weighs on the bodies and minds; the new media has in many ways inherented them and their way of reenacting or extending propaganda on an individual or group scale. We will then question the place of images, and in particular those in motion, in the war between Russia and Ukraine since 2014 to describe the way in which they have served or still serve the military-memorial device deployed by the Russian invader. (shrink)

James Lorimer Halliday (1897–1983) pioneered the development of the concept of psychosocial medicine in Britain in the 1930s and 1940s. He worked in Glasgow, first as a public health doctor, and then as part of the corporatist National Health Insurance scheme. Here he learned about links between poverty, the social environment, emotional stress and psychological and physical ill-health, and about statistical tools for making such problems scientifically visible. The intellectual development of his methodologically and epistemologically integrated medicine – a (...) class='Hi'>hybrid of biomedical and psychological approaches – was embedded in the context of this practice with its particular medical culture and socio-economic circumstances. Halliday’s ideas are part of the wider, heterogeneous turn towards medical modernism and holism within mainstream medicine in Britain, western Europe and the United States in the inter-war period, and their evolution underlines the varied nature of contemporary anti-reductionist thinking in medicine. It also points to the diversity of the sources of holism and the many routes by which psychological and especially psychosocial discourses about health and illness entered professional and public arenas in Britain in this period. (shrink)

Recent scholarship provides the opportunity for an assessment of the underexplored but promising marriage between science and technology studies and Internet governance research. This article seeks to provide such an assessment by reviewing and discussing, in particular, three volumes: Laura DeNardis’s The Global War for Internet Governance, The Power of Networks: Organizing the Global Politics of the Internet by Mikkel Flyverbom, and Governance, Regulations and Powers on the Internet edited by Eric Brousseau, Meryem Marzouki, and Cécile Méadel. Approaching IG through (...) an STS lens, these authors bring to the fore a number of related issues that political and legal sciences have addressed only incompletely so far, but are crucial to understand today’s governance of the Internet as a complex sociotechnical system of systems. In their research, STS scholars of IG highlight the day-to-day, mundane practices that constitute IG; the plurality and “networkedness” of hybrid devices and arrangements that populate, shape, and define IG processes; the performative function of these arrangements vis-à-vis the virtual, yet very material, worlds they seek to regulate; the invisibility, pervasiveness, and agency of infrastructure. (shrink)

Since literary historian Robert Bone published his seminal essay ‘Richard Wright and the Chicago Renaissance’ in 1986, scholars have created new cartographies of previously unexplored terrain in American cultural history. The earliest studies focused on literature, but more recently attention has turned to other disciplines, including visual arts. Recent publication of The Muse in Bronzeville: African American Creative Expression in Chicago, 1932–1950 (2011) by Robert Bone and Richard A. Courage promises to decisively broaden scholarly understandings of the scope and significance (...) of Chicago-centred cultural production during the Great Depression and post-war years. Of particular relevance to contemporary studies of new media art is the manner in which then-emergent ideas and practices – centring on racialized subject matter, elite and mass audiences, traditional and new mediums of expression, private vs public sponsorship, and passive vs active reception of art objects – converged to create new paradigms and possibilities for visual artists to reshape consciousness in a period of institutional collapse and change. Chicago’s New Negro artists of the 1930s and 1940s, like their counterparts in 1920s Harlem, sought to reframe perceptions of African American life, to re-present the black subject as something other than an object of contempt or amusement beneath the privileged gaze of the white viewer. Just as these artists sought to revise perceptions of racial reality, examination of the wide range of actual images they created and the mediums and styles they explored revises reductive notions about creative expression in this period, which often portray a mere subordination of art to propaganda and an embrace of representational aesthetics and simplistic narratives in a fruitless detour in the evolution from modernism to postmodernism. On the contrary, Andrew Hemingway notes the range of stylistic experiment and characterizes so-called ‘social art’ as ‘a hybrid and unstable mode [which] had to carry the imperative to be an art equal in formal achievement to both the great art of the past and the modern tradition … [and] to suggest a political orientation without becoming overt revolutionary propaganda’ (2002).New media theorist Oliver Grau observes thatIn many quarters, virtual reality is viewed as a totally new phenomenon… but it did not make its first appearance with the technical invention of computer-aided virtual realities. On the contrary, virtual reality forms part of the core of the relationship of humans to images… grounded in art traditions that have receivedscant attention up to now.(2004)In the midst of another period of change, of transformed and transforming ideas and practices in the arts, we have much to learn from the attempts of Chicago’s New (Media) Negro artists to create ‘art for the people’, to immerse broad audiences in such accessible media as mural painting, photography and graphic arts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editors' IntroductionThomas Cattoi and Kristin Johnston LargenIn 2018, Buddhist-Christian Studies published the proceedings of an international conference on Ippolito Desideri (1684–1733) that had been held in Pistoia in October 2017. Marking the two-hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the Tuscan Jesuit in Lhasa, the event explored from a variety of disciplinary perspectives the extraordinary contribution of a figure who effectively inaugurated the theological conversation between Tibetan Buddhism and Christianity. (...) Desideri, however, was neither the only nor the first Catholic missionary to reach Tibet—a number of other Jesuits and a few members of other religious orders had visited the Land of Snows or even settled there before his arrival. In this issue of the journal, we are therefore glad to open this issue with the translation of another report by a missionary—this time, the author is the Capuchin Domenico da Fano, who authored his memories of his time in Tibet in 1713. The translation is by Michael J. Sweet and Leonard Zwilling—names many of our readers will recognize as the translator and the editor of Desideri's Relazione. As Luciano Petech's collection Il Nuovo Ramusio contains quite a few more reports by Italian Catholic missionaries to Asia, this may not even be the last such translation that the journal is going to publish.Continuing our long-established tradition, the first part of the issue contains a number of papers that were initially presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies. For the second year in a row, because of the global health emergency, the meeting was held remotely, but the energy and the enthusiasm of both speakers and audience ensured that the sessions were both compelling and inspiring. A first set of essays touches on the relationship between Buddhist-Christian dialogue and the environmental crisis, exploring perspectives as diverse as process thought, hybridity, the interface between environmental activism and spiritual practice, and the need to listen to the environmental wisdom of the marginalized voices from the Global South. The second section explores different facets of the exchange between Japanese Buddhism and Christianity. Two contributions map the contribution of the Jesuit scholar and practitioner William Johnston, SJ (1925–2010), who played an important role in laying the foundations of dialogue between Japanese Zen and Catholic Christianity; another piece—also presented at the SBCS meeting in November 2021—addresses the fraught question of different responses to US nationalism during the Japanese-American conflict in World War II, while a final essay introduces us to the way women practitioners respond to [End Page vii] challenging aspects of Shin Buddhist teachings. The third and the last section of the first part includes four essays that sketch the contours of a number of interreligious encounters; one explores monastic obedience in Franciscan spirituality and Theravada Buddhism, one touches on the spirituality of victim souls and the Tibetan practice of gcod, and a final one brings into conversation Dignāga, Dharmakīrti, and Lonergan.In 2016, members of the Research Center for World Buddhist Cultures at Ryukoku University started an interreligious project under the title "Conversations in Comparative Theology: Shin Buddhism, Christianity, Islam." The goal was to organize a series of events where a few scholars from these three traditions would present papers on shared themes and discuss points of shared concerns. This initiative led to a series of four meetings that concluded in 2019. Thanks to Dennis Hirota and Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Buddhist-Christian Studies is glad to publish a series of eight essays that emerged from these conversations. Readers will notice that some of these essays are of an interreligious nature, but do not actually discuss the intersection of Buddhism and Christianity. In line with the policy adopted with the publication of the proceedings from the 2019 Lotus Sutra seminar organized in Tokyo by Risshō-Kōsei-Kai, the editors decided to publish all the contributions from these events, so as to make sure that the proceedings of these important interreligious exchanges would all be available in the same place.On January 22, 2022, the Vietnamese Buddhist leader Thich Nhat Hahn reached the end of his life. Thich Nhat Hahn had devoted his... (shrink)

John Cook Wilson (1849–1915) was Wykeham Professor of Logic at New College, Oxford and the founder of ‘Oxford Realism’, a philosophical movement that flourished at Oxford during the first decades of the 20th century. Although trained as a classicist and a mathematician, his most important contribution was to the theory of knowledge, where he argued that knowledge is factive and not definable in terms of belief, and he criticized ‘hybrid’ and ‘externalist’ accounts. He also argued for direct realism in (...) perception, criticizing both empiricism and idealism, and argued for a moderate nominalist view of universals as being in rebus and only ‘apprehended’ by their particulars. His influence helped swaying Oxford away from idealism and, through figures such as H. A. Prichard, Gilbert Ryle, or J. L. Austin, his ideas were also to some extent at the origin of ‘moral intuitionism’ and ‘ordinary language philosophy’ which defined much of Oxford philosophy until the second half of the twentieth-century. Nevertheless, his name and legacy were all but forgotten for generations after World War II. Still, his views on knowledge are with us today, being in part at work in the writings of philosophers as diverse as John McDowell, Charles Travis, and Timothy Williamson. (shrink)