The following appeared in Volume 98, Number 2 (Spring, 1999) of the APA Newsletters

This is the fourth installment in a series of short reviews of electronic journals (e-journals) devoted to philosophical topics. Previously reviewed journals are listed at the end of this article.

1. For some years various military academies in the United States have offered philosophy courses for their undergraduate students. In particular, there is an interest that officer candidates be exposed to critical reasoning, including moral reasoning. In part, these educational concerns reflect a broader interest among officers, and others, in military professional ethics. The Joint Services Conference on Professional Ethics (JSCOPE) is an organization of military professionals, academics and others formed in 1980 to discuss ethical issues relevant to the military. Colonel Malham M. Wakin, U.S. Air Force Academy, who has published extensively on military professional ethics, became the original administrator of this organization. Since 1980 JSCOPE has had many conferences. During the past few years it has met once a year to present and discuss academic papers on professional ethics. Although it is not exactly a journal, the proceedings of these annual conferences have now developed into an online periodical.

The JSCOPE Home Page is located at the Air Force Academy, with the URL http://www.usafa.af.mil/jscope/

but the views expressed on the web page are not official views of the Academy, the Air Force, or the U. S. Government. This web site contains bibliographical references and interesting case studies of ethical dilemmas. The case studies are intended to be used as teaching aids. Although they describe ethical problems in military contexts, several of them could be used in courses on introductory ethics or professional ethics.

The current, principal content of the JSCOPE Home Page consists of online publication of the proceedings of the JSCOPE meetings of 1995 through 1999. This amounts to five volumes of an online periodical. The 1995 through 1997 volumes each contain about a dozen papers, whereas those of 1998 and 1999 contain roughly twenty. The 1999 conference took place in late January, shortly before this review was written. At that time, there was an online table of contents for the 1999 volume, but the papers had not yet been posted. Presumably they will be by the time this review appears. Here are some representative articles from the previous four volumes:

Although many of the articles in the JSCOPE volumes will only interest a specialized audience, there are materials here that would be useful in ethics classes. Also, there are articles of particular interest to readers concerned with professional ethics, and especially those interested in military ethics and the laws of war. During the decade or so following the Vietnam conflict, many philosophers were very concerned with such issues. This interest has apparently waned, but these are important issues which demand continuing attention. The JSCOPE Home Page is a valuable resource for work on professional ethics and related issues.

2. There are two new e-journals worth brief mention. It is far too early to review them, but I believe that philosophers, both readers and potential contributors, will benefit from knowing about them. The first, Essays in Philosophy, is a biannual e-journal, currently located at http://www.humboldt.edu/~mfg1/opening.html.

However, this is a "working site", and may not be the permanent location of the journal. Essays in Philosophy plans to publish articles in a variety of areas of philosophy. The submissions will be refereed according to policies described at the current web site. Each issue of the journal will be devoted to a specific topic, with the future topics announced well in advance of their submission deadlines. Some of the topics currently planned, with their anticipated publication dates, are the following:

Potential contributors should visit the web site for details.

Another new e-journal is Symposia, located at http://www.trincoll.edu/~phil/symposia/index2.html.

It is trying an unusual design for a journal. As stated by the editors, "…each series of Symposia will cite a key paragraph as its ‘topic text.’ This text will serve as the focal point for interpretation, criticism, commentary, intervention, debate, invention." Each issue is to be an "…open-ended series of articles." The effect will be to promote not just the statement of positions and interpretations, but an ongoing process of debate and criticism as well. For example, the topic of the first issue is "Future," and the topic text for it is a quotation from Nietzsche’s, Untimely Mediations. The quotation begins with, "And this is a universal law: a living thing can be healthy, strong and fruitful only when bounded by a horizon; if it is incapable of drawing a horizon around itself, and at the same time too self-centered to enclose its own view within that of another, it will pine away slowly or hasten to its timely end," and continues on for a few more lines. The first issue will consist of an open-ended series of contributions that may contain "…interpretation, criticism, commentary, intervention, debate, invention," inspired by the topic text. In addition to "Future," other currently announced topics are "Plagiarism," "Blood," "Translation," and "Work," although topic quotations are not yet posted for the last three on this list. The Plagiarism issue uses a lengthy quotation from Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.

Essays in Philosophy and Symposia are both interesting new philosophy e-journals. The former is planned around a familiar format for academic journals, whereas the latter hopes to break away from academic models. Indeed, it proclaims, "And as the ‘academic voice’ of present philosophical discourse drops away, the stage is set for original thought." I am not at all confident that the ‘academic voice’ will drop away from discussions of quotations from the likes of Nietzsche and Hegel. I do hope that both journals thrive, since both have the potential to make interesting and useful contributions.

The Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy
http://www.phil.indiana.edu/ejap/ejap.html

BEARS: Brown Electronic Article Review Service in Moral and Political Philosophy
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/bears/homepage.html

Society for Philosophy and Technology Quarterly Electronic Journal
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/spt.html

PSYCHE
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au

Analyst
http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/phil/analysis/analyst/analyst.html

HYLE: An International Journal for the Philosophy of Chemistry
http://www.uni-karlsruhe.de/~philosophie/hyle.html

The Philosophers’ Web Magazine
http://www.philosophers.co.uk/index2.htm

Connexions
http://www.shef.ac.uk/~phil/connex/index.html