Which ISME Do You Mean?

Last week, with my partner, I participated in and presented in an excellent, fruitful conference of one of the two ISME organizations with which I am involved.  There are, as it turns out, at least four associations bearing that acronym (as well as a women's fashion catalog, not surprising given that Philosophy also names a skin care product line, and Orexis a rather dubiously successful male enhancement pill).  I've been a longstanding member of the International Society for MacIntyrian Enquiry, and more recently became involved (in a currently much more amateur manner) with the International Society for Military Ethics.

Last week's conference was the meeting of the former organization -- and I'll write more in posts soon to come about selected highlights of those sessions -- but I was not the only attendant to belong to -- or even note the anacronymic ambiguity of -- the two organizations.  The MacIntyrian ISME as a matter of deliberate policy -- since this is in fact what the tradition-dependent moral inquiry Alasdair MacIntyre espouses requires -- invites keynote speakers who are not for the most part MacIntryre scholars or even admirers (sometimes, they are strong critics). One of the keynote speakers, James Connelly, began by noting that he was more accustomed to thinking of the second organization, in whose conversations, projects, inquiries, and debates he was very active.  His presentation dealt with two different fields of ethics, typically called and thought of under the rubric of "applied ethics":  military ethics and environmental ethics.  And the guiding question, which he developed into a stark and detailed contrast, was: what are thought of, spoken about, or advocated as "virtues" in these two fields?