Purpose: The millennia long struggles of various oppressed groups have over time illuminated widespread social injustices, organically leading to the recognition of yet further injustices captured by the umbrella of discriminatory isms, such as racism, sexism, classism, ableism, anti-Semitism, ageism, heterosexism, and many others. In recent years, the debate has become increasingly fierce, polarized, and even physically violent. -/- Approach: One of the premises of the present work is that in part, the aforementioned unconstructive behaviours are a result of the (...) different understandings of what constitutes an ism and the lack of a thoughtful consideration of this issue in the mainstream social debate as much as in the academic literature. -/- Findings: I present evidence for this, and critique the dominant lines of thought in this realm showing them all to fall short of both the fundamental philosophical as well practical desiderata in how isms ought to be understood. -/- Originality: I propose an alternative which does not suffer from the same weakness: one based on the denial of equivalence of sentience. I show how the adoption of this understanding leads to constructive ways of addressing isms effected injustice. (shrink)

Purpose: The remarkable increase of sophistication of artificial intelligence in recent years has already led to its widespread use in martial applications, the potential of so-called 'killer robots' ceasing to be a subject of fiction. -/- Approach: Virtually without exception, this potential has generated fear, as evidenced by a mounting number of academic articles calling for the ban on the development and deployment of lethal autonomous robots (LARs). In the present paper I start with an analysis of the existing ethical (...) objections to LARs. -/- Findings: My analysis shows the contemporary thought to be deficient in philosophical rigour, these deficiencies leading to an alternative thesis. (shrink)

Incarceration remains the foremost form of sentence for serious crimes in Western democracies. At the same time, the management of prisons and of the prison population has become a major real-world challenge, with growing concerns about overcrowding, the offenders’ well-being, and the failure of achieving the distal desideratum of reduced criminality, all of which have a moral dimension. In no small part motivated by these practical problems, the focus of the present article is on the ethical framework that we use (...) in thinking about and administering criminal justice. I start with an analysis of imprisonment and its permissibility as a punitive tool of justice. In particular, I present a novel argument against punitive imprisonment, showing it to fall short in meeting two key criteria of just punishment, namely (i) that the appropriate individual is being punished, and (ii) that the punishment can be adequately moderated to reflect the seriousness of the crime. The principles I argue for and that the aforementioned analysis brings to the fore, rooted in the sentient experience, firstly of victims, and not only of victims but also of the offenders as well as the society at large, then lead me to elucidate the broader framework of jurisprudence that I then apply more widely. Hence, while rejecting punitive imprisonment, I use its identified shortcomings to argue for the reinstitution of forms of punishment that are, incongruently, presently not seen as permissible, such as corporal punishment and punishments dismissed on the basis of being seen as humiliating. I also present a novel view of capital punishment, which, in contradiction to its name, I reject for punitive aims, but which I argue is permissible on compassionate grounds. (shrink)