Though it is legally permissible to kill combatants in war,unless they are rendered hors de combat,the existence of Naked Soldiers raises an important moral question: should combatants kill vulnerable enemy combatants or show mercy towards them? Most philosophers who address this question argue that it is morally permissible to kill the Naked Soldier given the extended notion of self-defense during war. They ground their arguments in a form of collectivism. In this essay, I use Larry May’s argument. He offers an (...) approach that extends the principle of discrimination that would also apply to combatants. Instead of assuming all combatants are de facto dangerous,this approach would allow for nuance in targeting the enemy and showing mercy when enemy combatants clearly pose no danger, in other words, when they are Naked Soldiers. I defend this view against two criticisms: Noam Zohar’s view of armies as complex collectives and Stephen Deakin’s view that a policy that spares Naked Soldiers would be open to abuse. I argue that it is not only morally suspect to kill Naked Soldiers, but also it is within the spirit of both international laws governing war and the just war tradition to offer mercy whenever possible. (shrink)

This article focuses on the impact of globalization on international law and the discourse of sovereignty. It challenges the claim that we have entered into a new world order characterized by transnational governance and decentered global law, which have replaced “traditional” international law and rendered the concepts of state sovereignty and international society anachronistic. We are indeed in the presence of something new. But if we drop the concept of sovereignty and buy into the idea that transnational governance has upstaged (...) international treaty organizations, we will misconstrue the nature of contemporary international society and the political choices facing us. In the contemporary context where there is a powerful imperial project afoot (on the part of the United States) that seeks to develop a useful version of global (cosmopolitan) right to justify its self-interested interventions, proposals to abandon the default position of sovereignty and its corollary, the principle of nonintervention in international law, are both premature and dangerous. Instead, we should rethink the normative dimensions of the concept of sovereignty in light of the new principle of sovereign equality articulated in the UN Charter, and show how it can complement cosmopolitan principles such as human rights and collective security. The task is to strengthen, not abandon, international law and supranational institutions, and to foster a global rule of law that protects both the sovereign equality of states, based on a revised conception of sovereignty, and human rights. (shrink)

What is, or should be, the role of defense in thinking about the justification of use of armed force? Contemporary just war thinking prioritizes defense as the principal, and perhaps the only, just cause for resorting to armed force. By contrast, classic just war tradition, while recognizing defense as justification for use of force by private persons, did not reason from self‐defense to the justification of the use of force on behalf of the political community, but instead rendered the idea (...) of just cause for resort to force in terms of the sovereign's responsibility to maintain justice, vindicating those who had suffered from injustice and punishing evildoers. This paper moves through three major stages in the historical development of just war thinking, first examining a critical phase in the formation of the classical idea of just cause as the responsibility to maintain justice, then discussing the shift, characteristic of the modern period, to an idea of sovereignty as connected to the state and the prioritization of defense of the state as just cause for use of force, and lastly showing how this conception of the priority of defense became part of the recovery of just war thinking in the latter part of the twentieth century. The paper concludes by noting recent changes in thought on international law that tend to emphasize justice at the expense of the right of self‐defense, suggesting that the roots of just war thinking imply the need for a similar rethinking of contemporary just war discourse. (shrink)

In this essay, Robin May Schott criticizes leading proponents of just war theory and introduces the notion of justifiable but illegitimate violence. Instead of legitimating some wars as just, it is better to acknowledge that both the situation of war and moral judgments about war are ambiguous. Schott raises the questions: What are alternative narratives of war? And what are alternative narratives to war? Such narratives are necessary for addressing the concepts of evil and of witnessing in the ethical discourse (...) after Auschwitz. (shrink)

In this essay, Ben-Porath begins from the assumption that just war theory should be extended to include a jus post bellum component. Postwar conduct should be significantly informed by a care ethics perspective, particularly its political aspects as developed by Joan Tronto and others. Care ethics should be extended to the international postwar arena with one significant amendment, namely, weakening the aim of ending dependence.

In this essay, Ben-Porath begins from the assumption that just war theory should be extended to include a jus post bellum component. Postwar conduct should be significantly informed by a care ethics perspective, particularly its political aspects as developed by Joan Tronto and others. Care ethics should be extended to the international postwar arena with one significant amendment, namely, weakening the aim of ending dependence.

In contrast to the period when the Journal of Religious Ethics began publishing, the study of religion in relation to war and connected issues has prospered in recent years. This article examines three collections of essays providing comparative perspectives on these topics, two recently authored studies of Buddhism and Islam in relation to war, and a compendious collection of texts on Western moral tradition concerning war, peace, and related issues from classical Greece and Rome to the present.

This paper argues that certain central tenets of the traditional theory of the just war cannot be correct. It then advances an alternative account grounded in the same considerations of justice that govern self-defense at the individual level. The implications of this account are unorthodox. It implies that, with few exceptions, combatants who fight for an unjust cause act impermissibly when they attack enemy combatants, and that combatants who fight in a just war may, in certain circumstances, legitimately target noncombatants (...) who bear a significant degree of moral responsibility for a wrong, when the prevention or rectification of that wrong constitutes a just cause for war. (shrink)

The government itself, which is the only mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable [with the standing army] to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure. Henry Thoreau, in “Civil Disobedience” It is easy to say — and often (...) is said — that we cannot have tolerable relations with new revolutionary regimes. The problem is that our anticommunist paranoia has made it impossible to find out. We do not know whether Mao's declared interest in a relationship with the Americans in the 1940s or Ho Chi Minh's were sincere. And the reason we don't know is that we never tried to find out. Those who reported it was a possibility were hounded out of the foreign service because of our suspicion and fear of communism. The legacy of that era brings to mind Ivan the Terrible's practice of murdering the bearer of bad news. We are more civilized than that; we have been content simply to ruin people's careers. J. William Fulbright, in The Price of Empire This poisonous thing I'm trying to describe is [a] characteristic way of dealing with criticism. It used to be enough to brand a critic as a radical or a leftist to make people turn away. Now we need only to call him a liberal. Soon “moderate” will be the M word, “conservative” will be the C word and only fascists will be in the mainstream. E. L. Doctorow, Brandeis Commencement, May 21, 1989 We have lived with violence for seven years It was not worth one single life But the patriot's fist is at her throat Her voice is in mortal danger... Adrienne Rich, “Natural Resources,” in Dream of a Common Language. (shrink)

Political philosophy has difficulties to cope with the complexity and variety of state-religions relations. ‘Strict separationism’ is still the preferred option amongst liberals, deliberative and republican democrats, socialist and feminists. In this article, I develop a complex typology based on comparative history and sociology of religions. I summarize my reasons why institutional pluralist models like plural establishment or non-constitutional pluralism are attractive not only for religious minorities but for religiously deeply diverse societies in general. Most attention is paid defending associative (...) democracy, the most flexible and open variety of institutional pluralism, against realist objections that group representation is incompatible with liberal democracy, that it leads to stigmatization and bureaucratization, that it strengthens undemocratic leaders, that it leads to an ossification of the status quo, and, most importantly, that it is inherently divisive undermining social cohesion and political unity. In my refutation of these objections I try to show that it helps to integrate minority religions into liberal democratic policies compatible with reasonable pluralism and to prevent religious and political fundamentalism. (shrink)

Zohar applies Talmudic views on communal sin to contemporary political discourse by posing the question "Are we our brothers' keepers?" The essay addresses international responsibility to protect victims of oppression worldwide.

Just War Theory debates discussing the principle of the Moral Equality of Combatants involve the notion of Invincible Ignorance; the claim that warfi ghters are morally excused for participating in an unjust war because of their epistemic limitations. Conditions of military deployment may indeed lead to genuinely insurmountable epistemic limitations. In other cases, these may be overcome. This paper provides a preliminary sketch of heuristics designed to allow a combatant to judge whether or not his war is just. It delineates (...) the sets of relevant facts uncontroversially accessible and inaccessible to contemporary professional soldiers. Relevant facts outside these two sets should by default be treated as inaccessible until proven otherwise. Even such a rudimentary heuristic created in this way demonstrates that practical recommendations of MEC-renouncing Just War Theory are not too challenging to follow and still signifi cantly impact a compliant combatant’s behavior. (shrink)

Contra Michael Walzer and Jeff McMahan, neither classical just war theory nor the contemporary rules of war require or support any notion of combatant moral equality. Nations rightly accept prohibitions against punishing enemy combatants without recognizing any legal or moral right of aggressors to kill. The notion of combatant moral equality has real import only in our interpersonal -- and intrapersonal -- attitudes, since the notion effectively preempts any ground for conscientious objection. Walzer is criticized for over-emphasizing our collective responses (...) to war conduct and slighting our personal, extra-political responses. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAccording to Brian Orend’s binary political model, minimally just states possess a robust set of moral rights, while other states essentially exist in a moral vacuum in which they possess n...

This article provides an ethical evaluation of the CIA's use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to target so-called terror suspects and insurgents. It utilises Christian informed deontological and virtue-ethical criteria to assess this practise. These criteria include just intent, charity, proportionality, moral consistency, truthfulness, mercy, courage and prudence. The article concludes that the UAV target programme is morally problematic. The United States’ ‘kill not capture’ policy as exemplified in the use of ‘signature’ strikes defies the virtues at stake. By using UAV's (...) as tools for preventive warfare, utilising armed UAV's that are weapons of war outside areas of armed conflict and disregarding the principles of transparency, last resort and proportionality, the United States is employing UAV's in a morally illegitimate and imprudent way, and is setting precedents that might have dire consequences for global peace and the security of future generations. (shrink)

Many nongovernmental forms of business regulation aim at reducing ethical violations in commerce. We argue that such nongovernmental ethics standards, while often laudable, raise their own ethical challenges. In particular, when such standards place burdens upon vulnerable market participants (often, though not always, SMEs), they do so without the backing of traditional legitimate political authority. We argue that this constitutes a structural analogy to wars of humanitarian intervention. Moreover, we show that, while some harms imposed by such standards are desirable, (...) others are best thought of as a form of collateral damage. We thus look at the well-developed literature on just war theory for inspiration and find that the principles of jus ad bellum and jus in bello contain many insights that can be fruitfully adapted to the case of nongovernmental standard-setting. Consequently, we propose the Ius ad Normam—a set of principles that should guide would-be standard-setters in assessing whether imposing those burdens is ethically justifiable in particular cases. We also discuss how powerful multinational businesses often act simultaneously as standard-takers and standard-setters and explore the normative implications of this dual role. (shrink)

Some contemporary Just War theorists, like Jeff McMahan, have recently built upon an individual right of self-defense to articulate moral rules of war that are at odds with commonly accepted views. For instance, they argue that in principle combatants who fight on the unjust side ought to be liable to punishment on that basis alone. Also, they reject the conclusion that combatants fighting on both sides are morally equal. In this paper, I argue that these theorists overextend their self-defense analysis (...) when it comes to the punishment of unjust combatants, and I show how in an important sense just and unjust combatants are morally equal. I contend that the individualistic and quid pro quo perspective of the self-defense analysis fails to consider properly how the international community, morally speaking, ought to treat combatants, and I set forth four elements of justice applicable to war, which, together, support the conclusion that in principle the international community should not take on the activity of punishing combatants solely for fighting on the unjust side. (shrink)

Combatants who attempt to obey the laws of war often have to take considerable risks in order to effectively discriminate between legitimate and illegitimate targets. Sometimes this task is made even more complicated by systemic factors which influence their ability to discriminate effectively without unduly risking their lives or the mission. If they fail to do so, civilians often pay the price. In this paper, I argue that to the extent that non-combatants benefit from the attempt to fight justly, and (...) to the extent that wars in which combatants attempt to fight justly can be understood as a system of social cooperation which produces both burdens and benefits, non-combatants have a responsibility to shoulder their fair share of these burdens. Thus, if combatants (and by extension enemy non-combatants) are disproportionately burdened in a conflict, non-combatants ought to take on some costs, for instance in order to reduce the strain imposed on combatants by systemic factors such as the availability and distribution of resources. (shrink)

Combatants who attempt to obey the laws of war often have to take considerable risks in order to effectively discriminate between legitimate and illegitimate targets. Sometimes this task is made even more complicated by systemic factors which influence their ability to discriminate effectively without unduly risking their lives or the mission. If they fail to do so, civilians often pay the price. In this paper, I argue that to the extent that non-combatants benefit from the attempt to fight justly, and (...) to the extent that wars in which combatants attempt to fight justly can be understood as a system of social cooperation which produces both burdens and benefits, non-combatants have a responsibility to shoulder their fair share of these burdens. Thus, if combatants (and by extension enemy non-combatants) are disproportionately burdened in a conflict, non-combatants ought to take on some costs, for instance in order to reduce the strain imposed on combatants by systemic factors such as the availability and distribution of resources. (shrink)

This paper presents a non-consequentialist defense of Rawls’s general conception of justice requiring that primary social goods be distributed so that the least share is as great as possible. It suggests that a defense of this idea can be offered within a Rossian framework of prima facie duties. The prima facie duty not to harm constrains people from supporting social institutions which do not leave their fellows with goods and resources above a certain threshold. The paper argues that societies in (...) accord with the Rawlsian general conception come closest to meeting this requirement. This way of arguing for the conception enables the defenders of the theory to elude standard objections offered by utilitarians, libertarians, and even other egalitarians. (shrink)

In distributing the costs associated with climate change, most scholars have focused exclusively upon mitigation burdens. Few consider the distribution of adaptation costs, which concern projects that seek to minimize harm from human-induced climate change.

The aim of this paper is to study and analyse the Charlie Hebdo attacks from a methodological and an ethical perspective, concentrating generally, though in some cases indirectly, on the consequences of our actions and the motives behind them. The analysis examines the issues of liberties, freedoms and responsibilities in general and further applies these values to the phenomenon of terrorism in contemporary society. The primary goal of this study is to use the Thomas Aquinas doctrine of double effect and (...) Michael Ignatieff’s lesser evil theory to appraise specific acts of terrorism. The article suggests that certain freedoms should be limited in democratic societies and thus ensure safety. (shrink)

Lethal Autonomous Weapons (LAWs) are robotic weapons systems, primarily of value to the military, that could engage in offensive or defensive actions without human intervention. This paper assesses and engages the current arguments for and against the use of LAWs through the lens of achieving more ethical warfare. Specific interest is given particularly to ethical LAWs, which are artificially intelligent weapons systems that make decisions within the bounds of their ethics-based code. To ensure that a wide, but not exhaustive, survey (...) of the implications of employing such ethical devices to replace humans in warfare is taken into account, this paper will engage on matters related to current scholarship on the rejection or acceptance of LAWs—including contemporary technological shortcomings of LAWs to differentiate between targets and the behavioral and psychological volatility of humans—and current and proposed regulatory infrastructures for developing and using such devices. After careful consideration of these factors, this paper will conclude that only ethical LAWs should be used to replace human involvement in war, and, by extension of their consistent abilities, should remove humans from war until a more formidable discovery is made in conducting ethical warfare. (shrink)

A survey of just war theory literature reveals the existence of quite different lists of principles. This apparent arbitrariness raises a number of questions: What is the relation between ad bellum and in bello principles? Why are there so many of the former and so few of the latter? What order is there among the various principles? To answer these questions, I first draw on some recent work by Jeff McMahan to show that ad bellum and in bello principles are (...) not, as often portrayed, independent—the justice of conduct in war largely presupposes the justice of the recourse to war. Undermining this independence claim is one important step toward revealing the unified logical structure of just war theory. I then argue that we can see the dependence of the jus in bello upon the jus ad bellum , not just in the content of certain principles, but also in the structure of the two sets of principles: I construct a one-to-one mapping between ad bellum and in bello principles. In doing so, I argue also that the shared structure successfully finds place for the questions central to the evaluation of the morality of war: what is a sufficient provocation to use force, what objectives may be sought by force, why or for what ends, who has authority to decide to use force, and when or in what circumstances? Despite variations in expression, the theory allows for a coherent and comprehensive evaluation of morality in warfare. (shrink)

Currently, the central questions in the philosophical debate surrounding the ethics of automated warfare are (1) Is the development and use of autonomous lethal robotic systems for military purposes consistent with (existing) international laws of war and received just war theory?; and (2) does the creation and use of such machines improve the moral caliber of modern warfare? However, both of these approaches have significant problems, and thus we need to start exploring alternative approaches. In this paper, I ask whether (...) autonomous robots ought to be programmed to be pacifists. The answer arrived at is “Yes”, if we decide to create autonomous robots, they ought to be pacifists. This is to say that robots ought not to be programmed to willingly and intentionally kill human beings, or, by extension, participate in or promote warfare, as something that predictably involves the killing of humans. Insofar as we are the ones that will be determining the content of the robot’s value system, then we ought to program robots to be pacifists, rather than ‘warists’. This is (in part) because we ought to be pacifists, and creating and programming machines to be “autonomous lethal robotic systems” directly violates this normative demand on us. There are no mitigating reasons to program lethal autonomous machines to contribute to or participate in warfare. Even if the use of autonomous lethal robotic systems could be consistent with received just war theory and the international laws of war, and even if their involvement could make warfare less inhumane in certain ways, these reasons do not compensate for the ubiquitous harms characteristic of modern warfare. In this paper, I provide four main reasons why autonomous robots ought to be pacifists, most of which do not depend on the truth of pacifism. The strong claim being argued for here is that automated warfare ought not to be pursued. The weaker claim being argued for here is that automated warfare ought not to be pursued, unless it is the most pacifist option available at the time, and other alternatives have been reasonably explored, and we are simultaneously promoting a (long term) pacifist agenda in (many) other ways. Thus, the more ambitious goal of this paper is to convince readers that automated warfare is something that we ought not to promote or pursue, while the more modest—and I suspect, more palatable—goal is to spark sustained critical discussion about the assumptions underlying the drive towards automated warfare, and to generate legitimate consideration of its pacifist alternatives,in theory, policy, and practice. (shrink)

This paper draws on the underappreciated realist thought of Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire and Judith Shklar, rehearses their critique of moralism and extends it to a position which seems far from obvious a target: the dirty hands thesis, which is mostly owed to Michael Walzer, and which a number of contemporary realists have recently appealed to in their endeavour to challenge moralism and/or tackle the insufficiently addressed question of what a more affirmative, realist public ethic might involve. In illustrating that (...) the DH thesis is a thinly disguised brand of the moralism which realists reject, I shall not merely put some flesh on the bones of Shklar’s scattered, unsystematic objections to Walzer’s thought – the only realist who explicitly criticized his DH thesis. Rather, I wish to cast doubt on the internal coherence and ‘realism’ of contemporary realist positions which invoke that thesis and to illustrate that the discrepancy between Berlin’s, Shklar’s and Hampshire’s thought and the DH thesis: i) enriches our understanding of how we might wish to distinguish more meaningfully realism from the ideal/non-ideal theory debate; and ii) enables us to pursue a particular direction in which a more positive realist approach to public ethics and integrity might be developed – an approach which we might term Heraclitian realism, and which follows from their idiosyncratic, innovative, and radical account of the place of conflict in human life. (shrink)

‘It is necessary to a Prince to learn how not to be good’. This quotation from Machiavelli’s The Prince has become the mantra of the standard dirty hands thesis. Despite its infamy, it features proudly in most conventional expositions of the dirty hands problem, including Michael Walzer’s original analysis. In this paper, I wish to cast a doubt as to whether the standard conception of the problem of DH—the recognition that, in certain inescapable and tragic circumstances an innocent course of (...) action is unfeasible—fully captures Machiavelli’s message and its terrifying implications. In particular, I argue that the standard DH thesis is inadequately ‘static’: it conceives the conflict between ordinary morality and political morality as a stark, momentary and rare paradox of action—an anomaly disrupting the normality of harmony. As such it misconceives both the extent and the nature of the rupture between morality and politics. In this sense, the argument I shall advance does just involve an exercise in the history of political thought. Rather, I want to suggest that, by virtue of its failure to take Machiavelli’s insights seriously, the standard DH thesis fails to live up to its purported capacity to capture the complexity and fragmentation of our moral cosmos and that, consequently, it is nothing more than a thinly veiled version of the idealism and monism it purports to reject. (shrink)

H.L.A. Hart’s lost and found essay ‘Discretion’ has provided new insight into the issue of how legal systems can cope with indeterminacy in the law. The so-called ‘open texture’ of law calls for the exercise of judicial discretion, which, I argue, renders judges susceptible to the problem of dirty hands. To show this, I frame the problem as being open to an array of appropriate emotional responses, namely, various senses of guilt. With these responses in mind, I revise an example (...) from Michael Walzer’s original analysis in a way that highlights purely personal sacrifices in solutions to dirty hands situations. I then turn to an account of moral emotions in legal decision-making and show how judges—in failing to advance all interests—might be left with a unique sense of guilt. With an application of this account to Hart’s legal positivism, it can be seen that a judge’s hands are often dirtied in resolving borderline cases. If discretion leaves judges in situations where they must do wrong in order to do right, Hart’s endorsement of a closure view of wrongdoing will lead to difficulties in how he can explain the presence of moral remainders in jurisprudence. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTorture requires careful definition, because of the degree to which its definition often entails its moral condemnation. Torture involves the deliberate infliction of pain for coe...

Dirty hands cases are often seen as a crucial challenge for political ethics. Michael Walzer’s analysis of dirty hands cases has been especially influential. On closer inspection, however, Walzer’s analysis contains some serious flaws. This article examines how and to what extent the political ethics of Paul Ricoeur can remedy the problems in Walzer’s approach. It is shown that Ricoeur’s approach can offer a better understanding of what is at stake in dilemmas in political action and that it can provide (...) guidance for dealing with such issues. Ricoeur’s analysis, furthermore, provides the foundation for a more critical political ethics than Walzer can offer. (shrink)

Traditional articulations of the conception of dirty hands, as the doing of wrong in order to do right, invite construals of the issues raised thereby as mired in conceptual confusions and inconsistencies, and moreover as generating unproductive discussions of the scope of the proposed notion itself. The status of the concept of dirty hands is thus precarious, in spite of its provenance in the work of political thinkers such as Machiavelli. This essay articulates one nonparadoxical conception of dirty hands, as (...) the uncomfortable phenomenology of agents authorized to act on behalf of others, when they are called upon to do things that, while morally correct, are also personally or morally distasteful. The key point is that the dirt of action remains on these agents’ hands, even if moral responsibility for the relevant actions should be conceived as falling on the persons in whose name they take the said action. This articulation opens up for investigation questions about the phenomenology of authorized agency, as well as the moral labor involved in leadership and in other contexts of authorized distasteful action. These are questions of social ontology. Here there is important philosophical work that remains to be done. (shrink)

Abstract The article addresses three aspects of the humanitarian intervention doctrine. It argues, first, that the value of sovereignty rests on the justified social processes of the target state ? the horizontal contract. Foreign interventions, even when otherwise justified, must respect the horizontal contract. In contrast, morally objectionable social processes (such as the subjection of women) are not protected by sovereignty (intervention, of course, may be banned for other reasons). In addition, tyrants have no moral protection against interventions directed at (...) them. Second, the article addresses the internal legitimacy of humanitarian intervention. It concludes that the liberal state may only use voluntary soldiers (either the voluntary army or mercenaries) to conduct humanitarian intervention. Conscription for that purpose is not permissible. The article shows that the long-standing criticism of mercenaries stems from a romantic prejudice and is thus unfair. Third, the article makes a distinction between intention (the determination to perform an action) and motive (a further goal that the agent seeks with that action) and shows that only intention is relevant for humanitarian intervention. A justified humanitarian intervention requires the intention to liberate the victims, but not necessarily a good further motive. It shows how mainstream doctrine has impermissibly confused the two concepts. (shrink)

The war in Iraq has reignited the passionate humanitarian intervention debate. President George W. Bush surprised many observers in his second inaugural address when he promised to oppose tyranny and oppression, and this in a world not always willing or ready to join in that fight. Humanitarian intervention is again on the forefront of world politics.

This paper examines four interpretations of the observation that humanitarian intervention might be used ‘selectively’ or ‘inconsistently’ in order to elucidate the normative commitments of the deliberative process in international relations. The paper argues that there are several types of concerns that are implicit in the accusation of inconsistency, and only some of them amount to objections to humanitarian intervention as a whole. The paradox of humanitarian intervention is that intervention is prohibited except where the intervention is humanitarian, yet humanitarian (...) reasons never exist in isolation, and it is nearly impossible to determine the real reason for intervention (or any other collective action) in the international arena. The problems revealed by an examination of inconsistency in the example of humanitarian intervention turn out to be general problems with applying the norms of practical reasoning to moral questions dealing with collective agents. (shrink)

Current precursors in the development of lethal, autonomous systems (LAS) point to the use of biometric devices for assessing, identifying, and verifying targets. The inclusion of biometric devices entails the use of a probabilistic matching program that requires the deliberate targeting of noncombatants as a statistically necessary function of the system. While the tactical employment of the LAS may be justified on the grounds that the deliberate killing of a smaller number of noncombatants is better than the accidental killing of (...) a larger number, it may nonetheless contravene a reemerging conception of right intention. Originally framed by Augustine of Hippo, this lesser-known formulation has served as the foundation for chivalric code, canon law, jus in bello criteria, and the law of armed conflict. Thus it serves as a viable measure to determine whether the use of lethal autonomy would accord with these other laws and principles. Specifically, examinations of the LAS through the lenses of collateral damage, the principle of double effect, and the principle of proportionality, reveal the need for more attention to be paid to the moral issues now, so that the promise of this emerging technology—that it will perform better than human beings—might actually come to pass. (shrink)

A case study is presented of the American Psychological Association (APA), as a health care organization that promotes human welfare. APA includes policies on human welfare in its Ethical Principles of Psychologists and even lists the advancement of psychology "as a means of promoting human welfare" on its letterhead. Nevertheless, APA has other policies and activities based on military and weapons work that appear to conflict with its promotion of human welfare. Although military work in and of itself may not (...) necessarily be problematic, work that contributes to people purposely being harmed or killed should be squared with the association's ethical guidelines. The results presented here show that this may not be the case: There currently appears to be little justification in the Ethical Principles for work intended to harm people. APA's active lobbying, research, and development for the military are documented here, in relation to an analysis of the Ethical Principles. APA's uncritical support for Operation Desert Storm is examined specifically, with regard to weapons technology and therapeutic treatment of U.S. soldiers on the battlefield. This one-sided support for victims of the war is not in keeping with a Hippocratic health care ethic to treat patients needing care, and to do so with neutrality and impartiality. Similarities to a historical example of nationalistic mental health ethics are discussed, with a review of the development of the German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy and of the German Society for Psychology in the Nazi wartime effort and the Holocaust. The results here show similar deficiencies in APA's ethical standards, not the least of which is that the code applies to individual members but not to APA policies, committees, or activities. This article concludes with suggested criteria for the Ethical Principles that would at least (a) recognize the ambiguities in systematically developing and using weapons to hurt people and (b) provide an initial rationale of potential justifications. (shrink)

Telerobotically operated and semiautonomous machines have become a major component in the arsenals of industrial nations around the world. By the year 2015 the United States military plans to have one-third of their combat aircraft and ground vehicles robotically controlled. Although there are many reasons for the use of robots on the battlefield, perhaps one of the most interesting assertions are that these machines, if properly designed and used, will result in a more just and ethical implementation of warfare. This (...) paper will focus on these claims by looking at what has been discovered about the capability of humans to behave ethically on the battlefield, and then comparing those findings with the claims made by robotics researchers that their machines are able to behave more ethically on the battlefield than human soldiers. Throughout the paper we will explore the philosophical critique of this claim and also look at how the robots of today are impacting our ability to fight wars in a just manner. (shrink)

The most defensible justifications of war in the European intellectual tradition hold that war is instrumentally necessary for the maintenance of peace and order. An investigation of Ancient Chinese philosophical attitudes towards war calls this assumption into question. The closest parallel to an instrumental concept of war is found in the Legalist school, but historical experience in China has rejected this. The Confucian school, especially Mencius and Xunxi, insists that war is not instrumental in creating social order, but derives from (...) the prior establishing of cultural and political authority, and thus must be punitive in nature. Even the use of “punitive expeditions” is not instrumental, but rather demonstrative or performative in nature, for if coercive methods are necessary, the authority to use them is arguably absent. War for the Chinese, then, is not justified by the necessity for creating public order, but is in itself a sign of the failure to achieve such an order. This contrasts sharply with the views of the dominant Western thinkers on war, such as Michael Walzer, whose positions insist upon the instrumental necessity of armed force, even to the point of absurdity. The ancient Chinese position suggests that this necessity may be ungrounded. (shrink)

According to the dominant position in the just war tradition from Augustine to Anscombe and beyond, there is no "moral equality of combatants." That is, on the traditional view the combatants participating in a justified war may kill their enemy combatants participating in an unjustified war - but not vice versa (barring certain qualifications). I shall argue here, however, that in the large number of wars (and in practically all modern wars) where the combatants on the justified side violate the (...) rights of innocent people ("collateral damage"), these combatants are in fact liable to attack by the combatants on the unjustified side. I will support this view with a rights-based account of liability to attack and then defend it against a number of objections raised in particular by Jeff McMahan. The result is that the thesis of the moral equality of combatants holds good for a large range of armed conflicts while the opposing thesis is of very limited practical relevance. (shrink)

(1986). Moral Approaches to Nuclear Strategy: A Critical Evaluation. Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 16, Supplementary Volume 12: Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence and Disarmament, pp. 75-109.

I defend just war theory against pacifist, conventionalist, collectivist and feminist challenges that have been recently directed against it. I go on to apply just war theory to the use and threat to use nuclear weapons concluding that under present conditions the possession but not the threat to use a limited nuclear force is morally justified.

We are morally perplexed about nuclear weapons. Popular debate oscillates tediously between an apparently impractical idealism which would have nothing to do with the things, and a military and political realism which insists that we have to use such means to attain our legitimate ends. The choice, it too often seems, is between laying down our nuclear arms–thus avoiding the moral odium of resting our defence policies on threats to vaporize millions of civilians–but leaving ourselves open to domination by those (...) who do not feel such scruples, and on the other hand, retaining such weapons as long as our potential enemies possess them, constantly maintaining parity with the other side–in other words, proceeding with the arms race. The respective proponents of principle and of prudence typically fail to understand how others can possibly neglect the considerations which loom so large in their own minds. Each has at bottom a deeply held ethical view–that certain means may not be used for any end, or that certain ends are so important that they justify the use of almost any means. The disagreement is so irreconcilable that it spills out from TV studios and newspaper editorial pages on to the streets and the missile bases, and into the courts and the prisons. (shrink)