Technological developments in the sphere of artificial intelligence (AI) inspire debates about the implications of autonomous weapon systems (AWS), which can select and engage targets without human intervention. While increasingly more systems which could qualify as AWS, such as loitering munitions, are reportedly used in armed conflicts, the global discussion about a system of governance and international legal norms on AWS at the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (UN CCW) has stalled. In this article we argue (...) for the necessity to adopt legal norms on the use and development of AWS. Without a framework for global regulation, state practices in using weapon systems with AI-based and autonomous features will continue to shape the norms of warfare and affect the level and quality of human control in the use of force. By examining the practices of China, Russia, and the United States in their pursuit of AWS-related technologies and participation at the UN CCW debate, we acknowledge that their differing approaches make it challenging for states parties to reach an agreement on regulation, especially in a forum based on consensus. Nevertheless, we argue that global governance on AWS is not impossible. It will depend on the extent to which an actor or group of actors would be ready to take the lead on an alternative process outside of the CCW, inspired by the direction of travel given by previous arms control and weapons ban initiatives. (shrink)

In the second decade of the new millennium, artificial intelligence (AI) became a catchword among senior politicians and the military officers of India. Indian military officers have raised concerns about the potential use of AI-enabled weapon systems by China and by insurgents supported by Pakistan in the subcontinent. This article portrays the complex interlinkages between AI, strategic planning about future warfare and the role of ethics in India. The article, divided into three sections, deals with the role of AI and (...) ethics in India’s grand strategy, in military strategy and in command culture. Finally, the article also offers some policy recommendations. For cultural reasons, India follows a defensive strategy. India is attempting to integrate the AI weapons within its dharmayuddha (just war) format. Indian military strategy emphasises that on no account should these intelligent machines be autonomous. Atman (self-consciousness) must not be subordinated to yantras (machines). (shrink)

In the early twentieth century, scientific innovations permanently changed international warfare. As chemicals traveled out of laboratories into factories and military locations, war became waged at home as well as overseas. Large numbers of women were employed in munitions factories during the First World War, but their public memories have been overshadowed by men who died on battlefields abroad; they have also been ignored in traditional histories of chemistry that focus on laboratory-based research. Mostly young and poorly educated, but (...) crucial for Britain’s military success, these female workers were subjected to procedures of social regulation and consigned to carrying out dangerous chemical procedures causing chronic illness or death; in particular, when TNT died their skin yellow, they were colloquially known as 'canaries.'. (shrink)

‘Since the Great War began’, Professor David Orme Masson told a Melbourne audience in September 1915, ‘two statements have been made, and so frequently repeated that today they are commonplace. The first is that the result…depends on…men and more men, munitions and yet more munitions. The second is that this is a war of chemists and engineers—a war of applied science’. To Britain's assistance in this war of invention and applied science came more than 120 Australian scientists, whose (...) particular technical skills were urgently needed by the expanding munitions industries. However, their contribution to the Imperial cause and to Allied victory has been overshadowed by the heroism of ANZAC troops in Gallipoli and in France. This paper begins the task of assessing the importance of their work for Britain, and the significance of their wartime experiences for post-war Australia, as viewed through the lives of the men and their organizing genius, A. E. Leighton. (shrink)

Dans la perspective du second conflit mondial, la Suisse s’est engagée dans la production massive d’armements militaires. Épargnée par la guerre, elle procède à partir de 1948 à la réduction de ses stocks en privilégiant le rejet des munitions dans ses lacs plutôt que de les faire exploser à ciel ouvert ou de les recycler. Malgré le retour sur la scène publique des munitions immergées, aucune controverse n’a éclaté dans un pays pourtant sensible aux questions environnementales. À partir (...) du cas des munitions immergées dans les lacs, le présent article s’interroge sur les manières dont les stratégies du secret conjuguées avec d’autres facteurs, tels que l’oubli ou d’autres priorités politiques, ont retardé toute réflexion sur ce dossier et ont participé au contingentement de tout débat public. À quelles conditions préalables le dépôt des munitions dans les lacs suisses pourrait-il entrer dans le débat public et engager les pouvoirs publics à agir au-delà même d’un risque potentiel non avéré? Pour y parvenir, il s’agira de s’interroger sur le rôle et la fonction même de la controverse écologique comme moyen de mobilisation de la société civile et des acteurs institutionnels. (shrink)

Inner Strength of Female Characters in Loitering with Intent and The Public Image by Muriel Spark Women characters in Muriel Spark's novels are diverse, some strong and powerful, some weak and unable to make decisions. And there are characters who develop throughout the novel and learn from their own mistakes. From being passive, they gradually start acting and making their own choices. Loitering with Intent and The Public Image present women characters who go through metamorphosis, from being dependent (...) on others into living their own lives and freeing themselves from former influences. Such kaleidoscopic change enables them not only to be able to finally make their own decisions but also to overcome many difficult situations threatening their future life.Fleur Talbot, a heroine in Loitering with Intent, finds herself at a point in which she thinks that everything she cares for is lost. Chronically passive and naïve, she cannot imagine another way of being until she understands that she is being cheated, that her life will be ruined if she does not act. Everyone around her seems to be in conspiracy against her; only taking a firm stand and opposing her surrounding world can help. Fleur's life has become totally dependent on her ability to be strong and decisive. She knows that if she remains what she is, her career and prospects for the future will be lost, so she decides to prove her determination and her will to be finally happy. Her transformation into a powerful character saves her dignity and makes her a successful writer.Annabel, a character in The Public Image is the same type of person as Fleur, as she lacks self-confidence and has no support from anybody, even her own husband. Muriel Spark, however, presents her as another example of a heroine who develops as the action progresses, able to evoke strength in herself when her situation seems hopeless. Annabel, at first treated as a puppet in the hands of other people, who use her image for their own benefit, shows that she is capable of anything by the book's end. When her career and reputation are threatened and her privacy invaded, she decides to leave the country. This requires both effort and sacrifice, as she has to leave behind everything she has worked for all her life, but this is the necessary price for her freedom.The ability of both female characters to show so much determination reveals an inherent inner strength, and their weakness and vulnerability as just superficial. When the situation requires it, both Annabel and Fleur are ready to fight for their rights, for their freedom and self esteem, and they discover that they are indeed capable of changing their lives. (shrink)

Oleoresin capsicum (OC) is a substance contained in capsicum peppers that produces a range of physiological responses in mammals, including inflammation and respiratory constriction. It is also the active ingredient in the most widely used chemical munition in the United States. OC-based pepper sprays are now issued to police officers by nearly every law enforcement agency in the country. Police use of pepper spray is supported by an ostensibly evidence-based consensus that OC exposure presents no significant risk of lethal injury. (...) This essay examines the peculiar durability of that nonlethality consensus in the face of mounting contradictory evidence. It traces the trajectory of European science that links race and capsaicin sensitivity from colonization to slavery to the twentieth century, while also narrating the emergence of OC-based pepper spray as a distinct and highly desirable category of police weapon. It concludes by exposing medicolegal death examination practices that continually rehabilitate the nonlethality consensus by naturalizing deaths caused by or linked to OC exposure. (shrink)

Unmanned (or Uninhabited) Aerial Vehicles are a key part of the American military's so-called revolution in military affairs (RMA) as practiced over Iraq. They are also part of the drive to shift agency away from humans and toward machines. This article considers the ways in which humans have, in calling on high technologies to distance them from what the military calls the “dull, the dirty, and the dangerous,” hoped to avoid responsibility for murder in wartime. In examining the claims of (...) weapons manufacturers and their military customers, the article focuses on the concept of “systems of systems” and the various outcomes such battlespace imaginings might have for human beings. The article concludes that the RMA entertains a fantasy of human agency while technological systems call out to and conjure up other technological systems that are possessed not only of their own logics but also purposes that are hidden and disturbing. (shrink)

The author starts from the traditional American notion that technology might offer a way to decrease the horror and suffering of warfare. He points out that historically this assumption is flawed in that past technological advances, from gunpowder weapons to bombers, have only made warfare more--not less--bloody. With a relentless logic, Colonel Dunlap takes to task those who say that the Revolution in Military Affairs has the potential to make war less bloody. He covers the technological landscape from precision-guided (...) class='Hi'>munitions and Information Warfare to the use of space for military operations to raise issues that could pose difficult ethical, legal and moral problems for statesmen and soldiers. Some of these conundrums are so confounding that the author could claim that in all humility his only purpose was to raise these issues to prompt debate. But Colonel Dunlap takes the next step to outline several broad thematic avenues that may help us all address the difficult problems that lie ahead. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Whiteness and the General WillDiversity Work as Willful WorkSara AhmedIn this essay I explore whiteness in relation to the general will. My starting point is that the idea of “the general will” offers us a vocabulary for thinking through the materiality of race. In his keynote address to the 40th Annual Philosophy Symposium in 2010, Charles Mills argues that race is material: it becomes part of the living human (...) body. Mills draws on recent theories of whiteness as habit, including the work of Linda Alcoff (2006) and Shannon Sullivan (2006). Quoting from Sullivan, he suggests that whiteness is in “the nose that smells, the back, neck and other muscles that imperceptibly tighten with anxiety, and the eyes that see some but not all physical differences as significant” (Sullivan 2006, 188). Whiteness is embodied; it is in bodily matter as well as affecting how bodies matter. Mills then suggests that the materiality of whiteness is its “resistance to will.” One definition of materiality could be this: resistance to will.This essay takes up the theme of the materiality of race by thinking of whiteness in relation to the will. There are clearly risks in such an undertaking: after all, the idea of whiteness as willed might seem to imply that whiteness is volitional: and can be simply “willed away.”1 I want to suggest that if whiteness is resistant to will, as that which cannot be simply willed away, then whiteness can also be understood as willed: in other words, what cannot be willed away is a willing way. Edward Said’s definition of Orientalism as “willed human work,” which as a definition has yet to be rigorously understood, could be considered an important precedent to my argument (1978, 140). The suggestion is not [End Page 1] simply that the Orient is brought into existence, or made to exist over time, but that the very labor of creating the Orient, the land of the stranger, the land far away, is what establishes a direction. Once the Orient has come to exist, there is a willing of its existence; to keep going that way is to keep that way going. Willed work is work that in willing that way creates a way that can be willed. It is not as the old English cliché says—where there’s a will there’s a way—but rather to will is to way. I think it is useful to think of whiteness in this way, as a willing way, which is of course only one way of thinking about whiteness.I pose the generality of the will as a way of reflecting on “institutional whiteness.” Whiteness becomes “the material” of an institutional body, whether that body is the nation, an organization, a neighborhood, or a street. We can consider an institution as a body with parts: it too has noses, mouths, muscles that register anxiety, as well as ears and eyes. Just think of how Neighborhood Watch, as a national or even global technology, uses the injunction that citizens should become the “eyes and ears of the police.” A good citizen is the one who accepts this injunction: the one who is willing to watch out for strangers, those who are loitering, who seem suspicious, or out of place. Institutions have “detection systems”: they have parts that register the approach of strangers. A collective body in registering those who are out of place, both creates strangers and establishes a direction toward them, as those who threaten the place of the “in place,” as those who generate anxiety.A key event in my own life was of becoming a stranger in a white neighborhood in Adelaide, Australia, in a place I called home. I was fourteen years old. I was stopped by two policemen in a car who asked me, “Are you Aboriginal?” It turned out that there had been some burglaries in the area. It was an extremely hostile address, and it was an unsettling experience at the time. It was an experience of being made into a stranger, the one who is recognized as “out of place,” as the one who does not belong, whose proximity is registered... (shrink)

Whether it pertains to what is not considered, what cannot be determined, what is not allowed to be known, or what is deliberately concealed, absences figure as the constant shadows of what is made present by social research. This article explores the relation between what is presented and what is not by treating it first as a vexing conundrum for representation and then as a vehicle for understanding. The matters under examination include what is written about the social world as (...) well as the methods of writing employed. This article seeks an orientation toward both aspects that attends to the binds, contradictions, and possibilities of depicting what is missing. That involves addressing how authors labor to render absences present, the criteria for assessment, as well as the metaphors that guide activities. (shrink)

Whether it pertains to what is not considered, what cannot be determined, what is not allowed to be known, or what is deliberately concealed, absences figure as the constant shadows of what is made present by social research. This article explores the relation between what is presented and what is not by treating it first as a vexing conundrum for representation and then as a vehicle for understanding. The matters under examination include what is written about the social world as (...) well as the methods of writing employed. This article seeks an orientation toward both aspects that attends to the binds, contradictions, and possibilities of depicting what is missing. That involves addressing how authors labor to render absences present, the criteria for assessment, as well as the metaphors that guide activities. (shrink)

Modern warfare cannot be conducted without civilians being killed. In order to reconcile this fact with the principle of discrimination in just war theory, the principle is applied through the doctrine of double effect. But this doctrine is morally inadequate because it is too permissive regarding the risk to civilians. For this reason, Michael Walzer has suggested that the doctrine be supplemented with what he calls the idea of double intention: combatants are not only to refrain from intending to harm (...) civilians; they are also to take precautions to reduce risk to civilians, even at the expense of increasing risk to themselves. The article develops the idea of double intention by addressing two questions: What does it mean to intend to reduce civilian risk, and how much should civilian risk be reduced? The results of this discussion are then used to consider a moral issue that arises in technologically asymmetric warfare, namely, the extent to which the use of precision-guided munitions, which allow more accurate targeting, can by itself bear the moral burden imposed by the principle of discrimination. (shrink)

The Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE) provides that, all else equal, intentional deaths are harder to justify than merely foreseen deaths. The principle is meant to ground the distinction within humanitarian law between terror bombing and strategic bombing. However, according to the “closeness problem,” terror bombers are not necessarily intentional killers. Terror bombing strictly requires only that the civilians appear dead, goes the argument, such that—for a “sophisticated” terror bomber—the civilians’ deaths could be unintended side-effects of making them appear dead. (...) But if intentions could be calibrated so finely and strategically, the argument continues, then the DDE would very doubtfully be true. This essay replies to the closeness problem in three steps. First, agents often intend _causal processes_, with specific causal “ingredients,” as the proximate means of bringing about their specifically intended means or ends. Second, when an agent foresees a byproduct as resulting directly from their intended causal process, it is morally equivalent to a specifically intended outcome. The process’s causal relationship to the byproduct is constitutive of the process from the agent’s perspective. Third, a “sophisticated” terror bomber’s intended causal process involves blowing up the civilians, while a strategic bomber’s involves blowing up, say, a munitions factory. Thus, because the “sophisticated” terror bomber foresees their intended causal process as resulting directly in the civilians’ deaths, while the strategic bomber foresees their deaths as side-effects of their intended causal process occurring within an environment that happens to contain civilians, the DDE can distinguish between the bombers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Comments on Margaret Watkins, The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s “Essays”Jacqueline Taylor (bio)After David Hume’s death, Adam Smith wrote a letter to Hume’s publisher, William Strahan, to recount some of the final words and the attitude of “our late excellent friend, Mr. Hume.”1 Despite declining health and increasing weakness, Hume faced his approaching demise “with great cheerfulness” (EMPL xlvi). He had recently been reading Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead, and (...) although feeling he had every reason “to die contented,” Smith describes the “jocular excuses” Hume might make to Charon to delay his death (EMPL xlv). He first requests more time so that he can see how the public responds to the latest corrections he had been making to his works, but Charon replied that this would only lead Hume to want more time to make further corrections. Hume tries another tack: “Have a little patience, good Charon, I have been endeavouring to open the eyes of the public. If I live a few years longer, I may have the satisfaction of seeing the downfall of some of the prevailing systems of superstition,” to which Charon replies, “You loitering rogue, that will not happen these many hundred years... Get into the boat this instant, you lazy loitering rogue” (EMPL xlvi). This imaginary dialogue makes evident Hume’s self-awareness as an author who cared greatly about both the correctness of his written works and the influence of these works on the public.In her book, Margaret Watkins argues that Hume’s concern to open the eyes of the public goes well beyond attempts to bring about the downfall of systems of superstition.2 She credits him with the broader aim of writing essays for a literate audience that would stimulate both public and individual improvement in various areas of human activity, including government, work, aesthetic experience, and intimate [End Page 155] relationships. The first three chapters of the book examine the case for Hume’s concern with public improvement. Chapter 1 focuses primarily on the political essays, and examines Hume’s account of governing and his criticism of the irrationality apt to arise with divisive political factionalism. Chapter 2 turns to inequalities of power and the circumstances that allow some to exercise to a greater degree the domineering tendency that is part of human nature. Watkins uses Hume’s essay on the population size of ancient and modern societies to reconstruct his view on the ills—to both masters and slaves—of ancient slaveholding. She complicates this discussion by looking at modern slaveholding in the colonies, and Hume’s puzzling lack of attention to this. In the ancient world, slaveholding resulted from war and conquest, and Watkins examines how ancient warfare also led to greater ferocity and anger in fighting and exacerbated cruelty (a trait Hume had deemed the worst vice in the Treatise [T 3.3.3.8]).3 This is another place where Watkins sees Hume taking stock of modern improvements. In the wide-ranging third chapter, entitled “Working,” Watkins considers economic circumstances as moral causes that can shape character, highlighting the importance for Hume of the commercial virtues, especially industry.4 She also shows that in the four essays on happiness, modeled on Hellenistic sects, each type of philosopher regards industry, or at least occupation, as essential to human happiness. Watkins concludes that the need for industry is thus something we are naturally motivated to seek out, and so an integral part of human nature. Chapter 4, on “Composing,” shows Watkins’s talents as a philosophical essayist in her own right, as she relates art and other forms of beauty to the cultivation of calm passions. We find here an insightful discussion of art, whether composing or consuming, as having particularly therapeutic effects on melancholy and other forms of nervous conditions. Chapters 5 and 6 take up, respectively, love for oneself and love for others. The former looks at the importance Hume places on both self-love and pride. Here Watkins draws primarily on Hume’s more morally theoretical works, both the Treatise and EPM, since they have more to say about self-valuing. Chapter 6 shows how we may fruitfully read... (shrink)

The period 1873–1947 was productive in fostering ideas about observing, measuring, and quantifying repetitive human movements, prior to the rise of occupational health and ergonomics within industrial psychology. Starting with physiological experimentation in the lab, instruments of graphic inscription were then applied in the industrial workplace, initially as a benevolent measurement for monitoring worker health, but elsewhere as a more invasive measurement for the surveillance of worker efficiency. Herman Helmholtz’s invention of the myograph, and an adaptation called the ergograph, would (...) help form what Kronecker (1873) and later Mosso (1891) termed the ‘curve of fatigue’, and were used in extensive research on factory workers for Jules Amar’s Le Moteur humain in 1914. Meanwhile, in Britain in 1915 the physiologist Sherrington was observing workers in munitions factories, feeding into the formation of the Industrial Fatigue Research Board in 1919, which produced official reports. In the United States, similar but more high-profile research was conducted by Frederick Winslow Taylor and Lillian and Frank Gilbreth, who studied movement efficiency to maximize industrial productivity by innovating upon photographic and chronophotographic techniques. Further physiological research was taken up in Lawrence J. Henderson’s Harvard Fatigue Laboratory between 1927 and 1947 on subjects situated in environmental extremes. (shrink)

Does it matter morally whether a bomber who kills civilians in a raid intends to do so as a means to weakening the enemy or merely foresees he will do so in his attempt to destroy a munitions factory? Does it matter morally whether a nurse who gives a terminally ill patient a lethal dose of painkiller intends to do so as a means to ending the patient's life or merely foresees she will do so in her attempt to (...) alleviate the patient's pain? Those who answer affirmatively rest moral weight on the notion of intending to do something as a means. But giving an adequate analysis of this notion has proved difficult. In ‘Intending as a Means,’ Kwong-Loi Shun criticizes two attempts at analyzing this notion, one which he attributes to Jonathan Bennett and the other which he attributes to Thomas Nagel. Shun thinks both Bennett's and Nagel's analyses identify intending to bring about S as a means with aiming at S and offers examples which he believes show ‘an agent need not aim at what he intends to bring about.’ In making his objection to Bennett and Nagel, Shun introduces his own criterion for intending as a means. (shrink)

This article employs Gerald Dworkin’s analysis in “Is More Choice Better Than Less” in order to understand the challenges and consequences of having enlarged the scope of military options to include precision guided munitions and unmanned aerial vehicle capabilities.1 Following Dworkin, we argue that having more strategic choices are not always better than less for a number of specific reasons. Unlike many philosophical discussions of the use of these military technologies, ours is an account of the prudential challenges and (...) consequences of having widened military options, and the analysis self-consciously avoids making moral or legal claims concerning their use. It is simply an examination of the claim that widening the range of tactical options, to include these new weapon systems, is necessarily better. We will follow the outline of Dworkin’s argument in describing the current politico-military affairs. Our intent is to expose the practical costs associated with having tactical choices that include the use of these technologies. To be clear, the argument does not bear directly on the use of these technologies, but rather on the challenges associated with merely having the choice to use these weapon systems. Faced with the challenges associated with the option of having PGM or UAV capabilities, it may be judicious for countries to freely limit the military choices that they have at their disposal. This is not self-evident since the weapon technologies in question are not the sort that poses a clear and present danger to a large number of citizens, as was the case with nuclear weapons limited in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks of the 1970s or 1980s. Therefore a more detailed philosophical argument is warranted. A final caveat needs to be stated: The argument is to be taken as a whole since no single aspect of Dworkin’s analysis is definitive in regard to the question of whether more choice is indeed better than less. Each aspect does, however, contribute to a deeper understanding of what enlarging the set of tactical means for modern militaries. (shrink)

Les expériences de pensée sont à la fois un instrument de la pratique philosophique et un stimulant pour l’imagination. La question ici posée est celle de la détermination de la valeur de ces expériences de pensée quand elles sont employées dans des œuvres de fiction. On répond que la mise en fiction d’une expérience de pensée, si elle reste associée à une visée argumentative, rend le public moins apte à penser correctement et peut conduire à la remise en question de (...) ses valeurs les plus fondamentales, mais pour de mauvaises raisons. La puissance qu’a la fiction de mettre en scène ces scénarios imaginaires la munit donc du pouvoir de détériorer son public. Afin de justifier cette thèse, l’article s’appuie sur une analyse de la manière dont la série 24 heures chrono met en scène l’expérience de pensée de la bombe à retardement. (shrink)

Cet essai brillant fait ressortir l'actualité brûlante de Raymond Aron à un moment historique où, pour bien des Français, les repères se brouillent : la clairvoyance, la modération et le courage sont plus que jamais nécessaires. L'engagement d'Aron tout au long d'une vie bouleversée par les tempêtes politiques du siècle - son opposition résolue au nazisme, sa condamnation du communisme, sa critique de la colonisation de l'Algérie et sa nourrissante analyse de l'antisémitisme et d'Israël - sert ici de guide. Sa (...) réflexion nous prémunit contre les écueils de la pensée politique (historicisme, "politique de puissance", ultralibéralisme) ; elle a valeur, aussi, d'avertissement contre les compromissions passées et présentes des intellectuels, particulièrement éreintés quand ils cèdent à la tentation du conformisme. Alexis Lacroix, dont le parcours intellectuel doit tant à Raymond Aron, invite à sortir des lectures trop souvent partielles de l'œuvre du célèbre sociologue pour apprécier son approche interdisciplinaire qui se révèle féconde et, au bon sens du terme, holistique."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

As past president of both the History of Science Society and the American Society of Church History, Ronald L. Numbers is uniquely qualified to assess the historical relations between science and Christianity. In this collection of his most recent essays, he moves beyond the clichés of conflict and harmony to explore the tangled web of historical interactions involving scientific and religious beliefs. In his lead essay he offers an unprecedented overview of the history of science and Christianity from the perspective (...) of the ordinary people who filled the pews of churchesor loitered around outside. Unlike the elite scientists and theologians on whom most historians have focused, these vulgar Christians cared little about the discoveries of Copernicus, Newton, and Einstein. Instead, they worried about the causes of the diseases and disasters that directly affected their lives and about scientists preposterous attempts to trace human ancestry back to apes. Far from dismissing opinion-makers in the pulpit, Numbers closely looks at two the most influential Protestant theologians in nineteenth-century America: Charles Hodge and William Henry Green. Hodge, after decades of struggling to harmonize Gods two revelationsin nature and in the Biblein the end famously described Darwinism as atheism. Green, on the basis of his careful biblical studies, concluded that Ussher's chronology was unreliable, thus opening the door for Christian anthropologists to accommodate the subsequent discovery of human antiquity. In Science without God Numbers traces the millennia-long history of so-called methodological naturalism, the commitment to explaining the natural world without appeals to the supernatural. By the early nineteenth century this practice was becoming the defining characteristic of science; in the late twentieth century it became the central point of attack in the audacious attempt of intelligent designers to redefine science. Numbers ends his reassessment by arguing that although science has markedly changed the world we live in, it has contributed less to secularizing it than many have claimed. Taken together, these accessible and authoritative essays form a perfect introduction to Christian attitudes towards science since the 17th century. (shrink)

Quality-of-life policing, responsive to the concerns of urban communities, presents a profound paradox. On the one hand, the collateral effects of drug use, especially in public and in racially fragmented, low-income communities, result in levels of crime and fear of crime that renders the communities almost uninhabitable; on the other, the collateral effects of policing drug crime, for these same communities, destroy the community's human fabric. A "new" generation of legal scholars have embraced and transformed the Broken Windows model of (...) policing urban communities. These theorists share a "social norms"perspective: they suggest that law's direct threat of imposing sanctions is not the sole means of constraining conduct. A variety of other devices, including non-legal, "social" norms, may supplement the law's coercive power. The social norms "take" on the Broken Windows argument is that public low-level crime undermines the social structures of local communities. Inner city blight sends a distinct message: that community members reject or ignore norms supporting law-abiding behavior in favor of norms supporting law-breaking. Accordingly, social norms theorists advocate empowering police and local communities through a variety of traditional and newly minted public order offenses (such as anti-loitering statutes and youth curfews) as means of attacking high crime in urban and predominantly minority neighborhoods. In this article, I take up the challenge of public order policing. My claim is that the sort of preventative policing social norms theorists advocate can and should be separated from reactive "investigative" policing directed at apprehending criminals. Separating preventative and investigative policing means that the police, as currently constituted, are the wrong people to engage in preventative policing. Instead, the appropriate people include municipal officials with no power to engage in investigation but who have the authority to enforce norms of public order. My proposal is to radically restructure the manner in which we think about the legitimacy of various policing practices and the type of authority the police wield. Our current focus on constitutional remedies for low-level police abuses has failed to ameliorate the justified resentment expressed by individuals and local communities subject to heightened amounts of increasingly invasive policing.The attempt to limit police authority through prospective constitutional (and other) norms that control their ability to search, seize, and interrogate suspects is properly confined to the police's investigative role. Limits do not work to constrain their ability to police public order and engage in crime prevention. Yet even at the investigative stage, the Court has already replaced the rule-based due-process model of authority with a series of role-based exceptions to the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments' constitutional requirements. Both role- and rule-based concepts of authority concern the proper scope of legitimate authority. Rule-based authority has its basis in adherence to the content of particular rules; role-based authority is based in the powers afforded individuals in particular roles of public authority. Whereas rule-based authority derives its legitimacy primarily from the government's right to promulgate norms, role-based authority gains legitimacy from the degree to which the official's role is matched to the circumstances triggering authority. (shrink)

'Beaucoup perçoivent, devant la progression de la possibilité pour l'individu d'affirmer sa singularité et sa volonté de bien-être, une progression de l'individualisme. Pour maintenir tant bien que mal un semblant de cohérence, ils sont alors obligés de minimiser, voire d'occulter, la progression de la solidarité dans le monde, aussi bien le développement des divers systèmes de protection sociale étatiques que le développement des aides interétatiques ou le développement des organisations non gouvernementales. Mais le concept d'individualisme ne décrit pas ce qui (...) effectivement se passe au niveau de l'individu, il ne fait que l'effleurer de son aile douloureuse et s'écraser contre la vitre du concept d'égoïsme. Il faut inventer un autre concept : ce sera l'individuité. Et alors tout devient plus cohérent. L'individuité, définie comme la désacralisation totale de tout groupe et la sacralisation à égalité de tout individu, est ce qui permet de rendre compte du fait que c'est justement parce que la civilisation se structure peu à peu autour de l'égo, que c'est justement parce qu'elle transfère peu à peu, des dieux aux individus, ses mouvements les plus centraux et ses perspectives les plus fondamentales, qu'elle fait alors croître sa capacité à générer de la solidarité et même de l'altruisme. Le regard humain, qui depuis toujours vacillait, à la fois se courbant vers le despotisme de sa terre et se perdant vers les mirages de l'au-delà, acquiert peu à peu la capacité d'enfin se stabiliser à hauteur d'humain, dans le regard de l'Autre. Vidant progressivement de leur substance les communautés identitaires au profit des individus qu'arbitrairement elles enclosent, déconstruisant progressivement les fausses transcendances au profit de l'autotranscendance de la conscience réflexive, faisant progressivement du Je le centre de l'univers, la civilisation se structure peu à peu autour du fait qu'il y a magnifiquement un nombre incommensurable de centres à l'univers, un par subjectivité. L'humanité n'avait toujours vécu qu'à l'ère des sacralités groupales, qu'à l'ère de la dialectique identitarisme-religion, et puis, d'abord par un frémissement il y a deux millénaires et demi, et se renforçant peu à peu au cours des siècles jusqu'à de nos jours entrer dans un vertige exponentiel, voilà qu'une nouvelle dynamique émerge qui renverse tout : l'individu s'émancipe. Une nouvelle ère anthropologique s'ouvre à nous, il fallait la nommer : l'ère de l'individuité sera, ici, peut-être ailleurs, son nom. Un nom est aussi un outil, il permettra de mieux conceptualiser ce changement, pour mieux l'accompagner, et pour l'accélérer. Car les forces réactionnaires sont là, puissantes, actives, qui le freinent. Le militarisme est l'archétype du vivre-ensemble tel que l'agençait l'ère des sacralités groupales, là où les individus ne sont que des fragments de groupes identitaires, d'insignifiantes munitions ne servant qu'à s'écraser, au mieux par terre, et le labour ainsi se fait, au pire contre celles des autres groupes identitaires, et la mort toujours triomphe : et ce monde affreux, bien qu'affreux, n'est pas facile à quitter, et le vivre-ensemble, bien que souffrant, ne se laisse pas facilement soigner, et le chemin sera alors encore long (peut-être même très long, mais peut-être pas tant que ça si l'on sait le penser) avant que chaque individu soit considéré comme un tout, avant que l'égalité ontologique remplace totalement les hiérarchies identitaires, avant que l'éthique du respect universel remplace totalement la morale sacrificielle, avant que l'humanité ait définitivement choisi entre l'individuité ou la guerre'."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This special issue explores the significance of collectivism in modern and contemporary Japanese art. Japanese artists banded together throughout the twentieth century to work in collectives, reflecting and influencing each evolution of their culture. Illuminating the interplay between individual and community throughout Japan’s tumultuous century, the contributors to this issue examine both the practical internal operations of the collectives and the art that they produced. One contributor studies the art societies of prewar imperial Japan, whose juried art salons defined a (...) new _nihonga_ painting tradition. While recent scholarly work on art produced during World War II has tended to neglect the collectivist tradition, this issue covers wartime groups like the Art Unit for Promoting the Munitions Industry and the important questions they pose about the relationship between artists and the state. Art collectives in post-occupation Japan gained prominence working in the experimental vanguard of the global art scene in painting, sculpture, design, and intermedia projects. Adding a crucial dimension to the study of Japanese art and modernism, this issue explores how these groups attempted to accommodate the creative paradox of individualism within collectivism. _Contributors: Maki Kaneko, Kuroda Raiji, John Szostak, Miwako Tezuka, Ming Tiampo, Reiko Tomii, Alicia Volk, Midori Yoshimoto Reiko Tomii_ is an independent art historian and curator in New York. She is coauthor of _Xu Bing_. _Midori Yoshimoto_ is Associate Professor of Art History and curator of two galleries at New Jersey City University. She is the author of _Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York_. (shrink)

Les Fermenta cognitionis, mais surtout les Leçons de 1833, permettent de mesurer l’ampleur et la variété thématiques de la lecture de Boehme opérée par F. von Baader. En plein accomplissement de l’idéalisme allemand, Baader trouve chez le « cordonnier de Görlitz » les munitions spéculatives nécessaires pour lui opposer un « réalisme transcendantal » puissant et pleinement chrétien. C’est dans la compréhension, ardue mais salutaire, du juste rapport de la manifestation de l’être à sa médiation intérieure, que Baader pense (...) découvrir l’apport le plus excellent de Boehme à une philosophie théologique. (shrink)

SummaryThe outbreak of war in 1914 found Britain unprepared for a lengthy conflict. British science and industry were particularly ill-prepared to meet the demands of static warfare. Within two years, however, mobilization had made appreciable strides, and, as Britain's munitions industries moved from crisis to confidence, Britain's chemical industry was transformed by an arsenal of ‘garrison chemists’, with skills either born of necessity or borrowed from overseas. At the same time, Britain's chemical leadership traced a path that led them (...) from voluntarist to corporate methods, from private to public initiatives, and from individual to collective behaviours. This paper suggests four key stages in this mobilization, and hints at the significance of the war for the emergence of new sub-disciplines, for the careers of chemists, for academic-government relations in research, and for the image, status, and international position of British chemistry on the threshold of the postwar world. (shrink)

Revisionist approaches to the ethics of war seem to imply that civilians on the unjust side of a conflict can be legitimate targets of defensive attack. In response, some authors have argued that although civilians do often causally contribute to unjustified global threats – by voting for war, writing propaganda articles, or manufacturing munitions, for example – their contributions are usually too ‘small’, or ‘remote’, to make them liable to be intentionally killed to avert the threat. What defenders of (...) this view lack, however, is a theory of causal contribution. This article sketches and defends a theory of causal contribution. We then apply it to the kinds of situation that defenders of the view are interested in. We argue, however, that since degrees of causal contribution turn out to be sensitive to particular features of the situation that are extrinsic to the agent's action, whether an agent makes a small or a large contribution to a threat may not only be very difficult to discern but in many cases may not line up very well with the kinds of intuition about liability that defenders of the view want to uphold. (shrink)

This paper argues that the current stock of anti-personnel cluster bombs are temporally indiscriminate, and, therefore, unjust weapons. The paper introduces and explains the idea of temporal indiscriminateness. It argues that to honor non-combatant immunity—in addition to not targeting civilians—one must adequately target combatants. Due to their high dud rate, cluster submunitions fail to target combatants with sufficient temporal accuracy, and, thereby, result in avoidable serious harm to non-combatants. The paper concludes that non-combatant immunity and the principle of discrimination require (...) a moratorium on the use of current cluster munitions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:CHARITY LOST: TBE SECtJLA'.RIZATfON OF THE PRINCIPLE OF DOUBLE EFFECT IN THE JUST-WAR TRADITION TIMOTHY M. RENICK Georgia State University Atlanta, Georgia 0 N AUGUST 12, 1945, the city of Hiroshima still smoldered, and President Harry Truman addressed the American people : We have used [the atomic bomb] against those who have attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American (...) prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war.1 Truman and his military advisers had made a calculation. Japan was preparing for a last-ditch defense of the Japanese Islands. The prospect was ominous, to say the least. The United States had suffered eighty thousand casualties in the taking of the smaller and less protected Okinawa just two months earlier; 120,000 Japanese soldiers had been killed (and only ten-thousand taken prisoner). Strategists estimated that losses, both military and civilian, from a full scale battle for Japan itself would exceed one million. Surely the tens of thousands killed by exploding a bomb over Hiroshima was the lesser evil. Surely this was a proportionate act : fifty thousand lives traded for a million. As Winston Churchill wrote in support of Truman's decision: "To avert a vast, indefinite butchery... at the cost of a few explosions seemed, after all our toils and perils, a miracle of deliverance." 2 1 Michael Walzer, lust and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1979), p.164. 2 Ibid., pp. 266-267. 441 442 TIMOTHY M. RENICK From an ethical perspective, however, the act was anything but a deliverance. I am not alone in this assessment. Advocates of the just-war tradition including Elizabeth Anscombe, Paul Ramsey, George Kennan, John Langan, and Michael Walzer have condemned the bombing of Hiroshima by means of a shared just-war argument.8 The argument goes as follows, and it is a good one. In times of war, many actions are likely to have both good and evil effects. One destroys an enemy's munitions factory (good effect) but kills an innocent child in the process (evil effect). The jus in bello of the just-war tradition, however, stipulates that an action which has a " double effect " is permissible if and only if: ( 1) it is discriminate (i.e., the actor aims only at the good effect and does not intend the evil effect, nor is the evil effect a means to the end, however good); and (2) it is proportionate (i.e., the good created by the act outweighs the bad).4 Now, the argument continues, Truman's decision to bomb Hiroshima failed the first criterion. It was not a discriminate act because the evil effect (the killing of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians) was not unintended. In fact, the evil was the very means to the good end. Although Truman himself claimed to have selected Hiroshima as a target because it was "a war s See, for example, G. E. M. Anscombe, "Mr. Truman's Decision," in Ethics, Religion and Politics (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota, 1981); M. Walzer "Supreme Emergency," in Just and Unjust Wars; and John Langan, "The American Hierarchy and Nuclear Weapons," Theological Studies 43 (1982) : 447-467. ' I utilize here a helpful shorthand version of the principle of double effect introduced by Paul Ramsey in War and the Christian Conscience (Durham, North Carolina: Duke, 1961). More frequently, the principle is rendered by means of four criteria: It is permissible to perform an act likely to have evil consequences if and only if (I) the act is good in itself or at least indifferent; (2) the direct effect is morally justified; (3) the actor aims only at the acceptable effect and does not intend the evil effect, nor is the evil effect a means to the end, however good ; and (4) there is in the good effect a proportionately grave reason for permitting the evil effect. The shortened version of the theory captures all components essential to my discussion and enhances clarity. I thus will make use of it throughout this essay. CHARITY AND... (shrink)

This article reflects on securitization efforts with respect to ‘killer robots’, known more impartially as autonomous weapons systems (AWS). Our contribution focuses, theoretically and empirically, on the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, a transnational advocacy network vigorously pushing for a pre-emptive ban on AWS. Marking exactly a decade of its activity, there is still no international regime formally banning, or even purposefully regulating, AWS. Our objective is to understand why the Campaign has not been able to advance its disarmament agenda (...) thus far, despite all the resources, means and support at its disposal. For achieving this objective, we challenge the popular assumption that strong stigmatization is the universally best strategy towards humanitarian disarmament. We investigate the consequences of two specifics present in AWS, which set them apart from processes and successes of the campaigns to ban anti-personnel landmines, cluster munitions, and laser-blinding weapons: the complexity of AWS as a distinct weapons category, and the subsequent circumvention of its complexity through the utilization of pop-culture, namely science fiction imagery. We particularly focus on two mechanisms through which such distortion has occurred: hybridization and grafting. These provide the conceptual basis and heuristic tools to unpack the paradox of over-securitization: success in broadening the stakeholder base in relation to the first mechanism and deepening the sense of insecurity in relation to the second one does not necessarily lead to the achievement of the desired prohibitory norm. In conclusion, we ask whether it is not the time for a more epistemically-oriented expert debate with a less ambitious, lowest common denominator strategy as the preferred model of arms control for such a complex weapons category. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Intention and Wrongdoing: A Defense of the Principle of Double Effect by Joshua StuchlikMichael J. DegnanSTUCHLIK, Joshua. Intention and Wrongdoing: A Defense of the Principle of Double Effect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. xvi + 220 pp. Cloth, $99.99In this book Joshua Stuchlik vigorously defends the principle of double effect (PDE), which states, "There is a strict moral constraint against bringing about serious evil (harm) to an innocent (...) person intentionally, but it is permissible in a wider range of circumstances to act in a way that brings about serious evil incidentally, as a foreseen but non-intended side effect." After defining the terms of the principle and considering an intuitive case-based defense, he supports its truth based on a standard of solidarity. Since the PDE requires the distinction between intended consequences and nonintended side effects, he explains Elizabeth Anscombe's theory of intention, which supports the distinction's moral significance. He uses her theory to treat the closeness problem, the irrelevance of intention critique, and a challenge from Joshua Greene's empirical moral psychology that purports to undermine deontological constraints on causing harm.I present Stuchlik's grounding for the PDE followed by an uncontroversial example of its application. After this I consider two important objections to the PDE that Stuchlik critiques: the closeness problem and James Rachels's argument that intentions are irrelevant to judging the moral permissibility of actions. I conclude by examining Stuchlik's treatment of these challenges.Stuchlik interprets the PDE's very strict constraint against intentional killing or seriously harming the innocent as a near absolute prohibition, for he believes innocent persons are not suitable recipients of intentional harm. He grounds this constraint on the principle of solidarity. Being in solidarity with another is possessing concern for that other's sake. The ground for this concern is a shared human nature that enables members to think of themselves as making a "we." Human nature consists in the structured potentialities for knowing and freely choosing. Evidence of these rational potentialities is the human orientation toward the transcendent values of truth and goodness. Such embodied potentialities have inviolable worth.The scenarios of the precision bomber and the terror bomber illustrate the moral significance of the intended harm versus the nonintended but foreseen harm that Stuchlik adopts from Elizabeth Anscombe's action theory. Each bombers' goal is to help his country win a just war. The precision bomber pursues that goal by targeting a munitions factory. Though he foresees that many noncombatants will be killed or seriously [End Page 367] injured from the bomb, he does not necessarily intend these harms. By contrast, the terror bomber targets a civilian center necessarily intending harm for noncombatants. The PDE rules out his conduct.Anscombe's account of intention can lead to the problem of closeness in which the content of an intention is sufficiently fine-grained that an agent need not intend harm in almost any situation. Stuchlik illustrates the problem with Alexander Pruss's zookeeper scenario.An eccentric literalistic but always truthful magnate tells Sam he will donate to famine relief saving a hundred lives if and only if Sam follows his directions to the iota. Sam is to purchase a gun, sneak at night into a zoo owned by the magnate and kill the first mammal he sees. Sam sneaks into the zoo, sees a mammal in the distance, and forms the intention to shoot it. Then he notices that the mammal is human but shoots nonetheless on utilitarian grounds.In this case applying the PDE shows that Sam is simply intending that a mammal be killed. The fact that the mammal is a human is irrelevant, according to Anscombe's action theory.Stuchlik's response clarifies the scope of intention in the PDE. As stated above, the intention's content includes seriously harming an innocent human. However, if the intention ranges only over an intention to bring about an effect, E, and it turns out that E is a serious harm for an innocent human being, then applying the principle shows that Sam's action is wrong. The intended effect of killing the mammal is, as a matter of fact, an... (shrink)

Si les sympathies de Toland pour le régime «républicain» (en anglais de l’époque, « commonwealthman » pour le substantif, « republican » pour l’adjectif ou le substantif) ne sont guère mises en doute aujourd’hui, encore faut-il s’entendre sur ce que signifie ce terme de «républicain». Les éditions que donna Toland d’ouvrages dont les thèses antiabsolutistes étaient connues de tous et les préfaces dont il les munit sont un argument sérieux en faveur d’un Toland « républicain ». Il faut cependant mettre (...) en lumière les différents sens que Toland accepterait ou refuserait de donner à la notion de « république ». De nombreuses thèses de l’auteur sont communes aux whigs et aux républicains, et pourtant il manifeste sa méfiance à l’égard des partis. Ce qui est certain, c’est que Toland défend vivement les libertés – liberté de conscience, liberté de la presse, liberté du commerce – et aussi l’idée d’équilibre tant à l’intérieur des divers pouvoirs de l’État que dans le concert des nations. (shrink)

In 2002 a significant number of American theologians declared that the ‘war on terror’ was a just war. But the indiscriminate strategies and munitions technologies deployed in the invasion and occupation of Iraq fall short of the just war principles of non-combatant immunity, and proportionate response. The just war tradition is one of Christendom's most enduring legacies to the law of nations. Its practice implies a standard of virtue in war that is undermined by the indiscriminate effects of many (...) modern weapons and by the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure. The violent power represented by the technology of what the Vatican calls ‘total war’has occasioned a significant shift in Catholic social teaching on just war since the Second World War. Total war generates an asymmetry of weakness in those subjected to these techniques of terror, and this has only strengthened the violence of the Islamist struggle against the West. But those who draw inspiration and legitimacy from this weakness in their struggle with the West also reject virtue in war. In a time of terror the theological vocation is to speak peace and to recall the terms in which the peace of God was achieved by way of the cross. (shrink)

Le 'Dictionaire historique et critique' de Pierre Bayle est depuis longtemps considéré comme un des ouvrages clés qui a non seulement effectué une influence importante à l'époque de sa parution, mais aussi sur le siècle des Lumières par la suite. Le présent ouvrage examine, dans un premier temps, le dictionnaire en tant que genre littéraire et fait ressortir les particularités du 'Dictionaire historique et critique.' Dans un deuxième temps, on s'intéresse à la question de savoir comment des aspects formels du (...) texte baylien permettent à l'auteur de propager des argumentations sceptiques. Par ce moyen, le rapport entre la forme et le contenu devient visible. Dans un troisième temps, on s'interroge au même rapport entre la forme et le contenu mais en considérant la dimension historiographique de Pierre Bayle. Par cette étude, il devient possible de montrer que l'auteur se munit de différents outils de travail intellectuel pour faire part de sa pensée en choisissant le dictionnaire comme genre pour son texte."--Page 4 of printed paper wrapper. (shrink)

Toute guerre se remporte avec des hommes et des munitions, y compris celle des idées. Aujourd'hui l'histoire, la politique, l'économie, la culture, le droit sont des champs de bataille. À nous d'y triompher de la pensée unique. Beaucoup ont déjà pris la plume, tels Jean Sévillia, Philippe de Villiers ou Mathieu Bock-Côté. Mais à cette aventure intellectuelle, le droit reste étranger. Chose curieuse, au regard de son immixtion dans nos vies, réglées comme des horloges suisses par ses rouages. Mal (...) interprété, il regorge d'idées fausses, parfois sciemment entretenues par nos législateurs à des fins politiques. Remettre le droit à l'endroit? C'est l'objet insolite de cet ouvrage. Les hommes naissent-ils réellement libres et égaux en droit? Nos élus nous coûtent-ils trop cher? La naissance d'un étranger en France le rend-elle nécessairement français? Le droit européen est-il vraiment supérieur au droit national? Trente questions pour y voir clair et combattre les idées reçues. (shrink)

Consensus among human rights groups and churches in recent years about cluster bombs has culminated in the Convention on Cluster Munitions. While there is apparent agreement that cluster bombs ought to be illegal, no substantive ethical treatment of this issue exists. In statements, references are typically made to the danger cluster munitions pose to civilians; it is alleged that these weapons are inherently immoral, and appeal is given only implicitly or in a cursory fashion to traditional just war (...) reasoning. Taking its cue from Jesuit moral theologian John C. Ford's influential article appearing in 1944 on `The Morality of Obliteration Bombing', and drawing on the more recent work of Oliver O'Donovan on `immoral weapons', this essay offers a critical moral assessment of cluster bombs and their use through attention to the principles of discrimination, proportionality, and the framework of double effect reasoning. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the ethical implications of emerging Nanotechnologically Enhanced Combat Systems (or 'NECS'). Through a combination of materials innovation and biotechnology, NECS are aimed at making combatants much less vulnerable to munitions that pose a lethal threat to soldiers protected by conventional armor. We argue that increasing technological disparities between forces armed with NECS and those without will exacerbate the ethical problems of asymmetric warfare. This will place pressure on the just war principles of jus in (...) bello, by encouraging the resort to tactics that either (i) make it more difficult to respect these principles or (ii) directly violate them, by virtue of attacking non-combatants or creating disproportionate numbers of casualties without a clear military goal. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:46. HUME AND THE FUTURE OF THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS In the section of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature entitled Of the laws of nations (Section XI of Book III) he says: Political writers tell us, that in every kind of intercourse, a body politic is to be consider 'd as one person; and indeed this assertion is so far just, that different nations, as well as private persons, (...) require mutual assistance; at the same time that their selfishness and ambition are perpetual sources of war and discord.But tho' nations in this particular resemble individuals, yet as they are very different in other respects, no wonder they regulate themselves by different maxims, and give rise to a new set of rules, which we call the laws of nations. 1 He goes on to give examples of such laws:the sacredness of the persons of ambassadors, the declaration of war, the abstaining from poison'd arms, with other duties of that kind, which are evidently calculated for the commerce, that is peculiar to different.societies. (T 567) Hume then tells us in the next paragraph that such laws of nations may be added to the three laws of nature (that possessions should be stable, that possessions should be transferable by consent, and that promises or contracts should be kept) but that these laws of nations do not supersede the laws of nature; that is, they do not make the laws of nature irrelevant to relations among nation-states. In fact, the morality among nation-states involves the same kinds of obligations as morality among private persons, but the obligations are not as binding. The obligations of nation-states to each other can more readily be overridden by concerns of self-interest than would be legitimate in the case of private persons because nation-states are more nearly able to maintain themselves without external assistance than are individual persons. In Hume's words,... tho' the 47. morality of princes has the same extent, yet it has not the same force as that of private persons (T 558) because tho' the intercourse of different states be advantageous, and even sometimes necessary, yet it is not so necessary nor advantageous as that among individuals, without which 'tis utterly impossible for human nature ever to subsist. (T 569) In the last paragraph of this section Hume addresses himself to the question of the proportion these two species of morality bear to each other. (T 569) He says that we can never give any precise answer (T 569) and that the proper proportion is exhibited in the actual practice of the world. He takes this fact as showing that all men recognize that the rules of morality, both among private individuals and among nation-states, arise from human conventions, and from the interest, which we have in the preservation of peace and order. (T 569) When discussing the same issue in his Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals Hume is more succinct. The observance of justice, though useful among them [nations], is not guarded by so strong a necessity as among individuals; and the moral obligation holds proportion with the usefulness. 2 """ The moral obligations of individuals to each other is thus greater than that of nations to each other because keeping the rules of justice is inore useful in the former case than in the latter. But Hume did not live in an age of atomic weapons, long-range missiles, and precision-guided munitions. Furthermore, the nations of the world are now much more interdependent than in his day, not only with regard to where they get the resources they need but also with regard to what they do with their wastes. There seems to be little roo.? _or dtubt that the utility of following the rules of justice among nations is much greater now than it was in the eighteenth 48. century. Since a nuclear war might mean the end of the human species, the utility of justice among nations seems to be approaching, perhaps even surpassing, the utility which moral rules have at the level of private persons. In view of this changed situation, I intend to review what Hume has... (shrink)

Common sense would suggest that the acquisition of precision-guided munitions should make it easier to avoid “collateral” damage in war. But U.S. military theorists have drawn the opposite conclusion: namely, that the more precise the weapon, the more permissive the standard for targeting should be. Henry Shue explains why this has happened—and why it is factually mistaken and morally misguided.

Since 2007, five scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear program have been killed under mysterious circumstances. This is not the first time that nuclear scientists have come under direct attack. Scientists are legally civilians. Like the rest of us, they are protected by laws prohibiting murder and perfidious killing, and enjoy civilian immunity during wartime. Moreover, powerful moral arguments oppose assassination policies specifically. Nevertheless, contemporary theories of just war allow for the partial extension of combatant status to civilians who are either (...) threatening or responsible for unjust threats. Weapons manufacturers, their factories and employees, are accorded less than absolute protection within just war theory, and even under international law. Dramatic events compel us to think through these issues of political violence in a principled manner, whatever our particular views on the Iranian case may be. The various moral arguments against assassination on the one hand and the complex status of munitions workers on the other suggest that scientists involved in weapons manufacturing may in some cases be morally liable to direct harm, as well as being legally liable to proportionate collateral damage. (shrink)