The Laws of Armed Conflict require that war crimes be attributed to individuals who can be held responsible and be punished. Yet assigning responsibility for the actions of Lethal Autonomous Weapon...

In his recent JME article Daniel Restrepo argues that both legal and ethical rules should protect the so-called Naked Soldiers, combatants engaged in activity unrelated to military operations and unaware of the imminent danger threatening them. I criticize this position from several angles. I deny the existence of any link between vulnerability and innocence, and claim ignorance of deadly threats does not give rise to a morally distinguished type of vulnerability. I argue that actions not contributing to the war effort (...) are nevertheless an inherent part of fighting a war, and that combatants do not signal intention to abandon their commitment to the war effort by undertaking these. I show that by granting hors de combat status to Naked Soldiers, we would unjustly disadvantage their opponents and engender significant and manifold practical difficulties that the proponents of the view fail to solve or even anticipate. Finally, I demonstrate that Restrepo’s general project of “making killing in war difficult to legitimately justify” regardless of why, how and by whom the killing is done is incompatible with just war theory’s basic assumptions. That project is in fact pacifist in nature and as such redundant in light of pacifism’s broader and stronger implications. (shrink)

Business and Society Review, Volume 127, Issue S1, Page 283-298, Spring 2022.

This book brings together an international collection of experts in reproductive ethics, law, disability studies, and medicine to explore the challenging future of reproduction and children. From the medical to the social and from the financial to the legal, the authors explore the expanding impact of reproductive genetics on our society. New advances in genetic technologies are revolutionizing the practice of reproductive medicine. We have expanded our ability to detect genetic changes in embryos and fetuses in ways that potentially allow (...) to identify, treat, or prevent a growing range of diseases. The development of gene-editing technologies raises questions about the possibility of removing disease-causing variants from embryos before pregnancy implantation. The growing sophistication of prenatal genomic sequencing offers us glimpses into the whole genome of the developing fetus. And, the increasingly sophisticated science of 'gene matching' allows us greater and greater foreknowledge of how the genomes of two individuals will combine in a future child. This is an indispensable book on the newest developments in bioethics caused by the sciences. Chapter 5 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com. (shrink)

The ethical Principle of Proportionality requires combatants not to cause collateral harm excessive in comparison to the anticipated military advantage of an attack. This principle is considered a major (and perhaps insurmountable) obstacle to ethical use of autonomous weapon systems (AWS). This article reviews three possible solutions to the problem of achieving Proportionality compliance in AWS. In doing so, I describe and discuss the three components Proportionality judgments, namely collateral damage estimation, assessment of anticipated military advantage, and judgment of “excessiveness”. (...) Some possible approaches to Proportionality compliance are then presented, such as restricting AWS operations to environments lacking civilian presence, using AWS in targeted strikes in which proportionality judgments are pre-made by human commanders, and a ‘price tag’ approach of pre-assigning acceptable collateral damage values to military hardware in conventional attritional warfare. The article argues that application of these three compliance methods would result in AWS’ achieving acceptable Proportionality compliance levels in many combat environments and scenarios, allowing AWS to perform most key tasks in conventional warfare. (shrink)

Efforts to ban Autonomous Weapon Systems were both unsuccessful and controversial. Simultaneously the need to address the detrimental aspects of AWS development and proliferation continues to grow in scope and urgency. The article presents several regulatory solutions capable of addressing the issue while simultaneously respecting the requirements of military necessity and so attracting a broad consensus. Two much stricter solutions – regional AWS bans and adoption of a no first use policy – are also presented as fallback strategies in case (...) achieving AWS’ compliance with the Laws of Armed Conflict proved elusive. Together, the solutions presented form an outline of a flexible regulatory strategy able to adjust to different technological outcomes and providing a sensible compromise to solve the current deadlock on the AWS issue. (shrink)

Allowing prisoners of war (POW) to be released on parole ceased to be practiced in early XX century, although for centuries it was quite common in European warfare. In this article I argue there are several powerful moral reasons to reinstate POW parole: the well- being of POW and their families, but also a chance to address the previously intractable problem of surrender to aircraft and autonomous weapons. I also argue that there are no good moral reasons not to allow (...) POW to accept parole, and that the reasons commonly put forward against the practice of parole are usually informed by antiquated and flawed ethical attitudes. I subsequently offer solutions for overcoming the practical obstacles to reinstating the practice of parole utilizing commonly available technology and self-enforcing diplomatic arrangements. I provide a detailed outline of such arrangements, addressing a number of possible objections and testing the model against several hypothetical scenarios. (shrink)

There are several strong moral reasons for restoring the practice of parole for prisoners of war (POWs), that is, allowing them to spend their POW internment in a neutral country or in their own country provided they abstain from any military activity. This article makes an ethical case for parole, while discussing thoroughly theoretical as well as practical arguments against its reintroduction. The article suggests ways to create a reliable, internationally recognized way of paroling POWs. It concludes that the reintroduction (...) of parole as such is both ethically required and practically possible, and that it would reduce the needless suffering among POWs that exists under a system that does not allow for parole. (shrink)

As members of the fetal surgery advisory board at a large tertiary care center, we read with great interest Hendriks’ et al. target article proposing a new ethical framework for fetal therap...

If a firm provides incentives by promoting those who have performed well in a job, it may transfer them to a job to which they are not well suited and agents are promoted to their levels of incompetence. Tournaments are an alternative to reputation as a means of ensuring that firms reward good performance when performance is unverifiable.

We were interested to read the current target article, given our admiration for the senior author’s comprehensive coverage of these same topics a decade ago (Donley, Hul...

In their target article, Conley et al. (2023) appropriately highlight the ongoing conceptual and practical opacity of public engagement (PE) in the translation of human gene editing (HGE) (Conley e...

In 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed changes to the regulations that govern human subjects protection in federally funded research. The proposed changes involve modifying inclusion standards for minimal-risk research and removing the necessity of review from certain categories of noninvasive research. All studies would instead be required to comply with privacy protections as initiated by the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act . We argue that relying on HIPAA to protect participants from participation-related risks in noninvasive (...) research is insufficient to protect the autonomy and psychological health of potential research participants. Instead, we suggest a streamlined review format for these categories of research. (shrink)

The field of war ethics changes its focus, and grows, in reaction to salient conflicts of the day – and this is how things should be. World War II made the deficiencies of contemporary law and policy crystal clear, remaining the obvious reference point up to this day. It was in reaction to the atrocities of the Vietnam War that Michael Walzer and others made just war theory relevant again, featured in military academies and politician’s speeches. The Iraq War inspired (...) the so-called revisionists in just war theory and fixated military ethicists’ glance on the complex conundrums of counterinsurgency, while G.W. Bush’s War on Terror ignited debates on torture, use of private military contractors and targeted killing. Had these wars been different, contemporary ethics of war would have dealt with different problems, or at the very least it would apportion attention and expertise differently. Consequently it is no surprise that the Russian invasion of Ukraine, launched clandestinely in April 2014 and escalated in February 2022, has generated its own ethical problems. A rare large scale, conventional, inter-state conflict, fought both with legacy Soviet systems and cutting edge contemporary technologies, the Russo-Ukrainian War is different from the asymmetrical, low-end (though not low harm) conflicts of the last thirty years. It is also marked by the almost complete disregard shown by the aggressor side to the issues of justice, both ad bellum and in bello ones. Indeed, as I write these words, use of nuclear weapons in offensive warfare is being openly threatened, and one is to assume, considered, by the Kremlin. Both frost and hunger are being weaponized against civilians, with the inhabitants of Ukraine being far from the only target, or casualty, of such policies. In a globalized world, the suffering is also global. While the issue of ad bellum justice is uncharacteristically straightforward, many other questions are anything but answered. Nuclear blackmail, and nuclear-backed imperialism, stand out as theoretically underappreciated yet vastly important problems. So does the role of the global community in limiting the spillover effects of the war from hurting the most vulnerable. Devising an appropriate international response to crimes against humanity and acts of genocide committed by a nuclear power, yet by conventional means, offers another set of stark problems. These heavyweight questions are just the very first ones that spring to mind when one contemplates the events of the current war. Russian attacks on power plants and heating stations, conducted at the verge of winter, unfortunately may be said to have some precedent in the actions of Western powers in Serbia and Iraq. Whether such attacks are legal under international laws of armed conflict, and, if they are legal, whether the laws should change is another subject ripe for debate. So is the issue of POW’s notorious vulnerability to wanton and needless cruelty, once again exposed by this war. The internment of Mariupol garrison commanders in Turkey seems to offer a glimpse of a solution far more civilized than the current system. As far as the ethics of novel military technologies are concerned, the widespread use of armed drones, permeating to ever lower levels of military organization has major, though unclear implications both for the future of drones and that of autonomous weapons. Does the wildfire proliferation of armed drones prove the attempts to frame them as illegitimate, morally suspect weapons were naïve and futile? Or does it prove ethicists should double down their efforts to shackle such technologies in their infancy? The general problem is far from the only one. What about the use of drones or autonomous weapons that cannot be tied to a particular actor against critical infrastructure, such as the Nord Stream pipelines? How are such attacks to be responded to or deterred? Regarding technology, this is also the first conflict of this size followed almost in real time by a truly global audience of sympathizers, spectators and trolls capable of impacting political and military outcomes through influence campaigns, donations, volunteer online work etc. It is clear that trying to sway one’s government to increase or cease support for a side of this conflict is not morally neutral, nor is transferring money for the war effort. How should we think of these new forms of extended participation in conflict? And given their importance, how should those who report the truth about the ugly realities of war proceed? What about pundits and commentators with large audiences – what are their responsibilities, and what standards can we expect of them? The questions that may be asked about the behavior of essentially private citizens may of course also be asked about the behavior of governments – and corporations. What degree of assistance to the victim state may be required? What degree of involvement with the aggressor state is permissible? What these and many other conundrums placed in the spotlight by the Russian invasion have in common is that they need answers – most quite urgently. Consequently we invite a variety of learned and considerate voices to opine on these in our journal’s special issue. Among questions and doubts, one thing is certain – when confronted with the evils of war, we cannot stay silent, and we cannot cease to reflect. (shrink)

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)

Reputation is often seen as central to the coordination of transactions in sharing economy platforms. Participants perform a double role regarding reputation management: while engaging in exchanges with other peers, they build their individual ‘reputation capital’ and simultaneously execute community oversight. In Couchsurfing (CS), a network often cited as paradigmatic of the sharing economy, there is, however, a clear bias for positive references. In the digital economy literature, participants’ friendly behaviour is understood as motivated by self-interest and an incentive to (...) maintain a positive reputation. Social research on reputation in CS attributes the bias to fear of retaliation, but also hints at norms of reciprocity leading travellers to require positive feedback for hospitality. This article analyses the lived experience of reputation management in CS and argues that participants seek to reconcile direct and general reciprocity. It proposes breaking these practices down into boundary-work and creative avoidance and argues these result in insufficient protection of inexperienced participants against problematic members. (shrink)

There are several strong moral reasons for restoring the practice of parole for prisoners of war (POWs), that is, allowing them to spend their POW internment in a neutral country or in their own country provided they abstain from any military activity. This article makes an ethical case for parole, while discussing thoroughly theoretical as well as practical arguments against its reintroduction. The article suggests ways to create a reliable, internationally recognized way of paroling POWs. It concludes that the reintroduction (...) of parole as such is both ethically required and practically possible, and that it would reduce the needless suffering among POWs that exists under a system that does not allow for parole. (shrink)

Celem artykułu jest zwięzłe przedstawienie historii rozwoju literatury Turków cypryjskich od momentu pojawienia się Osmanów na wyspie pod koniec XVI wieku po czasy najnowsze. Osmańscy zdobywcy przywieźli na Cypr swoją tradycję, kulturę i literaturę, ale rozwój piśmiennictwa na wyspie odbywał się w innym tempie i w zależności od sytuacji politycznej podlegał różnym wpływom, nie tylko anatolijskim. Także wielokulturowość miała duży wpływ na charakter rozwoju tureckojęzycznej literatury w ciągu całej 450-letniej obecności Turków na wyspie. W artykule przedstawiono pokrótce najważniejsze wydarzenia polityczne, (...) które miały wpływ na rozwój i kondycję literatury tureckiej na Cyprze. Następnie omówiony został problem periodyzacji literatury Turków cypryjskich na tle okresów rozwoju literatury w Turcji. Z epokami literackimi zazwyczaj można łączyć konkretne gatunki, które w danym okresie pojawiają się, przeżywają największy rozkwit lub zanikają. Historia rozwoju gatunków takich jak nowela, powieść, sztuka sceniczna wskazuje na pewne różnice między literaturą Turcji osmańskiej i republikańskiej a literaturą Turków cypryjskich. Kolejny ważny element, który może służyć jako narzędzie porównania to tematyka utworów – najbardziej naturalne zwierciadło wydarzeń historycznych i problemów przeżywanych przez naród. Zestawienie cech charakterystycznych literatury tureckocypryjskiej i tureckiej na przestrzeni wieków pokazuje, że poza okresem po 1974 roku literatura Turków cypryjskich rozwijała się wolniej, a nowe trendy pojawiały się z opóźnieniem. Jako główne przyczyny takiego stanu rzeczy wskazać można uwarunkowania polityczne i ekonomiczne. (shrink)

Arguments from human dignity feature prominently in the Lethal Autonomous Weapons moral feasibility debate, even though their exists considerable controversy over their role and soundness and the notion of dignity remains under-defined. Drawing on the work of Dieter Birnbacher, I fix the sub-discourse as referring to the essential value of human persons in general, and to postulated moral rights of combatants not covered within the existing paradigm of the International Humanitarian Law in particular. I then review and critique dignity-based arguments (...) against LAWS: argument from faulty targeting process, argument from objectification, argument from underappreciation of the value of human life and the argument from the absence of mercy. I conclude that the argument from the absence of mercy is the only dignity-based argument that is both valid and irreducible to another class of arguments within the debate, and that it offers insufficient justification for a global ban on LAWS. (shrink)

In this article I consider a certain characteristic of our times as a “secular age,” namely, a series of complications in our understanding of transgression. Transgression implies the presence of some rules and laws which can be violated. As long as the rules and laws are perceived as right, as a way of protecting the values which would otherwise perish, transgression appears to be a wrong thing to do, a misdeed, a criminal act. Needless to say, the very conceptual structure (...) makes sense only provided that the distinctions between right and wrong, good and evil, lawful and lawless are not arbitrary, which, in turn, depends on the presence of the concept of truth. In the secular age, though, the concept of truth becomes not only difficult to handle, since it is incompatible with the modern frame of mind, but also assumes some derogatory connotations, up to the point when to insist on the distinction between (truly) right and (truly) wrong is in itself a wrong thing to do. That is the state of contemporary societies which G. K. Chesterton examines in his work Heretics. The effect of Chesterton’s reflections is a new map of right/wrong, good/evil, lawless/lawful permutations. After Chesterton, I comment on the character of a new heretic, one for whom transgression, understood as the attack on buried-for-long orthodoxy, is too easy a thing to do. To illustrate the mentioned changes of perspective, I refer to an exemplary criminal figure of the West, that is, the biblical serpent, and its criticism. (shrink)

We are grateful to Friesen and colleagues for drawing attention to the tension between the protection of populations that may experience vulnerability with their inclusion in research (Friesen et a...

Objective The study evaluated patient informed consent (IC) for the Quad screen and examined differences in IC between test acceptors and test refusers. A multidimensional model of IC was used. Methods Women seeking prenatal care at nine obstetrics clinics in a large Midwestern city completed surveys between February and December 2006. Surveys contained measures for three dimensions of IC: intention, understanding and controlling influence. Results 56.2% of women did not meet criteria for all three of our dimensions of IC and (...) therefore failed to give it. The failure rate was higher among women who choose to screen (72.6%) than women who choose not screen (50%) (p < 0.001). Women who met all criteria for IC were over three times less likley to choose to screen (or = 0.32, CI 0.17–0.62 ( p < 0.01)) than women who did not meet criteria for IC. Conclusion The decision to screen for fetal anomalies is less of a deliberated action than the decision not to screen. Women who lack a fundamental understanding of the purpose and nature of the screen may be operating on the belief that the screen is part of standard care and presents no need to deliberate. (shrink)

While the 2022 Supreme Court of the United States decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization may bring the contingent rights of pregnant people to refuse interventions into sharper foc...