For the role of utilitarianism in the ethics of war and peace, Shaw suggests there is a Utilitarian War Principle (UWP) and argues that the principles of the just war theory should be treated as intermediate principles that are subordinated to UWP. He also argues that the state should be the primary legitimate authority to wage war and holder of the right of national defense. I argue that the utilitarian approach should be specifically linked with contingent pacifism, a (...) new understanding of pacifism from within the just war tradition, and the utilitarian contingent pacifism only endorses individual self-defense but not national defense. This finding is not only theoretically important but has practical implications for the debate on Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution. Utilitarian contingent pacifism supports the idealist position that Article 9 is morally significant because it makes Japan a pioneer of the new kind of pacifism. (shrink)

In this, the first major philosophical study of contingent pacifism, Larry May offers a new account of pacifism from within the Just War tradition. Written in a non-technical style, the book features real-life examples from contemporary wars and applies a variety of approaches ranging from traditional pacifism and human rights to international law and conscientious objection. May considers a variety of thinkers and theories, including Hugo Grotius, Kant, Socrates, Seneca on restraint, Tertullian on moral purity, Erasmus's (...) arguments against just war, and Hobbes's conception of public conscience. The guiding idea is that the possibility of a just war is conceded, but not at the current time or in the foreseeable future due to the nature of contemporary armed conflict and geopolitics - wars in the past are also unlikely to have been just wars. This volume will interest scholars and upper-level students of political philosophy, philosophy of law, and war studies. (shrink)

The just war tradition began life, primarily in the writings of Augustine and other Church Fathers, as a reaction to pacifism. In my view, contemporary just war adherents should also see pacifism as their main rival. The key question of the just war tradition is how to justify war, given that war involves intentionally attacking or killing innocent people. And this justificatory enterprise is not an easy one. Today some theorists argue that some, but not all, soldiers are (...) liable to be attacked, especially those who fight in an unjust war. In this view, some of those who fight and kill in unjust wars should not be excused for following orders or even for their ignorance. Yet, it is often hard to tell if one is fighting in an unjust war, or whether military orders are unjust. I will argue that, especially in light of new work by just war adherents, the moral risks of participating in war are so high that pacifism, at least in its contingent form, should be seen as a reasonable option. The new versions of the just war doctrine bring us much closer to pacifism than their adherents would admit. (shrink)

The destruction wrought by even just wars lends undeniable appeal to radical pacifism, according to which all wars are unjust. Yet radical pacifism is fundamentally flawed. In the past decade, a moderate and more defensible form of pacifism has emerged. According to what has been called ‘contingent pacifism’, it is very unlikely that it is morally permissible to wage any given war. This chapter develops the doctrine of contingent pacifism by distinguishing and developing (...) various versions of it, and by assessing the merits and drawbacks of each. According to ‘proportionality-based’ contingent pacifism, almost all wars with just causes are unjust ‘tout court’ because the in bello harms such wars impose on the innocent are too great relative to the relevant evils averted by achieving the war’s aims. After arguing against this view, the chapter introduces a novel, more defensible form of contingent pacifism, called ‘epistemic-based’ contingent pacifism, according to which the prevalence of mistaken judgements regarding the justness of wars, combined with the devastating harmfulness of unjust wars, requires imposing prohibitions against waging war, where the strength of the prohibition varies according to whether the government has a history of mistakes or deception regarding the justness of wars. (shrink)

Anti-war pacifism rejects modern war as a means of attaining peace. This paper outlines two varieties of theoretical anti-war pacifism: conditional pacifism (war is conditionally unjustifiable due to the harm it causes to innocent persons) and contingent pacifism (war is justified if certain criteria are met but contingent facts about modern war mean that few, if any, actual wars meet these criteria). It elucidates the main points of contention at which these positions intersect with (...) other war institution preserving theories, and each other, and defends them as plausible positions that can add significant value to the critical studies and international relations conversations on war. (shrink)

Pacifism involves a number of related moral positions, endorsed for different reasons, often evoking powerful emotional responses. To understand pacifism, we need to identify what pacifism is, or what pacifisms there are, by (1) looking at pacifism's core meaning, etymology, uses, near neighbors, and relationship to just war theory; (2) distinguishing absolute versus contingent pacifism; (3) categorizing pacifism's chief motivators such as nonviolence, nonkilling, moral autonomy, libertarianism, nuclear war, and religious teachings; (4) highlighting (...) pacifism's role in international relations in the United Nations, pacifist nations, the human rights debate, and legal standing as conscientious objectors; and (5) articulating and responding to pacifism's perennial criticisms. (shrink)

There is a nonabsolute or “contingent” form of pacifism that claims that war in contemporary conditions inevitably involves the killing of innocent people on a scale that is too great to be justified. Some contingent pacifists argue that war always involves a risk that virtually everyone that one might kill is innocent – either because one can never be sure that one’s cause is just or because even most of those who fight in wars that lack a (...) just cause are nevertheless not culpable and are therefore innocent in the relevant sense. Others argue that there is no just cause for war that is sufficiently important to justify the large-scale killing of innocent civilians that is unavoidable in war. I seek to refute contingent pacifism by arguing that its theoretical presuppositions are untenable. (shrink)

This article seeks to expose some of the implications of certain versions of pacifism for matters of criminal punishment, arguing that the plausibility of these versions of pacifism depend on the extent to which their implicit denials of certain central punishment-related concepts are themselves reasonable.

Anti-war pacifism eschews modern war as a means of attaining peace. It holds war to be not only evil and supremely harmful, but also, on balance, morally wrong. But what about force short of war? The aim of this paper is to analyse targeted killing, a specific form of force short of war, from an anti-war pacifist perspective, or, more specifically, from two related but distinct pacifist perspectives: conditional and contingent. Conditional pacifism deems war to be unjustified (...) if the condition that innocent persons are killed in war is satisfied. Since this condition is always fulfilled, conditional pacifism implies the impermissibility of modern war. Contingent pacifism concedes that war would be morally acceptable if its harms were sufficiently outweighed by its benefits, but maintains that no (or very few) wars meet this criterion. The empirical reality of war is such that it cannot be justified, because it harms too many innocents in proportion to the harm it prevents. Pacifists’ treatment of targeted killing short of war should thus concentrate on the harm it does to innocents. Conditional pacifists should focus on whether targeted killing kills innocents, while contingent pacifists should focus on whether the harm it does to innocents is disproportionate to its benefits. (shrink)

According to “epistemic-based contingent pacifism” a) there are virtually no wars which we know to be just, and b) it is morally impermissible to wage a war unless we know that the war is just. Thus it follows that there is no war which we are morally permitted to wage. The first claim (a) seems to follow from widespread disagreement among just war theorists over which wars, historically, have been just. I will argue, however, that a source of (...) our inability to confidently distinguish just from unjust wars lies in how we evaluate “morally heterogeneous” wars—i.e., wars with just and unjust aims. Specifically, the practice of reaching a univocal evaluation of a morally heterogeneous war as a whole by aggregating the evaluations of that war’s just and unjust aims is wrongheaded, because it undermines the action-guiding character of jus ad bellum. We ought instead to adopt what I call the “disaggregate approach” to jus ad bellum, according to which we evaluate the various aims of a war individually, without aggregating them into an evaluation of the war as a whole. Adopting this approach will eliminate a source of our disagreement over which wars have been just, and will ipso fact eliminate a basis for epistemic-based contingent pacifism. (shrink)

Jeff McMahan famously defends a moral inequality of combatants, where liability to be attacked and potentially killed in war, should be grounded in the individual combatant’s moral responsibility for posing an unjust threat. In a response, Seth Lazar shows that McMahan’s criterion for liability leads to an unacceptable dilemma between “contingent pacifism” and “total war”, i.e. between war being practically infeasible, or implausibly many civilians being legitimate targets. The problem is that McMahan grounds liability mainly in the individual’s (...) causal responsibility for posing an unjust threat, but where a large proportion of combatants and civilians are approximately equally causally responsible. Recently, Saba Bazargan has come to the aid of McMahan by injecting an alternative supplementary criterion for liability, namely the individual’s complicity in a group act. This criterion is supposed to uphold the noted moral inequality, while avoiding the responsibility dilemma, by grounding moral incrimination in the individual’s participatory intention, instead of her causal contribution. I argue that the complicity account fails to resolve the dilemma. It fails because complicity grounded in a causally inert participatory intention is insufficient for liability. Further, I show why this reveals a deeper problem with the complicity account itself, namely that though it purports to ground incrimination non-causally, it fails to do so to any serious extent. (shrink)

There is extensive discussion in current Just War literature about the normative principles which should govern the initiation of war (jus ad bellum) and also the conduct of war (jus in bello), but this is the first book to treat the important and difficult issue of justice after the end of war. Larry May examines the normative principles which should govern post-war practices such as reparations, restitution, reconciliation, retribution, rebuilding, proportionality and the Responsibility to Protect. He discusses the emerging international (...) law literature on transitional justice and the problem of moving from a position of war and possible mass atrocity to a position of peace and reconciliation. He questions the Just War tradition, arguing that contingent pacifism is most in keeping with normative principles after war ends. His discussion is richly illustrated with contemporary examples and will be of interest to students of political and legal philosophy, law and military studies. (shrink)

Killing in War presents the Moral Equality of Combatants with serious, and in my view insurmountable problems. Absent some novel defense, this thesis is now very difficult to sustain. But this success is counterbalanced by the strikingly revisionist implications of McMahan’s account of the underlying morality of killing in war, which forces us into one of two unattractive positions, contingent pacifism, or near-total war. In this article, I have argued that his efforts to mitigate these controversial implications fail. (...) The reader is left stranded: to reach plausible conclusions, Walzer deployed an implausible conception of our rights to life; McMahan’s more rigorous account of those rights generates untenable conclusions. Absent new developments, it seems that the prospects for grounding the ethics of war in individual rights are poor: any theory of our rights to life that is sufficiently indiscriminate to work in the chaos of war is not discriminating enough to be a plausible theory of our rights to life. Perhaps by rejecting the ideal of the rights-respecting war altogether we might develop an alternative theory of justified warfare, which marries theoretical soundness with conclusions that we can more confidently support. (shrink)

One criticism of revisionist just war thought is often called the “contingent pacifism” objection. According to this objection, revisionist just war theory fails because it requires combatants on the just side to evaluate the moral responsibility for wrongful harm of each combatant on the unjust side to determine liability to defensive harming in each case. Combatants on the just side are epistemically barred from making these determinations. Moreover, many combatants on the unjust side (e.g., cooks and administrative soldiers) (...) fail to meet the threshold of responsibility for wrongful harm to make them liable to lethal defensive harm. Therefore, ex hypothesi, combatants on the just side will inevitably target enemy combatants who are not liable to be killed. In this paper, I offer a novel response to the contingent pacifism objection. I argue that, even on the revisionist account, participation in a military engaged in an unjust war is sufficient for liability to lethal defensive harm. First, I show merely signaling a threat of unjust harm—even if one lacks the means to actualize the threat—is sufficient for liability to defensive harm. Second, I argue that almost all participants in military activity signal a threat. Finally, I conclude that, in general, combatants on the unjust side of a conflict signal threats of unjust harm and are therefore liable to lethal defensive harming. This novel account of signaling-as-threatening disarms the contingent pacifist objection. (shrink)

This article scrutinizes discourse surrounding the Russia-Ukraine war in Western nations, where, despite widespread support for Ukraine, a contingent advocates for peace by rejecting military aid. This “pacifist” stance gains traction through public demonstrations in European countries and political endorsement. However, by opposing military aid while advocating peace, these messages, while ostensibly altruistic, distort genuine efforts for establishing peace in Ukraine. The article argues that recent developments from the philosophy of language, combined with the realities of Russia’s invasion and (...) main war objectives, provide clarity on this phenomenon, making a case for considering such calls for peace as propagandistic, perverting the meaning of the word. (shrink)

Este ensayo es consecuencia de las reflexiones que desde hace años realizamos en el Instituto de Paz y Conflictos de la Universidad de Granada y que nos ha obligado a hacer una deconstrucción crítica de algunos aspectos del pensamiento pacifista. Bien es cierto que la supervivencia de la especie ha sido posible porque la respuesta a la conflictividad ha sido, mayoritariamente, la búsqueda de equilibrios dinámicos y de armonía. Pero, a pesar de todo, perviven muchas grietas, rupturas, dadas por la (...) propia contingencia y fragilidad humanas. Estamos ante unos entes humanos fragmentados, violentados, lo que hace más difícil la búsqueda de la armonía o la paz. Estas dificultades son razones de peso para trabajar en el camino de una «desfragmentación» ontológica que sea útil para liberar nuestras fuerzas emancipadoras y creativas. Construir la visión integrada y unitaria de la Ciencia de los Seres Humanos es una tarea conjunta que interesa sobremanera a la Investigación para la Paz.This essay is a consequence of the reflections we have been conducting for several years at the Instituto de Paz y Conflictos of the University of Granada. These reflections have obliged us to undertake a critical deconstruction of a few aspects of pacifist thought. Although the survival of the species has been possible because the response to conflicts has been, principally, the search for dynamic equilibrium and harmony; on the other hand there remain many fissures, ruptures brought about by the own human contingency and fragility. We find ourselves before a fragmented and distorted human being, which makes the search for harmony or peace even more difficult. These difficulties are convincing reasons for working towards an ontological “defragmentation” which is useful to liberate our emancipating and creative forces. To build the integrated and united view of Human Sciences is a collective task which is of great interest for Peace Research. (shrink)

In this essay, it is submitted that consent comes in degrees and the wrongfulness and harmfulness of conduct is contingent on the degree of voluntariness underwriting the particular consent decision. A fully free decision to consent changes the normative nature of the act: genuine gift-giving is not theft. Lovemaking is not rape. Partially free decisions to consent can change the nature of the act if it makes the act less harmful and thus less wrongful. Partial consent is not about (...) claiming that the conduct was partially justified, but rather about demonstrating the particular act was less harmful and thus deserving of a less serious crime label than is found in the label rape simpliciter. A second theme picked up in this essay is the issue of conditional consent. It is submitted that breaching a condition (conditions such as D is rich, D is a pacifist, D does not have HIV and so on) of consent to sexual intercourse will not change otherwise consensual nature of the sexual intercourse itself, but it may give rise to criminal liability for the collateral harm caused such as HIV infection. (shrink)

A popular principle about grounding, “Internality”, says that if A grounds B, then necessarily, if A and B obtain, then A grounds B. I argue that Internality is false. Its falsity reveals a distinctive, new kind of explanation, which I call “ennobling”. Its falsity also entails that every previously proposed theory of what grounds grounding facts is false. I construct a new theory of what grounds grounding: the ennobling theory.

In a recent paper (Bird 2001), Alexander Bird argues that the law that common salt dissolves in water is metaphysically necessary - and he does so without presupposing dispositionalism about properties. If his argument were sound, it would thus show that at least one law of nature is meta- physically necessary, and it would do so without illicitly presupposing a position (dispositionalism) that is already committed to a necessitarian view of laws. I shall argue that Bird's argument is unsuccesful.

How is the tension between conflict and deliberation resolved in shareholder engagement? We address this question by studying shareholder engagement as a deliberative process with three stages: establishing dialogue, solution development, and solution implementation. We theorize that two interactionist mechanisms, deliberative interaction and the voicing of disagreement, play different roles at different stages of the process. We test our hypotheses with a proprietary database of 169 environmental, social, and governance engagements with US public companies over 2007–12. We find that while (...) deliberative interaction does not help advance the engagement process, it positively moderates the effect of disagreement in the solution development stage. By contrast, in the solution implementation stage, deliberative interaction amplifies the negative effect of disagreement, thus hindering progress in the engagement. Our article contributes to shareholder engagement, deliberation theory, and interactionist organization theory by establishing that engagement effectiveness is an interactional achievement shaped by both deliberation and disagreement. (shrink)

A well-known objection to divine simplicity holds that the doctrine is incompatible with God’s contingent knowledge. I set out the objection and reject two problematic solutions. I then argue that the objection is best answered by adopting an “extrinsic model of divine knowing” according to which God’s contingent knowledge, which varies across worlds, does not involve any intrinsic variation in God. Solutions along these lines have been suggested by others. This paper advances the discussion by developing and offering (...) partial defenses of three such models. (shrink)

Stoffregen & Bardy's proposal that perceptual systems can use information defined across two or more sensory domains is valuable and urgent in its own right. However, their claim of exclusive validity for global-array information is superfluous and perpetuated for incorrect reasons. The seeming ambiguities of individual arrays emanate from failures to consider relevant ecological constraints and higher-order variables.

Only rarely have feminist theorists addressed the adequacy of just -war theory, a set of principles developed over hundreds of years to assess the justice of going to war and the morality of conduct in war. Recently, a few feminist scholars have found just -war theory inadequate, yet their own counterproposals are also deficient. I assess feminist contributions to just -war theorizing and suggest ways of strengthening, rather than abandoning, this moral approach to war.

Duties to future persons are central to numerous key ethical issues including contraception, abortion, genetic selection, treatment of the environment, and population control. Nevertheless, we still seem to be lacking Parfit's 'Theory X', a general theory of beneficence whose appropriateness extends to future generations. Starting from the Golden Rule, R. M. Hare purportedly derived counterintuitive duties to potential people and 'the potentiality principle'. However, I argue that Hare's derivation involves a hidden and unjustifiable extension from TGR, and show how the (...) most plausible form of TGR is compatible with multiple contradictory principles for the treatment of future persons. I appeal to our own preferences to argue that one extension of TGR follows the spirit of TGR, while the other is deeply implausible. Using the plausible extension, I derive a Contingent Interests Principle that offers much promise as Parfit's elusive Theory X. In contrast to Hare's interpretation of TGR, this application provides solid justification for rejecting the potentiality principle. (shrink)

Goldstein reveals the beliefs underlying political psychology, thereby siding with the position of radical constructivism. I argue that the epistemological implications presented in the article ….

ABSTRACT This paper proposes a novel answer to the Special Composition Question. In some respects it agrees with brutalism about composition; in others with universalism. The main novel feature of this answer is the insight I think it gives into what the debate over the Special Composition Question is about.

I present a novel argument against the non-contingency of identity. I first argue that the necessity of distinctness is intimately connected with numerous paradoxes of recombination. In particular, I argue that those who reject the necessity of distinctness have natural solutions to various paradoxes of recombination which have plagued the metaphysics of modality. Moreover, I argue that adding the necessity of distinctness to modest, paradox-free assumptions is sufficient to reinstate the paradoxes. Given that identity is non-contingent only if distinctness (...) is necessary, I suggest this constitutes new evidence against the non-contingency of identity. (shrink)

It is pointed out that a slight variation on the Wheeler Delayed Choice Experiment presents the same challenge to orthodox quantum mechanics as Maudlin-type contingent absorber experiments present to the Transactional Interpretation. Therefore, the latter cannot be used as a basis for refutation of TI.

This statement requires us to conceive his philosophy as a system of thought based on perception. Accordingly genealogical perception would have the advantage of giving us an insight into the contingent element, whereas we have been too easily satisfied by the belief in a political or anthropological necessity. Nonetheless, we should not seek to shirk an axiological constraint : how can the consideration of contingency legitimately grant a necessary value to that norm which would constitute the “intolerable”?

Mental body-representations are highly plastic and can be modified after brief exposure to unexpected sensory feedback. While the role of vision, touch and proprioception in shaping body-representations has been highlighted by many studies, the auditory influences on mental body-representations remain poorly understood. Changes in body-representations by the manipulation of natural sounds produced when one's body impacts on surfaces have recently been evidenced. But will these changes also occur with non-naturalistic sounds, which provide no information about the impact produced by or (...) on the body? Drawing on the well-documented capacity of dynamic changes in pitch to elicit impressions of motion along the vertical plane and of changes in object size, we asked participants to pull on their right index fingertip with their left hand while they were presented with brief sounds of rising, falling or constant pitches, and in the absence of visual information of their hands. Results show an "auditory Pinocchio" effect, with participants feeling and estimating their finger to be longer after the rising pitch condition. These results provide the first evidence that sounds that are not indicative of veridical movement, such as non-naturalistic sounds, can induce a Pinocchio-like change in body-representation when arbitrarily paired with a bodily action. (shrink)