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209Twenty seconds to comply: Autonomous weapon systems and the recognition of surrenderInternational Law Studies 91 699-728. 2015.Would it be ethical to deploy autonomous weapon systems (AWS) if they were unable to reliably recognize when enemy forces had surrendered? I suggest that an inability to reliably recognize surrender would not prohibit the ethical deployment of AWS where there was a limited window of opportunity for targets to surrender between the launch of the AWS and its impact. However, the operations of AWS with a high degree of autonomy and/or long periods of time between release and impact are likely to re…Read more
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145Building a better warbot: Ethical issues in the design of unmanned systems for military applicationsScience and Engineering Ethics 15 (2): 169-187. 2009.Unmanned systems in military applications will often play a role in determining the success or failure of combat missions and thus in determining who lives and dies in times of war. Designers of UMS must therefore consider ethical, as well as operational, requirements and limits when developing UMS. I group the ethical issues involved in UMS design under two broad headings, Building Safe Systems and Designing for the Law of Armed Conflict, and identify and discuss a number of issues under each o…Read more
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16Therapeutic Cloning and Reproductive LibertyJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 34 (2): 102-118. 2009.Concern for “reproductive liberty” suggests that decisions about embryos should normally be made by the persons who would be the genetic parents of the child that would be brought into existence if the embryo were brought to term. Therapeutic cloning would involve creating and destroying an embryo, which, if brought to term, would be the offspring of the genetic parents of the person undergoing therapy. I argue that central arguments in debates about parenthood and genetics therefore suggest tha…Read more
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258Predators or Ploughshares? Arms Control of Robotic WeaponsIEEE Technology and Society 28 (1): 25-29. 2009.This paper makes the case for arms control regimes to govern the development and deployment of autonomous weapon systems and long range uninhabited aerial vehicles.
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45Orphaned at conception: The uncanny offspring of embryosBioethics 26 (4): 173-181. 2012.A number of advances in assisted reproduction have been greeted by the accusation that they would produce children ‘without parents’. In this paper I will argue that while to date these accusations have been false, there is a limited but important sense in which they would be true of children born of a reproductive technology that is now on the horizon. If our genetic parents are those individuals from whom we have inherited 50% of our genes, then, unlike in any other reproductive scenario, chil…Read more
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34“Hands up Who Wants to Die?”: Primoratz on Responsibility and Civilian Immunity in WartimeEthical Theory and Moral Practice 8 (3): 299-319. 2005.The question of the morality of war is something of an embarrassment to liberal political thinkers. A philosophical tradition which aspires to found its preferred institutions in respect for individual autonomy, contract, and voluntary association, is naturally confronted by a phenomenon that is almost exclusively explained and justified in the language of States, force and territory. But the apparent difficulties involved in providing a convincing account of nature and ethics of war in terms of…Read more
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551Egalitarianism and Moral BioenhancementAmerican Journal of Bioethics 14 (4): 20-28. 2014.A number of philosophers working in applied ethics and bioethics are now earnestly debating the ethics of what they term “moral bioenhancement.” I argue that the society-wide program of biological manipulations required to achieve the purported goals of moral bioenhancement would necessarily implicate the state in a controversial moral perfectionism. Moreover, the prospect of being able to reliably identify some people as, by biological constitution, significantly and consistently more moral tha…Read more
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31What we can - and cannot - learn about the ethics of enhancement by thinking about sportIn Akira Akabayashi (ed.), The Future of Bioethics: International Dialogues, Oxford University Press. pp. 218-223. 2014.In “The misguided quest for the ethics of enhancement”, Tom Murray makes two related claims. First, he argues that “understanding the ethics of enhancement is deeply dependent on context". Second, he suggests that, as a consequence, we should not look for “a single all-purpose ethics for every form of human enhancement”. In this brief response, I argue that while Murray is correct in the first of these claims, there is an important sense in which he is wrong in the second. His focus on the ethic…Read more
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21Borders, States, Freedom and JusticeArena Magazine 66 25-31. 2003.What are borders? For many in the movement opposing mandatory detention they are simply expressions of the state. Yes this position cannot give us a coherent and critical politics. Rethinking borders is essential to the project of a genuinely democratic society.
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692The March of the robot dogsEthics and Information Technology 4 (4): 305-318. 2002.Following the success of Sony Corporation’s “AIBO”, robot cats and dogs are multiplying rapidly. “Robot pets” employing sophisticated artificial intelligence and animatronic technologies are now being marketed as toys and companions by a number of large consumer electronics corporations. It is often suggested in popular writing about these devices that they could play a worthwhile role in serving the needs of an increasingly aging and socially isolated population. Robot companions, shaped li…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |