Douglas Lackey

This paper argues that there is a conflict between divine omniscience and the human right to privacy. The right to privacy derives from the right to moral autonomy, which human persons possess even against a divine being. It follows that if God exists and persists in knowing all things, his knowledge is a non-justifiable violation of a human right. On the other hand, if God exists and restricts his knowing in deference to human privacy, it follows that he cannot fulfill the traditional function of being the perfect and final judge of all things.

Nuclear War, edited by Fox and Groarke, is one of five recent anthologies containing new essays by philosophers on the subject of nuclear war. The Blake and Pole volumes, containing essays mainly by British philosophers, are distinguished by unrelenting and comprehensive opposition to British and American policy, and by the fame of the contributors, which include Anthony Kenny, Michael Dummett, and Bernard Williams. The Chicago volume contains a number of excellent papers by philosophers and the added bonus of nine papers by established specialists in national security issues; it attempts, with partial success, to cover the full range of strategic nuclear options. The Cohen and Lee and the Fox and Groarke volumes consist largely of papers by strategic outsiders far from the centres of political power; the debate in these volumes is not between the principal versions of nuclear deterrence but between nuclear deterrence in any form and some scheme that transcends the present arrangement of mutually deterring superpowers. Of these last two books, Cohen and Lee contains relatively longer and more detailed essays.

I. Beyond Utilitarianism In the summer of 1982, I published an article called “Missiles and Morals,” in which I argued on utilitarian grounds that nuclear deterrence in its present form is not morally justifiable. The argument of “Missiles and Morals” compared the most likely sort of nuclear war to develop under nuclear deterrence with the most likely sort of nuclear war to develop under American unilateral nuclear disaramament. For a variety of reasons, I claimed diat the number of casualties in a two-sided nuclear war developing under DET would be at least fifteen times greater than the number of casualties in a one-sided nuclear attack developing under UND. If one assumes that human lives lost or saved is the principal criterion by which nuclear weapons policies should be measured, it follows that DET is morally superior to UND on utilitarian grounds only if the chance of a two-sided nuclear war under DET is more than fifteen times less dian the chance of a one-sided nuclear attack under UND. Since I did not believe that the chance of nuclear war under deterrence is fifteen times less than the chance of nuclear war under unilateral nuclear disarmament, I inferred diat utilitaranism failed to justify DET. Indeed, on utilitarian grounds, DET stood condemned.