Andrew Rebera

This thesis explores the development of Bertrand Russell‘s theory of definite descriptions. It aims at demonstrating the connection between Russell‘s views on the subject of denoting and his attempt, in the period 1903-05, to develop a solution to 'the Contradiction'. The thesis argues that the discovery of the theory of descriptions, and the way in which it works, are best understood against the backdrop of Russell‘s work on the paradoxes. A new understanding of Russell‘s seminal paper 'On Denoting' is presented, including a novel interpretation of the notorious 'Gray‘s Elegy Argument', in which Russell argues against his earlier theory of denoting. That Russell‘s work on denoting is connected to his work on the paradoxes is reasonably well-known: the nature of the connection has not, however, been adequately brought out in the literature. This is addressed through demonstrating the relationship between Russell‘s work on denoting and his development of the 'substitutional theory' of classes and relations. This theory eliminates classes and propositional functions in favour of matrices and substitutions. The role of the theory of descriptions in the development of the substitutional theory is commonly supposed to be merely that the theory of descriptions facilitates the ontological elimination of classes. But this elimination was equally possible on Russell‘s earlier theory of denoting. In the thesis it is suggested that the theory of descriptions brings with it a new conception of analysis, and that it is through the introduction of this new form of analysis—rather than through the elimination of classes—that the theory of descriptions facilitates the substitutional approach.

This paper addresses the problem of ‘premature consent’. The term ‘premature consent’ denotes patient decisions that are: formulated prior to discussion with the appropriate healthcare professional ; based on information from unreliable sources ; and resolutely maintained despite the HCP having provided alternative reliable information. HCPs are not obliged to respect premature consent patients’ demands for unindicated treatments. But why? What is it that premature consent patients do or get wrong? Davis has argued that premature consent patients are incompetent and misinformed. We argue that this view is not sustainable. A more plausible position asserts that premature consent threatens the integrity of the medical profession. We argue that this gives rise to a negative patient duty which premature consent patients fail to honour. We argue for a further positive duty of good faith engagement in shared decision-making. This implies willingness to potentially revise or justify one’s evaluative bases. Fundamentally, the problem with premature consent patients is that certain of their evaluative bases are not open to revision. They therefore fail in their duty to participate faithfully in the shared decision-making process.

First responders to chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) events face decisions having significant human consequences. Some operational decisions are supported by standard operating procedures, yet these may not suffice for ethical decisions. Responders will be forced to weigh their options, factoring-in contextual peculiarities; they will require guidance on how they can approach novel (indeed unique) ethical problems: they need strategies for “on the spot” ethical decision making. The primary aim of this paper is to examine how first responders should approach on the spot ethical decision-making amid the stress and uncertainty of a CBRN event. Drawing on the long-term professional CBRN experience of one of the authors, this paper sets out a series of practical ethical dilemmas potentially arising in the context of a large-scale chemical incident. We propose a broadly consequentialist approach to on the spot ethical decision-making, but one which incorporates ethical values and rights as “side-constraints”.

Responsibility gaps occur when autonomous machines cause harms for which nobody can be justifiably held morally responsible. The debate around responsibility gaps has focused primarily on the question of responsibility, but other approaches focus on the victims of the associated harms. In this paper I consider how the victims of ‘AI-harm’—by which I mean harms implicated in responsibility gap cases and caused by AI-agents—can make sense of what has happened to them. The reactive attitudes have an important role here. I argue that regulating our reactive attitudes—withdrawing or sustaining them as our understanding of the actions, motives, status, and character of others develops—is an important part of the way in which we make sense of the harms we suffer. But, I argue, AI-agents can disrupt standard practices of regulating the reactive attitudes. This can lead victims of AI-harm to suffer a secondary hermeneutic harm (in addition to the primary AI-harm). This harm, which the responsibility gap and AI ethics literatures have neglected, can occur whether responsibility gaps are real or not.

The AI Ethics literature has identified many forms of harm caused, perpetuated or exacerbated by artificial intelligence (AI). One, however, has been overlooked. In this paper we argue that the increasing use of AI heightens the risk of ‘hermeneutic harm’, which occurs when people are unable to make sense of, or come to terms with, unexpected, unwelcome, or harmful events they experience. We develop several examples to support our argument that AI increases the risk of hermeneutic harm. Importantly, our argument makes no assumption of flawed design, biased training data, or misuse: hermeneutic harm can occur regardless. Explainable AI (XAI) could plausibly reduce the risk of hermeneutic harm in some cases. Thus, one respect in which this paper advances the field is that it shows the need to further broaden XAI’s understanding of the social function of explanation. Yet XAI cannot fully mitigate the risk of hermeneutic harm, which (as our choice of examples shows) would persist even if all ‘black-box’ problems of system opacity were to be solved. The paper thus highlights an important but underexplored risk posed by AI systems.

Military ethics education programmes must prepare soldiers and other military personnel to carry out their duties responsibly, honourably and, above all, ethically. But the practical, moral, and ethical reasoning employed by soldiers in their professional activities—what I call ‘military ethical thinking’—is deeply challenging. The successful interpretation and application of principles and other demands of military ethical thinking presupposes more fundamental commitments that serve as its grounding. But whether soldiers address questions of grounding in their training and education tends to depend upon their rank and role. The ethics education provided to senior officers, junior officers, NCOs, enlisted soldiers, new recruits, or conscripts varies greatly. Nonetheless, to facilitate coordination and cooperation across ranks and roles, there must be an overall unity and coherence to an ethics education programme. This paper asks which ethical approaches are best suited as grounds of military ethical thinking and education. According to a widely held view, the militaries of many democratic states are committed to ‘hybrid approaches’ to military ethical thinking and education. Here I argue that while hybrid decision-making procedures are valuable tools for soldiers facing ethically challenging situations, hybrid approaches cannot play the fundamental grounding role. Instead, I make a case for grounding military ethics education in a non-reductive virtue ethics which is based around the concept of ‘the good soldier’ and which is able to meet objections commonly put to virtue-based approaches.

In the notoriously obscure “Gray’s Elegy Argument” (GEA) of “On Denoting”, Russell argues against the theory of denoting concepts which he had set out in his earlier work The Principles of Mathematics (PoM). Nathan Salmon has argued that the GEA is intended to demonstrate the falsity of the thesis that definite descriptions are singular terms, a view which he attributes to the Russell of PoM. In a similar vein, Peter Hylton has argued that we can make sense of the GEA by attributing to the early Russell the principle of truth-value dependence. In this paper I argue that Russell was committed to neither of these positions. If Salmon and Hylton mischaracterise Russell’s position in PoM, then they also, I suggest, mischaracterise the GEA. I close, therefore, by suggesting how my account of the relation between the theory of denoting concepts and Russell’s position in “On Denoting” can guide our approach to the GEA

This chapter explores the most effective way to build ethics into CBRNE security. The most obvious approach may appear to encompass generating a list of activities involved in CBRNE security and to develop ethical guidance for each item. But this approach encounters two significant difficulties. First, every decision in CBRNE security has an ethical side and so the list is likely to be extremely long. Second, in this domain ethical issues are often insufficiently distinguished from societal and legal issues: this is liable to obscure important nuances. All this makes the main practical goal of CBRNE ethics – to build ethics into all aspects of CBRNE resilience – a challenging one. In this chapter I argue that the need to support responders in on-the-spot ethical decision-making, amid so much pressure and so many stressors, suggests that organisations should build ethics into CBRNE security by developing an ethos of key ethical values and principles. Staff should be trained in how to operationalise the ethos when making ethical decisions. Finally, I argue that the complexity of CBRNE security – its multi-agency, multi-disciplinary, inter-regional, and international character – requires us to focus on how organisations with divergent ethical positions, ethoses, and cultural backgrounds can cooperate effectively. Such cooperation should provide clarity and reassurance so that CBRNE professionals can make on-the-spot ethical decisions relatively free from doubt as to the legitimacy of their decisions in uncertain cultural contexts.

Biometric identification is thought to be less vulnerable to fraud and forgery than are traditional forms of identification. However biometric identification is not without vulnerabilities. In a ‘spoofing attack’ an artificial replica of an individual’s biometric trait is used to induce a system to falsely infer that individual’s presence. Techniques such as liveness-detection and multi-modality, as well as the development of new and emerging modalities, are intended to secure biometric identification systems against such threats. Unlike biometrics in general, the societal and ethical issues raised by spoofing and anti-spoofing techniques have not received much attention. This paper examines these issues

Concerns about artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential existential risks have garnered significant attention, with figures like Geoffrey Hinton and Dennis Hassabis advocating for robust safeguards against catastrophic outcomes. Prominent scholars, such as Nick Bostrom and Max Tegmark, have further advanced the discourse by exploring the long-term impacts of superintelligent AI. However, this existential risk narrative faces criticism, particularly in popular media, where scholars like Timnit Gebru, Melanie Mitchell, and Nick Clegg argue, among other things, that it distracts from pressing current issues. Despite extensive media coverage, skepticism toward the existential risk discourse has received limited rigorous treatment in academic literature. Addressing this imbalance, this paper reconstructs and evaluates three common arguments against the existential risk perspective: the Distraction Argument, the Argument from Human Frailty, and the Checkpoints for Intervention Argument. By systematically reconstructing and assessing these arguments, the paper aims to provide a foundation for more balanced academic discourse and further research on AI.

On a contentious but still widely held view of the ethics of war, belligerents’ mutual imposition of risk licenses the harm they attempt to inflict upon each other. When this reciprocity of risk imposition is lost—when combatants of one side are able to inflict harm without exposing themselves to it—the moral balance is disrupted. Technologies that radically reduce risk, such as UAVs (drones) or autonomous weapon systems, are particularly challenging in this respect. Scholars have suggested that these technologies of radical risk reduction are so morally disruptive that the ethics of war should fundamentally shift from virtue-based towards rule-based approaches. According to this view, since the traditional martial virtues (such as courage and mercy) are of little practical relevance to certain forms of modern warfare, drone pilots and other soldiers who dole out violence from great distances would be better served by clear moral rules. We argue, however, that this view is mistaken. That technologies of radical risk reduction bring some disruption to the martial virtues is undeniable, but the disruption is far less severe than has been suggested. We present an alternative account of the moral disruption caused by technologies of radical risk-reduction, highlighting how the changing nature of warfare is informing changes in what morality and virtue demand in war. Martial virtues continue to play a crucial role in ethical decision-making, as the moral performance of drone pilots in Ukraine has clearly demonstrated. We continue to have, therefore, strong reasons to educate and entrench a conception of the ‘virtuous warrior’ in today’s soldiers.