Bradley Strawser

In July 2020, more than 1000 companies that advertise on social media platforms withdrew their business, citing failures of the platforms (especially Facebook) to address the proliferation of harmful content. The #StopHateForProfit movement invites reflection on an understudied topic: the ethics of boycotting by corporations. Under what conditions is corporate boycotting permissible, required, supererogatory, or forbidden? Although value-driven consumerism has generated significant recent discussion in applied ethics, that discussion has focused almost exclusively on the consumption choices of individuals. As this article underscores, value-driven consumerism by business corporations complicates these issues and invites further examination. We propose principles for the ethics of boycotting by corporations, indicate how these principles relate to different CSR paradigms, and show how these insights can help assess recent instances of corporate boycotting.

We propose that the prevalent moral aversion to AWS is supported by a pair of compelling objections. First, we argue that even a sophisticated robot is not the kind of thing that is capable of replicating human moral judgment. This conclusion follows if human moral judgment is not codifiable, i.e., it cannot be captured by a list of rules. Moral judgment requires either the ability to engage in wide reflective equilibrium, the ability to perceive certain facts as moral considerations, moral imagination, or the ability to have moral experiences with a particular phenomenological character. Robots cannot in principle possess these abilities, so robots cannot in principle replicate human moral judgment. If robots cannot in principle replicate human moral judgment then it is morally problematic to deploy AWS with that aim in mind. Second, we then argue that even if it is possible for a sufficiently sophisticated robot to make ‘moral decisions’ that are extensionally indistinguishable from (or better than) human moral decisions, these ‘decisions’ could not be made for the right reasons. This means that the ‘moral decisions’ made by AWS are bound to be morally deficient in at least one respect even if they are extensionally indistinguishable from human ones. Our objections to AWS support the prevalent aversion to the employment of AWS in war. They also enjoy several significant advantages over the most common objections to AWS in the literature.

This chapter concludes the book and summarizes and reviews some of the primary take-aways in the book’s attempt to articulate the various moral and political issues and concepts surrounding the moral exploitation of soldiers. In particular, we emphasize that the core issue at the heart of the present situation for how American society treats its soldiers revolves around an unfair, or uneven at any rate, distribution of the various harms and burdens of warfare—including and especially the moral burdens. The chapter challenges civilians to reconsider their relationship towards the soldiers who wage war on their behalf, and asks all to reconsider how we should prioritize these moral relationships.

Given the moral exploitation of soldiers, the last chapter explores several institutional prescriptions and remedies. In particular, the chapter looks at (1) reforms to recruitment and military compensation, (2) a return to a citizen-soldier model of military service, and (3) granting military veterans more official say in warfighting and foreign policy decision-making. After having entertained these institutional prescriptions, the chapter argues for a return to a citizen-soldier or skin in the game model of military service. We do not claim that these possible prescriptions and remedies would wholly mitigate the harms and disfunction apparent in the present civil-military relationship in the United States. Indeed, some form of moral exploitation may be endemic to large nation-states fielding militaries, even if only for the strict purpose of national defence. However, these prescriptions could potentially go a long way towards reducing the harms of the moral exploitation of soldiers.

This chapter investigates classical philosophical accounts of the state, as well as notions of citizenship and duty to country. The chapter argues that citizens have a prima facie duty to country for reasons of contractualism and inheritance. The chapter then goes on to consider how the concept of moral exploitation stands up against instances where soldiers seem to take on supererogatory moral risk for the sake of the body politic at large. If one holds that a military institution is both necessary and serving on behalf of a minimally just state, then the moral risks of military service seem similarly necessary for some subset of the body to take on. The implications of both the basic duties citizens have towards their state and the need for moral risks to be undertaken by some subset of that state are significant.

In this chapter we explore several related political and moral concerns connected to the moral exploitation of soldiers as well as the strained American civil-military divide. In particular, we explore issues of veteran moral injury, suicide, and PTSD, future military technologies and future warfare, and the so-called global war on terror. All of these related moral concerns and issues, and more, often either contribute in some way to the central thesis of this book – the moral exploitation of the American soldier – or are partial consequences of that exploitation itself, even if they are not immediately caused by it. These issues constitute a network of inter-related themes which collectively point to the many downstream negative effects of our present civil-military relationship in the United States.

This chapter outlines key theoretical accounts of the phenomenon of exploitation. Specifically, the chapter looks at theoretical conceptions of vulnerability, excessive benefit, wrongful versus mutually beneficial exploitation, and transactional versus structural accounts of exploitation. After having outlined these theoretical frameworks, the chapter introduces the novel concept of “moral exploitation,” the notion that a person or group can be wrongfully exploited by being pressured to shoulder an excessive amount of moral responsibility, moral risk, and/or moral residue (i.e., dirty hands). This particular species of exploitation lays the conceptual groundwork for the remainder of our work in this book and explicates what we take to be occurring among a significant subportion of the US military population.

Building on Chapter 1 and the concept of moral exploitation, this chapter outlines the ways in which many American military recruits are vulnerable to “normal” exploitation as well as moral exploitation. In particular, the chapter examines key demographic and statistical numbers related to age, race, sex, socioeconomic class, geographic region, and familial lineage. The chapter then goes on to investigate several military anecdotes and explain several ways in which the moral burdens of warfighting have been disproportionately outsourced onto American servicemembers, particularly Special Forces soldiers. This chapter effectively ties the conceptual work from chapter 1 into its direct application for military personnel. If this application of moral exploitation to military members is correct, then the implications of the relationship between the military and the broader American society will be significant, as is explored in Chapter 3.

In this introductory chapter, we outline the main themes of the book and motivate the overall research project on the moral exploitation of American soldiers. We first contextualize the present moment modern soldiers find themselves in relationship to the broader society and highlight the feelings of discomfort many soldiers have with displays of gratitude towards them by civilians and various institutions, businesses, sporting events, and more. We then go onto to describe descriptions of this unease that we have heard from countless soldiers and contend that we believe this feeling of discontent and related phenomena can be at least partially explained through the concept of moral exploitation. We cose the chapter with an important caveat about what we call the “veteran paradox” wherein work such as ours runs the risk of either valorizing or victimizing veterans; we intend to do neither.

Are contemporary soldiers exploited by the state and society that they defend? More specifically, have America's professional service members disproportionately carried the moral weight of America's war-fighting decisions since the inception of an all-volunteer force? In this volume, Michael J. Robillard and Bradley J. Strawser, who have both served in the military, examine the question of whether and how American soldiers have been exploited in this way. Robillard and Strawser offer an original normative theory of 'moral exploitation'--the notion that persons or groups can be wrongfully exploited by being made to shoulder an excessive amount of moral weight. They make the case that this exploitation accurately describes the relationship between the United States and the members of its military, and offer a thorough and in-depth analysis of some of the exploitative and misleading elements of present-day military recruitment, the moral burdens soldiers often bear, and the stifling effect that a 'Thank You for Your Service' and 'I support the troops' culture has had on serious public engagement about America's ongoing wars. Robillard and Strawser offer a piercing critique of the pernicious divide between military members and the civilians who direct them. They conclude by arguing for several normative and prudential prescriptions to help close this ever-widening fissure between the U.S. and its military, and within the U.S. itself. In so doing, their work gives a much needed and urgent voice to America's soldiers, the other 1%.

This article presents a case study in how sellers of weaponizable technology can develop safeguards to mitigate risks of misuse by end users. In 2020, the authors were approached by a defense technology start-up whose core product offering was weaponizable drones. The start-up sought guidance in designing terms of sale and service that would ensure responsible usage of this technology. Combining elements from just war theory, international humanitarian law, and the theory of responsibility, we developed a novel, systematic framework for reducing risks of misuse on the basis of precise principles and objective metrics. Although designed for a specific use case, we believe aspects of this framework are portable to a wide range of scenarios. We share it to demonstrate proof of concept and stimulate further work on integrating ethical considerations into the business of weapons and dual-use technology.

Killing bin Laden: A Moral Analysis is a short treatise on the possible ethical justification for the U.S. mission to kill Osama bin Laden. After rejecting the standard justifications most commonly used in support of the killing, Strawser ultimately argues that the killing was ethically permissible as an act of defensive harm on behalf of innocents. The book contends bin Laden was morally responsible for a collection of unjust threats such that he was liable to be killed. Moreover, the many unique features of the bin Laden case -such as the use of pre-emptive harm and the collective agency of al-Qaeda - do not defeat that liability. The monograph also includes discussions of the apparent violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and the morally dubious celebrations of bin Laden's death, among other morally relevant issues.

Most people believe that killing someone, while generally morally wrong, can in some cases be a permissible act. Most people similarly believe that war, while awful, can be justified. This book addresses both subjects as equal parts in a larger meditation on the ethics of harm and moral responsibility—whether in war collectively or in individual cases of self-defense—and whatever it is that lies in between the two. The book sets out by examining the moral justification for individual defensive killing and then tests its application to collective war as a natural outgrowth of the former. In seeking sincere answers to these morally vexing questions, it offers a novel theory of liability attribution based upon evidence-relative norms: we should only be held morally responsible for what we could possibly know is wrong based on the evidence before us. In developing this theory of liability as it applies to war, Bounds of Defense also gives a robust apologia of what has been called as “revisionist” just war theory and charts a neo-liberal basis for just war theory grounded on the value of individual autonomy along the way. The entire book is an earnest attempt to take individual rights and responsibilities seriously in our thinking over killing and the horrors of war.

Realism about material objects faces a variety of epistemological objections. Recently, however, some realists have offered new accounts in response to these long-standing objections; many of which seem plausible. In this paper, I raise a new objection against realism vis-à-vis how we could empirically come to know mind-independent essential properties for objects. Traditionally, realists hold kind-membership and persistence as bound together for purposes of tracing out an object’s essential existence conditions. But I propose kind-membership and persistence for objects can conceptually come apart and function epistemologically distinctly from one another—in which case the usual reliance by realists on an assumption of persistence to determine kind-membership conditions is unjustified. Thus, present realist attempts to explain how empirical detection of mind-independent essential properties for objects could possibly occur inevitably results in circularity. The charge against the realist is to explain why we don’t have to first discover persistence conditions for an object before we can ascertain kind-membership conditions for an object. If no answer is forthcoming, then it seems the weight of the epistemological objection to realism is back in full force

A variety of ethical objections have been raised against the military employment of uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs, drones). Some of these objections are technological concerns over UAVs abilities’ to function on par with their inhabited counterparts. This paper sets such concerns aside and instead focuses on supposed objections to the use of UAVs in principle. I examine several such objections currently on offer and show them all to be wanting. Indeed, I argue that we have a duty to protect an agent engaged in a justified act from harm to the greatest extent possible, so long as that protection does not interfere with the agent's ability to act justly. UAVs afford precisely such protection. Therefore, we are obligated to employ UAV weapon systems if it can be shown that their use does not significantly reduce a warfighter's operational capability. Of course, if a given military action is unjustified to begin with, then carrying out that act via UAVs is wrong, just as it would be with any weapon. But the point of this paper is to show that there is nothing wrong in principle with using a UAV and that, other things being equal, using such technology is, in fact, obligatory.

In Plato’s Sophist (245e–247e) an argument against metaphysical materialism in the “battle of gods and giants” is presented which is oft the cause of consternation, primarily because it appears the characters are unfair to the materialist position. Attempts to explain it usually resort to restructuring the argument while others rearrange the Sophist entirely to rebuild the argument in a more satisfying form. I propose a different account of the argument that does not rely on a disservice to the materialist nor restructuring Plato’s argument. I contend, instead, that the argument is enthymematic in nature, allowing the definitions employed to flow out of the reasoning as originally presented. Moreover, it suggests that Plato’s idealism was so deeply ingrained that modern defenses of materialism were not even live options.