•  1
    Make Them Rare or Make Them Care: Artificial Intelligence and Moral Cost-Sharing
    In Daniel Schoeni, Tobias Vestner & Kevin Govern (eds.), Ethical Dilemmas in the Global Defense Industry, Oxford University Press. 2023.
    The use of autonomous weaponry in warfare has increased substantially over the last twenty years and shows no sign of slowing. Our chapter raises a novel objection to the implementation of autonomous weapons, namely, that they eliminate moral cost-sharing. To grasp the basics of our argument, consider the case of uninhabited aerial vehicles that act autonomously (i.e., LAWS). Imagine that a LAWS terminates a military target and that five civilians die as a side effect of the LAWS bombing. Becaus…Read more
  •  32
    This new Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of contemporary extensions and alternatives to the just war tradition in the field of the ethics of war. The modern history of just war has typically assumed the primacy of four particular elements: jus ad bellum, jus in bello, the state actor, and the solider. This book will put these four elements under close scrutiny, and will explore how they fare given the following challenges: • What role do the traditional elements of jus ad bellum and jus…Read more
  •  21
    This new Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of contemporary extensions and alternatives to the just war tradition in the field of the ethics of war.
  •  19
    Can We Justify Military Enhancements? Some Yes, Most No
    with Blake Hereth
    Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 31 (4): 557-569. 2022.
    The United States Department of Defense has, for at least 20 years, held the stated intention to enhance active military personnel (“warfighters”). This intention has become more acute in the face of dropping recruitment, an aging fighting force, and emerging strategic challenges. However, developing and testing enhancements is clouded by the ethically contested status of enhancements, the long history of abuse by military medical researchers, and new legislation in the guise of “health security…Read more
  •  452
    Reconciling Regulation with Scientific Autonomy in Dual-Use Research
    with Michael J. Selgelid and Robert Mark Simpson
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 47 (1): 72-94. 2022.
    In debates over the regulation of communication related to dual-use research, the risks that such communication creates must be weighed against against the value of scientific autonomy. The censorship of such communication seems justifiable in certain cases, given the potentially catastrophic applications of some dual-use research. This conclusion however, gives rise to another kind of danger: that regulators will use overly simplistic cost-benefit analysis to rationalize excessive regulation of…Read more
  •  98
    Human Flourishing, Human Dignity, and Human Rights
    Law and Philosophy 32 (5): 539-564. 2013.
    Rather than treating them as discrete and incommensurable ideas, we sketch some connections between human flourishing and human dignity, and link them to human rights. We contend that the metaphor of flourishing provides an illuminating aspirational framework for thinking about human development and obligations, and that the idea of human dignity is a critical element within that discussion. We conclude with some suggestions as to how these conceptions of human dignity and human flourishing migh…Read more
  •  18
    The social value of candidate HIV cures: actualism versus possibilism
    with Regina Brown
    Journal of Medical Ethics 43 (2): 118-123. 2017.
  •  14
    Gain-of-function research and model organisms in biology
    Journal of Medical Ethics 50 (3): 201-206. 2024.
    So-called ‘gain-of-function’ (GOF) research is virological research that results in a virus substantially more virulent or transmissible than its wild antecedent. GOF research has been subject to ethical analysis in the past, but the methods of GOF research have to date been underexamined by philosophers in these analyses. Here, we examine the typical animal used in influenza GOF experiments, the ferret, and show how despite its longstanding use, it does not easily satisfy the desirable criteria…Read more
  •  5
    This new Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of contemporary extensions and alternatives to the just war tradition in the field of the ethics of war. The modern history of just war has typically assumed the primacy of four particular elements: jus ad bellum, jus in bello, the state actor, and the solider. This book will put these four elements under close scrutiny, and will explore how they fare given the following challenges: • What role do the traditional elements of jus ad bellum and jus…Read more
  •  11
    New advances in neuroscience promise innovations in national security, especially in the areas of law enforcement, intelligence collection, and armed conflict. But ethical questions emerge about how we can, and should, use these innovations. This book draws on the open literature to map the development of neuroscience, particularly through funding by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, in certain areas like behavior prediction, behavior modification, and neuroenhancement, and its use …Read more
  •  153
    Covid-19, equity, and inclusiveness
    with Zackary Berger, Alexandra Phelan, and R. D. Silverman
    British Medical Journal. 2021.
  •  19
    Kinship Revisited
    with Stephen Levinson and Kim Sterelny
    Biological Theory 16 (3): 123-126. 2021.
  •  9
    Kin Against Kin: Internal Co-selection and the Coherence of Kinship Typologies
    with Sam Passmore, Wolfgang Barth, Kyla Quinn, Simon J. Greenhill, and Fiona M. Jordan
    Biological Theory 16 (3): 176-193. 2021.
    Across the world people in different societies structure their family relationships in many different ways. These relationships become encoded in their languages as kinship terminology, a word set that maps variably onto a vast genealogical grid of kinship categories, each of which could in principle vary independently. But the observed diversity of kinship terminology is considerably smaller than the enormous theoretical design space. For the past century anthropologists have captured this vari…Read more
  •  380
    Moving Through Capacity Space: Mapping Disability and Enhancement
    with Joel Michael Reynolds and Kaylee R. Johnson
    Journal of Medical Ethics 47 (11): 748-755. 2021.
    In this paper, we highlight some problems for accounts of disability and enhancement that have not been sufficiently addressed in the literature. The reason, we contend, is that contemporary debates that seek to define, characterise or explain the normative valence of disability and enhancement do not pay sufficient attention to a wide range of cases, and the transition between one state and another. In section one, we provide seven cases that might count as disability or enhancement. We explain…Read more
  •  27
    The Ethics of Social Distancing
    The Philosophers' Magazine 89 96-103. 2020.
  •  12
    Children of Capital: Eugenics in the World of Private Biotechnology
    Ethics in Biology, Engineering and Medicine 6 (3-4): 285-297. 2015.
  •  29
    Dual-use decision making: relational and positional issues
    Monash Bioethics Review 32 (3-4): 268-283. 2014.
    Debates about dual-use research often turn on the potential for scientific research to be used to benefit or harm humanity. This dual-use potential is conventionally understood as the product of the magnitude of the harms and benefits of dual-use research, multiplied by their likelihood. This account, however, neglects important social aspects of the use of science and technology. In this paper, I supplement existing conceptions of dual-use potential to account for the social context of dual-use…Read more
  •  47
    Did language evolve in multilingual settings?
    Biology and Philosophy 32 (6): 905-933. 2017.
    Accounts of language evolution have largely suffered from a monolingual bias, assuming that language evolved in a single isolated community sharing most speech conventions. Rather, evidence from the small-scale societies who form the best simulacra available for ancestral human communities suggests that the combination of small societal scale and out-marriage pushed ancestral human communities to make use of multiple linguistic systems. Evolutionary innovations would have occurred in a number of…Read more
  •  1
    The Irish Annals: Their genesis, evolution and history (review)
    The Medieval Review 4. 2009.
  •  20
    Reciprocal constructions in Mah Meri
    with Gaby Alice
    In Nicholas Evans (ed.), Reciprocals and Semantic Typology, John Benjamins Pub. Company. pp. 149--162. 2011.
  •  10
    Mundari reciprocals
    with Toshiki Osada
    In Reciprocals and Semantic Typology, John Benjamins Pub. Company. pp. 98--115. 2011.
  •  48
    Winning Well by Fighting Well
    with Adam Henschke
    International Journal of Applied Philosophy 26 (2): 149-163. 2012.
    Modern warfare has shifted from the traditional conception of states involved in self-defensive wars to include peacekeeping missions, humanitarian intervention, regional stabilisation in the face of natural disasters, and more. A central criterion from just war traditions is the probability of success—given the magnitude of harms that large military operations are expected to cause; there must be some likelihood that the military operation will be successful. However, how likely a given militar…Read more
  •  40
    In this article, we raise ethical concerns about the potential misuse of open-source biology : biological research and development that progresses through an organisational model of radical openness, deskilling, and innovation. We compare this organisational structure to that of the open-source software model, and detail salient ethical implications of this model. We demonstrate that OSB, in virtue of its commitment to openness, may be resistant to governance attempts
  •  700
    Great expectations—ethics, avian flu and the value of progress
    Journal of Medical Ethics 39 (4): 209-213. 2013.
    A recent controversy over the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity's recommendation to censor two publications on genetically modified H5N1 avian influenza has generated concern over the threat to scientific freedom such censorship presents. In this paper, I argue that in the case of these studies, appeals to scientific freedom are not sufficient to motivate a rejection of censorship. I then use this conclusion to draw broader concerns about the ethics of dual-use research
  •  50
    In this paper, I will discuss the responsibilities that scientists have for ensuring their work is interpreted correctly. I will argue that there are three good reasons for scientists to work to ensure the appropriate communication of their findings. First, I will argue that scientists have a general obligation to ensure scientific research is communicated properly based on the vulnerability of others to the misrepresentation of their work. Second, I will argue that scientists have a special obl…Read more