-
2348Just War Theory: Revisionists Vs TraditionalistsAnnual Review of Political Science 20 37-54. 2017.Contemporary just war theory is divided into two broad camps: revisionists and traditionalists. Traditionalists seek to provide moral foundations for something close to current international law, and in particular the laws of armed conflict. Although they propose improvements, they do so cautiously. Revisionists argue that international law is at best a pragmatic fiction—it lacks deeper moral foundations. In this article, I present the contemporary history of analytical just war theory, from the…Read more
-
2257Necessity in Self-Defense and WarPhilosophy and Public Affairs 40 (1): 3-44. 2012.It is generally agreed that using lethal or otherwise serious force in self-defense is justified only when three conditions are satisfied: first, there are some grounds for the defender to give priority to his own interests over those of the attacker (whether because the attacker has lost the protection of his right to life, for example, or because of the defender’s prerogative to prefer himself to others); second, the harm used is proportionate to the threat thereby averted; third, the harm is …Read more
-
2219Skepticism about Jus Post BellumIn Larry May & Andrew Forcehimes (eds.), Morality, Jus Post Bellum, and International Law, Cambridge University Press. pp. 204-222. 2012.The burgeoning literature on jus post bellum has repeatedly reaffirmed three positions that strike me as deeply implausible: that in the aftermath of wars, compensation should be a priority; that we should likewise prioritize punishing political leaders and war criminals even in the absence of legitimate multilateral institutions; and that when states justifiably launch armed humanitarian interventions, they become responsible for reconstructing the states into which they have intervened – the s…Read more
-
1828Evaluating the Revisionist Critique of Just War TheoryDaedalus 146 (1): 113-124. 2017.Modern analytical just war theory starts with Michael Walzer's defense of key tenets of the laws of war in his Just and Unjust Wars. Walzer advocates noncombatant immunity, proportionality, and combatant equality: combatants in war must target only combatants; unintentional harms that they inflict on noncombatants must be proportionate to the military objective secured; and combatants who abide by these principles fight permissibly, regardless of their aims. In recent years, the revisionist scho…Read more
-
1421What’s Wrong with Automated InfluenceCanadian Journal of Philosophy 52 (1): 125-148. 2022.Automated Influence is the use of Artificial Intelligence to collect, integrate, and analyse people’s data in order to deliver targeted interventions that shape their behaviour. We consider three central objections against Automated Influence, focusing on privacy, exploitation, and manipulation, showing in each case how a structural version of that objection has more purchase than its interactional counterpart. By rejecting the interactional focus of “AI Ethics” in favour of a more structural, p…Read more
-
1375The responsibility dilemma for killing in war: A review essayPhilosophy and Public Affairs 38 (2): 180-213. 2010.Killing in War presents the Moral Equality of Combatants with serious, and in my view insurmountable problems. Absent some novel defense, this thesis is now very difficult to sustain. But this success is counterbalanced by the strikingly revisionist implications of McMahan’s account of the underlying morality of killing in war, which forces us into one of two unattractive positions, contingent pacifism, or near-total war. In this article, I have argued that his efforts to mitigate these controve…Read more
-
1358Necessity and Non-Combatant ImmunityReview of International Studies (Firstview Online) 40 (1): 53-76. 2014.The principle of non-combatant immunity protects non-combatants against intentional attacks in war. It is the most widely endorsed and deeply held moral constraint on the conduct of war. And yet it is difficult to justify. Recent developments in just war theory have undermined the canonical argument in its favour – Michael Walzer's, in Just and Unjust Wars. Some now deny that non-combatant immunity has principled foundations, arguing instead that it is entirely explained by a different principle…Read more
-
1309Limited Aggregation and RiskPhilosophy and Public Affairs 46 (2): 117-159. 2018.Many of us believe (1) Saving a life is more important than averting any number of headaches. But what about risky cases? Surely: (2) In a single choice, if the risk of death is low enough, and the number of headaches at stake high enough, one should avert the headaches rather than avert the risk of death. And yet, if we will face enough iterations of cases like that in (2), in the long run some of those small risks of serious harms will surely eventuate. And yet: (3) Isn't it still permissible …Read more
-
1280National Defence, Self Defence, and the Problem of Political AggressionIn Cécile Fabre & Seth Lazar (eds.), The Morality of Defensive War, Oxford University Press. pp. 10-38. 2014.Wars are large-scale conflicts between organized groups of belligerents, which involve suffering, devastation, and brutality unlike almost anything else in human experience. Whatever one’s other beliefs about morality, all should agree that the horrors of war are all but unconscionable, and that warfare can be justified only if we have some compel- ling account of what is worth fighting for, which can justify contributing, as individu- als and as groups, to this calamitous endeavour. Although th…Read more
-
1209The Justification of Associative DutiesJournal of Moral Philosophy 13 (1): 28-55. 2016.People often think that their special relationships with family, friends, comrades and compatriots, can ground moral reasons. Among these reasons, they understand some to be duties – pro tanto requirements that have genuine weight when they conflict with other considerations. In this paper I ask: what is the underlying moral structure of associative duties? I first consider and reject the orthodox Teleological Welfarist account, which first observes that special relationships are fundamental for…Read more
-
980The Morality and Law of WarIn Andrei Marmor (ed.), Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Law, Routledge. pp. 364-379. 2012.The revisionist critique of conventional just war theory has undoubtedly scored some important victories. Walzer’s elegantly unified defense of combatant legal equality and noncombatant immunity has been seriously undermined. This critical success has not, however, been matched by positive arguments, which when applied to the messy reality of war would deprive states and soldiers of the permission to fight wars that are plausibly thought to be justified. The appeal to law that is sought to resol…Read more
-
964Moral Status and Agent-Centred OptionsUtilitas 31 (1): 83-105. 2019.If we were required to sacrifice our own interests whenever doing so was best overall, or prohibited from doing so unless it was optimal, then we would be mere sites for the realisation of value. Our interests, not ourselves, would wholly determine what we ought to do. We are not mere sites for the realisation of value — instead we, ourselves, matter unconditionally. So we have options to act suboptimally. These options have limits, grounded in the very same considerations. Though not merely suc…Read more
-
942Proxy Battles in Just War Theory: Jus in Bello, the Site of Justice, and Feasibility ConstraintsIn David Sobel, Peter Vallentyne & Steven Wall (eds.), Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, Volume 3, Oxford University Press. pp. 166-193. 2017.Interest in just war theory has boomed in recent years, as a revisionist school of thought has challenged the orthodoxy of international law, most famously defended by Michael Walzer [1977]. These revisionist critics have targeted the two central principles governing the conduct of war (jus in bello): combatant equality and noncombatant immunity. The first states that combatants face the same permissions and constraints whether their cause is just or unjust. The second protects noncombatants fro…Read more
-
925Debate: Do Associative Duties Really Not Matter? 1Journal of Political Philosophy 17 (1): 90-101. 2009.Associative duties are non-contractual duties owed in virtue of a valuable relationship. They hold between lovers, family members, friends, and perhaps compatriots. General duties, by contrast, are owed to people simply in virtue of their humanity: they are grounded in each person’s great and equal moral worth. In this paper, I ask what should be done when we can perform either an associative duty or a general duty, but not both.
-
908Associative Duties and the Ethics of Killing in WarJournal of Practical Ethics 1 (1): 3-48. 2013.this paper advances a novel account of part of what justifies killing in war, grounded in the duties we owe to our loved ones to protect them from the severe harms with which war threatens them. It discusses the foundations of associative duties, then identifies the sorts of relationships, and the specific duties that they ground, which can be relevant to the ethics of war. It explains how those associa- tive duties can justify killing in theory—in particular how they can justify overrid- ing th…Read more
-
808Justifying LockdownEthics and International Affairs 2020. 2020.Our aim in this brief essay is not to defend a particular policy or attitude toward lockdown measures in the United States or elsewhere, but to consider the scope and limits of different types of arguments that can be offered for them. Understanding the complexity of these issues will, we hope, go some way to helping us understand each other and our attitudes toward state responses to the pandemic.
-
773Moral Sunk CostsThe Philosophical Quarterly 68 (273). 2018.Suppose that you are trying to pursue a morally worthy goal, but cannot do so without incurring some moral costs. At the outset, you believed that achieving your goal was worth no more than a given moral cost. And suppose that, time having passed, you have wrought only harm and injustice, without advancing your cause. You can now reflect on whether to continue. Your goal is within reach. What's more, you believe you can achieve it by incurring—from this point forward—no more cost than it warrant…Read more
-
762A Liberal Defence of (Some) Duties to CompatriotsJournal of Applied Philosophy 27 (3): 246-257. 2010.This paper asks whether we can defend associative duties to our compatriots that are grounded solely in the relationship of liberal co-citizenship. The sort of duties that are especially salient to this relationship are duties of justice, duties to protect and improve the institutions that constitute that relationship, and a duty to favour the interests of compatriots over those of foreigners. Critics have argued that the liberal conception of citizenship is too insubstantial to sustain these du…Read more
-
711Risky Killing: How Risks Worsen Violations of Objective RightsJournal of Moral Philosophy 16 (1): 1-26. 2019.I argue that riskier killings of innocent people are, other things equal, objectively worse than less risky killings. I ground these views in considerations of disrespect and security. Killing someone more riskily shows greater disrespect for him by more grievously undervaluing his standing and interests, and more seriously undermines his security by exposing a disposition to harm him across all counterfactual scenarios in which the probability of killing an innocent person is that high or less.…Read more
-
654The nature and disvalue of injuryRes Publica 15 (3): 289-304. 2009.This paper explicates a conception of injury as right-violation, which allows us to distinguish between setbacks to interests that should, and should not, be the concern of theories of justice. It begins by introducing a hybrid theory of rights, grounded in (a) the mobilisation of our moral equality to (b) protect our most important interests, and shows how violations of rights are the concern of justice, while setbacks where one of the twin grounds of rights is defeated are not. It then looks m…Read more
-
632Accommodating OptionsPacific Philosophical Quarterly 100 (1): 233-255. 2018.Many of us think we have agent-centred options to act suboptimally. Some of these involve favouring our own interests. Others involve sacrificing them. In this paper, I explore three different ways to accommodate agent-centred options in a criterion of objective permissibility. I argue against satisficing and rational pluralism, and in favour of a principle built around sensitivity to personal cost.
-
571Corrective Justice and the Possibility of RectificationEthical Theory and Moral Practice 11 (4): 355-368. 2008.In this paper, I ask how – and whether – the rectification of injury at which corrective justice aims is possible, and by whom it must be performed. I split the injury up into components of harm and wrong, and consider their rectification separately. First, I show that pecuniary compensation for the harm is practically plausible, because money acts as a mediator between the damaged interest and other interests. I then argue that this is also a morally plausible approach, because it does not clai…Read more
-
570Here is my thesis (and the outline of this paper). Increasingly secret, complex and inscrutable computational systems are being used to intensify existing power relations, and to create new ones (Section II). To be all-things-considered morally permissible, new, or newly intense, power relations must in general meet standards of procedural legitimacy and proper authority (Section III). Legitimacy and authority constitutively depend, in turn, on a publicity requirement: reasonably competent membe…Read more
-
303Duty and DoubtJournal of Practical Ethics 8 (1): 28-55. 2020.Deontologists have been slow to address decision-making under risk and uncertainty, no doubt because the standard approaches to non-moral decision theory appear superficially similar to consequentialist moral reasoning. I identify some central tenets of simple decision theory and show that they should not put deontologists off, before showing where we should go next to develop a comprehensive deontological decision theory.
-
238Responsibility, Risk, and Killing in Self‐DefenseEthics 119 (4): 699-728. 2009.I try to show that agent responsibility is an inadequate basis for the attribution of liability, by discrediting the Risk Argument and showing how the Responsibility Argument in fact collapses into the Risk Argument. I have concentrated on undermining these as philosophical theories of self-defense, although I at times note that our theory of self-defense should not be predicated on assumptions that are inapplicable to the context of war. The potential combatant, I conclude, should not look to t…Read more
-
221Axiological Absolutism and RiskNoûs 53 (1): 97-113. 2019.Consider the following claim: given the choice between saving a life and preventing any number of people from temporarily experiencing a mild headache, you should always save the life. Many moral theorists accept this claim. In doing so, they commit themselves to some form of ‘moral absolutism’: the view that there are some moral considerations that cannot be outweighed by any number of lesser moral considerations. In contexts of certainty, it is clear what moral absolutism requires of you. Howe…Read more
-
214Deontological Decision Theory and Agent-Centered OptionsEthics 127 (3): 579-609. 2017.Deontologists have long been upbraided for lacking an account of justified decision- making under risk and uncertainty. One response is to develop a deontological decision theory—a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for an act’s being permissible given an agent’s imperfect information. In this article, I show that deontologists can make more use of regular decision theory than some might have thought, but that we must adapt decision theory to accommodate agent- centered options—permissio…Read more
-
176Authority, Oaths, Contracts, and Uncertainty in WarThought: A Journal of Philosophy 4 (1): 52-58. 2015.Soldiers sign contracts to obey lawful orders; they also swear oaths to this end. The enlistment contract for the Armed Forces of the United States combines both elements: '9a. My enlistment is more than an employment agreement. As a member of the Armed Forces of the United States, I will be: (1) Required to obey all lawful orders and perform all assigned duties … (4) Required upon order to serve in combat or other hazardous situations.' We standardly think that these oaths and contracts give so…Read more
-
173IntroductionEthics 122 (1): 8-9. 2011.McMahan’s book develops each of these themes: rejection of the moral equality of soldiers, introduction and defense of his criterion of liability to lethal attack, and resistance to its unsavory implications for noncombatant immunity. The contributions to this symposium focus on the first two themes. John Gardner and Franc¸ois Tanguay-Renaud make a plea for culpability, testing McMahan’s endorsement of a thinner standard of responsibility for liability, while David Rodin’s paper explores the imp…Read more
-
150Supererogation and OptimisationAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 102 (1): 21-36. 2024.This paper examines three approaches to the relationship between our moral reasons to bear costs for others’ sake before and beyond the call of duty. Symmetry holds that you are required to optimise your beneficial sacrifices even when they are genuinely supererogatory. If you are required to bear a cost C for the sake of a benefit B, when they are the only costs and benefits at stake, you are also conditionally required to bear an additional cost C, for the sake of an additional benefit B, when…Read more
University of Oxford
DPhil, 2009
Acton, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Applied Ethics |
Areas of Interest
1 more
Normative Ethics |
Applied Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Probability |
Epistemology |
Decision Theory |