•  1985
    Necessity in Self-Defense and War
    Philosophy 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
  •  1978
    Skepticism about Jus Post Bellum
    In 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
  •  1648
    Just War Theory: Revisionists Vs Traditionalists
    Annual 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
  •  1495
    Evaluating the Revisionist Critique of Just War Theory
    Daedalus 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
  •  1203
    The responsibility dilemma for killing in war: A review essay
    Philosophy 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
  •  1199
    Necessity and Non-Combatant Immunity
    Review 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
  •  1137
    What’s Wrong with Automated Influence
    Canadian 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
  •  1104
    National Defence, Self Defence, and the Problem of Political Aggression
    In Seth Lazar & Cécile Fabre (eds.), The Morality of Defensive War, Oxford University Press. pp. 10-38. forthcoming.
    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
  •  1027
    The Justification of Associative Duties
    Journal 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
  •  1027
    Limited Aggregation and Risk
    Philosophy 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
  •  969
    Debate: Do Associative Duties Really Not Matter? 1
    Journal 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.
  •  845
    The Morality and Law of War
    In 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
  •  816
    Moral Status and Agent-Centred Options
    Utilitas 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
  •  778
    Associative Duties and the Ethics of Killing in War
    Journal 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
  •  697
    Proxy Battles in Just War Theory: Jus in Bello, the Site of Justice, and Feasibility Constraints
    In 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
  •  683
    Justifying Lockdown
    Ethics 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.
  •  682
    Moral Sunk Costs
    The 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
  •  594
    Risky Killing: How Risks Worsen Violations of Objective Rights
    Journal 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
  •  587
    Corrective Justice and the Possibility of Rectification
    Ethical 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
  •  586
    A Liberal Defence of (Some) Duties to Compatriots
    Journal 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
  •  522
    The nature and disvalue of injury
    Res 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
  •  499
    Accommodating Options
    Pacific 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.
  •  409
    Here 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
  •  214
    Duty and Doubt
    Journal 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.
  •  204
    Responsibility, Risk, and Killing in Self‐Defense
    Ethics 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
  •  191
    Axiological Absolutism and Risk
    with Chad Lee-Stronach
    Noûs 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
  •  161
    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
  •  152
    Introduction
    Ethics 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
  •  146
    Authority, Oaths, Contracts, and Uncertainty in War
    Thought: 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
  •  111
    Supererogation and Optimisation
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 1-16. forthcoming.