•  230
    To Be a Face in the Crowd: Surveillance, Facial Recognition, and a Right to Obscurity
    In L. Samuelsson, C. Cocq, S. Gelfgren & J. Enbom (eds.), Everyday Life in the Culture of Surveillance, Nordicom. pp. 45-66. 2023.
    This article examines how facial recognition technology reshapes the philosophical debate over the ethics of video surveillance. When video surveillance is augmented with facial recognition, the data collected is no longer anonymous, and the data can be aggregated to produce detailed psychological profiles. I argue that – as this non-anonymous data of people’s mundane activities is collected – unjust risks of harm are imposed upon individuals. In addition, this technology can be used to catalogu…Read more
  •  536
    Nonviolent Protesters and Provocations to Violence
    Washington University Review of Philosophy 2 170-187. 2022.
    In this paper, I examine the ethics of nonviolent protest when a violent response is either foreseen or intended. One central concern is whether protesters, who foresee a violent response but persist, are provoking the violence and whether they are culpable for any eventual harms. A second concern is whether it is permissible to publicize the violent response for political advantage. I begin by distinguishing between two senses of the term provoke: a normative sense where a provocateur knowingly…Read more
  • Kant and the Problem of Practical Judgment
    Dissertation, New School for Social Research. 2000.
    This project develops an underlying problem within Kant's practical works concerning the application of the categorical imperative. While it is often thought that Kant does not consider the need to bridge the gap between an abstract, universal, moral law and an agent's proposed maxims as problematic, he repeatedly offers strategies for overcoming exactly such a problem. This study undertakes a detailed examination of three distinct strategies in Kant's works that either have been or could be use…Read more
  •  24
    Beyond Positive and Negative Liberty
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 22 (2): 165-183. 2001.
    It is widely acknowledged that Isaiah Berlin’s seminal essay “Two Concepts of Liberty” has to a large extent set the tone and determined the content of the debates within political philosophy in the English-speaking world. Berlin maintains that the conceptual and institutional history of liberty can be understood in terms of the various responses to the logically distinct questions: “Who governs me?” and “How far does government interfere with me?”. In Berlin’s first question, the salient issue …Read more
  •  130
    A Typology of Terrorism
    Review Journal of Political Philosophy 6 (1): 1-38. 2008.
    In this paper, a two-fold strategy is carried out for gaining conceptual clarity in response to the question: What is terrorism? The first stage is to defend a broad working definition of terrorism that emphasizes the instrumental employment of terror or fear to obtain any number of possible ends. As proposed in this paper, Terrorism is an act or threat of violence to persons or property that elicits terror, fear, or anxiety regarding the security of human life or fundamental rights and that f…Read more
  •  137
    Three Prejudices Against Terrorism
    Critical Studies on Terrorism 2 (2): 181-199. 2009.
    This paper criticizes three assumptions regarding terrorism and the agents who carry it out: 1) terrorists are always indiscriminate in their targeting, 2) terrorism is never effective in combating oppression, and 3) terrorists never participate in fair negotiations as they merely wish to switch places with their oppressors. By criticizing these three prejudices against terrorism, the paper does not attempt to justify or excuse terrorism generally nor in the specific case of Sri Lanka which is …Read more
  •  48
    Beyond Positive and Negative Liberty
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 22 (2): 165-183. 2001.
    It is widely acknowledged that Isaiah Berlin’s seminal essay “Two Concepts of Liberty” has to a large extent set the tone and determined the content of the debates within political philosophy in the English-speaking world. Berlin maintains that the conceptual and institutional history of liberty can be understood in terms of the various responses to the logically distinct questions: “Who governs me?” and “How far does government interfere with me?”. In Berlin’s first question, the salient issue …Read more
  •  68
    Unraveling Emergency Justifications and Excuses for Terrorism
    Journal of Social Philosophy 42 (2): 219-238. 2011.
    This paper examines recent arguments by Michael Walzer and Uwe Steinhoff for justifying or excusing indiscriminate terrorism by means of invoking ‘emergency’ circumstances. While both authors claim that the principle of non-combatant immunity can be justifiably overridden under extreme circumstances, it is argued here that neither provides a convincing argument as to when and why the survival of some innocents ought to counterbalance the harms or rights violations of indiscriminate terrorism. …Read more
  •  59
    Punitive Warfare, Counterterrorism, and Jus ad Bellum
    In Fritz Allhoff, Nicholas Evans & Adam Henschke (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Ethics and War: Just War Theory in the 21st Century, Routledge. pp. 236-249. 2013.
    In order to address whether states can ever have the proper authority to militarily punish other international agents, I examine three attempts to justify punitive warfare from Augustine, Grotius and Locke for their relevance to both our contemporary international legal and political order and our contemporary security threats from sporadic terrorist or militant violence. Once a plausible model for a state’s valid authority to punish international agents is found, I will consider what punitive a…Read more
  •  87
    Emerging from the growing swell of recent literature concerning Kant's practical philosophy, one interpretation of his procedure for testing maxims has crested above others. The influential interpretation to which I refer believes that the categorical imperative guides a procedure that finds maxims impermissible when they cannot be universalized without producing a 'practical' contradiction. As a major proponent of the practical contradiction interpretation, Christine Korsgaard claims that, whil…Read more
  •  73
    Just War Theory: What Is It Good For?
    Philosophy in the Contemporary World 19 (2): 4-14. 2012.
    The usefulness of Just War Theory (JWT) has been called into question in recent years for two key reasons. First, military conflicts today less frequently fit the model traditionally assumed by JWT of interstate wars between regular armies. Second, there is a perception that JWT has lost its critical edge after its categories and principles have been co-opted by bellicose political leaders. This paper critically examines two responses to these concerns which shift the locus of responsibility for…Read more