Suchergebnisse

"States across the globe spend billions of dollars fighting terrorism annually. As well as strategic questions about the way in which the money should be spent, we are also confronted with a host of moral issues here, many of which are poorly understood. The Ethics of Counterterrorism offers the first systematic normative theory for guiding, assessing, and criticising counterterrorist policy. Many commentators claim that state actors combating terrorism should set aside ordinary moral and legal frameworks, and instead bind themselves by a different (and, generally, more permissive) set of ethical rules than is appropriate in other areas. The book assesses arguments for this view, and more specifically investigates whether widely-endorsed restrictions on state action in the areas of surveillance, policing, armed conflict, criminal justice, diplomacy, and cultural integration need to be weakened when we are confronted with terrorist threats. With its novel overall framework for assessing counterterrorist strategies, its comprehensive analysis of existing practices, and its bringing the tools of analytic philosophy to bear on new questions regarding how states can fight terrorism both effectively and morally, The Ethics of Counterterrorism promises to be an important point of reference for future debates in this area."--

AbstractWhen artificial intelligence (AI) is used to make high-stakes decisions, some worry that this will create a morally troubling responsibility gap—that is, a situation in which nobody is morally responsible for the actions and outcomes that result. Since the responsibility gap might be thought to result from individuals lacking knowledge of the future behavior of AI systems, it can be and has been suggested that deploying explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) techniques will help us to avoid it. These techniques provide humans with certain forms of understanding of the systems in question. In this paper, I consider whether existing XAI techniques can indeed close the responsibility gap. I identify a number of significant limits to their ability to do so. Ensuring that responsibility for AI-assisted outcomes is maintained may require using different techniques in different circumstances, and potentially also developing new techniques that can avoid each of the issues identified.

AbstractThe use of artificial intelligence (AI) to make high-stakes decisions is sometimes thought to create a troubling responsibility gap – that is, a situation where nobody can be held morally responsible for the outcomes that are brought about. However, philosophers and practitioners have recently claimed that, even though no individual can be held morally responsible, groups of individuals might be. Consequently, they think, we have less to fear from the use of AI than might appear to be the case. This paper assesses this claim. Drawing on existing philosophical models of collective responsibility, I consider whether changing focus from the individual to the collective level can help us identify a locus of responsibility in a greater range of cases of AI deployment. I find that appeal to collective responsibility will be of limited use in filling the responsibility gap: the models considered either do not apply to the case at hand or else the relevant sort of collective responsibility, even if present, will not be sufficient to remove the costs that are often associated with an absence of responsibility.

Abstract
The use of military force abroad is a significant part of some states' counter-terrorist efforts. Can these operations be ethically justified? This paper considers whether the underlying principles that philosophers have put forward to justify humanitarian interventions (which may underlie the international norm of the responsibility to protect (R2P)) can also give support for foreign counter-terrorist interventions of this sort. While it finds that the limits to international action that are imposed by the need to respect state sovereignty do not rule out counter-terrorist interventions, it urges caution in supporting an international norm permitting them. Because such a norm would be open to manipulation and abuse, it may be preferable to discourage appealing to it in order to justify military counter-terrorism.

AbstractPhilip Pettit has argued that more robust harms are worse than less robust ones, other things equal, and thinks that appealing to this presumption can help us rationalise the appeal of a number of widely-held moral principles. In this paper, I challenge this view. I argue against the presumption and suggest that, even if it were correct, it could not give much support to the moral principles that Pettit discusses. I also claim, however, that Pettit has the resources at his disposal to explain the attraction of the principles in another way, and lay out how such an explanation would proceed. As moral heuristics, at least, these principles can be grounded on the need to maintain social norms necessary to guarantee individuals' security.

Governments around the world collect huge amounts of personal data from their citizens (as well as foreigners) for counterterrorist purposes. While mining this data has arguably increased the security of populations, the practices through which these data are currently collected in many countries have been criticised for violating individuals' rights to privacy. Yet it is not clear what a permissible data collection regime (if one is possible) would look like and thus also how we could reform existing regimes to make them morally acceptable. This article explores a number of ways in which we might justify a data collection regime to those affected in spite of the setbacks to their privacy. In contrast to existing justifications, I argue that individuals can be asked to surrender their personal data as a requirement of reciprocity in a cooperative system in which they gain security from others doing likewise. Relying on this justification, though, has significant implications for how we should reform existing data collection regimes. In particular, more stringent limits will need to be placed on the forms which these regimes can legitimately take.

It is widely thought that the international community, taken as a whole, is required to take action to prevent terrorism. Yet, what each state is required to do in this project is unclear and contested. This article examines a number of bases on which we might assign responsibilities to conduct counterterrorist operations to states. I argue that the ways in which other sorts of responsibilities have been assigned to states by political philosophers will face significant limitations when used to assign the necessary costs of preventing terrorism. I go on to suggest that appealing to the principle of fairness—which assigns obligations on the basis of benefits received from cooperative endeavours—may be used to make up the shortfall, despite this principle having received relatively little attention in existing normative accounts of states' responsibilities.

Pratiques, institutions, et régimes des biens publiques globaux Une conception de la justice dépendant des pratiques est une conception qui considère que les principes de justice dépendent, dans leur contenu, de la nature des pratiques qu'ils visent à réguler. L'institutionnalisme, une forme de dépendance à la pratique, affirme que c'est la forme institutionnelle qui détermine les principes de justice. Plus précisément, les principes de justice devraient permettre la poursuite effective du but et de l'objet de l'institution qu'ils régulent. Puisqu'il ne peut y avoir, selon cette approche, de principes de justice en l'absence d'institutions, une de ses conséquences est de nier qu'instaurer de nouvelles institutions, lorsqu'elles n'existent pas déjà, soit un devoir de justice. Dans cet article, je plaide à l'encontre de cette dénégation, et prends le cas des biens publics globaux comme un cas exemplaire où il peut y avoir des devoirs de justice d'instaurer de nouvelles institutions.

A practice-dependent conception of justice holds that principles of justice depend, in their content, on the nature of the practice that they are intended to regulate. Institutionalism, one variety of practice-dependency, claims that it is institutional form which determines principles of justice. Specifically, principles of justice should enable the effective pursuit of the point and purpose of the institution they regulate. One consequence of this view is that it cannot be a duty of justice to set up new institutions when none already exist, as there are no principles of justice in the absence of institutions - call this the 'conservative institutionalist claim'. In this paper, I argue against this claim, and use the case of global public goods as an example of when there can be duties of justice to set up new institutions. Adapted from the source document.