Civilian Immunity,Supreme Emergency,and Moral Disaster

Any plausible position in the ethics of war and political violence in general will include the requirement of protection of civilians (non-combatants, common citizens) against lethal violence. This requirement is particularly prominent, and particularly strong, in just war theory. Some adherents of the theory see civilian immunity as absolute, not to be overridden in any circumstances whatsoever. Others allow that it may be overridden, but only in extremis. The latter position has been advanced by Michael Walzer under the heading of “supreme emergency.” In this paper, I look into some of the issues of interpretation and application of Walzer’s “supreme emergency” view and some of the criticisms that have been levelled against it. I argue that Walzer’s view is vague and unacceptable as it stands, but that the alternatives proposed by critics such as Brian Orend, C.A.J. Coady, and Stephen Nathanson are also unattractive. I go on to construct a position that is structurally similar to Walzer’s, but more specific and much less permissive, which I term the “moral disaster” view. According to this view, deliberate killing of civilians is almost absolutely wrong.     

MIGHT KANTIAN CONTRACTUALISM BE THE SUPREME PRINCIPLE OF MORALITY?

According to Parfit, the best version of Kantian ethics takes as its central principle Kantian Contractualism: the thesis that everyone ought to follow the principles whose universal acceptance everyone could rationally will. This paper examines that thesis, identifies a class of annoying counterexamples, and suggests that when Kantian Contractualism is modified in response to these examples, the resulting principle is too complex and ad hoc to serve as the 'supreme principle of morality'.     

Why the Wrongness of Killing Innocents is Not a Universal Moral Certainty

In this paper, I argue that the certainty about the wrongness of killing must not be considered as a universal, but as a local one. Initially, I show that there exist communities in which the wrongness of killing innocents is not a moral certainty and that this kind of case cannot be justified by arguing that such people are psychopaths. Lastly, I argue that universal certainties do not admit of exceptions: thus, the fact that some exceptional cases affect the certainty that killing innocents is wrong, leads me to conclude that it is a local certainty.     

Two Puzzles for Deontologists: Life-Prolonging Killings and the Moral Symmetry Between Killing and Causing a Person to be Unconscious

Some form of agent-relative constraint against the killing of innocent personsis a central principle in deontological moraltheories. In this article I make two claimsabout this constraint. First, I argue that somekillings of innocents performed incircumstances usually not taken to exculpatethe killer are not even pro tanto wrong.Second, I contend that either there is noagent-relative constraint against the killingof innocents or this constraint has a verydifferent shape from that which deontologistsnormally take it to have. My defence of theseclaims rests on two propositions. First, inkilling someone one may actually prolong thatperson's life. Roughly, life-prolongingkillings are possible, because to kill someoneis to perform an act that causes someone'sdeath and it might well be true that, had onenot performed this act, one's ``victim' wouldhave died earlier. Second, all other thingsbeing equal, killing and causing a person to beunconscious are morally equivalent. Both ofthese propositions are defended in thearticle.     

Aquinas's Opposition to Killing the Innocent and its Distinctiveness within the Christian just War Tradition

This essay argues that Aquinas's position regarding the killing of innocent people differs significantly from other representatives of the Christian just war tradition. While his predecessors, notably Augustine, as well as his successors, from Cajetan and Vitoria onward, affirm the legitimacy of causing the death of innocents in a just war in cases of necessity, Aquinas holds that causing the death of innocents in a foreseeable manner, whether intentionally or indirectly, is never justified. Even an otherwise legitimate act of just war cannot legitimate causing the death of innocent people, as this can never advance the common good. This stance also contrasts sharply with much modern and contemporary double effect theorizing in relation to jus in bello. In this regard, Aquinas's position, shaped decisively by his biblical and theological commitments, may point the way towards an ethical orientation beyond the typical divisions of “pacifism” and “just war.”     

The Challenge of Christian Schooling in a Secular Society

This article evaluates the position of Christian schooling within a liberal democracy and the rights of Christians within a secular state. I challenge the fundamental liberal tenet of individual autonomy as the supreme goal of education and put the case that Christian schools are a vital part of a diverse, tolerant and inclusive society. Although intended as a theoretical resource, current developments in faith-based education in the United Kingdom are used to exemplify important political and philosophical arguments that will be of value to Christian educators in the United States and elsewhere.     

Friend or foe? Evidence that anxious people are better at distinguishing targets from non‐targets

Armed conflict necessitates the ability to quickly distinguish friend from foe. Failure to make accurate shooting decisions may result in harm either to oneself or to innocent others. The factors that predict such rapid decision making, however, remain unclear. Based on social defense theory, we contend that people high on attachment anxiety possess characteristics that are particularly advantageous in this domain such that anxiously attached individuals will show greater vigilance and accuracy in a realistic shooting paradigm in which they must quickly distinguish between militants (people holding a gun) and innocents (people holding an item with the same color and shape as a gun—Coca‐Cola bottle, black wallet, and black mobile phone). Using signal detection theory algorithms, we calculated sensitivity in performing the behavioral shooting task [D_(prime)]. Results indicate that as expected, anxious people demonstrated significantly better shooting accuracy. Implication for contemporary violent conflict is discussed.     

Pluralism and civic education

Educational practices which reinforce cultural diversity are often commended in the name of pluralism, though such practices may be condemned on the same grounds if they are seen as a threat to the fragile sense of political unity which holds a pluralistic society together. Therefore, the educational implications of pluralism as an ideal are often ambiguous, and the ambiguity cannot be resolved in the absence of a clear understanding of the particular civic virtues which a pluralistic society should engender. Two influential conceptions of civic education which purport to affirm the ideal of pluralism are examined and both are found wanting. Liberal political theory proclaims the paramount importance of justice in public life, and justice can be construed in a way that accomodates diversity. However, the kind of civic education which liberalism entails does too little to restrain the centrifugal forces latent in cultural diversity. Communitarian political theory exalts civic friendship as the supreme public virtue, but the civic education it supports is compatible with only a highly attenuated cultural diversity. A third alternative is canvassed which combines the liberal stress on justice with a conception of patriotism distinct from civic friendship. The implications of this alternative for disputes about bias in public schools are briefly discussed.     

Moral dilemmas and moral rules

Recent work shows an important asymmetry in lay intuitions about moral dilemmas. Most people think it is permissible to divert a train so that it will kill one innocent person instead of five, but most people think that it is not permissible to push a stranger in front of a train to save five innocents. We argue that recent emotion-based explanations of this asymmetry have neglected the contribution that rules make to reasoning about moral dilemmas. In two experiments, we find that participants show a parallel asymmetry about versions of the dilemmas that have minimized emotional force. In a third experiment, we find that people distinguish between whether an action violates a moral rule and whether it is, all things considered, wrong. We propose that judgments of whether an action is wrong, all things considered, implicate a complex set of psychological processes, including representations of rules, emotional responses, and assessments of costs and benefits.     

The Verifiability Approach: Countermeasures Facilitate its Ability to Discriminate Between Truths and Lies

According to the verifiability approach, liars tend to provide details that cannot be checked by the investigator and awareness of this increases the investigator's ability to detect lies. In the present experiment, we replicated previous findings in a more realistic paradigm and examined the vulnerability of the verifiability approach to countermeasures. For this purpose, we collected written statements from 44 mock criminals (liars) and 43 innocents (truth tellers), whereas half of them were told before writing the statements that the verifiability of their statements will be checked. Results showed that ‘informing’ encouraged truth tellers but not liars to provide more verifiable details and increased the ability to detect lies. These findings suggest that verifiability approach is less vulnerable to countermeasures than other lie detection tools. On the contrary, in the current experiment, notifying interviewees about the mechanism of the approach benefited lie detection. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基督教的传播与罗马帝国统治者的因应对策

罗马帝国统治者以政治标准和实用态度裁决基督教,从视为犹太教的一个小教派予以默认,到将其视为一种非法的宗教加以迫害,再到承认其合法性,都是基于统治者的利益和政治的现实需要而调整,最终基督教提升为国教。罗马帝国的基督教政策为未来的国家统治者干涉教会事务确定了先例,对中世纪西欧政教关系的格局产生了深远影响。     

The Virtue of Justice and War

There has been a recent revival of interest in the medieval just war theory. But what is the virtue of justice needed to make war just? War is a complex and protracted activity. It is argued that a variety of virtues of justice, as well as a variety of virtues are required to guide the application of the use of force. Although it is mistaken to regard war as punishment, punitive justice—bringing to account those guilty of initiating an unjust war or of war crimes in its conduct— has an important role to play after conflict to restore the wrongs of war and help establish a just peace. Justice as fairness is needed to guide the distribution of resources and so reduce the grounds for war. Protective justice—protecting a community or innocents from harmful attack—helps define what constitutes a just cause for war and so constrains the occasions for war. The just principles set out the criteria to be met if war is to be morally permissible. In practice, this challenging demand requires that political leaders and military at all levels learn and exercise the virtues, particularly the cardinal virtues of justice, courage, self-control and practical wisdom. If we are to make war just and to make only just war, we need justice understood in its broadest sense. Such justice, as Aristotle noted, “is not a part but the whole of virtue.”     

Social psychology, ‘marital rape exemptions’, and privacy

A 50-state statutory search revealed that variations exist in marital rape exemptions throughout the United States. States handle the question of marital rape in one of three ways: (1) by abolishing the exemption for husbands; (2) by qualifying the exemption; or (3) by allowing the exemption. Although marital rape is a topic that has been largely ignored by social psychology, it is an area ripe for psycho-legal analysis. Possible relationships between social psychology, marital rape exemptions, and privacy are discussed against a background of a psychological jurisprudence.     

Protecting Human Dignity in Research Involving Humans

Human dignity is the supreme criterion for protecting research participants, and likewise for numerous ethical matters of ultimate importance. But what is meant by “human dignity”? Isn’t this some vague criterion, some sort of lip service of questionable relevance and application? We shall see that it is nothing of the sort, that to the contrary, it is a very definite and very accessible criterion. However, how is this criterion applied in protecting research participants? These are the matters that we will examine now. My presentation is divided into four parts. 1/Recognizing Human Dignity; 2/Practical Definition of Human Dignity; 3/The Human Being in a Weakened State; 4/ Conclusion.     

The ethics and politics of small sacrifices in stem cell research

Pluripotent human stem cell research may offer new treatments for hundreds of diseases, but opponents of this research argue that such therapy comes attached to a Faustian bargain: cures at the cost of the destruction of many frozen embryos. The National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC), government officials, and many scholars of bioethics, including, in these pages, John Robertson, have not offered an adequate response to ethical objections to stem cell research. Instead of examining the ethical issues involved in sacrificing human embryos for the goal of curing fatal and disabling diseases, they seek to either dismiss the moral concerns of those with objections or to find an "accomodation" with those opposed to stem cell research. An ethical argument can be made that it is justifiable to modify or destroy certain human embryos in the pursuit of cures for dread and lethal diseases. Until this argument is made, the case for stem cell research will rest on political foundations rather than on the ethical foundations that the funding of stem cell research requires.     

EQUAL POLITICAL LIBERTIES

Formal guarantees of political equality are compatible with inequalities in the value of political liberties, as individuals may convert their socioeconomic advantages into political advantages. Perhaps the predominant strategy for limiting substantive political inequalities recommends limiting inequalities in the means of acquiring political power for private gain – most notably, economic means. I express a worry that measures instituted to restrict economic inequalities may do more to frustrate the cause of political equality than to further it. I argue that attempts to decrease individuals' means to capture political power will systematically increase their motives to capture political power.     

What to Do in an Unjust State?: On Confucius’s and Socrates’s Views on Political Duty

Confucius argued for the centrality of the superior man’s political duty to his fellow human beings and to the state, while Socrates suggested that the superior man (the philosopher) may have no such political duty. However, Confucius also suggested that one not enter or stay—let alone save—a troubled state, while Socrates stayed in an unjust state, apparently fulfilling his political duty to the state by accepting an unjust verdict. In this essay, I will try to show how Confucius could solve these apparent contradictions. I will then examine the reasons Socrates directly and indirectly offers to resolve his seemingly conflicting positions in light of the discussion of the Confucian case. This article is a first step toward a deeper understanding of both Confucius and Socrates (Plato) by way of comparative studies, and of the general issue of a superior man’s political duty to a bad state.     

Toleration,Religion and Accommodation

Issues of religious toleration might be thought dead and advocacy of religious toleration a pointless exercise in preaching to the converted, at least in most contemporary European societies. This paper challenges that view. It does so principally by focusing on issues of religious accommodation as these arise in contemporary multi‐faith societies. Drawing on the cases of exemption, Article 9 of the ECHR, and law governing indirect religious discrimination, it argues that issues and instances of accommodation are issues and instances of toleration. Special attention is given to issues that arise when the claims of religious belief conflict with those of other legally protected characteristics, especially sexual orientation. The paper uses a concept of toleration appropriate to a liberal democratic political order—one that replaces the ‘vertical’ ruler‐to‐subject model of toleration that suited early modern monarchies with a ‘horizontal’ citizen‐to‐citizen model appropriate to a political order that aims to uphold an ideal of toleration rather than itself extend toleration to those whose lives it regulates.     

Political Authority and Unjust Wars

Just war theory is currently dominated by two positions. According to the orthodox view (Walzer), provided that jus in bello principles are respected, combatants have an equal right to fight, regardless of the justice of the cause pursued by their state. According to “revisionists” (McMahan, Fabre) whenever combatants lack reasons to believe that the war they are ordered to fight is just, their duty is to disobey. I argue that when members of a legitimate state acting in good faith are ordered to fight, they acquire a pro‐tanto obligation to obey which does not depend for its validity on the justice of the cause being pursued. However, when the war is unjust, this obligation may be overridden, under certain conditions, by the obligation not to contribute to the unjustified killing of innocents. This is because (contra Raz) the pro‐tanto force of the duty to obey the law is best understood in terms of “presumptive”, rather than “exclusionary” reasons for action. This approach captures the insights of both the orthodox and the revisionist view, while avoiding the problems that afflict each of them.