Abstract The debate about the ethics of uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs) is failing to keep pace with the rise of the technology. Therefore, all the key players, including ethicists, lawyers, and roboticists, are keen to offer their views on the use of these drone aircraft. Some are opposed to their use, citing a range of ethical, legal and operational issues, while others argue for their ethically mandated use. B.J. Strawser fits into this latter category. He develops a principle of ?unnecessary (...) risk?, from which he argues that we have an ethical obligation to employ UAVs if we can do so without incurring a loss of capability. Strawser defends his argument against a number of potential objections, most questionably, the argument that the use of distance weaponry such as drones, against another state without distance weaponry, crosses some moral threshold that makes the combat immoral. Utilising Jeff McMahan's work on the inequality of combatants, Strawser essentially argues that there are no grounds for a ?fair fight?. However, this paper will argue that it is not so easy to overturn the doctrine of the moral equality of combatants, nor dismiss the problem with asymmetry. It will demonstrate that if the asymmetry reaches a certain level, the justification for resorting to war may be removed and some sort of policing action may remain the only option. (shrink)

Ethics settings allow for morally significant decisions made by humans to be programmed into autonomous machines, such as autonomous vehicles or autonomous weapons. Customizable ethics settings are a type of ethics setting in which the users of autonomous machines make such decisions. Here two arguments are provided in defence of customizable ethics settings. Firstly, by approaching ethics settings in the context of failure management, it is argued that customizable ethics settings are instrumentally and inherently valuable for building resilience into the (...) larger socio-technical systems in which autonomous machines operate. Secondly, after defining the preliminary condition of responsibility attribution and demonstrating how ethics settings enable humans to exert control over the outcomes of morally significant incidents, it is shown that ethics settings narrow the responsibility gap. (shrink)

What's wrong with targeted advertising in political campaigns? Are echo chambers a matter of genuine concern? How does data collection impact on trust in society? As decision-making becomes increasingly automated, how can decision-makers be held to account? This collection consider potential solutions to these challenges.

Autonomous weapon systems could in principle release military personnel from the onus of killing during combat missions, reducing the related risk of suffering a moral injury and its debilita...

Today, with the advent of unmanned systems, military hopes are attached to the idea that battles can be fought with soldiers pressing buttons in distant command centres. However, soldiers must now be highly trained, super strong and have the intelligence and mental capacity to handle the highly complex and dynamic military operating environment. This book provides the first comprehensive and unifying analysis of the moral, legal and social questions concerning military human enhancement, with a view toward developing guidance and policy (...) that may influence real-world decision making. (shrink)

. VIEWPOINT ARTICLE CLOSING WITH COMPLETENESS: THE ASYMMETRIC DRONE WARFARE DEBATE. Journal of Military Ethics: Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 353-356. doi: 10.1080/15027570.2012.760245.

We must understand that with the possibility of commercial space travel on our horizon, it comes with a number of significant practical and moral challenges. This volume provides the first comprehensive and unifying analysis concerning the rise of private space exploration, with a view toward developing policy that may influence real-world decision making. The plethora of questions demanding serious attention - privatisation and commercialisation, the impact on the environment, health futures, risk assessment, responsibility and governance - are directly addressed in (...) this scholarly work. (shrink)

This volume examines the ethical issues generated by recent developments in intelligence collection and offers a comprehensive analysis of the key legal, moral and social questions thereby raised. Intelligence officers, whether gatherers, analysts or some combination thereof, are operating in a sea of social, political, scientific and technological change. This book examines the new challenges faced by the intelligence community as a result of these changes. It looks not only at how governments employ spies as a tool of state and (...) how the ultimate outcomes are judged by their societies, but also at the mind-set of the spy. In so doing, this volume casts a rare light on an often ignored dimension of spying: the essential role of truth and how it is defined in an intelligence context. This book offers some insights into the workings of the intelligence community and aims to provide the first comprehensive and unifying analysis of the relevant moral, legal and social questions, with a view toward developing policy that may influence real-world decision making. The contributors analyse the ethics of spying across a broad canvas – historical, philosophical, moral and cultural – with chapters covering interrogation and torture, intelligence’s relation to war, remote killing, cyber surveillance, responsibility and governance. In the wake of the phenomena of WikiLeaks and the Edward Snowden revelations, the intelligence community has entered an unprecedented period of broad public scrutiny and scepticism, making this volume a timely contribution. This book will be of much interest to students of ethics, intelligence studies, security studies, foreign policy and IR in general. (shrink)

Discusses nuances required to balance out the debate surrounding the moral and legal permissibility of using autonomous weapon systems in war fighting.

The question of whether new rules or regulations are required to govern, restrict, or even prohibit the use of autonomous weapon systems has been the subject of debate for the better part of a decade. Despite the claims of advocacy groups, the way ahead remains unclear since the international community has yet to agree on a specific definition of Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems and the great powers have largely refused to support an effective ban. In this vacuum, the public has (...) been presented with a heavily one-sided view of Killer Robots. This interdisciplinary volume presents a more nuanced approach to autonomous weapon systems that recognizes the need to progress beyond a discourse framed by the Terminator and HAL 9000. Re-shaping the discussion around this emerging military innovation requires a new line of thought and a willingness to challenge the orthodoxy. Lethal Autonomous Weapons focuses on exploring the moral and legal issues associated with the design, development and deployment of lethal autonomous weapons. The volume brings together some of the most prominent academics and academic-practitioners in the lethal autonomous weapons space and seeks to return some balance to the debate. As part of this effort, it recognizes that society needs to invest in hard conversations that tackle the ethics, morality, and law of these new digital technologies and understand the human role in their creation and operation. (shrink)

The US military is a globally recognizable force politically, ethically and, to some extent, economically. It is not generally realized, however, that such an influential military force also holds...

This article investigates the question concerning moral deskilling in the context of autonomous weapon systems. To this end, it interrogates the appropriateness of deskilling as an analytical tool, the consequences of the conflation of the terms “the warrior” and “the soldier,” and the impact of the dominant, but commonplace, understanding of autonomous weapons that underwrites the concerns that have been expressed thus far. While affirming the critical importance of the question regarding moral deskilling in the context of advanced weapons and (...) technologies, this article argues (a) that the notion of deskilling may not be an adequate or even appropriate analytical tool to investigate the matter on hand; (b) that the conflation of the terms “the warrior” and “the soldier” only serves to obfuscate the critical issues at stake; and (c) that the understanding of autonomous weapons that underwrites the concern is highly speculative. To this extent, the concern regarding moral deskilling in the context of autonomous weapon systems is ill-served. By way of a conclusion, the article calls for a more careful and nuanced approach and makes some preliminary suggestions as to how the question regarding moral deskilling in the context of autonomous weapon systems may be addressed. (shrink)

Fifteen philosophers look at the deeper issues raised in the highly popular TV drama, including common morality, legal correctness and legal ethics, discussing the gray areas of legal battles and maneuvering. Original.

ABSTRACT This article considers how five single mothers, who used adoption or donor conception to bring children into their lives, negotiate a persistent and pervasive discourse of ‘problematic single motherhood’ in their interview talk. Tactics of intersubjectivity (Bucholtz & Hall [2005]. Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies, 7(4–5), 585–614.), especially the overlapping strategies of distinction, authorisation and illegitimation, are shown to be particularly salient for these parents, as they work to legitimise their routes to motherhood by distancing (...) themselves from widely stigmatised positions such as young motherhood, working-class motherhood and unplanned motherhood. I argue that these single women’s intersubjective positioning serves to protect them against stigma and discrimination, but often relies on the reproduction of other polarising and discriminatory discourses, which feed into idealised constructions of mothers as responsible, middle-class, and appropriately aged citizens. Overall, the analysis suggests that it is difficult for these single mothers to challenge the multiple and intersecting discriminatory discourses, ideals and stereotypes that converge in exclusionary and limiting constructions of single motherhood, whilst maintaining a recognisably legitimate social position for themselves. (shrink)

Over the past decade, interest in human enhancement has waxed and waned. The initial surge of interest and funding, driven by the US Army’s desire for a ‘Future Force Warrior’ has partly given way to the challenges of meeting operational demands abroad. However the ethical opportunities provided by soldier enhancement demand that investigation of its possibilities continue. Benefits include enhanced decision-making, improved force capability, reduced force size and lower casualty rates. These benefits — and enhancement itself — carry concomitant risks, (...) including morale issues due to tension between enhanced and unenhanced soldiers, the issues of enhanced veterans and ownership of enhanced bodies, challenges to the army’s core values and personal identity issues. A range of measures should be designed to highlight the opportunities offered by enhancement while also minimising the potential risks. This includes providing advice on which areas the army ought to demonstrate restraint in research for ethical reasons. (shrink)

Ethical Politics and Modern Society introduces and critically examines British idealist philosopher, Thomas Hill Green, his practical philosophy and its reception in China between the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. As a response to the modernity issue in Great Britain, Green's philosophy, in particular his ethical politics, anticipated a practical solution to the individual alienation issue in modern society. Witnessing the resemblance between Green's ethical politics and classical Chinese ethical and political thought, some Chinese scholars became inclined (...) to take Green's thought as an intellectual approach to assimilate Western modernity. While Green and the Chinese scholars both intended to articulate an ethical conception of modern politics in response to the issue of modernity, their results were very different. In this book, James Jia-Hau Liu analyses why modern Chinese scholars introduced Green's philosophy to China and why the studies of Green's philosophy in China have since faded away. Modern Chinese scholars, such as Gao Yi-Han, Chin Yueh-Lin, Tang Jun-Yi, Chang Fo-Chuan and Yin Hai-Guang, are explored in greater detail. The contradictory standings towards modernity between Green and Chinese scholars illustrate how to understand the difference forms of modernity that can be embodied therein. Ethical Politics and Modern Society is a valuable resource to scholars of political philosophy, political theory, history of social and political thought, British Idealism and the work of Thomas Hill Green. (shrink)

This article examines representations of Mermaids, a charity that supports trans young people and their families, in the British press. Using corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis, we identify and chart patterns in reporting between Mermaids’ inception as a charity in 2015, and 2022, a turbulent year for both the charity and trans people in the UK more generally. The findings show that, in the early years, there is relatively little attention to Mermaids in the press. Where they are mentioned, the charity (...) is represented as a useful source of advice and support, and their service users as happy and united. However, 2018 represents a turning point, with increasingly negative and misleading portrayals of Mermaids coinciding with a rise in public interest and funding. By 2019, media interest in the charity has surged and the impression of Mermaids as a support group for families is supplanted by the image of a powerful, dangerous and controversial organisation. We argue that the increasingly excessive, negative and polarised reporting around Mermaids is a strategy for indirectly delegitimising and attacking the lives of trans young people themselves. In a burgeoning culture war, Mermaids is used as a weapon against the very people they seek to support. (shrink)

Unethical behavior on the part of business corporations and their leaders has led many business executives and university administrators to call for the inclusion of ethics in MBA programs. This paper reviewed studies and commentary relating to the teaching of ethics in MBA programs in the United States. The results showed that ethics has not yet gained an integral place in the curricula of business schools. A plan of action for the systematic incorporation of ethics into the MBA curriculum was (...) proposed based on the system model of training commonly used in the training field. In concluding, a question about the total responsibility of the business schools toward the promotion of ethical behavior on the part of their graduates was raised. (shrink)

This special issue brings to a close a series of three issue of this journal that have sought to expand the philosophical vocabulary of those concerned with business ethics. Previous issues treated the work of Emmanuel Levinas (Business Ethics: A European Review 2007, 16:3) and Jacques Derrida (Business Ethics: A European Review 2010, 19:3), whereas this issue is organised around engagements with the work of Alain Badiou. The three issues together seek to show ways in which the idea of the (...) ethical, in all of its variety, poses grave challenges to the continued practice of capitalist business enterprise. The editorial introduction to this issue introduces the work of Alain Badiou, some of the specific challenges his thought poses for business and business ethics and the papers included in the special issue. (shrink)

In recent years the possibility of using humanoid robots to perform interviews with children has been explored in a number of studies. This paper details a study in which a potential real-world user trialled a Robot-Mediated Interviewing system with children to establish if this approach could realistically be used in a real-world context. In this study a senior educational psychologist used the humanoid robot Kaspar to interview ten primary school children about a video they had watched prior to the interview. (...) We conducted a pre and post interview with the educational psychologist before and after using the system to establish how the system worked for him and the perceived potential for real-world applications. The educational psychologist successfully used the system to interview the children and believed that principally using a small humanoid robot to interview children could be useful in a real-world setting provided the system was developed further. (shrink)

In recent years the possibility of using humanoid robots to perform interviews with children has been explored in a number of studies. This paper details a study in which a potential real-world user trialled a Robot-Mediated Interviewing system with children to establish if this approach could realistically be used in a real-world context. In this study a senior educational psychologist used the humanoid robot Kaspar to interview ten primary school children about a video they had watched prior to the interview. (...) We conducted a pre and post interview with the educational psychologist before and after using the system to establish how the system worked for him and the perceived potential for real-world applications. The educational psychologist successfully used the system to interview the children and believed that principally using a small humanoid robot to interview children could be useful in a real-world setting provided the system was developed further. (shrink)

To date research investigating the potential of Robot-Mediated Interviews has focused on establishing how children respond to robots in an interview scenario. In order to test if an RMI approach would work in a real world setting, it is important to establish what the experts would require from such a system. To determine the needs of such expert users we conducted three user panels with groups of potential real world users to gather their views of our current system and find (...) out what they would require for the system to be useful to them. The user groups consisted of specialist police officers, intermediaries, educational specialists and healthcare specialists. To our knowledge this is the first article investigating user needs for Robot-Mediated Interviews. Due to the novelty of this area, the work presented in this paper is exploratory in nature. The results provide valuable insights into what real world users would need from a Robot-Mediated Interviewing system. Our findings will contribute to future research and technology development in the domain of RMI in particular, and child-robot interaction in general. (shrink)

To date research investigating the potential of Robot-Mediated Interviews has focused on establishing how children respond to robots in an interview scenario. In order to test if an RMI approach would work in a real world setting, it is important to establish what the experts would require from such a system. To determine the needs of such expert users we conducted three user panels with groups of potential real world users to gather their views of our current system and find (...) out what they would require for the system to be useful to them. The user groups consisted of specialist police officers, intermediaries, educational specialists and healthcare specialists. To our knowledge this is the first article investigating user needs for Robot-Mediated Interviews. Due to the novelty of this area, the work presented in this paper is exploratory in nature. The results provide valuable insights into what real world users would need from a Robot-Mediated Interviewing system. Our findings will contribute to future research and technology development in the domain of RMI in particular, and child-robot interaction in general. (shrink)

About 6% of women in the world live in countries that ban all abortions, and 34% in countries that only allow abortion to preserve maternal life or health. In the USA, over the last decades—even before Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned the federal right to abortion—various states have sought to restrict abortion access. Often times, this legislation has been advanced based on legislators’ personal moral values. At the bedside, in contrast, provision of abortion care should adhere to the (...) normative principles of medical ethics and reproductive justice, centreing patients and their individual reproductive intentions and desires. Abortion regulations, through their influence on patients and providers, may facilitate or impede such ethical care at the bedside. In this paper, we present a framework to model how abortion legislation should fit into the patient–provider relationship and to clarify the dynamics by which legislation may affect healthcare encounters. Our proposed framework serves as a tool to analyse the ethical impact of abortion regulations. We propose a model for assessing abortion policies based not on legislators’ or advocates’ individual moral claims, but on the shared, normative framework of clinical medical ethics. Through contrasting case studies, we demonstrate how a robust normative ethical framework can recentre patients and their reproductive needs. Our model is one way to account for—and safeguard—patients’ diverse viewpoints and needs in the development of abortion policy, and it can serve to ground narratives for advocacy by healthcare workers and their professional organisations. (shrink)

This paper examines the situation of rurally rooted cross-border migrant workers from Myanmar during the Covid-19 pandemic. It looks at the circumstances of the migrants prior to the global health emergency, before exploring possibilities for a post-pandemic future for this stratum of the working people by raising critical questions addressed to agrarian movements. It does this by focusing on the nature and dynamics of the nexus of land and labour in the context of production and social reproduction, a view that (...) in the context of rurally rooted cross-border migrant workers necessarily requires interrelated perspectives on labour, agrarian, and food justice struggles. This requires a rethinking of the role of land, not as a factor in either production or social reproduction, but as a central component in both spheres simultaneously. The question is not ‘whether’ it is necessary and desirable to forge multi-class coalitions and struggles against external capital, while not losing sight of the exploitative relations within rural communities and the household; rather, the question is ‘how’ to achieve this. It will require a messy recursive process, going back and forth between theoretical exploration and practical politics. (shrink)

Despite the frequency of stillbirths, the subsequent implications are overlooked and underappreciated. We present findings from comprehensive, systematic literature reviews, and new analyses of published and unpublished data, to establish the effect of stillbirth on parents, families, health-care providers, and societies worldwide. Data for direct costs of this event are sparse but suggest that a stillbirth needs more resources than a livebirth, both in the perinatal period and in additional surveillance during subsequent pregnancies. Indirect and intangible costs of stillbirth are (...) extensive and are usually met by families alone. This issue is particularly onerous for those with few resources. Negative effects, particularly on parental mental health, might be moderated by empathic attitudes of care providers and tailored interventions. The value of the baby, as well as the associated costs for parents, families, care providers, communities, and society, should be considered to prevent stillbirths and reduce associated morbidity. (shrink)

The gulf between multinational enterprises’ focus on high income countries and the reality of 80% of the world living in developing, bottom of pyramid (Hahn, J Bus Ethics 84:313–324, 2009 ) economies could magnify the anti-globalisation movement and political backlashes in the twenty-first century. The global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 has increased such social tensions throughout the world and creates greater challenges for, responsible leadership. In this conceptual article, the authors analyse the value and identity of local managers, (...) and the liability of foreignness caused by over-reliance on expatriate managers and under-reliance on local managers in bottom of pyramid countries (Hahn, 2009 ). It is argued that multinational enterprises need to assess local managers’ knowledge and contributions as having not only operational and market value, but also institutional value, such as access to local knowledge and local social capital; such a holistic approach will ensure fairer, equal treatment of all managers in the multinational enterprise. Responsible leadership in the twenty-first century requires a greater appreciation of local managers’ institutional value and the overcoming of any psychological distance towards local managers of bottom of pyramid countries. (shrink)

A majority of the countries in the world are still considered "developing," with a per capita income of less than U$1,000. Hahn (2008, Journal of Business Ethics 78, 711–721) recently proposed an ambitious business ethics research agenda for integrating the "bottom-of-the-pyramid" countries (Prahalad and Hart, 2002, Strategy and Competition 20, 22–14) through sustainable development and corporate citizenship. Hahn's work is among the growing field of research in comparative business ethics including the global business ethics index (Michalos, 2008, Journal of Business (...) Ethics 79(1), 9–19; Scholtens and Dam, 2008, Journal of Business Ethics 75(3), 273–284; Tsalikis and Seaton, 2008, Journal of Business Ethics 75(3), 229–238). This article is complementary to Hahn's work and it advocates an urgent need for business ethics researchers to globally integrate the bottom-of-thepyramid countries through a fundamental re-definition of the global economic triad, including the United States, Western Europe, and Japan [Ohmae, 1985, Triad Power: The Coming Shape of Global Competition (New York: Free Press)]. The definition that we propose is based on business systems and institutional perspectives that include the bottom-of-the-pyramid countries. We also propose to broaden the research in business ethics to enable comparisons across business systems indifferent income levels. (shrink)

The present research was conducted to empirically examine whether death anxiety is the fundamental fear that feeds people’s fear of COVID-19 and leads to increased behavioral compliance with and acceptance of COVID-19 regulations. Results from an online survey of 313 participants from New York City show that death anxiety was, indeed, positively associated with behavioral compliance with, but not acceptance of, COVID-19 regulations via an increased fear of COVID-19. Hence, media campaigns that are designed to increase people’s compliance with restrictive (...) COVID-19 measures by stirring up their death anxiety are likely to meet their target, but they do not necessarily lead to increased public acceptance of the measures taken. (shrink)

Table of Contents Foreword .................................................................................................... ......................................... xiv Preface .................................................................................................... .............................................. xv Acknowledgment .................................................................................................... .......................... xxiii Section 1 On the Cusp: Critical Appraisals of a Growing Dependency on Intelligent Machines Chapter 1 Algorithms versus Hive Minds and the Fate of Democracy ................................................................... 1 Rick Searle, IEET, USA Chapter 2 We Can Make Anything: Should We? .................................................................................................. 15 Chris Bateman, University of Bolton, UK Chapter 3 Grounding Machine Ethics within the Natural System ........................................................................ 30 Jared Gassen, JMG Advising, USA Nak Young Seong, Independent Scholar, South (...) Korea Section 2 From the Outside In: Intelligent Machine Technologies as a Window on Human Morality both as Evolved and as Evident in Internet Discourse, Today Chapter 4 The Emergence of Arti cial Autonomy: A View from the Foothills of a Challenging Climb ............. 51 Fernando da Costa Cardoso, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal Luís Moniz Pereira, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal Chapter 5 Semantic Analysis of Bloggers Experiences as a Knowledge Source of Average Human Morality .... 73 Rafal Rzepka, Hokkaido University, Japan Kenji Araki, Hokkaido University, Japan Section 3 From the Inside Out: The Ethics of Human Enhancement from Moral Perception to Competition in the Workplace Chapter 6 Machine Ethics Interfaces: An Ethics of Perception of Nanocognition ............................................... 97 Melanie Swan, Kingston University, UK Chapter 7 Ethical Concerns in Human Enhancement: Advantages in Corporate/Organizational Settings ......... 124 Ben Tran, Alliant International University, USA Section 4 From Far to Near and Near to Far: The Ethics of Distancing Technologies in Education and Warfare Chapter 8 Responsibility and War Machines: Toward a Forward-Looking and Functional Account ................. 152 Jai Galliott, Macquarie University, Australia Chapter 9 Ethical Responsibilities of Preserving Academicians in an Age of Mechanized Learning: Balancing the Demands of Educating at Capacity and Preserving Human Interactivity ................... 166 James E. Willis III, Indiana University, USA Viktoria Alane Strunk, Independent Scholar, USA Section 5 Wrapping Things Up, then Unwrapping Them Again: Integral Visions of Morality in a Technological World, Over Evolutionary Time, with Revolutionary Means, and with Open Questions about the Final Purpose of It All Chapter 10 Bridging Two Realms of Machine Ethics ........................................................................................... 197 Luís Moniz Pereira, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal Ari Saptawijaya, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal & Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia Chapter 11 Robots in Warfare and the Occultation of the Existential Nature of Violence ................................... 225 Rick Searle, IEET, USA Chapter 12 Self-Referential Complex Systems and Aristotle’s Four Causes ........................................................ 239 Aleksandar Malecic, University of Nis, Serbia Related References .................................................................................................... ........................ 261 Compilation of References .................................................................................................... ........... 292 About the Contributors .................................................................................................... ................ 325 Index .................................................................................................... ............................................... 329 . (shrink)