26 found
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  1. The Ethics of Military Influence Operations.Michael Skerker - 2023 - Conatus 8 (2):589-612.
    This article articulates a framework for normatively assessing influence operations, undertaken by national security institutions. Section I categorizes the vast field of possible types of influence operations according to the communication’s content, its attribution, the rights of the target audience, the communication’s purpose, and its secondary effects. Section II populates these categories with historical examples and section III evaluates these cases with a moral framework. I argue that deceptive or manipulative communications directed at non-liable audiences are presumptively immoral and illegitimate (...)
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  2.  64
    Autonomous weapons systems and the moral equality of combatants.Michael Skerker, Duncan Purves & Ryan Jenkins - 2020 - Ethics and Information Technology 22 (3):197-209.
    To many, the idea of autonomous weapons systems (AWS) killing human beings is grotesque. Yet critics have had difficulty explaining why it should make a significant moral difference if a human combatant is killed by an AWS as opposed to being killed by a human combatant. The purpose of this paper is to explore the roots of various deontological concerns with AWS and to consider whether these concerns are distinct from any concerns that also apply to long-distance, human-guided weaponry. We (...)
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  3. The Rights of Foreign Intelligence Targets.Michael Skerker - 2021 - In Seumas Miller, Mitt Regan & Patrick Walsh (eds.), National Security Intelligence and Ethics. Routledge. pp. 89-106.
    I develop a contractualist theory of just intelligence collection based on the collective moral responsibility to deliver security to a community and use the theory to justify certain kinds of signals interception. I also consider the rights of various intelligence targets like intelligence officers, service personnel, government employees, militants, and family members of all of these groups in order to consider how targets' waivers or forfeitures might create the moral space for just surveillance. Even people who are not doing anything (...)
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  4. Cannibals, Gun-deckers, and Good Idea Fairies: Structural Incentives to Deceive in the Military.Michael Skerker - 2019 - In Michael Skerker, David Whetham & Don Carrick (eds.), Military Virtues. Havant: Howgate Publishing.
    Case studies about institutional pressures encouraging dishonesty in the US Navy.
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  5. A Two Level Account of Executive Authority.Michael Skerker - 2019 - In Claire Oakes Finkelstein & Michael Skerker (eds.), Sovereignty and the New Executive Authority. Oxford University Press.
    The suite of secretive national security programs initiated in the US since 9/11 has created debate not only about the merits of targeted killing, torture, secret detention, cyberwar, global signals intercepts, and data-mining, but about the very secrecy in which these programs were conceived, debated by government officials, and implemented. Law must be revealed to those who are expected to comply with its demands. Law is a mere pretext for coercion if the laws permitting the government to coerce people for (...)
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  6.  13
    Military Virtues.Michael Skerker, David Whetham & Don Carrick (eds.) - 2019 - Havant: Howgate Publishing.
    At a minimum, military professionals need to have a clear and working knowledge of the ethical decisions that underpin their profession in order to evaluate situations quickly. In the search for such clarity, this volume identifies 14 key virtues of the military professional and through opening commentaries and real world examples of those virtues in practice, it provides guidance for service personnel at every stage of their career.
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  7.  66
    Just war criteria and the new face of war: Human shields, manufactured martyrs, and little boys with stones.Michael Skerker - 2004 - Journal of Military Ethics 3 (1):27-39.
    This article applies jus in bello criteria to a relatively novel tactic in asymmetrical warfare: the attempt by a conventionally weaker force to shape the conditions of combat so that the (morally scrupulous) stronger force cannot advance without violating the rules of war. The weaker side accomplishes this by placing its own civilian population before the attacking force: by encouraging or forcing civilians to be human shields, by launching attacks from civilian areas, by provoking reprisal massacres, by creating humanitarian disasters, (...)
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  8. Individual Responsibility for Collective Actions.Michael Skerker - 2020 - In Saba Bazargan-Forward & Deborah Tollefsen (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Collective Responsibility. Routledge.
    This chapter will develop standards for assessing individual moral responsibility for collective action. In some cases, these standards expand a person’s responsibility beyond what she or he would be responsible for if performing the same physical behavior outside of a group setting. I will argue that structural differences between two ideal types of groups— organizations and goal- oriented collectives— largely determine the baseline moral responsibility of group members for the group’s collective action. (Group members can be more or less responsible (...)
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  9.  30
    An Ethics of Interrogation.Michael Skerker - 2010 - University of Chicago Press.
    The act of interrogation, and the debate over its use, pervades our culture, whether through fictionalized depictions in movies and television or discussions of real-life interrogations on the news. But despite daily mentions of the practice in the media, there is a lack of informed commentary on its moral implications. Moving beyond the narrow focus on torture that has characterized most work on the subject, _An Ethics of Interrogation_ is the first book to fully address this complex issue. In this (...)
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  10. What can be asked of Interrogators?”.Michael Skerker - 2020 - In Interrogation and Torture: Efficacy, Morality, and Law. Oxford, UK:
    The article assesses different models of professional ethics and develops a model which sees professional imperatives as the institutionally-guided expression of foundational moral principles. This article uses the model to assess the moral pressures placed on interrogators in undercover operations in which a detective poses as a suspect in pre-arraignment holding. While highly effective, the level of empathetic rapport required risks incurring compassion fatigue and burn out on the part of detectives.
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  11. Seeking a Variable Standard of Individual Moral Responsibility in Organizations.Michael Skerker - 2014 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 17 (2):209-222.
    Relatively few authors attempt to assess individuals’ moral responsibility for collective action within organizations. I draw on fairly technical recent work by Seamus Miller, Christopher Kutz, and Tracy Isaacs in the field of collective responsibility to see what normative lessons can be prepared for people considering entry into large hierarchical, compartmentalized organizations like businesses or the military. I will defend a view shared by Isaacs that group members’ responsibility for collective action depends on intentions to contribute to particular collective actions, (...)
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  12. Nussbaum's Capabilities Approach and Religion.Michael Skerker - 2004 - Journal of Religion 84 (3):379-409.
    An assessment of Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach with respect to religion. I contend that her contribution to John Rawls's project of political-liberalism would be less accommodating of religion, specifically illiberal religions, than it desires to be. This feature weakens the capabilities approach as a foundation for inclusive and stable political institutions in pluralistic societies.
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  13. Intelligence ethics and non-coercive interrogation.Michael Skerker - 2007 - Defense Intelligence Journal 16 (1):61-76.
    This paper will address the moral implications of non-coercive interrogations in intelligence contexts. U.S. Army and CIA interrogation manuals define non-coercive interrogation as interrogation which avoids the use of physical pressure, relying instead on oral gambits. These methods, including some that involve deceit and emotional manipulation, would be mostly familiar to viewers of TV police dramas. As I see it, there are two questions that need be answered relevant to this subject. First, under what circumstances, if any, may a state (...)
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  14. Moral Implications of Data-Mining, Key-word Searches, and Targeted Electronic Surveillance.Michael Skerker - 2015 - In Bradley J. Strawser, Fritz Allhoff & Adam Henschke (eds.), Binary Bullets.
    This chapter addresses the morality of two types of national security electronic surveillance (SIGINT) programs: the analysis of communication “metadata” and dragnet searches for keywords in electronic communication. The chapter develops a standard for assessing coercive government action based on respect for the autonomy of inhabitants of liberal states and argues that both types of SIGINT can potentially meet this standard. That said, the collection of metadata creates opportunities for abuse of power, and so judgments about the trustworthiness and competence (...)
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  15. Jesus and Mars: The Christian Just War Tradition.Michael Skerker - 2008 - In David Linnan (ed.), Enemy Combatants, Terrorism, and Armed Conflict Law.
    A brief overview of the Christian just war tradition, with case studies.
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  16. The Rights of Irregular Combatants.Michael Skerker - 2007 - International Journal of Intelligence Ethics 16 (1).
    This article discusses the rights enjoyed by irregular combatants in detention, that is, members of organized groups (who may be fighting an insurgency or engaging in terror attacks) who fail to qualify for POW status. The paradigmatic example of such a detainee would be an al-Qaeda agent.
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  17. Compassion for Enemies.Michael Skerker & John Sattler - 2019 - In Michael Skerker, David Whetham & Don Carrick (eds.), Military Virtues. Havant: Howgate Publishing.
    A case study exploring the importance of compassion for enemies appealing to a series of targeting decisions, co-written with the senior Marine in Iraq in 2003-4.
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  18. Military Virtues.Michael Skerker, Donald G. Carrick & David Whetham (eds.) - 2019 - Howgate Publishing Limited.
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  19.  6
    (1 other version)Sovereignty and the New Executive Authority.Claire Oakes Finkelstein & Michael Skerker (eds.) - 2018 - Oxford University Press.
    This volume explores moral and legal issues relating to sovereignty by addressing foundational questions about its nature, examining state sovereignty between states, and dealing with post 9/11 developments in the U.S., potentially destabilizing received views of democratic sovereignty. With essays addressing foundational, state and international sovereignty, the book focuses on Post 9/11 developments including the profusion of secret national security programs, including those pertaining to the interrogation, rendition, and detention of terror suspects; signal intercepts and meta-data analysis; and targeted killing (...)
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  20.  52
    Ethics of Spying: A Reader for the Intelligence Professional, vol. I.Joel H. Rosenthal, J. E. Drexel Godfrey, R. V. Jones, Arthur S. Hulnick, David W. Mattausch, Kent Pekel, Tony Pfaff, John P. Langan, John B. Chomeau, Anne C. Rudolph, Fritz Allhoff, Michael Skerker, Robert M. Gates, Andrew Wilkie, James Ernest Roscoe & Lincoln P. Bloomfield Jr (eds.) - 2006 - Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
    This is the first book to offer the best essays, articles, and speeches on ethics and intelligence that demonstrate the complex moral dilemmas in intelligence collection, analysis, and operations. Some are recently declassified and never before published, and all are written by authors whose backgrounds are as varied as their insights, including Robert M. Gates, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; John P. Langan, the Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Professor of Catholic Social Thought at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown (...)
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  21.  30
    Cyber Warfare Ethics.Michael Skerker & David Whetham (eds.) - 2021 - Howgate Publishing.
    Cyber technology gives states the ability to accomplish effects that once required kinetic action. These effects can now be achieved with cyber means in a manner that is covert, deniable, cheap, and technologically feasible for many governments. In some cases, cyber means are morally preferable to conventional military operations, but in other cases, cyber's unique qualities can lead to greater mischief than governments would have chanced using kinetic means. This volume addresses the applicability of traditional military ethics to cyber operations, (...)
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  22. Interrogation and Torture: Efficacy, Morality, and Law.Michael Skerker (ed.) - 2020 - Oxford, UK:
     
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  23. Pragmatism, Pluralism, and the Salience of Doubt.Michael Skerker - 2004 - Dissertation, The University of Chicago
    This dissertation asks how moral disputes are to be resolved between adherents of different moral systems. Given that a practice positively described in one moral vocabulary may be negatively described in another, ethicists have often sought to find or design a neutral, inclusive meta-norm to judge the worth of a particular practice. I argue ethicists should not attempt to define or describe what is common to human beings, to moral claims, or to moral systems when considering dilemmas occasioned by moral (...)
     
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  24.  13
    Spying Through a Glass Darkly.Michael Skerker - 2023 - Philosophical Quarterly 73 (3):905-908.
    Cécile Fabre's Spying Through a Glass Darkly is a valuable philosophical contribution to a little-studied subject: the ethics of espionage. Compared to the ethi.
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  25.  33
    The Moral Status of Combatants: A New Theory of Just War.Michael Skerker - 2020 - London: Routledge.
    This book develops a new contractualist foundation for just war theory, which defends the traditional view of the moral equality of combatants and associated egalitarian moral norms. -/- Traditionally it has been viewed that combatants on both sides of a war have the same right to fight, irrespective of the justice of their cause, and both sides must observe the same restrictions on the use of force, especially prohibitions on targeting noncombatants. Revisionist philosophers have argued that combatants on the unjust (...)
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  26.  27
    Principled Spying: The Ethics of Secret Intelligence, David Omand and Mark Phythian , 304 pp., $32.95 cloth, $32.95 eBook. [REVIEW]Michael Skerker - 2018 - Ethics and International Affairs 32 (4):509-511.
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