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Seth Lazar [50]Seth R. M. Lazar [1]
  1. Necessity in Self-Defense and War.Seth Lazar - 2012 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 40 (1):3-44.
    It is generally agreed that using lethal or otherwise serious force in self-defense is justified only when three conditions are satisfied: first, there are some grounds for the defender to give priority to his own interests over those of the attacker (whether because the attacker has lost the protection of his right to life, for example, or because of the defender’s prerogative to prefer himself to others); second, the harm used is proportionate to the threat thereby averted; third, the harm (...)
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  2. The responsibility dilemma for killing in war: A review essay.Seth Lazar - 2010 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 38 (2):180-213.
    Killing in War presents the Moral Equality of Combatants with serious, and in my view insurmountable problems. Absent some novel defense, this thesis is now very difficult to sustain. But this success is counterbalanced by the strikingly revisionist implications of McMahan’s account of the underlying morality of killing in war, which forces us into one of two unattractive positions, contingent pacifism, or near-total war. In this article, I have argued that his efforts to mitigate these controversial implications fail. The reader (...)
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  3. Associative Duties and the Ethics of Killing in War.Seth Lazar - 2013 - Journal of Practical Ethics 1 (1):3-48.
    this paper advances a novel account of part of what justifies killing in war, grounded in the duties we owe to our loved ones to protect them from the severe harms with which war threatens them. It discusses the foundations of associative duties, then identifies the sorts of relationships, and the specific duties that they ground, which can be relevant to the ethics of war. It explains how those associa- tive duties can justify killing in theory—in particular how they can (...)
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  4. Limited Aggregation and Risk.Seth Lazar - 2018 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 46 (2):117-159.
    Many of us believe (1) Saving a life is more important than averting any number of headaches. But what about risky cases? Surely: (2) In a single choice, if the risk of death is low enough, and the number of headaches at stake high enough, one should avert the headaches rather than avert the risk of death. And yet, if we will face enough iterations of cases like that in (2), in the long run some of those small risks of (...)
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  5. What’s Wrong with Automated Influence.Claire Benn & Seth Lazar - 2022 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 52 (1):125-148.
    Automated Influence is the use of Artificial Intelligence to collect, integrate, and analyse people’s data in order to deliver targeted interventions that shape their behaviour. We consider three central objections against Automated Influence, focusing on privacy, exploitation, and manipulation, showing in each case how a structural version of that objection has more purchase than its interactional counterpart. By rejecting the interactional focus of “AI Ethics” in favour of a more structural, political philosophy of AI, we show that the real problem (...)
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  6.  89
    On the site of predictive justice.Seth Lazar & Jake Stone - 2024 - Noûs 58 (3):730-754.
    Optimism about our ability to enhance societal decision‐making by leaning on Machine Learning (ML) for cheap, accurate predictions has palled in recent years, as these ‘cheap’ predictions have come at significant social cost, contributing to systematic harms suffered by already disadvantaged populations. But what precisely goes wrong when ML goes wrong? We argue that, as well as more obvious concerns about the downstream effects of ML‐based decision‐making, there can be moral grounds for the criticism of these predictions themselves. We introduce (...)
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  7. Axiological Absolutism and Risk.Seth Lazar & Chad Lee-Stronach - 2019 - Noûs 53 (1):97-113.
    Consider the following claim: given the choice between saving a life and preventing any number of people from temporarily experiencing a mild headache, you should always save the life. Many moral theorists accept this claim. In doing so, they commit themselves to some form of ‘moral absolutism’: the view that there are some moral considerations that cannot be outweighed by any number of lesser moral considerations. In contexts of certainty, it is clear what moral absolutism requires of you. However, what (...)
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  8. Risky Killing: How Risks Worsen Violations of Objective Rights.Seth Lazar - 2019 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 16 (1):1-26.
    I argue that riskier killings of innocent people are, other things equal, objectively worse than less risky killings. I ground these views in considerations of disrespect and security. Killing someone more riskily shows greater disrespect for him by more grievously undervaluing his standing and interests, and more seriously undermines his security by exposing a disposition to harm him across all counterfactual scenarios in which the probability of killing an innocent person is that high or less. I argue that the salient (...)
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  9.  62
    Sparing Civilians.Seth Lazar - 2015 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
    Killing civilians is worse than killing soldiers. If any moral principle commands near universal assent, this one does. Few moral principles have been more widely and more viscerally affirmed. And yet, in recent years it has faced a rising tide of dissent. Political and military leaders seeking to slip the constraints of the laws of war have cavilled and qualified. Their complaints have been unwittingly aided by philosophers who, rebuilding just war theory from its foundations, have concluded that this principle (...)
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  10. The Justification of Associative Duties.Seth Lazar - 2016 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 13 (1):28-55.
    People often think that their special relationships with family, friends, comrades and compatriots, can ground moral reasons. Among these reasons, they understand some to be duties – pro tanto requirements that have genuine weight when they conflict with other considerations. In this paper I ask: what is the underlying moral structure of associative duties? I first consider and reject the orthodox Teleological Welfarist account, which first observes that special relationships are fundamental for human well-being, then claims that we cannot have (...)
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  11. Deontological Decision Theory and Agent-Centered Options.Seth Lazar - 2017 - Ethics 127 (3):579-609.
    Deontologists have long been upbraided for lacking an account of justified decision- making under risk and uncertainty. One response is to develop a deontological decision theory—a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for an act’s being permissible given an agent’s imperfect information. In this article, I show that deontologists can make more use of regular decision theory than some might have thought, but that we must adapt decision theory to accommodate agent- centered options—permissions to favor or sacrifice our own interests, (...)
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  12. Responsibility, Risk, and Killing in Self‐Defense.Seth Lazar - 2009 - Ethics 119 (4):699-728.
    I try to show that agent responsibility is an inadequate basis for the attribution of liability, by discrediting the Risk Argument and showing how the Responsibility Argument in fact collapses into the Risk Argument. I have concentrated on undermining these as philosophical theories of self-defense, although I at times note that our theory of self-defense should not be predicated on assumptions that are inapplicable to the context of war. The potential combatant, I conclude, should not look to the agency view (...)
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  13. In dubious battle: uncertainty and the ethics of killing.Seth Lazar - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (4):859-883.
    How should deontologists concerned with the ethics of killing apply their moral theory when we don’t know all the facts relevant to the permissibility of our action? Though the stakes couldn’t be higher, and uncertainty is endemic where killing is concerned, few deontologists have an answer to this question. In this paper I canvass two possibilities: that we should apply a threshold standard, equivalent to the ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ standard applied for criminal punishment; and that we should fit our (...)
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  14. National Defence, Self Defence, and the Problem of Political Aggression.Seth Lazar - 2014 - In Cécile Fabre & Seth Lazar (eds.), The Morality of Defensive War. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press. pp. 10-38.
    Wars are large-scale conflicts between organized groups of belligerents, which involve suffering, devastation, and brutality unlike almost anything else in human experience. Whatever one’s other beliefs about morality, all should agree that the horrors of war are all but unconscionable, and that warfare can be justified only if we have some compel- ling account of what is worth fighting for, which can justify contributing, as individu- als and as groups, to this calamitous endeavour. Although this question should obviously be central (...)
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  15. Duty and Doubt.Seth Lazar - 2020 - Journal of Practical Ethics 8 (1):28-55.
    Deontologists have been slow to address decision-making under risk and uncertainty, no doubt because the standard approaches to non-moral decision theory appear superficially similar to consequentialist moral reasoning. I identify some central tenets of simple decision theory and show that they should not put deontologists off, before showing where we should go next to develop a comprehensive deontological decision theory.
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  16. Legitimacy, Authority, and the Political Value of Explanations.Seth Lazar - manuscript
    Here is my thesis (and the outline of this paper). Increasingly secret, complex and inscrutable computational systems are being used to intensify existing power relations, and to create new ones (Section II). To be all-things-considered morally permissible, new, or newly intense, power relations must in general meet standards of procedural legitimacy and proper authority (Section III). Legitimacy and authority constitutively depend, in turn, on a publicity requirement: reasonably competent members of the political community in which power is being exercised must (...)
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  17. Just War Theory: Revisionists Vs Traditionalists.Seth Lazar - 2017 - Annual Review of Political Science 20:37-54.
    Contemporary just war theory is divided into two broad camps: revisionists and traditionalists. Traditionalists seek to provide moral foundations for something close to current international law, and in particular the laws of armed conflict. Although they propose improvements, they do so cautiously. Revisionists argue that international law is at best a pragmatic fiction—it lacks deeper moral foundations. In this article, I present the contemporary history of analytical just war theory, from the origins of contemporary traditionalist just war theory in Michael (...)
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  18.  89
    Authorization and The Morality of War.Seth Lazar - 2016 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94 (2):211-226.
    Why does it matter that those who fight wars be authorized by the communities on whose behalf they claim to fight? I argue that lacking authorization generates a moral cost, which counts against a war's proportionality, and that having authorization allows the transfer of reasons from the members of the community to those who fight, which makes the war more likely to be proportionate. If democratic states are better able than non-democratic states and sub-state groups to gain their community's authorization, (...)
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  19. Supererogation and Optimisation.Christian Barry & Seth Lazar - 2024 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 102 (1):21-36.
    This paper examines three approaches to the relationship between our moral reasons to bear costs for others’ sake before and beyond the call of duty. Symmetry holds that you are required to optimise your beneficial sacrifices even when they are genuinely supererogatory. If you are required to bear a cost C for the sake of a benefit B, when they are the only costs and benefits at stake, you are also conditionally required to bear an additional cost C, for the (...)
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  20. Accommodating Options.Seth Lazar - 2018 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100 (1):233-255.
    Many of us think we have agent-centred options to act suboptimally. Some of these involve favouring our own interests. Others involve sacrificing them. In this paper, I explore three different ways to accommodate agent-centred options in a criterion of objective permissibility. I argue against satisficing and rational pluralism, and in favour of a principle built around sensitivity to personal cost.
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  21.  71
    The Morality of Defensive War.Cécile Fabre & Seth Lazar (eds.) - 2014 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    International law and conventional morality grant that states may stand ready to defend their borders with lethal force. But what grounds the permission to kill for the sake of political sovereignty and territorial integrity? In this book leading theorists address this vexed issue, and set the terms of future debate over national defence.
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  22. Risky Killing and the Ethics of War.Seth Lazar - 2015 - Ethics 126 (1):91-117.
    Killing civilians is worse than killing soldiers. Although this principle is widely affirmed, recent military practice and contemporary just war theory have undermined it. This article argues that killing an innocent person is worse the likelier it was, when you acted, that he would be innocent: riskier killings are worse than less risky killings. In war, killing innocent civilians is almost always riskier than killing innocent soldiers. So killing innocent civilians is worse than killing innocent soldiers. Since almost all civilians (...)
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  23. Moral Status and Agent-Centred Options.Seth Lazar - 2019 - Utilitas 31 (1):83-105.
    If we were required to sacrifice our own interests whenever doing so was best overall, or prohibited from doing so unless it was optimal, then we would be mere sites for the realisation of value. Our interests, not ourselves, would wholly determine what we ought to do. We are not mere sites for the realisation of value — instead we, ourselves, matter unconditionally. So we have options to act suboptimally. These options have limits, grounded in the very same considerations. Though (...)
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  24. Justifying Lockdown.Christian Barry & Seth Lazar - 2020 - Ethics and International Affairs 2020.
    Our aim in this brief essay is not to defend a particular policy or attitude toward lockdown measures in the United States or elsewhere, but to consider the scope and limits of different types of arguments that can be offered for them. Understanding the complexity of these issues will, we hope, go some way to helping us understand each other and our attitudes toward state responses to the pandemic.
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  25.  64
    (1 other version)Deontological decision theory and lesser-evil options.Peter A. Graham & Seth Lazar - 2019 - Synthese 198 (7):6889-6916.
    Normative ethical theories owe us an account of how to evaluate decisions under risk and uncertainty. Deontologists seem at a disadvantage here: our best decision theories seem tailor-made for consequentialism. For example, decision theory enjoins us to always perform our best option; deontology is more permissive. In this paper, we discuss and defend the idea that, when some pro-tanto wrongful act is all-things considered permissible, because it is a ‘lesser evil’, it is often merely permissible, by the lights of deontology. (...)
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  26. A Liberal Defence of (Some) Duties to Compatriots.Seth Lazar - 2010 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 27 (3):246-257.
    This paper asks whether we can defend associative duties to our compatriots that are grounded solely in the relationship of liberal co-citizenship. The sort of duties that are especially salient to this relationship are duties of justice, duties to protect and improve the institutions that constitute that relationship, and a duty to favour the interests of compatriots over those of foreigners. Critics have argued that the liberal conception of citizenship is too insubstantial to sustain these duties — indeed, that it (...)
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  27. Moral Sunk Costs.Seth Lazar - 2018 - The Philosophical Quarterly 68 (273):841–861.
    Suppose that you are trying to pursue a morally worthy goal, but cannot do so without incurring some moral costs. At the outset, you believed that achieving your goal was worth no more than a given moral cost. And suppose that, time having passed, you have wrought only harm and injustice, without advancing your cause. You can now reflect on whether to continue. Your goal is within reach. What's more, you believe you can achieve it by incurring—from this point forward—no (...)
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  28.  75
    Self-ownership and agent-centered options.Seth Lazar - 2019 - Social Philosophy and Policy 36 (2):36-50.
    I argue that agent-centered options to favor and sacrifice one’s own interests are grounded in a particular aspect of self-ownership. Because you own your interests, you are entitled to a say over how they are used. That is, whether those interests count for or against some action is, at least in part, to be determined by your choice. This is not the only plausible argument for agent-centered options. But it has some virtues that other arguments lack.
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  29. The nature and disvalue of injury.Seth Lazar - 2009 - Res Publica 15 (3):289-304.
    This paper explicates a conception of injury as right-violation, which allows us to distinguish between setbacks to interests that should, and should not, be the concern of theories of justice. It begins by introducing a hybrid theory of rights, grounded in (a) the mobilisation of our moral equality to (b) protect our most important interests, and shows how violations of rights are the concern of justice, while setbacks where one of the twin grounds of rights is defeated are not. It (...)
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  30. Debate: Do Associative Duties Really Not Matter? 1.Seth Lazar - 2009 - Journal of Political Philosophy 17 (1):90-101.
    Associative duties are non-contractual duties owed in virtue of a valuable relationship. They hold between lovers, family members, friends, and perhaps compatriots. General duties, by contrast, are owed to people simply in virtue of their humanity: they are grounded in each person’s great and equal moral worth. In this paper, I ask what should be done when we can perform either an associative duty or a general duty, but not both.
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  31. Attention, Moral Skill, and Algorithmic Recommendation.Nick Schuster & Seth Lazar - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies.
    Recommender systems are artificial intelligence technologies, deployed by online platforms, that model our individual preferences and direct our attention to content we’re likely to engage with. As the digital world has become increasingly saturated with information, we’ve become ever more reliant on these tools to efficiently allocate our attention. And our reliance on algorithmic recommendation may, in turn, reshape us as moral agents. While recommender systems could in principle enhance our moral agency by enabling us to cut through the information (...)
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  32. Corrective Justice and the Possibility of Rectification.Seth R. M. Lazar - 2008 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 11 (4):355-368.
    In this paper, I ask how – and whether – the rectification of injury at which corrective justice aims is possible, and by whom it must be performed. I split the injury up into components of harm and wrong, and consider their rectification separately. First, I show that pecuniary compensation for the harm is practically plausible, because money acts as a mediator between the damaged interest and other interests. I then argue that this is also a morally plausible approach, because (...)
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  33.  64
    Anton's Game: Deontological Decision Theory for an Iterated Decision Problem.Seth Lazar - 2017 - Utilitas 29 (1):88-109.
    How should deontologists approach decision-making under uncertainty, for an iterated decision problem? In this paper I explore the shortcomings of a simple expected value approach, using a novel example to raise questions about attitudes to risk, the moral significance of tiny probabilities, the independent moral reasons against imposing risks, the morality of sunk costs, and the role of agent-relativity in iterated decision problems.
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  34. Skepticism about Jus Post Bellum.Seth Lazar - 2012 - In Larry May & Andrew Forcehimes (eds.), Morality, Jus Post Bellum, and International Law. Cambridge University Press. pp. 204-222.
    The burgeoning literature on jus post bellum has repeatedly reaffirmed three positions that strike me as deeply implausible: that in the aftermath of wars, compensation should be a priority; that we should likewise prioritize punishing political leaders and war criminals even in the absence of legitimate multilateral institutions; and that when states justifiably launch armed humanitarian interventions, they become responsible for reconstructing the states into which they have intervened – the so called “Pottery Barn” dictum, “You break it, you own (...)
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  35. Proxy Battles in Just War Theory: Jus in Bello, the Site of Justice, and Feasibility Constraints.Seth Lazar & Laura Valentini - 2017 - In David Sobel, Peter Vallentyne & Steven Wall (eds.), Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, Volume 3. Oxford University Press. pp. 166-193.
    Interest in just war theory has boomed in recent years, as a revisionist school of thought has challenged the orthodoxy of international law, most famously defended by Michael Walzer [1977]. These revisionist critics have targeted the two central principles governing the conduct of war (jus in bello): combatant equality and noncombatant immunity. The first states that combatants face the same permissions and constraints whether their cause is just or unjust. The second protects noncombatants from intentional attack. In response to these (...)
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  36. Authority, Oaths, Contracts, and Uncertainty in War.Seth Lazar - 2015 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 4 (1):52-58.
    Soldiers sign contracts to obey lawful orders; they also swear oaths to this end. The enlistment contract for the Armed Forces of the United States combines both elements: -/- '9a. My enlistment is more than an employment agreement. As a member of the Armed Forces of the United States, I will be: (1) Required to obey all lawful orders and perform all assigned duties … (4) Required upon order to serve in combat or other hazardous situations.' -/- We standardly think (...)
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  37. The Morality and Law of War.Seth Lazar - 2012 - In Andrei Marmor (ed.), Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Law. New York , NY: Routledge. pp. 364-379.
    The revisionist critique of conventional just war theory has undoubtedly scored some important victories. Walzer’s elegantly unified defense of combatant legal equality and noncombatant immunity has been seriously undermined. This critical success has not, however, been matched by positive arguments, which when applied to the messy reality of war would deprive states and soldiers of the permission to fight wars that are plausibly thought to be justified. The appeal to law that is sought to resolve this objection by casting it (...)
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  38. Necessity and Non-Combatant Immunity.Seth Lazar - 2014 - Review of International Studies (Firstview Online) 40 (1):53-76.
    The principle of non-combatant immunity protects non-combatants against intentional attacks in war. It is the most widely endorsed and deeply held moral constraint on the conduct of war. And yet it is difficult to justify. Recent developments in just war theory have undermined the canonical argument in its favour – Michael Walzer's, in Just and Unjust Wars. Some now deny that non-combatant immunity has principled foundations, arguing instead that it is entirely explained by a different principle: that of necessity. In (...)
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  39. Evaluating the Revisionist Critique of Just War Theory.Seth Lazar - 2017 - Daedalus 146 (1):113-124.
    Modern analytical just war theory starts with Michael Walzer's defense of key tenets of the laws of war in his Just and Unjust Wars. Walzer advocates noncombatant immunity, proportionality, and combatant equality: combatants in war must target only combatants; unintentional harms that they inflict on noncombatants must be proportionate to the military objective secured; and combatants who abide by these principles fight permissibly, regardless of their aims. In recent years, the revisionist school of just war theory, led by Jeff McMahan, (...)
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  40.  35
    Strengthening Moral Distinction.Seth Lazar - 2018 - Law and Philosophy 37 (3):327-349.
    The authors in this symposium on Sparing Civilians gave me much to think about; their criticisms have helped me to strengthen the argument for moral distinction, and enhance the moral protection of civilians in war. In this response I address their objections thematically, focusing in turn on each chapter of the book.
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  41. Travel, Friends, and Killing.Seth Lazar - 2016 - In David Edmonds (ed.), Philosophers Take on the World. Oxford University Press UK. pp. 25-27.
    Military recruitment campaigns emphasize adventure, skills and camaraderie but rarely mention the moral complexities of armed conflict. Enlisting in state armed forces poses the risk of being complicit in unjust wars and associated war crimes. For prospective recruits concerned with morality, the decision is challenging. The probability of wrongdoing alone does not settle the matter; many lawful activities increase risks of future wrongdoing. The permissibility of enlisting depends on weighing expectations of doing good versus wrong. -/- Armed forces provide security (...)
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  42.  94
    Complicity, Collectives, and Killing in War.Seth Lazar - 2016 - Law and Philosophy 35 (4):365-389.
    Recent work on the ethics of war has struggled to simultaneously justify two central tenets of international law: the Permission to kill enemy combatants, and the Prohibition on targeting enemy noncombatants. Recently, just war theorists have turned to collectivist considerations as a way out of this problem. In this paper, I reject the argument that all and only unjust combatants are liable to be killed in virtue of their complicity in the wrongful war fought by their side, and that noncombatants (...)
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  43. Introduction.Seth Lazar - 2011 - Ethics 122 (1):8-9.
    McMahan’s book develops each of these themes: rejection of the moral equality of soldiers, introduction and defense of his criterion of liability to lethal attack, and resistance to its unsavory implications for noncombatant immunity. The contributions to this symposium focus on the first two themes. John Gardner and Franc¸ois Tanguay-Renaud make a plea for culpability, testing McMahan’s endorsement of a thinner standard of responsibility for liability, while David Rodin’s paper explores the implications of McMahan’s novel analysis of proportionality in self (...)
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  44. (1 other version)The Oxford Handbook of the Ethics of War.Seth Lazar & Helen Frowe (eds.) - 2017 - Oxford University Press.
    This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online.
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  45.  27
    Introduction.Seth Lazar - 2017 - Ethics 127 (3):576-578.
    We need a moral theory for decision-making with imperfect information; that is, decision-making under what decision theorists call both risk, when we can assign probabilities, and uncertainty, when we cannot. And yet contemporary philosophy has, for the most part, offered a division of labor: ethicists work out what we morally ought to do if we knew all the facts; decision theorists, working quite separately, focus on what we rationally ought to do, given our doubt. In this symposium, we start to (...)
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  46.  5
    Liability and the Ethics of War.Seth Lazar - 2016 - In Christian Coons & Michael Weber (eds.), The Ethics of Self-Defense. New York, NY: Oxford University Press USA.
    The responsibility account of permissible killing in war states that only those responsible for unjustified threats may be intentionally killed in war. In recent papers, Jeff McMahan and Bradley Strawser have defended the responsibility account against an objection that it leads either toward pacifism, according to which force is nearly always unjustified, or towards total war in which combatants need not even respect noncombatant immunity, depending on how much responsibility is required for liability to be killed. This chapter rebuts their (...)
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  47.  16
    Law of war.Seth Lazar - 2012 - In Andrei Marmor (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Law. New York , NY: Routledge. pp. 364.
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  48.  50
    Response: Limiting Defensive Rights.Seth Lazar - 2017 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 34 (1):19-23.
    Arthur Ripstein’s article draws on more resources than I can deploy in this response to it. I will restate what I take to be the central claims of the article, then present a reply. Ripstein does not strictly argue for his view of proportionality in defensive force. Instead he paints a picture of a moral system that one might adopt, and indicates the role of the proportionality constraint therein. So after outlining how I understand that picture, I will draw an (...)
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  49.  93
    War: Essays in Political Philosophy, edited by Larry May with Emily Crookston. [REVIEW]Seth Lazar - 2011 - Mind 120 (479):895-901.
    This collection of essays on the ethics of war brings some of the most recognized names in just war theory together with some less familiar figures, to yield a rounded introduction to a flourishing debate. It is intended to offer both a comprehensive introduction to the field, and a series of original contributions — two goals that are somewhat in tension with one another; the book is more successful as an introduction than in its original contributions.
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