22 found
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  1. A Metaphysics of Dehumanization.Suzy Killmister - 2023 - Philosophers' Imprint 23.
    Most contemporary accounts of dehumanization construe it either as a psychological phenomenon of seeing the other as non-human, or as as an interpersonal phenomenon of failing to treat the other as they are entitled qua moral agent. In this paper I offer an alternative way of thinking about dehumanization. Drawing on recent work in social metaphysics, I argue that we can productively think of the human as a social kind, and correspondingly of dehumanization as a process of excommunication from that (...)
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  2. Dignity: Not Such a Useless Concept.Suzy Killmister - 2010 - Journal of Medical Ethics 36 (3):160-164.
    In her 2003 article in the British Medical Journal, Ruth Macklin provocatively declared dignity to be a useless concept: either a vague restatement of other more precise values, such as autonomy or respect for persons, or an empty slogan. A recent response to Macklin has challenged this claim. Doris Schroeder attempts to rescue dignity by positing four distinct concepts that fall under the one umbrella term. She argues that much of the confusion surrounding dignity is due to the lack of (...)
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  3.  50
    Constructing Moral Equality.Suzy Killmister - 2023 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 9 (4):636-654.
    Moral equality—the idea that ‘we’ all have equal moral worth, our interests ought to count for the same, and we possess the same bundle of basic rights—is one of the most central principles of liberal thought, being regularly drawn on as a presupposition of moral and political inquiry. Perhaps because it is so often relied on as a presupposition, however, moral equality is more often assumed than argued for. When moral equality is argued for, the most common tactic is to (...)
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  4. Dignity: personal, social, human.Suzy Killmister - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (8):2063-2082.
    The goal of this paper is to sketch and defend a novel conception of dignity. I begin by offering three desiderata that a theory of dignity should be able to satisfy: it should be able to explain why all human beings are owed respect, and what kind of respect we are owed; it should be able to explain how acts such as torture damage dignity, and what kinds of harms this brings about; and finally, it should be able to explain (...)
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  5. Autonomy and false beliefs.Suzy Killmister - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 164 (2):513-531.
    The majority of current attention on the question of autonomy has focused on the internal reflection of the agent. The quality of an agent’s reflection on her potential action (or motivating desire or value) is taken to determine whether or not that action is autonomous. In this paper, I argue that there is something missing in most of these contemporary accounts of autonomy. By focusing overwhelmingly on the way in which the agent reflects, such accounts overlook the importance of what (...)
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  6.  40
    ‘I Am a Man’: Countering Oppression through Appeal to Kind Membership.Suzy Killmister - 2023 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 40 (5):919-935.
    All too often, social kinds function as sites of oppression. To be a woman, to be Black, to be trans – each, in its own way, situates someone at the lower end of a social hierarchy. Membership in such groups thus constitutes a liability: notwithstanding the goods people draw from sharing in these identities, they also stand at perpetual risk of those same identities exposing them to significant harm. What, if anything, can members of oppressed groups do to counter that (...)
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  7. Autonomy and the Problem of Socialization.Suzy Killmister - 2013 - Social Theory and Practice 39 (1):95-119.
    One of the more intractable problems in the debate over autonomy is how we should distinguish autonomy-enhancing from autonomy-compromising forms of socialization. In this paper I first survey a range of theories of autonomy, from the procedural through to the substantive, and argue that none offers sufficient resources to resolve the problem of socialization. In the second half of the paper I develop an alternative theory that can both differentiate benign from pernicious socialization and, more importantly, provide an explanation for (...)
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  8. Remote weaponry: The ethical implications.Suzy Killmister - 2008 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 25 (2):121–133.
    The nature of warfare is changing. Increasingly, developments in military technology are removing soldiers from the battlefield, enabling war to be waged from afar. Bombs can be dropped from unmanned drones flying above the range of retaliation. Missiles can be launched, at minimal cost, from ships 200 miles to sea. Micro Air Vehicles, or 'WASPS', will soon be able to lethally attack enemy soldiers. Though still in the developmental stage, progress is rapidly being made towards autonomous weaponry capable of selecting, (...)
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  9. Group-Differentiated Rights and the Problem of Membership.Suzy Killmister - 2011 - Social Theory and Practice 37 (2):227-255.
    Justifications of group-differentiated rights commonly overlook a crucial practical consideration: if rights are to be allocated on the basis of group membership, how should we determine which individuals belong to which group? Assuming that social identities are fixed and transparent runs the risk of creating further injustices, whilst acknowledging that social groups are porous and heterogeneous runs the risk of rendering group-differentiated rights impracticable. In this paper, I develop a schema for determining group membership which avoids both horns of this (...)
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  10.  19
    Supplementing the capabilities approach.Suzy Killmister - 2022 - Journal of Medical Ethics 48 (12):977-978.
    Soofi makes a persuasive case that a modified version of Nussbaum’s capabilities approach can be used to develop effective care guidelines for persons with dementia. 1 I agree with Soofi that, so elaborated, the capabilities approach can avoid the four problems that are typically taken to beset dignitarian theories—redundancy, exclusion, speciesism and vagueness. Moreover, I do not seek to challenge the utility of the care guidelines Soofi derives from the capabilities approach—they are clear, practicable and appropriately wide-ranging. I do, however, (...)
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  11.  3
    Taking the measure of autonomy: a four-dimensional theory of self-governance.Suzy Killmister - 2018 - New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
    Introduction -- Self-definition -- Self-realisation -- Self-unification -- Self-constitution -- Application -- The autonomy of agents -- Paternalism, consent, and moral responsibility -- Autonomy under oppression -- Aids to autonomy.
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  12. Autonomy, Liberalism, and Anti-Perfectionism.Suzy Killmister - 2013 - Res Publica 19 (4):353-369.
    John Christman has recently objected to substantive conceptions of autonomy on the grounds that they introduce unwanted perfectionism into political thinking. I defend substantive conceptions of autonomy against Christman’s critique on two fronts. First, I defend substantive conceptions of autonomy against the charge that their utilisation in political theory would result in the inappropriate exclusion from democratic respect of individuals in oppressive relations. Second, I defend substantive conceptions of autonomy from the charge that they fail the ‘endorsement constraint’, i.e. that (...)
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  13. Autonomy and Dignity.Suzy Killmister - 2022 - In Ben Colburn (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Autonomy. New York, NY: Routledge.
    Like the ‘thoughts and prayers’ so commonly offered by politicians in the aftermath of disaster, it is incredibly common to hear ‘autonomy and dignity’ invoked together in response to some threat to human wellbeing. As such, it seems natural to assume they must bear some kind of relation to one another. But are they merely two core human interests, that happen to be vulnerable to the same kinds of threat? Or are they interrelated in a deeper way? What I aim (...)
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  14. (1 other version)The Woody Allen Puzzle: How 'Authentic Alienation' Complicates Autonomy.Suzy Killmister - 2014 - Noûs 48 (2):729-747.
    Theories of autonomy commonly make reference to some form of endorsement: an action is autonomous insofar as the agent has a second-order desire towards the motivating desire, or takes it to be a reason for action, or is not alienated from it. In this paper I argue that all such theories have difficulty accounting for certain kinds of agents, what I call ‘Woody Allen cases’. In order to make sense of such cases, I suggest, it is necessary to disambiguate two (...)
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  15. Paternalism and autonomy.Suzy Killmister - 2018 - In Kalle Grill & Jason Hanna (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Paternalism. New York: Routledge.
     
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  16. The Human in Human Rights.Suzy Killmister - forthcoming - In Jessica Gienow-Hecht, Sönke Kunkel & Sebastian Jobs (eds.), Visions of Humanity. Berghahn Books.
    This chapter interrogates the human in human rights. It first takes issue with the common assumption that to be human just is to be a member of the species homo sapiens, and that this suffices for possession of human rights. Such an assumption is problematic because it presupposes a unique ‘essence’ possessed by all and only human beings, which in turn functions to exclude certain individuals from the realm of the human, and presents a culturally-specific vision of humanity as if (...)
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  17.  34
    : Kantian Ethics, Dignity and Perfection.Suzy Killmister - 2023 - Ethics 133 (3):420-424.
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  18. Why Group Membership Matters; A Critical Typology.Suzy Killmister - forthcoming - Ethnicities.
    The question of why group-differentiated rights might be a requirement of justice has been a central focus of identity politics in recent decades. I attempt to bring some clarity to this discussion by proposing a typology to track the various ways in which individuals can be harmed or benefited as a consequence of their membership in social groups. It is the well-being of individuals that group-differentiated rights should be understood as protecting, and so clarity on the relationship between group membership (...)
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  19.  95
    Dignity, Torture, and Human Rights.Suzy Killmister - 2016 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (5):1087-1101.
    This paper focuses on a distinct puzzle for understanding the relationship between dignity and human rights. The puzzle is that dignity appears to enter human rights theory in two distinct roles: on the one hand, dignity is commonly pointed to as the foundation of human rights, i.e. that in virtue of which we have human rights. On the other hand, dignity is commonly pointed to as that which is at risk in a subset of human rights, paradigmatically torture. But how (...)
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  20.  19
    Taking the Measure of Autonomy: Self-Definition, Self-Realisation, and Self-Unification.Suzy Killmister - 2017 - New York: Routledge.
    Introduction -- Self-definition -- Self-realisation -- Self-unification -- Self-constitution -- Application -- The autonomy of agents -- Paternalism, consent, and moral responsibility -- Autonomy under oppression -- Aids to autonomy.
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  21.  15
    Dignity: Its History and Meaning by Michael Rosen, 2012 Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Pressxvii + 176pp, £16.95 (hb). [REVIEW]Suzy Killmister - 2012 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 29 (4):380-381.
  22.  41
    The philosophy of war and peace. [REVIEW]Suzy Killmister - 2008 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (4):697 – 698.
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