Is there a duty to prosecute grave international crimes? Many have thought so, even if they recognize the obligation to be defeasible. However, the theoretical literature frequently leaves the grounds for such a duty inadequately specified, or unsystematically amalgamated, leaving it unclear which considerations should drive and shape processes of criminal accountability. Further, the circumstance leaves calls to end impunity vulnerable to skeptical worries concerning the risks and costs of punishing perpetrators. I argue that a qualified duty to prosecute (...) can be substantiated on the basis of a single class of reasons, though also that standard justifications of international criminal law (as currently conceived) are not up to the task. The account exploits the expressive dimension of punishment, but locates the central good of criminal accountability in its capacity to appropriately enable an agential stance on the part of subjects in transitional circumstances. It can legitimate, in a way to be specified, hope. The approach also displays the cynicism of an anti‐impunity ethos in the absence of a robust commitment to securing basic human rights in transitional circumstances. (shrink)

Republicans hold that freedom is non-domination rather than non-interference. This entails that any instance of interference that does not involve domination is not freedom-lessening. The case for thinking of freedom as non-domination proceeds mostly by way of a handful of highly compelling cases in which it seems intuitive to say of some person that he or she is unfree despite being in fact free from interference. In this essay, I call attention to a kind of case which directs attention to (...) what seems to me to be a highly counterintuitive element of the republican conception of freedom. (shrink)

An emerging consensus regards domestic amnesties for international crimes as generally inconsistent with international law. This legal consensus rests on a norm against impunity: the chief role of international criminal law, and of the fledgling International Criminal Court , is to end impunity for violators of the worst of criminal acts. But the anti-impunity norm, and the anti-amnesty consensus that has arisen from it, now face serious difficulties. The ICC's role in the ongoing conflict in Northern Uganda (...) illustrates the deadlock that has now emerged between countries wishing to retain the power to use domestic politics and criminal law as tools for negotiation with current or outgoing perpetrators, on the one side, and the ICC's determination to apply a consistent international anti-impunity norm, on the other. The paper argues that the anti-impunity norm itself is based on a narrowly retributivist conception of criminal justice. A broader norm for democratic accountability, by contrast, would continue to prefer prosecutions over amnesties in international law, less for the opportunity for deserved retribution for perpetrators than for the public enactment of the deliberative procedures associated with the rule of law.Keywords: amnesty; impunity; international law; international criminal court. (shrink)

What is the relationship between impunity and economic and social rights? A substantiated expectation of impunity encourages the commission of acts that violate human rights. Using a logistic-multinomial regression model, we find that impunity affects per capita GDP, years of schooling, and life expectancy. An unexpected finding was that different civil and political rights systems, as diverse as those of Norway and Singapore, have similar impacts on both impunity and economic and social rights. Nonetheless, we need (...) to focus on holistic models that strive for protection of all human rights. (shrink)

International criminal law is dedicated to the battle against impunity. However, the concept of impunity lacks clarity. Providing that clarity also reveals challenges for the current state and future prospects of the project of ICL, which this article frames in cosmopolitan terms. The ‘impunity norm’ of ICL is generally presented in a deontic form. It holds that impunity for perpetrators of international crimes is a wrong so profound that states and international bodies have a pro tanto (...) duty to prosecute and punish perpetrators, a duty that cannot be overridden by considerations of cost, including the costs of infringing on the traditionally understood legal sovereignty of states. This deontic reading of the impunity norm is difficult to justify, a fact linked to the waning fortunes of ICL over the past several years. If ICL is to reverse this trend, the impunity norm’s strongly deontic reading should be replaced by a version derived from deliberative principles. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 32.3-4 (2002) 33-59 [Access article in PDF] Amnesty or Impunity? A Preliminary Critique of the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (TRC) Mahmood Mamdani The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa was the fruit of a political compromise whose terms both made possible the Commission and set the limits within which it would work. These limits, in turn, defined the space available (...) to the Commission to interpret its terms of reference and define its agenda. This paper takes the compromise legislation that set up the TRC as a historical given and focuses attention on the TRC's interpretation of its terms of reference.The TRC claimed to be different from its predecessors, whether in Latin America or Eastern Europe. It would practice neither impunity nor vengeance. It was therefore determined to avoid two pitfalls: on the one hand, reconciliation becoming an unprincipled embrace of political evil and, on the other hand, a pursuit of justice so relentless as to turn into revenge. To do so, the Commission was determined to address both "victims" and "perpetrators," not just one or the other.This double determination was first written into the interim constitution that paved the way for the legislation that set up the TRC. First, there would be no blanket amnesty. Amnesty would be conditional. It would not be a group amnesty. Every perpetrator would have to be identified individually, and would have to own up to his or her guilt—the truth—before receiving amnesty from legal prosecution. Second, any victim who is so acknowledged would give up the right to prosecute perpetrators in courts of law. Justice for the victim would thus not be criminal but restorative: acknowledgment would be followed by reparations. In sum, individual amnesty for the perpetrator, truth for the society, and acknowledgement and reparations for the victim—this was the pact built into the legislation that set up the TRC.Since the Act did not clearly define "victim," however, the definition of "perpetrator" was unclear as well. The task of defining "victim" and "perpetrator" was left to the Commission and was the single most important decision that determined the scope and depth of the Commission's work. Without a comprehensive acknowledgment of victims of apartheid, there would be only a limited identification of perpetrators and only a partial understanding of the legal regime that made possible the "crime against humanity." From this perspective, the paper identifies three key limitations in the Commission's Report.First, the TRC individualized the victims of apartheid. Though it acknowledged apartheid as a "crime against humanity" which targeted entire communities for ethnic and racial policing and cleansing, the Commission majority was reluctant to go beyond the formal acknowledgment. The Commission's analysis reduced apartheid from a relationship between the state and entire communities to one between the state and [End Page 33] individuals. Where entire communities were victims of gross violations of rights, the Commission acknowledged only individual victims. If the "crime against humanity" involved a targeting of entire communities for racial and ethnic cleansing and policing, individualizing the victim obliterated this particular—many would argue central—characteristic of apartheid. Limiting the definition of harm and remedy to individuals center-staged political activists as victims of apartheid, as indeed happened with the victim hearings. The consequence was to narrow the TRC perspective to a political reconciliation between state agents and political activists, individual members of a fractured political elite, rather than the "national unity and reconciliation" mandated by the legislation that set it up. To pursue its actual mandate, the TRC needed to broaden its perspective: to work for a social reconciliation between perpetrators and victims required that the relationship between the state and the entire South African people be addressed.Second, by focusing on individuals and obscuring the victimization of communities, the TRC was unable to highlight the bifurcated nature of apartheid as a form of power that governed natives differently from non-natives. If the apartheid state spoke the language of rights to... (shrink)

Resumo Giorgio Agamben tece a genealogia da “vida nua”, no percurso que vai do homo sacer ao Muselmann, do primeiro paradigma da política ocidental à fabricação do morto-vivo, em Auschwitz, como vida insacrificável e impunemente matável. Judith Butler segue argumento semelhante, ao desenvolver o conceito de “vida precária”, com o qual problematiza a separação entre vulnerabilidade universal e formas de produção da precariedade, a distinção entre vidas cujas perdas importam e as indignas de pranto e luto. A finalidade deste artigo (...) consiste em aproximar as concepções dos dois autores, sob a hipótese de que, em ambos, trata-se da fabricação de vidas matáveis, sobre as quais pesa a proibição do luto.Giorgio Agamben weaves the genealogy of “naked Life”, on the path that goes from Homo sacer to Muselmann, from the first paradigm of Western politics to the manufacture of the undead in Auschwitz, as an unexpendable and unpunishable killing life. Judith Butler follows similar argument in developing the concept of “precarious life”, with which problematizes the separation between universal vulnerability and forms of production of precariousness, the distinction between lives whose losses matter and the unworthy of weeping and Mourning. The purpose of this article is to approximate the conceptions of the two authors, under the assumption that in both it is the manufacture of killing lives, on which it weighs the prohibition of grief. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 32.3-4 (2002) 33-59 [Access article in PDF] Amnesty or Impunity? A Preliminary Critique of the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (TRC) Mahmood Mamdani The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa was the fruit of a political compromise whose terms both made possible the Commission and set the limits within which it would work. These limits, in turn, defined the space available (...) to the Commission to interpret its terms of reference and define its agenda. This paper takes the compromise legislation that set up the TRC as a historical given and focuses attention on the TRC's interpretation of its terms of reference.The TRC claimed to be different from its predecessors, whether in Latin America or Eastern Europe. It would practice neither impunity nor vengeance. It was therefore determined to avoid two pitfalls: on the one hand, reconciliation becoming an unprincipled embrace of political evil and, on the other hand, a pursuit of justice so relentless as to turn into revenge. To do so, the Commission was determined to address both "victims" and "perpetrators," not just one or the other.This double determination was first written into the interim constitution that paved the way for the legislation that set up the TRC. First, there would be no blanket amnesty. Amnesty would be conditional. It would not be a group amnesty. Every perpetrator would have to be identified individually, and would have to own up to his or her guilt—the truth—before receiving amnesty from legal prosecution. Second, any victim who is so acknowledged would give up the right to prosecute perpetrators in courts of law. Justice for the victim would thus not be criminal but restorative: acknowledgment would be followed by reparations. In sum, individual amnesty for the perpetrator, truth for the society, and acknowledgement and reparations for the victim—this was the pact built into the legislation that set up the TRC.Since the Act did not clearly define "victim," however, the definition of "perpetrator" was unclear as well. The task of defining "victim" and "perpetrator" was left to the Commission and was the single most important decision that determined the scope and depth of the Commission's work. Without a comprehensive acknowledgment of victims of apartheid, there would be only a limited identification of perpetrators and only a partial understanding of the legal regime that made possible the "crime against humanity." From this perspective, the paper identifies three key limitations in the Commission's Report.First, the TRC individualized the victims of apartheid. Though it acknowledged apartheid as a "crime against humanity" which targeted entire communities for ethnic and racial policing and cleansing, the Commission majority was reluctant to go beyond the formal acknowledgment. The Commission's analysis reduced apartheid from a relationship between the state and entire communities to one between the state and [End Page 33] individuals. Where entire communities were victims of gross violations of rights, the Commission acknowledged only individual victims. If the "crime against humanity" involved a targeting of entire communities for racial and ethnic cleansing and policing, individualizing the victim obliterated this particular—many would argue central—characteristic of apartheid. Limiting the definition of harm and remedy to individuals center-staged political activists as victims of apartheid, as indeed happened with the victim hearings. The consequence was to narrow the TRC perspective to a political reconciliation between state agents and political activists, individual members of a fractured political elite, rather than the "national unity and reconciliation" mandated by the legislation that set it up. To pursue its actual mandate, the TRC needed to broaden its perspective: to work for a social reconciliation between perpetrators and victims required that the relationship between the state and the entire South African people be addressed.Second, by focusing on individuals and obscuring the victimization of communities, the TRC was unable to highlight the bifurcated nature of apartheid as a form of power that governed natives differently from non-natives. If the apartheid state spoke the language of rights to... (shrink)

International criminal law is dedicated to the battle against impunity. However, the concept of impunity lacks clarity. Providing that clarity also reveals challenges for the current state and future prospects of the project of ICL, which this article frames in cosmopolitan terms. The ‘impunity norm’ of ICL is generally presented in a deontic form. It holds that impunity for perpetrators of international crimes is a wrong so profound that states and international bodies have a pro tanto (...) duty to prosecute and punish perpetrators, a duty that cannot be overridden by considerations of cost, including the costs of infringing on the traditionally understood legal sovereignty of states. This deontic reading of the impunity norm is difficult to justify, a fact linked to the waning fortunes of ICL over the past several years. If ICL is to reverse this trend, the impunity norm’s strongly deontic reading should be replaced by a version derived from deliberative principles. (shrink)

I argue that the idea of a freely embraced eternal destiny in hell is deeply incoherent and implies, quite apart from its incoherence, that we are free both to sin with impunity and to defeat God's justice forever.

With its express intention ‘to put an end to impunity’, the International Criminal Court (ICC) faces a substantial challenge in the shape of conditional amnesties granted in future national truth commissions (TCs)—a challenge that invokes fundamental considerations of criminal justice ethics. In this article, I give an account of the challenge, and I consider a possible solution to it presented by Declan Roche. According to this solution the ICC-prosecutor should respect national amnesties and prosecute and punish only those perpetrators (...) who have refused to cooperate with the TC. I argue, however, that this compromise is untenable. As a general rule, if we justify the ICC on grounds of deterrence we should not accept conditional amnesties granted in national TCs. (shrink)

Through the lens of Guatemala’s Jorge Carpio Nicolle case I analyze the mechanisms that preserve impunity in Latin American nations struggling to emerge from violent conflict and embrace, the rule of law. I reveal how the infective influence of parallel powers, the ineffectiveness of the judicial process, and obstructive legal doctrine destroy domestic efforts to prosecute those responsible for human rights violations. The Carpio case exposes the role of international courts in providing justice when domestic courts fail to do (...) so, and it demonstrates the importance of human rights groups in pursuing this justice. (shrink)

What can well-meaning people do about terror and genocide? The more we fight against systems of violence, the further we seem to sink into them. This book explores the lives and letters of ordinary and intellectual Germans who faced the ethical challenges of the Third Reich. Trained in history, literary criticism, philosophy, and theology, its four authors look at the role of myths, lies, non-conformity, irony, and modeling in cultivating a self. They explain how we might use these ordinary strategies (...) of selfhood to bear the burden of historical responsibility and be happy doing so.". (shrink)

Here we will go beyond the variety of violence to show its unity, common points and continuities. For although there are multiple forms of violence, they are interrelated: they define a continuum from trivial to extreme violence. Violence against oneself, things, living things such as plants and animals, other nations, the other, one’s fellow human beings, therefore the violence of society against its members, which returns to self-violence. Another continuum is its spiral development, with violence generating violence and pushing it (...) to grow. Violence can also be learned, we progress ever further in violence: in gangs, in armies, in society... Everyone is capable of violence, sometimes to a good advantage as in self-defence. Here it resides in necessity, that of survival, but in general it is impunity that allows and encourages it. In closed, totalitarian, universes: family, work, hospital, army, state... The proximity and distance between the perpetrator and the victim defines yet another continuity. We will discuss the various elements that contribute to its development. And paradoxically, to see that violence also serves to avoid violence. In this way, evacuating it, refusing it, is in fact feeding it, which makes today’s violence, which is an evolution of previous violence and which prepares and defines tomorrow’s violence. (shrink)

The prosecution of international crimes is a challenge both under international and domestic law. Taking the example of international criminal law (ICL) , the fullest realization of its objectives is influenced by many factors including; (a) the adoption of appropriate laws by states, (b) the adequacy of the ICL framework on definitions of crimes and principles of criminal responsibility, (c) the level of political control and involvement in decision making related to investigation, prosecution or extradition, (d) Problems with exclusion including (...) restrictions on the rights of victims with regard to the proceedings and to reparation, and (e) The application of provisions for amnesties and similar measures of impunity. -/- Over the years, the mandate of States under ICL has expanded. Key reforms under ICL and domestic laws have been led by the above mentioned concerns. The scope of state obligations, in particular, has been shaped by the standards adopted under the ICL framework including the "duty to prosecute" international crimes. The article discusses the normative significance of the "duty to prosecute". (shrink)

Here, I defend the view that there is no sensible way to pin a truth-maker objection on presentism. First, I suggest that if we adopt truth-maker maximalism then the presentist can requisition appropriate ontological resources with impunity. Second, if we deny maximalism, then the presentist can sensibly restrict the truth-maker principle in order to avoid the demand for truth-makers for talk about the non-present.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 44, no. 1. © 2018 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 197 Ashwini Tambe Reckoning with the Silences of #MeToo The past six months have been an important time for US feminism. For women’s studies professors, it’s been heartening to find the world outside our classrooms taking up conversations about sex and power that we’ve been having for decades. In this piece, I will reflect on three questions: What (...) is going on? Why is it happening now? And what forms of feminism have been overlooked in the coverage of the #MeToo movement? I spend the longest time on the third question, because I’m concerned about how #MeToo has advanced a version of public feminism that is, in some ways, out of step with currents in academic feminism. What’s going on? Although feminists have long championed public speak-outs for survivors of sexual violence—whether in Take Back the Night open mics since the 1980s or the workshops also called “MeToo” that Tarana Burke started in Alabama in 2007—the viral force of the hashtag #MeToo in mid-October 2017 took most people by surprise. Within the first twenty-four hours, it had been retweeted half a million times. According to Facebook, nearly 50 percent of US users are friends with someone who posted a message about experiences of assault or harassment. #MeToo was by no means just a US phenomenon: Facebook and Twitter feeds in various parts of the world, notably Sweden, India, and Japan, were rocked for days by this hashtag. Then came the slew of powerful cis-men, largely in the US 198 News and Views media and entertainment industries, who were forced to swiftly resign after allegations of sexual misconduct. This toppling continues and has expanded beyond the media to other industries where reputations matter: politics, music, architecture, and, somewhat belatedly, higher education. In an important way, the ground beneath us has shifted. #MeToo has tilted public sympathy in favor of survivors by changing the default response to belief, rather than suspicion; the hashtag has revealed how widespread sexual coercion is. Why Now? We need to theorize, on a cultural scale, why this movement against sexual harassment and violence in the United States has happened now rather than, say, three years ago, when Bill Cosby was accused by multiple women, or after Roger Ailes, CEO of Fox News, was deposed. #MeToo’s impact may seem sudden, but it is a part of a groundswell in women’s activism since the November 2016 elections. The Women’s March was the largest globally coordinated public gathering in history. The 3-million strong Facebook group Pantsuit Nation saw hundreds of thousands of posts about experiences of misogyny. Unprecedented numbers of women are running for US political office this year. The signature affective note running through this political moment is a fierce rage about the election of Donald Trump. Trump’s impunity, I suggest, serves as a trigger provoking the fury at the heart of #MeToo. There are many reasons to find fault with Trump, but it is distinctly galling that he faced no consequences after acknowledging being a sexual predator. For victims of sexual trauma, it is already painful to watch perpetrators roam free because of how high the burdens of proof are in legal cases. When a person such as Trump is grandly affirmed by an election, it retraumatizes victims. Right after the election, therapists and counseling centers were flooded with patients seeking help with processing past events. The ballast provided by women’s feverish organizing and the instant power of social media has facilitated a collective emboldening. Trump has made the comeuppance of all powerful men feel more urgent. But from the inception of #MeToo, I have also watched its racial and class politics with some wariness: whose pain was being centered, I wondered? A colleague recently asked aloud: is #MeToo a white women’s movement? Another wondered, is this a moral panic? These questions News and Views 199 underline the importance of feminist insights that are overlooked in dominant coverage of the movement. What’s Left Out? Critical race feminism offers important insights when exploring the question of whether this is a white... (shrink)

We have been oversold on the base rate fallacy in probabilistic judgment from an empirical, normative, and methodological standpoint. At the empirical level, a thorough examination of the base rate literature (including the famous lawyer–engineer problem) does not support the conventional wisdom that people routinely ignore base rates. Quite the contrary, the literature shows that base rates are almost always used and that their degree of use depends on task structure and representation. Specifically, base rates play a relatively larger role (...) in tasks where base rates are implicitly learned or can be represented in frequentist terms. Base rates are also used more when they are reliable and relatively more diagnostic than available individuating information. At the normative level, the base rate fallacy should be rejected because few tasks map unambiguously into the narrow framework that is held up as the standard of good decision making. Mechanical applications of Bayes's theorem to identify performance errors are inappropriate when (1) key assumptions of the model are either unchecked or grossly violated, and (2) no attempt is made to identify the decision maker's goals, values, and task assumptions. Methodologically, the current approach is criticized for its failure to consider how the ambiguous, unreliable, and unstable base rates of the real world are and should be used. Where decision makers' assumptions and goals vary, and where performance criteria are complex, the traditional Bayesian standard is insufficient. Even where predictive accuracy is the goal in commonly defined problems, there may be situations (e.g., informationally redundant environments) in which base rates can be ignored with impunity. A more ecologically valid research program is called for. This program should emphasize the development of prescriptive theory in rich, realistic decision environments. (shrink)

A growing number of medical professionals claim a right of conscience, a right to refuse to perform any professional duty they deem immoral—and to do so with impunity. We argue that professionals do not have the unqualified right of conscience. At most they have a highly qualified right. We focus on the claims of pharmacists, since they are the professionals most commonly claiming this right.

Business ethics is a relatively new topic of academic discussion in Latin America. Corruption and impunity came to be serious moral diseases in the region, probably as a result of a long period of dictatorship in most countries. Low ethical standards in the politics have had deep impact on individuals, organizations and economic systems. Excessive consumption, materialism and selfishness, in contrast with real poverty, have been responsible for a sloppiness in attitudes and principles in many Latin American countries. Even (...) though the majority of the population belongs to the Roman Catholic Church, the lack of education has led people to a dichotomy: faith and business practices are often very distant from each other. Several isolated efforts have been done in order to enhance business ethics through education, publications and professional activities. The relationship business-academia has proved to be an excellent initiative for this objective, mainly in Mexico, Brazil and Peru. (shrink)

Care este statutul moral al copiilor? Ce înseamnă egalitatea morală dintre copii şi adulți? Care sunt constrângerile pe care le impune acceptarea acestei egalități în ceea ce priveşte felul în care pot fi tratați copiii în familie sau în societate ? Cine are ce fel de responsabilitate pentru copii ? În capitolul de față voi discuta astfel de întrebări. Voi analiza relația dintre copii, părinți şi stat, în dimensiunea ei practică (felul în care ne raportăm la copii), din punct de (...) vedere legal (constrângerile legale asupra felului în care ne raportăm la copii) şi din punct de vedere moral (cum ar trebui să ne raportăm la copii). Voi începe cu o scurtă incursiune în istoria relațiilor dintre copii, părinți, şi stat, atât din punct de vedere legal, cât şi filosofic. Voi prezenta conceptul de statut moral şi ideea de egalitate morală între copii şi adulți. Voi ilustra schimbările sociale şi legislative în ce priveşte acceptarea statutului moral al copiilor şi a egalității morale între copii şi adulți, folosind exemple din România şi Suedia. Voi examina dinamica dintre aspirațiile legale şi morale la care aderă România în ce priveşte statutul moral al copiilor şi normele sociale despre copii, copilărie, şi familie, care nu sunt întotdeauna în acord cu aceste aspirații. Voi urmări apoi schimbările care au avut loc în ultimele decenii în ce priveşte limitele responsabilității parentale. (shrink)

Since anonymous agents can spread misinformation with impunity, many people advocate for greater accountability for internet speech. This paper provides a veritistic argument that accountability mechanisms can cause significant epistemic problems for internet encyclopedias and social media communities. I show that accountability mechanisms can undermine both the dissemination of true beliefs and the detection of error. Drawing on social psychology and behavioral economics, I suggest alternative mechanisms for increasing the trustworthiness of internet communication.

This article considers two related and fundamental issues about morality in a virtual world. The first is whether the anonymity that is a feature of virtual worlds can shed light upon whether people are moral when they can act with impunity. The second issue is whether there are any moral obligations in a virtual world and if so what they might be. -/- Our reasons for being good are fundamental to understanding what it is that makes us moral or (...) indeed whether any of us truly are moral. Plato grapples with this problem in book two of The Republic where Socrates is challenged by his brothers Adeimantus and Glaucon. They argue that people are moral only because of the costs to them of being immoral; the external constraints of morality. -/- Glaucon asks us to imagine a magical ring that enables its wearers to become invisible and capable of acting anonymously. The ring is in some respects analogous to the possibilities created by online virtual worlds such as Second Life, so the dialogue is our entry point into considering morality within these worlds. These worlds are three dimensional user created environments where people control avatars and live virtual lives. As well as being an important social phenomenon, virtual worlds and what people chose to do in them can shed light on what people will do when they can act without fear of normal sanction. -/- This paper begins by explaining the traditional challenge to morality posed by Plato, relating this to conduct in virtual worlds. Then the paper will consider the following skeptical objection. A precondition of all moral requirements is the ability to act. There are no moral requirements in virtual worlds because they are virtual and it is impossible to act in a virtual world. Because avatars do not have real bodies and the persons controlling avatars are not truly embodied, it is impossible for people to truly act in a virtual world. We will show that it is possible to perform some actions and suggest a number of moral requirements that might plausibly be thought to result. Because avatars cannot feel physical pain or pleasure these moral requirements are interestingly different from those of real life. Hume’s arguments for why we should be moral apply to virtual worlds and we conclude by considering how this explains why morality exists in these environments. (shrink)

The Gelman case entails the conviction of Uruguay for violation of the rights to recognition of legal personality, to life, to personal integrity and to personal liberty; to the family, to the name, to the rights of children and to nationality, to the protection of the family, to judicial guarantees and judicial protection and has failed to comply with the obligation to adapt its domestic law to the American Convention on Human Rights. Protected by the democratic legitimacy of the referendums (...) that validated the Expiry Law, Uruguay has extended impunity for the crimes of the dictatorship by not executing the sentence. The author criticizes the validity of these exculpatory arguments based on various reasons. (shrink)

On 27 March 2014, Loreal Tsingine, a 27-year-old Navajo woman was shot and killed by Austin Shipley, a white male police officer, also 27 years old, who said he was trying to apprehend her for a suspected shoplifting. Shipley was never charged, and the Department of Justice declined to investigate the Winslow police on the matter. This article explores Shipley’s killing of Loreal Tsingine and the police investigation of the shooting as quotidian events in settler colonial states. Police shootings of (...) Indigenous people and the legal response to police use of force (along with everyday settler violence) are a part of the racial terror that is a central part of settler colonialism. Both the shooting and the official narratives of it as a justifiable use of force reveal the psychic and material underpinnings of a settler state, a state that continually imagines and consolidates itself as a community of whites imperiled by Indians among others. White settler violence directed at those imagined as threats lives just beneath the surface of everyday settler life, and importantly, flows through institutions such as policing, embedding itself in everyday professional routines. The extractive relations that are the basis of settler colonialism require and produce white subjects for whom Indigenous lands and bodies are the resource for white identity; policing is one site where white men and women (as well as those aspiring to whiteness), can enact racial hierarchy on behalf of the colonial state with impunity. (shrink)

The theoretical commitments of Rust Cohle, the philosopher detective of True Detective, tend toward nihilism. Cohle appears to be a tough‐minded naturalist. True Detective is a deep enough show that it offers some genuinely penetrating insights into evil and evil personhood. In True Detective evil is Errol William Childress: the "Lawnmower Man" of True Detective, with a yen for torturing, raping, murdering, and ritualistically posing young women. Childress is described as a "green‐eared spaghetti monster". Some philosophers suggest that there is (...) a link between evil people and monsters. Most philosophers agree that being an evil person is qualitatively worse than being a bad person or even a very, very bad person. Cohle does some bad stuff— and with impunity, by his own account— however he is not a pederast and he is not a child killer. That is a qualitative distinction. Childress seems to have killed more people than Cohle; that is a quantitative distinction. (shrink)

There is another sort of ‘defense’ of relativism that I mention in conclusion. Sometimes one finds the view that one is rightly punished for a crime only if they admit committing it, and that it was a crime — something wrongly done: ‘punishment conditional on confession’ is the rule proposed. It might seem that this would give impunity to a criminal hardy enough to deny the fact, or the evil, of her deed; so it would, unless it was also (...) understood that if a person was proved by accepted standards to be the perpetrator of an action agreed to be wrong, the opportunity to admit guilt would extend from open questioning through beating to exquisite torture until confession was extracted (cf. the Chinese customs reflected in the Judge Dee stories of Robert Van Gulik). More often, one finds the view that a person is not refuted unless he admits this, and a view is not refuted — and so is not properly dismissed — unless its proponents concede defeat. A similar view is that all really telling philosophical criticism must be internal or else non-neutral (a view we discussed above).If one can in principle produce a conceptual system from a list of all propositions by following the recipe: for any proposition P include P, or else include not-P, in S, then (providing one adds no constraints concerning consistency) there will be no proposition that will appear in all conceptual systems. If what it is for a proposition to be neutral is for it to appear in all conceptual systems, then no proposition is neutral. But of course, the same recipe that produces this result produces the result that the proposition (P) Some proposition is both true and false appears in some conceptual system which (since the denial of (P) appears in less than all systems and hence is not neutral) is (allegedly) none the worse for that. And the proposition (P1) Conceptual relativism is false appears in some conceptual systems which (since the denial of (P1) appears in less than all systems and hence is not neutral) is none the worse for that. But then what remains of the claim that conceptual relativism is true?Sometimes refuted is used in a person-independent manner: Proposition P is (and always was) refuted by the fact that F uses P is refuted in such a way that it does not entail There is someone who refuted P. Sometimes, of course, it is so used that P is refuted does have that entailment. Even in the latter case, refutation is an epistemological notion, and Person S is refuted does not entail S knows that S is refuted and is compatible with S believes that S is not refuted. The recommendation that we add a psychological component of ‘admits to’ to the epistemological notion ‘being refuted’ seems to have no other ground than the arbitrary one that if we do we shall then be able better to defend relativism.While the recipe for constructing conceptual systems suggested above may seem useful to a relativist — it gives one clear content to ‘neutral proposition’ — it has what must surely seem a defect to the relativist, namely that given it (even with consistency constraints added) there will be no translational incommensurability. For if P is contained in system S, then not-P is expressible in S, and conversely. And the recipe yields the result that for any proposition P, and any system S, S contains either P or else not-P.This, of course, brings out an ambiguity in ‘contains’. In one sense, a system ‘contains (1)’ whatever can be expressed in it. In another, it ‘contains (2)’ whatever, according to it, is true. If it is a complete system without suspense of judgment it contains (1) twice the propositions it contains (2). Further, a system contains (1) lots of propositions it (or its proponent) does not regard as true, and so the fact that a proposition P appears in system S does not mean that P favors S. One often at least can state the conditions of S's falsehood in S, and even prove in S that S is false, where “in” is used in the sense of “contains (1).”Sophisticated relativism, then, seems no more plausible, no more free from inconsistency, and no less open to devastating critique than are its less cultured relatives. Relativism, at least in the varieties discussed here, seems to live up to its unsavory reputation. Since not even translation incommensurability seems to entail lack of cognitive competitiveness, it seems that it will have to be admitted that, regarding apparent disagreement on basic matters — including fundamental religious disagreement — the appearance is also the reality. People do uneliminably disagree, and short of conversion or (what will seem from within the religious perspective in question) some other ‘failure in faith’ (e.g., coming to reject all religious views) will continue to do so. Whatever can be done in terms of common understanding and common humanitarian endeavors must be done without denying the many basic disagreements that there are. And whatever notion of inter-faith dialogue is other than espitemically defective will have to face that fact; for significant dialogue based on self-deception or on falsehood seems not a terribly promising enterprise. (shrink)

There has always been much controversy surrounding property rights in legal and political philosophy. Thinkers such as Plato, Locke, Kant, Hegel and Marx have all offered different views on the idea of property. This collection of essays, written by some of the most eminent scholars in the field, examines the most central issues of property theory from a variety of perspectives. The essays discuss whether property may be dissipated or used imprudently with impunity, and analyse how a person's property (...) should be distributed after death. They survey the economic landscape of intellectual property and show that Locke's celebrated justification for private property falters when it comes to copyrights and patents. They also demonstrate how important it is that institutions of property be carefully justified. The variety and originality of these essays are evidence that the theory of property is one of the most exciting areas of intellectual inquiry in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

We all know what water is, and we often take it for granted. But the spectre of a worldwide water crisis suggests that there might be something fundamentally wrong with the way we think about water. Jamie Linton dives into the history of water as an abstract concept, stripped of its environmental, social, and cultural contexts. Reduced to a scientific abstraction – to mere H20 – this concept has given modern society licence to dam, divert, and manipulate water with apparent (...) impunity. Part of the solution to the water crisis involves reinvesting water with social content, thus altering the way we see water. An original take on a deceptively complex issue, What Is Water? offers a fresh approach to a fundamental problem. (shrink)

With their prospect for causing both novel and known forms of damage, harm and injury, the issue of responsibility has been a recurring theme in the debate concerning autonomous vehicles. Yet, the discussion of responsibility has obscured the finer details both between the underlying concepts of responsibility, and their application to the interaction between human beings and artificial decision-making entities. By developing meaningful distinctions and examining their ramifications, this article contributes to this debate by refining the underlying concepts that together (...) inform the idea of responsibility. Two different approaches are offered to the question of responsibility and autonomous vehicles: targeting and risk distribution. The article then introduces a thought experiment which situates autonomous vehicles within the context of crash optimisation impulses and coordinated or networked decision-making. It argues that guiding ethical frameworks overlook compound or aggregated effects which may arise, and which can lead to subtle forms of structural discrimination. Insofar as such effects remain unrecognised by the legal systems relied upon to remedy them, the potential for societal inequalities is increased and entrenched, situations of injustice and impunity may be unwittingly maintained. This second set of concerns may represent a hitherto overlooked type of responsibility gap arising from inadequate accountability processes capable of challenging systemic risk displacement. (shrink)

This article was developed as part of the forthcoming special issue on "Reparations" for the Journal of Social Philosophy and was accepted (with minor revisions) by the guest editors Christina Nick and Susan Stark in November 2021. The special issue article is available online open access for early view. -/- Abstract: The United Nations Commission on Human Rights acknowledges the Right to Know as part of state obligations to combat impunity and thereby protect and promote human rights in the (...) aftermath of “serious crimes under international law”. In light of such an institutionally acknowledged epistemic right of victims, this paper explores the normative foundations of the idea of epistemic reparation in the aftermath of genocide. I argue that such epistemic reparation requires not only fulfilment of the informational needs of victims, survivors and descendants, including access to knowledge about the violations. By taking into account epistemic injuries, which are part and parcel of genocide, it ought to also re-establish victims’ epistemic standing. This is because genocide is enabled, justified and even prescribed through a genocidal epistemology involving the propagation of falsehoods and misinformation about social reality as well as abuses of epistemic authority and epistemic authoritarianism. Hence, epistemic reparation ought to correct the dysfunctional epistemic practices that underlie and sustain a genocidal epistemology. It thereby provides victims, survivors and descendants with epistemic recognition that has been systematically withdrawn from them, making epistemic reparation a crucial element of restorative justice. (shrink)

This paper focuses on a neglected portion of Plato’s Gorgias from 506c to 513d during Socrates’s discussion with Callicles. I claim that Callicles adopts the view that virtue lies in self-preservation in this part of the dialogue. Such a position allows him to assert the value of rhetoric in civic life by appealing not to the goodness of acting unjustly with impunity, but to the badness of suffering unjustly without remedy. On this view, the benefits of the life of (...) rhetoric depend on the idea that virtue consists in the power to protect oneself from the predations of others. I argue that by challenging this understanding of virtue as self-preservation, Socrates both deprives Callicles of any remaining justification for the rhetorical life in the Gorgias and, at the same time, makes room for his own defense of the life of philosophy. (shrink)

Imagine someone who deliberately provokes someone else into attacking him so that he can harm that person in defending himself against her attack and then claim “self-defense” when brought to court to defend himself for what he has done to her. Should he be allowed to use this defense, even though it’s clear that he has deliberately manipulated his attacker into attacking him precisely in order to be able to harm her with impunity (assuming he were allowed to use (...) the defense and thus escape legal penalties)? This question is the focal point in the paper that follows. I argue first that the case described above is indeed an instance of an “actio libera in causa,” albeit arguably one at the margins of this controversial class of cases. Then, using a view about the justification of self-defense that I have defended elsewhere, I show why I believe that, while the manipulator should not be deprived of the legal right to defend his self-defensive actions in such cases by claiming they were a legitimate matter of self-defense, there is good reason to enact laws that will allow him to be prosecuted, independently of his “self-defense” defense, for manipulating his attacker as he did, thus allowing him to harm her in self-defense and then defend his actions as purely a matter of “self-defense.”. (shrink)

This paper focuses on segmenting digital movie and TV series pirates and on investigating the effectiveness of piracy-combatting measures i.e., legal and educational strategies, in light of these segments. To address these research objectives, two online studies were conducted. First, 1277 valid responses were gathered with an online survey. Four pirate segments were found based on differing combinations of attitude toward piracy, ethical evaluation of piracy and feelings of guilt. The anti-pirate, conflicted pirate, cavalier pirate, and die-hard pirate can be (...) placed on a continuum of increasing pirating frequency, subjective norm, pirating self-efficacy, habit, and decreasing in perceived harm, respectively. The segments also differ in deontological and teleological orientations. Second, in an experimental mixed design, we find that the educational strategy is more effective than the legal strategy in lowering pirating intentions for the conflicted and cavalier pirate. However, both strategies fail at lowering intentions of the die-hard pirate, although perceived harm and perceived impunity were significantly influenced. These findings offer a more profound understanding of pirate segments and how they react differently to piracy-combatting measures. As a result, better strategies can be developed to control digital piracy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ill HUME ON THE MORALITY OF PRINCES "There is a maxim very current in the world," says Hume (Treatise III, ii, sec. 11) "that there is a system of morals calculated for princes, much more free than that which ought to govern private persons. " He interprets the maxim to mean that "the morality of princes... has not the same force as that of private persons, and may lawfully (...) be transgress 'd from a more trivial motive." And he gives as an example: "we must necessarily give a greater indulgence to a prince or minister, who deceives another; than to a private gentleman, who breaks his word of honour" (T 569). This passage, cryptic though it is, makes Hume sound bad. He seems to be a cynic, or a skeptic, or an immoralist, with respect to the morality of nations. Does he think that princes have a special right to act immorally? Even worse is the reason he gives: international relations just don't matter very much, he says. And the chapter in question is not just a self-contained essay more or less tacked on to the Treatise. Hume tries to connect it integrally with his theory of justice. The point of the chapter is not to put forward a view about the morality of international relations (a view Hume himself admits may be found shocking), but to demonstrate the power of the theory of justice by showing how the "maxim current in the world" can be defended upon the theory's principles. The passage has not won approval from recent commentators. One, Marshall Cohen, labels Hume a "moderate skeptic" with regard to international morality and argues vehemently that Hume's position 2 should be condemned as immoral. Cohen, who thinks that there is only one system of morality and that it 112 applies "with equal force to princes and private persons," evidently thinks any system weakening ordinary standards is immoral by definition. He traces Hume's allegedly morally flawed views to what he regards as a deep flaw in Hume's moral theory, namely, his conventionalism. J. L. Mackie and Jonathan Harrison are both considerably more sympathetic to Hume's general position, but nevertheless are critical of the chapter in question. They agree with Hume's observation that international morality is weaker than private. (Harrison points out that people tend to regard breaches of private morality as more serious than breaches of international morality: "A minister may be dismissed for sexual misconduct, although he breaks solemn treaties with other nations with impunity." But, contrary to Hume, they find this weakness deplorable, Harrison arguing that, given the relative amount of harm princes do, the indulgence allowed them is irrational. Harrison in fact at first agrees with Hume: "He is right, too, in suggesting that the obligations of nations to be just in their dealings with one another is [sic] of less force than the obligations of private persons." But after ten pages he has evidently changed his mind: "[with respect to] what Hume says about the comparative force of the morality of princes and the morality of private persons, though it is clear that there is nothing in principle wrong with Hume's view that the former has less force than the latter... it is doubtful whether he is right in saying that the former do in fact have less force than the latter." Like Cohen, who holds that "Injustice among nations should be regarded as being as reprehensible as injustice among individuals," Harrison concludes (more tentatively than Cohen) "my 113 own feeling... is that though Hume is right in thinking that the morality of princes is commonly regarded as being of less force than private morality, he is wrong... in thinking that... they [sic] are of less force." So none of our commentators agree with Hume that international morality not only is, but is properly, weaker than domestic. How did Hume go wrong? Hume argues that international morality is weaker because the interests at stake are less. Where the interests at stake do not matter very much, Hume thinks, it is not so important what people do, and thus the moral obligations involved are weaker. (Hume thinks this idea... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ill HUME ON THE MORALITY OF PRINCES "There is a maxim very current in the world," says Hume (Treatise III, ii, sec. 11) "that there is a system of morals calculated for princes, much more free than that which ought to govern private persons. " He interprets the maxim to mean that "the morality of princes... has not the same force as that of private persons, and may lawfully (...) be transgress 'd from a more trivial motive." And he gives as an example: "we must necessarily give a greater indulgence to a prince or minister, who deceives another; than to a private gentleman, who breaks his word of honour" (T 569). This passage, cryptic though it is, makes Hume sound bad. He seems to be a cynic, or a skeptic, or an immoralist, with respect to the morality of nations. Does he think that princes have a special right to act immorally? Even worse is the reason he gives: international relations just don't matter very much, he says. And the chapter in question is not just a self-contained essay more or less tacked on to the Treatise. Hume tries to connect it integrally with his theory of justice. The point of the chapter is not to put forward a view about the morality of international relations (a view Hume himself admits may be found shocking), but to demonstrate the power of the theory of justice by showing how the "maxim current in the world" can be defended upon the theory's principles. The passage has not won approval from recent commentators. One, Marshall Cohen, labels Hume a "moderate skeptic" with regard to international morality and argues vehemently that Hume's position 2 should be condemned as immoral. Cohen, who thinks that there is only one system of morality and that it 112 applies "with equal force to princes and private persons," evidently thinks any system weakening ordinary standards is immoral by definition. He traces Hume's allegedly morally flawed views to what he regards as a deep flaw in Hume's moral theory, namely, his conventionalism. J. L. Mackie and Jonathan Harrison are both considerably more sympathetic to Hume's general position, but nevertheless are critical of the chapter in question. They agree with Hume's observation that international morality is weaker than private. (Harrison points out that people tend to regard breaches of private morality as more serious than breaches of international morality: "A minister may be dismissed for sexual misconduct, although he breaks solemn treaties with other nations with impunity." But, contrary to Hume, they find this weakness deplorable, Harrison arguing that, given the relative amount of harm princes do, the indulgence allowed them is irrational. Harrison in fact at first agrees with Hume: "He is right, too, in suggesting that the obligations of nations to be just in their dealings with one another is [sic] of less force than the obligations of private persons." But after ten pages he has evidently changed his mind: "[with respect to] what Hume says about the comparative force of the morality of princes and the morality of private persons, though it is clear that there is nothing in principle wrong with Hume's view that the former has less force than the latter... it is doubtful whether he is right in saying that the former do in fact have less force than the latter." Like Cohen, who holds that "Injustice among nations should be regarded as being as reprehensible as injustice among individuals," Harrison concludes (more tentatively than Cohen) "my 113 own feeling... is that though Hume is right in thinking that the morality of princes is commonly regarded as being of less force than private morality, he is wrong... in thinking that... they [sic] are of less force." So none of our commentators agree with Hume that international morality not only is, but is properly, weaker than domestic. How did Hume go wrong? Hume argues that international morality is weaker because the interests at stake are less. Where the interests at stake do not matter very much, Hume thinks, it is not so important what people do, and thus the moral obligations involved are weaker. (Hume thinks this idea... (shrink)

Grassmann n’est pas le premier à créer un nouveau calcul :Möbius, Hamilton, Bellavitis, Cauchy, et bien d’autres l’ont précédé dans cette voie qui témoigne de toute l’importance des mutations subies par l’algèbre et de l’évolution des rapports complexes entretenus entre ce domaine et son « exacte contrepartie » la Géométrie euclidienne : à l’heure où s’élaborent les premières « structures » et les « morphismes », la géométrie euclidienne perd son statut de « critère de vérité » et d’« existence (...) » des entités algébriques, notamment dénoncé par un prétendu « retour à la rigueur ».L’introduction « philosophique », décriée par ses contemporains ne voyant là que « fausse philosophie », ne pouvait être impunément écartée : la « seconde » Ausdehnungslehre de 1862 (A2) — pourtant proposée telle une nouvelle version rédigée conformément au style « souhaité » par son époque — ne conviendra pas plus à ses trop rares lecteurs. Tout lecteur averti reconnaît que A2ne peut être parfaitement entendu sans les nécessaires éclaircissements de A1.Trois points nous paraissent aujourd’hui significatifs :– L’Ausdehnungslehre est une science formelle qui trouve sa place dans le système mathématique de Grassmann. Ce système « améliore » celui déjà classique (notamment connu du père de Grassmann) qui résulte du croisement entre les deux contrastes fluants « continu/discret » et « distinct/égal ».– L’Ausdehnungslehre admet la géométrie comme première « application » remarquable. La géométrie [Geometrie] (ou encore la théorie de l’espace [Raumlehre]) est devenue une science réelle (l’espace préexiste), elle ne peut donc légitimement figurer au sein de la mathématique pure.– Une partie précède la séparation en les quatre branches précédentes de la mathématique pure (ou théorie des formes). La théorie générale des formes présente leurs lois communes, soit cette série de vérités qui, de la même manière se rapportent à toutes les branches des mathématiques et qui ne supposent donc que les concepts généraux d égalité, de diversité, de liaison et de séparation. (shrink)

Grassmann n’est pas le premier à créer un nouveau calcul :Möbius, Hamilton, Bellavitis, Cauchy, et bien d’autres l’ont précédé dans cette voie qui témoigne de toute l’importance des mutations subies par l’algèbre et de l’évolution des rapports complexes entretenus entre ce domaine et son « exacte contrepartie » la Géométrie euclidienne : à l’heure où s’élaborent les premières « structures » et les « morphismes », la géométrie euclidienne perd son statut de « critère de vérité » et d’« existence (...) » des entités algébriques, notamment dénoncé par un prétendu « retour à la rigueur ».L’introduction « philosophique », décriée par ses contemporains ne voyant là que « fausse philosophie », ne pouvait être impunément écartée : la « seconde » Ausdehnungslehre de 1862 (A2) — pourtant proposée telle une nouvelle version rédigée conformément au style « souhaité » par son époque — ne conviendra pas plus à ses trop rares lecteurs. Tout lecteur averti reconnaît que A2ne peut être parfaitement entendu sans les nécessaires éclaircissements de A1.Trois points nous paraissent aujourd’hui significatifs :– L’Ausdehnungslehre est une science formelle qui trouve sa place dans le système mathématique de Grassmann. Ce système « améliore » celui déjà classique (notamment connu du père de Grassmann) qui résulte du croisement entre les deux contrastes fluants « continu/discret » et « distinct/égal ».– L’Ausdehnungslehre admet la géométrie comme première « application » remarquable. La géométrie [Geometrie] (ou encore la théorie de l’espace [Raumlehre]) est devenue une science réelle (l’espace préexiste), elle ne peut donc légitimement figurer au sein de la mathématique pure.– Une partie précède la séparation en les quatre branches précédentes de la mathématique pure (ou théorie des formes). La théorie générale des formes présente leurs lois communes, soit cette série de vérités qui, de la même manière se rapportent à toutes les branches des mathématiques et qui ne supposent donc que les concepts généraux d égalité, de diversité, de liaison et de séparation. (shrink)