Cyberwar ethics

Fritz Allhof, Patrick Lin, and B. J. Strawser get a grant to study Cyber War ethics.
(h/t Leiter Reports)  

Workshop in Warwick

The University of Warwick is organizing a workshop on Helen Frowe’s manuscript "Defensive Killing: An Essay on War and Self-Defence". The workshop will bring together moral, legal and political philosophers to discuss four chapters from the pre-final draft of Dr. Frowe's manuscript.

The four chapters will be read in advance and will not be presented. Each session will be introduced by a specialist, who will deliver comments on one of the chapters.

8 November 2013, Wolfson Research Exchange, University of Warwick

Programme

10:00-10:15 Arrival

10:15-10:30 Introduction

10:30-11:45 Vittorio Bufacchi (Cork) – “Threats and Bystanders”

11:45-12:15 Coffee

12:15-13:30 Victor Tadros (Warwick) – “Killing Innocent Threats”

13:30-14:30 Lunch

14:30-15:45 Jonathan Parry (Sheffield) – “War and Self-Defence”

15:45-16:15 Coffee

16:15-17:30 James Pattison (Manchester) – “Non-combatant Immunity”

The workshop is free of charge, but places are limited. If you'd like to attend, please register by sending an email to m.renzo@warwick.ac.uk

The workshop is generously sponsored by CELPA and the Society for Applied Philosophy.

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/celpa/news/

Graduate Reading Retreat (looks fun)

This came in the mail:

Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace

Graduate Reading Retreat

Cala Galdana, Menorca

19 - 20 September, 2014

The Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace invites submissions for its first Graduate Reading Retreat. Up to six places are available on a competitive basis for current or recent graduate students doing
philosophical research in the field of the ethics of war and peace. Those students whose papers are accepted will have their meals and accommodation covered, and receive a contribution towards travel (up to 3000 SEK (approx. £300) for those from within Europe, up to 7000 SEK (approx. 1000 USD) for those outside Europe). The Reading Retreat will be held at the Sol Gavilanes hotel in Cala Galdana, Menorca.

Each student will have a two hour session (including a 30 minute presentation) on their submitted paper. All papers will be pre-circulated and each student will be allocated a respondent from the invited faculty, who will provide both written comments and a short response during the session. The invited faculty this year are:

Invited Faculty:

David Rodin (ELAC, Oxford)

David R. Mapel (Political Science, UC Boulder)

Laura Valentini (Political Science, UCL)

Helen Frowe (Philosophy, Stockholm)

Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen (Politics, Aarhus)

Massimo Renzo (Philosophy, Warwick)

Those wishing to submit a paper should email it to helen.frowe@philosophy.su.se no later than 1st February 2014. Papers should be no longer than 10,000 words, excluding references, and should be suitable for blind-refereeing. Please include your name, email address and affiliation in the submitting email, along with a one page CV. You should also attach a letter from your supervisor or head of department confirming that as of the 1st of February 2014 you are registered as a graduate student or within six months of your viva, and confirming your year of study. Please do not include letters of reference or other supporting materials.

All enquiries should be sent to helen.frowe@philosophy.su.se.

--

Dr. Helen Frowe

Director, Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace

Wallenberg Academy Research Fellow, Department of Philosophy, Stockholm

Department of Philosophy

Stockholm University

SE - 10691 Stockholm, Sweden

helen.frowe@philoosphy.su.se

Gendered military robots

At The Washington Post's Monkey Cage Erica Chenowith has an opinion piece complaining that current military robots appear too masculine and that in turn reinforces gender stereotypes.

While I think I have something uninteresting to say about this (along the lines that psychology and military necessity should decide how these things look and sound) I would be interested in comments from the public. What say you? Does it matter what these things look like? Does making robots look aggressive in a masculine way make them bad for society? Should we sacrifice some aggressive efficiency for social betterment? Is a masculine look really telling women that they don't have a place in an aggressive military? If we needed something to look aggressive and we made it aggressive looking and also female, would that reinforce another stereotype about military women? Does the fault not lie with society who still thinks that looking masculine is an insult when said to women?. . .

Any thoughts? 

Call for Papers: The Ethics of War in the 21st Century

I got this in an email:

Call for Papers: The Ethics of War in the 21st Century
Inaugural Conference of the Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace
24 – 25 May 2014
Preceded by the Wallenberg Lecture on the Ethics of War and Peace, to be delivered by Prof. Jeff McMahan (Rutgers University) at Stockholm University, May 23rd 2014.

Invited Speakers:
Frances Kamm (Harvard)
Seth Lazar (ANU)
Gustaf Arrhenius (Stockholm)
Cheyney Ryan (Oregon and Oxford)
Christopher Heath Wellman (Washington University in St. Louis)

Special Panel on War and International Law
Adil Ahmad Haque (Rutgers)
François Tenguay-Renaud (Osgoode Hall Law School, York University)
Massimo Renzo (Warwick)

This conference marks the opening of the Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace, which is based in the Philosophy Department at Stockholm University. The Centre is funded by the Wallenberg Foundation and directed by Dr. Helen Frowe. The theme of the inaugural conference will be the Ethics of War in the 21st Century, with an emphasis on how just war theory has evolved since 9/11. The conference will be preceded by a public lecture by Professor Jeff McMahan.

It is intended that there be several sessions for submitted papers. Graduate students are especially encouraged to submit. Two graduate bursaries will be available for the best submitted papers by current graduate students. The bursaries will contribute up to 5000 SEK (about $750) towards travel, and cover meals, accommodation and conference registration.

Papers of no more than 5000 words (exc. references), suitable for a 30 minute presentation, should be submitted to helen.frowe@philosophy.su.se by the 1st of December 2013. Papers that exceed the word limit will not be accepted. Only electronic submissions will be accepted. Papers should include an abstract of no more than 250 words and be prepared for blind review - please include name, affiliation and contact details in the body of the email. Please also indicate in the submission email whether you would be willing to act as a respondent if your paper is not accepted for the conference. There are plans to put together a journal special issue from selected papers. Please indicate in your email whether you would like your paper considered for publication as part of this issue.

Please note that, excluding graduate bursaries, authors of submitted papers are responsible for all their own expenses.

Suggested paper topics include:
Theoretical approaches to just war theory, such as cosmopolitanism, reductivism, collectivism, and pacifism
Humanitarian intervention
Civil war and arming uprisings
Weapons and technology
Terrorism and just war theory
Legitimate authority
The moral status of non-state combatants
War and international law
Conscientious refusal
Preventive war, especially with respect to nuclear proliferation

Any enquiries should be emailed to helen.frowe@philosophy.su.se.

Fully-Funded PhD Position in the Ethics of War (Stockholm)

I got this in an email:

Department of Philosophy, Stockholm University

Fully-funded Doctoral Position in Practical Philosophy (Ref. No. SU FV-2582-13)

This is a four year, fully-funded PhD position attached to the Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace, which is funded by the Wallenberg Foundation and part of the Philosophy Department at Stockholm University. The successful applicant will undertake a PhD in Philosophy in a topic falling within the Centre’s remit of the ethics of war and peace. This could include (but is not limited to): humanitarian intervention, national-defence, theoretical approaches to war (such as pacifism or collectivism), terrorism, civil war, revolution, war crimes, crimes against humanity, issues within jus ad bellum and jus in bello, the moral status of combatants and non-combatants, war and technology, reconstruction and reconciliation, the notion of ‘just peace’, and legitimate authority. He or she will be co-supervised by Helen Frowe and a suitable member of staff from the Philosophy Department. More information about the Centre can be found here: http://helenfrowe.weebly.com/stockholm-centre.html

The expected starting salary is approx. 23 200 SEK/month (approx. 278 000 SEK / £26 800 / $42 500 / €32 000 a year). This is a pensionable position, subject to the favourable conditions of standard Swedish social benefits, such as paid parental leave. The holder of the position will be expected to conduct research in English. The employment as a Doctoral Student is for four years, with a possibility of prolongation due to special reasons, such as an absence from work due to illness, parental leave, etc. The start date is negotiable, but should be no later than October 2014. For more information and to apply, please visit the Philosophy Department webpage here:http://www.philosophy.su.se/english/about-us/fully-funded-doctoral-position-in-practical-philosophy-1.146680 . Enquiries should be directed to helen.frowe@philosophy.su.se .

The deadline for applications is the 15th of October, 2013. Stockholm University strives to be a work place that is free from discrimination and with equal opportunities for all.

A Quick Thought on Chemical Weapons and "Red Lines"

A question going around the internet these days is "Why are chemical weapons a valid "red line" which we should take action on when the Assad regime crosses it?" (Not that I am yet convinced that Assad has used chemical weapons.) I want offer what I think the answer is to that question. I think there are a lot of poor answers being given and I have a theory as to why good thinkers are deliberately giving bad answers. I will start with what I think the answer is:

Using chemical weapons is seen as wrong because chemical weapons are indiscriminate and behave in such a way that whoever deploys them cannot even pretend that they are only targeting combatants. By nature, chemical weapons (like nuclear and biological weapons) cannot be used with precision. The negative judgments we make about the use of WMDs derive from the same intuition as our judgments about the discrimination consideration in jus in bello. The only difference, I think, is that here any talk about double effect sounds disingenuous because of the nature of the weapon. Therefore when someone employs chemical weapons they are knowingly and deliberately dropping all pretenses that they are only targeting combatants.

Once a combatant is no longer afraid to publicly admit that they are no longer playing by the traditional rules of just war, which they do by employing WMDs (or terror tactics), especially inside one's own borders in a civil war, other countries will rightly become antsy. The international community can no longer turn a blind eye to the humanitarian crisis under the guise that the only people who were being killed were combatants and collateral damage. The employment of WMDs strips outsiders of their pretext of neutrality. Without such ability to stay neutral, countries of good will cannot say that it is an internal matter that is no harming bystanders, nor can they pretend there will not be third-countries that will not be impacted or worry about being impacted. (It should also force the UN to act under the new R2P regime, but I am pretty sure we won't see that happening.)

Chemical weapons are also almost all used as offensive weapons, which adds another layer to our discomfort. Using an offensive weapons or taking offensive action requires considerably more legal and ethical justification than using defensive weapons or taking defensive action, again, especially in a civil war. Assad has articulated no such justification, nor does anyone think he can. Therefore the international community should rightly worry that Assad is disobeying the international norms of war, which, one might think, is an adequate reason to call it a "red line" which we could expect him not to cross without consequences.

(Some really bad reasons for thinking that chemical weapons should be "red lines" are being offered, often just to dismiss them and "show" that after a bit of thinking there is no justification for taking chemical weapons to be particularly repugnant (the Talking Philosophy blog is particularly bad in this sense). Such silly answers as the reductio ad Hitlerum (Hitler used gas so it is bad) are rightly dismissed. But rarely do we see good reasons adequately discussed. This is the most disingenuous kind of philosophy. The argument is supposed to be: The best reasons don't hold, therefore there is no argument. This is a bad argument because we have no guarantee that we have just heard the only reasons or the best of them. In fact we heard bad ones.)  

Articles on Drones

Mark Bowden (of Black Hawk Down fame) on drones, in The Atlantic.
The Israel Defense Forces on one way they use drones. 

Call for papers

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TECHNOETHICS (IJT)
Editor-in-Chief: Rocci Luppicini, University of Otttawa, Canada
Published: Quarterly (both in Print and Electronic form)
Submission deadline extended to September 1, 2013

Special Issue on Technoethics and New Military Technologies
Guest Editor: Marcus Schulzke, State University of New York at Albany


New military technologies are transforming warfare, allowing wars to be
fought at longer distances, with greater asymmetries of risk, and at higher
speeds than ever before. Some of these technologies seem to mark radical new
directions in the way wars are fought by upsetting traditional military
roles and introducing entirely new domains of conflict. Emerging
technologies of war create many pressing ethical challenges, which call for
a serious examination of these technologies and a reexamination of existing
standards for determining the justice and morality during war.

Many of the ethical challenges associated with new military technologies
arise from how these technologies are designed. Some devices or techniques
may seem to be intrinsically unethical or intrinsically better suited to
waging just wars. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other remote weapons
allow their operators to carry out attacks from thousands of miles away,
raising the question of whether these machines are essentially unjust or
whether their power to carry out discriminate attacks makes their use
ethically obligatory. Nonlethal weapons, cyberweapons, and nanoweapons
likewise create new problems for determining what weapons can have an
ethical use in war. Other challenges arise from how new military
technologies are employed. Technological asymmetries that give some
militaries substantial advantages over less developed opponents raise
questions about fairness between combatants and whether risk asymmetry can
be so extreme that it hinders ethical conduct. The use of advanced weapons
complicate ongoing debates about just war theory and military ethics, such
as the debate over the morality of targeted killing, by changing the way
attacks are carried out. Finally, new military technologies test the
adequacy of the moral and legal concepts that are used to make normative
sense of war. For example, new technologies and the techniques associate
with their use strain conventional standards of determining combatant and
noncombatant status by leading military personnel and civilians to play
novel roles.

This special issue of the International Journal of Technoethics on
“Technoethics and New Military Technologies” aims at exploring the many
ethical issues surrounding the design and use of the many new technologies
used to wage wars. Topics may include, but are not limited to, ethical
issues relating to:

•       Unmanned weapon systems/drones
•       Remote weapons
•       Technological asymmetries during war
•       Cyberweapons
•       Military nanotechnology
•       Electronic surveillance
•       Nonlethal weapons
•       Semi-autonomous and autonomous military robots
•       Military communications systems
•       Digital targeting systems
•       Techniques of employing new technologies
•       Targeted killing using drones and other remote weapons
•       Civil-military cooperation in developing weapons
•       Reassessing the just war tradition in light of technological developments

Submitting to the International Journal of Technoethics:
Prospective authors should note that only original and previously
unpublished articles will be considered. Interested authors must consult the
journal’s guidelines for manuscript submissions prior to submission
(www.igi-global.com/ijt). All article submissions will be forwarded to at
least 2 reviewers. Final decision regarding acceptance/revision/rejection
will be based on the reviews received from the reviewers. Each research
paper should be between 5,500 to 8,000 words in length.

All inquiries and submissions should be should be directed to:

Marcus Schulzke
Project on Violent Conflict
Department of Political Science
State University of New York at Albany
Email: MSchulzke@albany.edu

New Military ethics literature

Philosophy Compass has a survey article by James Pattison (who has written a book on the same topic) on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) paradigm of humanitarian intervention.

David B. Resnik reviews John Forge's Designed to Kill: The case against weapons research.