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Traditional international relations scholarship has concentrated on war, but has not provided deep theoretical consideration of the concept of peace.While the focus of each of these three books differs, they share a common goal: to better place "peace" into the study of international affairs.

School liking is an important factor in student engagement, well-being, and academic achievement, but it is also potentially influenced by factors external to the individual, such as school culture, teacher support, and approaches to discipline. The present study employed a survey methodology to investigate the associations between school liking and disliking, teacher and school connectedness, and experiences of exclusionary discipline from the perspective of students themselves. Participants included 1,002 students from three secondary schools serving disadvantaged communities. Results indicated clear differences (...) between students who like and dislike school in terms of their preferred school activities and school disciplinary history, with students who disliked school experiencing overall lower school connectedness. Moreover, students who disliked school experienced less positive relationships with their teachers, and this was even more pronounced for students who had been previously suspended. The findings reveal key differences between students who do and do not like school, differences that may be masked by typical research approaches. This research indicates the need for more nuanced, student-informed approaches to inclusive school reform. (shrink)

Faculty members in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines are typically expected to pursue grant funding and publish to support their research or teaching agendas. Providing effective professional development programs on grant preparation and management and on research publications is crucial. This study shares the design and implementation of such a program for Native STEM faculty from two tribal colleges and one public, non-tribal, Ph.D. granting institution during a 3-year period. The overall development and implementation of the program is centered (...) on the six R’s Indigenous framework – Respect, Relationship, Representation, Relevance, Responsibility, and Reciprocity. The role of NAF-STEM and their interactions with the program, as members of the community formed by their participation, impacted the program. Their practices and the program co-emerged over time, each providing structure and meaning for the other. Through such reciprocity, NAF-STEM and the program research team continually refined the program through their mutual engagement. They took on the shared responsibility of the program while they participated in and shaped its practices. The process and results of formative and summative assessment and the impact of COVID-19 on the program are reported. Results of the program offer lessons on the implementation of six R’s framework in professional development at institutions of higher education. (shrink)

The main objection to human embryonic stem cell research is that it involves killing human embryos, which are essentially beings of the same sort that you and I are. This objection presupposes that we once existed as early embryos and that we had the same moral status then that we have now. This essay challenges both those presuppositions, but focuses primarily on the first. I argue first that these presuppositions are incompatible with widely accepted beliefs about both assisted conception (...) and monozygotic twinning. I then argue that we never existed as embryos. If this last claim is right, killing an embryo does not kill someone like you or me but merely prevents one of us from existing. (shrink)

Killing civilians is worse than killing soldiers. Although this principle is widely affirmed, recent military practice and contemporary just war theory have undermined it. This article argues that killing an innocent person is worse the likelier it was, when you acted, that he would be innocent: riskier killings are worse than less risky killings. In war, killing innocent civilians is almost always riskier than killing innocent soldiers. So killing innocent civilians is worse than (...) class='Hi'>killing innocent soldiers. Since almost all civilians are innocent in war, and since killing innocent civilians is worse than killing liable soldiers, killing civilians is worse than killing soldiers. (shrink)

v. 1. A critical edition of Mimamsa-Slokavarttika ad 1.1.2 (Codanasutra) -- v. 2. An annotated translation of Mimamsa-Slokavarttika ad 1.1.2 (Codanasutra).

Mercy killing in battle is an illegal activity, yet, the evidence suggests, it happens on battlefields the world over and it has probably done so throughout human history. This may be a ?silent? part of the battlefield that few survivors wish to remember or to report subsequently. The practice is illegal, yet it raises difficult, perhaps sometimes impossible, ethical problems. A framework derived from the ethos of the just war tradition is developed here to analyse and to evaluate such (...) battlefield killings. (shrink)

Common sense has that killing someone amounts to causing the death of someone. This makes killing a physical, biological, or, at best, metaphysical issue, and, as a consequence, the ethics of killing can be dealt with independently of the non-ethical issue of who the killer is. However, in this paper, we show that this is not the case. A physical/biological definition of death plus a metaphysical definition of causation does not exhaust the meaning of killing. Rather, (...) the notion of killing per se generally presumes a notion of default, which often involves ethical considerations. (shrink)

Audre Lorde wrote in her essay The Transformation of Silence into Language to Action, “I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and s...

In Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, two doctors from the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands outline the circumstances in which doctors in their hospital have, in 22 cases over seven years, carried out euthanasia on newborn infants. All of these cases were reported to a district attorney's office in the Netherlands. None of the doctors were prosecuted.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 6, Page 65-66, June 2011.

RésuméLa mort d'une personne peut-elle être intrinsèquement mauvaise pour la personne qui meurt? Et pourquoi est-il mal de tuer une autre personne? Je soutiens qu'une réponse adéquate à l'une ou l'autre de ces questions requiert d'apprécier l'importance morale de l'autonomie. J'examine ici la conception dominante de ce qui rend la mort mauvaise — la théorie de la dépossession —, ainsi que deux conceptions rivales de ce qui fait qu'il est mal de tuer — la théorie de la dépossession appliquée à (...) l'acte de tuer, et la thèse des droits liminaux de Judith Thomson. Bien que mon objectif principal dans cet article soit d'établir l'importance de l' autonomie pour expliquer à lafois que la mort est mauvaise et qu'il est mal de tuer, je pense également qu'une réflexion sur ce qui rend la mort mauvaise nous apprend quelque chose au sujet des droits et de leur force, et qu'une réflexion sur les droits nous apprend quelque chose quant à ce qui fait que la mort et l'immortalité sont toutes deux de mauvaises choses. (shrink)

Is it ever morally wrong to enjoy fantasizing about immoral things? Many video games allow players to commit numerous violent and immoral acts. But, should players worry about the morality of their virtual actions? A common argument is that games offer merely the virtual representation of violence. No one is actually harmed by committing a violent act in a game. So, it cannot be morally wrong to perform such acts. While this is an intuitive argument, it does not resolve the (...) issue. -/- Focusing on why individual players are motivated to entertain immoral and violent fantasies, Video Games, Violence, and the Ethics of Fantasy advances debates about the ethical criticism of art, not only by shining light on the interesting and under-examined case of virtual fantasies, but also by its novel application of a virtue ethical account. Video games are works of fiction that enable players to entertain a fantasy. So, a full understanding of the ethical criticism of video games must focus attention on why individual players are motivated to entertain immoral and violent fantasies. -/- Video Games, Violence, and the Ethics of Fantasy engages with debates and critical discussions of games in both the popular media and recent work in philosophy, psychology, media studies, and game studies. (shrink)

This is a review essay of Jeff McMahan's recent book The Ethics of Killing : Problems at the Margins of Life. In the first part, I lay out the central features of McMahan's account of the wrongness of killing and its implications for when it is permissible to kill. In the second part of the essay, I argue that we ought not to accept McMahan's rejection of species membership as having any bearing on whether it is permissible to (...) kill a particular individual, as there are ways of understanding its relevance that are more plausible than McMahan allows. (shrink)

In her (1996) Kadri Vihvelin argues that autoinfanticide is nomologically impossible and so that there is no sense in which time travelers are able to commit it. In response, Theodore Sider (2002) defends the original Lewisian verdict (Lewis 1976) whereby, on a common understanding of ability, time travelers are able to kill their earlier selves and their failure to do so is merely coincidental. This paper constitutes a critical note on arguments put forward by both Sider and Vihvelin. I argue (...) that although Sider’s criticism starts out promisingly he doesn’t succeed in establishing that Vihvelin’s analysis fails, because (a) he neglects to rule out a class of counterfactuals to which Vihvelin’s sample-case may belong; and (b) (together with Lewis) he is wrong to suggest that future facts are irrelevant in the evaluation of time travelers’ abilities. I show instead that Vihvelin’s argument is viciously circular, indicating that even if there are nomological constraints on autoinfanticide these cannot be established a priori. (shrink)

Derek Parfit’s view of ‘personal identity’ raises questions about whether advance decisions refusing life-saving treatment should be honored in cases where a patient loses psychological continuity; it implies that these advance decisions would not be self-determining at all. Part I of this paper argues that this assessment of personal identity undermines the distinction between suicide and homicide. However, rather than accept that an unknown metaphysical ‘further fact’ underpins agential unity, one can accept Parfit’s view but offer a different account of (...) what it implies morally: that the social and legal bases for ascribing a persisting ‘personal identity’ maintain the distinction between homicide and suicide. (shrink)

Most people believe that it is sometimes morally permissible for a person to use force to defend herself or others against harm. In Defensive Killing, Helen Frowe offers a detailed exploration of when and why the use of such force is permissible. She begins by considering the use of force between individuals, investigating both the circumstances under which an attacker forfeits her right not to be harmed, and the distinct question of when it is all-things-considered permissible to use force (...) against an attacker. Frowe then extends this enquiry to war, defending the view that we should judge the ethics of killing in war by the moral rules that govern killing between individuals. She argues that this requires us to significantly revise our understanding of the moral status of non-combatants in war. Non-combatants who intentionally contribute to an unjust war forfeit their rights not to be harmed, such that they are morally liable to attack by combatants fighting a just war. (shrink)

The distinction between killing and letting die is too simple. A third category must also be recognized. Like killing, preventing a person from being saved is a species of doing harm; like killing, it infringes one of the victim's negative rights. Yet preventing a person from being saved is morally on a par with letting die, which infringes one of the victim's positive rights. It follows that we cannot explain the moral inequivalence of killing and letting (...) die by saying, as so many have, that negative rights are more stringent than positive rights. A more promising strategy is suggested at the end of the article. (shrink)

Although the belief that killing is normally wrong is as universal and uncontroversial a moral belief as we are likely to find, no one, to my knowledge, has ever offered an account of why killing is wrong that even begins to do justice to the full range of common sense beliefs about the morality of killing. Yet such an account would be of considerable practical significance, since understanding why some killings are wrong should help us to determine (...) the conditions in which killing is not wrong. For, in those cases in which the reasons why killing is wrong do not apply, killing may be permissible or, if there are positive reasons that favour it, even morally required. (shrink)

When engaging in a philosophical analysis of body and corporeality in a political context, it is essential to ask to what extent, under what circumstances, and in accordance with what moral norms the state performs actions that have the bodies and lives of citizens as their object. This issue was already discussed in ancient philosophy, examples of which can be found in the writings of Plato and Aristotle, but also in ancient jurisprudence, especially in the law and the legal doctrine (...) of ancient Rome. Aware of such a previous history of studies on this topic, this analysis will discuss the three main ways in which state power over the life and health of citizens is manifested. Namely: (i) capital punishment (ii) policing and (iii) warfare. In addition, it will be indicated, based on Thomistic philosophy, what moral norms govern these state actions. The fundamental differences between the three main state powers — judicial, police, and military — will also be shown in the context of lethal actions undertaken on their basis. (shrink)

Jeff McMahan appeals to what he calls the “Time-relative Interest Account of the Wrongness of Killing ” to explain the wrongness of killing individuals who are conscious but not autonomous. On this account, the wrongness of such killing depends on the victim’s interest in his or her future, and this interest, in turn, depends on two things: the goods that would have accrued to the victim in the future; and the strength of the prudential relations obtaining between (...) the victim at the time of the killing and at the times these goods would have accrued to him or her. More precisely, when assessing this interest, future goods should be discounted to reflect reductions in the strength of such relations. Against McMahan’s account I argue that it relies on an implausible “actualist” view of the moral importance of interests according to which satisfactions of future interests only have moral significance if they are satisfactions of actual interests. More precisely, I aim to show that the Time-relative Interest Account does not have the implications for the morality of killing that McMahan takes it to have, and implies, implausibly, that certain interest satisfactions which seem to be morally significant are morally insignificant because they are not satisfactions of actual interests. (shrink)

Do individuals have a positive right of self-defence? And if so, what are the limits of this right? Under what conditions does this use of force extend to the defence of others? These are some of the issues explored by Dr Uniacke in this comprehensive 1994 philosophical discussion of the principles relevant to self-defence as a moral and legal justification of homicide. She establishes a unitary right of self-defence and the defence of others, one which grounds the permissibility of the (...) use of necessary and proportionate defensive force against culpable and non-culpable, active and passive, unjust threats. Particular topics discussed include: the nature of moral and legal justification and excuse; natural law justifications of homicide in self-defence; the Principle of Double Effect and the claim that homicide in self-defence is justified as unintended killing; and the question of self-preferential killing. This is a lucid and sophisticated account of the complex notion of justification, revolving around a critical discussion of trends in the law of self-defence. (shrink)

Suppose a driverless car encounters a scenario where harm to at least one person is unavoidable and a choice about how to distribute harms between different persons is required. How should the driverless car be programmed to behave in this situation? I call this the moral design problem. Santoni de Sio defends a legal-philosophical approach to this problem, which aims to bring us to a consensus on the moral design problem despite our disagreements about which moral principles provide the correct (...) account of justified harm. He then articulates an answer to the moral design problem based on the legal doctrine of necessity. In this paper, I argue that Santoni de Sio’s answer to the moral design problem does not achieve the aim of the legal-philosophical approach. This is because his answer relies on moral principles which, at least, utilitarians have reason to reject. I then articulate an alternative reading of the doctrine of necessity, and construct a partial answer to the moral design problem based on this. I argue that utilitarians, contractualists and deontologists can agree on this partial answer, even if they disagree about which moral principles offer the correct account of justified harm. (shrink)

This paper examines accounts of the moral wrongness of killing persons in addition to determining what conclusions, if any, can be drawn from the morality of killing persons about the equality of persons, and vice versa. I will argue that a plausible way of thinking about the moral wrongness of killing implies that the permissibility of killing innocent, nonthreatening persons depends on a person’s age. I address objections to this conclusion and discuss some potential implications of (...) the view. (shrink)

(2014). Killing without Heart: Limits on Robotic Warfare in an Age of Persistent Conflict. Journal of Military Ethics: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 106-111. doi: 10.1080/15027570.2014.910017.

ABSTRACTThere are a number of arguments that purport to show, in general terms, that there is no difference between killing and letting die. These are used to justify active euthanasia on the basis of the reasons given for allowing patients to die. I argue that the general and abstract arguments fail to take account of the complex and particular situations which are found in the care of those with terminal illness. When in such situations, there are perceptions and intuitions (...) available that do not easily find propositional form but lead most of those whose practice is in the care of the dying to resist active euthanasia. I make a plea for their intuitions to be heeded above the sterile voice of abstract premises and arguments by examining the completeness of the outline form of the pro‐euthanasia argument. In doing so, I make use of Nussbaum's discussion of moral perception and general claims to be found in the literature of moral particularism. (shrink)

Killing in War presents the Moral Equality of Combatants with serious, and in my view insurmountable problems. Absent some novel defense, this thesis is now very difficult to sustain. But this success is counterbalanced by the strikingly revisionist implications of McMahan’s account of the underlying morality of killing in war, which forces us into one of two unattractive positions, contingent pacifism, or near-total war. In this article, I have argued that his efforts to mitigate these controversial implications fail. (...) The reader is left stranded: to reach plausible conclusions, Walzer deployed an implausible conception of our rights to life; McMahan’s more rigorous account of those rights generates untenable conclusions. Absent new developments, it seems that the prospects for grounding the ethics of war in individual rights are poor: any theory of our rights to life that is sufficiently indiscriminate to work in the chaos of war is not discriminating enough to be a plausible theory of our rights to life. Perhaps by rejecting the ideal of the rights-respecting war altogether we might develop an alternative theory of justified warfare, which marries theoretical soundness with conclusions that we can more confidently support. (shrink)

Debates that revolve around the topic of morality and fiction rarely explicitly treat virtual worlds like, for example, Second Life. The reason for this disregard cannot be that all users of virtual worlds only do the right thing while online—for they sometimes even virtually kill each other. Is it wrong to kill other people in a virtual world? It depends. This essay analyzes on what it depends, why it is that killing people in a virtual world sometimes is wrong, (...) and how different virtual killings are wrong in different ways. I argue that killing people online is wrong if it is an instance of deliberately and non-consensually evoking disagreeable emotions in others. Establishing this conclusion requires substantial conceptual work, as virtual worlds feature new kinds of fictional agency, particular emotional responses to fiction, and unique ways in which the fiction of the virtual world relates to the wrongness of the killing. (shrink)