International Journal of Applied Philosophy

My differences with Derek Brookes reflect an alternative understanding of what forgiveness is intended to achieve, and how it achieves it. I express some skepticism about his account of wrongdoing as an expression of contempt, of wrongdoing posing an ongoing threat, of resentment as a protective shield, and apology/remorse as the only morally acceptable means for removing such a threat. I remain unconvinced that forgiveness in the absence of an apology is likely to evidence condonation or a failure of self-respect. In emphasizing that forgiveness is a morally discretionary gift, I depart from the idea that it must somehow be earned (by apology, etc.) to be morally laudable. Its character as forgiveness is therefore not morally impugned if not made dependent on the wrongdoer’s repentance.

In my paper “Moral Grounds for Forgiveness,” I argued that forgiveness is morally appropriate only when a sincere apology is received, thus ruling out the three grounds for unconditional forgiveness suggested by John Kleinig in his paper “Forgiveness and Unconditionality.” In response to his reply “Defending Unconditional Forgiveness,” I argue here that my terminology, once clarified, does not undermine my construal of resentment; that conditional forgiveness is just as discretionary as unconditional forgiveness; and that what we choose to take into account when we forgive must be a morally appropriate grounding for that particular end, but that only a sincere apology could satisfy this condition. I end by conceding that the three grounds suggested by Kleinig nevertheless play an essential role in the process of (conditional) forgiveness insofar as they facilitate a willingness to forgive and an openness toward accepting an apology.

The ethics of warfare and military leadership must pay attention to the rapidly increasing use of artificial intelligence and machines. Who is responsible for the decisions made by a machine? Do machines make decisions? May they make them? These issues are of particular interest in the context of Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS). Are they autonomous or just automated? Do they violate the international humanitarian law which requires that humans must always be responsible for the use of lethal force and for the assessment that civilian casualties are proportionate to the military goals? The article analyses relevant documents, opinions, government positions, and commentaries using the methods of applied ethics. The main conceptual finding is that the definition of autonomy depends on what the one presenting it seeks to support. Those who want to use lethal autonomous weapon systems call them by another name, say, automated instead of autonomous. They impose standards on autonomy that machines do not meet, such as moral agency. Those who wish to ban the use of lethal autonomous weapon systems define them much less broadly and do not require them to do much more than to be a self-standing part of the causal chain.The article’s argument is that the question of responsibility is most naturally perceived by abandoning the most controversial philosophical considerations and simply stating that an individual or a group of people is always responsible for the creation of the equipment they produce and use. This does not mean that those who press the button, or their immediate superiors, are to blame. They are doing their jobs in a system. The ones responsible can probably be found in higher military leadership, in political decision-makers who dictate their goals, and, at least in democracies, in the citizens who have chosen their political decision-makers.

The aim of this paper is to identify, given certain democratic normative standards regarding deliberation, some pros as well as cons of possible online deliberation designs due to variations in two key design dimensions: namely, asynchronicity and anonymity. In particular, we consider one crucial aspect of deliberative argumentation: namely, its reciprocity, which puts interaction centre stage to capture the back-and-forth of reasons. More precisely, we focus on two essential features of the deliberative interaction: namely, its listening widely and listening carefully. We conclude that one sort of online deliberation that combines the two design features of anonymity and asynchronicity is likely to better promote the reciprocity required for democratic deliberation than both natural and designed offline deliberations (such as the designed deliberation in Deliberative Polling) and online simulations of them.

Most philosophers who have expressed a view about whether forgiveness is compatible with forgivers’ continuing to punish, or support the punishment of, people who have wronged them hold that forgiveness is compatible with punishing or favouring punishment of wrongdoers. I argue that whether forgiveness entails forbearing punishment depends on which of two senses of forgiveness is operative. On the first, sentiment-based sense of forgiveness as consisting essentially in a change of heart on the part of a victim, a victim can, I submit, forgive while continuing to punish or to support the punishment of a person who has wronged her. On the second sense of forgiveness as consisting in debt remission whether or not accompanied by a change of heart, the state’s remission of the entirety of criminal offenders’ punishment qualifies as forgiveness and, moreover, the state could not forgive offenders in this sense while continuing to punish them.

If people have stringent moral rights, then the doctrine of double effect is false or unimportant, at least when it comes to making acts permissible or wrong. There are strong and weak versions of the doctrine of double effect. The strong version asserts that an act is morally right if and only if the agent does not intentionally infringe a moral norm and the act brings about a desirable result (perhaps the best state of affairs available to the agent or a promotion of the common good). The weak version asserts that, other things being equal, it is deontically worse to intentionally infringe a norm than to foreseeably do so. A person’s intention or mere foresight might still be relevant to his or her blameworthiness or virtue, but this is a separate issue.

Sati as a trope for the general status of women within certain portions of the Hindu cultures of India is examined, with a view toward clarification of its history and current context. The work of Sangari and Vaid, Banerjee and Mala Sen is cited, and the notion that sati is a misappropriated concept is analyzed.

A person points to a situation, A, and says that A is morally repugnant; A ought to be condemned; we should do something about A. In response, another person says, “Well, what about B? B is analogous to A in that it is equally morally repugnant. If we ought to condemn and do something about A then we should also condemn and do something about B.” This “what about” response is an argumentative strategy, sometimes called “whataboutery” or “whataboutism.” In popular discussion, whataboutery is condemned as a fallacy, in particular an instance of the tu quoque fallacy. I will present an analysis of whataboutery showing that, to the degree that this is a fallacy, it is a red herring. But this argumentative move cannot always be dismissed as fallacious. Sometimes the imputation of fallacious reasoning attempts to cover over political commitments.

Humanitarian aid workers typically reject the accolade of hero as both untrue and undesirable. Untrue when they claim not to be acting beyond the call of duty, and undesirable so far as celebrating heroism risks elevating “heroic” choices over safer, and perhaps wiser ones. However, this leaves unresolved a tension between the denial of heroism and a sense in which certain humanitarian acts really appear heroic. And, the concern that in rejecting the aspiration to heroism an opportunity is lost to inspire more and better humanitarian action. Having set out this problem in more detail in Part I, the argument in Part II will suggest that a virtue ethics approach to humanitarian moral obligations can make good sense of our intuitions concerning the role of heroism in humanitarian action. In Part III I will argue that at least “professional” humanitarians, instead of rejecting heroism, should aim to be heroes, in the sense of displaying a virtue of humanity in high-stakes contexts, because this is consistent with the aim of humanitarian action. Finally, some lingering problems of demandingness and motivation are considered.

Gillian Brock’s Justice for People on the Move is an important contribution to the migration literature. While I agree with many of Brock’s arguments, I focus here on a few key points of difference between us. I press three interrelated concerns about Brock’s view: first, the practical implications of her assessment of the state-system’s current illegitimacy remain too unclear. Second, Brock’s human rights-based theory neglects the importance of citizens’ democratic agency, in a way that may have paternalistic implications. Third, Brock’s view is tolerant of inequalities of wealth and power that may enable relations of exploitation, as we see by examining her advocacy of guestworker schemes. The article draws attention to those places where Brock’s view faces hard questions, and explains why I might have answered some of these questions differently.

Gillian Brock’s compelling and richly textured new book aims to set out a human-rights-based framework for thinking about justice in migration. There is much to celebrate in these chapters, not least Brock’s masterful effort at weaving together her basic justificatory framework with real-world political concerns. In this article, I query the focus she places on self-determination in setting out the basic normative argument elaborated in Chapters 2, 3, and 9. In particular, I will wonder whether she gives the collective self-determination of a people anything more than instrumental value, and so whether she is able to distance herself from so-called proponents of “open borders”.

What weight should we place on self-determination, democracy, human rights and equality in an account of migration justice? Anna Stilz and Andrea Sangiovanni offer insightful comments that prompt us to consider such questions. In addressing their welcome critiques I aim to show how my account can help reduce migration injustice in our contemporary world. As I argue, there is no right to free movement across state borders. However, migrants do have rights to a fair process for determining their rights. Democratic communities should have scope to make many migration decisions, although there are constraints on that self-determination. The migration governance oversight arrangements I favor are compatible with core requirements of agency and responsiveness that are operative in mature democracies. In responding to concerns about objectionable power inequalities that often characterize temporary worker programs, I show why addressing these issues requires various institutional protections that are well enforced. Robust migration governance arrangements can assist in formulating defensible migration policies that we can implement here and now as we aim to reduce migration injustices in our current world.

The passing of the French law that prohibits face coverings, such as the Islamic burqa, in public places ignited a complex philosophical and legal debate. Participants in the debate have typically focused on the boundaries between individual and religious liberties, on the one hand, and state-imposed limitations on public behaviors, on the other. The author of this paper wishes to introduce a change in perspective by concentrating instead on the duties immigrants have to the citizens of the countries that host them. The author finds that, under certain circumstances, immigrants may have a moral duty to conform to the ethical preferences of the communities they have come to live and interact with.

Arguments both in favor and against including undocumented immigrants in healthcare reform abound. However, many of these arguments, including ones that are favorable towards immigrants, are ethically problematic, and for the same reason; namely, that they either support or deny the inclusion of undocumented immigrants in healthcare reform based on their perceived level of desert, due to their alleged contribution to our social utility, or lack thereof. This encourages gauging the lives and worth of undocumented immigrants in terms of their productivity or output, rather than viewing them as intrinsically valuable human beings. This, in turn, contributes to the instrumentalization of undocumented immigrants’ welfare; for even arguments in favor of including them in healthcare reform encourage viewing them as, in Kantian language, mere means instead of ends in themselves. In this paper, I will be critical of arguments that either seek to exclude or include undocumented immigrants from healthcare reform or access based on social utility and will, instead, champion arguments in favor of inclusion that rely on fostering a sense of solidarity and identification amongst citizens and migrants.

Logic-Based Therapy (LBT), a mode of philosophical counseling I invented beginning in the mid 1980s, under the auspices of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) founder Albert Ellis, takes metaphysical security (security about reality itself) as a sin qua non for human happiness. The goal of LBT is to help people overcome irrational thinking that leads to metaphysical insecurity and to help build constructive, philosophical thinking that promotes metaphysical security. However, the advent of augmented and digital reality are beginning to present new challenges to obtaining metaphysical security. Applying the tenets of LBT, this paper examines the implications for attaining metaphysical security in this brave new world of advancing technologies.

In the future, autonomous vehicles are predicted to be much safer than current vehicles and affordable enough for all vehicle owners. At such a point, should we still allow people to manually drive non-autonomous vehicles? Can we say people who want to drive have a right to drive? In this paper, we first attempt a deontological justification of a right to drive, by trying to derive the right from more uncontroversial rights, like the right to freedom of movement, but fail. Looking at the right on consequentialist grounds, both in terms of paternalistic justifications of denying the right and the externalities caused by manual driving, we are able to justify a right to drive. However, the externalities caused by manual driving (especially the risks imposed on non-drivers and the property damage) are enough to limit this right to drive to non-public roads.

Non-suicidal self-harm is common in youth. The behavior may have negative and sometimes dangerous consequences, such as feelings of guilt, scars, nerve damage and accidental death. Is this behavior a mental disorder? This question is attracting serious consideration. I want to say that non-suicidal self-harm in youth is never a mental disorder in its own right. Yet, I do not want to commit to saying what is a mental disorder. So I identify the characteristic features and functions of non-suicidal self-harm in youth and show that these features and functions are also seen in non-disordered behaviors in youth. This, I say, shows that non-suicidal self-harm in youth is non-disordered too. I say that non-suicidal self-harm in youth is a characteristic youth behavior that when seen in youth has an understandable practical function. I offer to the general discussion about mental disorder the strategy I use.