Skip to main content

School of Philosophy

  • Home
  • People
  • Events
    • Event series
    • Conferences
      • Past conferences
    • Past events
  • News
    • Audio/Video Recordings
  • Research
  • Study with us
    • Prizes and scholarships
  • Visit us
  • Contact us

Centres & Projects

  • Centre for Consciousness
  • Centre for Moral, Social and Political Theory
  • Centre for Philosophy of the Sciences
  • Humanising Machine Intelligence

Related Sites

  • Research School of Social Sciences
  • ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences

Centre for Consciousness

Related Sites

Centre for Moral, Social and Political Theory

Centre for Philosophy of the Sciences

School of Philosophy

Administrator

Breadcrumb

HomeUpcoming EventsSeth Lazar (ANU): In Dubious Battle: Uncertainty and The Ethics of Killing
Seth Lazar (ANU): In Dubious Battle: Uncertainty and the Ethics of Killing

Moral decision-making is always marred by uncertainty; in the ethics of killing, that uncertainty is especially acute and pervasive. The stakes couldn't be higher, and yet it is often difficult, even impossible to know whether the conditions for killing to be fact-relative permissible are satisfied. Any successful theory of the ethics of killing should offer an account of when killing is evidence-relative permissible. And yet few do. In this paper, I consider three possibilities: two that focus on thresholds (killing is evidence-relative permissible just in case it is sufficiently likely to be fact-relative permissible), and one that fits the ethics of killing into a broader decision-theoretic framework. I show the flaws of the first two approaches, and endorse the third, before exploring some of its implications and answering some obvious objections.

Date & time

  • Thu 04 Sep 2014, 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Location

Coombs Seminar Room A

Event Series

Philosophy Departmental Seminars