Autonomous Weapons and Reactive Attitudes

2021 ◽  
pp. 189-202
Author(s):  
Jens David Ohlin
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Reactive Attitudes ◽  
Shared Environment ◽  
Collateral Damage ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Behavioral Complexity ◽  
Autonomous Weapons ◽  
Local Populace ◽  
Enemy Combatants

The discourse surrounding Autonomous Weapons Systems (AWS) should encourage deeper consideration of how perceptions and reactive attitudes toward AWS could evolve in such a way to no longer reflect their deterministic nature. As AWS become more sophisticated and demonstrate increased behavioral complexity, it may well become more difficult for soldiers and policymakers to continue to view these systems dispassionately. This chapter draws on P.F. Strawson’s work to demonstrate how humans may find it impossible to fully rid themselves of reactive attitudes toward AWS. This chapter goes on to consider the consequences of humans and AWS in a shared environment. Human beings, whether enemy combatants or civilians, may respond to AWS not as sophisticated but ultimately deterministic actors, but rather as free agents and thus targets for feelings of gratitude or resentment. The link between behavior interpretation, perceived agency, and emotional attitudes has important implications for the deployment of AWS. A common argument in favor of AWS is that they would reduce collateral damage in counterinsurgency operations. It is far from certain that even the detached, calculated, and objective decision-making of an AWS would reduce the reactive response of the local populace. This chapter concludes by noting that some resentment to the lethal use of force is inevitable among civilians and combatants and argues that the deployment of an AWS is an unreliable tool for reducing this response.

scholarly journals Thirty Years of Human Rights Study in the Web of Science Database (1990–2020)

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 2131
Author(s):  
Priscilla Paola Severo ◽  
Leonardo B. Furstenau ◽  
Michele Kremer Sott ◽  
Danielli Cossul ◽  
Mariluza Sott Bender ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Reproductive Health ◽  
Web Of Science ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
The Web

The study of human rights (HR) is vital in order to enhance the development of human beings, but this field of study still needs to be better depicted and understood because violations of its core principles still frequently occur worldwide. In this study, our goal was to perform a bibliometric performance and network analysis (BPNA) to investigate the strategic themes, thematic evolution structure, and trends of HR found in the Web of Science (WoS) database from 1990 to June 2020. To do this, we included 25,542 articles in the SciMAT software for bibliometric analysis. The strategic diagram produced shows 23 themes, 12 of which are motor themes, the most important of which are discussed in this article. The thematic evolution structure presented the 21 most relevant themes of the 2011–2020 period. Our findings show that HR research is directly related to health issues, such as mental health, HIV, and reproductive health. We believe that the presented results and HR panorama presented have the potential to be used as a basis on which researchers in future works may enhance their decision making related to this field of study.

scholarly journals Multiple-Criteria Decision-Making and Sensitivity Analysis for Selection of Materials for Knee Implant Femoral Component

Materials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (8) ◽  
pp. 2084
Author(s):  
Raman Kumar ◽  
Rohit Dubey ◽  
Sehijpal Singh ◽  
Sunpreet Singh ◽  
Chander Prakash ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Sensitivity Analysis ◽  
Femoral Component ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Multiple Criteria Decision Making ◽  
Multiple Criteria ◽  
Biomedical Science ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Weighted Sum Method ◽  
Selection Of

Total knee replacement (TKR) is a remarkable achievement in biomedical science that enhances human life. However, human beings still suffer from knee-joint-related problems such as aseptic loosening caused by excessive wear between articular surfaces, stress-shielding of the bone by prosthesis, and soft tissue development in the interface of bone and implant due to inappropriate selection of TKR material. The choice of most suitable materials for the femoral component of TKR is a critical decision; therefore, in this research paper, a hybrid multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) tactic is applied using the degree of membership (DoM) technique with a varied system, using the weighted sum method (WSM), the weighted product method (WPM), the weighted aggregated sum product assessment method (WASPAS), an evaluation based on distance from average solution (EDAS), and a technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS). The weights of importance are assigned to different criteria by the equal weights method (EWM). Furthermore, sensitivity analysis is conducted to check the solidity of the projected tactic. The weights of importance are varied using the entropy weights technique (EWT) and the standard deviation method (SDM). The projected hybrid MCDM methodology is simple, reliable and valuable for a conflicting decision-making environment.

scholarly journals A Framework for Authentic Ethical Decision Making in the Face of Grand Challenges: A Lonerganian Gradation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Larres ◽  
Martin Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Business Ethics ◽  
Ethical Decision ◽  
Ethical Decision Making ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Codes Of Ethics ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Invariant Structure ◽  
Grand Challenges

AbstractThis paper contributes to the contemporary business ethics narrative by proposing an approach to corporate ethical decision making (EDM) which serves as an alternative to the imposition of codes and standards to address the ethical consequences of grand challenges, like COVID-19, which are impacting today’s society. Our alternative approach to EDM embraces the concept of reflexive thinking and ethical consciousness among the individual agents who collectively are the corporation and who make ethical decisions, often in isolation, removed from the collocated corporate setting. We draw on the teachings of the Canadian philosopher and theologian, Fr. Bernard Lonergan, to conceptualize an approach to EDM which focuses on the ethics of the corporate agent by nurturing the universal and invariant structure that is operational in all human beings. Embracing Lonergan’s dynamic cognitive structure of human knowing, and the structure of the human good, we advance a paradigm of EDM in business which emboldens authentic ethical thought, decision making, and action commensurate with virtuous living and germane to human flourishing. Lonergan’s philosophy guides us away from the imposition of over-arching corporate codes of ethics and inspires us, as individual agents, to attend to the data of our own consciousness in our ethical decision making. Such cognitional endowment leads us out of the ethics of the ‘timeless present’ (Islam and Greenwood in Journal of Business Ethics 170: 1–4, 2021) towards ethical authenticity in business, leaving us better placed to reflect upon and address the ethical issues emanating from grand challenges like COVID-19.

scholarly journals Weapons prohibitions through immanent critique: NGOs as emancipatory and (de)securitising actors in security governance

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 619-653 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margarita H. Petrova
Keyword(s):  
Use Of Force ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Security Governance ◽  
Military Commanders ◽  
Cluster Munitions ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
Immanent Critique ◽  
Us Hegemony

AbstractThe article examines the roles of NGOs in banning cluster munitions that resulted in the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions and the campaign against landmines in the 1990s. It argues that NGOs have managed to move questions about the use of force from the closed decision-making sphere of military commanders and arms control diplomats into open public debate. Thus NGOs have simultaneously desecuritised the use of force by states, securitised certain weapons technologies, and made human beings the referent object of security. This has marked a shift from state security and strategic disarmament to human security and humanitarian disarmament, without fundamentally challenging the laws of war. However, in contrast to realist views that only militarily useless weapons ever get banned and radical critical perspectives that see new legal regimes as legitimating war and US hegemony, I argue that NGOs have engaged in immanent critique of military arguments and practices based on prevailing principles of international humanitarian law. The resulting weapon ban treaties have both restrained US policy and undermined its legitimacy. The article explores the discursive choices that underpinned the remaking of the security agenda by NGOs and their role as de/securitising actors and emancipatory agents of change.

El Protagonismo Dialéctico-Social del Ser Humano en el Desarrollo Intelectual de Rodolfo Mondolfo

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 125-144
Author(s):  
Jesús Víctor Alfredo Contreras Ugarte
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Academic Work ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
The One ◽  
Descriptive Method

Summary: Reflecting on the role humans take into nowadays society, should be of interest in all our social reflections, even for those that refer to the field of law. Any human indifferent and unconscious of the social role that he ought to play within society, as a member of it, is an irresponsible human detached from everything that surrounds him, regarding matters and other humans. Trying to isolate in an irresponsible, passive and comfortable attitude, means, after all, denying oneself, denying our nature, as the social being every human is. This is the reflection that this academic work entitles, the one made from the point of view of the Italian philosopher Rodolfo Mondolfo. From a descriptive development, starting from this renowned author, I will develop ideas that will warn the importance that human protagonism have, in this human product so call society. From a descriptive development, from this well-known author, I will be prescribing ideas that will warn the importance of the protagonism that all human beings have, in that human product that we call society. I have used the descriptive method to approach the positions of the Italian humanist philosopher and, for my assessments, I have used the prescriptive method from an eminently critical and deductive procedural position. My goal is to demonstrate, from the humanist postulates of Rodolfo Mondolfo, the hypothesis about the leading, decision-making and determining role that the human being has within society. I understand, to have reached the demonstration of the aforementioned hypothesis, because, after the analyzed, there is no doubt, that the human being is not one more existence in the development of societies; its role is decisive in determining the human present and the future that will house the next societies and generations of our historical future.

Ronald Reagan and the Fight against Communism

2018 ◽  
pp. 172-222
Author(s):  
Keren Yarhi-Milo
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
Ideal Type ◽  
International Crises ◽  
Self Monitoring ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Reputational Concerns

This chapter assesses the extent to which reputational concerns shaped President Ronald Reagan's discourse, decision making, and policies during international crises. It focuses on four of these international crises: the escalation in Afghanistan, the intervention in Lebanon, the invasion of Grenada, and the air strikes against Libya. Each posed a challenge, real or perceived, to US reputation for resolve and so are good tests of the dispositional theory. A review of Reagan's self-monitoring tendencies and beliefs about the use of force place him closest to the ideal-type high self-monitor hawk, and thus, one should expect his behavior to be consistent with that of a reputation crusader. However, his behavior and discourse during the crises covered cannot be convincingly explained simply by highlighting his hawkish tendencies. In order to fully appreciate Reagan's policies, rhetoric, and state of mind, one must look at how these hawkish tendencies interacted with his high self-monitoring disposition.

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