Killing with Discrimination

Abstract

This chapter explores two possible moral justifications for the legal prohibition on the use of indiscriminate weapons. The prohibition could be justified instrumentally, as an indirect strategy of implementing more fundamental prohibitions on inflicting intentional, unnecessary, and disproportionate harm on civilians. However, the chapter argues that it is intrinsically morally wrong to use weapons that, either by their nature or by their use in a particular situation, are more likely to strike civilians or civilian objects than to strike combatants or military objectives. The chapter concludes that the use of such weapons should be considered unlawfully indiscriminate.

Keywords: war, armed conflict, indiscriminate, discrimination, ethics, morality, killing, Parfit, expectabilism, evidence-relative