Yuan Yuan: practice job talk

Yuan Yuan will give a practice job talk on January 23, 2020.
The title of her talk will be "Killing in War under the Exclusionary Power of Superior Orders."

Abstract:
I defend the equal permission for just and unjust combatants to engage in hostilities when they operate under normal orders (Equal Permission). First, I demonstrate that, perhaps surprisingly, if unjust combatants lacked moral permission to fight their wars, just combatants would lack both ex-ante moral permissions and morally permissible means to fight their wars. Then, I argue for robust but restricted Equal Permission based on the exclusionary power of normal orders. I demonstrate that normal orders (including legitimate and apparently legitimate orders) must possess exclusionary powers for combatants operating under those orders, namely that they exclude reasons bearing on their justifiability for the combatants. Drawing on a novel conception of reason, I further contend that since a state’s normal order to go to war excludes reasons bearing on the justice of the war for its combatants, those reasons no longer count for or against combatants’ actions in war. Therefore, just and unjust combatants operating under normal orders are equally permitted to fight.