The Case Against Weapons Research

John Forge
Additional contact information
John Forge: Unit for History and Philosophy of Science, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

International Journal of Technoethics (IJT), 2014, vol. 5, issue 2, 1-10

Abstract: Weapons research seeks to design new or improved weapons and their ancillary structures. It is argued here that weapons research is both morally wrong and morally unjustified. This ‘case against weapons research' requires lengthy discussion and the argument given here is a summary of that discussion. The central claim is that the ‘standard justification; for all forms of weapons acquisition and deployment, which appeals to defense and deterrence, does not stand up for weapons research because the harms caused by the latter projects into the future in unknowable ways. Weapons research produces practical knowledge in the form of designs for the means to harm, and its practitioners cannot know how this knowledge will be used in the future.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://services.igi-global.com/resolvedoi/resolve. ... .4018/ijt.2014070101 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:igg:jt0000:v:5:y:2014:i:2:p:1-10

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Technoethics (IJT) is currently edited by Steven Umbrello

More articles in International Journal of Technoethics (IJT) from IGI Global
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journal Editor ().