Petty Revenge Campaigns

Okay, let's break this down piece by piece and then see where your potential counter-arguments might hit. First, here's a plain-English summary of Sparrow's responsibility gap argument against AWS:

Sparrow's Core Argument (Plain English):

1. Moral Accountability is Key: When we kill enemy soldiers in war, we have to have someone we can fairly blame (hold morally responsible) if things go wrong, or if innocent people die.
2. No Blame on the Programmer or Commander: You can't fairly blame the programmer because they didn't intend the specific deaths, and you can't fairly blame the commander because the autonomous system made its own choices.
3. Can't Blame the Weapon: You obviously can't blame the robot itself because it's not a moral agent/person.
4. No Other Good Candidates: There's no one else we could reasonably hold responsible.
5. Therefore, No One Accountable: If no one is legitimately accountable, then we can't justly be killing people with these weapons.
6. So, AWS Use is Wrong: Using these weapons is like treating the enemy as if they're worthless and we don't owe them any moral consideration at all.

Now, let's dive into a breakdown of Sparrow's argument to see where you might challenge it:

1. Challenging Premise 1: "Moral Accountability is Key"

• Unintended Casualties are Inevitable:
  • War is messy, full of accidents, and unintentional harm. It's never clean to just fairly blame one person for every death that happens due to enemy forces.
• Goal-Oriented Warfare
  • The overall goal of an operation or conflict is what matters, not the granular individual cases of who is responsible for which casualty. When looking at the totality of the engagement, there can be benefits or drawbacks that may have been caused by the casualties.
• Lowering Risk Makes it Ethical?
  • If AWS could overall reduce civilian deaths or make combat more precise, maybe they're ethically better, even if pinning blame is harder.

2. Challenging Premise 2: "No Blame on the Programmer or Commander"

• Programmer Accountability:
  • You can hold programmers accountable for bad or negligent programming. If a programmer made a system that's known to be reckless, they can share in the moral responsibility.
• Commander has Control.
  • A commander isn't totally hands-off because they still choose when and where to deploy the AWS. They set the parameters and mission objective. Therefore, they do have some responsibility.

3. Challenging Premise 3: "Can't Blame the Weapon"

• Irrelevant - Robots aren't and don't need to be people.
  • Whether the robot is a person, is not part of the argument. It doesn't need it. The AWS is a tool.

4. Challenging Premise 4: "No Other Good Candidates"

• False Dilemma:
  • There are other candidates, they were just overlooked.
• Share the load.
  • Can't you split or distribute the moral responsibility, and be shared amongst more candidates?

5. Challenging Sparrow's Analogy (Enemies as Vermin/Extermination)

• Straw Man/False Equivalence:
  • Using AWS is a technological choice, not an intent to dehumanize. You can still have "moral regard" for the enemy while using better tools to win. Comparing it to extermination is overblown and manipulative, and intentionally ignores the context of war.

Potential Overall Counter-Argument Strategy:

• Point out all the flaws!
  • Sparrow's argument rests of several shaky presumptions that are easily called-out. The biggest one being that all casualties of war would necessarily to have someone guilty of crimes.
• Argue that overall results matter, not individual blame.
  • It might be harder to lay specific blame in every case, but if AWS actually result in greater good while minimizing unnecessary damage, then that is a net positive for AWS.

Would you like assistance in formulating counter arguments to all of those presumptions that Sparrow presented?