Drawing on philosophical notions of personal identity and the immorality of killing, Jeff McMahan looks at various issues, including abortion, infanticide, the killing of animals, assisted suicide, and euthanasia.

"This academic text brings together, in one volume, the most recent and innovative accounts of liability in war. It offers a "who's who" of contemporary scholars working on and rigorously debating the major ethical questions surrounding self-defense and killing in war, including: liability to harm, rights theory, selective conscientious objection, obligations toward civilians, and autonomous weapons. This volume pulls together, expands upon, and provides new and updated analyses of the concept of liability (and related concepts) that have yet to be captured in a single work. As a convenient and authoritative collection of such discussions, this title is uniquely and well suited for university-level teaching and as a scholarly reference for ethicists, policymakers, and other stakeholders."--Provided by publisher.

This title examines the fields of value theory, normative and applied ethics on the issue of killing animals. It addresses a number of questions: Can painless killing harm or benefit an animal and, if so, why and under what conditions? Can coming into existence harm or benefit an animal? Is killing animals morally acceptable? Should animals have the legal right to life? In addressing these questions, animal rights and animal welfare positions are articulated and debated by some of the foremost thinkers on these issues, with a distinction made between rights-based and utilitarian approaches.

When and why is it right to kill? When and why is it wrong? Torbjörn Tännsjö examines three theories on the ethics of killing in this book: deontology, a libertarian moral rights theory, and utilitarianism. The implications of each theory are worked out for different kinds of killing: trolley-cases, murder, capital punishment, suicide, assisted death, abortion, killing in war, and the killing of animals. These implications are confronted with our intuitions in relation to them, and our moral intuitions are examined in turn. Only those intuitions that survive an understanding of how we have come to hold them are seen as 'considered' intuitions. The idea is that the theory that can best explain the content of our considered intuitions gains inductive support from them. We must transcend our narrow cultural horizons and avoid certain cognitive mistakes in order to hold considered intuitions. In this volume, suitable for courses in ethics and applied ethics, Tännsjö argues that in the final analysis utilitarianism can best account for, and explain, our considered intuitions about all these kinds of killing.

Richard Norman looks at issues concerning the justification for war and thereby examines the possibility and nature of rational moral argument.

This magisterial work is the first comprehensive study of the ethics of killing, where the moral status of the individual killed is uncertain. Drawing on philosophical notions of personal identity and the immorality of killing, McMahan looks carefully at a host of practical issues, including abortion, infanticide, the killing of animals, assisted suicide, and euthanasia.

In this book, philosopher Seumas Miller analyzes the various moral justifications and moral responsibilities involved in the use of lethal force by police and military, relying on a distinctive normative teleological account of institutional roles. Miller covers a variety of urgent and morally complex topics, including police shootings of armed offenders, police shooting of suicide-bombers, targeted killing, autonomous weapons, humanitarian armed intervention, and civilian immunity. -- Provided by publisher.