Professor Seth Lazar
Areas of expertise
- Social Philosophy 220319
- Ethical Theory 220305
- Applied Ethics 2201
- Human Rights And Justice Issues 220104
- Political Theory And Political Philosophy 160609
- Decision Theory 220302
- International Relations 160607
Research interests
I write on topics in political philosophy, and normative and applied ethics. I have two current research projects.
The first focuses on how those who care about rights and duties can make decisions under risk and uncertainty. I’m working on a book, to come out with Oxford University Press, called Duty Under Doubt: Deontological Decision-Making with Imperfect Information. This work fits into ‘Ethics and Risk’, an AUD335,000 grant from the Australian government, held jointly with Katie Steele, Alan Hajek, Frank Jackson, Philip Pettit and Lara Buchak.
My second project, which I started in August 2019, is on Humanising Machine Intelligence. I’m project leader of a major AUD7.5m investment by ANU on the morality, law and politics of data and AI. Our goal is to lay the social, theoretical, and technological foundations for democratically legitimate data and AI. I am thrilled to be working with some of the university’s leading computer scientists, philosophers, and social scientists on one of the most important problems of our age. Read about that at hmi.anu.edu.au. I’m going to be working on a number of topics: philosophical issues raised by the political economy of data and AI; automating governance and governing automation; and how AI amplifies human tendencies, for better or worse. This last topic is part of a just-awarded grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation, part of their ‘Diverse Intelligences’ initiative, for USD234,000, for which I am Director, Claire Benn is Co-Director, and Jenny Davis, Toni Erskine, Colin Klein, and Bob Williamson are also investigators.
Biography
I’m a Professor in the School of Philosophy at the ANU, lead CI on the ARC grant ‘Ethics and Risk’, director of a Templeton World Charity Foundation project on ‘Moral Skill and Artificial Intelligence’, and project leader of the major interdisciplinary research project: Humanising Machine Intelligence. In 2019, I was awarded the ANU Vice Chancellor’s award for excellence in research.
In my first book, Sparing Civilians (Oxford, 2015), I tried to preserve the protection of civilians in war against political and philosophical threats that have arisen in recent years. The book is the subject of a symposium in Law and Philosophy, available online now. A central focus of my early work on the ethics of war was the necessity of taking an approach more grounded in political philosophy than in moral philosophy—the same redirection is necessary for work on the morality, law and politics of data and AI.
I've published papers in many top journals, including Ethics (2009, 2015, 2017), Philosophy & Public Affairs (2010, 2012, 2018), Australasian Journal of Philosophy (2015), Nous (2017), Synthese (2019), Philosophical Quarterly (2018), Philosophical Studies (2017), Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy (2017), and others. See 'Research' for more. I'm also an Area Editor at Ergo, an editor of Philosophers' Imprint, and on the editorial board of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy.
I'm also a photographer. You can see more of my photos here. Sometimes the nice people at Samyang send me lenses to play with. You can see those pictures here. I exhibit my night sky work, which you can also buy here.
Current student projects
Lexical Priority and Risk
Moral Anti-Rationalism
Addressing the Environmental Crisis
Contractualism and Future Generations
Publications
- Lazar, S & Graham, P 2019, 'Deontological decision theory and lesser-evil options [IN PRESS]', Synthese, vol. Online.
- Lazar, S 2019, 'Accommodating Options', Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 100, no. 1, pp. 233-255.
- Lazar, S. & Lee-Stronach, C. 2019 'Axiological Absolutism and Risk', Noûs, vol. 53, no. 1, pp. 97-113.
- Lazar, S 2018, 'Strengthening Moral Distinction', Law and Philosophy, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 327pp-349pp.
- Lazar, S 2018, 'Moral Status and Agent-Centred Options', Utilitas, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 83-105.
- Lazar, S 2018, 'Moral Sunk Costs', The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 68, no. 273, pp. 841-861.
- Lazar, S 2018, 'Limited Aggregation and Risk', Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 46, no. 2, pp. 117pp-159.
- Lazar, S & Frowe PhD, H 2018, 'The Ethics of War', in Seth Lazar and Helen Frowe (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Ethics of War, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 1-20.
- Lazar, S 2017, 'War's Endings and the Structure of Just War Theory', in Sam Rickless and Saba Bazargan (ed.), The Ethics of War, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 227-242pp.
- Lazar, S 2017, 'Risky Killing How Risks Worsen Violations of Objective Rights', Journal of Moral Philosophy, vol. Online, pp. 1-26pp.
- Lazar, S 2017, 'Just War Theory: Revisionists Versus Traditionalists', Annual Review of Political Science, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 37-54pp.
- Lazar, S 2017, 'Response: Limiting Defensive Rights', Journal of Applied Philosophy, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 19-23pp.
- Lazar, S 2017, 'Evaluating the Revisionist Critique of Just War Theory', Daedalus, vol. 146, no. 1, pp. 113-124.
- Lazar, S 2017, 'Deontological decision theory and agent-centered options', Ethics: an International journal of social, political and legal philosophy, vol. 127, no. 3, pp. 579-609.
- Lazar, S 2017, 'In dubious battle: uncertainty and the ethics of killing', Philosophical Studies, pp. 25pp.
- Lazar, S 2017, 'Symposium on Ethics and Decision Theory: Introduction', Ethics: an International journal of social, political and legal philosophy, vol. 127, no. 3, pp. 576-578pp.
- Lazar, S & Valentini, L 2017, 'Proxy Battles in Just War Theory: Jus in Bello, the Site of Justice, and Feasibility Constraints', in David Sobel, Peter Vallentyne and Steven Wall (ed.), Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, Volume 3, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 166-193pp.
- Lazar, S 2016, 'Liability and the Ethics of War: A Response', in Christian Coons and Michael Weber (ed.), The Ethics of Self-Defense, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 292-304pp.
- Lazar, S 2016, 'The Associativist Account of Killing in War', in David Held and Pietro Maffettone (ed.), Global Political Theory, Polity Press, Cambridge, pp. 158-179.
- Lazar, S 2016, 'WAR', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, pp. 1-65.
- Lazar, S 2016, 'Method in the Morality of War', in Seth Lazar and Helen Frowe (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Ethics of War, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 1-25.
- Lazar, S 2016, 'Travel, Friends and Killings', in David Edmonds (ed.), Philosophers Take on the World, Oxford University Press, UK, pp. 25-27.
- Lazar, S 2015, 'Authorization and The Morality of War', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Online First.
- Lazar, S 2016, 'Anton's Game: Deontological Decision Theory for an Iterated Decision Problem', Utilitas, Online First.
- Lazar, S 2016, 'Complicity, Collectives, and Killing in War', Law and Philosophy, Online First.
- Lazar, S 2016, 'The Justification of Associative Duties', Journal of Moral Philosophy, 13:1, 28-55.
- Lazar, S 2015, 'Authority, Oaths, Contracts, and Uncertainty in War', Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 52-58.
- Lazar, S 2015, 'Risky Killing and the Ethics of War', Ethics: an International journal of social, political and legal philosophy, vol. 126, no. 1, pp. 91-117.
- Lazar, S 2015, Sparing Civilians, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
- Lazar, S 2014, 'Book Review: Cosmopolitan War', Ethics: an International journal of social, political and legal philosophy, vol. 124, no. 2, pp. 406-412.
- Lazar, S 2014, 'Letter: A Reply to McMahan', Journal of Practical Ethics, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 69-71.
- Fabre, C & Lazar, S, eds, 2014, The Morality of Defensive War, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
- Fabre, C & Lazar, S 2014, 'Introduction to the Morality of Defensive War', in Cecile Fabre & Seth Lazar (ed.), The Morality of Defensive War, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 1-8.
- Lazar, S 2014, 'National Defence, Self-Defence, and the Problem of Political Aggression', in Cecile Fabre & Seth Lazar (ed.), The Morality of Defensive War, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 11-40.
- Lazar, S 2014, 'Necessity and non-combatant immunity', Review of International Studies, vol. 40, no.1, pp. 53-76.
- Lazar, S 2014, On Human Shields, Boston Review.
- Lazar, S 2013, The Moral Responsibility of Volunteer Soldiers: Response to McMahan, Boston Review, pp. 3pp.
- Lazar, S 2013, 'War', in Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, John Wiley & Sons Inc, United States of America, pp. 5379-5393.
- Lazar, S 2013, 'Associative Duties and the Ethics of Killing in War', Journal of Practical Ethics, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 3-48.
- Lazar, S 2013, 'Just War Theory', in Joel Krieger (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Comparative Politics, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 618-623.
- Lazar, S 2012, 'Necessity in Self-Defense and War', Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 3-44.
- Lazar, S 2012, 'The Morality and Law of War', in Andrei Marmor (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Law, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, United Kingdom, pp. 364-380.
- Lazar, S 2012, 'Scepticism about Jus Post Bellum', in Larry May and Andrew T. Forcehimes (ed.), Morality, Jus Post Bellum, and International Law, Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom, pp. 1-292.
- Lazar, S 2011, 'War', in Luanna H Meyer (ed.), Oxford Bibliographies Online, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. Online.
- Lazar, S, ed., 2011, Introduction: Symposium on Jeff McMahan's Killing in War .
- Lazar, S 2011, 'Book review: War: Essays in Political Philosophy', Mind: a quarterly review of philosophy, vol. 120, no. 479, pp. 895-901.
- Lazar, S 2010, 'A Liberal Defence of (Some) Duties to Compatriots', Journal of Applied Philosophy, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 246-257.
- Lazar, S 2010, 'The Responsibility Dilemma for Killing in War: a Review Essay', Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 180-213.
- Lazar, S 2009, 'Do Associative Duties Really Not Matter?', Journal of Political Philosophy, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 90-101.
- Lazar, S 2009, 'Responsibility, Risk, and Killing in Self-Defense', Ethics: an International journal of social, political and legal philosophy, vol. 119, no. 4, pp. 699-728.
- Lazar, S 2009, 'The Nature and Disvalue of Injury', Res Publica: a journal of legal and social philosophy, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 289-304.
- Lazar, S 2008, 'Corrective Justice and the Possibility of Rectification', Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 355-368.
Projects and Grants
Grants information is drawn from ARIES. To add or update Projects or Grants information please contact your College Research Office.
- Ethics and Risk (Primary Investigator)