Against Moral Absolutism: Surveillance and Disclosure After Snowden

Enabling Digital Citizenship? The Reshaping of Surveillance Policy After Snowden

The revelations by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have led to policy reform debates in several countries and to policy change in some, including a new legislative framework in the UK—the Investigatory Powers Act. In this article, we trace the forces and dynamics that have shaped this particular policy response. We investigate key controversies over the types and extent of surveillance; the ca...

The Moral Physician Miller’s Quest for Non-Melodramatic Absolutism

Mass Surveillance in Cyberspace and the Lost Art of Keeping a Secret - Policy Lessons for Government After the Snowden Leaks

Global security concerns, acts of terrorism and organised crime activity have motivated nation states to delve into implementing measures of mass surveillance in cyberspace, the breadth of which was partly revealed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. But are modern nation states fighting a battle in the wrong space? Is mass surveillance of cyberspace e↵ective and are the conventional metaphors...

Two Accounts of Moral Diversity: the Cognitive Science of Pluralism and Absolutism

Psychology is relevant to judging moral theories. Ever since G. E. Moore's discussion of the naturalistic fallacy (1903), many philosophers have denied this, but the charge of irrelevancy overlooks the fact that the assumptions on which a moral position rests often include non-moral elements. If the non-moral bits are wrong, the moral position will often be undermined. This paper concerns some ...

Russell’s Absolutism vs.(?) Structuralism

Along with Frege, Russell maintained an absolutist stance regarding the subject matter of mathematics, revealed rather than imposed, or proposed, by logical analysis. The Fregean definition of cardinal number, for example, is viewed as (essentially) correct, not merely adequate for mathematics. And Dedekind’s “structuralist” views come in for criticism in the Principles. But, on reflection, Rus...