University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Mistaken defense and normative conventions

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Mistaken defense and normative conventions

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Abstract (if available)

Abstract Uncertain defenders face an urgent, high stakes decision: they must choose between risking being unjustly killed (if they mistakenly assume the agent is not a threat) or killing an innocent (if they mistakenly assume the agent is a threat). This creates a coordination problem for well-intentioned agents, which if left unresolved, results in an unjust distribution of the risk of suffering aggressive or mistaken harm. The problem is best resolved by conventionally marking some actions (like pointing a gun at someone) as threat-indicating signals, holding that when an agent A behaves in these ways and could easily have avoided doing so, A cannot reasonably demand that S refrain from defensive action, so if S lacks countervailing evidence she is morally permitted to defend herself even if (unknown to S) A did not pose or intend to pose a threat. Such a convention has normative power to alter the boundaries of agents' rights only if constrained in a few important ways: (1) all agents must be able to avoid signaling without undue cost, and (2) no agent can be placed in a position of signaling aggression by default. Understanding defensive permissions as mediated by a normative convention captures the intuitive idea that whether a defender’s mistaken use of force is justified is intimately connected to the kind of reasons she had for assuming force was necessary. It also puts us in a good position to evaluate our actual accountability practices. There is good reason to think that current legal determinations of the reasonableness of mistakes in Anglo-American law rely on signals for threateningness that are keyed to racial identities, which violates the two constraints on normative conventions and is morally bankrupt.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Bolinger, Renèe Jorgensen (author)

Core Title Mistaken defense and normative conventions

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Philosophy

Publication Date 09/01/2017

Defense Date 08/21/2017

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Defence,defensive permissions,moral conventions,moral rights,normative conventions,OAI-PMH Harvest,self defense,signaling conventions,uncertainty

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Quong, Jonathan (committee chair), Jeshion, Robin (committee member), John, Richard (committee member), Schroeder, Mark (committee member), Shiffrin, Seana (committee member)

Creator Email rbolinge@usc.edu,renee.bolinger@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-427428

Unique identifier UC11263855

Identifier etd-BolingerRe-5703.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-427428 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-BolingerRe-5703.pdf

Dmrecord 427428

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Bolinger, Renèe Jorgensen

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA