Dr Alex Leveringhaus
Academic and research departments
Department of Politics, Centre for International Intervention, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.About
Biography
I joined Surrey in January 2018 from the University of Manchester, where I was a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in the Centre for Political Theory. Prior to working at Manchester, I was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, University of Oxford, as well as a James Martin Fellow in the Oxford Martin School. I received my PhD in Government from LSE, where I worked under the supervision of Cecile Fabre and Paul Kelly.
At Surrey, I am the co-director, with Nick Kitchen, of the Centre for International Intervention. I am also a coordinator for the Special Interest Group for Ethics and Artificial Intelligence at the University, and an affiliate at the Surrey Centre for Law and Philosophy (SCLP).
University roles and responsibilities
- Exams and Assessments Officer
ResearchResearch interests
My research interests lie in contemporary political theory and philosophy in the analytic tradition. I also have an interest in contemporary ethical theory – normative and applied. Most of my work is on ethical and other theoretical issues in armed conflict, with special emphasis on emerging combat technologies (drones, robots, autonomous weapons), as well as military intervention. More generally, I am interested in the ethical and political repercussions of the wide-spread introduction and use of Artificial Intelligence.
Research interests
My research interests lie in contemporary political theory and philosophy in the analytic tradition. I also have an interest in contemporary ethical theory – normative and applied. Most of my work is on ethical and other theoretical issues in armed conflict, with special emphasis on emerging combat technologies (drones, robots, autonomous weapons), as well as military intervention. More generally, I am interested in the ethical and political repercussions of the wide-spread introduction and use of Artificial Intelligence.
Supervision
Postgraduate research supervision
I welcome proposals in most areas of contemporary political theory, especially on the following topic:
- Theories of rights
- Non-consequentialism (applied issues in the ethics of killing and saving, as well as conceptions of human dignity and non-instrumentalisation)
- Just war theory
- Theoretical approaches to atrocities and human right abuses
- Ethics and Politics of Artificial Intelligence
Teaching
At Surrey, I convene ‘Social and Political Thinkers: from Plato to Marx’, which is the core political philosophy course for all our undergraduates. It is also taken by a large number of students from outside the Politics Department. From Winter Semester 2019, I will convene the UG course on political ideologies.
At PGT level, I convene the module on global governance, and co-teach, with Nick Kitchen, Politics of International Intervention.
Dissertation supervision: I have supervised a variety of topics in political theory and beyond, including abortion rights, biomedical enhancement in sports, the moral standing of soldiers, the obligation to intervene, the conceptualisation of war as punishment, and society-building in (post-) civil war scenarios.
Publications
Highlights
Leveringhaus, Alex (2016), Ethics and Autonomous Weapons (Palgrave)
Leveringhaus, Alex (2016), ‘What so bad about Killer Robots?’, Journal of Applied Philosophy.
In this chapter, political philosopher Alex Leveringhaus asks whether Lethal Autonomous Weapons (AWS) are morally repugnant and whether this entails that they should be prohibited by international law. To this end, Leveringhaus critically surveys three prominent ethical arguments against AWS: firstly, AWS create ‘responsibility gaps’; secondly, that their use is incompatible with human dignity; and ,thirdly, that AWS replace human agency with artificial agency. He argues that some of these arguments fail to show that AWS are morally different from more established weapons. However, the author concludes that AWS are currently problematic due to their lack of predictability.
This paper critically examines the implications of technology for the ethics of intervention and vice versa, especially regarding (but not limited to) the concept of military humanitarian intervention (MHI). To do so, it uses two recent pro-interventionist proposals as lenses through which to analyse the relationship between interventionism and technology. These are A. Altman and C.H. Wellman’s argument for the assassination of tyrannical leaders, and C. Fabre’s case for foreign electoral subversion. Existing and emerging technologies, the paper contends, play an important role in realising these proposals. This illustrates the potential of technology to facilitate interventionist practices that transcend the traditional concept of MHI, with its reliance on kinetic force and large-scale military operations. The question, of course, is whether this is normatively desirable. Here, the paper takes a critical view. While there is no knockdown argument against either assassination or electoral subversion for humanitarian purposes, both approaches face similar challenges, most notably regarding public accountability, effectiveness, and appropriate regulatory frameworks. The paper concludes by making alternative suggestions for how technology can be utilised to improve the protection of human rights. Overall, the paper shows that an engagement with technology is fruitful and necessary for the ethics of intervention.