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The Price of Precaution and the Ethics of Risk

Since a couple of decades, the notion of a precautionary principle plays a central and increasingly influential role in international as well as national policy and regulation regarding the environment and the use of technology. Urging society to take action in the face of potential risks of human a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Munthe, Christian
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 2011, 2011
Edition:1st ed. 2011
Series:The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology
Subjects:
Ethics
Environment
Philosophy Of Technology
Environmental Law
Political Science
Environmental Sciences
Technology / Philosophy
Moral Philosophy And Applied Ethics
Online Access:
Collection: Springer eBooks 2005- - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
Table of Contents:
  • 5.6.4 Pure or Mixed Relative Progressiveness?
  • 5.6.5 What Makes for an Acceptable Mix of Risks and Chances?
  • 5.7 SummingUp
  • References
  • 6 Practical Applications
  • 6.1 General Cases
  • 6.1.1 Consumerism
  • 6.1.2 Why Individual Motivation Should Not Be the Target
  • 6.1.3 Precaution as a Collective Good and the Need for a Politics of Power
  • 6.2 Hard Cases
  • 6.2.1 Climate Change and Pollution
  • 6.2.2 Nuclear Power and Energy Production
  • 6.2.3 Biotechnology
  • 6.3 Policy
  • 6.3.1 Do We Really Need a PP?
  • 6.3.2 Principlism vs. Proceduralism
  • 6.3.3 De Minimis Revisited
  • 6.3.4Justifying the Proof Requirement of Justifiable Policy Claim
  • 6.3.5 Justifying the Burden of Proof Requirement
  • 6.3.6 Conservatism Revisited
  • 6.4 Big Questions
  • 6.4.1 The Enlightment Ideals Revisited
  • 6.4.2 The Remaining Challenge of Values
  • 6.4.3 The Case for Cosmopolitan Precaution
  • 6.4.4 Unrealistic and Dangerous?
  • 6.4.5 A Challenge for Liberal Democracy?
  • References
  • 1 Introduction
  • 1.1 Background
  • 1.1.1 Diversity and Unclarity
  • 1.1.2 The Price of Precaution
  • 1.1.3 Precaution, Risk Analysis and Models of Rationality
  • 1.1.4 The Ideal of the Desirability of Precaution
  • 1.2 Aim,Plan and Basis
  • 1.2.1 Plan of the Book
  • 1.2.2 The Requirement of Precaution
  • 1.2.3 Degrees of Precaution
  • References
  • 2 Dimensions of Precaution
  • 2.1 Values, Levels and Time-Horizons
  • 2.1.1 Values
  • 2.1.2 Levels and Time-Horizons
  • 2.2 May Bring Great Harm
  • 2.2.1 De MinimisRisk and the Need for a Limit
  • 2.2.2 The Argument from Decision Costs
  • 2.3 Show
  • 2.3.1 Proof-Standards
  • 2.3.2 Decisional Paralysis
  • 2.3.3 The Holistic Nature of Precaution
  • 2.3.4 Conservatism and Arbitrariness
  • 2.4 Risk
  • 2.4.1 Likelihoods, Values or Combinations?
  • 2.4.2 Quantities, Qualities and Levels of Precision
  • 2.4.3 Objective or Subjective?
  • 2.5 Too Serious
  • 2.6 SummingUp
  • References
  • Contents
  • 3 Precaution and Rationality
  • 3.1 Rational Action – the Standard View
  • 3.1.1 Efficiency, Value Neutrality and Calculated Risk Taking
  • 3.1.2 Enlightment Critique and the Charge of Instrumental Rationality
  • 3.2 Rational Precaution
  • 3.2.1 Ignorance, Precaution and the Maximin Rule
  • 3.2.2 Limitations of Plausibility, Applicability and Status
  • 3.3 From Rationality to Morality
  • 3.3.1 Rawls’ Appeal to Responsibility
  • 3.3.2 Moral Opinions About Risk Impositions
  • 3.3.3 Moral Dilemmas of Precaution
  • References
  • 4 Ethics and Risks
  • 4.1 Traditional Criteria of Rightness
  • 4.1.1 TheDiversity ofNormativeEthic
  • 4.1.2 Factualism and the Silence on Risks
  • 4.1.3 Autonomy and Justice
  • 4.1.4 The Two Level Approach
  • 4.2 The Virtue of Precaution
  • 4.3 AbandoningFactualism
  • 4.3.1 The Forbidden Risks Approach
  • 4.3.2 Trading Off Risks and Harms 1: Apples and Oranges
  • 4.3.3 Trading Off Risks and Harms 2: Improving Practical Guidance
  • 4.3.4 Trading Off Risks and Harms 3: The Knowability Argument
  • 4.3.5 Trading Off Risks and Harms 4: Back to Square One References
  • 5 The Morality of Imposing Risks
  • 5.1 Basic Structure
  • 5.2 The Problem of Guidance
  • 5.3 Basic Intuitions About Responsibility
  • 5.3.1 Absolutes or Degrees?
  • 5.3.2 What About Intentions?
  • 5.3.3 Assessing and Comparing Degrees of Responsibility
  • 5.3.4 Avoiding Indeterminacy – Possibility and Desirability
  • 5.4 Areas of Precaution
  • 5.4.1 Beyond Risk Neutrality
  • 5.4.2 The Quality of Available Evidence
  • 5.5 The Weight of Evil
  • 5.5.1 Conceptual Preliminaries
  • 5.5.2 Five Approaches
  • 5.5.3 The Case Against Rigidity
  • 5.5.4 Rigidity of Aggregation and the Notion of Rights
  • 5.5.5 Simple Progressiveness
  • 5.5.6 The Case for Relative Progressiveness
  • 5.6 Problems with Relative Progressiveness
  • 5.6.1 What Implications for other Normative Issues?
  • 5.6.2 The Lack of Numerical Exactness
  • 5.6.3 What Size of the Weight?

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