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Emotions Involved in Risk Perception: From Sociological and Psychological Risk Studies Towards a Neosentimentalist Meta-Ethics

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Emotions and Risky Technologies

Part of the book series: The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology ((ELTE,volume 5))

Abstract

This contribution deals with the role of emotions in risk perception from a philosophical perspective. The first part gives a brief overview of the discussion about risk and risk perception triggered by the social sciences and by interdisciplinary risk assessment. Second, I will discuss a recent form of antisentimentalism as it was recently supported by Lennart Sjöberg. I support a moderate adaptation of the constructivist point of view defended in the first part as it was originally spelled out by risk sociology in the 1970s. On the meta-ethical level, this implies a (neo-) sentimentalist conception of risk. On the level of normative ethics, I will follow a recipient-oriented approach, supporting the thesis that emotional damage adds to the total amount of harmful consequences.

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Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Sabine Roeser and Niels Taubert for their helpful comments and Dieter Birnbacher for the opportunity to co-teach a course with him on risk ethics. Niels Taubert’s expertise on the sociology of risk has substantially contributed to the first and second part of this paper. It goes without saying that mistakes are all mine.

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  1. Faculty of Innovation Management and Industrial Design, Philosophy & Ethics, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Felicitas Kraemer

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  1. Felicitas Kraemer
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Correspondence to Felicitas Kraemer .

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  1. Dept. Philosophy, Delft University of Technology, Delft, 2628 BX, Netherlands

    Sabine Roeser

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Kraemer, F. (2010). Emotions Involved in Risk Perception: From Sociological and Psychological Risk Studies Towards a Neosentimentalist Meta-Ethics. In: Roeser, S. (eds) Emotions and Risky Technologies. The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8647-1_12

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