Abstract
Let me sum up the results so far. In the second chapter, two desiderata for a sound interpretation of the requirement of precaution were formulated. First, such an interpretation must not lead to decisional paralysis – at least not systematically so. Second, such an interpretation must at least implicitly imply reasons for its recommendations (thereby avoiding the issuing of arbitrary prescriptions). These desiderata alone exclude a number of possible interpretations of the requirement, for example, those employing simplistic conservatism or ‘worship of the novel 1 and those employing proof-standards that for most people are impossible to live up to in most cases.
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Notes
- 1.
Simplistic conservatism tells us to preserve status quo for no better reason than it being status quo. Simplistic worship of the novel tells us to adopt/use any new thing, just because it is new.
- 2.
Another possibility would be to view these statements as being about totally different subjects, lacking all connection to each other. This would not effect any change in what will be said below about what makes for a morally responsible risk imposition . However, due mainly to reasons having to do with the problem of guidance addressed below, I have come to prefer a model where all normative and evaluative statements are related to what they may function as reasons for.
- 3.
Cf. Parfit (1984, pp. 31ff). The reason, of course, is that this would again mean that the responsibility of risk imposition comes to be seen as a special case of the (factualist ) rightness and wrongness of actions. More specifically, it would again actualise the two level approach – an idea that in the preceding chapter was rejected as a fruitful basis for justifying the requirement of precaution .
- 4.
This further step, however, will need additional claims, for example, the political norm that society should involve itself in trying to make (certain types of) decisions more responsible. I will return to this aspect in the final chapter.
- 5.
This is really two different questions: (1) is the property of being responsible a binary property? (2) Is the occurrence of this property determined by one single property or relative to the occurrence of various other properties?
- 6.
There may be problems involved in specifying this idea, due to the general problem of individuating and quantifying over alternative decisions, and the more specific possibility that the set of alternative decisions may be infinite. Handling these complications comes down to settling for one particular categorisation of an alternative decision capable of clearly separating different such decisions relative to a situation. Moreover, even if the total set of alternative decisions in any situation is in fact infinite, it does not follow that the subset of alternative decisions that would have been more responsible than a particular decision in the infinite (main) set must be an infinite set. Finally, in the present context it is not very important exactly how the idea at hand is specified. As will be seen below, what matters is that it may be specified in some way that makes the comparison of degrees of (ir)responsibility theoretically meaningful, so that, what might be called, ‘quasi-absolutist’ judgements about the (ir)responsibility of decisions may be inferred.
- 7.
This idea follows trivially from the gradual approach when we compare options in the same situation of choice. However, comparing options from different situations of choice, it may seem less obvious. In that case, it may be claimed, we should base the comparison on a thought experiment where we imagine the different options to belong to the same situation and compare the relative degrees of irresponsibility that would have been assigned to the options had this been the real situation of choice. This latter solution may seem to satisfy the intuition that the relative degree of irresponsibility should be determined solely by how options are ranked on the basis of those features determining the degree of responsibility (what these are will be further discussed below). However, my own intuition is rather that the interesting comparison to make regarding different irresponsible options is how irresponsible they are in the actual situation of choice. If they are equally irresponsible relative to their respective situations of choice, they are also equally irresponsible, period. The fact that they may have had a different relative degree of irresponsibility had they figured in another situation of choice is another matter entirely. Another idea is that it may make sense to have the comparison depend not only on the number of more responsible (or less irresponsible) options in the situation, but also on the number of less responsible (or more irresponsible) options. This would make the comparison of degrees of irresponsibility more complicated. I owe these observations to Ragnar Francén .
- 8.
This makes it possible to compare the degree of (ir)responsibility of a particular decision to impose risks, first, in relation to other particular situations of choice where this decision would or could be made, but also, second, between the decisions made in different situations of choice. One may ask why the latter is an important feature. I believe it is, since I believe that most of us have strong moral intuitions with regard to such comparisons. For example, compare the following two (clearly) irresponsible decisions made in different situations: (1) as a father I let my 3 year old child play around on the deck of a small sailboat at sea without any lifejacket on. (2) as the captain of a cruiser, I have neglected to see to it that there are lifejackets and lifeboats available for the 300 passengers aboard in case of an emergency in spite of the fact that I knew very well that the cruise will be very likely to pass through a severe tropical storm.
- 9.
This basic idea can be found in the writings of both Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant , as well as numerous followers of the ideas of these philosophers. The idea is, of course, not entirely clear and can be interpreted in many different ways. One important distinction is that between requiring of the intention to be directed at that particular state or event that is condoned by morality (which seems to be Aquinas ’ idea), and requiring the intention to be directed at the abstract aim of doing one’s moral duty (the core idea of Kantian ethics).
- 10.
- 11.
If the institutions are not political but, for example, commercial, other types of aims will transpire, such as the aim of maximising profit, keeping the shareholders happy, following the directions of a company board, et cetera.
- 12.
- 13.
What Sandin points to is, first, that the concept of precautionary action entails a relativisation to some particular danger, hazard, undesirable event etc. This, in turn, can be used in order to rebut accusations against PP of implying absolutism or of necessarily being unable to deal with the balancing of different risks and chances. Secondly, he demonstrates how particular disagreements on precautionary policy (such as the differing views on the use of growth hormones in beef cattle between the E.U. and the U.S .) can be better understood with the help of the requirement that the agent possess “externally good reasons” for the various beliefs about the possibility of harm, et cetera, that underlies her action in order for it to be truly precautionary. See Sandin (2005a).
- 14.
If it is not, the decision to build the tunnel is irresponsible for the simple reason that it unnecessarily introduces new risks .
- 15.
Taken together, these three factors imply that my theory of the morality of imposing risks, and the version of the requirement of precaution , as well as any version of PP based on this theory, is not implied by any of the suggested generic versions of PP that Martin Peterson has claimed to be incoherent (Peterson 2006). In addition, my theory does not satisfy the ‘dominance’ or ‘covariance’ conditions assumed by Peterson in his proof of the just mentioned incoherence. All of this depends on the simple fact that, on moral grounds, I reject the idea that only outcome values and likelihoods are relevant from the point of view of a sound ethics of risks.
- 16.
- 17.
This is the realistic picture to paint regarding available evidence when considering possible risks and benefits of previously unapplied technologies – especially regarding applications on larger scales where significant effects on complex systems, such as the ecosphere, may be anticipated. In these cases, we will often have quite a lot of evidence about various seemingly relevant mechanisms taken in isolation (or in more limited combinations), but lack completely any experience of the workings of all relevant mechanisms taken together in exactly that kind of surrounding in which the application is being pondered (partly because we will have to take seriously the possibility that some such mechanism is unknown to us until we acquire experience of this application).
- 18.
It should be noted that this increased clarity may consist in the insight that the idea of a fully deterministic theory of the moral responsibility of risk impositions is a fundamentally hopeless prospect.
- 19.
For those not familiar with philosophical discussions of vagueness , characteristics and phenomena such as these constitute standard examples of very familiar and obviously true aspects of reality that are vague (i.e. we are unable to say exactly what number of hair strands must be lost in order for the feature of baldness to appear, or what number of grains of sand need to be assembled in order for a heap to have been formed).
- 20.
Hansson (1999).
- 21.
- 22.
Hansson (1999).
- 23.
As with all examples of this sort, we may of course complicate it; assuming uncertainty as to the quality of the lottery, further values than merely money, et cetera. However, as everyone clever enough to point that out realises, every such move may be counteracted by further changes (the safety of the way home, even more preferences pulling in the opposite direction than the formerly added ones, and so on).
- 24.
This seems to be the vague idea of Allhoff (2009). Below, I argue in favour of a more refined, flexible and less binary/rigid version of such a general intuition.
- 25.
I owe this point to Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen .
- 26.
This idea presupposes that we define the concepts of harm and benefit, so that they may be distinguished in theory. Since there are ways to define these respective notions so that this assumption cannot be made, I thus presuppose the concepts of harm and benefit to be other ones than these. This aspect is further elaborated on below.
- 27.
Unless, of course, that person can convince us of a preference or value ordering where the difference between being economically independent and living in slavery is not a significant one. As this is not what people think outside of philosophical thought experiments, this possibility is disregarded in the following. It should further be observed that variations regarding how economical independence and slavery is compared in terms of (un)desirability is irrelevant, since whatever comparison seems apt has to be done in the assessment of both L1 and L2.
- 28.
See the beginning of Chapter 4 for an explanation of what is traditionally taken to unite such theories.
- 29.
Again, see the beginning of Chapter 4.
- 30.
- 31.
- 32.
Rawls (1971, p. 27).
- 33.
Parfit (1984, p. 370).
- 34.
Parfit (1984, chapter 16).
- 35.
- 36.
Parfit (1984, p. 362).
- 37.
Parfit (1984, pp. 364–366).
- 38.
If this condition is dropped, what results is a typical consequentialist view regarding morally relevant trade-offs between the impositions of risks to different parties.
- 39.
Hansson (2009).
- 40.
Rawls (1971, §82).
- 41.
Rawls himself claims that the ultimate rationale of this reasoning is based on liberty or autonomy as the ultimate value, since the reason why the choosing parties will be willing to sacrifice political liberty under the conditions mentioned is that these conditions impede an effective use of the freedoms guaranteed by such liberty. However, what this actually means is that liberty or autonomy are viewed as instrumental (and not ultimate) values by the parties whose choice justifies the priority of liberty construction.
- 42.
In this, the priority of liberty idea is more close to the ‘rigidity approaches’ rejected above, since it bases its assignation of negative moral weight to evils on a differentiation of different types of harms (loss of liberty as opposed to loss of material welfare).
- 43.
The application of these safeguards, we assume, presupposes detailed knowledge about the various mechanisms involved in the creation of the risk of ecological disaster .
- 44.
For an interesting attempt in this direction with applications in the area of energy production, see Arrhenius and Bykvist (1995).
- 45.
It is important that none of the inequalities in the two cases are results of illegitimate transactions having taken place between the groups. Otherwise, considerations of justice requiring one of the groups to compensate the other might be applicable. This, of course, is a difference to the global inequalities of the actual world.
- 46.
Thus, I reject Hansson ’s suggestion (Hansson 2009) that formulating a theory of a prima facie or defeasible right against risk impositions is a central task for the ethics of risk.
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Munthe, C. (2011). The Morality of Imposing Risks. In: The Price of Precaution and the Ethics of Risk. The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1330-7_5
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