Many philosophers and statisticians argue that risk assessors are morally obligated to evaluate the probabilities and consequences of methodological error, and to base their decisions of whether to adopt a given parameter value, model, or hypothesis on those considerations. This argument is couched within the rubric of null hypothesis testing, which I suggest is a poor descriptive and normative model for risk assessment. Risk regulation is not primarily concerned with evaluating the probability of data conditional upon the null hypothesis, but (...) rather with measuring risks, estimating the consequences of available courses of action and inaction, formally characterising uncertainty, and deciding what to do based upon explicit values and decision criteria. In turn, I defend an ideal of value-neutrality, whereby the core inferential tasks of risk assessment – such as weighing evidence, estimating parameters, and model selection – should be guided by the aim of correspondence to reality. This is not to say that value-judgments be damned, but rather that they should be accounted for within a structured approach to decision analysis, rather than embedded within risk assessment in an informal manner. (shrink)

A decision was made at the UNFCCC, COP-18 meeting in Doha in 2012 to create a work programme on loss and damage. Part of this programme was to include the production of a technical paper to enhance the general understanding of non-economic losses from climate change. The following article looks carefully at that paper in order to discover whether it provides an adequate conceptual understanding of non-economic losses. Several shortcomings of the paper’s conceptualization of these losses are identified. An alternative (...) ethical framework with methods better suited for capturing a fuller range of non-economic losses is considered. This framework is likely to be most useful if used prospectively for the purpose of devising better adaptation policies to head off potential future losses rather than if used retrospectively for quantifying losses that have already occurred for the purposes of providing compensation. (shrink)

Drawing on the recognition that questions of discourse and power are vital components in analysing the public participation in environmental governance, this paper examines the ways in which dominant scientific discourses about the Earth's climate inform the types of public talk facilitated in and by mini-publics, particularly when they are ‘scaled up’ to address environmental issues such as climate change. World Wide Views on Global Warming (WWViews) serves as a case study. Conceived and organised by the Danish Board of Technology, (...) WWViews was a historically unprecedented public forum in which participants, invited from a range of nations, were given the opportunity to deliberate on key themes addressed in the negotiations taking place during the United Nations Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen (COP 15). The overarching purpose of this analysis is to invite reflection on the practices and assumptions that serve to make up publics in relation to issues that have been framed, predominantly, as scientific, universal and global. (shrink)

The connotations attached to the concept of 'risk' have changed over the last several decades. In particular, the image of risk, at least in the word's most economically advanced countries, has turned from predominantly positive to highly critical. A sociological look at this historic change reveals the emergence of a plurality of risk definitions that can be attributed to different risk cultures. We can distinguish risk cultures by their proximity to the dominant social practice of risk taking ; namely risk (...) cultures belong either to the centre or the periphery of society. Social movements that resist risky technologies are examples of a peripheral risk culture. Due to a certain concept of social community their perception of risk differs fundamentally from that of the centre. In addition, cultural variation across countries leads to different representations of risk-avoidance in social movements. This contribution illustrates these differences by comparing the American and German anti-nuclear movements. (shrink)

Approaches aimed at regulating artificial intelligence (AI) include a particular form of risk regulation, i.e. a risk-based approach. The most prominent example is the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act). This article addresses the challenges for adequate risk regulation that arise primarily from the specific type of risks involved, i.e. risks to the protection of fundamental rights and fundamental societal values. This is mainly due to the normative ambiguity of such rights and societal values when attempts are made to (...) select, interpret, specify or operationalise them for the purposes of risk assessments and risk mitigation. This is exemplified by (1) human dignity, (2) informational self-determination, data protection and privacy, (3) anti-discrimination, fairness and justice, and (4) the common good. Normative ambiguities require normative choices, which are assigned to different actors under the regime of the AI Act. Particularly critical normative choices include selecting normative concepts by which to operationalise and specify risks, aggregating and quantifying risks (including the use of metrics), balancing value conflicts, setting levels of acceptable risks, and standardisation. To ensure that these normative choices do not lack democratic legitimacy and to avoid legal uncertainty, further political processes and scientific debates are suggested. (shrink)

There are now dozens of proposals for integrating ethics into the early planning and assessment of technological innovation. This paper tracks some of Larry Hickman’s contributions to these trends. While Hickman’s suggestions could be incorporated into virtually many of the new proposals for integrating ethics into technological research, development and dissemination, barriers remain. In this paper, I will explores some reasons why the field remains fragmented, emphasizing weaknesses in the pragmatist approach. First, I acknowledge the significance of obvious explanations: the (...) technical community’s unfamiliarity with ethical inquiry and the lack of both administrative and financial commitment to ethics-oriented research. There is, in short, an epistemic gap between the message that innovators are prepared to hear and the sophisticated response that Hickman’s pragmatism offers. This gap may be a practical limitation to philosophical pragmatism in many of its manifestations. (shrink)

It is now widely acknowledged that social theorists can make an important contribution to our understanding of environmental risk. There is however a danger that the current ascendancy of social theory will encourage a tendency to assimilate issues around environmental risk to those at stake in entrenched debates between realist and constructivist social theorists. I begin by citing a recent example of this trend, before going on to argue that framing the issues in terms of a monism/pluralism dichotomy would make (...) for a more informative analysis. Nothing that realists and constructivists can make common cause against risk monism, I turn, in the second half of the paper, to setting out a positive case for risk pluralism. Citing some fictional examples of risk behaviour, I show how different individuals might rationally adopt different perspectives on the same risk. I conclude by exploring some implications of the truth of risk pluralism for two current approaches to environmental decision-making. I argue that the importance of risk pluralism lies in its capacity to highlight the shortcomings of the latter approach. (shrink)

Traditionally floods have been understood to be acts of God or nature, with localised impacts afflicting those who choose to live or to invest capital in lowland and coastal locations. This central idea of causation, located outside human agency, survives somewhat precariously today, but is reflected in the lack of any right to protection from flooding in England and Wales. However in 1930 new legislation institutionalised a social framing of the impact of floods as part of a wider national problem. (...) This related the interests of lowland agriculture and land drainage to the national economic and military interest. Modernising and expanding agricultural production was a political priority from the 1930s to the 1980s. The cost of preventing flooding and draining land was transferred from the affected landowners to the nation as a whole. River and coastal engineering was central to the new policy, and by the early 1970s much of the riverine and coastal environment was radically altered by flood defence structures and associated land drainage. As a result of food over-production and conflicts with conservation interests in the early 1980s, the emphasis has shifted from drainage to flood defence, while risk reduction and environmentalist values have also been promoted. The institutional arrangements from 1930 largely survive, however, and a new coherent social framing has failed to emerge. It is argued that for a risk-oriented framing to succeed, new assumptions about causation and a new ethical outlook are now needed. Emphasis on flood 'control' rather than 'defence', and a shift in priorities from economic benefits towards human rights and intrinsic value in nature are proposed as key elements in such a reframing. (shrink)