Normative Foundations in Risk Judgments

对接触有毒物质的担忧是我们生活的一部分。 该项目，通过适当的科学信息，解决了这一问题，通过开发一个风险判断的规范性假设的哲学分析。 研究的重点是比较有毒物质的风险与其他人类活动和接触的风险。 关于风险比较的讨论一直由科学和技术风险评估界主导，哲学家的投入很少。 这种讨论对有毒物质的特殊性质所引起的一些问题以及它们与生活中的普通风险之间的一些差异不敏感。 它往往忽视风险可接受性的许多特点，并在评估风险可接受性时诉诸一种特定的范式，即功利主义和成本效益分析。 本研究的目标是确定一个更广泛和更丰富的矩阵的风险承担和风险暴露的特点，可以考虑在评估风险的可接受性。 第一项研究任务是进一步阐明我们作为个体所作的不同风险判断的规范性区别。 这些区别已经开始在风险认知和风险沟通文献中得到发展，包括损害和利益的程度和概率、受影响人员的数量和分布、自愿或非自愿发生、风险是可以理解的还是可以避免的等因素，第二个任务是根据道德理论中的非结果主义和功利主义特征对这些因素进行系统化和评估。 这里的目标是扩大理解和评估风险判断的相关道德范式的理解。 该项目将导致文章和演示文稿，以及一本书的篇幅专著。

Concern about exposures to toxic substances is part of our lives. This project, informed by appropriate scientific information, addresses this concern by developing a philosophic analysis of normative assumptions in risk judgments. The research focuses on the comparison between risks from toxic substances and those from other human activities and exposures. The discussion of risk comparisons has been dominated by the scientific and technical risk assessment community, with little input from philosophers. This discussion has been insensitive to some of the problems posed by special properties of toxic substances and some of the differences between them and ordinary risks in life. It has tended to overlook many features of the acceptability of risk exposures and to appeal to a particular paradigm, utilitarianism and cost-benefit analysis, in assessing the acceptability of risks. The goal of this research is to identify a much broader and richer matrix of features of risk-taking and risk-exposure, that can be taken into consideration when assessing the acceptability of risk . The first research task is to articulate further some of the normative distinctions underlying the different risk judgments we make as individuals. These distinctions, which have begun to be developed in the risk perception and risk communication literature, include such factors as magnitude and probability of harm and benefit, numbers and distributions of people affected and voluntary or involuntary occurrence, whether the risks are appreciated or avoidable, and so on. The second task involves the systematization and assessment of these factors in light of non-consequentialist as well as utilitarian features in moral theories. The goal here is to broaden the understanding of relevant moral paradigms in understanding and evaluating risk judgments. The project will result in articles and presentations, and a book length monograph.