In non-technical contexts, the word “risk” refers, often rather vaguely, to situations in which it is possible but not certain that some undesirable event will occur. In technical
What is risk? Strictly, two categories have been identified: ‘risk’ (based upon known probabilities) and ‘uncertainty’ (epistemic – based upon what cannot be clearly identified). W
In his first lectures on jurisprudence, Adam Smith told his students that the imperfect rights which are the subject of distributive justice do not properly belong to jurisprudence
Since the 1970s, studies of risk have grown into a major interdisciplinary field of research. Although relatively few philosophers have focused their work on risk, there are import
Issues of risk are important in many fields of applied ethics. Risk assessments tend to have implicit value assumptions, which need to be identified so that they can be subject to
Probabilistic or quantitative risk assessment (QRA) aims to identify, estimate and evaluate a variety of threats to human health and safety. These threats arise primarily from part
Liberty, the highest of natural endowments, being the portion only of intellectual or rational natures, confers on man this dignity - that he is "in the hand of his counsel"(1) and
Let us take up again the text of the First Letter of Peter to which we referred at the end of the previous catechesis:
The idea of risk combines two notions: that of the likelihood of something happening, or failing to happen, and the undesirability or disvalue of that outcome. Utilitarian decision-making involves three tasks: a) identifying the range of courses available in a given context; b) assigning utility values to the foreseeable outcomes of each course, and c) estimating the probability of each outcome. Most commonly such thinking focuses on positive values for utility, but negative utilitarianism argues for minimising negatives (inutilities) and is therefore more inclined to think in terms of risks than of opportunities. Risk analysis is now a common practice in corporate, government and financial sectors, particularly in relation to environmental, economic and social impacts. Apart from the obvious challenge of predicting outcomes there are several ethical and philosophical questions about risk analysis. First, the nature of the values to be considered: is it happiness, health, length of life, opportunity, or all of these and others besides? Second, the constituency over which risk is defined: is it those immediately affected, or those remotely affected, and should there be discounting for distance? and should it include future as well existing generations? This last question introduces the ‘person-affecting’ issue, since different courses will lead to different people and different numbers of people being born. Third, there is the issue of the inevitability of risk and negative outcomes. No course of action is risk free, and the selection of which risks to consider and the setting aside or neglect of others may indicate question-begging biases.