Risk

Many philosophers accept that, as well as having a right that others not harm us, we also have a right that others not subject us to a risk of harm. And yet, when we attempt to spell out precisely what this ‘right against risk imposition’ involves, we encounter a series of notorious puzzles. Existing attempts to deal with these puzzles have tended to focus on the nature of rights – but I propose an approach that focusses instead on the nature (...) of risk. The key move is to distinguish two different ways in which to conceptualise the risk that a given action presents – one of which is linked to the notion of probability and the other to the notion of normalcy. (shrink)

I defend a weak version of the Pigou-Dalton principle for chances. The principle says that it is better to increase the survival chance of a person who is more likely to die rather than a person who is less likely to die, assuming that the two people do not differ in any other morally relevant respect. The principle justifies plausible moral judgements that standard ex post views, such as prioritarianism and rank-dependent egalitarianism, cannot accommodate. However, the principle can be justified (...) by the same reasoning that has recently been used to defend the core axiom of ex post prioritarianism and egalitarianism, namely, Pigou-Dalton for well-being. The arguably biggest challenge for proponents of Pigou-Dalton for chances is that it violates State Dominance for social prospects. However, I argue that we have independent reason for rejecting State Dominance for social prospects, since it prevents a social planner from properly respecting people's preferences. (shrink)

Argues that given an appropriate understanding of objective probabilities, pure objective risk of harm can itself be a harm.

In a recent paper in this journal Duncan Pritchard responds to an objection to the modal account of risk pressed by Ebert, Smith and Durbach ( 2020 ). In this paper, I expand upon the objection and argue that it still stands. I go on to consider a more general question raised by this exchange – whether risk is ‘objective’, or whether it is something that varies from one perspective to another.

Many people are worried about the harmful effects of climate change but nevertheless enjoy some activities that contribute to the emission of greenhouse gas (driving, flying, eating meat, etc.), the main cause of climate change. How should such people make choices between engaging in and refraining from enjoyable greenhouse-gas-emitting activities? In this chapter we look at the answer provided by decision theory. Some scholars think that the right answer is given by interactive decision theory, or game theory; and moreover think (...) that since private climate decisions are instances of the prisoner’s dilemma, one rationally should engage in these activities provided that one enjoys them. Others think that the right answer is given by expected utility theory, the best-known version of individual decision theory under risk and uncertainty. In this chapter we review these different answers, with a special focus on the latter answer and the debate it has generated. (shrink)

Many philosophers assume that, when making moral decisions under uncertainty, we should choose the option that has the greatest expected moral value, regardless of how risky it is. But their arguments for maximizing expected moral value do not support it over rival, risk-averse approaches. In this paper, I present a novel argument for maximizing expected value: when we think about larger series of decisions that each decision is a part of, all but the most risk-averse agents would prefer that we (...) consistently choose the option with the highest expected value. To the extent that what we choose on a given occasion should be guided by the entire series of choices we prefer, then on each occasion, we should choose the option with the highest expected moral value. (shrink)

The notion of risk plays a central role in economics, finance, health, psychology, law and elsewhere, and is prevalent in managing challenges and resources in day-to-day life. In recent work, Duncan Pritchard (2015, 2016) has argued against the orthodox probabilistic conception of risk on which the risk of a hypothetical scenario is determined by how probable it is, and in favour of a modal conception on which the risk of a hypothetical scenario is determined by how modally close it is. (...) In this article, we use Pritchard’s discussion as a springboard for a more wide-ranging discussion of the notion of risk. We introduce three different conceptions of risk: the standard probabilistic conception, Pritchard’s modal conception, and a normalcy conception that is new (though it has some precursors in the psychological literature on risk perception). Ultimately, we argue that the modal conception is ill-suited to the roles that a notion of risk is required to play and explore the prospects for a form of pluralism about risk, embracing both the probabilistic and the normalcy conceptions. (shrink)

Many researchers and intellectuals warn about extreme risks from artificial intelligence. However, these warnings typically came without systematic arguments in support. This paper provides an argument that AI will lead to the permanent disempowerment of humanity, e.g. human extinction, by 2100. It rests on four substantive premises which it motivates and defends: First, the speed of advances in AI capability, as well as the capability level current systems have already reached, suggest that it is practically possible to build AI systems (...) capable of disempowering humanity by 2100. Second, due to incentives and coordination problems, if it is possible to build such AI, it will be built. Third, since it appears to be a hard technical problem to build AI which is aligned with the goals of its designers, and many actors might build powerful AI, misaligned powerful AI will be built. Fourth, because disempowering humanity is useful for a large range of misaligned goals, such AI will try to disempower humanity. If AI is capable of disempowering humanity and tries to disempower humanity by 2100, then humanity will be disempowered by 2100. This conclusion has immense moral and prudential significance. (shrink)

What socially beneficial causes should philanthropists prioritize if they give equal ethical weight to the welfare of current and future generations? Many have argued that, because human extinction would result in a permanent loss of all future generations, extinction risk mitigation should be the top priority given this impartial stance. Using standard models of population dynamics, we challenge this conclusion. We first introduce a theoretical framework for quantifying undiscounted cost-effectiveness over the long term. We then show that standard population models (...) imply that there are interventions other than extinction risk mitigation that can produce persistent social benefits. In fact, these social benefits are large enough to render the associated interventions at least as cost-effective as extinction risk mitigation. (shrink)

It is plausible that current generations owe something to future generations. One possibility is that we have a duty to not harm them. Another possibility is that we have a duty to protect them. In either case, however, to satisfy the duties to future generations from environmental or political degradation, we need to engage in widespread collective action. But, as we are, we have a limited ability to do so, in part because we lack the self-discipline necessary for successful collective (...) action. Given that having an obligation hinges on being able to satisfy it, the apparent duty to future generations is at odds with our apparent inability to satisfy it. Thus, we either need to rethink our duties to future generations or rethink the nature of our abilities. I argue in this chapter that we should rethink the nature of our abilities. Specifically, we should enhance our self-discipline, which is distinct from enhancements of motivation, judgment, or emotion. Even the most intelligent, motivated, and empathetic actor is likely to slip up, which encourages others to withdraw their cooperation. Without the necessary self-discipline to sustain our public cooperative behavior, collective action is likely to fail, leaving us with one alternative: to abandon our duties to future generations. (shrink)

In The Expanse, the future of humanity is constantly at stake. In The Expanse vestiges of an ancient alien civilization with incredibly advanced technology have been found—which eventually permits human interstellar expansion through the gates. James Lenman argues that, even if we agree that biodiversity is a good thing, it only means that it's good that there should be natural diversity while life exists on Earth. While we might not be facing interplanetary war or the unpredictable consequences of ancient alien (...) technology, many serious dangers face the human species today. We are quite resilient and have survived numerous disasters in the past, including floods, earthquakes, famine, pandemics, and wars. Small population size and restricted distribution range are factors that increase a species’ extinction risk. Interplanetary expansion could potentially bring about speciation, which means the separation of Homo sapiens into different species. (shrink)

Longtermists claim that what we ought to do is mainly determined by how our actions might affect the very long-run future. A natural objection to longtermism is that these effects may be nearly impossible to predict — perhaps so close to impossible that, despite the astronomical importance of the far future, the expected value of our present actions is mainly determined by near-term considerations. This paper aims to precisify and evaluate one version of this epistemic objection to longtermism. To that (...) end, I develop two simple models for comparing ‘longtermist’ and ‘neartermist’ interventions, incorporating the idea that it is harder to make a predictable difference to the further future. These models yield mixed conclusions: if we simply aim to maximize expected value, and don’t mind premising our choices on minuscule probabilities of astronomical payoffs, the case for longtermism looks robust. But on some prima facie plausible empirical worldviews, the expectational superiority of longtermist interventions depends heavily on these ‘Pascalian’ probabilities. So the case for longtermism may depend either on plausible but non-obvious empirical claims or on a tolerance for Pascalian fanaticism. (shrink)

Many philosophers defend two claims: the astronomical value thesis that it is astronomically important to mitigate existential risks to humanity, and existential risk pessimism, the claim that humanity faces high levels of existential risk. It is natural to think that existential risk pessimism supports the astronomical value thesis. In this paper, I argue that precisely the opposite is true. Across a range of assumptions, existential risk pessimism significantly reduces the value of existential risk mitigation, so much so that pessimism threatens (...) to falsify the astronomical value thesis. I argue that the best way to reconcile existential risk pessimism with the astronomical value thesis relies on a questionable empirical assumption. I conclude by drawing out philosophical implications of this discussion, including a transformed understanding of the demandingness objection to consequentialism, reduced prospects for ethical longtermism, and a diminished moral importance of existential risk mitigation. (shrink)

قد يكون الانقراض البشري مادة كوابيس تُنذر بتدمير الحضارة الحديثة برُمتها، ولئن كانت الثقافة الشعبية تميل إلى التركيز فقط على أكثر الاحتمالات إثارة؛ كتوقع اصطدام كويكب عملاق بالأرض (فيلم الخيال العلمي الأمريكي «أرمجدون»: 1998)، أو توقع غزو فضائي للأرض (فيلم الخيال العلمي الأمريكي «يوم الاستقلال»: 1996)، فإن التركيز على مثل هذه السيناريوهات قد يعني تجاهل أخطر التهديدات التي تُواجهنا في عالم اليوم، والتي يُمكن أن نفعل شيئًا للحد منها بتبيانها كخطرٍ وجودي، وتكثيف التعاون الدولي لصياغة وتنفيذ التدابير المحتملة للحد من (...) آثارها. (shrink)

A social planner who evaluates risky public policies in light of the other risks with which their society will be faced should judge favourably some such policies even though they would deem them too risky when considered in isolation. I suggest that a longtermist would—or at least should—evaluate risky polices in light of their prediction about future risks; hence, longtermism supports social risk-taking. I consider two formal versions of this argument, discuss the conditions needed for the argument to be valid, (...) and briefly compare these conditions to some risky policy options with which actual public decision-makers are faced. (shrink)

Like asteroids, hundred-year floods and pandemic disease, thermonuclear war is a low-frequency, high-impact threat. In the long run, catastrophe is inevitable if nothing is done − yet each successive government and generation may fail to address it. Drawing on risk perception research, this paper argues that psychological biases cause the threat of nuclear war to receive less attention than it deserves. Nuclear deterrence is, moreover, a ‘front-loaded good’: its benefits accrue disproportionately to proximate generations, whereas much of the expected cost (...) will be borne in the distant future. Recent surveys indicate that the US and Russian publics assign a surprisingly high likelihood to nuclear war. Nevertheless, earlier research suggests that it is probably not believed to be just around the corner. This, along with the absence of easy solutions, encourages governments and publics to give priority to more pressing concerns. The danger is that the pattern will continue clear up to the point that nuclear war arrives. (shrink)

Because of accelerating technological progress, humankind may be rapidly approaching a critical phase in its career. In addition to well-known threats such as nuclear holocaust, the prospects of radically transforming technologies like nanotech systems and machine intelligence present us with unprecedented opportunities and risks. Our future, and whether we will have a future at all, may well be determined by how we deal with these challenges. In the case of radically transforming technologies, a better understanding of the transition dynamics from (...) a human to a “posthuman” society is needed. Of particular importance is to know where the pitfalls are: the ways in which things could go terminally wrong. While we have had long exposure to various personal, local, and endurable global hazards, this paper analyzes a recently emerging category: that of existential risks. These are threats that could cause our extinction or destroy the potential of Earth-originating intelligent life. Some of these threats are relatively well known while others, including some of the gravest, have gone almost unrecognized. Existential risks have a cluster of features that make ordinary risk management ineffective. A final section of this paper discusses several ethical and policy implications. A clearer understanding of the threat picture will enable us to formulate better strategies. (shrink)

A lovingly critical review focused on issues of risk, aggregation, autonomy, and supererogation.

Are mandatory lockdown measures, which place restrictions on one’s freedom to move and assemble, justifiable? Offhand, such measures appear to compromise important rights to secure goals of public health. Proponents of such measures think the trade-off is worth it; opponents think it isn’t. However, one might think that casting the debate in these terms concedes too much to the opponents. Mandatory lockdown measures don’t infringe important rights because no one has a right to impose a risk of grievous harm on (...) others—and, in the context of a pandemic, participating in the prohibited activities (e.g., going out to the bar) does just that. -/- This chapter explores whether this defense of mandatory lockdown measures holds up. It, first, considers whether we have a right against risk imposition—and, if so, how such a right is best understood. It then considers the objection that, even if there is such a right, people who voluntarily choose to engage in the prohibited activities—at least if fully appraised of the risks involved—effectively waive it. The chapter argues that this objection fails. (shrink)

The received view of Kant’s moral philosophy is that it precludes all moral luck. But I offer a plausible interpretation according to which Kant embraces moral luck in circumstance and constitution. I interpret the unconditioned nature of transcendental freedom as a person’s ability to do the right thing no matter how she is inclined by her circumstantial and constitutive luck. I argue that various passages about degrees of difficulty relating to circumstantial and constitutive luck provide a reason to accept a (...) pro-moral luck interpretation of Kant. (shrink)

When an abortion is performed, someone dies. Are we killing an innocent human person? Widespread disagreement exists. However, it’s not necessary to establish personhood in order to establish the wrongness of abortion: a substantial chance of personhood is enough. We defend The Don’t Risk Homicide Argument: abortions are wrong after 10 weeks gestation because they substantially and unjustifiably risk homicide, the unjust killing of an innocent person. Why 10 weeks? Because the cumulative evidence establishes a substantial chance (a more than (...) 1 in 5 chance) that preborn humans are persons around this stage of development. We submit evidence from our bad track record, widespread disagreement about personhood (after 10 weeks gestation), problems with theories of personhood, the similarity between preborn humans and newborn babies, gestational age miscalculations, and the common intuitive responses of women to their pregnancies and miscarriages. Our argument is cogent because it bypasses the stalemate over preborn personhood and rests on common ground rather than contentious metaphysics. It also strongly suggests that society must do more to protect preborn humans. We discuss its practical implications for fetal pain relief, social policy, and abortion law. (shrink)

Suppose an agent is choosing between rescuing more people with a lower probability of success, and rescuing fewer with a higher probability of success. How should they choose? Our moral judgments about such cases are not well-studied, unlike the closely analogous non-moral preferences over monetary gambles. In this paper, I present an empirical study which aims to elicit the moral analogues of our risk preferences, and to assess whether one kind of evidence – concerning how they depend on outcome probabilities (...) – can debunk them. I find significant heterogeneity in our moral risk preferences – in particular, moral risk-seeking and risk-neutrality are surprisingly popular. I also find that subjects’ judgments aren’t probability-dependent, thus providing an empirical defence against debunking arguments from probability dependence. (shrink)

According to a common judgement, a social planner should often use a lottery to decide which of two people should receive a good. This judgement undermines one of the best-known arguments for utilitarianism, due to John C. Harsanyi, and more generally undermines axiomatic arguments for utilitarianism and similar views. In this paper we ask which combinations of views about (a) the social planner’s attitude to risk and inequality, and (b) the subjects’ attitudes to risk are consistent with the aforementioned judgement. (...) We find that the class of combinations of views that can plausibly accommodate this judgement is quite limited. But one theory does better than others: the theory of chance-sensitive utility. (shrink)

When you are indifferent between two options, it’s rationally permissible to take either. One way to decide between two such options is to flip a fair coin, taking one option if it lands heads and the other if it lands tails. Is it rationally permissible to employ such a tie-breaking procedure? Intuitively, yes. However, if you are genuinely risk-averse—in particular, if you adhere to risk-weighted expected utility theory (Buchak in Risk and rationality, Oxford University Press, 2013) and have a strictly (...) convex risk-function—the answer will often be no: the REU of deciding by coin-flip will be lower than the REU of choosing one of the options outright (so long as at least one of the options is a nondegenerate gamble). This turns out to be a significant worry for risk-weighted expected utility theory. I argue that it adds real bite to established worries about diachronic consistency afflicting views, like risk-weighted expected utility theory, that violate Independence. And that, while these worries might be surmountable, surmounting them comes at a price. (shrink)

For the purpose of this analysis, risk assessment becomes the primary term and risk management the secondary term. The concept of risk management as a primary term is based upon a false ontology. Risk management implies that risk is already there, not created by the decision, but lies already inherent in the situation that the decision sets into motion. The risk that already exists in the objective situation simply needs to be “managed”. By considering risk assessment as the primary term, (...) the ethics of responsibility for risking the lives of others, the environment and future generations in the first place comes into the forefront. The issue of risk heeding is especially important as it highlights the need to pay attention to warnings of danger and to take action to redress problems before disasters occur. In this paper, the decision making that led to the choice of technology utilized and the implementation of such technology in the case of the space shuttle Challenger disaster will be used as a model to illustrate the need to take ethical factors into account when making decisions regarding the safety of technological systems and the heeding of danger warnings. While twenty-five years separates the decision to launch the Challenger and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster, the lessons of the Challenger disaster are still to be learned. (shrink)

How should you evaluate your choices when you’re unsure what their outcomes will be? One popular answer is to rank your options in terms of their expected utilities. But what should you do when you think that the value of their respective outcomes might be incommensurable? In the face of incommensurable values, it no longer makes sense to speak of ranking your options according to expected utility. Are there any general principles to guide us when facing decisions of this kind? (...) If only! This chapter develops an impossibility result: it holds that there are a handful of independently plausible constraints that no such decision theory can jointly satisfy. The result, while depressing, can be used to helpfully classify extant approaches based on which of the constraints they violate. (shrink)

A social planner who evaluates risky public policies in light of the other risks with which their society will be faced should judge favourably some such policies even though they would deem them too risky when considered in isolation. I suggest that a longtermist would—or at least should—evaluate risky polices in light of their prediction about future risks; hence, longtermism supports social risk-taking. I consider two formal versions of this argument, discuss the conditions needed for the argument to be valid, (...) and briefly compare these conditions to some risky policy options with which actual public decision-makers are faced. (shrink)

Orthodox causal decision theory is unstable. Its advice changes as you make up your mind about what you will do. Several have objected to this kind of instability and explored stable alternatives. Here, I'll show that explorers in search of stability must part with a vestige of their homeland. There is no plausible stable decision theory which satisfies Savage's Sure Thing Principle. So those in search of stability must learn to live without it.

All ordinary decisions involve some risk. If I go outside for a walk, I may trip and injure myself. But if I don’t go for a walk, I slightly increase my chances of cardiovascular disease. Typically, we disregard most small risks. When, for practical purposes, is it appropriate for one to ignore risk? This issue looms large because many activities performed by those in wealthy societies, such as driving a car, in some way risk contributing to climate harms. Are these (...) activities morally appropriate? -/- In this paper, I first summarize and respond to some arguments that purport to show that it is appropriate to ignore or discount very small risks. I argue that because our rationality is bounded, it is impossible for us to include every small risk in our decision-making process, and so we may reasonably use heuristics to guide many decisions. However, contrary to some thinkers, I argue that this does not violate the spirit of expected value theory; it merely shows that we should adopt a so-called "two-level" view. Our use of heuristics allows for the reasonable ignoring of some risks, and this perhaps explains why one might be inclined to think that individual climate-related risks are negligible. However, virtually all greenhouse-gas emitting activities in fact have some climate risk on the negative side of the ledger, and the use of heuristics does not permit the general ignoring of climate-change-related risk by individuals on grounds of expediency of judgment and decision-making. (shrink)

This paper aims to scrutinize how the notion of risk should be understood and applied to possibly catastrophic cases. I begin with clarifying the standard usage of the notion of risk, particularly emphasizing the conceptual relation between risk and probability. Then, I investigate how to make decisions in the case of seemingly catastrophic disasters by contrasting the precautionary principle with the preventive (prevention) principle. Finally, I examine what kind of causal thinking tends to be actually adopted when we make decisions (...) on emergent cases. My arguments are mainly based on Japan's 2011 massive earthquake and nuclear power station accident. Masaki Ichinose. (shrink)

A decision theory is self-recommending if, when you ask it which decision theory you should use, it considers itself to be among the permissible options. I show that many alternatives to expected utility theory are not self-recommending, and I argue that this tells against them.

A de minimis risk is defined as a risk that is so small that it may be legitimately ignored when making a decision. While ignoring small risks is common in our day-to-day decision making, attempts to introduce the notion of a de minimis risk into the framework of decision theory have run up against a series of well-known difficulties. In this paper, I will develop an enriched decision theoretic framework that is capable of overcoming two major obstacles to the modelling (...) of de minimis risk. The key move is to introduce, into decision theory, a non-probabilistic conception of risk known as normic risk. (shrink)

Do unknown and unrealized risks of harm diminish an individual’s well-being? The traditional answer is no: that the security of prudential goods benefits an individual only instrumentally or by virtue of their subjective sense of security. Recent work has argued, however, that the security of prudential goods non-instrumentally benefits an individual regardless of whether or not they enjoy subjective security. In this paper, I critically examine three claims about the way in which unknown and unrealized risks of harm might diminish (...) individual well-being: it frustrates a desire to be secure, it frustrates the enjoyment of modally-robust goods, and it undermines the ability to make reasonable plans. Ultimately, I argue that all three of these hypotheses are mistaken, but that they deepen our understanding of the ways in which subjective security is an important constituent of individual well-being. (shrink)

The EU proposal for the Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) defines four risk categories: unacceptable, high, limited, and minimal. However, as these categories statically depend on broad fields of application of AI systems (AIs), the risk magnitude may be wrongly estimated, and the AIA may not be enforced effectively. Our suggestion is to apply the four categories to the risk scenarios of each AIs, rather than solely to its field of application. We address this model flaw by integrating the AIA with (...) the framework arising from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports and related literature. This makes possible addressing AI risk considering the interaction between (a) risk determinants, (b) individual drivers of determinants, and (c) multiple risk types. Then we integrate the proposed model with a proportionality-based balance among values considered by the AIA’s risk analysis. The resulting semi-quantitative approach identifies a more efficient way to implement the AIA and addresses the regulatory issue of general-purpose AI (GPAI). (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to review and critically discuss the philosophical aspects of probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA). Given that estimates of seismic hazard are typically riddled with uncertainty, diferent epistemic values (related to the pursuit of scientifc knowledge) compete in the selection of seismic hazard models, in a context infuenced by non-epistemic values (related to practical goals and aims) as well. We frst distinguish between the diferent types of uncertainty in PSHA. We claim that epistemic and nonepistemic (...) considerations are closely related in the selection of the appropriate estimate of seismic hazard by the experts. Finally, we argue that the division of scientifc responsibility among the experts can lead to responsibility gaps. This raises a problem for the ownership of the results (“no one’s model” problem) similar to the “problem of many hands” in the ethics of technology. We conclude with a plea for a close collaboration between philosophy and engineering. (shrink)