The Irrelevance of the Risk-Uncertainty Distinction.
Precautionary Principles are often said to be appropriate for decision-making in contexts of uncertainty such as climate policy. Contexts of uncertainty are contrasted to contexts of risk depending on whether we have probabilities or not. Against this view, I argue that the risk-uncertainty distinct...
| Publicado en: | Science & Engineering Ethics Vol. 23; no. 5; pp. 1387 - 1408 |
|---|---|
| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Artículo |
| Publicado: |
Springer Nature
Oct2017
|
| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=125617724&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 125617724 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 13533452 GNI jtl: Science & Engineering Ethics issn: 13533452 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Oct2017 vid: 23 iid: 5 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 125617724 10.1007/s11948-017-9919-x ppf: 1387 ppct: 21 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 445KB tig: atl: The Irrelevance of the Risk-Uncertainty Distinction. aug: au: Roser, Dominic su: Climate change Decision making Uncertainty Environmental policy Epistemics Probability theory sug: subj: Climate change Decision making Uncertainty Environmental policy Epistemics Probability theory keyword: Climate policy Knight Precautionary Principle Probability Risk ab: Precautionary Principles are often said to be appropriate for decision-making in contexts of uncertainty such as climate policy. Contexts of uncertainty are contrasted to contexts of risk depending on whether we have probabilities or not. Against this view, I argue that the risk-uncertainty distinction is practically irrelevant. I start by noting that the history of the distinction between risk and uncertainty is more varied than is sometimes assumed. In order to examine the distinction, I unpack the idea of having probabilities, in particular by distinguishing three interpretations of probability: objective, epistemic, and subjective probability. I then claim that if we are concerned with whether we have probabilities at all-regardless of how low their epistemic credentials are-then we almost always have probabilities for policy-making. The reason is that subjective and epistemic probability are the relevant interpretations of probability and we almost always have subjective and epistemic probabilities. In contrast, if we are only concerned with probabilities that have sufficiently high epistemic credentials, then we obviously do not always have probabilities. Climate policy, for example, would then be a case of decision-making under uncertainty. But, so I argue, we should not dismiss probabilities with low epistemic credentials. Rather, when they are the best available probabilities our decision principles should make use of them. And, since they are almost always available, the risk-uncertainty distinction remains irrelevant. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Science & Engineering Ethics is a copyright of Springer, 2017. All Rights Reserved. item: Science & Engineering Ethics holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2017 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
|---|