PREport: Ethics of Risk

Group 3A

In general, risk has not been widely studied from the ethical point of view, and in general its definition
is not clear and some authors indicate that it is rather a social construction.

In the text it is dwiscussed whether the imposition of risk is ethically acceptable, the author mentions
that approaching it from the point of consequuensalismo, the evaluation of an action depends only
on its result, it seems to be very permissive. On the other hand, from the point of view of legal theory,
very restrictive.

(88 words)

Concept:

Philosophers have not attend to fundamental concept of risk in terms of its impose in last periods
and there is a systematic discussion about to permitting or allowing the applying of risk to an
individual or society. While nowadays human has the ability of mitigating the risk both in natural
hazards and human made activities. Level of risks must be considered in two groups of individual
risks and general ones. For instance when a person decides to have the so-called bravery and
adventure, imposes the risk just to him/herself, while in global scale imposing a risk like war, has
consequences and costs in large scale and it needs risk management for governments.

Philosophers found it hard to deriving a theory to approach the meaning of risk, however recently,
many of the issues of risk have been explored in the context of science and technology philosophy.

Definition of risk in statistical concept, refers the possibility of a possible negative outcome and an
acknowledged possibility of it coming about. But in numerical concept, the effect and cost of risk is
estimated in numeric probability that how probable the different possible outcomes are and how
much they would be harmful in order to make a decision in level of individual harm or a total level.
Contractualism can be reasonable to accept exposure to risk of harms whose direct imposition
would not be acceptable. It is morally problematic to harm someone while there is anti-theoretical
perspective to selecting which harms need notice or not.

Difficult concept:

"It implies that there is no metaphysical property of actions themselves that is of the sort 'to produce
a 0.1 chance of death," according to paragraph "6.2 Assessing the Probability for Harm." we would like
a much more precise description of what is meant by the term "metaphysical property."

We are unable to grasp the concept of Prima Facie Rights in paragraph "10 Prima Facie Rights" since
no application is provided that may give a practical foundation for the concept.

(80 words)