Imposing Risk

Thomas Rowe and Tony Zhou

University Place 6.212

This workshop seeks to explore recent debates surrounding the moral, political and legal problem of risk imposition. Many activities impose risks of harm on others, from mundane actions like turning on a gas oven or driving a car, to more nefarious behaviours like malicious attempts on life. How should the normative significance of risks be best understood, especially when the risk does not end up materialising? There has been a recent surge of interest in this area, not least due to difficult questions that arose from responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our interest is in exploring the foundational and applied aspects of this question. In this regard, we have in mind the following kinds of enquiries.

First, can risks of harm themselves constitute harm? Authors such as Claire Finkelstein (2003) and John Oberdiek (2017) have argued that risks can themselves constitute harms. There has been recent debate over whether risk is the type of thing that can itself be a harm. Whether a risk is itself a harm is central to the project of determining the moral status of impositions of risk, as well as the legal consequences of being exposed to risk. If harm can be generally defined as a set-back to a legitimate interest, what sorts of interest does the imposition of risk set back? And if risk is not itself a harm, how else can we ground its moral significance?

Second, is there (or should there be) a right against the imposition of risks of harm? Irrespective of whether impositions of a risk of harm constitute harms, could this conduct be the sort of conduct that individuals have a right against. There are various issues that arise in this context, including the problem of determining a threshold of acceptable risk (since many everyday activities will impose even a very small risk of harm), and the problem of “paralysis”, where it would appear that a right against being exposed to risks of harm will effectively block large swathes of conduct. What are the best grounds for a risk against impositions of risks of harm (if any)?

Third, how should we evaluate the distribution of risks of harm? Many activities lead to the spread of risks across a population of people, often to people who stand not to benefit. What principles are best to guide the fair or just distribution of risks? One recent fruitful approach has been the debates over “social risk”, following from Johann Frick’s (2015) “Contractualism and Social Risk” paper. Associated with this are debates over the role of contractualism in the ethics of risk, in particular the role of “ex ante” and “ex post” accounts of risk.