Complex Hazards, Technological Futures and Risk

1
Complex Hazards, Technological Futures and Risk

• Chris Groves
• ESRC Centre for Business Relationships,
  Accountability, Sustainability and Society
  (BRASS)
• www.brass.cf.ac.uk
• grovesc1_at_cf.ac.uk

2
Complex technologies

• May have unknown causal impacts, e.g.
  nanotechnology

• May involve many different social, economic and
  political dimensions in their management

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Historical context

• Debates in morality of risk utilitarian versus
  deontological arguments
• Complex technological hazards change the object
  of ethical concern
• As such, they contain an immanent critique
  (Hegel/Lukacs) of the terms of the debate (risk
  thinking)
• Present the distribution of uncertainty as an
  ethical and political problem

4
The timeprint of technology

• Hans Jonas (The Imperative of Responsibility,
  1984)
• Mediation of social relations by technologies
  implies a special responsibility
• Specifically, a future-oriented or ex ante
  responsibility for the well-being of strangers
• The nature of technological uncertainty
• Risks emerge over time in the wild
• World as laboratory1
• Properties of technologies include their
  processual reach (timeprint2)

1 Krohn, W. and J. Weyer (1994). Society as a
laboratory the social risks of experimental
research. Science and Public Policy 21(3)
173-83. 2 Adam, B. and C. Groves (2007). Future
Matters Action, Knowledge, Ethics, Leiden,
Brill, pp. 115-17.
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The ethics and politics of uncertainty

• Talk of responsibility does not imply solely an
  abstract moral injunction
• The politics of uncertainty concerns how social
  action produces and distributes uncertainty3
• the forms of power/knowledge which produce
  interpretations of uncertainty
• how the power to act and influence social futures
  is distributed

3 Marris, P. (1996). The politics of uncertainty
attachment in private and public life, London
New York, Routledge.
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Risk thinking and morality

• Includes both
• broadly utilitarian and
• broadly deontological responses
• Both assume that socially legitimate policy
  treatments of uncertainty requires risk
  knowledge4
• Reflect different and conflicting bodies of
  social practice and concepts of moral good4, 5
• Bureaucratic management ? public interest
• Jurisprudential ? private property

4 Wynne, B. (2001). Creating public alienation
expert cultures of risk and ethics on GMOs.
Science as Culture 10(4) 445-81, 5 McAuslan,
P. (1980), The Ideologies of Planning Law,
Oxford, Pergamon Press. 6 Macintyre, A. (1981).
After virtue a study in moral theory, London
Duckworth.
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Commonalities

• Both assume that the moral significance of
  uncertainty depends on how determinate it is
• Prevalence of risk as organising concept
• Uncertainty is subjective, risk is objective5
• Both tend to identify agency with reduction and
  control of uncertainty
• Knowledge for control has normative meaning
• Privileges autonomy over solidarity6

5 Knight, F. H. (1921). Risk, uncertainty and
profit, Boston, MA Houghton Mifflin, p. 233. 6
Marris, P. (1996). The politics of uncertainty
attachment in private and public life, London
New York, Routledge, pp. 88-91.
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Differences

• Different foundational assumptions
• Utilitarian
• Mix of philosophical utilitarianism and welfare
  economics
• Aggregate utility calculated through RCBA
  provides criterion of policy choice7
• Deontological
• RCBA does not ask whether some risks are
  inherently socially unacceptable8
• Individual entitlement not to be harmed9

7 Sunstein, C. (2005), The Laws of Fear,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 8 e.g.
Cranor, C. F. (2007). Towards a
non-consequentialist approach to acceptable
risks. In Risk philosophical perspectives, ed.
T. Lewens, London, Routledge 36-53. 9 Hansson,
S. O. (2007). Risk and ethics three approaches.
Risk philosophical perspectives. T. Lewens.
London New York, Routledge 21-35.
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Risk thinking and foresight

• Risk thinking implies that calculative knowledge
  of the future is foresight
• In both moralities, the capacity to understand
  regularities is their knowledge base
• For RCBA, knowledge of sets of homogenous events
• For deontology, the predictable connection
  between acts and harms against the person or
  property (e.g. tort)
• Uncertainty about the consequences of action
  remains an in principle temporary phenomenon

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Objective Uncertainty

• Science and technology studies/philosophy of
  technology
• Uncertainty as an objective feature of complex
  systems/social action
• Changes the temporal scope of thinking about
  uncertainty
• Changes its future orientation displaces risk
  from centre stage

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Uncertainty as contingency
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Unforeseeable consequences

• Unforeseeability emerges from this analysis as an
  objective problem for social action
• How do we deal with this problem as a feature of
  the technological mediation of social relations?
• What social forms of knowledge, action, and
  normative resources are relevant?

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Risk and reification

• Concepts of risk are not foundational
• Ethical and political problem what is obscured
  by risk thinking?
• Implies a critique of legitimacy of risk
  expertise (e.g. Jasanoff, Wynne)
• Implies also an understanding of how
  unforeseeability and objective uncertainty
  matter, i.e. what are their social meanings?

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The politics and ethics of uncertainty a
research programme

• An immanent critique of the legitimacy of
  risk-based governance leaves us with a crucial
  problem
• How can finitude be made central to the ethics
  and politics of uncertainty?
• Have begun to outline an approach, consisting of
  an interlinked series of themes, centring on
• assumptions about subjectivity and value
• How subjects and values construct futures

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Progress and prospects

• Several publications
• Groves, C. (2006). Technological futures and
  non-reciprocal responsibility. International
  Journal of the Humanities 4(2) 57-62
• Adam, B. and C. Groves (2007). Future Matters
  Action, Knowledge, Ethics, Leiden, Brill.
• Groves, C. (forthcoming, 2009). Future Ethics
  Risk, Care and Non-Reciprocal Responsibility.Journ
  al of Global Ethics 5(1).

• Key ongoing themes
• Care, subjectivity and action
• Critique of prevalent forms of value
  (instrumental versus intrinsic)
• Moral pluralism, narrative and uncertainty

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Complex Hazards, Technological Futures and Risk

• Chris Groves
• ESRC Centre for Business Relationships,
  Accountability, Sustainability and Society
  (BRASS)
• www.brass.cf.ac.uk
• grovesc1_at_cf.ac.uk