1st Edition

Moral Responsibility and Risk in Society Examples from Emerging Technologies, Public Health and Environment

By Jessica Nihlén Fahlquist Copyright 2019
200 Pages
by Routledge

200 Pages
by Routledge

200 Pages
by Routledge

Risks, including health and technological, attract a lot of attention in modern societies, from individuals as well as policy-makers. Human beings have always had to deal with dangers, but contemporary societies conceptualise these dangers as risks, indicating that they are to some extent controllable and calculable. Conceiving of dangers in this way implies a need to analyse how we hold people... Read more

Acknowledgements



Note on Permissions



Introduction: Moral Responsibility and Risk



PART 1: HOLDING AGENTS RESPONSIBLE FOR RISK



Introduction to part 1: Moral Responsibility – the Philosophical Discussion



1. Fairness and Efficacy in Responsibility Distributions



2. Backward-looking and Forward-looking Responsibility



3. Individual and Collective Responsibility



PART 2: TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR RISK



Introduction to part 2: Responsibility as a Virtue



4. Taking Responsibility for Technological Risk



5. Responsible Risk Communication



6. Children, Risk & Responsibility



Index

Biography

Jessica Nihlén Fahlquist has a Ph.D. in philosophy and is a senior lecturer in biomedical ethics at the Centre for Research Ethics and Bioethics at Uppsala University in Sweden.

"Jessica Nihlen-Fahlquist offers a clear, analytic discussion of moral problems that arise as we seek to hold people responsible for the risks (rather than the actual harm) they impose on us and others. Her discussion of fair risk distributions, as well as the distinction between backward and forward-looking responsibility, will be of significant interest to anyone working in the field. The discussion of individual and collective responsibility adds valuable perspectives to an important academic debate with major societal implications. I warmly recommend this book to scholars, graduate students and others interested in the philosophy of risk and responsibility." -- Martin Peterson, Professor of History and Ethics of Professional Engineering, Texas A&M University, USA