Abstract
In a democracy, government is made legitimate by the consent of the governed. But figuring out what counts as consent where opinions are divided and why consent should be so valued poses deep problems, whether we are considering authority in general or are focusing our attention on a particular application of authority through government. Decisions about risk and safety that must be centralized, usually in regulatory agencies, provide some dramatic examples of this problem. The agencies must determine acceptable levels, distributions, and kinds of risk. Most of these agencies were established by legislation, but they were not established to do whatever they please. What should they do? How can they appeal to the consent of the governed to justify their decisions?
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Notes
Baruch Fischhoff, “Cognitive and Institutional Barriers to Informed Consent,” in To Breathe Freely, edited by Mary Gibson (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allanheld, 1985 ).
J.J. Rousseau, Du Contrat Social, Book I, chapter 5. The translation is attributed to one Mr. Hopkins and appears in Social Contract, edited by Sir Ernest Barker ( London: Oxford University Press, 1947 ), page 179.
Ibid., Book IV, chapter 2, page 273.
This division is partly due to the influence of an excellent book by William Lowrance, Of Acceptable Risk (Los Altos: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1976), especially pages 8–11.
See Mary Gibson, “To Breathe Freely: Risk, Consent and Air,” Center for Philosophy and Public Policy Working Paper RC-2, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, 1982.
See James Repace, “Risks of Passive Smoking,” CPPP Working Paper RC-8; in To Breathe Freely, edited by Mary Gibson ( Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allanheld, 1985.
See Mark MacCarthy, “Reform of Occupational Safety and Health Policy,” CPPP Working Paper RC-4; in To Breathe Freely, edited by Mary Gibson ( Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allanheld, 1985.
For work by economists, see Charles Brown, “Equalizing Differences in the Labor Market,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 94 (1980): pages 113-134; also Martin Bailey, Reducing Risks to Life (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1980). For work by psychologists, see Baruch Fischhoff et al., Acceptable Risk ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981 ).
See Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982); also see The Language of Risk, edited by Dorothy Nelkin ( Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1985 ).
Chauncey Starr and Chris Whipple, “The Risks of Risk Decisions,” Science 208 (6 June 1980): pages 1114–1119.
Ralph Keeney, “Ethics, Decision Analysis, and Public Risk,” Risk Analysis, 4 (1984): pages 117–130.
John Barth, The End of the Road ( New York: Avon Books, 1958 ), page 89.
Chauncey Starr and Chris Whipple, “The Risks of Risk Decisions,” page 1115.
See Mark Sagoff, “Economic Theory and Environmental Law,” Michigan Law Review 79 (1981): pages 1393–1419.
This view is persuasively argued in Herman Leonard and Richard Zeckhauser, “Cost-Benefit Analysis Applied to Risks: Its Philosophy and Legitimacy,” in Values at Risk edited by Douglas MacLean (Totawa, N.J.: Rowman and Allanheld, 1986 ).
Michael Thompson, “To Hell With the Turkeys!” CPPP Working Paper RC-5; forthcoming in Values at Risk.
See Ian Hacking, “Hume’s Species of Probability,” Philosophical Studies 33 (1978): pages 21–37.
See Stuart Hampshire, “Morality and Pessimism,” Public and Private Morality, edited by Stuart Hampshire ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978 ), pages 1–22.
Ronald Dworkin, “Why Efficiency?” Hofstra Law Review 8 (1981): pages 576 - 578.
The phrase is part of a well-known quote attributed to Lord Ashby, although I have been unable to find its origin. For the full quote and discussion, see Douglas MacLean, “Quantification, Regulation and Risk Assessment,” Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association, PSA 1982, Vol. 2, edited by Peter Asquith and Thomas Nickles ( East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1983 ), pages 243–260.
See Douglas MacLean, “Valuing Human Life,” in Uncertain Power, edited by Dorothy Zinberg (New York: Pergamon Press, 1983 ), pages 89–107.
I have described these models of indirect consent more fully in Douglas MacLean, “Risk and Consent: Philosophical Issues for Centralized Decisions,” Risk Analysis 2 (1982): pages 59–67.
The remarks in this and the following paragraph draw heavily on Samuel Scheffler, “The Role of Consent in the Legitimation of Risky Activity,” in To Breathe Freely, edited by Mary Gibson (Totawa, N.J.: Rowman and Allanheld, 1985 ).
My remarks in this section draw heavily on Annette Baier, “Poisoning the Wells”; Allan Gibbard, “Risk and Value”; and Douglas MacLean, “Social Values and the Distribution of Risk”; all in Values at Risk, edited by Douglas MacLean ( Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allanheld, 1985 ).
This quote is from an earlier draft of Allan Gibbard’s “Risk and Value” which he presented to a working group on risk and consent. It does not appear in the chapter published in Values at Risk edited by Douglas MacLean (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allanheld, 1985).
Douglas MacLean (ed.), Values at Risk ( Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allanheld, 1986 ).
Mary Gibson (ed.), To Breathe Freely: Risk, Consent, and Air (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allanheld, 1985.)
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© 1986 Plenum Press, New York
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MacLean, D. (1986). Consent and the Justification of Risk Analysis. In: Covello, V.T., Menkes, J., Mumpower, J. (eds) Risk Evaluation and Management. Contemporary Issues in Risk Analysis, vol 1. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2103-3_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2103-3_20
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