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Moral Emotions as Guide to Acceptable Risk

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Handbook of Risk Theory

Abstract

Risks arising from technologies raise important ethical issues for people living in the twenty-first century. Although technologies such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, ICT, and nuclear energy can improve human well-being, they may also convey risks due to, for example, accidents and pollution. As a consequence of such side effects, technologies can trigger emotions, including fear and indignation, which often leads to conflicts between experts and laypeople. Emotions are generally seen to be a disturbing factor in debates about risky technologies as they are taken to be irrational and immune to factual information. This chapter reviews the psychological literature that seems to support this idea. It then presents an alternative account according to which this is due to a wrong understanding of emotions. Emotions can be a source of practical rationality. Emotions such as fear, sympathy, and compassion help to grasp morally salient features of risky technologies, such as fairness, justice, equity, and autonomy that get overlooked in conventional, technocratic approaches to risk. Emotions should be taken seriously in debates about risky technologies. This will lead to a more balanced debate in which all parties are taken seriously, which increases the chances to be willing to listen to each other and give and take. This is needed in order to come to well-grounded policies on how to deal with risky technologies. The chapter discusses various recent examples of hotly debated risky technologies and how an alternative approach of emotions can help to improve debates about the moral acceptability of these technologies. The chapter ends with suggestions for future research in the areas of financial risks and security risks.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Jeff Powell for comments on a draft version of this chapter. Work on this chapter was supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) under grant number 276-20-012.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philosophy Department, Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan 5, Delft, 2628 BX, The Netherlands

    Prof. Sabine Roeser (Faculty of Technology)

  2. University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Prof. Sabine Roeser (Faculty of Technology)

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  1. Prof. Sabine Roeser
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Correspondence to Sabine Roeser .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Philosophy Department Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Sabine Roeser

  2. Philosophy Department, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Sabine Roeser

  3. Human Technology Center, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Rafaela Hillerbrand

  4. Department of Plant Physiology and Forest Genetics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden

    Per Sandin

  5. Section for Philosophy and Ethics, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Martin Peterson

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Roeser, S. (2012). Moral Emotions as Guide to Acceptable Risk. In: Roeser, S., Hillerbrand, R., Sandin, P., Peterson, M. (eds) Handbook of Risk Theory. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1433-5_32

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1433-5_32

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-007-1432-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-007-1433-5

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