New Substantial Entry on Precautionary Reasoning and the Precautionary Principle in (Global) Bioethics Online – and Open Access for a While

I'm happy and proud to announce that a brand new invited 10 page entry by myself in the Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics (edited by Henk ten Have and published by Springer) on the topic of "Precautionary Principle" is now online. Moreover, for some time ahead (though I don't know how long) the entry is so-called open access – that is, it can be freely read online and downloaded by anyone!

Of course, the entry builds on some of my previous work on the ethics of precaution and risk, not least my book The Price of Precaution and the Ethics of Risk and a more brief encyclopedia piece built on that from two years back, as well as my knowledge of a wide variety of fields and issues in bioethics. However, the new entry is much fuller than the previous one and is in many ways a seminal and much broader text: it is the first time that I (and, to my knowledge, anyone) puts these strands of inquiry together in a systematic analytic overview, and I add some fresh thinking on the global aspects of both these areas on top of that. It should therefore offer something of interest for both people interested in bioethics, medical ethics, health care ethics, ethics of the life sciences and research ethics and bordering fields, and those more interested in the general grounding of public policy with regard to technology, science, environment, risk, uncertainty and ignorance, as well as those particularly pondering the global aspects of both these areas; or global ethics or politics in general. This is the abstract:

Precautionary reasoning has deep historical and wide cross-cultural roots in the ethics of health, health care, and medical research. As in general ethics, however, this side of bioethical thinking has not been the subject of focused critical analysis until recently. The emergence of the precautionary principle (PP) in general environmental and technology policy debate has, after an initial period of confusion, resulted in a range of possible ideas about the value of precaution and what sacrifices it may be worth. This has indicated some need for developments in ethical as well as decision theory. In bioethical debates, this process has left only vague traces, however. Although many issues exist where precautionary reasoning has a place, this is either often left unnoticed or arguments developed suffer from elementary flaws. Environmental and general public health ethics, the ethics of evidence-based practice in research, as well as clinical decision-making, management of normative or factual uncertainty, and the nature of clinical ethical virtues are all areas where precautionary ideas seem to have a place. Such reasoning moreover has specific relevance for global approaches to bioethics and health policy issues in a number of ways.

Keywords

Clinical research, Decision-making, Decision theory, Emerging technology, Environmental health, Evidence, Ignorance, Risk assessment, Technology assessment, Uncertainty

 The entry can be accessed and read here, and downloaded here. take your chance quickly, as the free availability may end anytime.

Why Aren't Existential Risk / Ultimate Harm Argument Advocates All Attending Mass?

An increasingly popular genre in the sort of applied philosophy and ethics of technology, which does not so much engage with actual technological development as more or less wild phantasies about possibly forthcoming ones is the notions of "existential risks" or "ultimate harms", or similar expressions. The theme is currently inspiring several research environments at world-leading universities, such as this one and this one (where you can find many links to other sources, articles, blog posts, and so on), and given quite a bit of space in recent scholarly literature on a topic often referred to as the ethics of emerging technology. Now, personally and academically, as it has actually proceeded, I have found much of this development being to a large extent a case of the emperor's new clothes. The fact that there are possible threats to human civilizations, the existence of humanity, life on earth or, at least, extended human well-being, is not exactly news, is it? Neither is there any kind of new insight that some of these are created by humans themselves. Also, it is not any sort of recent revelation that established moral ideas, or theories of rational decision making, may provide reason for avoiding or mitigating such threats. Rather, both these theses follow rather trivially from a great many well-established ethical and philosophical theories, and are well-known to do so since hundreds of years. Still, piece after piece is being produced in the existential risk genre making this out as some sort of recent finding, and exposing grand gestures at proving the point against more or less clearly defined straw-men.

At the same time, quite a bit of what is currently written on the topic strikes me as philosophically shallow. For instance, the notion that the eradication of the human species has to be a bad thing seems to be far from obvious from a philosophical point of view - this would depend on such things as the source of the value of specifically human existence, the manner of the imagined extinction (it certainly does not have to involve any sort of carnage or catastrophe), and what might possibly come instead of humanity or currently known life when extinct and how that is to be valued. Similarly, it is a very common step in the typical existential risk line to jump rather immediately from the proposition of such a risk to the suggestion that substantial (indeed, massive) resources should be spent on its prevention, mitigation or management. This goes for everything from imagined large scale geo-engineering solutions to environmental problems, dreams of outer space migration, to so-called human enhancement to adapt people to be able to handle otherwise massive threats in a better way. At the same time, the advocates of the existential risk line of thought also urges caution in the application of new hitherto unexplored technology, such as synthetic biology or (if it ever comes to appear) "real" A.I. and android technology. However, also there, the angle of analysis is often restricted to this very call, typically ignoring the already since long ongoing debates in the ethics of technology, bioethics, environmental ethics, et cetera, where the issue of how much of and what sort of such caution may be warranted in light of various good aspects of different the technologies considered. And, to be frank, this simplification seems to be the only thing that is special with the existential risk argument advocacy: the idea that the mere possibility of a catastrophic scenario justifies substantial sacrifices, without having to complicate things by pondering alternative uses of resources.

Now, this kind of argument, is (or should be) well-known to anyone with a philosophical education, since it seems to share the basic form of the philosophical classic known as Pascal's Wager. In this argument, French enlightenment philosopher and mathematician, Blaise Pascal offered a "proof" of the rationality of believing in God (the sort of God found in abrahamitic monotheistic religion, that is), based on the possible consequences of belief or non-belief, given the truth or falsity of the belief. You can explore the details of Pascal's argument, but the basic idea is that in the face of the immense consequences of belief and non-belief if God exists (eternal salvation vs. eternal damnation), it is rational to bet on the existence of God, no matter what theoretical or other evidence for the truth of this belief exists and no matter the probability of this truth. It seems to me that the typical existential risk argument advocacy subscribes to a very similar logic. For instance, the standard line to defend that resources should be spent on probing and (maybe) facilitating), e.g., possible extraterrestial migration for humanity, seems to have the following form:

1) Technology T might possibly prevent/mitigate existential risk, E

2) It would be really, really, very, very bad if E was to be actualised

3) Therefore: If E was otherwise to be actualised, it would be really, really, very, very good if E was prevented

4) Therefore: If E was otherwise to be actualised, it would be really, really, very, very good if we had access to a workable T

5) Therefore: there are good reasons to spend substantial resources on probing and (maybe, if that turns out to be possible) facilitating a workable T

That is, what drives the argument is the (mere) possibility of a massively significant outcome, and the (mere) possibility of a way to prevent that particular outcome, thus doing masses of good. Now, I'm sure that everyone can see that this argument is far from obviously valid, even if we ignore the question of whether or not premise 2 is true, and this goes for Pascal's Wager too in parallel ways. For instance, the existential risk argument above seems to ignore that there seems to be an innumerable amount of thus (merely) possible existential risk scenarios, as well as innumerable (merely) possibly workable technologies that might help to prevent or mitigate each of these, and it is unlikely (to say the least) that we have resources to bet substantially on them all, unless we spread them so thin that this action becomes meaningless. Similarly, there are innumerable possible versions of the god that lures you with threats and promises of damnation and salvation, and what that particular god may demand in return, often implying a ban on meeting a competing deity's demands, so the wager doesn't seem to tell you to try to start believing in any particular of all these (merely) possible gods. Likewise, the argument above ignores completely the (rather high) likelihood that the mobilised resources will be mostly wasted, and that, therefore, there are substantial opportunity costs attached to not using these resources to use better proven strategies with better identified threats and problems (say, preventing global poverty) - albeit maybe not as massive as the outcomes in the existential risk scenarios. Similarly, Pascal's Wager completely ignores all the good things one needs to give up to meet the demands of the god promising eternal salvation in return (for instance, spending your Sundays working for the allieviation of global poverty). None of that is worth any consideration, the idea seems to be, in light of the massive stakes of the existential risk / religious belief or non-belief scenarios.  

Now, I will not pick any quarrel with the existential risk argument as such on these grounds, although I do think that more developed ways to analyse risk-scenarios and the ethical implications of these already in existence and used in the fields I referred above will mean lots of troubles for the simplistic aspects already mentioned. What I do want to point to, however, is this: If you're impressed by the existential risk argument, you should be equally impressed by Pascal's Wager. Thus, in accordance with Pascal's recommendation that authentic religious belief can be gradually installed via the practice of rituals, you should – as should indeed the existential risk argument advocates themselves – spend your Sundays celebrating mass (or any other sort ritual demanded by the God you bet on). I very much doubt, however, that you (or they) in fact do that, or even accept the conclusion that you (or they) should be doing that.

Why on earth is that?