I also notice the dangers of the precautionary principle. "pre-caution", "caution", these words merely mean to think about the future implications of a yet uncommitted action. It seems to me this principle will only cause ill effects if it is turned into a static ethical theory. the precautionary principle lives only in applied ethics, if anywhere in philosophy.
    The precautionary principle asks to be incorporated into a society or culture's environmental decision making process. It is for the sake of posterity (something we see little of in today's political debates, unfortunately). When considering the precautionary principle, it is of utmost importance to consider time scales: How far ahead are we thinking? How good of opinions do we have about our impacts in the present on the future?
     These are important questions, but they lead to a further question that is at the root of Jim's e-mail:  who should be given the power to make such decisions? Certainly we do not want just anyone judging future impacts of our actions. We want experts. But who are the experts? In our present state of diversity, this necessity of leadership based on credentials poses a difficult problem. I am reminded of the problem of elitism in Plato's philosopher kings of the Republic. I am also reminded of the benefit of the modern day republic over true democracy. Or the benefits and hindrances of private vs. public ownership (capitalism vs. communism/ communalism).
      These indeed are unsettled arguments; the world is still full of Marxists and Smithians.
      However, the precautionary principle is more a political tool than something in need of philosophical fine tuning. It asks people to judge the effects of corporate and governmental actions on our great great great grandchildren. A political tool, simple as that. I think it is perhaps meant only to open the public consciousness to a new sort of time scale that allows, for example, citizens of a boom and bust town created by natural resource extraction have the ability to tell their employer (logging, mining, fishing, et) that they want to lessen this years harvest for the sake of next year's. Or for a country to vote to greenen itself up at the sake of their present economy. The precautionary principle should never serve as an absoloute Kantian-type maxim.
Any thoughts?



Jim Tantillo wrote:

> Hi everybody,
>
> Well, the response to my speculations about Cold War rationality (or lack thereof) has been underwhelming to say the least. :-) But that's okay, I am not deterred . . . .
>
> Let me restate the argument in somewhat more forceful terms. But first, recall that Ray Lanier asked:
>
> >My question is: Does the field of ethics have a decision model that would
> >help (not necessarily resolve) ethical issues where the facts about actions
> >and consequences are subject to the condition of uncertainty?
>
> I might have added in my previous response that some philosophers might say that the decision model provided by John Rawls in _A Theory of Justice_ constitutes another such approach under conditions of uncertainty. The basic argument is familiar: Rawls proposes the thought experiment of the "original position," where justice-seeking individuals negotiate with each other to determine fair social arrangements, all the while remaining under a "veil of ignorance" as to their particular personal circumstances in such a society. Rawls reasons that if the participants act rationally, they would institute a kind of "maximin" social structure which would maximize the well-being of the least well-off individuals. The original position thus represents a situation of uncertainty because the actors would be uncertain about their place in such a social arrangement.
>
> Critics of Rawls's model have pointed out that Rawls allows no room for probabilistic thinking under the veil of ignorance--e.g. gambling that you would be among the best-off, rather than among the worst-off, citizens. Thus the original position seems to require the maximin principle as its decision rule under conditions of uncertainty, as opposed to a Bayesian decision rule which would maximize expected (probabilistic) utilities.
>
> John Harsanyi, for example, in an early paper reviewing Rawls's theory, uses the following thought experiment to illustrate the problem with the maximin principle. "Suppose you live in New York City and are offered two jobs at the same time. One is a tedious and badly paid job in New York City itself, while the other is a very interesting and well paid job in Chicago. But the catch is that, if you wanted the Chicago job, you would have to take a plane from New York to Chicago . . . . Therefore there would be a very small but positive probability that you might be killed in a plane accident. . . . The maximin principle says that you must evaluate every policy available to you in terms of the *worst possibility* that can occur to you if you follow that particular policy. If you choose the New York job . . . you will have a poor job but you will stay alive. . . . [I]f you choose the Chicago job then the worst possible outcome will be that you may die in a plane accident."
>
> Thus, Harsanyi continues, "if you want to follow the maximin principle then you must choose the New York job. Indeed, you must not choose the Chicago job *under any condition*--however unlikely you might think a plane accident would be, and however strong your preference might be for the excellent Chicago job."
>
> "Clearly," Harsanyi concludes, "this is a highly irrational conclusion. Surely, if you assign a low enough probability to a plane accident, and if you have a strong enough preference for the Chicago job, then by all means you should take your chances and choose the Chicago job. This is exactly what Bayesian theory would suggest you should do" (595, cite below). In other words, what a Rawlsian-like maximin approach prevents us from doing is the conducting of ordinary "risk-cost-benefit" analyses. This leads to irrational consequences (as in the turning down the Chicago job scenario).
>
> What I now want to suggest is that the "Precautionary Principle," as it has come to be known in environmental policy and elsewhere, resembles the maximin principle in that: (a) similarly, it can prevent us from conducting intelligent risk-cost-benefit analyses; and also (b) it similarly can lead to irrational policy consequences.
>
> The precautionary principle finds expression, for example, in semi-codified form in the Agenda 21 proposals from the Rio Earth Summit. But the precautionary principle is also taking hold in the formal policies of some European countries, as Carolyn Raffensperger and Joel Tickner observe in their article, "Implementing the Precautionary Principle":
>
> "Recent international controversies regarding genetically modified foods, beef hormones, and phthalates softeners in PVC children's toys have raised the need for U.S. government agencies to better understand and develop a process for implementing the precautionary principle. This process has already begun among European Union agencies and member states, most notably Sweden and Denmark. The precautionary principle is a fundamental principle of environmental health policy and provides explicit guidance to decision-making in the EU and many of its member states." http://www.islandpress.com/ecocompass/prevent/index.html
>
> For a general (favorable) statement about the precautionary principle and its place in public policy, see the Rachel's newsletter for a basic overview/definition article: http://www.monitor.net/rachel/r586.html . Interestingly, this article cites author Sandra Steingraber, who says the precautionary principle "suggests certain kinds of arguments that grass-roots activists might use at the local level." I was particularly interested to see that among the grass-roots arguments Steingraber suggests is the idea that we have a "fundamental human right" to enjoy our environment "free from fear":
>
> "3) We all have a fundamental human right to enjoy our environment free of fear. Those who put toxics chemicals into the environment --whether as wastes or as products --deny us this human right. Almost everyone recognizes that such a denial of human rights is wrong."
>
> Call me crazy, but this seems like a pretty far-fetched application of rights theory to the environment and to matters of human health. Are we now so desirous of a sanitized existence that we are personally guaranteeing all human beings the absolute right to be "free of fear"? Where does such a "right" come from? Do nonhuman animals have it? <grin> Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for human rights, as any reader of this list ought to know that by now. And while a certain amount of everyday, run-of-the-mill precautionary thinking strikes me as a generally prudent and moral strategy for getting through my day, where does it say in the cosmic Constitution that I have a right to enjoy the world totally and absolutely free from fear? Is this some kind of natural law? Should the maximin/precautionary principle approach be elevated to the status of a (the?) "fundamental principle of environmental health policy," as environmentalists and environmental health advocates insist?
>
> The Raffensperger and Tickner article cited above points rather uncritically to, among other things, the controversy over phthalate softeners in PVC plastics as an example where the precautionary/maximin principle is appropriate. And yet consider another article on the phthalate controversy in Europe. In "Plastic Panics and the Perils of the Precautionary Principle," Bill Durodié, a research student at the London School of Economics, writes with regard to the policy process in Italy:
>
> "The impending decision by the Italian government is therefore simply the tail end of a process formalising self-regulatory action already taken by retailers and endorsed by regional authorities, which have been mirrored all over Europe and more recently, in the US. The actions of Greenpeace have been identical throughout. By a carefully timed and crafted sequence of stunts, press releases, and often unsubstantiated scientific papers, their campaigners have, in the manner of precocious schoolchildren, managed to play off all the major interested parties against one another.
>
> "Ironically, throughout this period new scientific evidence as to potential harm has entirely contradicted the actions that were taken. There is simply no cause for concern about the impact of phthalates in babies' toys or elsewhere. Unfortunately, many measures by retailers and regional governments were taken prior to the publication of the results last autumn of a major study aimed at bringing clarity to some of the research evidence. This indicated the risks posed to be so small 'that the statistical likelihood cannot be estimated'. However, by applying the so-called 'precautionary principle', now advocated by the European Commission as a guide to all such investigations post-BSE, the CSTEE has issued a series of opinions maintaining that there is 'cause for concern'.
>
> "These opinions have been based upon extrapolating from the worst available data (for one particular compound this was 10,000 times greater than the next nearest estimate), scaled up by a further factor of 100 for safety, and based on exposure doses and times since recognised to have been grossly exaggerated. It was also assumed that humans would suffer from the most sensitive adverse effects noticed in experiments upon rodents, although even the CSTEE accept that in the case of cancer this 'may have little relevance for humans', whilst the latest available in vivo research indicates no effect upon reproductive capabilities. Moreover, evidence that the majority of human consumption of phthalates comes from food has studiously been ignored.
>
> "But the 'race to the bottom' logic of applying the 'precautionary principle', which encourages caution and inaction in the absence of absolute proof of safety, thereby reversing the usual scientific burden of proof, will mean more than the wholesale replacement of childcare articles and toys. In countries where the campaign has been successful the focus has now moved onto medical devices such as flexible tubing, intravenous bags, catheters and protective gloves. These have provided billions of patient days of acute exposure with no evidence of adverse effects even amongst the most exposed groups, such as patients receiving dialysis for kidney disease. Yet, companies with a vital interest at stake, and who are aware of the enormous social benefit brought by products which are durable, disposable, flexible, inexpensive and safe, have proven to be remarkably defensive in their stance."
> (full text at http://www.esef.org/durodie.htm )
>
> Jim again:
> In contrast to the risk-cost-benefit analysis approach that has been common to public policy in the United States and which represents a (generally) Bayesian approach to decision-making, the precautionary principle embodies a maximin approach to public policy. Such (European?) precautionary approaches seem to imply that when there is a chance of catastrophic consequences--no matter how small the likelihood of those consequences occurring--then we should act so as to avoid those consequences. In other words, the precautionary principle as a decision rule for policy seems to enshrine a "zero-tolerance for risk" approach to public policy.
>
> Is this a good thing? These epistemological issues play an important role in many current environmental controversies ranging from genetically modified organisms to phthalates to global warming. In some cases, the risks are better known than in others. But can we really hope for a completely risk-free future? This seems unlikely to me.
>
> We might do well to reflect upon what Harsanyi says: "If you took the maximin principle seriously then you could not ever cross a street (after all, you might be hit by a car); you could never drive over a bridge (after all, it might collapse); you could never get married (after all, it might end in a disaster), etc. If anybody really acted this way he would soon end up in a mental institution."
>
> Is that where environmentalists are going?
>
> Jim T.
>
> Harsanyi, John C. 1975. Can the Maximin Principle Serve as a Basis for Morality? A Critique of John Rawls's Theory. _The American Political Science Review_ 69 (2, June): 594-606.



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