Risk Objectivism and Risk Subjectivism: When Are Risks Real
![handle is hein.journals/risk1 and id is 13 raw text is: RISK OBJECTIVISM AND RISK
SUBJECTIVISM: WHEN ARE RISKS
REAL?
Paul B.Thompson*
Introduction
In introducing a session on The Risks We Run and the Risks We
Accept, at a 1979 conference of risk analysts, Chauncey Starr
characterized the risk judgments of the great mass of citizens in the
following way:1
Their perceptions may be so far from reality that you and I
know that they're absurd, but that's how they feel about it
and that's the way they perceive things. So, in discussing
the subject [of risk], we really have to distinguish between
the reality of what may or may not occur, the analysis of it,
* Professor Thompson received his B.A. from Emory University (1974) and his
M.A. (1979) and Ph.D. (1980) both from State University of New York at Stony
Brook. He is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Agricultural Economics at
Texas A&M University.
1 C. Starr, Introductory Remarks in SOCIETAL RISK ASSESSMENT: HOW
SAFE IS SAFE ENOUGH? 4 (R. C. Schwing and W. A. Albers eds. 1980). In the
same volume, W. W. Lowrance essentially rejects Starr's formulation of the problem
by characterizing analysis as a form of perception that differs from the laypersons
primarily in being subjectively endorsed by the scientific community in The
Nature of Risk, at 6-7. Lowrance's approach converts Starr's concern for getting
clear about real risk into a public policy issue regarding the political authority of
scientists, rather than a philosophical and methodological problem about the nature
of risk. This strategy for thinking about the policy problem is pursued in W. W.
LOWRANCE, SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND PUBLIC POLICY (1986) and by
Raynor and Cantor, How Fair Is Safe Enough?: The Cultural Approach to
Technology Choice, 7 RISK ANALYSIS 3 (1987). A more cynical statement of the
view is found at Tieman, Risk, Technology and Society, 7 RISK ANALYSIS 11
(1987). This contrasting view cannot be profitably pursued in the present context
without rather elaborately complicating matters that are already complex.
I RISK -Issues in Health & Safety 3 [Winter 1990]](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/risk1&div=9&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Risk Objectivism and Risk Subjectivism: When Are Risks Real
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