Cognitive Status of Risk: A Response to Thompson, The
![handle is hein.journals/risk2 and id is 323 raw text is: The Cognitive Status of Risk:
A Response to Thompson*
L. James Valverde A., Jr.**
Introduction
The concept of risk has traditionally given rise to such questions as:
What is the nature of risk? Why is it practically useful to posit the notion
of risk? Is risk a fundamentally irreducible and unexplainable concept?
If it is not, how should we define risk? How should we think about risk
in the context of human experience? These are all questions relating to
what can collectively be referred to as the cognitive status of risk.1
In a recent essay,2 Paul Thompson provides some interesting and
thought-provoking perspectives on many of these questions. Central to
his analysis is the question, When are risks real? In answering this
question, Professor Thompson challenges two basic tenets of
contemporary risk analysis. The first of these tenets is the philosophical
view that risk is fundamentally an epistemic category that is grounded in
empiricism - a view that Thompson labels probabilistic. The second
* This paper was written during the author's tenure as Senior Research Associate
at the Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, CA. The author thanks John
Kadvany, D. Warner North, Mario Rabinowitz, Jennie Rice and Bruce Tonn for their
insightful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts.
** Technology and Policy Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge, MA.
1 For the purposes of this discussion, I draw a somewhat informal distinction
between the cognitive status of risk and the psychology of risk, where the latter is
concerned mainly with how people react to and perceive uncertainty, and the former is
concerned with the mental processes that are associated with our conceptualization
and understanding of risk.
2 Thompson, Risk Objectivism and Risk Subjectivism: When are Risks Real?, 1
RISK: ISSUEsIN HEALTHAND SAFETY 3 (1990).
2 RISK -Issues in Health & Safety 313 [Fall 1991]](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/risk2&div=29&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Cognitive Status of Risk: A Response to Thompson, The
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