Larry Haworth

Selected by Choice as one of the outstanding publications for 1991. Are risk debates disputes between those who accept the findings of science and those who do not? Between good and bad science? Or is it possible that opposing assessments of risk, by scientific experts as well as ordinary citizens, reflect and are guided by dominant values held by the assessors? The following analysis of one of these debates supports the latter view. In it we suggest what those dominant values are, how they work within a risk assessment, and some implications of reconceiving risk debates as primarily debates about values.

There has been much discussion in recent years of the possibilities for and nature of “value science.” The present paper is intended to be a contribution to this discussion. One encouraging feature of the bulk of current discussion of value science is that its protagonists have a definite end in view, namely, “human betterment,” taking that phrase in the common sense as covering, at least, a process of creating and maintaining such conditions of life as enable human beings successfully to engage in satisfying activities.

In Taking Rights Seriously, Ronald Dworkin defends the thesis that some, at least, of the rights people have, and in particular the most fundamental rights such as free speech and religious freedom, are “rights against the state”. By this he means that they identify modes of action that individuals ought to be permitted to carry out, and interference with which ought to be banned, even if a majority in the society prefer that the actions be prohibited or prefer some other condition achievement of which would require prohibiting them.

In Patterns of Moral Complexity, Charles Larmore describes three related ways in which moral and political theory are more complex than is often allowed. He objects to three parallel simplifications: that moral decision making largely consists in the application of rules to particular situations; that the ideals by which we are guided in our personal lives should also do service as political ideals, a simplification which he calls “expressivism”; and that there is but a single source of moral value. Against these simplifications he argues in a sort of Aristotelian way for the centrality of judgment in moral reasoning; for the liberal principle that the state should not strive to express our highest personal ideal; and for the, I suppose eclectic, view that partiality, deontological reasons, and consequentialist reasons all have a place in moral reasoning and that therefore the moral person may well be caught in conflicts that present him or her with tragic choices. These are the three “patterns of moral complexity” that the title of the book refers to.