O'Sullivan, A. and Mace, L. (2024) Reverse-engineering risk. Erkenntnis, (doi: 10.1007/s10670-024-00788-6) (Early Online Publication)
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Abstract
Three philosophical accounts of risk dominate the contemporary literature. On the probabilistic account, risk has to do with the probability of a disvaluable event obtaining; on the modal account, it has to do with the modal closeness of that event obtaining; on the normic account, it has to do with the normalcy of that event obtaining. The debate between these accounts has proceeded via counterexample-trading, with each account having some cases it explains better than others, and some cases that it cannot explain at all. In this article, we attempt to break the impasse between the three accounts of risk through a shift in methodology. We investigate the concept of risk via the method of conceptual reverse-engineering, whereby a theorist reconstructs the need that a concept serves for a group of agents in order to illuminate the shape of the concept: its intension and extension. We suggest that risk functions to meet our need to make decisions that reduce disvalue under conditions of uncertainty. Our project makes plausible that risk is a pluralist concept: meeting this need requires that risk takes different forms in different contexts. But our pluralism is principled: each of these different forms are part of one and the same concept, that has a ‘core-to-periphery’ structure, where the form the concept takes in typical cases (at its ‘core’) explains the form it takes in less typical cases (at its ‘periphery’). We then apply our findings to epistemic risk, to resolve an ambiguity in how ‘epistemic risk’ is standardly understood.
| Item Type: | Articles |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | O’Sullivan thanks the Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2019-302) for supporting this research, as part of the project ‘A Virtue Epistemology of Trust’. Mace thanks the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (948356) for supporting this research, as part of the project ‘KnowledgeLab: Knowledge-First Social Epistemology’. |
| Keywords: | Risk, epistemic risk, conceptual reverse-engineering, anti-risk epistemology. |
| Status: | Early Online Publication |
| Refereed: | Yes |
| Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: | O'Sullivan, Ms Angela and Mace, Dr Lilith |
| Authors: | O'Sullivan, A., and Mace, L. |
| College/School: | College of Arts & Humanities > School of Humanities > Philosophy |
| Journal Name: | Erkenntnis |
| Publisher: | Springer |
| ISSN: | 0165-0106 |
| ISSN (Online): | 1572-8420 |
| Published Online: | 08 March 2024 |
| Copyright Holders: | Copyright © 2024, The Author(s) |
| First Published: | First published in Erkenntnis 2024 |
| Publisher Policy: | Reproduced under a Creative Commons licence |
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