What’s the Harm?: An Evolutionary Theoretical Critique of the Precautionary Principle

Abstract

The precautionary principle has been hailed as the new paradigm for contending with health and environmental risk in the context of emerging technologies. In the philosophical literature, however, it has been met with skepticism. Weaker conceptions of the precautionary principle are accused of being trivial or vacuous, while stronger versions are criticized for issuing irrationally restrictive or even contradictory prescriptions. Although the precautionary approach suffers from a number of conceptual defects, it nonetheless could be justified in certain biological domains if it were the case that evolution tended to produce optimal, delicately balanced equilibria that generally coincided with what we value. This justification fails, however, since it is premised on assumptions about the causal structure of the world that do not accord with contemporary evolutionary theory. This does not exclude the possibility that the precautionary principle may be warranted for other reasons or in certain settings, but it does remove a potentially powerful rationalization, one that has motivated much of the scholarship, law, and policy that is inclined toward the precautionary approach.

Creating ethics guidelines for artificial intelligence and big data analytics customers: The case of the consumer European insurance market

“…The precautionary principle is also in play here. 71 , 72 , 73 Discussions with the EIOPA Expert Group on Digital Ethics mirrors debates that have been taking place in academia over the past three decades, with some members’ positions being close to that of Cass Sunstein 74 , 75 , 76 , 77 , 78 , 79 and others Powell 80 in arguing that the regulation has the potential to damage innovation, 81 and others taking a more precautionary stance to data-centered business models. 82 Many of the issues thrown up by the use of big data by insurers may have unwelcome long-term social consequences.…”

Justifying the Precautionary Principle as a political principle

“…In view of the apparent impossibility of finding a workable and problem-free formulation of the PP, some authors have proposed thinking of precaution not as a principle, but as a cluster of related principles and norms (Powell 2010, Rodríguez-Alcázar 2010, as some kind of meta-principle (Steel 2014, Hansson 2018 or as a framework or approach (Hartzell-Nichols 2013, Holbrook & Briggle 2014, Wolff 2014. In turn, most radical critics of the PP have recommended getting rid of precaution as a principle altogether on the grounds that, in general, we have as many reasons to guide our decisions by precaution as by audacity (Harris & Holm 2002, Posner 2004, Sunstein 2005, Sandin 2007, Burnett 2009, Fuller 2012a, Fuller & Lipinska 2014.…”