rights against risking

Question 1

The ideal of moral rights/rights based approach

Answer 1

Rights set limits on what we can do to other people, even if we are pursuing a valuable social goal

Question 2

moral paralysis

Answer 2

Almost everything we do exposes others to some risk
of serious harm
- Result of absolute right against risk imposition would
be ‘moral gridlock’ (Fried 2012, 2018) or moral paralysis

Question 3

The problem of ‘social risk’ (Frick)

Answer 3

Cases that share three features pose a particular challenge for the rights-theorist:
1. Type of risky action or omission will affect large numbers of individuals - highly likely that some individual will end up being harmed.
2. Individual losses to those burdened will be much greater than individual gains for those benefitted
3. Risky action or omission is intuitively morally permissible e.g. convenience drivin

Question 4

A Defeasible right against risk imposition - Hanson

Answer 4

defeasible rights are rights that are sometimes permissibly overridden

Question 5

contractualist approach to setting limits on moral rights

Answer 5

Our moral principles must be justified to each individual person

Question 6

oberdiek - fair exchanges of risk

Answer 6

Convenience driving involves intra-personal aggregation - practice of driving is justified because risks of allowing it are worth it to each individual

Question 7

temporal perspective

Answer 7

ex-ante - the perspective of those who the risk has not eventuated yet
ex-post - the perspective of those who the risk has turned out badly for them
- brings us back to gridlock

Question 8

atypical perspectives

Answer 8

those who don’t encounter a risk at all and therefore the risk doesn’t seem justifiable even from ex-ante perspective

Question 9

concerns with self-driving cars

Answer 9

• How should we programme them to distribute risk between different parties?
• Do we have rights against being exposed to the risks of SD cars? If so, does this mean that we should keep SD vehicles off the road?
• Do SD car users, other drivers and pedestrians have different rights in relation to risks posed by SD cars?

Question 10

for self-driving cars

Answer 10

• introduction of SD cars expected to significantly reduce overall
  deaths on the roads (over 90% of accidents thought to be due to human error).
• result in time savings by allowing users to work whilst they travel and
  reduce emissions