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Contractualism and risk preferences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2020

Tobey K. Scharding Open the ORCID record for Tobey K. Scharding [Opens in a new window]
Tobey K. Scharding*
Affiliation:
Rutgers Business School – Newark and New Brunswick, Piscataway, New Jersey, USA
*
Email: tscharding@business.rutgers.edu
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Abstract

I evaluate two contractualist approaches to the ethics of risk: mutual constraint and the probabilistic, ex ante approach. After explaining how these approaches address problems in earlier interpretations of contractualism, I object that they fail to respond to diverse risk preferences in populations. Some people could reasonably reject the risk thresholds associated with these approaches. A strategy for addressing this objection is considering individual risk preferences, similar to those Buchak discusses concerning expected-utility approaches to risk. I defend the risk-preferences-adjusted (RISPREAD) contractualist approach, which calculates a population’s average risk preference and permits risk thresholds below that preference, only.

Keywords

riskcontractualismScanlonrisk-weighted expected utility (REU) theory
Type
Article
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , July 2021 , pp. 260 - 283
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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