EMOTIONS AND RISKY TECHNOLOGIES by Sabine Roeser (Editor) ( 9789048186464 )

Item Details

Title:

EMOTIONS AND RISKY TECHNOLOGIES

By:

Format:

Hardback

List price:	£109.99
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ISBN 10:

9048186463

ISBN 13:

9789048186464

Publisher:

SPRINGER

Pub. date:

9 June, 2010

Edition:

2010

Series:

The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology 5

Pages:

262

Description:

By offering an original and challenging approach to the topic of risk and emotion, this book covers new territory. It focuses on risk and emotion from the perspective of moral philosophy and emphasizes that emotions are an important source of moral knowledge.

Synopsis:

"Acceptable Risk" - On the Rationality (and Irrationality) of Emotional Evaluations of Risk What is "acceptable risk"? That question is appropriate in a number of different contexts, political, social, ethical, and scienti c. Thus the question might be whether the voting public will support a risky proposal or project, whether people will buy or accept a risky product, whether it is morally permissible to pursue this or that potentially harmful venture, or whether it is wise or prudent to test or try out some possibly dangerous hypothesis or product. But complicating all of these queries, the "sand in the machinery" of rational decision-making, are the emotions. It is often noted (but too rarely studied) that voters are swayed by their passions at least as much as they are convinced by rational arguments. And it is obvious to advertisers and retailers that people are seduced by all sorts of appeals to their vanities, their fears, their extravagant hopes, their insecurities. At least one major thread of ethical discourse, the one following Kant, minimizes the importance of the emotions ("the inclinations") in favor of an emphatically rational decision-making process, and it is worth mulling over the fact that many of those who do not accept Kant's ethical views more or less applaud his rejection of the "moral sentiment theory" of the time, promoted by such luminary philosophers as David Hume and Adam Smith.

Illustrations:

XXXII, 262 p.

Publication:

Netherlands

Imprint:

Springer

Returns:

Returnable

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BASIC BELIEF AND BASIC KNOWLEDGE

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EMOTION AND VALUE (HB)