Competing Conceptions of Risk
http://www.fplc.edu/risk/vol7/fall/thompson.htm

Thompson, Paul B. and Wesley Dean
Franklin Pierce Law Center
1996

Abstract:

Risk issues are unarguably contentious. People evaluate risks in incompatible ways and propose conflicting proposals for mitigating or litigating risk issues. The sources of contention are multiple. Sometimes people differ because they have different information; sometimes they differ because they have incompatible interests. This paper addresses one of the more philosophical and systemic bases for differing opinions and approaches: The possibility that people have fundamentally or substantially different conceptions of risk. The philosophical basis for contention over risk is most evident in the scholarly and scientific literature. Experts who study risk or risk issues are more likely to develop well-defined, internally consistent conceptions of risk than members of the lay public. If distinct philosophical and linguistic presumptions underlie competing conceptions of risk, it should be possible to formulate the contentiousness over alternatives in terms of a principled philosophical debate, with implications for risk analysis, risk evaluation and risk communication.