Pluralism about Risk

Philip A. Ebert (University of Stirling), null, Dr Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen (Yonsei University)

We start by introducing the standard, probabilistic notion of risk and highlight some challenges to it. Two other notions of risk—one modal, the other normic—are introduced as alternatives to the standard notion. However, these notions, too, face challenges. We propose that several notions of risk may have a place in deliberating and theorizing about risk—thus suggesting a pluralist approach to risk. However, there are different types of pluralism on the market. This raises the issue of what type of pluralism might be most plausibly applied in the case of risk. In order to make some initial progress in the discussion of this issue we spell out a number of pluralist views, transposing them from debates concerning truth, logic, and ethics. We end by briefly discussing how each of them fares in relation to a selection of test cases.