Neueste Artikel

Risk is a futures issue: Challenging assumptions and practices

Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience : Podcasts – Durham University

Barbara Adam, Professor of Sociology in Cardiff University and a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study discusses how risk is a ‚futures issue.‘ She explains how risk is linked to time and how we might understand the future within the context of risk in contemporary society.

via Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience : Podcasts – Durham University.

Risk, ethics and public sensitivities

Thinking Like a Social Scientist lunchtime lecture series

Date: Thursday 28 January 2010

Venue: Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House

Speaker: Professor George Gaskell

In this lunchtime series of lectures, a selection of LSE’s academics from across the spectrum of the social sciences explain the latest thinking on how social scientists work to address the critical problems of the day. They survey the leading ideas and contributions made by their discipline, explain the types of problems that are addressed and the tools that are used, and explore the kinds of solutions proposed.

Following international agreements food safety is judged solely on the criterion of scientific risks – toxicity, allergenicity and in exceptional circumstances genotoxicity. The example of cloned animals for food products is used to highlight both the limitations of risk based regulation and its potential for creating public outrage. While safe food is an undeniable good, science based regulation cannot entertain or act upon ethical issues and/or public sensitivities. This pits science against everyday life, bringing both science and regulation into question in the public domain. Do we need a new paradigm for the regulation of sensitive technologies?

via Risk, ethics and public sensitivities – 2010 – Events – Public events – Home.

On the art of choosing: Sheena Iyengar on TED.com

Sheena Iyengar studies how we make choices — and how we feel about the choices we make. At TEDGlobal, she talks about both trivial choices (Coke v. Pepsi) and profound ones, and shares her groundbreaking research that has uncovered some surprising attitudes about our decisions. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2010, July 2010 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 24:09)

via TED Blog | On the art of choosing: Sheena Iyengar on TED.com.

Some Moral Dimensions of Scientific Research

In this talk I intend to reflect on three different dimensions in which moral values impinge on scientific research.

First, I want to explore the moral character traits of the scientific investigator. Next I will examine some moral side constraints on scientific methodology. And thirdly I want to look at some moral constraints on the consequences of various scientific inquiries. In conclusion, I will consider the additional dimensions added to these factors when scientific research is carried on in a democratic social order.

Termin: Mi., 20.01.2010

Zur Person:

Prof. Delaney teaches in both the Philosophy Department of which he was the chair from 1972 to 1982 and in the University Honors Program of which he has been the Director since 1990. His teaching has been in the areas of Pragmatism, Political Philosophy and the History of Modern Philosophy, and his most recent research has focused on the interpenetration of philosophy and science both in its historical instantiation in the pragmatism of Charles Sanders Peirce and its more general philosophical articulation.

via Moral Dimensions – Universität Innsbruck.

Uncertainty, Lags and Nonlinearity: Challenges to Governance in a Turbulent World

Montag, 01. Juni 2009 12:39

Prof. Homer-Dixon looks at systems displaying high levels of uncertainty. Using the example of climate change, he asks whether standard „management“ approaches used by policymakers are enough or if we must find new approaches in times of uncertainty. Global financial, climate, energy, and food challenges exhibit similar characteristics – all emerge from systems exhibiting high levels of uncertainty, countless unknown unknowns, time lags, threshold effects, occasional chaotic behavior, and sometimes synchronized systemic failure (as we’re now seeing in the financial system). In such systemic environments, standard „management“ approaches to public policy and governance are severely handicapped. Specifically, systems with lots of uncertainty and inertia are notoriously hard to control: manager cannot effectively predict the system’s future behavior, and they cannot quickly correct behavior they do not like. In the case of climate change, by the time policymakers find out that the climate dice have rolled against humankind, inertia could make conventional responses like carbon taxes and wind power inadequate. Planning humankind’s response around what scientists currently think is the most likely outcome is therefore reckless. While we can hope for the best, we must lay plans to navigate the worst.

via Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict.