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A revised version of this article has been published in
Politics Philosophy Economics, August 2016 vol. 15 no. 3
DOI: 261-279 10.1177/1470594X15605437
RISK IMPOSITION AND FREEDOM
Maria Paola Ferretti
Abstract:
Various authors hold that what is wrong with risk imposition is that being at risk diminishes
the opportunities available to an agent. Arguably, even when risk does not result in material or
psychological damages, it still represents a setback in terms of some legitimate interests.
However, it remains to be specified what those interests are. This paper argues that risk
imposition represents a diminishment of overall freedom. Freedom will be characterized in
empirical terms, as the range of unimpeded actions available to an agent. After briefly
outlining the main characteristics of overall freedom as defended by Hillel Steiner and Ian
Carter, the paper shows that this notion is able to capture many of our intuitions about when
and how risk imposition disadvantages an agent, without reference to welfare indicators. The
paper argues that if this non-welfarist perspective can be defended, then it would be easier to
approach a number of applied questions about risk, including the questions of when risk
imposition is permissible or legitimate, in which ways risk can be an object of distributive
justice, and how one can be compensated for being subject to a risk.
___________________________________________________________________________
1. Introduction
Risk taking is a very important part of our life. We cannot imagine a society in which risks are
not run, and, at least in some circumstances, we praise risk taking, for example as necessary
for scientific innovation and economic progress. But although risk taking is generally
motivated by the chance of benefits, it often has (as a byproduct) negative consequences.
These negative consequences are in many cases distributed differently among various agents
in society, and they are sometimes imposed on those who had no chance of benefitting from
the risk that was taken.
Most people would intuitively agree that imposing a risk on someone else is at least in
some cases wrong and sometimes gives rise to claims of compensation and redistribution. But
it is hard to know exactly why this is, especially in cases where the risk does not actually
result in the negative outcomes it threatens.
Theorists disagree on what exactly is wrong with risk imposition, how exactly it
makes people worse off, what exactly we are meant to compensate for, and what precisely the
object of distribution is. My aim in this paper, therefore, is to present a plausible explanation
of the wrong of risk imposition. The question I address is not about the ‘outcome harm’ that
can follow from risk imposition (i.e.: the harm inflicted when the more or less probable
negative outcomes are actually realized), but what, if anything, is morally problematic with
risk imposition as such.
I argue that references to people’s welfare cannot account for all our intuitions on why
and in which respect risk imposition treats people in the wrong way. Instead, in order to
understand what is specifically morally problematic about risk, I submit, we should ask
whether risk imposition is compatible with respecting people as moral agents. I argue that the
2
notion of overall freedom, as defended by Hillel Steiner (1994) and Ian Carter (1999), can be
very useful to capture the sense in which risk imposition is (in certain cases) problematic with
respect to the moral agency of those at the receiving end. In particular, by focusing on the
concept of overall freedom it is possible to give an account of what I will call the ‘non-
specific negative impact’ of risk on the whole range of options open to an agent. The basic
idea is that when imposing a risk on someone (often in pursuit of my own ends) I am
interfering with a person’s range of external options (more precisely, her set of sets of
options), i.e. her overall freedom. One basis of the judgment that interference with our set of
sets of options is wrong lies in the idea that each of us, as a moral agent, is owed respect. In a
broadly Kantian approach, in virtue of respect each of us is entitled to a measure of external
freedom (equal or otherwise, depending on the substantive moral theory one endorses). It is
this entitlement that best explains the moral wrongness of the particular kind of interference
that is constituted by risk imposition. Risk imposition, I will argue, diminishes the overall
freedom of those at the receiving end, rather than (trivially) their probability of being free.
Decreasing people’s overall freedom under a certain acceptable level fails to treat them in the
appropriate manner.
This approach contrasts with ‘actualist’ views according to which the wrong of risk
imposition is realized only at the moment in which the harm being risked is actually realized.
What is more it offers an alternative to ‘probabilist’ views that see risk imposition as bad
because of its adverse effects on the agent’s wellbeing (e.g. creating fear or anxiety), or on the
agent’s autonomy; and to capability approaches that consider the impact of risk on a closed
list of opportunities for specific functionings. In the next section I will explain my reasons for
focusing on risk imposition itself, rather than its effects on persons’ wellbeing (§2). I will then
present two versions of why risk imposition, rather than just its outcomes, is morally
significant (§3). I elaborate on these in order to explain how risk impacts on people’s freedom
3
and defend an approach based on overall freedom. I argue that, unlike other approaches, the
freedom based view is able to account for the social dimension of risk imposition and identify
what is specifically problematic with risk in inter-human relations (§4). In §5 I explain how
both dimensions of risk magnitude, i.e., risk probability and risk impact, can be said to
diminish people’s overall freedom. In §6 I ask how we can make sense of the fact that some
persons are more vulnerable to risk than others. I conclude (§7) by considering the
consequences that my conception of risk as a decrease in freedom has for the debate over
compensatory and distributive issues in the regulation of risk. I also point out the
methodological advantages of the overall freedom-based approach.
2. The Wrong of Risk Imposition
Roughly defined, risk is the probability of the occurrence of a negative outcome.1 Thus,
without the probability of a negative outcome it would be impossible to talk about risk.
However, I am interested in whether being subject to a risk means being made worse off,
whether or not the probable negative outcomes actually materialize. What is more I will
mainly discuss risks that involve the probability of negative effects being imposed by some
agents (who expect possible benefits) on some other agents. I will only consider cases where
risk is imposed, rather than freely chosen. Accordingly, when I refer to risk, what I really
mean is risk imposition. I will consider simplified cases of risk imposition (by setting aside
questions of responsibility, which is relevant in cases of self-imposed risks or consensual
risks) in order to focus in on what is problematic with imposing the possible negative
outcomes of risk. In this context, natural risks are relevant only to the extent that they result
from risk imposition. For example, in the case of floods it may be that, say, failure of the city
council to secure the river banks results in risk imposition on those probably affected by the
flood. The reason to focus on risk imposition, rather than on risk in general, is that risk
imposed by some human beings on others represents a special way to treat persons (rather
4
than being simply something that happens to persons) and, as such, is the core moral issue
when discussing risk. The cases that I am thinking of are those where an actor takes a risky
action (normally in the hope of obtaining a benefit for herself or others) but in so doing
imposes a burden of risk on some third party. For this latter person there is a chance of loss or
non-loss, but no chance of gain. This would be the case if, for instance, emissions from a
factory created health risks for the surrounding populations, but there was no prospect of these
populations benefitting, in any way, from the presence of this factory. In real life, often,
expected benefits come together with risks, and towards the end of the paper it will become
clear that my approach is able to account for the impact of both risks and expected benefits on
an agent’s freedom. However, for analytical purposes, I will concentrate on risk only.
One obvious objection to my project of focusing on risk in itself is that what strikes us
as problematic when considering risk imposition is not that risks are run, but that adverse
effects materialize, which diminish individual wellbeing. On this view, sometimes called
‘actualism’, the wrong is realized only at the moment in which the harm being risked
materializes. Yet if someone plays with explosive materials in your cellar - you are not aware
of it - and no accident actually happens, then there is neither harm nor loss (Arneson 2010:
346). In this perspective there are still reasons to prevent actions that are very likely to
produce substantial loss (even if we do not know exactly who will suffer that loss) by treating
risk as a proxy for harm (Perry 2007). In this view, however, what is morally relevant is the
outcome, not risk imposition as such.
An alternative way of looking at the question is to consider that the very fact of being
at risk, even when it does not result in the negative effects that it threatens, may cause
decreases in wellbeing when it gives rise to fear or anxiety among those on which the risk is
imposed. What is more, it may induce people to take costly precautionary measures, whether
or not the risk realizes (Wolff and de-Shalit 2007). In this view, what is crucial is risk
5
awareness and the psychological reactions to the fact of being exposed to a risk. As a
consequence risk imposition here is morally problematic only in cases in which the awareness
of risk diminishes the wellbeing of those on which risk is imposed. To wit, what makes an
instance of risk imposition morally relevant is not what kind of risk is imposed on someone,
or the magnitude of that risk, but rather the consequences of risk awareness in terms of
wellbeing.
Such an approach must allow for a high degree of individual variation in risk
assessment, based on risk perception. What some people find frightening may leave others
indifferent. Moreover, people may be scared by risks that are relatively small in terms of
objective probability but remain indifferent to risks that in probabilistic terms are quite
serious. Although some theorists argue that this awareness-based understanding is appropriate
in the regulatory context, others have exposed the absurdities and inefficiency of risk policies
that respond to people’s subjective levels of fear and anxiety rather than risk objectively
measured.2 For example, in a number of countries there is a very low level of awareness of the
risk threatened by climate change, despite empirical evidence pointing to the need to take
precautionary measures to avoid severe damage to humans and the environment (UNEP
2006).
For Wolff and de-Shalit, however, risk awareness and its material or psychological
consequences are not the only way to account for how risk may affect people’s lives, or - as
they put it- may render insecure their future functionings. Wolff and de-Shalit explicate the
different ways in which risk may impact on functionings (such as life, health, shelter etc…)
by identifying three categories of risk: first, threats to a specific functioning, such as the threat
to one’s health; second, what they call ‘cross-category risk’; and, third, ‘inverse cross-
category risk’. Cross-category risks are risks likely to spread their effects from one
functioning to another. For example, the risk of losing one’s job may involve at the same time
6
the risk of not being able to pay the rent and thus to have shelter. What is more, the risk of
losing one’s house is an ‘inverse cross-category risk’ if the agent in order to secure shelter has
to give up, say, nutritious food (Wolff and de-Shalit 2007: 70-71).
This classification is useful to understand the different ways in which risk may affect
wellbeing, but also – and more interestingly in my opinion – shifts the focus onto the
opportunities open to an agent. What seems specifically interesting about risk is not (or at
least not only) the indication it gives us of future states of wellbeing, but how risk modifies
the opportunities of a subject at the very moment in which it is imposed. Although their risk
classification seems to point in the right direction, Wolff and de-Shalit discuss the impact of
risk by reference to actual functionings. Yet, when considering the impact of risk at the
moment of its imposition, a focus on specific functionings hardly gives a satisfactory picture
of the impact of risk, because it is very difficult to identify the particular functionings that will
be actually impaired (Murphy and Gardoni 2012: 993). What is needed instead is a way to
capture the impact of risk on the whole range of opportunities available to an agent under risk
imposition. In the next section I will discuss two different proposals that help us to understand
how risk imposition as such affects opportunities. In § 4 I will then present my own position
on this issue. The wellbeing-based approach involves consequentialist accounts of right and
wrong (low risk is a means to increased wellbeing). By contrast I will offer an approach
which is anti-consequentialist, at least in the sense that it aims to show how risk imposition is
a wrong in itself when it entails a reduction of external freedom under a certain acceptable
level.
3. Risk Imposition as a Setback of a Legitimate Interest
Claire Finkelstein suggests that the harm involved in exposing someone to a risk can
be explained in the same way as the good involved in exposing someone to the chance of a
7
benefit. Suppose that someone gives me a lottery ticket. Whether or not I win a prize,
Finkelstein argues, the very fact that I have the chance to win constitutes an advantage. By
analogy, when you put me at risk, you somehow put me at a disadvantage, whether or not the
negative outcome materializes (Finkelstein 2003; 2013).
What is more, if you give me a lottery ticket, I feel grateful, even if I do not end up
winning a prize, and the sentiment of gratitude seems appropriate because I was offered a
chance. When someone puts me at risk, I feel that they damaged me somehow, and the feeling
of being disadvantaged persists even if the damage never, in fact, materialises.3 This, for
Finkelstein, can be explained not (only) in psychological terms but by the fact that when a
person is intentionally exposed to a risk, she is deprived of a particular set of opportunities.
This constitutes harm if it involves a set-back or an impairment of a legitimate interest in
avoiding unwanted risk. Any normal, non-suicidal agent has reasons to prefer not to be
exposed to, for example, the risk of developing cancer. Thus, it is not necessary to know the
subjective status of an agent in order to know that exposing her to the risk of cancer
constitutes a set back to her interest in basic health (Finkelstein 2003: 972-4). However, it is
not entirely clear to me what exactly makes this a harm. We could understand the harm
involved in putting someone at risk as derivative from the harm that is risked. We have a right
to basic health and what intentionally jeopardizes our health is wrong. However, this view is
vulnerable to an objection envisaged by Nozick: if this view is sound, then any risk that
threatens the violation of a right does, in fact, actually violate that right; so, all actions that
entail a non-zero probability of violating a right are impermissible (Nozick 1974: 74).
Alternatively, we may think that that we have a legitimate interest in avoiding the unwanted
status of being at risk. Yet, obviously, not everything that puts us in a status that is not our
preferred one constitutes a harm. So, if we take this view, then in order to avoid the result that
8
all unwanted risks are illegitimate, we would need a substantive account of which risks status
it is legitimate to want to avoid, both in terms of probability and impact.
These difficulties notwithstanding, the intuition captured by Finkelstein is an
important one. In particular, the idea that risk imposition corresponds per se to a setback of
our interests indicates that risk is disadvantageous and that such disadvantage is linked to the
diminished chances of pursuing one’s interests, independently of one’s subjective perspective
on what those interests are and the actual impact on those interests.
John Oberdiek (2012) elaborates on this idea and suggests that the interest set-back
caused by risk imposition must be identified with a diminishment of personal autonomy. The
argument, in a nutshell, is that risk, being the probability of a negative outcome, is like a trap
that forecloses an option, by rendering unsafe the path where the trap has been set. Thus, risk
modifies the opportunities open to people and, with that, the ways of life that they can choose
to lead. This, in turn, affects people’s autonomy, whether or not it has a material impact on
people’s lives.
Oberdiek argues that even where the will of an actor is not modified by the risk
situation—even if the risk trap is put on a path that she would not choose anyway—her
autonomy is affected and the risk imposition stands in need of justification. What is more,
even if she is not aware that she is running a risk, the very fact of risk imposition diminishes
her options by making them unsafe. For this reason, risk imposition is prima facie wrong.
Oberdiek offers an example in which someone shoots a bullet in your range of action.
You do not move, and hence you do not get killed. But if you had moved in the direction of
the bullet, so the example goes, you would have been killed. However, it is not clear that your
autonomous will has been affected here if you do not know about the bullet and you do not
move in the direction of the bullet. Although Oberdiek’s focus on the agent and the
opportunities open to her is appealing and points in the right direction, I find that describing
9
the impact of risk in terms of autonomy does not really hit the nail on the head, and fails to
capture what we find wrong with the bullet shooting in the example above.
Autonomy is a complex concept, and Oberdiek follows Joseph Raz’s definition of
personal autonomy, which involves having (a) appropriate mental abilities; (b) an adequate
range of valuable options; and (c) independence from external manipulation (Raz 1986: 372).
By Oberdiek’s own admission, of these three elements, what counts, really, are external
impediments to options, not the subject’s abilities, or her actual choices (Oberdiek 2009). It is
rather controversial that a diminishment in an agent’s options always amounts causally to a
diminishment in an agent’s autonomy, and it is difficult to establish when this occurs
(Dworkin 1998: 14-17).
Certainly, we would not say that someone who decided to move in a certain direction
and as a lucky result was not killed by a flying bullet acted in a non-autonomous way, but
only that under risk imposition there are less options available. I contend that autonomy is still
too wide and complex a concept to be useful in understanding the impact of risk in the bullet
example, and so the focus of the analysis should be sharpened further. In particular, we need
an interpretation that is insensitive to the choices of the agent subject to risk, and that
concentrates on open and impeded opportunities only. Moreover, as I will argue, it is
necessary to consider the whole horizon of opportunities open to an agent, rather than
focusing on the security of particular options in isolation. Such an interpretation, I argue in the
next section, is one that draws a connection between risk imposition and the diminishment of
freedom. By focusing on freedom, I submit, we can better understand how risk imposition
negatively affects people, even if it does not change their material situation, or affect their
will.
4. Freedom and Options for Actions
10
Although they follow different strands of reasoning, both Finkelstein and Oberdiek
suggest that what is wrong with risk imposition is that it negatively affects the opportunities
open to a subject. This notion is captured by economists and social choice theorists using the
concept of an opportunity set, that is, a set of available alternatives from which an individual
can choose an element (Pattanaik and Xu 1990). Different opportunity sets provide different
degrees of freedom of choice. Here, freedom of choice refers not to the faculty or the action of
choosing but to having choices, or external options.
As characterized so far, risk imposition is not simply a factor that diminishes the range
of choices for an agent, but an impediment imposed by someone on someone else’s options
for action (that were otherwise unconstrained) and, as such, represents a problematic aspect of
human interrelations. This problem, as I will show, is best captured by Hillel Steiner’s and Ian
Carter’s idea of social freedom, which conceptualizes freedom as those actions that are free
from humanly generated impediment (Steiner 1994: 42-54; Carter 1999: 23-30; for a
discussion on what counts as human constraint on freedom see Miller 1983; Kramer 2003).
So understood, options for action refer not only to opportunities as Rawls understands
them, i.e. a “normal opportunity range” that is mainly concerned with the availability of jobs
and offices, but more generally to the available alternatives open to an agent. The overall
freedom approach also contrasts with proposals, such as those based on the capability theory,
which assess the wrong of risk on the basis of its impact on opportunities to do or become
valuable things. A capability describes the freedom to choose things of value (for example the
freedom to eat or fast) and the freedom to choose things of no value is not a capability (and
deserves no consideration in this approach). For this reason it is very important to list what the
relevant capabilities are. Because a capability, on the capability theory, identifies the freedom
to choose a specific functioning, it is necessary to identify which functionings are of value
and which are of no value before being able of making any assessment in terms of wellbeing.
11
Sen has intentionally left open the list of capabilities, and different theorists have proposed a
variety of solutions. Those aimed at explaining the impact of risk are especially problematic.
To give an example, Murphy and Gardoni conceptualize and assess risk in terms of impact on
capabilities (or genuine opportunities to achieve valuable functioning). Their first
methodological step is to select the capabilities relevant for the kind of risk in question and
explain that in order to do this it “is necessary to identify which capabilities will provide an
accurate picture of the impact of a hazard” (Murphy and Gardoni 2012: 86). Yet if risk is
defined according to its impact on capabilities, the attempt to define relevant capabilities as
those which will give an accurate picture of the hazard seems to be circular. Thus there are
two alternatives: either (a) one considers the impact of risk on all options, or (b) one has to
decide on a list of capabilities that make a certain action risky in a relevant way. Murphy and
Gardoni go for solution (b) and list some basic capabilities (including some basic
opportunities that appear in most capability lists such as the opportunity to have shelter, food
etc…) that may be relevant when considering the impact of natural hazards, and suggest that
this list can be appropriately modified to assess other kinds of risk.
However, in the context of humanly imposed risk, the relevant question is whether risk
imposition is a morally acceptable way of treating people, and it would be awkward to
consider the consequences of our actions only on a restricted set of basic capabilities.
Imagine, for example, that the house with the cellar in which you are playing with explosives
is my holiday home and the risk of an explosion does not impair my basic capability of having
a shelter. This fact does not seem to render morally irrelevant the fact that you are risking
destroying my holiday home. In particular, considering that the motivation of risk imposition
on others is to gain a benefit (often confined to the risk imposer herself), it seems important to
ask whether by imposing a certain risk I am unduly interfering with the subject’s
opportunities for pursuing her own ends (and not just the ends that I think are relevant, or that
12
normal people consider as basic, or that have been democratically selected, and so on…). In
this sense the solution of considering the impact of risk on all options (a) seems the only
appropriate one.
The most relevant consideration seems to be that by taking a risky action I may reduce
the options for some other agents, and that these, before my intervention, were options against
which they could form or reform their plan of life. Considered in this perspective, it seems
that the wrong of risk imposition finds its source in the Kantian requirement according to
which respect for people prohibits subordinating other people’s goals to my own goals, or
sacrificing their ends for the promotion of a social goal (Hills 1980). Thus, the appropriate
moral question to be asked is whether (and in which cases) risk imposition is compatible with
treating people as sources of ends, and in which cases it reduces their options in a way that is
incompatible with this requirement. This seems to require moving away from an idea that
freedom has value only when is used for the right purposes (as in the capability approach), but
to attribute value to freedom as such and to recognize freedom as a condition for people’s
purposiveness (Carter 2009: 177).
One way to give theoretical coherence to this intuition is to refer to the notion of
overall freedom. Ian Carter and Hillel Steiner have argued that whatever treating people with
respect may mean, it must involve according to them ‘a measure of overall freedom’ and in
this sense non-interference with a certain measure of freedom is constitutive of a respectful
conduct towards persons.
Steiner holds that freedom is a relation between agents, constraints and actions. He
proposes that the measure of one’s freedom is given by the ratio between the free options (F)
and the sum of free and unfree options (U). This can be expressed by the formula (F/F+U). By
expressing freedom as a fraction it is possible to take into account not only the unconstrained
options one has, but also the humanly imposed constraints on all the feasible (constrained and
13
unconstrained) options. The reason to use a ratio is that when an agent’s options expand, we
should not necessarily conclude that the agent has more overall freedom. Indeed, one may
also be subject to a higher number of interferences. For example, it may be that technological
advancements make actions feasible that were foreclosed previously. Any given agent can be
either free or unfree to choose those actions, because some other agents may physically
impede her freedom to perform them. To wit, the ratio is an expression of the social and
political dimension of freedom, and considers humanly imposed constraints, rather than mere
inabilities. The problem, when expressing freedom in the form of a ratio, is that the
denominator in the fraction has to be a finite number, and therefore we need a criterion for
saying which actions count as ones you can be either free or unfree to perform. There are
various solutions available. Steiner considers the set of all logically possible actions; other
solutions consider technological possibility or actions that are possible given the laws of
nature.4
My argument would go through whichever of these formulae were correct. Because
risk imposition should be taken into consideration as an aspect of interpersonal and social
relations, I believe that it is important to use a ratio despite its difficulties. I will present a
version of that argument that follows Carter’s formula. However, it will be readily seen that,
by making the relevant adjustments, the argument could be presented using another formula,
which is able to account for the impact of probability on overall freedom.
Note that, so conceived, overall freedom is an extensive quality, which can be
possessed in various degrees. In other words, we are not merely free or unfree to do this or
that, but are also more or less free overall. What is more, we value freedom (rather than only
valuing the various things that freedom allows us to do) because freedom is a good for many
ends (Rawls 1971). In other words, freedom has non-specific value. Money is an example of a
good with non-specific value. We value it because of the things that we can buy. Yet, other
14
things being equal, we prefer money to, say, tokens for books, food or other goods for which
we have a subjective preference, because money offers us flexibility across the things that we
may want to buy in the light of an indeterminate set of present and future preferences.
Analogously, freedom is non-specifically valuable for it gives an agent several options. An
agent’s preference satisfaction can be increased by removing constraints on the options that
she favors; freedom, on the other hand, is measured by non-impediment on action tout-court,
both chosen and non-chosen. People can be understood as sources of ends only by granting
them a certain measure of freedom understood as non-specific value. Overall freedom has a
non-specific constitutive value in the sense that is a necessary (albeit not sufficient) condition
for moral agency (for a discussion see Carter 1999: 43-50; Hees 2000: 156). Behavior that
accords to another person a measure of overall freedom is constitutive of respect for her moral
agency (Carter 2009: 181).
Carter’s revision of Steiner’s formula, as I will show, offers a framework which is
useful to understand how risk affects freedom, and this in turn captures many of our intuitions
about what we find problematic about risk imposition. This is because Carter takes into
account a number of different ways in which freedom can be constrained, in particular the
compossibility of unimpeded actions and the probability that a constraint is successfully
applied.
Let us consider compossibility first. According to Carter, when measuring freedom one
should consider both basic actions and causally generated actions that could in principle be
foreseen by the best-informed person at the time at which the agent has the degree of freedom
under investigation (for a discussion see Kramer 2003: 420-5).5 A constraint might not affect
one’s freedom to perform any single action-option, but instead restrict the number of sets of
actions that are possible in combination. The availability of certain options in combination is
what Carter calls action compossibility. Recall the example of housing and food under
15
condition of unemployment in Section 2. The agent in the example is free to get food, but –
given the constraints in place - the action required to exercise that freedom excludes the
possibility of performing the actions necessary to get shelter. Thus the particular option to get
shelter and the option to get food are there, but the overall freedom of the agent is diminished
because the two freedoms are not exercisable in conjunction (and thus the set of options
‘shelter and food’ must be subtracted from the calculus of overall freedom). The availability
of these sets of options open to an agent can be expressed in the measurement of freedom by
aggregating over sets of compossible actions, rather than single actions. Rather than on
particular functionings in isolation, the focus is on how the options are conjunctively possible,
how they affect one another and how they can be computed in the calculus of overall freedom,
and bypasses the problem of evaluating different options (and ranking them) that afflicts
capabilities theories. What is more, unlike the approaches based on capability, it explains the
intuition that risk imposition is a special kind of harm by reference to an idea of social
freedom. Regardless of one’s views on the maximization or distribution of social freedom, in
order to recognize others as moral agents (rather than simply being concerned with their well-
being as patients) we have to respect a certain measure of overall freedom (Carter 2009).
Carter’s revised version of Steiner’s formula describes one’s freedom as equal to the
ratio of the set of sets of compossible actions unconstrained for a subject divided by the set of
sets of compossible actions unconstrained (F) for a subject plus the set of sets of compossible
actions constrained (U) for the subject (Carter 1999: 182).
16
The second element added by Carter, which is the most relevant given our interest in
risk, is that of probability (Carter 1999: 189-91). Commonsensical attributions of freedom or
unfreedom take into account the fact that we rarely know with certainty the constraints that
will be faced by an agent, and most constraints are not certain but only probable.
On the one hand, if we take the possibility of interference as non-probabilistically
relevant in attributions of freedom - and consider that any possibility of interference
diminishes freedom - then we will hardly find any freedom in our society, since risk is
ubiquitous. On the other hand, if only constraints that certainly result in actual unfreedom
were to count as restraining the freedom of an agent, then we would take into account very
few constrains on freedom (Petitt 1983; Goodin and Jackson 2007). A formal measure of
freedom that is closer to our commonsensical way of attributing freedom is one that considers
probability. Note that probability refers to the existence of a particular unimpeded set of
options for an agent. Probabilistic qualification expresses the confidence with which we can
attribute particular unimpeded sets of options and impeded sets of options to agents, and thus
the overall freedom that we attribute them (Kramer 2003: 418).
The intuition is that a probability that a constraint will be imposed affects the degree of
overall freedom contributed by the availability to the agent of the constrained/unconstrained
set of actions. Probability can be integrated into the freedom formula in the same way that
economists calculate probable utility gains. In the formula denominator, a number is assigned
to each set of options identified as relevant (i.e. the list of conceivable, or nomologically
possible, or technologically possible sets of actions). Then, for each set, we consider the
probability that it is unimpeded for the agent (i.e that the agent would succeed in performing
that complete set of actions if she tried) and the probability that the set of actions is impeded
for the agent (i.e that the agent would not succeed in performing that complete set of actions if
she tried). Thus, for a set that has a 60% probability of being available we multiply the
17
number assigned to the set of actions by 0.6. The resultant number for the action set being
unprevented then goes into the numerator in the formula.
Ceteris paribus, the higher the probability of being unprevented from a set of
compossible actions, the higher the degree of overall freedom one has. Carter’s revised
formula is such that it factors in the probability that a set of actions will remain unimpeded.
Although applying this formula to practical cases would give rise to various technical
difficulties it offers a model that allows us to identify what happens to an agent’s empirical
freedom when a risk is imposed on her. Carter’s formula makes it possible to take into
account risk as a factor that diminishes freedom.
Imposing a risk on an agent amounts to imposing an increased probability that some of
her sets of options will be constrained, and this in turn diminishes her overall freedom. Note
that this is different than stating, trivially, that risk increases the probability of being unfree,
but asserts that the degree of overall freedom of an agent is actually modified by the impact of
risk.
Thus, risk concerns all the sets of compossible actions that one cannot take as
unimpeded with certainty, but rather have a certain probability of being impeded. A less
probable and more remote risk will have a negligible impact on overall freedom, a higher risk
will be more weighty. Moreover the impact of a risk will be indicated by the size and number
of sets of compossible actions that are (more or less probably) removed. A risk imposed on a
particular option may have repercussions on many other options (because that option is a
member of many sets), and this fact is expressed in terms of a correspondingly greater loss of
freedom.
By comparing the amount of freedom that an agent has in the absence of risk
imposition and the amount of freedom that she has under risk imposition we can in theory
calculate the loss of freedom caused by risk imposition. This loss of freedom indicates how
18
much worse off the agent under consideration has been made by the risk itself (in terms of
overall freedom). For the sake of risk management, most of these comparisons will be made
thinking of the state of freedom at the moment of risk imposition. Thus the freedom that an
agent will have at a time T in the absence of risk will be compared with the freedom that the
agent would have at T under risk imposition. There may be instances of risk imposition that
are illegitimate because they reduce freedom to an unacceptable degree, others that may be
legitimate but still call for some redress or compensation, and others still that are acceptable.6
Thus a loss of freedom, per se and without being connected to a normative theory of freedom,
does not tell us anything about the permissibility or impermissibility of risk imposition, or
what moral claims this may give rise to, but simply indicates how risk affects an agent
without reference to welfare indicators. What we find prima facie wrong in risk imposition is
that it diminishes people’s overall freedom.
5. Probability of Occurrence and Impact
One objection to my reasoning may be that so far I have considered only one dimension of the
magnitude of risk, namely the probability of occurrence of the negative effects, while the
second dimension, qualitative impact, is ignored. Welfarists presuppose either that risks that
threaten the satisfaction of basic needs such as health, nutrition, or education are qualitatively
more important than other risks, or that subjective preferences should be used to determine
which risks are more damaging for people. Can we account for impact without making a
qualitative distinction between different kinds of possible effects and without resorting to a
preferentialist approach?
Carter suggests that, when measuring freedom, we should consider the ‘fecundity’ of
an action; that is, we should consider the extent to which the performance of an action is a
precondition for other possible generationally distinct actions (Feinberg 1980; Carter 1999:
19
204). Many of the freedoms that we consider qualitatively more important are simply
freedoms for actions that are more fecund. Impeding those actions renders impossible many
other actions that would otherwise have been possible.
In the same way, I submit, the risk of interference with a particularly fecund action is
particularly weighty in the balance of overall freedom because it threatens to impede all of the
other actions the availability of which depends on its performance. Thus, we can explain why
some risks are weightier than others, in terms of their impact rather than their frequency:
Risks that apply to actions that are more fecund are, other things being equal, of greater
magnitude.
This analysis also allows us to explain why we should try to make some rights, such as
the right to bodily integrity and the right to political freedom, as secure as possible: these
rights protect options that are very fecund (Carter 1999: 205). In this way, we can make sense
of the claim, made by neo–republican theorists, that certain options deserve special protection,
durable in time. The question is then what actual and possible constraints we should remove
in order to guarantee ‘resilient non-interference’ for these options (Pettit 1993: 17).
‘Possibilists’ would say that this requires us to make an option completely secure, but this is
impracticable (for a discussion see Goodin and Jackson 2007). For example, in order to
prevent threats to political freedom we need measures aimed at reducing the power of certain
individuals such a tyrants, because there is a high probability that they will act to constrain
our political freedom. However, provisions against, say, possible psychopaths who may
decide to commit political crimes may be difficult to implement, and indeed too costly for
society unless there is evidence (and thus a probability) that there are some psychopaths ready
for action. Similarly, the Precautionary Principle makes sense when applied to cases where it
is expected a severely negative outcome (say, a natural disaster), even if we are not sure about
the exact probability of this outcome being brought about.7 But to use the precautionary
20
principle where we have no indication of the probability and impact of a catastrophic outcome
would impair too many social activities. Thus, even republicans must concede that given
constraints on our time and resources we must resort to calculations of which impediments are
more probable in order to enhance freedom. This is what Pettit calls ‘bounded probabilism’
(Pettit 2008). Bounded probabilism is compatible with the idea that we should incorporate
risk into the measurement of freedom.
Thus, to sum up, by coupling the idea of the fecundity of an option with Carter’s
‘probabilist’ approach we are able to account for the fact that the impact of risk on certain
options is greater than on other options, without resorting to a qualitative distinction. Risk
impact and probability can be built into a unitary formula and calculated together to produce a
measure of overall freedom. To come back to our initial question, my idea is that risk
imposition disadvantages those subject to it by decreasing their overall freedom. Not all
decreases in an agent’s freedom are illegitimate, or give rise to injustice. In order to decide
when reducing an agent’s freedom is wrong, or gives rise to compensation claims, one would
need a normative perspective on freedom, for example one may want to equalize overall
freedom, or rather maximize it, or merely guarantee a minimum of it at all times to all of the
relevant persons. For the sake of this paper, I can be agnostic about this. The important point
is that our judgments about risk imposition should be guided by the normative theory of
freedom-distribution that we favor. For example, if we are egalitarians about freedom, all risk
imposition that causes a departure from an equal distribution of freedom is problematic. Thus
the point is not to ensure that everyone is equally subject to risk. This would be too strong a
requirement in many cases, and probably demand that nothing is risked so that no one is
subject to risk more than others. Instead, in the model that I have offered, a loss in freedom
due to risk imposition can in some cases be compensated by other freedom enhancing
resources, such as money or free services.
21
Talking about risk is useful as it describes a specific way in which overall freedom
may decrease. And it may turn out to be useful, for example, when discussing compensatory
measures. For example, if a subgroup of society is exposed to an increased risk of cancer
because of a hazardous waste site, it may be appropriate to compensate this population by
giving them the money that they need to move house to a safer location, rather than to try to
compensate them for the harm that cancer might cause them. If the probability that this
subgroup would develop cancer was lower, the impact that this risk would have on their
freedom would be lower, and so it might be appropriate to offer them a different kind of
compensation—for example, the money needed to cover regular medical checkups. It goes
without saying that the choice of whether to convert resources into medical care, or a new
house or into something else, can be entirely left to the agent. In this sense the compensation
method based on overall-freedom, as well as any other risk policy based on overall freedom is
compatible with respecting people as sources of ends and strongly anti-paternalistic.
How risk imposition should be matched by other resources is a separate question, but as a rule
of thumb, a bundle of resources that gives to the agent the same amount of freedom that is
detracted by the imposed risk seems to be appropriate. In this way, the compensation (if any)
that is appropriate in any given case of risk imposition will be sensitive to the frequency and
the impact of the risk on the overall freedom of the agent (rather than on the probable
negative effects on specific options for an agent), and it will not be sensitive to the agent’s
subjective attitude to the risk.8 This – just to be sure - does not mean that any risk, under
compensation, can be imposed non-consensually on a subject at any time.
6. Risk and Vulnerability
A further worry may be whether the framework that I have offered actually helps us to
understand the cases that I used in the introduction to explain how risk imposition can cause
22
injustice, such as the case in which the poor become more exposed to environmental risks.
What we find problematic is not (or at least not only) risk imposition, but the special
vulnerability of certain population groups to risk.
I think that in these cases it is useful again to think about constraints on freedom in
order to draw out our intuitions. Consider poverty. The fact that money is necessary in order
to perform certain actions shows that a lack of money is an indicator of a high probability of a
constraint on freedom—some options are impeded for those who cannot afford them. If
houses were free, my lacking money would not limit my freedom to occupy one, but because
landlords normally make paying rent a condition for anyone to occupy a house, my lack of
money is, in fact, indicative of a very high probability of landlords and law-enforcers
impeding my entry to, and use of, a house should I try to gain such entry or to engage in such
use. The set of compossible actions available to an agent depends on the market prices and the
resources at their disposal (Cohen 1995; Carter 1999: 58-59).
In cases of environmental classism, the injustice of risk imposition is not (only) that
hazardous waste sites are typically located where low-income populations live, but that
members of that group tend to have less resources, and thus are in the worst position to cope
with or avoid the imposed risk. Thus, if two persons with different amounts of resources live
in an area where an incineration site is to be placed, the imposed risk is the same for both, but
the freedom-impact for the poorer of them is higher, at least if (other things being equal) her
lack of resources is a barrier, say, to moving house to a healthier place. The idea defended by
some, including Wolff and de-Shalit, according to which some goods are non-replaceable
fails to capture the idea that we normally find it more unjust that a poor person loses his
house, or has to relocate, rather than a rich one. If we accept that one’s home is non-
replaceable by other goods, we would think that the risk of losing one’s home is equally bad
both for the rich and the poor. Instead we tend to think that the risk is more worrying for the
23
poor, exactly because the rich has more resources that can be converted so as to replace what
has been taken away by the loss of a particular house.
This may become clearer with an example in which risk imposition is not
geographically identifiable. Consider pesticide residue in food. Both the rich and the poor are
exposed to the health risk attached to consuming such food. However, it is likely that lower
income people are more vulnerable to this risk because they may have more difficulty
accessing organic food (because of lack of money) and so have to eat the affected food.
‘Difficulty’ here is sensitive to the sets of compossible actions available (as described in §4) to
the poor and affluent, given the total exchange value of the resources available to them.
Affluent people can, with their abundant resources, buy organic food (call this option a) and
other goods essential to a healthy life (option b). So, the set of compossible actions for them
includes (a), (b), and (a, b). For poorer people this and/or combination may not be available;
they can buy either organic food or other goods essential to a healthy life. So understood,
difficulty is described in terms of high opportunity costs.
By focusing on the way in which risk impacts on freedom, we can better explain the
injustice of risk. Poor and rich people are equally exposed to certain risks, but since they are
more likely to have more options (and not simply valuable options in the sense indicated by
capability lists), the rich are in a better position to avert the negative outcomes that a risk
threatens. Poverty, of course, is not the only ground for the preclusion of certain options.
Members of certain ethnic groups, even when group membership is not an indicator of
poverty, tend to be impeded in the performance of certain actions. For instance, a black
person may be prevented from renting a flat in an area populated mainly by white people,
which is less degraded than other areas, despite the fact that she could pay for it. Thus,
because of racial barriers, it may be more difficult for a black person with the same income to
move away from a hazardous waste site.
24
An agent who starts with a smaller measure of overall freedom (because she has less
resources or is subject to racial barriers, or indeed is subject to any other kind of barrier) is
more vulnerable to risk because the relative impact of risk on her overall freedom will be
greater than it would be for someone with a greater measure of overall freedom. For the same
reason, a fine of 1000 Euros will have a significant impact on someone who has, say, 1001
Euros, but a negligible impact on someone who has, say, 30 billion Euros. Carter’s formula
allows us to perform exactly these kinds of calculations.
These examples show how focusing on the overall freedom and the whole set of sets
of options available to an agent, rather than on the security of specific options, allows us to
understand how differently situated people may be differently burdened by risk imposition in
a way that is non-specific with respect to the actions that are directly threated by risk, but that
affects all the options (and their combinations) available to the agent.
7. Conclusions
I have argued in this article that the wrong of risk imposition is that it decreases the overall
freedom of an agent. There are some instances of risk imposition that have either negligible
consequences or a justified impact on people’s freedom, and thus are unproblematic. But
other cases do affect people’s overall freedom in ways that make them impermissible, or that
are permissible but generate claims to compensation.
Our judgments as to the permissibility or impermissibility of a risk imposition, or as to
whether a risk imposition makes redistribution or compensation appropriate, will be guided by
the theory of justice that we favor and the way in which it weighs freedom relative to other
values. Prioritarian views, for example, will make different judgments about what kinds of
diminishments of freedom are permissible than equalizing or maximizing views would. But
25
whatever theory we favor, cases involving risk imposition must be adjudicated by considering
the impact of risk on a certain measure of overall freedom to which each of us is entitled.
What is more, by focusing on overall freedom, we can make sense of our intuition that
risk imposition makes us worse off even when no damage occurs. It is not simply the
materialized negative effects of risks that can disadvantage agents, or the fear and anxiety
caused by agents knowing about these possible bad effects, but also the way in which risk
determines which sets of options are available or not available to agents, and thereby affects
their overall freedom and their ability to form, revise, and pursue their own life plans. In this
sense imposed risk contributes negatively in a non-specific way to what an agent is free or not
free to do. Most importantly, diminishments of overall freedom under a certain measure are
incompatible with respect for others as sources of ends, and this explains the wrong of risk
imposition. Framing risk in terms of the impact it has on the overall freedom of those at the
receiving end establishes the prohibitions to take risky action that interfere with the life of
others as moral agents, and to overpower them by restricting their options in order to pursue
our ends, or ends we ourselves ascribe to them, or ends that we think socially valuable. This is
the ground for risk policies that are strongly anti-paternalistic, and refuse to identify and rank
the options that should be valuable for people.
Finally, my model is able to explain why people are differently vulnerable to risk.
People have different degrees of overall freedom because some face more constraints than
others. Risk imposition has a greater impact, ceteris paribus, on the overall freedom of those
who already have less freedom. This allows us to make sense of the fact that the same risk
may represent a greater disadvantage for people differently situated in society.
To conclude, what I have offered in this paper is a framework that conceives of risk
imposition as a wrong or, in distributive contexts, a burden. Measuring the impact of risk on
overall freedom brings with it some important technical difficulties that deserve more
26
accurate analysis. However, my aim was rather to sketch a framework that makes sense of our
intuitions about risk, and that offers a plausible alternative to ‘actualist’ approaches and to
approaches that focus on the impact of risk on welfare; or on the agents’ capacity for
autonomous choice; or on the autonomy of the agent’s actual choices.
I suggested that if we can calculate the impact of risk on people’s overall freedom, we
can explain the sense in which people are negatively affected by risk as such. This puts us in a
better position both to understand the injustice that can be caused by risk imposition and to
start to think of ways to bring about a more equitable distribution of risk and its negative
effects.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Earlier versions of this paper were presented at workshops in
Charlottesville (UVa), Darmstadt, Frankfurt, Pavia, Rome (Luiss), Utrecht; at the Joint
Session of the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association in Exeter (2013) and at the
Society for Applied Philosophy Annual Conference in Zurich (2013). I should thank all those
who have provided comments on those occasions. For extensive comments I am especially
thankful to Colin Bird, Vittorio Bufacchi, Ian Carter, Joe Horton, Darrel Moellendorf, Peter
Niesen, Thomas Rowe, Gianfranco Pellegrino, Federico Zuolo, as well as two anonymous
reviewers. My research was financially supported by the Cluster of Excellence “The
Formation of Normative Orders” (EXC 243) at the University of Frankfurt am Main.
Notes
27
1 Risk, technically defined, involves knowledge of probabilities, whereas uncertainty arises where
there is not such knowledge (Altham, 1984: 15). However, some have pointed out that for most risk
situations, estimates in probabilistic terms cannot be made without making controversial and
arbitrary assumptions. While these disputes are important, I want to leave these epistemological
questions in the background and focus on the normative question: If we could agree on how to
evaluate risk, how should we consider risks in terms of justice? In this specific sense the article
discusses risk rather than uncertainty. However, in principle, I have nothing against the proposal of
taking into account evaluations of uncertainty, for example by adapting the guidelines suggested by
Taylor and Kuyatt (1994).
2 Adler (2005) argues that if a person believes that her action creates a relevant risk of harm to
someone else, then she is prima facie culpable; Sunstein (2002) exposes the bias that affect people’s
risk perceptions and judgements.
3 Of course, the ‘other things being equal’ rule applies, because many of us may prefer an actual
benefit to a lottery ticket, which only provides a probability of a material benefit.
4 For a discussion of a number of infinity objections see Carter (1999: 175-188). One important
objection is Kramer’s case against bivalence (Kramer 2003: 359-62).
5 A basic action is one that is not performed by performing any other action; its performance is
direct and unmediated (Davidson 1980).
6 My discussion of freedom does not presuppose that empirical freedom must be maximized, trumps
other values, or that it is the only kind of freedom that we value. Empirical freedom is one
important value, and independently of whether we think that it should be maximized or equalized or
balanced with other values, we can appreciate that risk decreases freedom.
7 The Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle (1998) defines the principle this way:
"When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary
measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established
scientifically."
8 In cases in which it seems that no amount of resources could compensate for the risk imposed on
an agent, we should conclude that the risk diminishes the agent’s freedom so much as to be
impermissible. What is more, if the practical cases under consideration were different, for example
if it was the case that the risk is such that the agent can expect benefits, then the risk will have both
a positive and a negative effect in terms of probabilities and freedom. Compensation is due only in
cases in which overall freedom decreases after risk imposition. Thus, if someone is put at risk of
cancer, she should receive compensation proportional to her calculated loss of freedom, whether or
not she develops cancer, and in cases in which she actually develops cancer, she should receive the
treatment that is due to any cancer patient in that society—the treatment that she would receive
anyway, regardless of how she came to be at risk of cancer.
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