Precautionary Reasoning and Moral Theory

In the previous chapter, we explored decision-theoretic approaches to precautionary reasoning and found them wanting. While decision theory offers important insights into making individual and group choices involving risks and benefits, it does not provide use with adequate guidance for precautionary reasoning, because it lacks moral content. Decision theory can tell us how to make decisions, given our values, but it cannot tell us what those values should be or how to rank them. For insight into values, we need to look beyond decision theory toward moral theory.