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Ethical aspects of technical safety
Author(s) -
Gethmann Carl Friedrich
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
human factors and ergonomics in manufacturing and service industries
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.408
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1520-6564
pISSN - 1090-8471
DOI - 10.1002/hfm.10038
Subject(s) - consistency (knowledge bases) , obligation , context (archaeology) , section (typography) , risk analysis (engineering) , relation (database) , positive economics , epistemology , hum , sociology , political science , computer science , economics , business , law , philosophy , history , archaeology , database , artificial intelligence , operating system , performance art , art history
Abstract Uncertainty and inequality are the most important phenomena that lead to the situation in which the modern technical age, in contrast to the premodern technical phase, gives rise to specifically moral problems which in the premodern era played only a marginal role or no role at all. So modern, technically constituted societies must learn to develop from the initial perception of dangers to a rational risk assessment. To justify this ethical obligation, the first section discusses the relation between danger and risk. The problem of weighing risks is analyzed in the second section; in this context the concept of pragmatic consistency is introduced. In the third section, the term safety is explicated as a comparative concept by means of the principle of pragmatic consistency. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Hum Factors Man 13: 243–252, 2003.