Speakers conference Moral Emotions
Robert Solomon was supposed to be one of the speakers at the conference, but he sadly passed away on January 2nd 2007. This conference will be held in his memory. This is the information Robert Solomon provided for the conference:
Robert Solomon
Robert C. Solomon is Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Business and Philosophy and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University Texas at Austin. He is past President of the International Society for Research on Emotions. He is best known for his courses on “Existentialism” and for his teaching in the Plan II Honors program. He has previously done several video and audio “Superstar Teacher” tapes for the Teaching Company, including No Excuses (on existentialism), The Will to Power (on Nietzsche, with Kathleen Higgins). He is the author of 52 books (more than 80 if you include revised editions) including The Passions, In the Spirit of Hegel, About Love, A Passion for Justice, Up the University and (with Jon Solomon) A Short History of Philosophy, Ethics and Excellence, A Passion for Wisdom, A Better Way to Think About Business, The Joy of Philosophy, and What Nietzsche Really Said (with Kathleen M. Higgins), Spirituality for the Skeptic, Living with Nietzsche, Not Passion’s Slave and In Defense of Sentimentality (Vol. I and II of a three-volume series, The Passionate Life), and most recently True to Our Feelings. He regularly consults and provides programs in business ethics for corporations and organizations around the world.
Title: “Acceptable Risk"--- On the Rationality (and Irrationality) of Emotional Evaluations of Risk.
Abstract: What is ‘acceptable risk’? That question is appropriate in a number of different contexts, political, social, ethical, and scientific. But complicating all of these queries are the emotions, the “sand in the machinery” of rational decision-making. But the complexities introduced by emotional involvement in our consideration of risky technologies should not be considered as distortions or interferences in our thinking but as an essential part of our rational reflections. The question is which emotion or emotions are engaged and how.
There are all sorts of risks in the world (climbing a volcano on the brink of eruption, invading a country on the brink of civil war, lying to your spouse about where you were last weekend, eating uncooked meats or seafood) but risky technology occupies a curious place in our estimation of dangers and probabilities. This is because risky technology is both risky (outcomes and consequences are uncertain) and within our control (the root of the term is techné, craft or skill). It is not just a question about how we should respond to a risk (should we go ahead or not, should we try it or not?) but what we do to create the risk. These present us with not only technological issues of uncertainty and control but provoke powerful emotions that may or may not be rational.
I do not know much about risk management (although, like all more or less rational creatures, I practice it all the time). Nor do I know much more than the average magazine and website reader about the new technologies as such. But what I do know something about and have thought about a great deal is the rationality of emotions. And since risk assessment is both a matter of rationality and of emotion that is what I would like to focus on here.
