Citizens and Experts in Risk Assessment: Technical Knowledge in Practical Deliberation

Abstract

Abstract: This paper explores the tensions between experts and citizens in the assessment of technological and environmental risks from the perspective of practical reason. Much of the discussion of the politics surrounding the acceptance or rejection of technologies such as nuclear power and biotechnology has focused on the purported “irrationality” of lay citizen. They are said to be unable to understand scientific findings and their im–plications for rational policymaking. By comparing the formal logic of technical in–quiry and the informal ordinary language logic of argumentation, the discussion re–verses the issue and interrogates the ration–ality of the scientist in judgments pertaining to public decisions. Employing the case of GM foods, the explication reveals that ordi–nary citizens focus on important questions that scientific experts often ignore or ne–glect. Citizens, it is shown, follow a different kind of logic than scientific experts, one more attuned to the normative realities of the social world. Demonstrating the scientific expert’s need to take the citizen’s normative logic into account, the essay offers an epis–temological approach for bringing together these two different modes of reason in pub–lic policy deliberation.