No Moral Nukes

Abstract

One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now widely raging over nuclear power. While many important empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not really lie at the center of the controversy. Instead, it is debate about values. Survey research shows that, both among experts and the public at large, the disagreement between advocates and opponents of nuclear energy is less over what the costs and benefits are than over which are worth pursuing.' Philosophers need make no apologies upon joining such issues. In any case, philosophers are unduly shy of empirical questions. Far better, surely, to address genuine policy issues in genuine way rather than resort to desert island examples disingenuously assuming away all the complexities that combined to make the issues problematic in the first place. Philosophers, it is often said, have no special expertise in resolving empirical questions. Neither, I would add, do they suffer any special disabilities, save those which are self-imposed. We are usually * I had much help turning up these materials. Presumably, specific acknowledgment would not always be kindness, so I simply note my general gratitude to all those in universities and the public and private sectors of several nations who shared insights and materials with me. I am particularly indebted to David Pearce for comments on the review itself. Responsibility is, of course, mine alone. 1. Otway and Fishbein (1976), analyzing survey responses of American energy experts, find that advocates and opponents of nuclear technology display no significant differences as regards perceived risks-they differ only in their perceptions of its whether or not nuclear power would contribute to that infamous intangible, the quality of life. From survey of the general public in Austria and America, Otway, Maurer, and Thomas (1978) similarly conclude that advocates of nuclear power are basically committed to pursuing economic and technological benefits, whereas opponents fundamentally resist psychological risks associated with technology-out-of-control. These findings lead them to conclude that nuclear power is basically life-style issue, judgment in which Pearce, Edwards, and Beuret (1979) concur. Duncan (1978, p. 19) similarly perceives a steady evolution in which problems are initially defined as scientific and technical, later as economic, and still later ... as intrinsically social and political. In the beginning of the Atomic Age, sociologists' pronouncements on atomic energy were mostly paraphrases of discussions by physical scientists. Now we are seeing ad hoc sociology-such as Weinberg's (1972b) famous essay on social institutions-being generated by the technical experts. If that kind of social science is not good enough, sociologists should know what to do about it. So, too, should philosophers.