Whereas standard approaches to risk and vulnerability presuppose a strict separation between humans and their world, this book develops an existential-phenomenological approach according to which we are always already beings-at-risk. Moreover, it is argued that in our struggle against vulnerability, we create new vulnerabilities and thereby transform ourselves as much as we transform the world. Responding to the discussion about human enhancement and information technologies, the book then shows that this dynamic-relational approach has important implications for the evaluation of new technologies and their risks. It calls for a normative anthropology of vulnerability that does not ask which objective risks are acceptable, how we can become invulnerable, or which technologies threaten human nature, but which vulnerability transformations we want. To the extent that we can steer the growth of new technologies at all, this tragic and sometimes comic project should therefore be guided by what we want to become.​

Increasingly, international legal arrangements imagine future worlds or create space for experts to articulate how the future can be conceptualized and managed. With the increased specialization of international law, a series of functional regimes and sub-regimes has emerged, each with their own imageries, vocabularies, expert-knowledge, and rules to translate our hopes and fears for the future into action in the present. At issue in the development of these regimes are not just competing predictions of the future based on what we know about what has happened in the past and what we know is happening in the present. Rather, these regimes seek to deal with futures about which we know very little or nothing at all; futures that are inherently uncertain and even potentially catastrophic; futures for which we need to find ways to identify, conceptualise, manage, and regulate risks the existence of which we can possibly only speculate about. This book explores how the future is imagined, articulated, and managed across the various fields of international law, including the use of force, maritime security, international economic and environmental law, and human rights. It investigates how the future is construed in these various areas; how the costs of risk, risk regulation, risk assessment, and risk management are distributed in international law; the effect of uncertain futures on the subjects of international law; and the way in which international law operates when faced with catastrophic or existential risk.

This two-volume set LNCS 12777 and 12778 constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Digital Human Modeling and Applications in Health, Safety, Ergonomics and Risk Management, DHM 2021, which was held virtually as part of the 23rd HCI International Conference, HCII 2021, in July 2021. The total of 1276 papers and 241 posters included in the 39 HCII 2021 proceedings volumes was carefully reviewed and selected from 5222 submissions. DHM 2021 includes a total of 56 papers; they were organized in topical sections named: Part I, Human Body, Motion and Behavior: Ergonomics, human factors and occupational health; human body and motion modeling; and language, communication and behavior modeling. Part II, AI, Product and Service: Rethinking healthcare; artificial intelligence applications and ethical issues; and digital human modeling in product and service design.

Understand the fundamentals of human risk assessment with this introduction and reference Human risk assessments are a precondition for virtually all industrial action or environmental regulation, all the more essential in a world where chemical and environmental hazards are becoming more abundant. These documents catalog potential environmental, toxicological, ecological, or other harms resulting from a particular hazard, from chemical spills to construction projects to dangerous workplaces. They turn on a number of variables, of which the most significant is the degree of human exposure to the hazardous agent or process. Human and Ecological Risk Assessment combines the virtues of a textbook and reference work to introduce and analyze these vital documents. Beginning with the foundational theory of human health risk assessment, it then supplies case studies and detailed analysis illustrating the practice of producing risk assessment documents. Fully updated and authored by leading authorities in the field, the result is an indispensable work. Readers of the second edition of Human and Ecological Risk Assessment will also find: Over 40 entirely new case studies reflecting the latest in risk assessment practice Detailed discussion of hazards including air emissions, contaminated food and soil, hazardous waste sites, and many more Case studies from multiple countries to reflect diverse international standards Human and Ecological Risk Assessment is ideal for professionals and advanced graduate students in toxicology, industrial hygiene, occupational medicine, environmental science, and all related subjects.

Christian Munthe undertakes an innovative, in-depth philosophical analysis of what the idea of a precautionary principle is and should be about. A novel theory of the ethics of imposing risks is developed and used as a foundation for defending the idea of precaution in environmental and technological policy making against its critics, while at the same time avoiding a number of identified flaws. The theory is shown to have far-reaching practical conclusions for areas such as bio-, information- and nuclear technology, and global environmental policy in areas such as climate change. The author argues that, while the price we pay for precaution must not be too high, we have to be prepared to pay it in order to act ethically defensible. A number of practical suggestions for precautionary regulation and policy making are made on the basis of this, and some challenges to basic ethical theory as well as consumerist societies, the global political order and liberal democracy are identified. Munthe’s book is a well-argued contribution to the PP debate, putting neglected justificatory and methodological questions at the forefront. His many discussions of alternative accounts as well as his drawing out the consequences of his own suggestion in practical cases give the reader a thorough, holistic sense of what justification of PP amounts to. /..../ Munthe’s main case, his argumentation for the requirement of precaution as a moral norm, is convincing and puts a strong pressure on too narrow alternative suggestions on how it should be perceived and justified, and he launches a plausible defence of its practical usability.

In this book, author Svein Olaf Thorbjørnsen probes the question: What is at stake for human beings in a society dominated by competition, particularly economic competition? Is competition endemic to human nature? Does it preserve the dignity and intrinsic value of the human being? Does it secure better living conditions? In a way, the answer to these queries is a simple “yes.” It can allow for superior satisfaction of fundamental needs; legitimate self-love and self-realization; and encourage positive feelings upon mastering a skill. At the same time, however, competition can also contribute to a strong materialistic self-interest and support classicism, social ranking, and elitism: other human beings become only means to a personal success, thus jeopardizing fellowship and collaboration. In a hyper-competitive environment, some of the same positive human values mentioned above—self-love, self-realisation, individuality, and freedom—can be viewed to pose a threat to the realisation of one’s potential and to one’s true humanity. These competing, contradictory aspects of competition are presented and discussed from perspectives across varying disciplines, from social anthropology and economics to history, ethics, philosophy and theology.

In fact, with the control and containment of most infectious conditions and diseases of the past millennium having been achieved in most developed countries, and with the resultant increase in life expectancies, much more attention seems to have shifted to degenerative health problems. Many of the degenerative health conditions have been linked to thousands of chemicals regularly encountered in human living and occupational/work environments. It is important, therefore, that human health risk assessments are undertaken on a consistent basis - in order to determine the potential impacts of the target chemicals on public health.