Practical Considerations for Using Reflective Equilibrium to Support the Precautionary Principle

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How should we approach uncertain threats of potentially very serious harm? For example, how long should social distancing measures be enforced against the spread of COVID-19? Should we research and develop climate engineering technologies as a measure against climate change harms? Should glyphosate herbicides be banned? Such and similar decisions have potentially far-reaching consequences for the environment or human health, yet they often have to be made under considerable uncertainty, for example, uncertainty about the extent of possible harm, its likelihood, or cause-and-effect relations. Frequently, precautionary principles (PPs) are proposed as an answer to such challenges, telling us that we have to act to prevent harm even if it is uncertain. However, this idea also comes in for criticism as being alarmist, anti-scientific, and in effect doing more harm than good by causing high costs and stifling innovation. The question of how we should deal with uncertain harms is clearly a controversial one. When we seek to address this issue, we are not only faced with the question of whether precautionary principles are justified. More fundamentally, the methodological question arises of how such principles can be justified-what is an adequate method for the justification of a precautionary principle?