1. I follow Thomas Scanlon in distinguishing substantive responsibility from other senses of responsibility; see hisWhat We Owe to Each Other(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 21-2, 248, 272, 278, hereafterWWO. My discussion is limited to the question of how we should set up arrangements that will make people's claims, obligations and situation depend on their options and choices. I will assume that before we put these arrangements into place, no one has claims based on prior choices; nor does anyone have entitlements, or special claims to the benefits and burdens in question. I will also leave aside claims based on desert. I will also assume that people's dispositions to choose are unchosen.
2. WWO, p. 257. It is important to note how my version of the example differs from Scanlon's. In his version, we have already justifiably chosen a particular policy which involved standard warnings to the citizens to stay indoors. Though an attempt was made to inform everyone, one person remained uninformed. As a consequence, in Scanlon's version, Curious has come to harm because the standard warning piqued her curiosity and she impetuously visited the excavation site, and Walker has come to harm because he was uninformed of the danger. Scanlon then asks which factors we could appeal to in order to explain to these people why our policy was justified. I believe our central question is brought into sharper focus by re-framing the example as involving a choice between arrangements under which either Curious or Walker, but not both, come to harm. Since I have modelled Curious' situation under Inform Everyone and Walker's situation under Vivid Warning to be just as Scanlon imagines them to be in his original example, I believe we can use Scanlon's remarks on what we can say to these two characters by way of justification of a policy under which they come to harm as indicative of the grounds Scanlon would adduce for choosing between the two policies I have imagined.
3. Social Benefit versus Technological Risk
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5. SOME EXPLANATIONS FOR DISPARITIES IN LIFESAVING INVESTMENTS1