On individual risk

Abstract

We survey a variety of possible explications of the term "Individual Risk." These in turn are based on a variety of interpretations of "Probability," including classical, enumerative, frequency, formal, metaphysical, personal, propensity, chance and logical conceptions of probability, which we review and compare. We distinguish between "groupist" and "individualist" understandings of probability, and explore both "group to individual" and "individual to group" approaches to characterising individual risk. Although in the end that concept remains subtle and elusive, some pragmatic suggestions for progress are made.

Some Ethical Considerations About the Use of Biomarkers for the Classification of Adult Antisocial Individuals

“…The first set of reasons emerges within the issue of extrapolating group-level knowledge to generate inferences about the individual (Dawid, 2017). An important aspect of this problem is that the law targets the propensity of an individual to commit some unlawful action in the future, or her legal responsibility for a specific action.…”

“…In fact, this type of classification could enable us to intervene with biological means in the moral capacities of the agent (Glannon, 2014;Persson & Savulescu, 2012). Whether and how we should intervene on these human capacities is a debated issue amongst ethicists (Baccarini & Malatesti 2017, 2017Douglas, 2014;Harris, 2011;H€ ubner & White, 2016;Pugh & Douglas, 2016;Shaw, 2013).…”

Neurocognitive predictors of treatment completion and daytime activities at follow-up in multiproblem young adults

“…However, several ethical concerns have been raised about the use of such markers for the prediction of antisocial behavior (Jurjako, Malatesti, & Brazil, 2019). These include the extrapolation of group-level information to gain knowledge on an individual level (Dawid, 2017), large error margins in risk estimates (Monahan, 2014), differences in the conceptualization of behavior between the legal system and science (Buckholtz & Faigman, 2014;Francken & Slors, 2018), and the heterogeneous, symptomatic conceptualization of most psychiatric disorders (Jurjako et al, 2019). First, the legal system is mostly interested in individual propensities, whereas scientific research commonly uses group average data.…”

Predicting violent behavior: What can neuroscience add?

“…Termed the "group to individual" (G2I) problem [36][37][38][39]; this issue has its roots in a key difference between the aims and methods of science, and the goals of the legal system. Science is focused on characterizing generalizable phenomena in order to establish mechanistic explanations that apply within definable population groups and hence, as a consequence, to additional members of such groups who may not yet have been observed.…”