Setting Health-Care Priorities: A Reply to Piotr Lichacz

Torbjörn Tännsjö

doi:10.18290/rf2202.14

Torbjörn Tännsjö Emeritus Professor of Stockholm University, Sweden https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9670-4608

Keywords: rationing, utilitarianism, prioritarianism, maximin, considered intuitions, irrationality

Abstract

I discuss the comments from Professor Piotr Lichacz on my book, Setting Health-Care Priorities. What Ethical Theories Tell Us (New York: OUP, 2019). The idea that our reluctance to let go of life and abstain from marginal life extension is irrational is defended against his criticism. The methodology used in the book—urging us to rely in our testing on ethical theories on the content of our considered moral intuitions—is explained at length and the notion of cognitive psychotherapy involved in it is defended.