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Reply to Crisp

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2011

MICHAEL OTSUKA  and
ALEX VOORHOEVE
MICHAEL OTSUKA
Affiliation:
University College [email protected]
ALEX VOORHOEVE
Affiliation:
London School of [email protected]
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Extract

We are grateful for, but unconvinced by, Roger Crisp's defence of the Priority View against our critique. In this reply, we show that Crisp fails to grapple with, much less defeat, the central claim of our critique. We also show that an example that Crisp offers in support of the Priority View in fact lends support to our critique of that view.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 109 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

1 Crisp, Roger, ‘In Defence of the Priority View: A Response to Otsuka and Voorhoeve’, Utilitas 23.1 (2011), pp. 105–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Otsuka, Michael and Voorhoeve, Alex, ‘Why It Matters That Some Are Worse Off Than Others: An Argument against the Priority View’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 37 (2009), pp. 171–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 ‘Why It Matters’, p. 181.

3 ‘Why It Matters’, p. 179, emphases added. On Crisp's presentation of our view, our ‘separateness of persons’ critique of the Priority View appears to rest upon our claim (i) that it would be reasonable to maximize utility in the one-person case involving an intrapersonal trade-off. It is, however, clear from the passage just quoted that this critique is independent of that claim.

4 See his ‘Equality’, in Mortal Questions (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 106–27, at p. 124. Our single-child variant is a transformation of ‘Nagel's two-child case into a case involving a single child who has a 50 percent chance of ending up with a disability and a 50 percent chance of ending up able bodied’ (‘Why It Matters’, p. 188).

5 ‘Why It Matters’, p. 188. Crisp quotes this claim on pp. 106–7 of his response.

6 ‘Why It Matters’, p. 188.

7 The last sentence of Crisp's response suggests that it is meant to provide such support.

8 ‘Why It Matters’, p. 175, n. 8.

9 ‘Why It Matters’, p. 175, n. 8.

10 ‘In Defence’, pp. 107–8.

11 ‘Why It Matters’, p. 197.

12 ‘Why It Matters’, pp. 197–8.

13 As in Crisp's orphans case, in this example, either treatment maximizes the expected utility of those treated.

14 See ‘Why It Matters’, pp. 173–4, where we state that the reasonableness of maximizing the expected utility of the one person in our intrapersonal trade-off case depends upon the assumption that ‘you are considering her fate in isolation from any consideration of how well off or badly off anybody else is (yourself included)’.

15 Although decisive, this case is not, however, as strong as is the case against providing such treatment in our original multi-person case in which it is already known who will suffer the very severe impairment and who will suffer the slight impairment. It is less strong for the following reason: in Crisp's orphans case, one can justify provision of the treatment for the slight impairment to each on grounds that such provision maximizes that person's expected utility. One cannot provide such justification to each in our original multi-person case, since one cannot provide such justification to those of whom it's already known that they will develop the very severe impairment. This shows, contrary to the very last sentence of Crisp's response, that the justifiability of provision of a given treatment is sensitive to more than the distributive upshot of such provision.

16 For such a critique of the Priority View as insensitive to the moral difference between cases involving perfectly versus imperfectly correlated risks, see Broome, John, ‘Equality versus Priority: A Useful Distinction’, ‘Goodness’ and ‘Fairness’: Ethical Issues in Health Resource Allocation, ed. Wikler, Daniel and Murray, Christopher J. L., World Health Organization, forthcomingGoogle Scholar.