Dan Hausman: Fairness

There are few theories of fairness in the philosophical literature, and those theories are controversial. They give conflicting answers to important policy questions, such as whether to rely on cot-effectiveness information to allocate health-related resources. For example, suppose that individuals in group A have a health condition that is slightly less cost-effective to treat than the health condition of individuals in group B. In that case, allocating resources by their cost effectiveness implies that members of group B gets treated first, and it may be that nobody in group A is treated. Critics maintain that it is unfair not to give members of group A some chance of being treated. Is it? On John Broome’s theory of fairness, it is unfair. According to Eyal, Kirpatrick and Eastwood, Hooker and Henning, the cost-effective allocation may be no less fair than giving members of group A some chance of treatment. Intuitions about similar cases are conflicted. In this talk I will sketch a theory of fairness that defends the cost-effective allocation and that also has implications concerning the moral importance of equality.

Dan Hausman is a Herbert A. Simon and Hilldale Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Attendance to this lecture is free, but due to space constraints advance registration is requested.