ABSTRACT
Nicholas Rescher's incredibly wide-ranging work exhibits throughout a deeply pragmatist spirit. The methodological commitments of pragmatism are fully on display in Rescher's approach to questions ranging from logic and philosophy of science to history of philosophy and applied ethics. In taking pragmatism on the road, Rescher has exemplified Peirce's ideal of the laboratory philosopher, one who is animated by the "impulse to penetrate into the reason of things". This chapter brings together Rescher's metaphilosophy and his treatment of the problem of how to allocate a specific category of medical care. In his prescient 1969 Ethics article "The Allocation of Exotic Medical Lifesaving Therapy", Rescher both anticipates the severity of health resource shortages at the level of microallocation now being experienced world-wide, and suggests a method for answering the question of who should receive certain types of treatment when scarcity is a factor, a method that aspires to objectivity while simultaneously acknowledging people's fallibility and people's epistemic limits.
