Imagining the Wrong Case 96 

The strategy for defending utilitarianism that I advance in this chapter differs from those that I discussed in the previous chapter. Earlier I considered re-

stricting the scope of utilitarianism to not extend over various thought exper-

iments. I also considered the strategies of debunking moral intuitions and pro- posing a specific mechanism behind intuition formation, which I called the qualified inferential view. All these strategies share an assumption that is chal- lenged in this chapter: that we manage to successfully carry out the thought experiments in the first place. I will argue that in some cases when we are testing utilitarianism using thought experiments, we unknowingly carry out the wrong thought experiment. To coin a term for this phenomenon, we misim-

agine the case – we try to imagine it, we fail to, and we imagine another case

instead. Importantly, we sometimes misimagine a crucial aspect of a case: whether an act does or does not maximize pleasure minus pain.

Because it might appear implausible that we ever misimagine cases when we conduct thought experiments, the rest of this section is dedicated to arguing that it is not strange or uncommon to think that we sometimes misimagine cases. The rest of the chapter is organized as follows. In Section 5.2, I propose an explanation for why we misimagine some cases. I suggest that the cases we are especially prone to misimagine are those with stipulated features “unnat- ural” to them. In Section 5.3, I conclude that each of the three cases being considered – Experience Machine, Transplant, and Utility Monster – are pre- cisely cases of this kind. Each of these cases contains a stipulated feature that is “unnatural to” or “fits badly with” the case as it is described – namely stip- ulations about the total amount of pleasure minus pain produced by acts. In Sections 5.4 and 5.5, I discuss two ways in which to prevent misimagining from occurring. Finally, in Section 5.6, I consider some potential objections to my view.

Similar ideas to mine can be found in the literature. For example, the argu- ment that I discuss is related to the complaint that thought experiments are

underdescribed – that they leave open different ways of filling out their de-

tails.111 _{However, the phenomenon I point to is different: We might misimag-}

ine cases even if they are fully described, and we might successfully imagine cases even if they are wildly underdescribed. Moreover, it strikes me as odd to call cases like the ones I consider in this book underdescribed. For example, Experience Machine seems to me fully described; while its full description contains few details, this is because the case contains few details. As I see it, the focus on cases being underdescribed distracts from the real problem facing thought experimenters – that we may unknowingly imagine the wrong case.

Another idea related to mine was considered in the previous chapter, namely that unusual cases are suspect. As I have already noted, my argument bears some similarity to this complaint. But my approach is subtly different: it finds no fault with cases as such being unusual. As I demonstrate in Sections 5.4 and 5.5, cases may sometimes avoid the problem of being misimagined by being made more unusual. Sometimes, by making cases more unusual, im- portant aspects of cases become more natural to them. Surprisingly, therefore, sometimes the problem is not that a case is too unrealistic, but that it is too

realistic.

Finally, my discussion draws on Sharon Hewitt’s discussion of hedonism and the experience machine, where she points out that our intuitions might fail to be sensitive to stipulation.112 _{While Hewitt does not put her argument in}

terms of us misimagining cases, our approaches have much in common. What would be well-established examples of misimagining cases? First, consider the phenomenon of imaginative resistance.113 _{As is well known in the}

philosophical literature, some propositions are especially difficult to imagine being true – they resist being imagined. For example, try to imagine that a sunset is horrifying, that torturing innocent people is fun, or that an episode of pain in your life is intrinsically good. Alternatively, we may consider the fol- lowing case proposed by Brian Weatherson:

JACK AND JILL

Jack and Jill were arguing again. This was not in itself unusual, but this time they were standing in the fast lane of I-95 having their argument. This was causing traffic to bank up a bit. It wasn’t significantly worse than normally happened around Providence, not that you could have told that from the reac- tions of passing motorists. They were convinced that Jack and Jill, and not the

111 _{For discussion of the problem of thought experiments being underdescribed, see Friedman}

(1987), pp. 200-201, Wilkes (1988), pp. 1-48, Sorensen (1992), pp. 246-24, Häggqvist (1996), pp. 136-159, and Wilson (2016), pp. 136-140. For a response to Wilkes, see Brooks (1994).

112 _{Hewitt (2010), especially pp. 337-343.}

113 _{For a well-known treatment of imaginative resistance, see Gendler (2000). For a more recent}

volume of traffic, were the primary causes of the slowdown. They all forgot how bad traffic normally is along there. When Craig saw that the cause of the bankup had been Jack and Jill, he took his gun out of the glovebox and shot them. People then started driving over their bodies, and while the new speed hump caused some people to slow down a bit, mostly traffic returned to its normal speed. So Craig did the right thing, because Jack and Jill should have taken their argument somewhere else.114

In this case, we are stipulating that Craig did the right thing – that he did what was morally right to do in the situation. But we also find this difficult to im- agine. In cases like these, either of two things might happen. First, we might fail to imagine any case whatsoever – our imagination simply shuts down. Second, we might imagine a case, but not the case that we were asked to im- agine. For example, when trying to imagine a horrifying sunset, I might in- stead imagine an ordinary beautiful non-horrifying sunset. This is an example of misimagining: I am asked to imagine a case C, but when trying to imagine

C, I imagine a different case C*. Similarly, when I try to imagine the case of

Jack and Jill, I will imagine a situation where it is not morally right for Craig to shoot them, rather than no case at all, or a case where it is morally right for Craig to shoot. This, again, is a case of misimagining.

Cases of imaginative resistance exist at the extreme end of a continuum, and other propositions are less difficult, although still hard, to imagine. For example, Simon Stevin famously asked his readers to imagine a chain draped over a frictionless plane. The chain is easy to imagine, but it is difficult to imagine the plane. Any flat space that we are acquainted with exhibits some friction, and so performing this thought experiment taxes our imagination. Here it is easy to unknowingly imagine an ordinary plane with some friction, especially if we do not attend to the details of the case.

Misimagining also occurs frequently when reading or listening to fiction, where we depend on elaborate descriptions to get the details right. If I read a text too fast, I often fail to imagine the case properly. I will imagine people looking different, wearing different clothes, possessing different motivations, and so on. Moreover, if I lack a complete understanding of the words used or concepts employed in a text, I might misimagine various parts of the case be- ing described. Finally, in some cases, I might simply not remember the correct details, leading me to misimagine the case. Even if not all such instances of misimagination are conducted unknowingly, some clearly are.