Objections and Responses 111 

Let me end this chapter by considering a few potential objections to the argu- ments that I have put forward, as well as responses to these objections.

Objector: “You are too pessimistic about my ability to avoid misimagining

cases. If I try hard enough, I can successfully imagine the cases you describe. So I do not need to add to or remove any details from the cases that you dis- cuss.”

Response: I am not claiming that we always misimagine cases like Expe-

rience Machine, Transplant, and Utility Monster. I am arguing that we some- times misimagine them and that it is not always transparent to us when we do

so. Moreover, I worry that we do not always try hard to imagine cases cor- rectly, even if we have the ability to successfully imagine them with enough effort. We often seem to imagine cases carelessly, quickly, and automatically. Finally, if you do in fact successfully imagine Transplant, then you should find that your intuitions do not differ between this case and that of Revised Transplant. But is that really so? I suspect that for many of us, our intuitions

do differ between these cases. And one explanation for why they differ is that

we do not, in fact, successfully imagine Transplant.

Objector: “I disagree – that is not the best explanation for why we have

different intuitions on the basis of considering these cases. While I have dif- ferent moral intuitions in response to the revised cases, that is primarily be- cause you introduce additional morally relevant factors. So it is not surprising that my moral intuitions differ – they differ because the morally relevant fac- tors differ.”

Response: I agree that this is another possible explanation for why our in-

tuitions differ between these cases. Even so, we cannot escape introducing potentially morally relevant factors to cases. Just because we do not stipulate them, we may still introduce them when we fill out cases via our passive im- agination. For example, when I imagine Transplant, I imagine Sarah standing in a cellar with scalpel in hand. Surely, any number of such unintentionally added features are potentially morally relevant. That features are not explicitly stipulated does not mean that they are not being imagined. So, I would argue, the more detailed cases are not worse off in this respect than the less detailed ones. Furthermore, the detailed cases are better off in one respect: they help us avoid misimagining the cases.

Objector: “But why not simply get rid of the details in Transplant and the

other original cases?”

Response: Because the details are needed for us to form intuitions about

these cases. As Hewitt notes, if “our feelings were always responsive to […] abstract stipulation […] we would not need to appeal to concrete thought ex- periments in the first place.”124 _{For example, consider the thought experiment:}

“Imagine that a person P can maximize pleasure minus pain by performing an act A, but not by performing its (only) alternative act A*, and that A is an act of prototypical violence. Should P perform A?” In response to this case, you will presumably not elicit any moral intuitions that conflict with utilitarianism. The case as described is too abstract. This shows that objections to utilitarian- ism are not just incidentally adding details to cases – such as transplants, doc- tors, patients, and so on – they essentially depend on them. Since we have to add at least some details to elicit moral intuitions, we should take care to only add details that are natural to the case as described.

Objector: “I worry that your proposal is too radical. If you are right, then

all thought experiments in philosophy become problematic.”

Response: I think the proposal is far less radical than one might believe.

The problem of misimagination concerns only cases that include stipulated propositions that are unnatural to them. Many cases that are used in philoso- phy, such as the famous Gettier thought experiments, are clearly not of this kind. Moreover, consider a strange thought experiment proposed by Lippert- Rasmussen. Lippert-Rasmussen notes that “it is possible to imagine worlds in which forced donations of one’s organs need in no way undermine one’s abil- ity to control one’s life” and “in which the forced donation of most of a per- son’s body will actually enhance his autonomy.”125 He then asks us to consider

the following case:

[Imagine] that people are born with huge bodies they can barely move, bodies with two hundred legs and arms. At any given moment, they can at best sense and control 1 percent of their bodies, although they can readily determine which percent that is. Since their bodies heal very easily, their ability to control their lives is promoted best if 99 percent of each body is removed in such a way that these abnormal individuals end up with what are, for us, normal hu- man bodies.126

This example is highly unrealistic and unusual, but nothing that is stipulated in it is unnatural to the case as described: it is not unnatural to assume that for the individuals we are told about, removing 99% of their bodies will enhance their autonomy; on the contrary, it would be unnatural to assume that doing so would not enhance their autonomy. But if even such extremely unrealistic cases can be unproblematic, then surely there is no general problem with our thought experimental practices here. There is only a specific problem with cases such as Experience Machine, Transplant, and Utility Monster, which upend our expectations about what would naturally be considered true in these cases.

To conclude, I propose that the utilitarian can give a partial response to intuitive objections by pointing out that, in cases such as Experience Machine, Transplant, and Utility Monster, certain assumptions are unnatural to the cases as they are described. Next, the utilitarian can argue that we tend to misimag- ine such cases – and to instead imagine cases which, unlike the ones we in- tended to imagine, do not give rise to moral intuitions that are problematic for utilitarianism. Finally, the utilitarian can propose revised variants of the orig- inal cases – either by adding or removing details – which contain less or no such unnatural assumptions, and which are also more favorable to utilitarian- ism. In this chapter, I have considered some such revised cases, including Re- vised Experience Machine, Revised Transplant, Revised Utility Monster, and Minimal Transplant. To be sure, the end result is not a conclusive vindication of utilitarianism, but it does make the theory seem more plausible.

125 _{Lippert-Rasmussen (2008), p. 109.} 126 _{Lippert-Rasmussen (2008), p. 109.}