Scope Restriction 85 

Moral theories can be thought of as moral laws, holding over a wide range of circumstances. For example, a moral theory has a wide geographical reach: if a moral theory is true, then it is not only true in Sweden, but also in Germany, the United Kingdom, and every other country on Earth. Conversely, if the moral theory is false in any country, it is also false in Sweden. Similarly, a moral theory is commonly thought to have a wide modal reach: if a moral theory is true, then it is true not only in the actual world, but also in many merely possible worlds, or alternative ways in which reality could be like. Conversely, if a moral theory is shown to be false in such a possible world, it must also be false in the actual world. This explains why there is no principled problem with evaluating moral theories merely by considering our moral in- tuitions about imaginary circumstances.

The above points suggest a way of defending utilitarianism against intuitive objections, which we may name scope restriction. Say that the “scope” of a moral theory is the set of possible worlds in which a moral theory is true if it is true in the actual world. For the intuitive objections that I mentioned earlier to be successful, the scope of moral theories must extend to the imagined cases of Experience Machine, Transplant, and Utility Monster. Therefore, to defend utilitarianism against these objections, we need only to show that the scope of moral theories fails to extend to these scenarios, in which case our moral in- tuitions about these cases become irrelevant to the evaluation of utilitarianism. That is, even if utilitarianism does in such a case conflict with our moral intu- itions about these cases, we still could not draw upon these conflicts to argue that utilitarianism is false. It would be like arguing against the laws of nature in the actual world – like the second law of thermodynamics – by demonstrat- ing that they fail to hold in the world of The Lord of the Rings.98 _{The proper}

response to such an argument is straightforward. The laws of nature are re- stricted in scope, and their scope does not extend to imaginary worlds like The

Lord of the Rings. Similarly, the utilitarian could argue that the moral laws are

restricted in scope, and that their scope does not extend to cases like Experi- ence Machine, Transplant, and Utility Monster. Therefore, whether or not our

98 _{Presumably, most uses of magic, even the more subtle kind used by Gandalf and the other}

Maia, enables the magician to decrease entropy in isolated systems, rendering the second law of thermodynamics false.

intuitions about such imaginary circumstances are to be counted on, they pro- vide no evidence against utilitarianism.

The problem is that, to restrict the scope of moral theories, we must deny a standard philosophical view. This is the view that the scope of moral theories is all and only the metaphysically possible worlds. Because the worlds of Ex- perience Machine, Transplant, and Utility Monster are metaphysically possi- ble, they will fall within the scope of moral theories according to the standard view. There are various rationales for why the scope of moral theories would extend this far in modal space. For example, perhaps the scope of philosophi-

cal laws in general, such as theories about personal identity, knowledge, and

reference, extend to these worlds. Since moral theories are philosophical laws in this sense, they share this scope. But plausible objections have also been offered against the standard view.99 For the utilitarian’s argument to get going,

I will simply assume that we can reject the standard view, and focus on how the utilitarian could take her argument from there. As we shall see, even when granting this controversial assumption, it is difficult to make the utilitarian defense against intuitive objections work.

Even when we refute the standard view of scope restriction, much work remains before we have an adequate defense of utilitarianism in hand. To begin with, we need to argue for a plausible alternative restriction of scope. Moreover, we need to show that this alternative restriction nets positive results for the plausibility of utilitarianism. For example, it is not helpful to the utili- tarian theory to get rid of cases like Experience Machine, Transplant, and Util- ity Monster, if we also get rid of imagined cases that are used to support the theory.

One salient possibility is to limit the scope of moral theories to the nomo-

logically possible worlds – i.e., the worlds that share the laws of nature with

the actual world. However, there are numerous problems with such a proposal. For one thing, it would be surprising if the moral laws exactly match the laws of nature, because what could account for this overlap? Moreover, we can easily conceive of nomologically impossible worlds that should intuitively be included in the scope of moral theories. For example, consider a world which is exactly like ours, but where a small miracle occurs whenever a bird flaps its wings, giving it slightly more lift and so violating the laws of nature. Surely this world should not be excluded from the scope of moral theories for such a trivial reason. If utilitarianism is true in the actual world, then it is true in this “small miracle”-world as well. So the correct scope restriction seems unlikely to be purely nomological in this way.

Furthermore, even if a nomological scope restriction is plausible, it is not clear that utilitarianism will benefit from such a restriction. First, the cases of

99 _{For arguments against strong supervenience for moral claims, see Tännsjö (2010), pp. 47-50,}

Experience Machine, Transplant, and Utility Monster are nomologically pos- sible, at least with minor unimportant modifications to these cases. Second, there are counterpart cases to Experience Machine, Transplant and Utility Monster that are clearly nomologically possible, yet which elicit nearly as strong moral intuitions. For example, we can substitute the experience ma- chine for drugs, entertainment, virtual reality, or being lied to by loved ones, all of which make similar “inauthentic” pleasures and pains possible. The transplantation can be changed for a “footbridge” where to maximize pleasure minus pain we must push a man from a bridge in front of a train to save the lives of five others (i.e., one of the classic trolley cases). Finally, Utility Mon- ster can be changed for a version of the “repugnant conclusion” thought ex- periment, where to maximize pleasure minus pain we must cause a billion people with slightly above zero in well-being to exist, rather than causing a thousand people with a moderately comfortable lifestyle to exist. In these cases we have nearly as strong anti-utilitarian intuitions, and these cases are also clearly nomologically possible.

Instead of tying the scope of moral theories to metaphysical or nomological necessity, we could tie it to a sui generis type of necessity, such as normative or moral necessity.100 But this move leads to another issue. The description of

Experience Machine is compatible with – that is, the case can be “situated in” – any of several possible worlds. Therefore, it is not correct to think of a thought experiment as being a possible world; rather, a thought experiment is better thought of as being compatible with various possible worlds. While some possible worlds in which we can situate Experience Machine may be morally impossible, what we need to defend utilitarianism is a significantly more ambitious claim: that all of them are morally impossible. Why is this so? When we perform thought experiments, we look to the closest possible worlds in which a described case is true. This is the possible world that differs the

least from the actual world. And even if there is only one possible world for

which the description of Experience Machine is true and that is also morally possible, then we are likely to imagine precisely this world when conducting the thought experiment, simply because it shares its moral laws with the actual world (and so does not differ from the actual world in this respect). But it seems unlikely that there is not a single morally possible world in which Ex- perience Machine can be situated. So restricting the scope of moral theories to the worlds that are normatively or morally possible seems unlikely to help the utilitarian.

A different kind of scope restriction restricts the scope of moral theories, not to a particular set of possible worlds, but to a particular set of choice situ-

ations. For example, we might think that the scope of moral theories extends

only to familiar or commonly encountered choice situations, as opposed to

100 _{For example, Rosen (Unpublished manuscript) has argued that moral principles hold with}

unfamiliar or unusual ones. Experience Machine, Transplant, and Utility Monster – as well as their realistic counterparts mentioned earlier – all have one feature in common: they are unusual cases. So this kind of scope re- striction, it seems, would nicely exclude these cases from consideration. Of course, it is a fairly odd view about scope restriction to hold in the first place, as it is not clear what arguments could be given in its favor.

In any case, even if this type of non-modal scope restriction would be rea- sonable, this “familiar circumstances” defense of utilitarianism faces the fol- lowing problem. In what way are the circumstances thought to be familiar? One possibility is that we require choice situations to be societally, culturally, biologically, or technologically familiar. But why would these features of choice situations decide the scope of moral theories? It seems that the famili- arity involved must be of a distinctively moral kind. But Experience Machine, Transplant, and Utility Monster involve quite familiar moral issues: how to value pleasure and pain had from living a real or authentic life, how to deter- mine whether violence or killing are permissible means to help others, and how to prioritize the well-being of different people. These cases are merely clad in a fantastic or unusual attire to strengthen our moral intuitions. So it seems that this proposal results either in an implausible view of scope re- striction, or that it fails to properly exclude cases like Experience Machine, Transplant, and Utility Monster.

Moreover, in this section I have focused on difficulties for excluding cases from the scope of moral theories. But even if we get this far, and do success- fully exclude cases like Experience Machine, Transplant, and Utility Monster, we must also take care not to jettison cases that elicit utilitarian friendly intu- itions. For example, consider a case of medical triage, where a doctor must choose between using her resources to save one person or save five people (the death of the one is not a means for saving the five). In this case, our moral intuitions strongly match the utilitarian verdict: the doctor should save the five. But if Transplant is excluded from consideration because it is unusual, then surely the case of medical triage is excluded as well, since it too is unu- sual.

I admit that the above arguments are not conclusive, but at least they sug- gest that scope restriction is a difficult path to take for the utilitarian. There is no clear and easy approach that will let us defend utilitarianism by excluding the imagined cases that I have considered. The strategies that I discuss in what remains of the book are less ambitious. If the strategy of scope restriction is a

metaphysical strategy, which defends utilitarianism by arguing that moral re-

ality is in a certain way, then the rest of the strategies that I will consider are

epistemic strategies, in that they let us defend utilitarianism by arguing that