Philosophers are fond of wild hypotheticals: psychophysicists confined to black-and-white rooms, trolleys targeting victims with unnerving precision, magic rings that turn those who wear them invisible—and perhaps unjust. One of the most well-known thought-experiments is Robert Nozick’s “experience machine”: a flawlessly convincing virtual reality in which one user, unaware that they’ve been plugged in, is fed a stream of consciousness that simulates an ideal life. The point is that their life is not in fact ideal: there’s more to living well than one’s subjective mental states. Philosophical hedonism—the view that a life is good in proportion to its net balance of pleasure over pain—is false.
We'll conceivably see the rubber in a couple of decades when experience machines might actually exist - I'll be honest, I might be quite tempted. Being a Bounty Hunter/Space Cowboy does sound pretty fun!
People for whom antidepressants or rTMS have worked are in a version of the experience machine. Would anyone seriously begrudge them that intervention?
Do we not feel like we live a life well lived because we perceived that we did all the cool stuff rather than it actually happening? In this sense, aren't we limited to only our perception?
What do you think of 1) the intuitions changing by the reverse experience machine and 2) the fact that one who goes in the experience machine has more information and does not regret the decision, which is (arguably) a good standard for a rational decision?
You are right that, even if living well depends on being engaged with reality, our *beliefs* about whether we are living well will depend on our *beliefs* about whether we are engaged with reality. They may not track whether are in fact engaged with reality. But that only shows that we can have false beliefs about whether we are living well, not that living well depends solely on our beliefs.
On the reverse experience machine (i.e. would you unplug if you discovered you were in one?): I think I'd choose reality myself, but of course it would depend on the odds of reality being awful! I don't think engagement with reality is the only thing that matters, or that it always matters more than how it feels, so there's a balance to be struck. If reality meant terrible suffering, for myself and others, that I could do little or nothing to abate, I might prefer a life of pleasant illusion.
There's also a confounding factor in the reverse experience machine, which is that unplugging, unlike plugging in. involves the experience of massive life disruption, from which we rationally recoil!
On the final question: the intended version of the experience machine is one in which the participant does not have full information, since they don't know they're plugged in.
Are the negative 'experiences' necessarily about maximizing U? Or could they be understood as potentially meaningful (not *in themselves*) as part of a wider (meaningful) narrative ?
Is a high quality pleasure necessarily hedonism? Doesn't she say that meaning is the meeting of subjective desire with objective reality? Arendt has this lovely line: "Pleasure is the fundamental awareness of reality." I think the language of pleasure/desire can be misleading. i.e. is it always a version of hedonism?
Wasn't very clear (as usual!). What I meant was that the case against monotony might admit that it could generate a higher net value over time but that variety or the rate of change in pleasure could still be better - where 'better' means a more meaningful life, not necessarily max U.
I.e. U is not additive separable.
Think John Broome makes this point in his 'Weighing Lives'.
We'll conceivably see the rubber in a couple of decades when experience machines might actually exist - I'll be honest, I might be quite tempted. Being a Bounty Hunter/Space Cowboy does sound pretty fun!
rubber hit the road*
People for whom antidepressants or rTMS have worked are in a version of the experience machine. Would anyone seriously begrudge them that intervention?
Do we not feel like we live a life well lived because we perceived that we did all the cool stuff rather than it actually happening? In this sense, aren't we limited to only our perception?
What do you think of 1) the intuitions changing by the reverse experience machine and 2) the fact that one who goes in the experience machine has more information and does not regret the decision, which is (arguably) a good standard for a rational decision?
Thanks for the questions!
You are right that, even if living well depends on being engaged with reality, our *beliefs* about whether we are living well will depend on our *beliefs* about whether we are engaged with reality. They may not track whether are in fact engaged with reality. But that only shows that we can have false beliefs about whether we are living well, not that living well depends solely on our beliefs.
On the reverse experience machine (i.e. would you unplug if you discovered you were in one?): I think I'd choose reality myself, but of course it would depend on the odds of reality being awful! I don't think engagement with reality is the only thing that matters, or that it always matters more than how it feels, so there's a balance to be struck. If reality meant terrible suffering, for myself and others, that I could do little or nothing to abate, I might prefer a life of pleasant illusion.
There's also a confounding factor in the reverse experience machine, which is that unplugging, unlike plugging in. involves the experience of massive life disruption, from which we rationally recoil!
On the final question: the intended version of the experience machine is one in which the participant does not have full information, since they don't know they're plugged in.
Are the negative 'experiences' necessarily about maximizing U? Or could they be understood as potentially meaningful (not *in themselves*) as part of a wider (meaningful) narrative ?
Is a high quality pleasure necessarily hedonism? Doesn't she say that meaning is the meeting of subjective desire with objective reality? Arendt has this lovely line: "Pleasure is the fundamental awareness of reality." I think the language of pleasure/desire can be misleading. i.e. is it always a version of hedonism?
Wasn't very clear (as usual!). What I meant was that the case against monotony might admit that it could generate a higher net value over time but that variety or the rate of change in pleasure could still be better - where 'better' means a more meaningful life, not necessarily max U.
I.e. U is not additive separable.
Think John Broome makes this point in his 'Weighing Lives'.