the experience machine thought experiment is supposed to show the

Experience Machine

What is the experience machine.

The Experience Machine is a thought experiment, which means it’s a kind of philosophical story designed to make us think about big ideas. It helps us to understand what truly makes us happy. Is it only about having all the pleasure we can imagine, or is there something special about the real experiences we have, even if they sometimes come with pain or trouble? The Experience Machine asks if we’d plug into a fake world that makes us feel great all the time, or if we’d rather stay in the real world, with all its ups and downs.

This big question comes from a famous philosopher named Robert Nozick. In 1974, he wrote about the Experience Machine in his book “Anarchy, State, and Utopia.” The Experience Machine he thought up can trick our minds into thinking we’re living any kind of life we want, filled with joy and without any bad parts. But Robert Nozick suspected that people wouldn’t choose to live this fake, perfect life because we care about more than just feeling good all the time. We value who we are, making real connections with others, and actually living through our experiences, even when it’s hard.

Definitions of the Experience Machine

The Experience Machine is like a super advanced video game that can make our brains believe we’re living any life we can dream up. It feels completely real and is programmed to make us feel nothing but happiness. The machine’s world is perfect, but it’s not the world we actually live in—it’s made up and controlled by this machine.

Imagine a virtual reality that’s so perfect you can’t tell it’s fake; that’s the Experience Machine. It creates a pretend life for us that’s so pleasing, we might prefer it to our real lives. But it’s like choosing to live inside a movie instead of the real world with everyone else. We have to decide: Should we pick a life full of pretend yet perfect moments, or should we keep living our true lives, complete with tough times and true achievements?

Key Arguments

Pleasure versus Reality: The heart of the debate is whether fake, perfect happiness is better than real, sometimes hard experiences. It’s like deciding between only eating your favorite candy for the rest of your life or choosing a meal that might have some veggies you don’t like but is overall healthier for you.
Understanding True Happiness: The Experience Machine suggests that what keeps us truly happy isn’t just a good feeling, but also knowing that our joys and triumphs are real. It’s like the difference between someone telling you a story that makes you laugh and actually living out a funny moment yourself.
Limitation to Knowledge : If we were to choose the Experience Machine, we’d only know what the machine shows us. This implies we care a lot about really understanding the world and learning from our own experiences, not just being told what it’s like.
Concept of Self-Identity: Who we are is shaped by the choices we make and the things we go through. The Experience Machine would take away our chance to build ourselves with the experiences we actually live.

Answer or Resolution

There’s no right or wrong answer when it comes to the Experience Machine question. Robert Nozick thought most of us would say no to the machine’s world of made-up happiness. This suggests that things like truth, growth, and being our genuine selves matter to us a lot, even more than endless pleasure. The ongoing conversation shows how complicated it is to figure out what makes life good and what happiness really means to each of us.

Major Criticism

Some people don’t agree with the arguments against the Experience Machine. They think that Nozick was unfair to pleasure, assuming everyone would pick a hard but real life over a pleasant fake one. After all, who wouldn’t want to feel great all the time and avoid all suffering? The thought that lots of people might pick the fake world of constant joy is a big point of disagreement between thinkers.

Practical Applications

Virtual Reality (VR): VR might remind us of the Experience Machine because it lets people enter a world that feels real but isn’t. It makes us wonder about how real these computer-generated places are and what that means for us.
Video Games: When we play video games, we can go on incredible adventures without leaving our homes. But this makes us question if these digital wins are as important as real-life achievements or friendships.
Online Social Lives: How we act on the internet, especially on social media, can sometimes seem more perfect than our actual lives. This raises questions about whether we’re being true to who we are or just showing off a better but fake version of ourselves.
Medical and Therapeutic Use: Technologies like VR can help people with pain or with healing from bad memories. Even though it might be helpful, it also asks us if it’s okay to use make-believe experiences to fix very real problems.

The Experience Machine is not just a tricky question but a tool that philosophers use to dig deep into what makes life worth living. For such a machine to appeal to us, it forces us to think about what we value most: a never-ending stream of happiness or the authentic journey of life with all its random, meaningful events. As technology blurs the line between reality and illusion, discussions like these help us navigate the choices we face. The Experience Machine keeps us questioning and talking about how we create meaningful lives, what happiness really is, and how we interact with the world of technology that’s growing around us.

Philosophical Disquisitions

Things hid and barr'd from common sense

Monday, January 23, 2017

Understanding the experience machine argument.

the experience machine thought experiment is supposed to show the

The Experience Machine : “Imagine a machine that could give you any experience (or sequence of experiences) you might desire. When connected to this experience machine, you can have the experience of writing a great poem or bring about world peace or loving someone and being loved in return. You can experience the felt pleasures of these things, how they “feel from the inside”. You can program your experiences for…the rest of your life. If your imagination is impoverished, you can use the library of suggestions extracted from biographies and enhanced by novelists and psychologists. You can live your fondest dreams “from the inside”. Would you choose to do this for the rest of your life?…Upon entering you will not remember having done this; so no pleasures will get ruined by realizing they are machine-produced.”

( Nozick 1989, 104 )

(1) Plugging into the experience machine would not be best for one.
(2) Hedonism entails that plugging into the experience machine would be best for one.
(3) Therefore, hedonism is false.
(4) The intuition against plugging in is, in fact, consistent with hedonism because it is based on a reasonable fear of catastrophe.
(5) You can modify the thought experiment to remove sources of reasonable fear or run an alternative version where you ask people to compare to experientially identical lives, one of which is lived in an experience machine and one of which is not. If people still prefer the non-plugged-in life, premise one holds.
(6) It is very difficult to construct a thought experiment in which people have a fine-grained intuition about hedonism: it is likely that their thinking about the scenario is contaminated by other moral/normative considerations.
(7) In imagining the case, you can also imagine that other people “can plug in to have the experiences they want, so there’s no need to stay unplugged to serve them.
(8) Our unwillingness to plug in might be due to an irrational fear, revulsion or bias.
(9) “Nozick could gladly accept that an important part of the reason we would be unwilling to plug in is that we have an irrational fear, revulsion or bias…His gripe with hedonism stands: it does not seem best for someone to plug in to the machine.” ( Bramble 2016, 139 )
(10) The Debunking Problem: The fact that our intuitions about the Experience Machine are affected by things like status quo bias gives us reason not to trust those intuitions.
(11) Proponents of debunking need to explain how our intuitions about well-being got to be affected in this way: how do our conditioned or hardwired preferences get to affect our pre-theoretical feeling that contact with reality is an important part of well-being.
(12) Proponents of debunking need to be challenged to identify some uncontaminated intuitions. Since, presumably, theories of well-being ultimately rest on some intuitive beliefs about what makes for the good life we need to figure out which ones we can trust.
(13) Proponents of debunking need to explain how some people can have the intuition that connecting reality is important without the deeper desire or belief that connecting to reality in intrinsically important. (Bramble gives himself as an example of such a person)

(14) Truth-adjusted hedonism is likely to be true, i.e. we are likely to get more subjective well-being from pleasures taken in true things than in false things.
(15) Truth-adjusted hedonism could be false: intuitively it is hard to see how the link to reality could make an experience subjectively superior if one is unaware of it.
(16) Plugging-in would involve a kind of suicide because it would require memory erasure to ensure experiential indistinguishability.
(17) The memory erasure involved is unlikely to require anything akin to suicide and, in any event, one could be plugged in without one’s awareness that this is happening.
(18) There are certain pleasures that are only possible in the real world.
(19) The pleasures that are alleged to only be possible in the real world might turn out not to be.
(20) The pleasures in question would have to be so powerful and unique that they could not be compensated for by the pleasures possible inside the experience machine.

3 comments:

I don't think hedonism should be the main focus here. It's pretty obvious that people can get fulfillment/happiness in virtual reality. Those who are reluctant to plug in are those with responsibilities and skepticism. What should be anticipated is the futuristic technology that will emerge, whether it be temporary memory erasure/suppression or a simulation that decently simulates real life. Without being able to consider even a fraction of the infinite nuances that will decide how many and what kind of people will plug in, guessing about this future isn't too much fun.. Also, I realize we all have a conscience for what must be "right" or "wrong," but that doesn't quite matter to the other seven billion plus apes. What matters is what many people want, which is awesome games when life isn't awesome. It may be a surprise to some people, but life isn't always awesome.

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I'm not convinced that there would still be some form of suicide, if only that of one's character. To plug in and experience all that you want, memory erased or maintained, removes the value of the real world and in my view the value of the person who dismisses those real experiences for those in the machine, if only because they are those which bring more pleasure.

The Experience Machine Thought Experiment

Imagine scientists have come up with an amazing new technology called the Experience Machine. It works like this:

You go into the lab and sit down with the staff and talk to them about everything you’ve ever wanted to do in life—you describe your perfect, most ideal, most pleasurable, most joyous, most satisfying possible life. Then they induce you into a coma that you’ll never emerge from. They put your unconscious body into a tank of fluid in a pitch black room and cover your head with electrodes. Here’s an artist’s rendition:

Once you’re in the tank, the simulation begins. You’ll experience everything you said you dreamed of, for the duration of your life (or what can feel like a lot longer if you choose), and you’ll have no memory of going into the experience machine or knowledge that your world is only a simulation. You will experience your perfect life in its entirety, exactly as if it really happened—but in reality, none of it is real and you’re actually floating in a vat of fluid in a pitch black room. You’ll never again wake up to experience the actual world or interact with actual people, but you won’t know that, and you’ll feel like you did.

The question is: If the experience machine were available to you and guaranteed to work flawlessly, would you do it? If not, why not?

___________

Tim’s Answer:

This is a thought experiment proposed by philosopher Robert Nozick in order to refute the philosophy of ethical hedonism. Hedonism suggests that the only thing that matters is human pleasure, and that the only goal should be to maximize pleasure. If hedonism is legit, said Nozick, then everyone would immediately elect to plug into the experience machine. But Nozick thinks most people wouldn’t do it, and to him, this proves that there are things humans value more than their own pleasure, and that pleasure for the sake of pleasure leaves us lacking something important.

My first thought when I heard this was, “No, I wouldn’t do it.” I thought about the real world going on all around me while I lay unconscious in a vat forever, missing everything. Meanwhile, all the people I’d think I was interacting with would be nothing other than figments of my imagination. If I designed my experience to be the life of a rock star, or a scientist who solved the cancer puzzle, or someone who can fly through the universe exploring everything— or all three— doesn’t it matter that there aren’t any real people hearing my rock star music and no actual cancer patients being saved and everything I’m exploring is just rendered in a lab?

Further, I like feeling like I have free will, and in the vat, everything I think is my own free will is all pre-determined—the second the simulation begins, everything that I’m about to experience is already written, like a video playing. I won’t know that, but that’ll be what’s happening.

But am I being irrational? Once I’m plugged in, I won’t know that the whole thing is fake, so who cares? And what if all humans could plug into experience machines, ending all suffering and letting everyone live in their own utopia. Isn’t that a much better world than we live in now? Or is it horribly depressing?

As I thought about this, I also went down the inevitable rabbit hole of wondering if I’m currently in a simulation. What if I had previously been living some terrible life of suffering and I got out of it using an experience machine, leaving me with my current pleasant existence in New York, a city that doesn’t actually exist. That would be kind of an upsetting thing to learn, right? But if, after learning that, I was given the option to permanently opt out of the experience and go back to my real life of suffering, would I do it? I might be inclined to stay here—and if so, wouldn’t that be an argument in favor of doing the experience machine in the first place?

In the end, I think I probably would skip the machine. And that’s probably a dumb choice.

How about you?

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Pleasure or Reality? The Experience Machine Debate

Conclusions often drawn from the famous thought experiment seem problematic..

Posted March 13, 2019

In his famous 1974 book Anarchy, State and Utopia , Robert Nozick presents his famous experience machine thought experiment. In this thought experiment, we are asked to imagine a scenario in which technology is so advanced that we can plug ourselves into a virtual reality machine for a very long time. When plugged in, we will experience life as very pleasant indeed. Before we plug in we can decide for ourselves what types of experiences we will have. Once the electrodes are connected to our head we will not know, of course, that we are plugged into the machine; we will believe that we really are receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature for writing the best novel of the century; that we really are extremely clever and attractive; that we really are painting like Picasso; or that we really are having a passionate love affair. (In fact, for all we know, we may be right now in an experience machine and not "really" reading this post from the screen in front of us.) We need not worry, in this thought experiment, about nutrition , safety or health; they are all taken care of. Nor are there any problems with family members that need care: We have no families, or they are fine, or they too will plug into the experience machine if we do. (I have slightly altered some of the details Nozick presents.)

Now the question arises: If there were such an opportunity for you, the reader, to plug in, would you? For life? For 20 years? For four years? Why would or wouldn't you?

Nozick believes that most people will choose not to plug into the machine. This may sound odd, since in the experience machine they are likely to experience life as far more pleasant than in real life. One way to interpret the refusal to plug into the machine is to suggest that people are not interested only, or mostly, in pleasure; it is not the only, or main, thing that people want in life. This may serve as an argument against what has come to be called hedonic theories of well-being , according to which people's well-being consists only of the balance of pleasure over pain. The refusal to plug into the machine suggests that we do not only want to feel subjective pleasure in our lives; we also want our lives to have some objective value . For example, we do not only want to be pleased by the thought that we wrote a good novel; we want to actually write a good novel. We want the achievement to be real, and we want to really be the ones making it.

The refusal to plug into the experience machine also has implications for discussions on meaning in life. Subjectivist theories of meaning in life hold that our sensation of meaningfulness or other subjective conditions is what makes life meaningful. Objectivist theories of meaning in life hold that attaining objective value in life is what makes life meaningful. Hybridist theories of meaning in life hold that both subjective and objective conditions have to be fulfilled in order that life be meaningful. The anticipated results of the experience machine thought experiment count against purely subjectivist views of meaning in life.

In his paper, "If You Like It, Does It Matter If It's Real?" Felipe de Brigard casts some doubt on both the anticipated results and on the way they are often interpreted. Brigard conducted experiments in which he presented to participants a somewhat different question than the one Nozick discussed: Brigard requested participants in the experiment to imagine that they already are connected to the experience machine, and then asked them whether they would like to disconnect . He presented three variations to the scenario: In the first, no information was given to participants about what they were in real life. In other words, participants were not told how real life would be for them if they unplugged from the machine. In the second variation, participants were told that in real life they were prisoners in a maximum security prison. In the third variation, participants were told that in real life they were multimillionaire artists living in Monaco.

Of those exposed to the first variation, only 54% said that they wanted to unplug. Thus, when told that they already are in the machine and that in order to live in reality they need to change the condition they are in, many did not prefer reality to the machine.

In the second variation, in which those unplugging would find themselves in a maximum security prison, only 13% preferred reality. This suggests that the pleasantness of life does, in fact, make a lot of difference to people thinking about the experience machine.

Somewhat surprisingly, in the third variation, in which moving to reality meant living the life of a multimillionaire artist in Monaco, 50% of the participants said that they would unplug. The difference between the second and third variations still shows that pleasantness of life does play an important role, but one would expect, if it played an important role, that the percentage of participants wishing to unplug would be higher in the third variation than in the first variation.

In his discussion, Brigard emphasizes what has come to be called in psychological research the status quo bias : People often show a preference to retain the conditions in which they find themselves rather than to change them; people like the status quo. For example, in an oft-mentioned experiment, Jack L. Knetsch gave rewards to two groups of undergraduate students. Each student in the first group got a mug bearing the university's logo, while each student in the second group got a chocolate bar. Then, all of the students were offered the option of trading the rewards they received with the students of the other group. But almost 90% of them preferred to keep the reward they had been given.

Brigard suggests that the many people's intuitive preference not to plug into the experience machine, in Nozick's version of the thought experiment, may well not have to do with the importance of retaining contact with reality or with the incorrectness of hedonism (or, it could be added, with the wrongness of subjectivism about meaning in life). It is likely, argues Brigard, that people's preference not to plug into the machine is mainly affected by the status quo bias.

Nozick's experience machine thought experiment, then, may prove less than it is often taken to. And it calls for much more discussion and deliberation. But this also brings up another issue that Brigard emphasizes at the end of his paper: Nozick and many of the philosophers who wrote about his thought experiment did not check empirically whether indeed most people do not wish to plug into the machine. They just predicted that this would be the case, without actually checking it. This is problematic, since the argument and much of the discussion following it relied on claims about how most people would react to this thought experiment without relying on any empirical data about how most people in fact choose. Many of those who wrote about the issue seem to have merely extrapolated from their own preferences to humanity at large. Some others seem to have extrapolated from their own preferences and from those of a few of their close friends to humanity at large. And yet some others also asked their philosophy students about their preferences, not always heeding the reasons the students raised. But these are surely not representative or reliable samples. There seems to be much more empirical and philosophical work to do on the topic before we draw conclusions about hedonism, subjectivism, and the nature of well-being and of meaning in life.

Robert Nozick Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 42–45.

Felipe De Brigard, "If You Like It, Does It Matter If It’s Real?" Philosophical Psychology 23 (2010): 43–57.

Jack L. Knetsch, "The Endowment Effect and Evidence of Nonreversible Indifference Curves," American Economic Review 79 (1989): 1277–1284.

Iddo Landau, Ph.D. , is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Haifa. He has written extensively on the meaning of life and is the author of Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World .

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"The Experience Machine" Discussion Questions

What is the experience machine thought experiment supposed to show? How does it purport to do so?
Nozick expands his thought experiment by considering the transformation and results machines. What are these thought experiments supposed to show? How do they purport to do so?

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What do our intuitions about the experience machine really tell us about hedonism?

Published: 01 October 2009
Volume 151 , pages 331–349, ( 2010 )

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Sharon Hewitt 1

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Robert Nozick’s experience machine thought experiment is often considered a decisive refutation of hedonism. I argue that the conclusions we draw from Nozick’s thought experiment ought to be informed by considerations concerning the operation of our intuitions about value. First, I argue that, in order to show that practical hedonistic reasons are not causing our negative reaction to the experience machine, we must not merely stipulate their irrelevance (since our intuitions are not always responsive to stipulation) but fill in the concrete details that would make them irrelevant. If we do this, we may see our feelings about the experience machine becoming less negative. Second, I argue that, even if our feelings about the experience machine do not perfectly track hedonistic reasons, there are various reasons to doubt the reliability of our anti-hedonistic intuitions. And finally, I argue that, since in the actual world seeing certain things besides pleasure as ends in themselves may best serve hedonistic ends, hedonism may justify our taking these other things to be intrinsically valuable, thus again making the existence of our seemingly anti-hedonistic intuitions far from straightforward evidence for the falsity of hedonism.

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When hedonism does get discussed, it often serves as no more than a quick set-up to praising a desire-based view of welfare. For example, in James Griffin’s 312-page book Well-being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance ( 1986 ), the discussion of hedonism occupies less than three pages (pp. 7–10). [Crisp ( 2006a ) points this out.] Will Kymlicka dispatches hedonism with similar speed in Contemporary Political Philosophy ( 1990 , pp. 12–14). Anti-hedonistic opinion has even reached the point at which refuting the view can seem too trivial an accomplishment to justify writing an entire article: Millgram ( 2000 ), after presenting some arguments against hedonistic utilitarianism, worries that his readers will wonder whether his target “was not in fact a straw man,” and he proceeds to address his attention to preference utilitarianism, because he wants them “to take away from this exercise … a more important lesson than: that an already-discredited view has been further discredited” (pp. 126–127).

There are some notable exceptions to the anti-hedonistic trend, however. See Edwards ( 1979 ), Katz ( 1986 ), Sprigge ( 1988 ), Tännsjö ( 1998 ), Feldman ( 1997 ), Feldman ( 2004 ), Crisp ( 2006a ; b , Chap. 4).

At least three Platonic dialogues—the Protagoras , the Philebus , and the Republic —seriously discuss hedonism. So does Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics (7.11–14, 10.1–5). The Epicureans and Cyrenaics defended the view, even as the Stoics went to pains to argue against it. On the Epicureans, see Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum , 1.30–1.54. On Aristippus, founder of the Cyrenaic school, see Xenophon ( 1970 , ii.1). On the Stoics, see Diogenes Laertius ( 1972 , 7.85–7.86).

See Thomas Hobbes, Human Nature: or the Fundamental Elements of Policy , 7.3; John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , 2.20.3; David Hume, Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals , app. 2.10; Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature , Book 2, Part 3, Sect. 9; Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation , 1.1; and John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism , especially Chaps. 2 and 4.

I take these historical references from Crisp ( 2006a , p. 619).

Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Carol Varey expressed as early as 1991 their regret that “[t]he definition of utility in terms of choices still rules the sciences of decision, although operationalism and behaviorism have largely lost their hold on psychology.” See Kahneman and Varey ( 1991 , p. 128). For evidence of new interest in subjective states in psychology, see Eid and Larsen ( 2008 ).

See, for example, Griffin ( 1986 , pp. 9–10), Brink ( 1989 , pp. 223–224), Darwall ( 1997 , pp. 162, 178), Sumner ( 1996 , pp. 94–98), Finnis ( 1980 , p. 33, 1983 , pp. 37–42), Thomson ( 1987 , p. 41), and Attfield ( 1987 , p. 33).

Let me sketch one way in which this might be true. Goodness seems to be in some way part of the very phenomenology of pleasure. In experiencing pleasure, we seem to be, in a very direct way, experiencing goodness . In fact, goodness seems to be the defining phenomenal property of pleasure. If it’s true that the intrinsic goodness of pleasure is phenomenal, then we seem to be capable of being directly acquainted with it. But we don’t seem to be acquainted with the goodness of other things we desire in anything like this direct way. We take other things to be good, but it’s not clear that our epistemic position with regard to their intrinsic natures is anywhere near as sure as our position with regard to the intrinsic goodness of pleasure. An epistemic difference like this could thus give us reason to think normative hedonism is true even if psychological hedonism is not.

I will use the term ‘pleasure’ to refer to all positive experiences and ‘pain’ to refer to all negative experiences, in keeping with traditional hedonistic usage.

Edwards ( 1979 , p. 60).

Fredrickson ( 2008 , p. 452). For the original research, see Fredrickson and Losada ( 2005 ).

See, for example, Millgram ( 2000 , 1997 , Chap. 6) and Jollimore ( 2004 ).

Millgram ( 1997 , p. 117).

Millgram ( 2000 ) makes a similar point on pp. 125–126.

See Brand and Yancey ( 1993 , especially pp. 194–196).

Brand and Yancey ( 1993 , p. 194).

Mill makes this point in Chap. 2 of Utilitarianism , writing that “utility would enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements should place the happiness or (as, speaking practically, it may be called) the interest of every individual as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of the whole; and secondly, that education and opinion, which have so vast a power over human character, should so use that power as to establish in the mind of every individual an indissoluble association between his own happiness and the good of the whole—especially between his own happiness, and the practice of such modes of conduct, negative and positive, as regard for the universal happiness prescribes….”

Nozick ( 1974 , pp. 42–44).

In this paper, I use the term ‘feelings’ to refer collectively to the various desires, emotions, and intuitions of value provoked by the experience machine thought experiment.

In accordance with Mill’s recommendation (see note 16), we seem to have done a good job of integrating the demands of our family, friends, and society into our ideas about our own interests and our own self-worth.

Nozick ( 1974 , p. 43).

See, for example, Glover ( 1984 , pp. 93–94). For an example of someone who does recognize the potential importance of these practical details, see Sumner ( 1996 , pp. 94–95).

Nozick’s original example mentions that one could come out of the machine from time to time, and Tännsjö ( 1998 , pp. 111–112) has reiterated this point.

Discussion with Sharon Street was of particular help in developing this point.

Of course, we don’t like the thought of being in a world where we’re so useless. Our sense of our own worth is very much tied up with our beliefs about our instrumental worth, to the extent that this may be one of the primary reasons we dislike the thought of living hooked up to the experience machine: we don’t like being useless. We seem to care so much about being useful that we would wish we could be useful even in the absence of any remaining valuable goals (as in this example). Yet that doesn’t prove that being useful is intrinsically valuable (what an odd kind of intrinsic value that would be!), just that our feelings of self-worth are very sensitive to it.

Valuing I take to be an activity or disposition that involves desiring something and approving of that desiring. It could be characterized, à la Frankfurtienne, as desiring “whole-heartedly.”

See, for example, Griffin ( 1986 , p. 7) and Kymlicka ( 1990 , p. 14). This criticism of Griffin, Kymlicka, and Nozick is made by Kawall ( 1999 , pp. 384–385).

Silverstein ( 2000 , p. 286).

Of course, this assumption is not restricted to opponents of hedonism. Mill famously employed the premise that “the sole evidence it is possible to produce that any thing is desirable is that people do actually desire it” in an argument for hedonism ( Utilitarianism , Chap. 4).

Nozick ( 1989 , pp. 106–107).

This example was suggested to me by Eli Hirsch.

Street ( 2006 ). See especially pp. 113–121.

See Diener and Seligman ( 2002 ), Kahneman et al. ( 2004 ), and Fleeson et al. ( 2002 ).

One might wonder how I expect to justify my belief in the intrinsic goodness of pleasure and the intrinsic badness of pain without myself appealing to doubtful intuitions. I sketch an answer to this question in note 7.

On this topic, see also Railton ( 1984 , p. 142).

Sidgwick ( 1913 ) also discusses the hedonistic benefits of focusing on knowledge or art for its own sake, although he tends to focus on increases in the pleasure immediately enjoyed in learning or creating art and not on its further instrumental effects. See p. 49. For further discussion of the paradox of hedonism by Sidgwick, see the rest of Book I, Chap. IV, as well as pp. 403, 405–406, in Book III.

The fact that hedonism tells us to adopt non-hedonistic attitudes might be thought to make hedonism incoherent in some way. There is no incoherence, however, since the fact that the only things intrinsically good and bad are pleasure and pain doesn’t entail that we ought to take the promotion of pleasure and the avoidance of pain as our only—or even our primary—conscious goals. If hedonism is true, we ought to reason in a self-consciously hedonistic way only to the extent that this is the best way of promoting pleasure. In other words, if being self-consciously hedonistic is self-defeating, hedonism tells us not to be self-consciously hedonistic. And this is no contradiction, since hedonism never told us to be self-consciously hedonistic.

For their helpful comments on this paper, I thank Sharon Street, Thomas Nagel, Eli Hirsch, and an anonymous reviewer.

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Happiness and Goodness: Philosophical Reflections on Living Well

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14 Choosing the Experience Machine

Published: June 2015
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This chapter examines whether the value of happiness depends on how it is achieved. It considers the thought experiment proposed by Robert Nozick, who conceives the following hypothetical situation: Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain … Would you plug in? Nozick presumes that no one would choose this option based on the belief that we value reality over the mere experience of it. This chapter argues that Nozick's conclusion appears mistaken and offers various reasons why an individual might be inclined to choose the experience machine, using examples at least as plausible as the experience machine itself.

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Does Nozick’s Experience Machine Refute Hedonism?

Nozick’s Experience Machine: Does it Refute Hedonism?

Robert Nozick’s experience machine is commonly invoked to argue that there’s more to life than pleasure. This article outlines the thought experiment, and discusses why hedonists think it’s deeply flawed.

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W hat does it mean to live a good life? What makes a life intrinsically valuable? If we were to describe someone as ‘happy’, what quality or qualities would their life include?

To answer such questions, a common stance philosophers take is that of hedonism .

Not the kind of folk hedonism whereby someone indulges in endless carnal pleasures, but prudential hedonism , the philosophical position which states that, ultimately, when it comes to personal wellbeing, pleasure is the only intrinsic good, and pain the only bad.

While there are different types of hedonism, hedonists generally assert that, when you get right down to it, everything we recognize as ‘good’ — say, friendship, love, kindness, growth, solving problems, high achievement — is underpinned by feeling good. And everything we recognize as ‘bad’ — say, loneliness, vice, fear, shame, failure — is underpinned by feeling bad.

So, though living a good life can often seem like a very complicated matter, hedonists cut through this complexity to point out that, actually, it’s rather simple: living a good life means feeling good within ourselves . ‘Happiness’ is simply the preponderance of pleasure over pain.

Our approach to living well should thus be built around this insight: the good life involves experiencing more pleasure than pain.

This ‘pleasure principle’ is very influential in philosophy. It underpins, for instance, the philosophy of the ancient Greek thinker Epicurus , who advises us to approach our lives according to a hierarchy of pleasures (with long-term mental tranquility being the highest, and short-term physical pleasures being the lowest).

It forms the basis, too, of 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s ethical theory of utilitarianism, that “ it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.”

While hedonism is a popular and influential philosophical theory, however, it is not without its critics.

Isn’t there more to a good life than simply feeling good?

The philosopher Robert Nozick certainly thinks so, and in his 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia he introduces a famous thought experiment aiming to knock down hedonism (along with other mental state theories of wellbeing) once and for all.

The Experience Machine

“S uppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience that you desired,” Nozick writes in Anarchy, State, and Utopia :

Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain.

The question is:

Should you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming your life’s experiences?

What do you think? Would you plug into the machine?

Nozick thinks most of us wouldn’t (and indeed shouldn’t).

And several empirical studies back up Nozick’s intuitions. Weijers (2014) , for instance, found that 84% of the participants asked about Nozick’s machine were averse to plugging in.

But, if the good life is only about having good experiences , as hedonists and proponents of other mental state theories of wellbeing claim, then why don’t we want to plug into a machine that guarantees good experiences?

What’s stopping us from plugging into the experience machine?

O f course, the simple answer — and the one Nozick wants us to have — is that we don’t want to plug into the experience machine because there is more to life than pleasurable experiences .

In other words, hedonism is false, for the good life is not just about feeling good, Nozick observes: we want to actually do something. We don’t just want to be a free-floating bundle of empty pleasures, we want to actually be a certain type of person. Nozick writes:

Someone floating in a tank is an indeterminate blob… Is he courageous, kind, intelligent, witty, loving? It’s not merely that it’s difficult to tell; there’s no way he is. Plugging into the machine is a kind of suicide.

The good life, then, is not just about having certain experiences, Nozick thinks: we want contact with reality . We want our lives to be rooted in the real.

As Nozick summarizes:

We learn that something matters to us in addition to experience by imagining an experience machine and then realizing that we would not use it.

However, while the experience machine is often taken as a knock-down argument against hedonism, some philosophers point out that the thought experiment exploits a number of psychological biases.

Sure, we might not want to plug into the machine — but that doesn’t mean not plugging in is the right answer, nor that hedonism is false; we are simply clouded by bias.

Once we expose that bias, the argument goes, we can see how Nozick’s thought experiment is no threat to hedonism whatsoever.

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Consider: technophobia and the status quo bias

O ne immediate thing to point out is that Nozick’s thought experiment isn’t just about pleasurable experiences; it’s about giving ourselves over to a big scary machine that we do not understand.

By rejecting the machine, we are not necessarily rejecting pleasure, we are simply expressing our unease with technology.

Related to this worry is what philosophers call the status quo bias: that we irrationally tend to prefer the way things are.

This bias reveals itself when we reverse Nozick’s thought experiment, notes the philosopher Lorenzo Buscicchi in a 2022 essay :

Imagine that a credible source tells you that you are actually in an experience machine right now. You have no idea what reality would be like. Given the choice between having your memory of this conversation wiped and going to reality, what would be best for you to choose?

Empirical studies show that most people, given these circumstances, would choose to stay in the experience machine. Buscicchi observes:

Comparing this result with how people respond to Nozick’s experience machine thought experiment reveals the following: In Nozick’s experience machine thought experiment people tend to choose a real and familiar life over a more pleasurable life, and in the reversed experience machine thought experiment people tend to choose a familiar life over a real life. Familiarity seems to matter more than reality, undermining the strength of Nozick’s original argument.

According to the status quo bias, then, we reject the experience machine not because we reject pleasure for reality, but because we are uncomfortable with such a radical departure from our familiar lives — including the abandonment of all our existing commitments.

The hedonistic bias

A nother way philosophers defend hedonism from Nozick’s thought experiment is by claiming that, far from counting against hedonism, our aversion to plugging in is in fact motivated by hedonism.

Nozick suggests we have a desire to remain rooted in the real world — but what motivates us to have this desire? Why do we want to remain attached to reality? Might it not be because we think that, by staying attached to the real world, we will ultimately feel better within ourselves..?

The so-called ‘paradox of hedonism’ is instructive here: pleasure is often best pursued indirectly.

We rarely set out to simply grant ourselves pleasure; instead, we go for a walk, we spend time with our loved ones, we read a book, we work on a favored project — and thereby obtain pleasure.

As Epicurus observes , going after every single promise of immediate, short-term pleasure is not a good strategy for maximizing our pleasure overall, and so we often forgo short-term pleasures — and even tolerate pain — in order to secure longer-term pleasures like mental tranquility.

Nozick’s experience machine exploits this gap between short-term pleasure and longer-term pleasures. We are suspicious, perhaps subconsciously, that it offers pleasures only of the instant gratification kind, and thus reject it because we think that by staying attached to reality we have a better chance of attaining longer-term peace of mind — failing to realize that this longer-term peace of mind is itself a form of pleasure .

The philosopher Matthew Silverstein nicely articulates this view in his 2000 paper, In Defense of Happiness (note: he uses ‘pleasure’ and ‘happiness’ interchangeably):

[O]ur experience machine intuitions reflect our desire to remain connected to the real world, to track reality. But… the desire to track reality owes its hold upon us to the role it has played in the creation of happiness…. Our intuitive views about what is prudentially good, the views upon which the experience machine argument relies, owe their existence to happiness. We miss the mark, then, if we take our intuitions about the experience machine as evidence against hedonism…. Even though it leads us away from happiness in the case of the experience machine, our desire to track reality points indirectly to happiness…. The mere existence of our intuitions against the experience machine should not lead us to reject hedonism. Contrary to appearances, those intuitions point — albeit circuitously — to happiness. And as a result, they no longer seem to contradict the claim that happiness is the only thing of intrinsic prudential value.

So, according to this position, we reject the experience machine because we think our lives would feel better outside of it. Far from a rejection of hedonism, then, our response to the experience machine reveals our deep-rooted hedonic motivations.

The experience machine says nothing about the truth or falsity of hedonism

F inally, some philosophers argue that, regardless of whether we choose to plug in or not, our response to the experience machine actually says nothing about the truth or falsity of hedonism whatsoever.

We might not want to plug into the experience machine, but that doesn’t suddenly mean we can conclude that hedonism is false. That’s like arguing that (i) since we wouldn’t plug in, we aren’t hedonists and that (ii) since we aren’t hedonists, hedonism is false.

Harriet Baber expresses this argument well in her 2008 paper, The Experience Machine Deconstructed . She writes:

Regardless of what subjects choose, the Experience Machine cannot either confirm or disconfirm any philosophical theory of wellbeing. It merely tests the empirical hypothesis that informed choosers prefer hedonically optimal states.

In other words: all the experience machine thought experiment tests, Baber says, is whether we ourselves would choose lives of maximal pleasure / happiness.

Our suspicion towards this kind of life says nothing about whether pleasure / happiness is the only intrinsic good; it merely reveals that we are not very good at choosing what is best for ourselves.

Defending the experience machine

I n response to the concerns just raised, some philosophers offer staunch defenses of Nozick’s experience machine, tweaking the conditions of the thought experiment to account for certain biases, and to make it less focused on our own individual preferences.

Eden Lin, for instance, in his 2016 paper How to Use the Experience Machine , suggests that we can refocus the thought experiment to turn up the heat on hedonism as follows.

Suppose A and B have exactly the same lives, and go through exactly the same experiences. The only difference is that A lives in reality, and B is plugged into an experience machine.

Who has the better life?

If hedonism is true, then we must answer that the quality of A and B’s lives, the value of their lives, is exactly the same.

But Lin thinks most of us would say that, in terms of their personal wellbeing, A’s life is better than B’s — because A’s life is actually happening . If we had to pick one, we would prefer to live A’s life than B’s.

While Lin’s new version of the thought experiment protects against the status quo and hedonistic biases, a hedonist might take issue with it in a different way: it exploits the so-called ‘freebie problem’.

If faced with two identical options, but one includes an extra bonus, we are likely to choose the extra bonus even if we’re not convinced it will make any difference; we pick it just in case .

So, in the context of Lin’s thought experiment, we say A has a better life not because we’re convinced, but because we’re hedging our bets that ‘living in reality’ has some kind of intrinsic value that increases A’s overall wellbeing. As Buscicchi puts it,

Most people will choose the life with the free bonus just in case it has intrinsic value, not necessarily because they think it does have intrinsic value.

What do you make of Nozick’s experience machine?

Do you think the experience machine thought experiment is a successful argument against hedonism?
Would you plug into a machine that offered to maximize your happiness?
What do you make of the criticisms of Nozick’s thought experiment? Which do you find most convincing? Which do you find least persuasive?
Does Eden Lin’s redesign of the thought experiment make it more powerful as an argument against hedonism?
Where do you stand on hedonism? Does everything important in life ultimately come back to increasing pleasure / decreasing pain? What matters to you in life?

Learn more about Nozick, hedonism, and other philosophical approaches to the good life

I f you’re interested in learning more about Nozick and how other philosophers approach ethics and the good life, you might enjoy the following related reads:

On Living Meaningfully in a Vast Universe: Robert Nozick
Epicureanism Defined: Philosophy is a Form of Therapy
The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number: What Bentham Really Meant
Peter Singer On the Life You Can Save
Iris Murdoch: ‘Unselfing’ is Crucial for Living a Good Life
Ethics and Morality: the Best 10 Books to Read
How to Live a Good Life (According to 7 of the World’s Wisest Philosophies)

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Digital Essay (31)

The Value of Pleasure

Is pleasure the only good thing there is? Some philosophers have thought so. Take anything you enjoy — going on vacation, eating a delicious pizza, reading a book. These are all things that cause pleasure , and that seems to be what makes them enjoyable. Reasoning in this way, the philosopher Jeremy Bentham concluded that pleasure is “the only good” and pain “without exception, the only evil”.

Thought Experiment

The Machine

To test this kind of view, the philosopher Robert Nozick developed the following thought experiment:

Suppose there was an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Super-duper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. While in the tank you won’t know that you’re there; you’ll think that it’s all actually happening.

Would you plug in? As Nozick asks, “What else can matter to us, other than how our lives feel from the inside?”

What Else Could Matter?

Actual Accomplishment
Personality & Character
Deeper Reality

Nozick notes that we seem to value doing certain things, not just having the experience of doing them. “In the case of certain experiences,” he says, “it is only because first we want to do the actions that we want the experiences of doing them or thinking we’ve done them.”

Suppose you solved a puzzle in your dream, then woke up to realize that you hadn’t actually completed it. It seems like some part of your accomplishment would go missing. You didn’t really do what you were proud of having “accomplished” in your dream. You didn’t actually do anything at all!

“We want to be a certain way,” Nozick says, “to be a certain sort of person” with a distinctive personality and moral character — but plugging into the machine seems to preclude this. As Nozick puts it:

“Someone floating in a tank is an indeterminate blob. There is no answer to the question of what a person is like who has been long in the tank. Is he courageous, kind, intelligent, witty, loving? It’s not merely that it’s difficult to tell; there’s no way he is. Plugging into the machine is a kind of suicide.”

If we plug in, we’re limited to a human-created reality. And while this might not be terrible for a few hours (we often waste this much time on our phones, or immersed in a television show), we value living in a world that wasn’t created by beings like ourselves, with limited imaginations, time, and creative energy.

“Plugging into an experience machine limits us to a world no deeper or more important than that which people can construct. There is no actual contact with any deeper reality; but many persons desire to leave themselves open to such contact, and to a plumbing of deeper significance. This clarifies the intensity of the conflict over psychoactive drugs, which some view as mere local experience machines, and others view as avenues to a deeper reality; what some view as equivalent to surrender to the experience machine, others view as following one of the reasons not to surrender!”

What Does the Thought Experiment Show?

In philosophy, we often use thought experiments like Nozick’s example of the Experience Machine to help us reflect on more abstract questions. In this case, considering what you would do if you had the option to plug into the Experience Machine can lead you to more general insights about what matters to you in life, what ingredients are needed in a good life, and more.

Nozick’s take on the thought experiment is that it shows that we care about more than simply having certain kinds of experiences. And he thinks parallel thought experiments can help us learn even more about what we value:

The Transformation Machine would transform you into any kind of person you’d like to be.
The Result Machine would produce whatever results the actions you experience yourself doing while in the Experience Machine would have if you had actually done them.

Would you be any more willing to plug into the Experience Machine if you could also use one (or both) of these machines beforehand? (For example, you could use the Transformation Machine to transform yourself into a highly talented doctor, use the Result Machine to produce a cure for the common cold, and then use the Experience Machine to give yourself the experience of discovering the cure through your own research. Would you find as much value in this as you would in actually training to become a doctor and discovering the cure through your own work?)

Reflecting on questions like these, Nozick thinks, reveals that our most central desires — to have certain experiences, to be a certain type of person, to bring about certain outcomes — only have force in the context of the actual lives we are living . As he puts it, “ Perhaps what we desire is to live ourselves, in contact with reality. And this, machines cannot do for us. “

For this class, Scheffler’s concept of being homeless in time is one of the most important parts of this chapter. The notion is similar to temporal mobility in the sense that we cannot control our movement. However, temporal mobility refers to individuals occupying space. It is true that we cannot control our movement at all times, but we do have some influence on our surroundings at certain points in life. For instance, one can control whether they attend class one day or not. In that sense, one expresses ownership over the possibility of occupying a classroom. Now, Scheffler is consider the ownership of time. According to him, it is not possible to express ownership over time, even in an insignificant amount. It is a dimension humans simply cannot express ownership over. Time is a constantly moving force and individuals have no control over its direction or magnitude. In this way, humans have no ability to occupy time itself.

Temporal mobility refers to the notion that humans cannot control our movement through time. While we may be able to influence our movement or actions in particular moments, we have very little influence on the broad scope of our entire life. Regardless of our wishes, time is always moving forward and we must adapt to it. While Scheffler notes that this is often taken for granted, it is a frustrating fact of life. As individuals (supposedly with free will), we expect to have full dominion over our lives; yet, we cannot master time and its influence over us. According to Scheffler, these circumstances emphasize the importance of tradition. A particular practice repeated at regular intervals enables an individual to have ownership over at least some aspects of one’s life.

Normativity refers to an evaluative statement as to whether something is desirable. It is important to distinguish normativity from positivism, which postulates one should only make claims based on empirical evidence. A positive statement makes a claim as to how things are, whereas a normative statement makes a claim to how things should be. A normative statement seeks to attach a belief or expectation to already established facts. To understand this distinction, refer to the following example:

Positive Statement: “Jake’s dog is a German Shepherd.”

Normative Statement: “German Shepherds are the best breed of dogs.”

Scheffler provides a definition of tradition that provides insight into his understanding of the term and its significance in human culture. Read it below as context for the rest of the digital essay. This is what Scheffler means by “tradition”:

Two points of clarification are in order. First, in one broad and standard sense of the term, a tradition is a set of beliefs, customs, teachings, values, practices, and procedures that is transmitted from generation to generation. However, a tradition need not incorporate items of all the kinds just mentioned. In this essay, I am interested in those traditions that are seen by people as providing them with reasons for action, and so I will limit myself to traditions that include norms of practice and behavior.

Second, there is a looser sense of the term in which a tradition need not extend over multiple generations. A family or a group of friends may establish a “tradition,” for example, of celebrating special occasions by going to a certain restaurant, without any thought that subsequent generations will do the same thing. Even a single individual may be described as having established certain traditions, in this extended sense of the term. [B]ut my primary interest is in the more standard cases in which traditions are understood to involve multiple people and to extend over generations.

The transition from personal salvation to universal redemption marks the transition of humanity from pursuing evil to seeking the good. Once an individual realizes that satisfying one’s pleasures and self-interest is not worthy, as it provides no meaning to life, one will instead actively look for goodness as a higher source of meaning. This leads one to pursuing God and developing a close relationship with God, actualized through acts of justice and mercy in pursuit of a better world.

One should note also that this redemption is universal. Heschel draws a distinction between his argument and personal salvation, arguing that simply pursuing the latter is another form of self-interest. Rather, the way to truly prevent suffering is committing oneself to salvation for the entire world, which he terms as universal redemption. It is through this method that humanity can become closer to God and end evil in the world.

Here, Heschel refers to the prophets of the Hebrew Bible who frequently criticized the Israelites for various offenses against God, such as worshipping false gods. An interesting notion that Heschel introduces here and develops in the subsequent paragraphs is a distinction between history and redemption. For him, history refers to human activities, ripe with the injustices and suffering associated with the pursuit of human self-interest. This is separate from the redemption, which refers to a state of affairs beyond history that involves concepts of salvation, the kingship of God, and other faith-based ideas. Heschel uses this distinction to separate the evils of our world from the goodness of God, counteracting the illusion of evil he mentioned earlier in the excerpt.

For Heschel, “alien thoughts” are ideas that enter one’s mind that dissuade one from pursuing righteous actions. He believes that even if an individual pursues good acts and remains faithful to God, foreign concepts will enter one’s thoughts with the mission to drive them away from God and goodness. This exacerbates the tension between God and humanity because it is rooted in human self-interest.

One of Heschel’s concerns is that God’s will and human nature are inherently opposed to one another. He believes that humans are naturally selfish and pursue ends that benefit themselves, even at the expense of others, which inevitably leads to situations where one will sacrifice piety or adherence to God’s will for some other goal. The desire to pursue self-interest introduces deceitful thoughts that drive one away from God and a life of holiness. Heschel also believes that self-interest contributes to suffering in the world. To prevent evil, humans must work towards rejecting their pursuit of self-interest through activities like faith and following God’s will.

Heschel is also concerned with how good and evil can often be confused for one another. What appears as holy and good may actually be evil in disguise around the illusion of self-interest. An example is worshipping a false idol. One may believe that their act is holy and upholds God’s will, but according to Heschel, the act only reinforces the evil and sinful nature of the world.

Here, Cohen is describing humanity grappling with the concept of absolute evil once it has entered reality. He argues that prior to the tremendum, the notion of absolute evil was simply a concept that existed in the mind that was thought to never exist in the real world. This enabled individuals to justify “relative evils” that were comparably smaller to the absolute evil that existed only in human consciousness. However, the Holocaust demonstrated that absolute evil, suffering and horror exercised without rationality or moral consideration, is certainly possible in this world. For Cohen, this means that there are no more excuses for the relative evil because the absolute evil is as real as it.

Cohen uses the term “vector” similar to mathematicians and physicians, in that it refers to something that has both magnitude and direction. When he says reason has a “moral vector,” he is suggesting that rationality is accompanied by moral considerations that drive the process of reasoning. Cohen believes that moral principles and rationality are intertwined, in that morality is rational and rationality is moral. As a result, any rational conclusion must also be morally acceptable. For this reason, Cohen notes that an evil like the Holocaust cannot be rational because it is not moral in any sense. Likewise, it cannot be moral because it is not rational.

What do you think of Cohen’s intertwining of reason and morality? Do you think that rationality has a moral vector? Should reason and morality be inherently connected or separate? Can someone reason something that is not moral?

Tremendum typically means “awefulness, terror, dread” and other similar feelings. Here, it is Cohen’s term for the Holocaust. He uses this term because he believes there is no evil equivalent to the Holocaust, so using the terms typically used to describe mass suffering is not an adequate description. He adopts the word tremendum because he believes it best captures the horrible realities of the Holocaust compared to other available terms, although it still ultimately falls short because humanity simply cannot comprehend the true extent of the events that took place during the Holocaust.

Mipnei Hataeinu is Hebrew for “because of our own sins” and refers to the concept that humanity’s suffering is brought about by its sins. In other words, destruction and pain are punishments for sinful behavior. The interpretation would suggest that humanity deserves this chastising, as indicated by Isaiah 59:12: “For our transgressions against You are many, and our sins have testified against us, for our transgressions are with us, and our iniquities – we know them.” Mipnei Hataeinu reveals that punishment is justified because it is a response to humanity’s sins, similar to how a parent might discipline a child.

However, recall that such an explanation for the Holocaust does not suffice. There is no rational explanation for anything committed by the Jews that would warrant such a devastating slaughter and genocide. For this reason, Berkovits rejects this view and instead relies on the free will argument to explain why God would permit the Holocaust to occur.

Hester Panim is a Hebrew phrase that means “hiding face” and is used commonly in Jewish biblical interpretation. It refers to the concept of God literally hiding Himself from the suffering of humanity. As the Torah (the Hebrew Bible) demonstrates, there are many times that God rescues the Israelites from devastation, whether it is being brought against the Israelites or they committed the evil themselves. Hester Panim is usually interpreted as those times that God does not save the Israelites. It is interpreted as a punishment for not following the covenant or breaking God’s laws. Some scholars take a less vindictive approach, believing that God hiding Himself is an act of love and compassion because He cannot bear to watch His people suffer, similar to how a father does not want to watch his son get hurt.

Berkovits uses an entirely different interpretation of Hester Panim, drawing from the Jewish concept of nahama d’kissufa (Hebrew for “bread of shame”). Nahama d’kissufa refers to the notion that greater satisfaction derives from being deserving of a reward than simply receiving it as a gift. For example, giving yourself a dessert as a reward for doing well on an exam is more meaningful than simply eating the dessert. Berkovits argues that God granted humanity free will to make our achievements more significant and worthwhile. As a result, God must distance himself from humanity to enable humans to exercise that free will to the greatest extent. This inevitably allows evil to occur in the world, as any interference by God to prevent evil would undermine humanity’s free will.

Here, Marx argues that in practicing religion, man becomes alien from his own life. How might other philosophers, such as Aquinas or Nietzsche, agree or disagree with this claim?

Key Terms: Objectification and Alienation: Marx defines a sort of two-pronged process of objectification and alienation. He defines objectification as the process of labor becoming a commodity in itself– and alienation refers to that commodity becoming something that is separate from the laborer.

Key Point: Stoicism is an ancient philosophy known for its emphasis on wisdom, virtue, and harmony with divine reason. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism/

The Grand Inquisitor was the lead official of the Inquisition, appointed by the Church. During the Inquisition, a time infamous for the torture and execution of heretics, the Inquisitor was a powerful authority figure in society. Note that Dostoevsky does not portray the Inquisitor as evil, but rather as a character whose aims are understandable.

A heretic is a person who has been baptized as a Christian but doubts or denies established religious principles. In the sixteenth century, the time when Christ is reborn on Earth in this story, heretics were executed or even burned at the stake during the Inquisition.

Key Term: remote effects refer to more distant and difficult-to-anticipate consequences that someone’s actions may have, ex. someone’s decision to take public transportation to save on gas costs may unwittingly cost a car salesman their job.

Ernest Partridge was an environmental philosopher who wrote extensively on duty to future generations. You can find more of his work on his website, The Online Gadfly, a title with a clever reference to Socrates. This website, according to his obituary, is also a virtual monument to continue on his legacy and work into the future.

Taylor is a Canadian philosopher and professor emeritus at McGill University known especially for his work related to political and historical philosophy. Taylor has critiqued Liberalism, naturalism, and secularism throughout his long career. He will be 90 in November of 2021.

Here Kavka is accounting for population growth or decline.

Otherwise known as the Lockean Proviso, this idea is that a person has a right to the property that they put work into as long as in claiming this property there is enough of that quality resource left for others. In other words, no one is worse off with that resource claimed.

An English Enlightenment philosopher, John Locke is known for his political philosophy and work on epistemology and metaphysics. Kavka is drawing from his writing in section 4 of the second treatise in Locke’s Two Treatises of Government.

There’s a distinction here…. not nec strongest possible reason, all things being equal, no one is required to have millions of kids.

Remember Kavka’s previous argument about contingency: if it is certain that there will be no future people, then they have no moral weight.

The “contingency” of people is the last concept that Kavka grounds his discussion on. The idea is that we cannot be certain as to whether future people will exist at all; in some respects, we can only assume that they will, but there’s always a chance that they won’t.

The term “temporal location” refers to a thing’s existence in a particular time. This concept is the basis of Kavka’s first point in the following section.

Kavka calls this “the more modest conditional conclusion” because it leaves open the possibility for further discussion. If someone does not accept the initial premise that “we are obligated to make sacrifices for needy strangers” then they do not have to accept the conclusion that they must sacrifice for future generations.

A telling title to his essay, “futurity” refers to all future time and events. Kavka will wrestle with the moral challenges that arise when we consider the obligations futurity imposes on us in the present.

When Ivan says “I hasten to return my ticket,” he is referring to the possibility that he might be rewarded in the afterlife after suffering in this world. Ivan cannot rationalize any argument that might justify unnecessary suffering and refuses to participate in such a system. This is where Ivan rejects the harmony, participating in what his brother deems rebellion.

When Dostoyevsky uses the term harmony, he refers to the belief that one’s suffering in this world is worthwhile because it will be rewarded in the afterlife. Ivan is adamantly against this idea, explaining that future benefit does not justify current suffering. If someone is sent to Heaven after having suffered immensely, it does not erase that the suffering happened in the first place. For Ivan, no future benefit can justify the current injustice of suffering.

Here, Ivan is referencing Jesus giving the Great Commandment. The verses (Matthew 22:35-40) of the passage are below.

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

Even after receiving a wage that is less than the value they have contributed to production, the proletariat must give much of their earnings to other members of the bourgeoisie in order to survive. For Marx, capitalism places the proletariat in constant subjugation to the bourgeoisie.

Marx argues that capitalism provides unjust wages to the proletariat. Think about the process of capitalism: a business owner provides resources, a worker produces a product, the worker receives a wage for that labor, and the business owner sells the product. For the business owner to have a profit, the selling price must be higher than the wage earned by the worker. Marx contends that this process devalues the worker’s wage, and therefore their humanity. This suggests that capitalism, as a system, dehumanizes and oppresses the proletariat. For capitalism to survive, and profit to exist, the proletariat must be devalued.

Just as the proletariat are reliant on labor to survive, they become an object to the system. Similar to the products they produce, the proletariat are bought and sold by the bourgeoisie to benefit the capitalist system.

Here, Marx argues that in capitalism, workers are only valuable to society if they are productive. When he says “labour increases capital”, he means that the proletariat’s work must contribute to the wealth of the bourgeoisie for the proletariat to survive. If a worker is unproductive, they will be deprived of a wage and will lack the resources to live. This is a key part of Marx’s criticism, that survival is dependent on productivity.

This is one of the most famous phrases from The Communist Manifesto . Here, Marx argues that the bourgeoisie, driven by a constant need to expand their markets (and therefore wealth) are forced to fundamentally change society. The simple, laboring feudal lifestyle is replaced with industrial machines creating elaborate products with little effort. Thus, capitalist relations of production tend to spread geographically, as well as into more and more areas of human life.

A key part of Marx’s theory is that common laborers have been reduced to wage earners and that this is bad for human well-being. For Marx, work is an essential part of human identity. It is a way of human flourishing, because your work is an extension of who you are. However, Marx contends that industrialization has led to the commodification of work — a worker is the kind of thing that a price is put on, that bourgeosie trade. Instead of doing your job simply for the sake of it, the proletariat are forced to work only to survive. And even then, the work is more and more disconnected from human life – it is reduced down to simple tasks alongside machines that have further dehumanized the work experience. When Marx says these individuals have become “paid wage labourers”, he is criticizing capitalism’s deteriorating effect on the value of work for individuals.

Aristotle also used knife imagery to talk about the purpose of human beings. For him, a good knife is one that fulfills its purpose (a sharp knife!), and a good human is someone who lives as a rational animal to the best of their ability. As you continue reading through Sartre, see if you can pick up on the difference in Sartre’s use of the knife. How does he relate the knife image to human beings? Why does he think humans are different from knives?

It is precisely the opinions that are most disagreeable to us that we have to do the most to preserve. They are the most in danger of being legally or socially suppressed, and society would be worse off if they were suppressed because our beliefs would become lively and understood.

Because the common consensus is one-sided, we shouldn’t be upset when the minority opinion is biased and one-sided too. What’s more, one-sided people are usually more emphatic and passionate about their belief, so Mill says it’s actually a good thing if the disagreement is expressed in a one-sided way.

Open-mindedness is difficult for people. Usually, we act and think as if what we do is the only way to do things.

Suspending judgment, is refraining from either believing or disbelieving in something. (Suspending judgment on whether God exists is agnosticism.) Mill thinks we sometimes ought to suspend and admit that we don’t have enough information to make a call. Better to admit your ignorance than to hold an opinion without knowing why you hold it.

A geocentric model of the solar system has earth at the center; a heliocentric model has the sun at the center. Phlogiston was believed to be a chemical substance playing some of the roles that we now know oxygen plays. Scientists now agree there is no such substance as phlogiston.

To be a ‘rational being’ just means that we humans can reason , we can think critically, imagine possible futures and choose between them, and make arguments. Because we have this unique strength, Mill believes we should use it as much as possible. In the next paragraph, Mill will discuss what it means to use our reason.

Mill is criticizing here people who consider blind faith a virtue, who believe things simply because their god or another authority figure told them they are true, and who cannot give good arguments for why they believe what they believe. This is no way for a rational person to live, he says.

For a defense of blind faith in certain circumstances, see our lesson on Kierkegaard.

Mill is calling out people here who walk confidently through life with two competing thoughts: “Everybody makes mistakes” and “I’m certain I’m not making a mistake right now.”

Usually, you’re not making a mistake. But those few times when you are making a mistake and you haven’t prepared for it, it blows up in your face.

Has anyone ever said to you, “If everyone jumped off a cliff, would you jump too?” Mill is making the same argument here. Mill argues that just because all people in your community believe something, that doesn’t make it true. If all people are fallible, then all groups of people are also fallible.

To call a person infallible is to say they can never be wrong. A fallible person, on the other hand, is sometimes wrong.

Philosophical Jargon: The Ethical

The ethical is the ultimate telos, the ultimate guiding principle of everything in the universe, according to Kierkegaard’s understanding of the dominant ethical paradigm of his time. This essentially means ethics, what is right and wrong, is an objective truth, and our purpose in life is to align ourselves as much as possible with it by doing good things and avoiding bad things.

Philosophical Jargon: Telos

Telos is an Aristotelian term that means an ultimate guiding principle or fundamental purpose engrained in the nature of a thing. Aristotle believed all things, from rocks to human beings, had a telos.

Philosophical Jargon: Subjectivity vs. Objectivity

A subjective truth is one from a particular person’s viewpoint with particular feelings, biases, and predispositions.

This is opposed to “Objectivity,” which is a lack of subjectivity. An objective truth would be true independently of anyone’s perspective on it.

The Greek city of Delphi was the site of a major temple dedicated to the god Apollo. The temple’s high priestess, known as the Pythia, was a famous oracle who played an important role in Greek culture and religious life throughout classical antiquity. By bringing up the God of Delphi, Socrates not only lends divine authority to his life’s mission, but also indirectly rebuts the charge of impiety brought against him.

Socrates here is alluding to the Sophists, professional teachers of rhetoric and debate often hired by wealthy families to help ensure successful political careers for their sons.

St. Thomas Aquinas’ Natural Law Theory centers on the idea that all people are called by God to be and do good while avoiding evil. Further, any rational being should be able to understand and know these obligations of the Natural Moral Law:

“I am the gadfly of the Athenian people, given to them by God, and they will never have another, if they kill me. And now, Athenians, I am not going to argue for my own sake, as you may think, but for yours, that you may not sin against the God by condemning me, who am his gift to you. For if you kill me you will not easily find a successor to me, who, if I may use such a ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to the state by God; and the state is a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long 1and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you. You will not easily find another like me, and therefore I would advise you to spare me.” –Socrates

Key Point: Dr. King iterates that his motivation for nonviolent protest is to promote healthy tension. Without the friction caused by breaking the status quo of oppression, the door to negotiation will remain closed. King will cite this reason as necessary for any progress and in anticipation to arguments posed by his opposition of religious leaders and passive moderates.

Dr. King makes the appeal to his audience that all people of the world are pieces of a single community of moral concern. This philosophical idea is similar to cosmopolitanism. Derived from the Greek word kosmopolitês (‘citizen of the world’), cosmopolitanism is the idea that all human beings, regardless of their political affiliation, are (or can and should be) citizens in a single community. Different versions of cosmopolitanism focus on political institutions, moral norms, relationships, or shared markets of cultural expression.

April 12, 1963

We the undersigned clergymen are among those who, in January, issued “An Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense,” in dealing with racial problems in Alabama. We expressed understanding that honest convictions in racial matters could properly be pursued in the courts, but urged that decisions of those courts should in the meantime be peacefully obeyed.

Since that time there had been some evidence of increased forbearance and a willingness to face facts. Responsible citizens have undertaken to work on various problems which cause racial friction and unrest. In Birmingham, recent public events have given indication that we all have opportunity for a new constructive and realistic approach to racial problems.

However, we are now confronted by a series of demonstrations by some of our Negro citizens, directed and led in part by outsiders. We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely.

We agree rather with certain local Negro leadership which has called for honest and open negotiation of racial issues in our area. And we believe this kind of facing of issues can best be accomplished by citizens of our own metropolitan area, white and Negro, meeting with their knowledge and experience of the local situation. All of us need to face that responsibility and find proper channels for its accomplishment.

Just as we formerly pointed out that “hatred and violence have no sanction in our religious and political traditions,” we also point out that such actions as incite to hatred and violence, however technically peaceful those actions may be, have not contributed to the resolution of our local problems. We do not believe that these days of new hope are days when extreme measures are justified in Birmingham.

We commend the community as a whole, and the local news media and law enforcement in particular, on the calm manner in which these demonstrations have been handled. We urge the public to continue to show restraint should the demonstrations continue, and the law enforcement official to remain calm and continue to protect our city from violence.

We further strongly urge our own Negro community to withdraw support from these demonstrations, and to unite locally in working peacefully for a better Birmingham. When rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets. We appeal to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense.

C. C. J. Carpenter, D.D., LL.D. Bishop of Alabama

Joseph A. Durick, D.D. Auxiliary Bishop, Diocese of Mobile, Birmingham

Rabbi Hilton L. Grafman Temple Emanu-El, Birmingham, Alabama

Bishop Paul Hardin Bishop of the Alabama-West Florida Conference

Bishop Nolan B. Harmon Bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the Methodist Church

George M. Murray, D.D., LL.D . Bishop Coadjutor, Episcopal Diocese of Alabama

Edward V. Ramage Moderator, Synod of the Alabama Presbyterian Church in the United States

Earl Stallings Pastor, First Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama

Fitz James Stephen was an English lawyer, judge, and writer. For more, see his biography .

Kant claims that we can achieve ‘synthetic a priori knowledge’ of objects in our experience when we understand the ‘conditions of experience’ or what structures our experience. Click here for more on Kant and his ideas.

Reid upholds the ‘common-sense’ view that we can acquire certain knowledge through our observations of the external world. For more on Reid and his ideas, click here .

Descartes holds that we can only be certain of ‘clear and distinct ideas’, and that the truth of these ideas are guaranteed by God’s existence, and the fact that God is not a deceiver. Click here for more on Descartes and his ideas.

Pyrrhonistic Skepticism, introduce by Pyrrho of Elis, is a philosophy which proposes that one should suspend judgment about matters that are ‘non-evident’ (most of them), in order to reach ataraxia – a state of equanimity or peace of mind. For more about this philosophy, click here .

Empiricists claim that we must rely on our observations and experiences of the world to gain knowledge, while Rationalists hold that we can gain knowledge through things like reason. For more on empiricists and rationalists click here.

Ontological means having to do with what exists. Ontology is the study of existence. Do numbers and sets exist in reality or are they just human concepts? Does god exist? Are natural laws part of the fabric of the universe or just useful ways for us to make sense of the world we observe? These are all the kinds of questions that worry philosophers working on ontology.

Glaucon and Socrates both agree that being just and morally good is is instrumentally valuable. If you were unjust, you wouldn’t have friends, you’d lose your job, and you might very well end up in prison—all definitely bad outcomes. The puzzle is, once you have stripped away all of the good things morality gets you (friends, jobs, freedoms), then is there anything left that is good about it?

Socrates was famous for asking those who claimed to have adequate theories of, say, courage or justice, pointed questions designed to show they really did not know what they were talking about. As part of this questioning, Socrates would often emphasize his own ignorance. Hence the term “Socratic irony”: though Socrates claimed to be ignorant, he understood better than his interlocutors how difficult the puzzles were.

Thrasymachus (pronounced Thruh-SIM-ah-kus) is another character in the Republic . He argued earlier in the dialogue that justice is simply another name for whatever those in power desire and that injustice is better than our ordinary conceptions of justice, at least for those who can get away with it.

Examples of Goods that are Both Intrinsic and Instrumental:

These goods can both be enjoyed on their own and tend to get you other goods you want.

Eudaimonia (in Aristotle’s sense)

These are just good, by themselves, no matter what else you are aiming at.

Examples of Purely Instrumental Goods:

Money – Money is only valuable insofar as it can be traded for other things you want Being good at standardized testing – Being good at standardized testing only really matters while you are in school. Knowing how to drive – Knowing how to drive is only good to the extent that you need to drive.

For Kant, a person is an autonomous rational being — someone capable of deciding which rules to follow, planning for the future, and recognizing what their moral obligations are. Someone can be a human organism and not a person, in Kant’s sense. For instance, Kant would not regard someone in a permanent coma as a person.

Kant thinks persons are “ends in themselves” — sources of value that must be respected unconditionally by other rational beings.

For Kant, a mere thing is anything that is not a person — not a being capable of rational autonomy. Mere things can be used as a mere means by rational agents. For example, when I use a shovel to dig a hole, I have no moral duty to respect the shovel. Similarly, we do not owe respect to the animals we use for food.

Example 1 : Suppose you decide to help out your sick friend by bringing her aspirin. Unbeknownst to you, the medicine has gone bad and is now poisonous. Your friend gets more ill. A defender of the Principle of Control would argue you are not responsible for making your friend sicker, since you could not have known or controlled the outcome. You are just responsible for a good deed—namely, the will to help your friend.

Example 2 : Suppose Alex and Bea both have several drinks at a bar one night and decide to drive home. Alex loses control of his car an ends up killing another driver. Bea arrives home safely. By the Principle of Control, both are equally morally blameworthy for their decision to drive drunk. Bea does not get “off the hook” just because she was lucky enough to not harm another person.

Unknown Truths: Knowing something entails believing it. There aren’t precise examples of unknown truths but you might think there is a fact of the matter whether, for instance, there are an even number or an odd number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. That fact, whatever it is, is a truth we are not now capable of believing based on any evidence we have.

Well-Justified but False: Sometimes our evidence turns out to be misleading. For example, for many centuries we believed the Earth was the center of the solar system, based on the kinds of observations we were able to make about the movement of the sun and moon. We had reasons for those beliefs, but we were wrong. We eventually got better reasons.

For many decades we believed that fat caused heart disease. Now we have much better evidence that sugar is the culprit.

True but Unjustified: For example, a child might believe she will get money whenever she loses a tooth because she believes the tooth fairy will visit her. The belief is true (most children get money when they lose teeth — at least in the US). But her belief is unjustified — it is her parents leaving the money not a magical fairy.

Or a lottery winner might have believed his ticket would win. His belief turned out to be true, but he had no good reason for believing he’d win a highly random lottery.

A Posteriori: An a posteriori belief is something that you believe on the basis of observations and experience. For instance, you might believe that it is cold in your room right now. Or that your room was cold yesterday. Or that this screen is white and black.

A Priori: An a priori belief is something that you believe without making observations out in the world (you believe it prior to making observations). For instance, you might think mathematical facts are known a priori — you know that 1+1=2 without performing any experiments. You might also know that you are thinking or that you have a headache a priori. Some a priori beliefs are called intuitions — beliefs that simply occur to us as true. For example, you might have a moral intuition that is wrong to kick puppies.

Premise 1: A necessary condition for being a sandwich is having two or more slices of bread.

Premise 2: Burritos have one and only one tortilla shell.

But what about chalupas?

Aristotle famously claims that there are no general moral theories that will always guide you in figuring out what’s right and wrong. For Aristotle, determining what’s right or good (what a virtuous person would do) always depends on the particulars of the case. Hence, learning to live well is more like learning to diagnose diseases, and less like learning to solve equations.

Aristotle contrasts natural properties and those acquired by habit. The key idea here is that properties things have by nature cannot be changed, but those that we acquire by habit can be changed (for instance, by training ourselves in a different way).

Example: I naturally have the property of being alive. I could acquire (through training and practice) the property of being able to speak Japanese.

An instrumental end or goal is one you pursue in order to get closer to another end or goal. For instance, you might pursue studying for the SATs because you are pursuing the more important goal of attending college. But why are you attending college? Presumably that is also an instrumental end: you are attending college so you can get a good job, learn about subjects you are interested in, and make friends.

Aristotle thinks a final end or goal is one for which we cannot reasonably wonder anymore why we are pursuing it. We are pursuing it for its own sake.

Presumably all instrumental ends have a final end at the end of the chain.

Take SATs. –> Go to college. –> Get a great job. –> Make money. –> Be Happy. –> ? If nothing comes next, this is the final end.

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The Experience Machine: Summary of Robert Nozick’s ‘Thought Experiment
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The Experience Machine
The Experience Machine. The experience machine is a thought experiment first devised by Robert Nozick in the 1970s. In the last decades of the 20 th century, an argument based on this thought experiment has been considered a knock-down objection to hedonism about well-being, the thesis that our well-being—that is, the goodness or badness of ...
Experience machine
Experience machine. The experience machine or pleasure machine is a thought experiment put forward by philosopher Robert Nozick in his 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia. [ 1] It is an attempt to refute ethical hedonism by imagining a choice between everyday reality and an apparently preferable simulated reality .
Chapter 2 Flashcards
One world in which everyone is virtuous and another in which everyone is vicious. What does Ross's "Two Worlds" objection falsely assume about hedonism? That it provides a way of evaluating worlds. What is the "experience machine" thought experiment supposed to show? The value of being in contact with reality.
'Experience machines': The 1970s thought experiment that speaks ...
Finally, Nozick supposed that "plugging into an experience machine limits us to a man-made reality, to a world no deeper or more important than that which people can construct".
Experience Machine: Explanation and Examples
The Experience Machine is a thought experiment, which means it's a kind of philosophical story designed to make us think about big ideas. It helps us to understand what truly makes us happy.
4.1: Is Pleasure all that Matters? Thoughts on the "Experience Machine
For Nozick, the Experience Machine thought experiment is meant to show there are things that matter to us beyond how our lives feel 'from the inside'. Pleasure is a feeling which exists only in our minds as an experience.
How the Experience Machine Works
How the Experience Machine Works Robert Nozick's Experience Machine counterexample to hedonism is one of the most famous thought experiments in contemporary philosophy. It has convinced many that there is more to prudential value than the felt quality of our experiences. Yet it is often misunderstood, and too easily dismissed.
Full article: Nozick's experience machine: An empirical study
1. Introduction. In order to show that happiness cannot be equated with pleasurable experiences, Robert Nozick ( 1974) invented a thought experiment involving an experience machine. In this thought experiment, we are to imagine that we can choose to plug into an experience machine that ensures our having exclusively pleasurable experiences.
the experience machine
The Experience Machine is a thought experiment designed by Robert Nozick, first presented in his 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Nozick intends it as a challenge to hedonism, the view that what is good in life simply is what is pleasurable. ... If a learner chooses to enter the Experience Machine, they should put the model person within ...
7.1.3: Nozick's Experience Machine
Robert Nozick (1938-2002) attacked the hedonistic idea that pleasure is the only good by testing our intuitions via a now famous thought-experiment. Nozick asks: Suppose there was an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Super-duper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you ...
Understanding the Experience Machine Argument
Understanding the Experience Machine Argument. The Experience Machine is Robert Nozick's classic thought experiment about the importance of being connected to reality. It went through several iterations in his work, but its mature expression can be found in his 1989 book The Examined Life: The Experience Machine: "Imagine a machine that ...
The Experience Machine Thought Experiment
The Experience Machine Thought Experiment Imagine scientists have come up with an amazing new technology called the Experience Machine. It works like this:
PDF ExperienceMachineExperienceRequirementJenniferHawkins
One particular thought experiment—Robert Nozick's experience machine—has had a huge impact on the way philosophers think about well-being.1 Indeed, many assume it completely refutes hedonism once and for all, and not merely hedonism, but any theory that focuses exclusively on mental states. However, as we shall see, Nozick's example and its implications are more complex than people ...
Pleasure or Reality? The Experience Machine Debate
In this thought experiment, we are asked to imagine a scenario in which technology is so advanced that we can plug ourselves into a virtual reality machine for a very long time.
What do our intuitions about the experience machine really tell us
Robert Nozick's experience machine thought experiment is often considered a decisive refutation of hedonism. I argue that the conclusions we draw from Nozick's thought experiment ought to be informed by considerations concerning the operation of our intuitions about value. First, I argue that, in order to show that practical hedonistic reasons are not causing our negative reaction to the ...
Questions unit 2 Flashcards
Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like The experience machine thought experiment is supposed to show that happiness is less valuable if it is based on, Hedonism is a theory about the value of, If happiness always makes us better off, then hedonism and more.
"The Experience Machine" Discussion Questions
What is the experience machine thought experiment supposed to show? How does it purport to do so? Nozick expands his thought experiment by considering the transformation and results machines. What are these thought experiments supposed to show? How do they purport to do so?
PDF What do our intuitions about the experience machine really tell us
Abstract Robert Nozick's experience machine thought experiment is often con-sidered a decisive refutation of hedonism. I argue that the conclusions we draw from Nozick's thought experiment ought to be informed by considerations concerning the operation of our intuitions about value. First, I argue that, in order to show that practical hedonistic reasons are not causing our negative ...
14 Choosing the Experience Machine
Abstract This chapter examines whether the value of happiness depends on how it is achieved. It considers the thought experiment proposed by Robert Nozick, who conceives the following hypothetical situation: Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were ...
PDF An Intentionalist Refutation of the "Experience Machine" Debate
One of the foundational flaws of the experience machine thought experiment is its misinterpretation of hedonism intrinsic in its emphasis on unreal experience as a hypothetical maximized source of pleasure. Nozick's logic seems to be that the experience machine is automatically more hedonically "good" than any finite real-world pleasures, because it gives a lifetime of continuous ...
Nozick's Experience Machine: Does it Refute Hedonism?
Robert Nozick's experience machine is commonly invoked to argue that there's more to life than pleasure. This article outlines the thought experiment, and discusses why hedonists think it's deeply flawed.
The Experience Machine
The Machine. To test this kind of view, the philosopher Robert Nozick developed the following thought experiment: Suppose there was an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Super-duper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend ...
Is Pleasure the Only Good Thing?
This is a lecture about a famous thought experiment conceived by Robert Nozick. If the thought experiment yields the results that Nozick thinks it yields, then Hedonism is false.

Experience Machine

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Monday, January 23, 2017

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