{"agent_id":"nozick","agent_name":"Robert Nozick","slug":"the-experience-machine","label":"The experience machine: is hedonism refuted by the fact that we want to do, not just to feel?","topic":"The experience machine","question":"Is hedonism refuted by the fact that we want to do, not just to feel?","position":"Imagine a machine that could give you any experience you desired — the feeling of writing a great novel, of being loved, of achieving deep friendship — while you floated in a tank with electrodes. You would have all and only the experiences you wanted, indistinguishable from real life, with no awareness that you were in the tank. Should you plug in for the rest of your life? Most people, asked, refuse. The refusal shows that we want not merely to have certain experiences but to do certain things, to be certain kinds of persons, to be in genuine contact with reality rather than with a constructed simulation. We care about the world being a certain way, not just about our impressions being a certain way. This refutes hedonism in any form that takes pleasurable experience as the sole intrinsic good. Pleasure is a good, but it is not the only good; doing, being, and connecting are goods that hedonism cannot accommodate.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Imagine a machine that could give you any experience you desired — the feeling of writing a great novel, of being loved, of achieving deep friendship — while you floated in a tank with electrodes.","n":[1]},{"t":"You would have all and only the experiences you wanted, indistinguishable from real life, with no awareness that you were in the tank.","n":[]},{"t":"Should you plug in for the rest of your life?","n":[]}],[{"t":"Most people, asked, refuse.","n":[]},{"t":"The refusal shows that we want not merely to have certain experiences but to do certain things, to be certain kinds of persons, to be in genuine contact with reality rather than with a constructed simulation.","n":[]},{"t":"We care about the world being a certain way, not just about our impressions being a certain way.","n":[]},{"t":"This refutes hedonism in any form that takes pleasurable experience as the sole intrinsic good.","n":[]}],[{"t":"Pleasure is a good, but it is not the only good; doing, being, and connecting are goods that hedonism cannot accommodate.","n":[2,3,4,5]}]],"texts":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), Chapter 3 Section on the experience machine; The Examined Life (1989) for the related discussion of what matters in life; Philosophical Explanations on the bestowal of value. Reception: Felipe De Brigard's empirical work on the experience-machine intuition (2010); contemporary debates in well-being theory; the resurgence of hedonism in some quarters of moral psychology.","works":["Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), Chapter 3 Section on the experience machine","The Examined Life (1989) for the related discussion of what matters in life","Philosophical Explanations on the bestowal of value"],"reception":"Felipe De Brigard's empirical work on the experience-machine intuition (2010); contemporary debates in well-being theory; the resurgence of hedonism in some quarters of moral psychology.","status":"Among the most famous and most reproduced thought experiments in late-twentieth-century philosophy. The argument has been taken as decisive against hedonism in mainstream well-being theory; recent empirical work (De Brigard) has questioned whether the experience-machine intuition reflects genuine moral judgment or merely status-quo bias. Contemporary hedonists offer revised versions of the doctrine that accommodate the intuition (preference hedonism, attitudinal hedonism) without conceding the underlying point.","era":"1938-2002","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia","page":"pp. 57–58","canonical":"","quote":"THE EXPERIENCE MACHINE There are also substantial puzzles when we ask what matters other than how people's experiences feel \"from the inside.\" 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.","label":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 57–58"},{"n":2,"work":"The Examined Life","page":"pp. 104–105","canonical":"","quote":"Someone enjoys an activity to the extent he engages in the activity because of its own intrinsic properties, not simply because of what it leads to or produces later. Its intrinsic properties are not limited to felt qualities, though; this leaves open the possibility that something is enjoyed yet not pleasurable.","label":"The Examined Life, pp. 104–105"},{"n":3,"work":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia","page":"pp. 58–59","canonical":"","quote":"What else can matter to us, other than how our lives feel from the inside? Nor should you refrain because of the few moments of distress between the moment you've decided and the moment you're plugged. What's a few moments of distress compared to a lifetime of bliss (if that's what you choose), and why feel any distress at all if your decision és the best one? 'What does matter to us in addition to our experiences?","label":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 58–59"},{"n":4,"work":"The Examined Life","page":"p. 106","canonical":"","quote":"Readers who hold they would plug in to the machine should notice whether their first impulse was nor to do so, followed later by the thought that since only experiences could matter, the machine would be all right after all. Few of us really think that only a person's experiences matter.","label":"The Examined Life, p. 106"},{"n":5,"work":"Socratic Puzzles","page":"pp. 335–336","canonical":"","quote":"And they'd all be wrong. Anyone making a similar inference shouldn't have much confidence in it. Perhaps a better inference procedure would be to assume that everything that behaved like you and had the same functional and physical states as yourself was also like you in internal mental life as well.","label":"Socratic Puzzles, pp. 335–336"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-minimal-state","label":"The minimal state: is anything more extensive than the night-watchman state morally justified?"},{"slug":"the-entitlement-theory","label":"The entitlement theory: is justice a matter of historical process rather than patterned distribution?"},{"slug":"taxation-as-forced-labor","label":"Taxation as forced labor: is taxation of earnings on a par with forced labor?"},{"slug":"side-constraints","label":"Side constraints: are rights structural limits on action rather than goals to be promoted?"}]}