The Experience Machine Revisited

1. The Experience Machine Revisited Dan Turton July 2008

2. Plan • The Experience Machine • How it (supposedly) refutes hedonism • Being precise about the argument • Counter-thought experiment • A better explanation of our reaction to the idea of getting in to the Experience Machine

3. The Experience Machine • Nozick (1974) • Aimed to show that more matters to us than how our experiences feel from the inside • Reality matters

4. Hedonism • Hedonism: only pleasure is good, only pain is bad • pleasure and not pain = happiness (or positive well-being) • Pleasure: mental state • Internalism about pleasure (traditional) • E.g. Bentham, Crisp • Externalism about pleasure • E.g. Mill, Feldman

5. The Experience Machine vs. Hedonism P1) Because we prefer our current life to a life in the Experience Machine, pleasurable experiences based on reality contribute more positively to well-being than those which are not P2) Traditional hedonism states that only how pleasurable and painful our experiences feel to us on the inside affects our well-being c) Therefore, traditional hedonism is false

6. The Target (for Refutation) • The Experience Machine thought experiment gives us good reason to think that pleasures based on reality contribute more positively to our well-being than those which are not • We chose not to get into the Experience Machine because real experiences matter more to us than fake ones

7. The Trip to Reality • Turton (2008) • Aims to show that how real our experiences are does not really matter to us • By producing a different intuition about getting into an experience machine • Intuitions are easily biased

8. Intuitions as Evidence • Woodward and Allman (2007) • One-dimensional visceral sensation (Gut feeling) • Result of probabilistic pattern recognition between current stimuli and past experiences • Susceptible to biases • Can’t introspect • Reconstruction is tough

9. Status Quo Bias • Irrational preference for an option that preserves the status quo • Endowment bias, familiarity bias, implicit egotism, risk aversion, loss aversion • The Mug Experiment • In both thought experiments we go for the status quo (not what is real)

10. Machine Failure • Nozick stipulates against machine failure • Our intuitive cognition doesn’t listen • In the Trip to Reality, it is much easier for our intuitive cognition to imagine that the machine works perfectly

11. Imaginative Resistance • Nozick doesn’t go out of his way to make the machine sound great • What did you imagine being in the Experience Machine to be like? • In the Trip to Reality, it is much easier to imagine how much better being in the machine is • But we still can’t imagine improving our most pleasurable experience

12. Moral Responsibility • Nozick stipulates against this being a factor • Our intuitive cognition doesn’t listen • In the Trip to Reality, most of our moral obligations are eliminated • A hedonist could rationally choose not to get into a machine for this reason anyway

13. The Experience Machine vs. Hedonism (Revisited) • If the ‘realness’ of our experiences doesn’t stop up from getting in the machine in the Trip to reality thought experiment, then how can it in Nozick’s Experience Machine thought experiment? • Alternate reasons (irrelevant and irrational biases) were given that explain choices in both scenarios • The original intuition is undermined

14. Conclusion • Hedonists who reluctantly changed or gave up their well-being related inclinations because of the Experience Machine can now safely return • Staunch opponents will ask for a new test, in which reality is more precisely isolated • E.g. Deceived businessman (also dealt with in my thesis)