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The Good Life and the Life That’s Good for You: A Response to the Experience Machine

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Notes

  1. Dan Weijers and Vanessa Schouten (2013) list more than 30 authors who present the experience machine as a “knock-down refutation” of hedonism (p. 462).

  2. Some theorists say pleasure and pain determine welfare, while others give this role to happiness and suffering. Others may refer to entirely different mental states. I will use “pleasure and pain” as shorthand for experiences that improve and worsen welfare, respectively.

  3. However, some hedonists disagree. For instance, Fred Feldman (2004) presents “truth adjusted” hedonism. On this account, a false pleasure contributes a fractional amount to welfare (pp. 108 – 123). So, on Feldman’s account, living the best possible life requires maximizing the right kind of pleasures.

  4. I use “qualities” and “properties” interchangeably in these phrases.

  5. I quote this argument from p. 315, but I have formatted it differently.

  6. Of course, this makes Yolanda appear quite strange to others. As a result, Zed is one of her only friends.

  7. I lack the space to defend the assumption that posthumous harm is impossible. For some arguments in favor of this claim, see Steven Luper (2004) and Douglas Portmore (2007)

  8. Assuming that it did not deserve publication, would not raise the profile of the journal if published, etc.

  9. This is a modification of L.W. Sumner’s (1996, p. 127) statement which in turn is derived from James Griffin’s (1986, p. 13) description. Parfit (1984, pp 501-2) also notes that Objective theories of welfare are implausible unless they require that someone enjoy the experience of pursuing the good, a distinct but similar claim.

  10. Ben Bramble (2016, pp. 87-90) argues that the experience requirement should motivate us to accept hedonism. However, Bramble takes it for granted that the only way in which can something you experience can affect welfare is via pain/pleasure. My present argument differs in that I do not share this assumption, and I am only using the experience requirement to argue that welfare is a matter of intrinsic properties, not that hedonism is true.

  11. Alternatively, one could be elected president with a majority in the House of Representatives, provided that no candidate reaches 270 votes in the electoral college.

  12. I say “right kind of change” simply to point out that not all changes in intrinsic properties change one’s level of welfare. For instance, I almost certainly have at least one more gray hair on my head than I did last month. This is a change in my intrinsic properties. But this does not seem to change my level of welfare.

  13. This is related to, although distinct from, the claim that the distribution of welfare across one’s life may make a difference to one’s overall welfare. See J.D. Velleman (1991, pp. 58 – 61) and Stephen Campbell (2015) for discussion.

  14. Nozick (2013) asks readers to not worry about “staying unplugged to serve [others]” since they may also enter the machine (p. 43). In the Examined Life (1989)¸ he states that friendly, trustworthy alien offer all humans the opportunity to connect – so we do not need to stay behind to help others (p. 105). Suppose that we do not violate our obligations by connecting. Nonetheless, a life on the machine seems lacking simply because one no longer performs beneficent acts themselves.

  15. See Daniel Kahneman (2011, pp. 304 – 5) for a brief discussion of the status quo bias.

  16. However, Weijers (2012) argues that, on Smith’s criteria, most thought experiments would not provide reliable conclusions; few, if any, have experience of the situation in any given thought experiment As a result, much of ethical thought would need to be discarded on Smith’s view.

  17. My thanks to a reviewer for emphasizing the need for clarification here.

  18. Crisp and Hewitt appeal to both learned associations and evolutionary factors in their arguments. However Silverstein relies solely on learned associations.

  19. For simplicity, I focus on the connection to pleasure/plain rather than reproductive fitness. Nonetheless, my critique applies to both. Simply replace all instances of “pleasure and pain” with “reproductive fitness” and sub out “psychological hedonism” for “evolutionary motivationism”.

  20. See Weijers (2021). What I call “psychological hedonism” Weijers refers to as “motivational hedonism”.

  21. I am indebted to a reviewer for making this connection.

  22. Chad Stevenson (2018) argues that a bipartite conception of welfare can explain differing intuitions about the experience machine. However, despite citing Kagan, he takes it for granted that this distinction is internal to welfare, rather than distinguishing between welfare and some other prudential category. Regardless, my purpose is not to argue against Stevenson’s view but merely to demonstrate that hedonists can make a similar claim.

  23. Defenders of the Status Quo Bias argument may argue that differences emerge because some, particularly those with philosophical training, have the expertise necessary to overcome their initial biases. However, appealing to expert judgment does not help the hedonist. In a study of philosopher and non-philosopher responses to three EMCs, Guido Löhr (2019) found that the only statistically significant differences between these groups were that philosophers showed more consistency in their responses across cases and were more likely to reject the experience machine. This latter finding is largely due to a significantly greater rate of rejection in one particular case. So, it seems that expertise may make people more negative towards the experience machine. However, Löhr also found no significant difference in the rate at which philosophers and non-philosophers cited reasons which the thought experiment stipulated against to support their judgment against the experience machine. Thus, he suggests it may simply be that experts are still unable to avoid their biases and are merely influenced by the orthodox position in their field.

  24. Credit to a reviewer for suggesting these accounts may be integrated.

  25. Thank you to a reviewer for pressing me to clarify this point.

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Acknowledgments

My gratitude to Christopher Morgan-Knapp, Charles Goodman and Aaron Schultz for their comments on earlier drafts. Additional thanks to two anonymous reviewers for their insightful critiques. I also wish to thank my colleagues, including but not limited to Andrew Towers, Jeff Hastings, Coleen Watson, Jim Lethbridge and Katrina England, who undoubtedly contributed to this paper through many philosophical discussions.

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    Nicholas Kreuder

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Kreuder, N. The Good Life and the Life That’s Good for You: A Response to the Experience Machine. J Value Inquiry (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-023-09968-z

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