Value, Well-Being, and The Experience

Machine

Would You Plug In?PHI 2630

Intrinsic Value•Worth pursuing for its own sake•Valuable in itself

Extrinsic (Instrumental) Value•Worth pursuing for the sake of something else•Valuable for what it brings about

Well-Being•Happiness•The Good Life•What makes a life go well•What is intrinsically valuable in life•What would we wish for loved ones•What kind of lives do we admire

Hedonism in a Nutshell•Pleasure is the only thing that is intrinsically valuable, pain is the only thing intrinsically bad•The best life is the one with the most pleasure and the least amount of pain

Hedonism: Non-Strawman Version•Not necessarily a “doctrine of swine”• John Stuart Mill distinguished between higher and lower pleasures. •Quality of pleasure matters, not just quantity.

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Hedonism: Non-Strawman Version•Mill observed that, of those who had experienced both higher and lower pleasures, most of them preferred higher pleasures• In other words, those with the most wisdom and experience would choose higher pleasures

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The Experience Machine

Nozick’s Main Questions•“What else can matter to us, other than how our lives feel from the inside?”•“What does matter to us in addition to our experiences?”

Why NOT to plug in? (Reason 1)•DOING is better than experiencing

>overachiever

Why NOT to plug in? (Reason 2)•BEING is better than experiencing•“Plugging into the machine is a kind of suicide”

I’m pretty

awesome Actually,

you kind of don’t even

exist anymore.

Why NOT to plug in? (Reason 3)•“There is no actual contact with any deeper reality.”

The Lessons1. “What is most disturbing about [the

machines] is their living our lives for us”2. “Perhaps what we desire is to live (an

action verb) ourselves, in contact with reality”

Pleasurable experience isn’t the only intrinsic value in life. Therefore, hedonism is mistaken.

Questions•What exactly counts as this “deeper reality” that we should be in contact with?•WHY, exactly, is it better to DO and BE, rather than merely experience?•Is there something missing from a life without pain, struggle, mistakes, hard work, etc.?