Does Nozick’s ‘experience machine’ thought experiment and the

promise of pure hedonism tempt you as a rational action?

Barry Morgan
A rational action is normative i.e. it is how one
ought to act given practical reasons.
it requires:
A rationally held belief
linked to:
A rational goal
together forming
a rational intention to act
 Hedonism
Is the notion we ought to strive for the goal or final value of:

Happiness or Pleasure
(either our own or that of others)
 The Experience Machine
 “Suppose that there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you
desired. 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. Should you plug into
this machine for life…?”
 Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp 42-45
 Smart, J. & Williams, B. (1973). Utilitarianism for and Against , pp 18-21.

 Disclaimers:
 Ignore responsibilities to family etc.
 Don’t realise it’s not real
 Still exercise autonomy
 Machine works perfectly
 The Experience Machine vs.
Hedonism
 Internalist mental state theories of wellbeing = ‘hedonism’
 “Now if pleasure were our greatest good, then we would all volunteer to be
hooked for life to this machine… But surely very few people would
volunteer.”
 Kymlicka, W. (1990). Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction, p 13.

1. If pleasure = g. good, then we’d plug in

2. We would not plug in
3. Therefore, pleasure ≠ g. good

 But is premise 1 true?

 It assumes our judgements about the EMTE are based on a rational comparison
of lots of pleasure with average pleasure
 Is premise 2 true for other EMTEs?
 Intuitions and Judgments
 Judgments are affected by intuitions, but it’s hard to say when and by how much
because intuitive cognition is opaque
 How easily does ‘the reason’ come?
 It’s also hard to know what causes the intuition (and therefore how useful it is)
 Reconstruction via reverse engineering
 Reconstruction often fails when we only consider the factors that are stipulated in the thought
experiment as the possible causes of the intuition.
 Since intuitive cognition uses pattern recognition, irrelevant aspects of the triggered past
experiences can affect the intuition.
 Experiments have caught people out confabulating / being dumbfounded
 Biases – The problem with intuitive cognition (and judgments heavily influenced by it)
 Debunking Intuitions

 David Sobel: the credibility of intuitions elicited from contemplation of thought experiments
can be undermined by “telling a convincing story about the genesis of such intuitions that
would explain why we have them while revealing them to be misleading” (2002, p. 244).
 Tweaks and reversals
 Armchair, hallway, and experimental testing
 Imaginative Resistance

 Imaginative resistance = consciously, or unconsciously, rejecting any of the

stipulations (or implied features) of a thought experiment.
 Machine underperformance
 Machine malfunction
 Not worrying about loved ones
 Also the opposite - overactive imagination.
 “floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain,”
 “plug into this machine”
 (My emphasis, Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p 42.)
 Nozick’s Experience Machine

A perfectly designed machine that gives whatever pleasurable experiences you could ever want.
Once in the machine it is impossible to distinguish between the experience inside and that outside the
machine
He then asks would you commit to the machine rather than real life?

Nozick argues you’d not enter because:

• We want to ‘do’ not just experience

• We want to ‘be’ not just exist
• We want a real ‘reality’ not just one we fabricate
 Experimental philosophy
• emerging paradigm in philosophy
• generates empirical evidence
but :
• risk of bias e.g.
• Imaginative resistance
• Maintenance of status quo
in addition:
• Who should be experimented upon?
• the professional philosopher?
• or the lay-person acting with intuition?
Weijers argues a new improved experience machine experiment

• He claims status quo bias is removed

• He seeks qualitative explanations of the binary yes/no answer
• Whilst not conclusive regarding internalised notions of well being
• Overall participants thought a stranger ought to ‘plug in’

Psych-O-Trend
Whilst Weijers ‘improves’ upon Nozick by removing some bias, I still argue the goal of the
experiment i.e. happiness is flawed as a rational goal because:

• The certainty of pleasure removes the excitement of risk or uncertainty

• Pleasure is meaningless in isolation it must be measured against misery
• It is a one off choice committing to the machine for ever
References
Barber, A. (2014) ‘Reason in Action’, The Open University, Milton Keynes.
De Brigard,F. (2014 [2010]) ‘Reading 2: De Brigard’s empirical case against Nozick’s argument’ in
Barber,A. (ed) ‘Reason in Action’, The Open University, Milton Keynes pp 147-153
Kauppinen,A. (2016) ‘Book 3: Reason in Action. Kauppinen on Nozick’s experience machine’,
A333 Key questions in philosophy. The Open University [Online] Available at:
https://learn2.open.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/1727802/mod_resource/content/1/ebook_a333_book3_kaup
pinen_transcript_l3.pdf (accessed 7 January 2017).
Nozick,R. (2014 [1974]) ‘Reading 1: Nozick and the experience machine’ in Barber,A. (ed)
‘Reason in Action’, The Open University, Milton Keynes pp 145-146
Weijers, D. 2014. Nozick's experience machine is dead, long live the experience
machine! Philosophical Psychology, 27(4), pp.513-535. [Online] Available at:
http://www.tandfonline.com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/doi/pdf/10.1080/09515089.2012.757889?
needAccess=true (Accessed 7 January 2017)
Woollard,F. (2016) ‘Book 3: Reason in Action. Woollard on intuitions in moral philosophy’, A333
Key questions in philosophy. The Open University [Online] Available at:
https://learn2.open.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/1727801/mod_resource/content/1/ebook_a333_book3_wool
lard_transcript_l3.pdf (accessed 7 January 2017).