PHILOSOPHY - Ethics: Hedonism and The Experience Machine [HD]

What makes our life go best? Is being happy all that matters? Is a life of blissful ignorance a good life? Or is there more to a good life than this? In this Wireless Philosophy video, Richard Rowland (University of Oxford) discusses whether we should take the blue pill in 'hedonism and the experience machine’.

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[HavidVideos]

Please tell me: Why is it better for us to do these things than to merely have the illusion of doing these things?

[williamwright]

There are several things wrong with this line of thinking.  In the first example of whether or not to keep a promise, Rowland construes Hedonism to be a short-term gratification seeking belief.  In reality, Hedonism is a consequentialist belief and therefore very much concerned with the overall pleasure/pain of a decision in the long-run.  It may suck to keep a promise, but it may be an important relationship with the possibility of more well-being if kept than if not.  Additionally, Nozick's argument about The Experience Machine provides no evidence that we should prefer the real experience over the illusion.  This being the case, I'd challenge the second premise. 

[jarhead]

I sure am glad that the closing argument didn't beg the question. That would have been incredibly frustrating for everyone and deeply embarrassing to this lecturer and his university.

[carlodominic]

There is also reverse experience machine thought experiment. You are living your pleasurable life and you are happy, you have achieved some stuff became a writer, won medals etc. and one day someone tells you that you are in the experience machine. Would you continue living your life or get out?

[carlodominic]

There is a mistake in your initial reasoning. Keeping a promise to friend in the long run actually benefits you, which opens the way for friendship and mutual trust that is helpfull in avoiding pain in the future. Eating unhealthy food is also causing pain in the future so these examples are not disproving the validity of hedonism!

[robertvondarth]

we cannot be outside of the machine, because as a brain, we are the machine

[wiiwillRule]

The guy's voice goes from soft to very loud way too much, made it difficult to listen.

[TheAgavi]

Like others have said, you can't just assert that the real experience is better than the illusory one. Take Cypher from The Matrix, for example. In his real life he is unable to find pleasure so he chooses to plug himself back into the literal experience machine that is The Matrix. In the same way, we can't all be athletes or award winning actors (some people can't even bear children), so the comparison is more than likely between having these wonderful experiences or not at all.

What about experiences that hurt other people? Inside the machine, can we kill? Can we rape? If one were inclined to enjoy these things, would it be better to do them inside or outside of the machine?

[Matt-khte]

I believe the experience is all that matters. If I have to live it organically or not this does not matter. If a synthetic experience takes the same or less time and is 100% accurate.this is superior. This synthetic experience could also be optimized where reality cannot as well as live beyond limitations the original cannot.

Sorry, I'm not convinced.

[qsync]

Being is experience. To experience is to be, is it not? What are we without experience; if being is just a coagulation of our experiences.

[spencerstephens]

So your big two arguments are that you keep the promise (forgetting longer term pleasure and pain where it might be net more enjoyable to be and have a good friend) and that you personally feel that the experience machine would be wrong (without any reason why)? Brilliant.

[chiqvism]

Support hedonism and try to live it. (to a good degree) 🙂

[Overonator]

Maybe we are already in an experience machine :)

[jgilgorri]

"But this seems wrong to us." Speak for yourself, mate. Hell, I think there may be a fairly convincing argument that having a family within the simulation is better than having a real family!

I think the experience machine is the obvious choice. Think of the opposite situation: you're on your way home one day after yet another successful and fulfilling day at the office, ready to meet your beloved, beautiful wife and brilliant kids, when some guy comes up to you and tells you that this is all a simulated reality, and that he can take you to the real world. The catch is that the real world is painful and shitty, you're actually a vagrant without a family living on dirty streets, and you came into a lab one day for a scientific experiment just to make a few bucks so you could eat that week. You have the option of returning to that life, or staying in this "false" one. What do you choose?
If you say you'd be the vagrant, or really anything less that what you are in this fake life, then I simply can not understand you. I can't fathom a good reason to leave the better life. Even if the two lives were identical, why leave this great life you know for an equally great life you're not quite as familiar with? I think 99% of people would tell the man to bugger off, and the last 1% most likely isn't thinking rationally.

[whartanto]

My friend who is a very successful businessman said that he wonders what good is all the success if he does not have the time to enjoy it, to have happiness in his life. I told him that "If all you want out of life is happiness, all you need is to start snorting dopamine and serotonin to your brain". Pleasure and Pain are merely translation of the signals that the brain processes; and with today's technology it is possible to have such experience without actual gain or damage to our biological body. I agree with most commenters here that there is no logical basis to say that 2) reality is better than simulation. But in the case of drug addiction, naturally generated pleasure is much less damaging than artifically generated pleasure.

[lucheng]

I know that Nozick says "We want to do certain things, and not just have the experience of doing them.", but why do we want more than just the experiences doing them? What matters to us in addition to the experiences? What can't we get from the experience of doing but by actually doing them?

[iDiceKingkaiserzap]

That's why we play games. The illusion is just as good as the real deal.

[philosophicalyoungmind]

Why is it better to be actually doing pleasurable things in what we would call reality? By actually doing them you're experiencing them through your senses. By fooling the senses you're still experiencing the same phenomenon. Isn't the experience all we're after? The second premise that was used to disprove hedonism needs validation. Does anyone feel the same way? Or perhaps disagree? If so why?

[PeterZeeke]

“I want to be someone important... like... an actor”

[steliosp]

pivoting from "experience" to "illusion" to justify a preconceived negation of a theory. what a waste of 4 minutes.