Robert Nozick's Experiment, The Experience Machine and the Inclusion of Meta-Pleasure

Nozick’s Experience Machine thought experience is supposed to demonstrate utilitarianism thinking of ethical hedonism. Nozick believes that pleasure is good and any component such as pain does not increase personal well-being. The Experience Machine gives a person any experience they want functioning as a tank where scientists stimulate your brain to believe that your experience is actually happen. The Experience Machine lasts for two years in which the person then decides to choose the next round of experiences for the next two years. The Experience Machine is a perfect illusion within the human mind. My strongest objection is that the Experience Machine is flawed in the sense that good and bad experiences equally influence a person's morality

Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are known for their theories about utilitarianism. Both of them agree that the ethical right thing to do would be to maximize utility in any given situation. Yet, both of them disagree when it came to defninig pleasure. Bentham’s theory generalizes pleasure as just the same type of emotion felt by anyone and in any situation. Mill’s theory on the other hand stated that there are two different types of pleasure: the higher intellectual pleasure and the lower physical pleasure

Nozick briefly discusses the nature of pleasure, as it is clearly an important element of happiness. There are pleasures of the body and mind, as well as pleasures of the emotion. They are all valued for their felt quality that what they have in common That is what a pleasure is, and is different from something like Equality, which is not valued for good feelings , but pleasure is something valued for its felt qualities.

Nozick suggests, “why should we be concerned only with how our time is filled, but not with what we are?” The truth is humans are not only concerned with what they do in life, but also with whom they become and are. The human personality develops by experiencing true and real events that are not resulted from a man made machine. We as humans have the ability to reason and understand life differently than everything else in existence. Because of this understanding of life, we understand that pleasure is not the only important thing to us. As human we have real life goals which need to be experienced through reality, not through some stimulation of our brain. Nozick makes it clear the pleasure is not intrinsically good because by denying this thought experiment, we are also denying that all we need is pleasure to live a good life.

In this essay I shall discuss how the film, 'The Matrix' (1999), engages in a form of cinematic philosophy. Specifically, I will discuss how the film can be seen as making an objection to the position held by Sidgwick (1907), who asserts that, positive states of consciousness, or, pleasure, is ultimately the only thing inherently valuable, which in turn becomes the basis of his utilitarian ethics. In doing so, I consider The Matrix to be a cinematic adaptation of Robert Nozick's (1974) 'experience machine' thought experiment, which the film-makers bring to life, developing it into a narrative that pulls heavily on our moral emotions. However, although the film-makers skilfully elicit the appropriate emotional responses from viewers, ensuring

A machine determines what people will buy, how they will act or look and even date which could cause people to suffer from boredom and go tired of the same stuff as always. In the previous, society is controlled by a machine that surrounds their mind with the aspects they most like. When Tilly says “You are scheduled to attend the kickoff meeting for the Davis case at eleven, which means you’ll get a lunch paid for by the firm. I suggest you go light on the breakfast, maybe just a banana.” (Ken Liu, 1), When Tilly suggests Sai what to eat, reveals people possess a lack of thought, which produces people to become ignorant by being told how to act, they stop thinking how they live their lives. Society trust in what their phones tell them is best for them and what will make them happy, they believe and let themselves manipulate by artificial intelligence to feel they are making sure they are going to become happy with the decisions they make. The idea of people controlled by technology leads to depression after some time, because makes people feel alone. In Harrison Bergeron society tells the people how they have to look, when the author mentions And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, “keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snuggle-tooth random.”(Kurt Vonnegut) the previous reinforces the idea of a society manipulated and limited to look certain way, what the author says leads to loneliness because people can’t be themselves. People also have a lack of thought because they can’t have their own decisions which produces them to depend on

In addition, Kupperman evaluates the value of pleasure through the Buddhist Argument as well as Csikszentmihalyi’s “flow” argument. Although it may seem that since we want more pleasure in life, that value of pleasure may depend on how much

The desire satisfaction theory accommodates the thought which hedonism does not accommodate. According to the desire satisfaction theory, our lives go better when the world actually is a certain way, and doesn’t merely appear to be a certain way. An individual experiences pleasure when the desires are satisfied but it is not a guarantee that the desires cause pleasure.

Utilitarianism is a philosophical theory. It concerns how to evaluate a large range of things that involve choices communities or groups face. These choices include policies, laws, human’s rights, moral codes,

He would argue that we do not just want to feel a certain way, but also be a certain way. He illustrates this by using the example of the experience machine. He wants us to think of the experience machine as a big tank that we are in essence floating around in. While in this tank we can “reprogram” any and all of our experiences, no matter what they are. For example, you could program the machine to change your job or change your set of values. You could even program the machine to seem real to your own life, but change all of the “lows” to “highs” and all of the negative aspects to positives- this way, from the inside you feel as good as is possible. Upon entering the machine, your life would be filled with happiness and you would feel as tremendously great. If you would choose not to enter, you would of course have to focus on reality and care more than about how things feel to you on the inside. Nozick argues that this idea would be nice, but for some reason, most people are so concerned with reality and all that it entails that they would not choose to have only feelings. Human beings want to experience happiness, and we desire for most if not all of the happiness to come from our real life

The hedonist would argue that pleasure is the only intrinsic good in life, that joy and suffering are the only distinguishing marks of things beneficial or harmful to the human being. To the hedonist, life is like the common balance scale with suffering on one side and pleasure on the other. With pleasure being inversely related to suffering, in order to maximize the good of life, the hedonist strives to minimize suffering, thereby maximizing net pleasure (pleasure minus suffering).

In part one of our book, “The Good Life,” we studied five different philosopher’s viewpoints on what is needed in order for a person to have a good, fulfilling life. They all included the concepts of pleasure and happiness to some extent in their theories, but they all approached the ideas in different ways. The two hedonists we studied, Epicurus and John Stuart Mill, place heavy emphasis on the importance of pleasure. They both believe that pleasure is a necessity in the ideal life. Jean Kazez agreed with their viewpoints in her theory and said that happiness was a necessity for a good life. Epicurus and Mill also argue that there is nothing else that we ultimately desire beyond pleasure and that it is an intrinsic good.

In his article, John Stuart Mill defends the idea that people should pursue pleasure because it is the only thing that they will ever desire and, therefore, the only thing that will make them happy. Mill measures the value of pleasure by looking at the majority’s’ opinion who have experienced both types of pleasures in question. Mill believes that the higher level of pleasure would bring the most satisfaction. He makes the argument that “no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool”. Therefore, Mill assumes that no one would want to go down into a lower class, because humans possess a sense of pride and dignity. What makes a person happy can be measured by the satisfaction they feel brought by the thing they desire.

Happiness even if identified with pleasure , is analyzed in terms of very little hedonistic Mill distinguishes between higher pleasures and lower pleasures and so introducted a qualitative distinction

He also criticizes the confusing nature of the hypothetical experiences, stating that it not purely a machine that generates pleasure, but an offering of fully realised experiences and every feeling that may come with them. If this is correct, then Nozick’s argument is misleading, because it appears that the experience machine could in fact offer all aspects of experiences that one would expect in reality, including struggles and failures, as long as the resulting experience is an ultimately pleasurable one. This calls into question what Nozick even believes pleasure to