(intro music)
Hi, I'm Richard Rowland.
I'm a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Oxford.
I want to talk about Hedonism and the Experience Machine.
Hedonism is a view about what things are good for us.
According to hedonism, the only thing that is good for us
is pleasure and the only thing that is bad for us is pain.
One good reason to accept Hedonism
is that if doing something doesn't give you pleasure
or enable you to avoid pain,
then it doesn't seem that that thing is good for you.
Suppose that you've made a promise to a friend,
but that keeping that promise
wouldn't give you any pleasure at all.
In fact, it would cause you pain.
In this case, although it might be morally good
for you to keep your promise,
and because it's morally good for you to keep your promise,
there might be some reasons for you to keep your promise,
it doesn't seem that it would be good for you at all
to keep that promise.
The most serious problems that hedonism faces
comes from a thought experiment.
This thought experiment is due to Robert Nozick.
Imagine that there is a machine,
and you can get into this machine and experience doing
whatever you want to do.
And once you're in the machine,
you won't know that you're only in the machine
having the experience of doing what you want to do.
Rather, you'll believe that you're in fact
doing what you want to do.
And so you can get into the Experience Machine
and have the experience of being a fantastic actor
or actress, performing in some amazing plays
and winning lots of awards for your fantastic performances.
You can have the experience of, the mere experience of
being an author and writing the next
great American novel.
You can have the experience of being a world-class athlete.
Now crucially, your experiences in the machine
and actually doing these things will be indistinguishable.
If you actually did these things,
they'd feel just like they feel in the machine.
And in virtue of this, you'll get the same amount
of pleasure from having the mere experience
of doing these things as you would from in fact
doing these things.
Now the question is, is it better for us to do these things
outside of the machine or is it just as good for us
to have the mere experience of doing these things?
That is, is it better for us to in fact be
a fantastic actor or actress,
play lots incredible roles,
and win lots of awards, or is it just as good for us
to have the mere experience of being
a fantastic actor or actress?
Is it just as good for us to have the mere experience
of being a world-class athlete or is it better
for us to in fact be a world-class athlete?
And is it just as good for us to have the mere experience
of having a child, of having a family,
or is it better for us to in fact have a child
and in fact have a family?
If hedonism is true, it's just as good for us
to have the mere experience of having a child
and having a family as it is for us to in fact
have a child and have a family.
But this seems wrong to us.
It seems to us that it's better for us
to in fact have a child, have a family,
or say in fact be an actor or actress,
and in fact be a world-class athlete,
than it is for us to have the mere experiences
of doing these things.
We can put this into a more formal argument
against hedonism.
According to hedonism, it's no better for us
to have a family or to be an amazing athlete
than to have an illusion of having a family
or to have an illusion of being an amazing athlete.
But it is better for us to do these things
than to merely have the illusion of doing these things
and so hedonism is false.
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