HEDONISM AND NOZICK’S “EXPERIENCE MACHINE” CRITICISM OF HEDONISM 6
Running head: HEDONISM AND NOZICK’S “EXPERIENCE MACHINE” CRITICISM OF HEDONISM 1
Hedonism and Nozick’s “experience machine” criticism of hedonism
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Hedonism and Nozick’s “experience machine” criticism of hedonism
In the day to day life, people are faced with the need to make many decisions. Various factors affect the choices people make in life. In most cases, people make decisions based on the happiness or satisfaction they expect to from the decisions. This implies that the goal of every decision is meant to avoid suffering. People apply this philosophical concept without realizing it. This idea is referred to as Hedonism in philosophy. The concept has been divided into two parts; the ethical Hedonism and the psychological Hedonism. The hedonism concept may appear attractive; however, based on the criticism by philosophers such as Nozick in his work, “experience machine” is not applicable in the real world.
Ethical Hedonism holds that it is people’s moral obligation to maximize pleasure or happiness. This concept is based on Epicurus idea that emphasizes reducing pain while maximizing pleasure as a human’s goal (Williams, 2019). According to ethical hedonism, pain is bad, and people should minimize or avoid it. On the contrary, pleasure or happiness is good and people should focus on achieving it. As such, during decision-making processes, people should strive to achieve maximum pleasure. This is attributed to the fact that maximizing pleasure gives people peace of mind. Among the reasons people should also pursue happiness or pleasure is that it has value while pain is worthless. Based on this philosophical concept, all human actions should have a goal, which is happiness or pleasure. Psychological Hedonism, on the other hand, holds that humans created psychologically to desire pleasure entirely (Williams, 2019). This concept has been divided into three parts. One part is the pleasure goals, which holds that the only thing that motivates individuals to do something is happiness. The second part is a pleasant thought, which holds that people only make choices that are less destructive and are more attractive. The difference between psychological and ethical Hedonism is that, while ethical Hedonism emphasized on pleasure as the only thing that has a value that later maintains that pleasure is a goal.
Hedonism has faced criticism from various philosophers. Among them includes Nozick using his famous experiment “The Experience Machine.” This experiment demonstrates the value of being in touch with reality (Hindriks & Douven, 2016). In his experiment, the philosopher takes us through the world of imagination where experience machines exist. Through this machine, people can get any experiences they desire. For instance, when connected to the machine, people can get experiences such as being a great poet, loving people who reciprocate their love and having world peace. These are experiences that people desire because they bring pleasure; however, it cannot happen in the real world. If the machine can enable people to program their own experiences in their entire lives. According to the experiment, if one’s mind is impoverished, they can simply enhance using the machine to access biographies in the libraries. According to the experiment, people could use the imaginary machines to live their fondest dreams. Nozick ends the experiment with a question for his audience, on whether or not they would choose to the machine for the rest of their lives. He then gives a hint that by selecting the machine, one would not remember making a choice. As such, their experiences would not be ruined by thinking that their experiences are merely machine produced. Through the question posed in the experiment, Nozick gives people suggestions. One of the recommendations is that if we chose Hedonism, we chose to have things without having the real experiences of achieving them. The second suggestion from the question is that if we chose Hedonism we chose to plug into suicide. The experiment also suggests that if we embrace Hedonism we chose to be reduced to a human-created reality.
With this experiment, Nozick claims that if Hedonism is true, then people should plug into the experiment machine. According to him, Hedonism is like an imaginary machine that does not exist in reality. This is attributed to the fact that the theory only focuses on people’s subjective experiences. Based on his argument, people would not plug into the machine because they would not want to reduce themselves to an artificial realism. On the surface hedonism ways of life appear to be good. However, living life hedonist may have negative impacts on humans. For instance, according to Nozick, this life will be ultimately not satisfactory because it will hinder people from making real decisions in their lives. As a result, this will prevent them from creating real relationships. Real choices and relationships are vital parts of living a fulfilling life. Nozick argues that rational people will not choose Hedonism because they value actual life experiences rather than the virtual ones promoted by Hedonism (Hindriks & Douven, 2016). Nozick criticizes Hedonism because it hinders people from developing their own personalities by turning them into machines. He claims that Hedonism is a man-made world that only gives people limited choices instead of allowing them to experience the realities of the world. We learn from Nozick’s criticism that various things matter in life rather than just having pleasure. For instance, we learn from him that it is satisfied to experience real-life issues. Instead of just focusing on pleasure, there is a need also to make moral judgments in life.
In my opinion, I think Nozick is right. Even though happiness and pleasure excite most people, it is not the only thing people desire in life. Even if the real world has some challenges and may sometimes seem ugly, I believe that people wish to live their lives and to experience everything for themselves. I think that people would be losing out on many things if we plugged on the machine as Hedonism requires us to do. I believe that getting real pleasures instead of the fake ones would make humans happier. Among the things that Hedonism would make us miss in life include the learning experiences that people gain after failing and then finally achieving something. Hedonism skips the learning experiences and goes straight to the achievement part. Hedonism achievements of pleasure or happiness appears attractive on the outside; however, I believe that living our lives uniquely gives more pleasure. I also think that Hedonism undermines the importance of making moral judgments. For instance, it only focuses on reduces one’s pain and increasing one’s happiness without thinking about the impacts of our actions to other people. I believe that we also achieve satisfaction if we do good to others or help them achieve happiness too. However, I think Hedonism only focuses only on personal happiness, which I believe is selfish to some extent. For instance, I believe that it would be ethically wrong if we achieve happiness and the actions that led to our happiness cause pain to others. In the end will achieve happiness because will not have peace of mind knowing that we cause pain to others. I think that Hedonism only focused on one’s happiness in the world of imagination without considering the happiness of those around us. I think that Hedonism creates a notion that it is okay not to think about others as long as we are happy.
Conclusively, hedonism concepts may appear convincing because many people desire happiness; however, his idea is not applicable in the real world. According to Hedonism, people should only focus on achieving happiness or pleasure. This concept has been criticized by Nozick in his “experience machine” experiment. This experience demonstrates how Hedonism only focuses on happiness without in the imaginary world. I believe that Nozick is right since, in the real world, people not only value pleasure. They also value the learning processes they experience when overcoming their challenges.
References
Hindricks, F. & Douven, I. (2016). Nozick’s experience machine: An empirical study. Journal Philosophical Psychology. Vol 31 (2).
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09515089.2017.1406600
Williams, D. (2019). Darwinian Hedonism and the Epidemic of healthy Behavior. Cambridge University Press. New York, NY.