Can a person’s degree of wellbeing be affected by things that do not enter her experience? Experientialists deny that it can, extra-experientialists affirm it. The debate between these two positions has focused on an argument against experientialism—the experience machine objection—but few arguments exist for it. I present an argument for experientialism. It builds on the claim that theories of wellbeing should not only state what constitutes wellbeing, but also which entities are welfare subjects. Moreover, the claims it makes about these (...) two issues should have a certain coherence with each other. I argue that if we accept a particular plausible answer to the second question—namely that all and only sentient beings are welfare subjects—extra-experientialist theories face a problem of coherence. While this problem can typically be solved, doing so will involve steps that are unattractive. On experientialist theories, on the other hand, the answer to these questions cohere perfectly. (shrink)

The concept of well-being is increasingly gaining acceptance as an object of science, and many different types of well-being measures have been developed. A debate has emerged about which measures are able to capture well-being successfully. An important underlying problem is that there is no unified conceptual framework about the nature of well-being—a hotly debated topic of philosophical discussion. I argue that while there is little agreement about the nature of well-being in philosophy, there is an important agreement on some (...) important principles relevant for its measurement. I argue that well-being science has good reasons to accommodate these principles, but currently fails to do so. (shrink)

While Nozick and his sympathizers assume there is a widespread anti-hedonist intuition to prefer reality to an experience machine, hedonists have marshalled empirical evidence that shows such an assumption to be unfounded. Results of several experience machine variants indicate there is no widespread anti-hedonist intuition. From these findings, hedonists claim Nozick's argument fails as an objection to hedonism. This article suggests the argument surrounding experience machines has been misconceived. Rather than eliciting intuitions about what is prudentially valuable, these intuitive judgements (...) are instead calculations about prudential pay-offs and trade-offs. This position can help explain the divergence of intuitions people have about experience machines. (shrink)

It is widely held that the Experience Machine is the basis of a serious objection to Hedonistic theories of welfare. It is also widely held that Desire Satisfactionist theories of welfare can readily avoid problems stemming from the Experience Machine. But in this paper, we argue that if the Experience Machine poses a serious problem for Hedonism, it also poses a serious problem for Desire Satisfactionism. We raise two objections to Desire Satisfactionism, each of which relies on the Experience Machine. (...) The first is very much like the well-known Experience Machine objection to Hedonism. The second asks whether someone who accepts Desire Satisfactionism should want to form a desire to plug into the Experience Machine. (shrink)

Theories of well-being purport to identify the features of lives, and of intervals within lives, in virtue of which some people are high in well-being and others are low in well-being. They also purport to identify the properties that make some events or states of affairs good for a person and other events or states of affairs bad for a person. This article surveys some of the main theories of well-being, with an emphasis on work published since the turn of (...) the century. (shrink)

The experience machine was traditionally thought to refute hedonism about welfare. In recent years, however, the tide has turned: many philosophers have argued not merely that the experience machine doesn't rule out hedonism, but that it doesn't count against it at all. I argue for a moderate position between those two extremes: although the experience machine doesn't decisively rule out hedonism, it provides us with some reason to reject it. I also argue for a particular way of using the experience (...) machine to argue against hedonism – one that appeals directly to intuitions about the welfare values of experientially identical lives rather than to claims about what we value or claims about whether we would, or should, plug into the machine. The two issues are connected: the conviction that the experience machine leaves hedonism unscathed is partly due to neglect of the best way to use the experience machine. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.How to Use the Experience MachineVolume 28, Issue 3EDEN LIN DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820815000424Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. How to Use the Experience MachineVolume 28, Issue 3EDEN LIN DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820815000424Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. How to Use the Experience MachineVolume 28, Issue 3EDEN LIN DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820815000424Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

Recent evidence suggests that participants without extensive training in philosophy (so-called lay people) have difficulties responding consistently when confronted with Robert Nozick’s Experience Machine thought experiment. For example, some of the participants who reject the experience machine for themselves would still advise a stranger to enter the machine permanently. This and similar findings have been interpreted as evidence for implicit biases that prevent lay people from making rational decisions about whether the experience machine is preferable to real life, which might (...) have consequences for one of the strongest objections to philosophical hedonism (the view that pleasure is the only intrinsic value). Against this consequence, it has been argued that expert philosophers are immune to such biases (the so-called expertise defense). In this paper, I report empirical evidence against this expertise defense. (shrink)

Experientialist accounts of wellbeing are those accounts of wellbeing that subscribe to the experience requirement. Typically, these accounts are hedonistic. In this article I present the claim that hedonism is not the most plausible experientialist account of wellbeing. The value of experience should not be understood as being limited to pleasure, and as such, the most plausible experientialist account of wellbeing is pluralistic, not hedonistic. In support of this claim, I argue first that pleasure should not be understood as a (...) broad term to describe valuable experiences generally. I then analyze responses to the main argument against a monistic view on the value of experience: the philosophy of swine objection. I argue that such responses deviate from the central hedonistic view that only pleasure and pain matter for wellbeing. I then argue that the argument can be avoided on a pluralistic account, and formulate a plausible candidate for an account of pluralistic experientialism, in which, besides pleasure, non-hedonic aspects of experience like novelty, compassion, and aesthetic value also contribute to wellbeing. (shrink)

In this paper, I reconstruct Robert Nozick's experience machine objection to hedonism about well-being. I then explain and briefly discuss the most important recent criticisms that have been made of it. Finally, I question the conventional wisdom that the experience machine, while it neatly disposes of hedonism, poses no problem for desire-based theories of well-being.

Experience machines, popularized in print by Robert Nozick and on the screen by the Wachowskis’ film The Matrix, provide highly or perfectly realistic experiences that are more pleasant and less painful than those generated in real life.1 The recent surge in virtual reality and neuro-prosthetic technologies is making the creation of real-world experience machines seem inevitable and perhaps imminent.2 Given the likelihood of the near-future availability of such machines, it behooves ethicists to consider the moral status of their potential uses. (...) In this chapter, we investigate the use of experience machines in palliative and end-of-life care situations. We pair up various kinds of experience machines with patients in a range of conditions, to illuminate the moral problems and benefits of using experience machines in this way. We argue that the use of Nozickian experience machines to treat patients in most conditions would be morally problematic, most notably for the negative effects on patients’ characters and real-world relationships. Informed by this initial moral analysis, we describe an experience machine that is more closely related to a virtual reality game, and argue that it can avoid the moral problems encountered by Nozickian experience machines. In fact, we argue that this new kind of experience machine could improve some patients’ characters and relationships with real-world people. We conclude that some kinds of experience machines could benefit many patients, especially those in extreme pain and those not in the position to meaningfully interact with their loved ones in reality. We also note that certain kinds of experience machines could be useful for religious people, for whom the range of palliative and end-of-life care options is often thought to be relatively narrow. (shrink)