PHL275H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Consequentialism, Experience Machine, Robert Nozick
Document Summary
Challenging hedonism: only things good in themselves are pleasure & freedom from pain) His thought experiment, the experience machine, seems to show that hedonism is false. He is claiming there are other things more valuable than pleasure and that there are other inherently valuable ends. Reality: what is the case, independent of my experience. Experience: my encounter with reality pain & pleasure are experienced. You"d be ignorant of the fact that you"re plugged in. If hedonism was true, then everyone would plug in because people only seek pleasure and the machine would give us all that we desire (maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain) Nozick presumes we wouldn"t plug in because we value something other than how our lives feel from the inside. (something other than experiencing pleasure and not experiencing pain) If hedonism were true, we"d plug into the experience machine. If hedonism were true, we only value pleasurable and pain-relieving experiences.
