CAS PH 150 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Experience Machine, Bad Life
4 Oct 2018
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Specialized in personal identity, rationality and ethics. A great one for generating new questions. Wrote reasons and persons (1984), very in uential work. Parfait explores a number of possibilities and wants to nd out which one he likes best. The best life is the most pleasurable one. What i desire is not what you desire. Certain things are good or bad for us, regardless of whether we desire them (or desire to avoid them) and regardless of whether they bring us pleasure. The best life is lled with many objectively good things and few-to-no objectively bad things. There are two important elements of human life: pleasure and pain. The best life is the one that achieves the best balance of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. Compare the pleasures of satisfying an intense thirst or lust, listening to music, solving an intellectual problem, reading a tragedy and knowing that one"s child is happy.
