8. The Experience Machine

2015 ◽  
pp. 65-70
Keyword(s):  
Experience Machine

scholarly journals The Experience Machine: Existential Reflections on Virtual Worlds

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Gualeni
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Robert Nozick ◽  
Experience Machine ◽  
Technical Reproducibility ◽  
Self Discovery ◽  
Digital Simulations

Problems and questions originally raised by Robert Nozick in his famous thought experiment ‘The Experience Machine’ are frequently invoked in the current discourse concerning virtual worlds. Having conceptualized his Gedankenexperiment in the early seventies, Nozick could not fully anticipate the numerous and profound ways in which the diffusion of computer simulations and video games came to affect the Western world.This article does not articulate whether or not the virtual worlds of video games, digital simulations, and virtual technologies currently actualize (or will actualize) Nozick’s thought experiment. Instead, it proposes a philosophical reflection that focuses on human experiences in the upcoming age of their ‘technical reproducibility’.In pursuing that objective, this article integrates and supplements some of the interrogatives proposed in Robert Nozick’s thought experiment. More specifically, through the lenses of existentialism and philosophy of technology, this article tackles the technical and cultural heritage of virtual reality, and unpacks its potential to function as a tool for self-discovery and self-construction. Ultimately, it provides an interpretation of virtual technologies as novel existential domains. Virtual worlds will not be understood as the contexts where human beings can find completion and satisfaction, but rather as instruments that enable us to embrace ourselves and negotiate with various aspects of our (individual as well as collective) existence in previously-unexperienced guises.

Unfelt Harm

Dead Wrong ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 16-58
Author(s):  
David Boonin
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Experience Machine ◽  
Central Argument

This chapter provides an extensive defense of the first premise of the book’s central argument: the claim that it is possible for an act to wrongfully harm a person while they are alive even if the act has no effect on the person’s conscious experiences. The chapter begins by offering a series of thought experiments designed to motivate this claim, including a version of Nozick’s famous experience machine. It then identifies a series of objections that can be raised against the use of such thought experiments in support of this claim and argues that all of them can be successfully overcome.

scholarly journals J. S. Mill's Conception of Utility

Utilitas ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
BEN SAUNDERS
Keyword(s):  
Experience Machine

Mill's most famous departure from Bentham is his distinction between higher and lower pleasures. This article argues that quality and quantity are independent and irreducible properties of pleasures that may be traded off against each other – as in the case of quality and quantity of wine. I argue that Mill is not committed to thinking that there are two distinct kinds of pleasure, or that ‘higher pleasures’ lexically dominate lower ones, and that the distinction is compatible with hedonism. I show how this interpretation not only makes sense of Mill but allows him to respond to famous problems, such as Crisp's Haydn and the oyster and Nozick's experience machine.

scholarly journals Hedonism and the Experience Machine

2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Barber
Keyword(s):  
Experience Machine
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