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Value, Well-Being, and The Experience Machine Would You Plug In?

Value, Well-Being, and The Experience Machine Would You Plug In?. PHI 2630. Intrinsic Value. Worth pursuing for its own sake Valuable in itself. Extrinsic (Instrumental) Value. Worth pursuing for the sake of something else Valuable for what it brings about. Well-Being. Happiness

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Value, Well-Being, and The Experience Machine Would You Plug In?

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  1. Value, Well-Being, and The Experience MachineWould You Plug In? PHI 2630

  2. Intrinsic Value Worth pursuing for its own sake Valuable in itself

  3. Extrinsic (Instrumental) Value Worth pursuing for the sake of something else Valuable for what it brings about

  4. Well-Being Happiness The Good Life What makes a life go well What is intrinsically valuable in life What would we wish for loved ones What kind of lives do we admire

  5. Hedonism in a Nutshell Pleasure is the only thing that is intrinsically valuable, pain is the only thing intrinsically bad The best life is the one with the most pleasure and the least amount of pain

  6. Hedonism: Non-Strawman Version > Not necessarily a “doctrine of swine” John Stuart Mill distinguished between higher and lower pleasures. Quality of pleasure matters, not just quantity.

  7. Hedonism: Non-Strawman Version > Mill observed that, of those who had experienced both higher and lower pleasures, most of them preferred higher pleasures In other words, those with the most wisdom and experience would choose higher pleasures

  8. The Experience Machine

  9. Nozick’s Main Questions “What else can matter to us, other than how our lives feel from the inside?” “What does matter to us in addition to our experiences?”

  10. Why NOT to plug in? (Reason 1) > overachiever DOING is better than experiencing

  11. Why NOT to plug in? (Reason 2) I’m pretty awesome • Actually, you kind of don’t even exist anymore. BEING is better than experiencing “Plugging into the machine is a kind of suicide”

  12. Why NOT to plug in? (Reason 3) “There is no actual contact with any deeper reality.”

  13. The Lessons • “What is most disturbing about [the machines] is their living our lives for us” • “Perhaps what we desire is to live (an action verb) ourselves, in contact with reality” Pleasurable experience isn’t the only intrinsic value in life. Therefore, hedonism is mistaken.

  14. Questions What exactly counts as this “deeper reality” that we should be in contact with? WHY, exactly, is it better to DO and BE, rather than merely experience? Is there something missing from a life without pain, struggle, mistakes, hard work, etc.?

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