The Experience Machine

The Value of Pleasure

Is pleasure the only good thing there is? Some philosophers have thought so. Take anything you enjoy — going on vacation, eating a delicious pizza, reading a book. These are all things that cause pleasure, and that seems to be what makes them enjoyable. Reasoning in this way, the philosopher Jeremy Bentham concluded that pleasure is “the only good” and pain “without exception, the only evil”.

Thought Experiment

The Machine

To test this kind of view, the philosopher Robert Nozick developed the following thought experiment:

Suppose there was an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Super-duper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. While in the tank you won’t know that you’re there; you’ll think that it’s all actually happening.

Would you plug in? As Nozick asks, “What else can matter to us, other than how our lives feel from the inside?”

What Else Could Matter?

Nozick notes that we seem to value doing certain things, not just having the experience of doing them. “In the case of certain experiences,” he says, “it is only because first we want to do the actions that we want the experiences of doing them or thinking we’ve done them.”

Suppose you solved a puzzle in your dream, then woke up to realize that you hadn’t actually completed it. It seems like some part of your accomplishment would go missing. You didn’t really do what you were proud of having “accomplished” in your dream. You didn’t actually do anything at all!

“We want to be a certain way,” Nozick says, “to be a certain sort of person” with a distinctive personality and moral character — but plugging into the machine seems to preclude this. As Nozick puts it:

“Someone floating in a tank is an indeterminate blob. There is no answer to the question of what a person is like who has been long in the tank. Is he courageous, kind, intelligent, witty, loving? It’s not merely that it’s difficult to tell; there’s no way he is. Plugging into the machine is a kind of suicide.”

If we plug in, we’re limited to a human-created reality. And while this might not be terrible for a few hours (we often waste this much time on our phones, or immersed in a television show), we value living in a world that wasn’t created by beings like ourselves, with limited imaginations, time, and creative energy.

“Plugging into an experience machine limits us to a world no deeper or more important than that which people can construct. There is no actual contact with any deeper reality; but many persons desire to leave themselves open to such contact, and to a plumbing of deeper significance. This clarifies the intensity of the conflict over psychoactive drugs, which some view as mere local experience machines, and others view as avenues to a deeper reality; what some view as equivalent to surrender to the experience machine, others view as following one of the reasons not to surrender!”

What Does the Thought Experiment Show?

In philosophy, we often use thought experiments like Nozick’s example of the Experience Machine to help us reflect on more abstract questions. In this case, considering what you would do if you had the option to plug into the Experience Machine can lead you to more general insights about what matters to you in life, what ingredients are needed in a good life, and more.

Nozick’s take on the thought experiment is that it shows that we care about more than simply having certain kinds of experiences. And he thinks parallel thought experiments can help us learn even more about what we value:

The Transformation Machine would transform you into any kind of person you’d like to be.
The Result Machine would produce whatever results the actions you experience yourself doing while in the Experience Machine would have if you had actually done them.

Would you be any more willing to plug into the Experience Machine if you could also use one (or both) of these machines beforehand? (For example, you could use the Transformation Machine to transform yourself into a highly talented doctor, use the Result Machine to produce a cure for the common cold, and then use the Experience Machine to give yourself the experience of discovering the cure through your own research. Would you find as much value in this as you would in actually training to become a doctor and discovering the cure through your own work?)

Reflecting on questions like these, Nozick thinks, reveals that our most central desires — to have certain experiences, to be a certain type of person, to bring about certain outcomes — only have force in the context of the actual lives we are living. As he puts it, “Perhaps what we desire is to live ourselves, in contact with reality. And this, machines cannot do for us.“