Lecture Supplement on Robert Nozick’s “The Experience Machine“[1] [1974]

     Copyright © 2013 Bruce W. Hauptli

As Louis Pojman notes in his introductory comment, Nozick argues against hedonistic utilitarianism by positing what he calls an “experience machine”—one which produces whatever experiences you want.  Would one want to spend one’s life “plugged into” such a machine?  Nozick thinks not, and, he thinks, this shows there is something wrong with hedonistic ethics. 

111 Nozick first posits the existence of an experience machine—one which gives us any experience we desire to have; and asks:

-“What else can matter to us, other than how our lives feel from the inside?” 

He responds that we would not “plug in” because:

-“Fist, we want to do certain things, and not just have the experience of doing them.” 

-“A second reason for not plugging in is that we want to be a certain way, to be a certain sort of person.  Someone floating in a tank is an indeterminate blob.  There is no answer to the question of what a person is like who has long been in the tank....Plugging into the machine is a kind of suicide.” 

111-112 -“Thirdly, plugging into an experience machine limits us to a man-made reality, to a world no deeper or more important than that which people can construct.  There is no actual contact with any deeper reality, though the experience of it can be simulated.” 

112 Nozick secondly posits a transformation machine—one which transforms us into whatever sort of person we would want to be.  He claims that we would still not want to “plug in.” 

-“So something matters in addition to one’s experiences and what one is like.” 

Finally, Nozick imagines a result machine—one which gives us the experiences, transforms us, and brings into being the appropriate causal results.  He claims that we would still not want to “plug in,” and that we don’t need to imagine increasingly complex sorts of machines:

-“..what we desire is to live (an active verb) ourselves, in contact with reality.  (And this, machines cannot do for us).” 

(end)

Our text contains another selection from Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia, “Side Constraints.”[2]  In it he advances a “libertarian” critique of utilitarianism which Louis Pojman characterizes as follows:

“...we have no right to be aided when we are in need, but we have the right not to be used as means to social ends. 

  Therefore, utilitarianism violates our rights by using us as a means to some end state.”[3] 

I recommend this critique to you. 

An additional source: as you consider Nozick's critique is an interesting discussion of "Cypher's Choice"--the choice made by one character in the movie The Matrix to return to return to the illusory world rather than seek his place in the "real" one.  Cf., James Prior’s “What’s So Bad About Living In The Matrix?” 

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File revised on: 09/28/2013.