mind & identity · new to this edition
the experience machine
a lifetime of any pleasure you choose, indistinguishable from the real thing. would you plug in?
Many people, when pressed, say that what ultimately matters in life is how it <em>feels from the inside</em>: that the good life is, at bottom, a matter of pleasant experience over painful. Robert Nozick built a machine to test whether you really believe that.
would you plug in for the rest of your life?
Neuroscientists offer you a machine. Float in a tank, electrodes to your cortex, and it will give you any sequence of experiences you wish (writing the great novel, falling in love, climbing the mountain, raising a family) each one as vivid and convincing as real life. You will not know you are in the tank; from the inside it will simply be your life, and a wonderful one.
Once you plug in, you cannot come back, and you will not remember choosing. You can pre-programme decades of experience, tuned to your deepest desires. Do you enter?
further reading
- hedonism stanford encyclopedia of philosophy
- experience machine wikipedia