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 feels from the inside: 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