I wrote something to post in my Philo forums that I thought was quite interesting. I added in a 'context' mini section so that people who do not take my philo module will understand it. It's a rather long write-up, so.. be prepared :p
Context:
There is an article about 'hedonism', which is the concept that humans are only interested in pursuing pleasure and avoiding suffering. (this is a very loose definition, there are more sub-categories of this and further elaboration/clarification that I won't go into, you just need to know this definition to understand what I'm going to say)
So the author(Roger Crisp) presents an analogy of an Experience Machine to counter hedonism. Let's suppose there is this new scientific device, called the Experience Machine. What it can do is when you are plugged into it, it allows you to experience all the pleasures that you would experience in the real world, with no suffering at all. In fact, it lets you experience this forever and ever. And you won't know that you are actually plugged in, you will think it is all real.
Will you want to plug in?
Most people would say 'no', and Crisp suggests some reasons for this, that it is because you want to have the feeling of accomplishment of doing something for real.. and some other reasons I don't quite get.
I didn't get why people would say no though. And as such, my dissertion begins:
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So we all know the Experience machine analogy - and the question is
"Do you want to plug into the experience machine?"
A) Yes, I want to plug in
B) No, I do not want to plug in, I want to stay in my present life.
and most of us would choose B, and NOT to be plugged into such a machine. And why? The reason the article gave was that we desired the accomplishment, yada yada. Whatever your reason is, just keep it in your head at the moment. If you would choose A, you don't have to read on, you are on my side already.
So now, what if I presented a reverse situation - instead of asking whether you want to plug into the experience machine, i tell you that you ARE already in the experience machine. The question now is,
"Do you want to unplug from the experience machine?"
C) Yes, I want to unplug
D) No, I want to stay in my present life and stay plugged in.
If you had chosen C, and your first answer was A, the contradiction is obvious. You need to rethink one of your responses, something is wrong, you can't both want to plug in and plug out of the machine it doesn't make sense.
And if you had chosen B, then D, the contradiction is there though not so straightforward. While your choice of being in the machine (whether you are plugging in or plugging out) changes, the underlying theme for both responses is that you want to stay in your present life. If you are in this camp, hold that thought, my response to you is below.
And what if you chose B, then C? The contradiction is more subtle, but still there. If i rephrase the options and put them side by side it should become obvious:
1) You do not want to plug into a machine because you prefer your current life
2) You want to unplug from your current life
1 and 2 are the opposite of each other. If you had chosen to not be plugged in because current factors influence you to prefer your current state of the world, then it wouldn't make sense that when you find out that you are in fact plugged in, you suddenly detest it and want out of it. The prior factors that made you choose this world should also make you choose NOT to unplug from it.
So what is the real issue here? It seems to me that it is a problem of REALITY. As we are brought up, we are taught Science, to believe in what we can observe. Thus, REALITY becomes a forefront concept to us. We seek to have REALITY. It's not just about having pleasure anymore, it's about our perception that we are having pleasure for real.
For those who took option B and D:
You chose not to plug into the machine because you thought what you had was reality.
You then chose not to unplug because the world that you were in is your perceived reality.
Now it needs to be clarified that it is our PERCEIVED REALITY that we want, not the 'actual' reality (as in the case of when asked to unplug and you decide to unplug)
After all, it does not make any logical sense that if your perception of your current reality is so real that you choose option B to stay in your current state BUT then choose option C later on, to choose to go to the 'actual' reality, because YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT IS LIKE. If your decision-making process had chosen B in the first place, the same decision-making process SHOULD rightly choose option D. The reason of 'I want to unplug because I want to experience reality' is invalid because staying plugged in has been, and is your reality, and thus, should be your preferred option.
It is therefore logically flawed to pick B and then C.
So what exactly is reality? Reality is merely a perception. An optical illusion is a reality (though misconceived one). A magic trick is reality to the audience, but not to the magician. A dream is sometimes, in a sense, reality, when we don't realise we are dreaming. Which is this case of the experience machine.
So how does this tie back to the hedonism argument? If we remember what the Experience Machine argument was arguing for, I believe it was to say that pleasure is NOT everything we want, since most of us would rather not be plugged in (Option B) and hence we don't really just want pleasure.
However, i propose that the reason for not wanting to plug in is because we desire REALITY. It is not about experiencing pleasure, it is about perceiving that the pleasure we are experiencing is real. That is what we all want.
Thus, the whole point of this is to show you that A is not that bad a choice after all, assuming you perceive the Experience machine world as your only and 'real' reality. And that choosing option B does not mean you are against hedonism, you still want pleasure, just that you want to perceive that it is real.
OK I'm done. I hope all this makes sense, I did not have a conclusion in mind when I started writing this, I just wanted to get the contradiction about choosing B then C out there (as that was the concensus in my tutorial) and see what people have to say about it. Of course, if you have things to comment about on the rest of my argument, please do so.
