How to Use the Experience Machine

Lin, Eden

doi:10.1017/s0953820815000424

Cited by 23 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…In addition to the problem of accounting for the badness of depressions, numerous problems have been raised to subjectivist accounts of wellbeing. To name a few, subjectivist accounts face the problem of adaptation (Nussbaum 2009;Khader 2011;cf. Dorsey forthcoming;Bruckner 2009); the problem that it becomes paradoxical if people have a pro-attitude towards their life going badly (Bradley 2007(Bradley , 2009; the problem that it is unable to account for the wellbeing of certain welfare subjects, such as small infants (Lin 2017;cf.…”

Section: Objectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can Subjectivism Account for Degrees of Wellbeing?

Deijl

Brouwer

2021

Ethic Theory Moral Prac

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Wellbeing describes how good life is for the person living it. Wellbeing comes in degrees. Subjective theories of wellbeing maintain that for objects or states of affairs to benefit us, we need to have a positive attitude towards these objects or states of affairs: the Resonance Constraint. In this article, we investigate to what extent subjectivism can plausibly account for degrees of wellbeing. There is a vast literature on whether preference-satisfaction theory – one particular subjective theory – can account for degrees of wellbeing. This is generally taken to be problematic. However, other subjective theories – namely, desire-satisfaction, judgment- and value-fulfillment theories – do not suffer from the same difficulties. We introduce two models of degrees of wellbeing a subjectivist can employ: the Relative and the Absolute Model, and defend the claim that both models face difficulties. In particular, we argue that a subjectivist theory should describe instances of depression as instances of low degrees of wellbeing. We also argue that a reduction of desires may sometimes improve one’s degree of wellbeing, an idea we call the Epicurean Intuition. We then argue that the Relative Model fails to account for the disbenefit of certain types of depression, while the Absolute Model fails to meet a central commitment of subjectivism – the Resonance Constraint – and is unable to accommodate the Epicurean Intuition. The upshot of the paper is that subjectivist theories cannot account for degrees of well-being in a plausible way.

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Section: Objectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can Subjectivism Account for Degrees of Wellbeing?

Deijl

Brouwer

2021

Ethic Theory Moral Prac

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“…We'd like to have certain kind of experiences and avoid others. But as the experience machine considerations reveal, we also value and prefer doing things rather than just having experiences (Nozick 1974, Lin 2016).…”

Section: Mcmahan 2002 and Kelly 2004mentioning

confidence: 99%

Prudence, Sunk Costs, and the Temporally Extended Self

Kauppinen

2020

J. Moral Philos.

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Many find it reasonable to take our past actions into account when making choices for the future. In this paper, I address two important issues regarding taking past investments into account in prudential deliberation. The first is the charge that doing so commits the fallacy of honoring sunk costs. I argue that while it is indeed irrational to care about sunk costs, past investments are not sunk costs when we can change their teleological significance, roughly their contribution to our excellence as temporally extended, reasons-responsive, and goal-directed agents. I suggest some general principles for evaluating such significance. Second, it’s a live issue whether we should care about the fate of our past projects, even if we can now affect it. I reject Dale Dorsey’s recent answer, and argue that the puzzle he addresses turns out to be merely apparent, if we take seriously the fact that we are temporally extended.

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“…However, in recent years the argument has been criticized on grounds that the intuition it pumps is driven by moral rather than prudential reasons (Silverstein 2000;Crisp 2008); that it is too strongly based on what we would want in such a case, rather than on how prudentially good the life of the person in the machine is (Silverstein 2000); or that the intuition it pumps is allegedly driven by a status quo bias which affects people's responses to it (De Brigard 2010;Weijers 2014;see Weijers and Schouten 2013;and Bramble 2016b for reviews of the arguments). While Lin (2016) recently argued that some of the force of the experience machine argument withstands these recent rebuttals, the force of the objection in light of these criticisms appears much less strong than it has long been seen.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is pleasure all that is good about experience?

Deijl

2018

Philos Stud

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Experientialist accounts of wellbeing are those accounts of wellbeing that subscribe to the experience requirement. Typically, these accounts are hedonistic. In this article I present the claim that hedonism is not the most plausible experientialist account of wellbeing. The value of experience should not be understood as being limited to pleasure, and as such, the most plausible experientialist account of wellbeing is pluralistic, not hedonistic. In support of this claim, I argue first that pleasure should not be understood as a broad term to describe valuable experiences generally. I then analyze responses to the main argument against a monistic view on the value of experience: the philosophy of swine objection. I argue that such responses deviate from the central hedonistic view that only pleasure and pain matter for wellbeing. I then argue that the argument can be avoided on a pluralistic account, and formulate a plausible candidate for an account of pluralistic experientialism, in which, besides pleasure, non-hedonic aspects of experience like novelty, compassion, and aesthetic value also contribute to wellbeing.

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How to Use the Experience Machine

Cited by 23 publications

References 27 publications

Can Subjectivism Account for Degrees of Wellbeing?

Can Subjectivism Account for Degrees of Wellbeing?

Prudence, Sunk Costs, and the Temporally Extended Self

Is pleasure all that is good about experience?

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