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The Experience Machine

Michael Hauskeller
(in: Think 8 (2004), 35-39)

What is life all about? What is it we want to achieve in life? A common answer is:
Some want this, and some want that, but in the long run we all want the same,
namely, a good life. A good life, however, is thought to be nothing but a happy life,
and a happy life is one that includes many pleasant, and few unpleasant,
experiences. Although what makes you happy need not make me happy, it seems
that it is happiness we are both after. So in so far as we want different things we want
them as means, not as ends. We just happen to disagree about the best way to gain
what we all want to gain. Accordingly, it seems irrelevant whereby we achieve
happiness as long as we do achieve it.
But if it is really only happiness that for each of us finally matters - happiness
understood as subjective wellbeing or positive (pleasant) experiences we should, it
seems, also orientate our moral concerns exclusively towards happiness. From a
moral point of view, we are then obliged to increase the happiness of all beings
capable of being happy (which includes many animals) or at least not to diminish it.
This is the central idea of classic Utilitarianism, which, however, is plausible only if we
accept the assumption that happiness, or rather, being happy, is all that matters in
life. For if what mattered to us were not alone, and perhaps not even primarily, being
happy, if there were other things which were as important to us or even more
important than this, it would be hard to see why those other things should be
irrelevant in respect to our duties towards other living beings. But what could be more
important than being happy?
Let us try to answer this question with the help of a thought experiment developed by
the American philosopher Robert Nozick in his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia
(1974). Imagine ingenious neuropsychologists have built an experience machine
which enabled their users to have any experience they wished for. If we wanted we
could spend the rest of our lives plugged into this machine. Of course, we would then
not know that we are connected to a machine, because everything we experienced in
the machine would appear to be real and we would not remember the life we had
before we plugged in. However, while we would not sense any difference we would
be protected from making experiences we would rather avoid. Our love affairs would
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all be happy, we would achieve all our goals and have everything we desired. In
other words, we could, in terms of our subjective experience, lead any life we wanted.
Now, would we, without hesitating, seize this opportunity and thus secure our
happiness for a lifetime? Or, rather, would we refuse the offer?
Of course, it is hard to say what we would do in this case, but this is not the point.
What is important is rather whether, when we imagine the situation, we are really
convinced that getting plugged in would be a good thing to do, that it would be
reasonable to do it. If happiness really is everything that matters and the experience
machine is actually able to make us happy, then there is no good reason not to use
it. On the other hand, if many people are in fact not attracted but, instead, rather
abhorred by the prospect of getting their life ready-made from a machine instead of
actually living it themselves, then the question arises whether this reaction is due to a
confused, irrational fear or, rather, is an indication that we expect more from life (and
that there actually is more to be expected) than merely pleasant experiences. But
again: What else could there be? Nozick makes three suggestions: First, we do not
only want to have the experience of doing something but we also want to do it.
Secondly, we want to be a certain kind of person and not only imagine being one. We
want to be, for instance, clever, courageous, or loving, and only imagining ourselves
to be that way is simply not enough. Finally, we want our experiences to be causally
connected to the world as it really is; we want to be, as it were, rooted in reality.
This is not to say that we do not want to be happy too. If being asked whether we
would rather be happy than unhappy we would say that we would, of course, rather
be happy, but from this it does not follow that we are indifferent to the grounds of our
happiness. What we want, besides being happy, are reasons for being happy - real
reasons, not imaginary reasons. What we want is that whatever we are happy about
really exists. Thus we may prefer an unhappy life which we actually live ourselves to
a happy life which in fact is lived for us by a machine. We do not want to live in a
dream, not even if we have no idea that this is in fact our actual state.
But imagine the decision has already been made and translated into action, so that
we already are plugged into the experience machine. While we still had the choice
whether to use the machine or not, we could well see that, once connected, we
would not really be what we would believe ourselves to be, and not really be doing
what we believe ourselves to be doing. Now, though, after having made the decision
to get plugged into the machine, and actually using the machine, we are not the least
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aware that the world we experience is not the real world. To us, it seems as if we
really do what we believe we do (for instance read this essay), and we also have
reasons to be happy (and sometimes reasons to be unhappy), etc. This means that,
in a certain sense, we have exactly what we insisted we wanted to have. Now, if the
programme we had chosen for ourselves would present us with a second experience
machine (generated by the first, real, experience machine) and we had to choose
again whether to use it or not, would we not express the same reservations, and
would these reservations then not be irrational after all? Perhaps our reservations are
due to a confusion similar to the one underlying, according to Schopenhauer, our fear
of death. For our fear of death seems to depend on the confused idea that we would,
after having died, somehow be aware of our own non-existence (thus imagining
ourselves both as existent and non-existent at the same time). In a similar way, we
seem to imagine ourselves being plugged into the experience machine and at the
same time being aware of this (which, according to the assumptions, we are not
aware of).
So perhaps what we do not like about the idea of being plugged into the experience
machine is less the fact that we would then live in an illusionary world (which may
already be the case) but rather, that our lives would be predetermined to be a series
of happy events. For why else should we use the machine? A life, however, that is
exclusively happy can hardly be considered a happy life at all. It would seem that
such a life is rather a life of mere fun, because it lacks the depth of experience
belonging to true happiness. Happiness requires unhappiness or at least the
possibility of being unhappy because some forms of happiness like the happiness
that springs from loving somebody presuppose receptiveness and therefore
vulnerability. Love is hardly imaginable without pain, without worry, without the
tragedy of loss. There is often pain involved in the experience of great beauty, in
such a way that those who do not experience the pain are also blind towards the
beauty and hence to the happiness linked to the experience of it. Happiness, it
seems, can only be found if we open ourselves and thereby take the risk of getting
hurt, of becoming unhappy. That is why happiness cannot be preconditioned. We
can, perhaps, render ourselves receptive to happiness but we cannot enforce it.
Happiness overcomes us unexpectedly, and it is exactly this quality of being
unexpected, its gift-like nature, that is one of the core features of happiness.
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That is why we would hesitate to call people happy who, although not feeling at all
unhappy, lived under what we would consider inhuman conditions in so far as their
lives lacked certain valuable experiences. Of course, we cannot be sure whether we
only hesitate to consider them happy because we cannot imagine that we ourselves
would be happy in their situation. But if the situation itself cannot be objectively
judged as a happy or an unhappy one, so that the only remaining fact which we can
rely on is the subjectively perceived pleasure or absence of displeasure, then from a
moral point of view it makes no difference if we improve or change the situation which
makes someone unhappy or, instead, change those who suffer from the situation, so
that they do not suffer from it anymore. Thus we can imagine genetically engineering
animals or human beings that do not mind being enslaved and exploited. Some
biotechnologists even hope for the day when they will be able to create research
animals that are entirely incapable of feeling pain, in the conviction that with such
creatures they could do whatever they wanted without having to worry about moral
constraints.
Could it be that ideas like these are so alarming because the loss of the very ability to
feel pain (and pleasure) is an evil more terrible than the pain itself?