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Ethical Hedonism Analysis

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What Matters to Us? Ethical Hedonism explores the maximization of our pleasure and happiness as a fundamental obligation for morality; but Nozick’s experiment demonstrates that pleasure and happiness doesn’t only matters to us. This essay argues that Nozick’s thought experiment, the “experience machine” exemplifies the weaknesses of Ethical Hedonism, as perfecting the machine illustrates that to truly live our lives; we must value other matters besides pleasure. Firstly, this essay will discuss Nozick’s thought experiment “the experience machine” and what the experiment reveals. Secondly, reasonable objections to why I wouldn’t enter a machine that promises me maximal pleasure as Nozick identifies several issues exposed by the thought experiment. …show more content…

Nozick designed the “experience machine” to analyze what matters to us, including pleasure and happiness. The “experience machine” is a machine that’s expertly designed to preprogram life experiences, including the lives of others and is able to give you any experience you desire including eternal pleasure, pain etc. The machine provides a vast selection of experiences of which one can select from for a selected period of time; after such, you’ll have a selected period of time out of the machine to reselect another set of experiences to experience and return back to the machine” (Nozick, 1974). The experiment includes the entire population as maintenance isn’t required and one doesn’t know if they’re inside. Furthermore, Nozick’s experiment highlights that even though the machine may provide us with momentary bliss, intuitively we feel that something is missing from the designed machine. We value the provided pleasure, but at some point, plateauing pleasure and happiness leaves us wanting beyond our selections. The experiment reveals that there’s something additional to pleasure that we value. Even if one designs such a machine we consequentially, would lose our yearning to “live” our true lives in actuality. Therefore, Nozick’s experiment illustrates that the argument for Ethical Hedonism is weak and that something beyond pleasure matters to

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In an article, Robert Nozick imagines a machine that would simulate experiences. A person could choose to be connected to it and choose what type of experience they would like to have and who they could share it with. Nozick claims that “plugging into the machine is a kind of suicide”. It would be a type of suicide because a person would lose free will. As a consequence, they would lose their personality, a sense of achievement, and true memories.

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Franzen’s article Liking Is for Cowards, go for what hurt, compares the concept of love with techno-consumerism. It argues on how the grit of love is still better than the perfection of an elegant piece of technology which is also referred to as the perfect erotic relationship. The piece’s primary purpose is to make people understand the contrast between consumer related technology and real life and how this techno consumer relationship allows its user to control pretty much everything giving people a false sense of power while what love gives us is grit but it helps us become a better personas proven in the bird anecdote given by franzen. I agree with franzen in entirety and believe that the new tech-consumer world has us “working in jobs we don’t want to do to pay for the things we do not need”.

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