Robert Nozick: The Meaning Of Life

Life is often depicted with a metaphor. Each day people wake up and resume their own personal rat race. Whether that be the rat race of clawing your way up the corporate latter or the rat race of filling out multiple applications for university admissions. With human nature constantly striving to improve and attain goals, one odd questions was presented by the widely known philosopher Robert Nozick. If there was a machine that could simulate an alternate reality full of pleasure and success would you hook up to it? Personally, I think letting a machine simulate an entire life while you sit in a tank lacks true meaningfulness. Among many other things, the good life requires autonomy and some sense of meaning to be truly successful. Plugging

In his article, The Meaning of Life, Stephen Law explains, “… in order for your life to be genuinely meaningful, you must exhibit a kind of autonomy. You must be

Nozick’s principal motivation in posing this question was to disprove the ideals of hedonism (cite). Hedonism is a philosophical term to describe that pleasure is the most important component of human life and should be sought after above all else. Nozick’s results found that most people would not hook up to the machine which acts as an agent in disproving the theories of hedonism. When you break it down, true value appears to be more highly coveted than attaining pleasure. If you spent the majority of your life being deceived by a machine it becomes apparent that your life is devoid of any value in regards to joining fellow humans in the fight to become successful and by doing so improving the lives of all. Sometimes the struggle and hardship of reaching for goals can eventually improve quality of life. For example, if an individual studied extremely hard and endured long, restless nights to secure entry into a medical program, the very act of struggling and stressing could make this student stronger. After being under constant stress the student could learn how to cope with stress which could help them greatly in the future when they are posed with daunting tasks. The student could learn the value of a hard-earned position at a hospital which could result in greater