The Universal pure pleasure machine: Suicide or nirvana?

Abstract

ABSTRACT If reactions to Nozick’s experience machine reveal a pervasive reluctance to choose a pleasurable virtual life over humdrum reality, that may indicate that most people are not intuitively hedonistic. However, recent work argues that popular reactions to his vignette fail to show this, due to various factors that confound people’s intuitions. Survey results on alternative experience machine scenarios cast doubt on Nozick’s assumption that most people are antagonistic to hedonism. Some surveys even show a majority endorsing a modified experience machine. Does this imply that a majority of people are open to hedonism? I argue not. Nozick’s experience machine and its variants all fail to effectively target hedonism because they offer more than mere pleasure – they offer a rich experiential life of manifold opportunities, possibly including opportunities to pursue non-hedonistic goals, such as truth, beauty or philosophy. As an alternative, I propose the Universal Pure Pleasure Machine, which avoids the pitfalls of other thought experiments and provides a more targeted probe of intuitions toward hedonism. Experimental evidence reveals a widespread rejection of this hedonistic fantasy. This bolsters Nozick’s assumption that most people are not satisfied with hedonism, thus supporting his argument that hedonism is a deficient theory of value.