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I’m not going to explain what hedonism is, or its varying forks, save to say that it is the position of seeing pleasure/lack of pain as the best goal. In this essay I intend to examine Nozick’s attempt to refute hedonism as a rational position. I will set out with an assumption that hedonism is intuitively a valid stance, run through some arguments against the premises of Nozick’s experiment and conclude by saying whether I have been swayed or remain unconvinced.

Is Nozick’s argument complete?

Nozick intends to refute hedonism, imagining a scenario where an individual has the option of a simulated reality that would be, to them, a chosen reality, where they could assimilate experiences that are pleasurable/pain-free (Nozick, 2014). Two problems, firstly I don’t recognise hedonism as purely a final-outcome strategy, there are downsides to experiences that are recognised in the work of major theorists, to consider preference recognises this and to contend that there are goods that all agree on is naïve since those goods cannot be pleasurable in their nature but merely necessary, if entering the machine was for the purpose of necessary goods then that factor alone would dictate the reason for entry, so not hedonism. Secondly Nozick’s experiment asks whether you would plug into the machine, a question concerning his construct and different to the more general question “What difference would it make if your experiences were real or an illusion?” I imagine, as Kauppinen does, its reversal, “You’re in a simulation, leave? It’ll feel the same but be real”. How many people surveyed would stay?

Nozick’s appeal to the masses proves nothing if the contention is that if you gave it some thought you may find your answer changes. What I am saying is that if reversed there would also be no reason to prefer reality over illusion, Nozick’s scenario, honed by Kauppinen, lacks incentive in either direction, unless there is a possibility of greater happiness in simulation than in reality, that would be why they enter it if they aimed to be consistent; If similar possibilities for pleasure existed then it is rational to be wherever one already is. The participant isn’t in the machine to start off with, but is offered the chance to enter, meaning they are in reality and would have to accept a before the fact knowledge of the falseness in it, I find this problematic since they may accept that after they enter they will be suitably hoodwinked or know all-the-while but value the experience of the falsehood, these are reasons not to enter even if they value pleasure as the greatest state, is a known false experience tempting? Would it be consistent to accept a later ignorance? If no then they cannot accept the machine because they would have to stop being consistent to get in. Nozick recognises this and calls it a few moments of distress and attempts to deal by positioning its cost as low in the grand scheme of what is gained, I assume he is being cynical and wishes the opposite effect than his words indicate, that we actually consider it a big issue.

The scenario can change to become more acceptable, to avoid biases, and the response may change with it, that is the key to the experimental position, that this in itself proves the subjectivity of the experiment, akin to Popper’s falsifiability, where a conclusion is not undermined by changing whatever leads to it, all conclusions remain just as valid; ergo, no conclusion is valid. Popper uses this reasoning to refute much of psychology so as to frame it as pseudoscientific, the same can be done here, if it can be proved that there are other reasons to reject, that must apply, entry then Nozick’s conclusion is unsound. This experiment does not address the individual’s awareness of the wider implications of their actions; I might assume that two wives would be better than one, more pleasurable. It might not, however, be better for them, and subsequently there is less pleasure for me, this is the social nature of decision/action, the equilibrium outcome for persons aware of the dangers of a dominant strategy are encumbered by such awareness, having orders of preference that each influence the next with no limit to their number or influence. Happiness is not normally an individuated consideration, Nozick recognises this in his second criticism when he states that we want to be a certain sort of person, this must be a person in the eyes of others, and a consideration important to the socialised beings we are. If I held the view that I would be better off I may still not enter, yet fully support another person’s decision to because I realised they were better off, they may be in extremis. There might be a point at which everybody would choose the machine, or one where nobody would, the conditions of the here and now dictate, creating biases that are not individual save for the most isolated or extreme lives. In an episode of Star Trek, Pike is disabled and forced to live within a machine, the alien race offers him the chance to live within an illusion where he would be fully able, his choice is easy, I can’t imagine a viewer objecting on the grounds that he is not better off. Conversely, in the film Demolition Man, lead character John wakes in the future to find intimacy simulated with a device that gives the right stimulation and prevents STDs by keeping lovers physically separated, he rejects it even though his partner explains the good that has come of it, again I can’t envisage the viewer rejecting his decision.  

Nozick’s position stipulates any pleasure, there are dual problems with this that are highlighted within the discipline of psychology, firstly desire fulfilled does not quell desire because desire remains; this is what forms of religion and duty based philosophical traditions recognise about desire and negate through cultivated acceptance (giving the name virtue to valuing resistance of desire), and secondly there’s no measure, happiness is not calculated externally (objectively) but internally (subjectively) and people have a tendency to re-evaluate how happy they are after the fact, fooling our expectations. I have the suspicion that a person would reject this machine for the reason that planned existence, regardless of how real it seemed, would feel like an illusion, the person programming the machine would have to build disappointment, failure and unforeseen happenings in to alleviate this concern, since that’s what life contains, a series of unforeseen incidents that cause re-evaluations and modifications of the ensuing decisions.

Considering myself the architect of my fantasy is problematic, I may not align my preferred illusion to those things that are best for me, I gave up smoking after 28 years recently but why wouldn’t I smoke in the machine? Why wouldn’t I go the whole hog and act out some of the, deeply troubling, inner desires that the psychoanalytic profession claims we all harbour, for this would be a world without consequences and as such I become the architect of its morals as well as its narrative. Let’s say for instance I neither supported the Hobbes nor Rousseau positions of man in the state of nature, I believed that I am capable of being both cooperative and selfish to certain extents, I may then recognise my preference desires and what constrains them, considering others, as both desirable and necessary, making a world of my own creation morally abhorrent.

It requires incentive to change the position of any participant, and that is by degrees of both importance and need to the person or group. Is the inactive blob contention, which states that persons do not wish to merely be a blob, a singular consideration? We may not want to be seen as inactive just as much as we do not wish to be inactive, and we may not wish to be thought to be immoral although we may wish deeply to be immoral. Roderick points out that, even supporters of social hedonism are concerned with more than social or personal goods, one example being the need for justice, which more usually requires punitive measures accompanying measures that simply prevent non-good behaviour through relocation, in effect we wish the bad guys to suffer rather than be simply removed from society, if we thought they were on a Caribbean Island, just as absent as if they were imprisoned, we would be morally unsatisfied.

Nozick is contending that the person who supports hedonism will have to stick by it if they disagree with him, or abandon it if they agree, like saying that in the famous trolley problem it does not matter whether the person has to physical manipulate a fat man in front of the trolley or redirect it with a lever instead (the better outcome being always so) and that rigid stance seems wrong since the level of immersion is different. His point is that persons prefer what is real, but if we look to a criticism levelled at the century Nozick is working in from Baudrillard, modern man having not the same life as his ancestors in that all current experiences are simulations of authentic experiences or simulations of experiences that have no originality we more normally find that persons are very much willing to assimilate and feel positively toward virtual environments and replicable experiential falsehoods; computer games, virtual currencies, a digital ego self, we seem happy to blur reality and in many ways we are already in an illusion. If I am in both an illusion and reality then my identity is based and has been built in it, I am what I do based on what I believe to be real which is in turn based experience, if I chose the machine then I am choosing to have my self altered by experiences I direct? If so then am I myself in the machine?

The point is to introduce something problematic to an existing theory, for this to be so the theory must have specific and categorical points, hedonism is too broad and too vague to be attacked in this way because it conjures different ideas of good for different persons and groups, more providing guidance than rigid directive. For example, Mill sets out to find where the legitimacy of the state lays in parenting the populous through social coercion but doesn’t get there convincingly, Kant assumes a first principle of moral law that he can only support with a circular argument when setting up his imperatives; there are knock-down arguments against these theories that involve subtle but valuable changes concerning their associated thought experiments, the introduction of such arguments changes the survey data, Woollard cites this when reimagining the same goal, a better outcome for a greater number, becoming a harder moral judgement when circumstances change and Roderick points out a major flaw in deontology, being where two perfectly good rules conflict, where you may be forced to pick one that violates another.

Conclusion

Nozick does not have me convinced that his argument alone successfully refutes hedonism. I set out to support hedonism because I, intuitively, felt that happiness, especially social happiness, is a rational goal. In studying the subject I have come to believe that personal hedonism is refutable, social hedonism is worthwhile (with caveats for personal rights), and I have been more swayed by criticisms other than Nozick’s. I ran through a criticism of the definition of hedonism as a rigid position, examined biases highlighted by various commentators that explain by other means an aversion to entering this machine, gave examples from culture that highlight how circumstances determine decisions, included social hedonism, talked about moral aspects, questioned whether we are already in a simulated world and finally I discussed well-known limitations of well-known thought experiments to illustrate how they also do not render the theories they argue with moot. Nozick’s thought experiment is insightful, problematic and usable but there are too many other considerations involved to make it the final word.

Paul Simon Wilson