Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State Utopia | The Experience Machine | Philosophy Core Concepts

hi this is dr. Gregory Sadler I'm a professor of philosophy and the president and founder of an educational consulting company called reason IO where we put philosophy into practice I've studied and taught philosophy for over 20 years and I find that many people run into difficulties reading classic philosophical texts sometimes it's the way things are said or how the text is structured but the concepts themselves are not always that complicated and that's where I come in to help students and lifelong learners I've been producing longer lecture videos and posting them to youtube many viewers say they find them useful what you're currently watching is part of a new series of shorter videos each of them focused on one core concept from an important philosophical text I hope you find it useful as well in his book Anarchy state and utopia Robert knows it devotes a portion of one of his chapters to a thought experiment that has become quite famous in part because it's a really great way to think out some some issues about what it is that we human beings desire what the good life looks like for us and what we would pursue as a means to it and it's called the experience machine now it actually includes a sequence of machines primarily focusing on this one that he calls the experience machine but also including a transformation machine a result machine and as he says we could imagine a whole sequence of other machines as well each of these is imaginary this is a thought experiment nobody's saying that these exist in reality we can find correlates you know some people would say well isn't that like being in the matrix well the matrix is imaginary - isn't this like immersing yourself in some sort of virtual reality well yes you're closer to that but we do exit virtual reality and right now we don't have smell-o-vision and you know the the touch stuff that we have is still pretty primitive so we're not quite at the level of having the experience machine you have to imagine this and this has been you know imagine not just by nose dick but you can find it in speculative fiction as well so what what is the the thought experiment really about he says he begins this this little section by saying there's substantial puzzles when we ask what matters other than how people's experiences feel from the inside and that's when he brings up this machine so they're there people who are saying what really matters is how people view things how people feel about things you know maybe the memories that they have to draw up on and he says suppose there was an experienced machine that would give you any experience you desired SuperDuper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so you would think and feel you were writing a great novel or making a friend or reading an interesting book now of course the typical professorial stuff you know you don't have to stop there imagine the greatest meal you could ever have or imagine a whole bunch of kind of boring meals leading up you know in a progression to better and better and better meals you can you can structure the experience any way that you want to you could think about what would it be like to have that first kiss and all the excitement that went with it and the anticipation and hopefully it turned out good for you and then like have that experience over and over and over again you know or what would it be like to take the body that you currently have and imagine that you would have experiences physical prowess that only super athletes could have well you could program that into the machine and we can go on and on and on other could be actually some quite you know gross and degrading and terrible things to imagine I won't go into any great thought experiments but imagine doing some horrific act that you know if society even knew that you desired it you would be shunned by everybody well I could be programming into the the experience machine just as well so you can make it give you any kind of experience you want if you want to have terrible experiences if that's you know what you get off on you could you could do that - or you could have a mix of both you know you could have as detail the composition as you like so here's the question he asks should you plug into this machine for life pre-programming your life's experiences now before we go on and look at it let's think about that for a minute think about all the crap that we go through all the wasted time all the stupid we didn't learn anything from this experience kind of lessons you know they joke about that and television shows now because you know they become very self conscious about the fact that there's supposed to be some sort of lesson coming out of things maybe there should be maybe a truly meaningful life would be set up differently than what we have right now so imagine you can set up your life any way that you want should you not just could you psychologically should you is this a sort of ethical imperative plug into the machine or should you not plug into the machine or should it just like be totally up to to you kind of random there you still have to decide whether you should or not he says you know if you if you're worried about some things here's how we can address those if you're worried about missing out on desirable experiences just imagine that business enterprises of research thoroughly the lives of many others so you know think about what it's like to enjoy the lifestyle of the super-rich you know stay piloting your yacht to Gibraltar I don't know where rich people go you know because I'm not a rich person but we can imagine that so there could be like all these scenarios that could be provided to us by doing essentially a kind of market research thing and that would go into the the Machine and you'd like pick and choose well I'll have one of those and one of those and one of those you can pick and choose from their large library or smorgasbord as such experiences selecting your life experiences for that say the next two years and then you can revise he says after two years have passed you'll have ten minutes or ten hours out of the tank to select the experiences of your next two years so you could say well you know that was pretty good but I think I want to like you know now I want to like see what it's like to be a monk in a monastery for the next two years that'd be cool as well and so you could try out anything that you want and he says of course while you're in the tank you won't know that you're there you'll think it's actually happening that's the nature of these experiences others can also plug in to have the experiences they want so you don't have to have to stay unplug to serve them like you know children or you know aged parents or spouses or anything like that we all we all have our own little tanks and who knows maybe they could actually he doesn't suggest this maybe they could be linked up so we could have like virtual visits with each other or something like that wouldn't that be nice and then he says would you plug in oh no so here's where we get to the crux what else can matter to us other than how our lives feel from the inside what can matter to us other than the experiences that either we're having or about to have or had in the past and then can remember is there anything else he also says put aside another worry don't refrain because of the few moments of distress between the moment you've decided in the moment you're plugged in because after all what's a few moments of distress compared to a lifetime of bliss if that's what you choose and why I feel any distress at all if your decision is the best one so it was a good question would you plug into the machine I think for a lot of people whose lies were sufficiently crappy or frustrating or meaningless I think they probably would say yeah definitely even knowing that what they're doing is plugging themself into something that's a facsimile of life rather than actual life when they talk about for example Second Life which is one of the early AI things which is still out there apparently that is in a certain sense life with quotes around it you might say all right there's first life with a capital L which might be happy and then there's Second Life which is a truncated experience but now we're saying it won't be truncated it won't be cut off it's gonna be just as full just as rich as the life that you're currently experiencing right now as far as the experiences go so Nozick says what does matter to us in addition to our experiences here he has three important considerations and this is where you want to think do I agree with this do I not agree with us that would probably determine whether you got into the machine or not so he says first we want to do certain things not just have the experience of doing them in the case of certain experiences it's only because first we want to do the actions that we want the experiences of doing them or thinking that we've done them so you know there's some things that I've brought up the first kiss thing so imagine that your entire life of sex intimacy desire all that sort of stuff would be totally mediated through an experience machine you would never actually kiss another person it would only feel totally realistically like you had that experience and then you know we would quickly move on from the you know for so many people landmark of losing your virginity into the much more fun stuff of once you actually know what you're doing doing all those things right getting introduced to new experiences trying out variations would you want that or would you prefer to actually do something what about cooking and then eating afterwards there's a really famous scene in the movie The Matrix where the one character who's told everybody out says you know I know that at the steak that I'm gonna be eating is not real it's just numbers basically but man I want that steak because he's not getting it in the world that he's currently in which is a crappy world right world that's that's effectively run by the machines except for where the resistance has curved out little places for Humanity what about the experience of like learning how to cook things and working with real materials that to some degree present you with challenges if you've ever done any real cooking you know not just pouring things out of boxes and adding an egg in oil and some milk and then stirring it up but actually cooking things from scratch you know that you have to you have to like engage with the matter that you're working with and then the actual eating of it do you want to just have the experience or do you want to actually do that so that's you know that's another important consideration and he asks the question he says why do we want to do the activities rather than merely to experience them he doesn't answer that there he leaves that open for you second thing we want to be in certain ways be a certain sort of person and he says someone floating in a tank is an indeterminate blob there's no answer to the question of what a person is like who's long been in the tank is that person courageous kind intelligent witty loving or are they the opposite are they stupid generate mean egotistical cowardly he says it's not merely that it's difficult to tell there's no way that that person is here he says something quite quite a strong claim plugging into the machine is a kind of suicide it will seem to some by a pleasure that nothing about what we are like can matter except as it gets reflected in our experiences he says but why should it why should it be surprising that what we are is important to us why should we be concerned only how our time is filled but not with what we are and we might say who we are what kind of people we are and I think that's a very strong consideration there can you within a virtual reality really become a person who has a certain character you can express your character and there may be ways in which virtual reality could improve or worsen our character in limited ways facing us with certain kinds of scenarios and temptations and perhaps guidance as well but could we really be a virtuous person or vicious person in the way that we are in the real world the third consideration he says as human beings we actually and now this is quite debatable we actually want contact with a deeper reality there is no actual contact with any deeper reality though the experience of it can be simulated in the machine and he says the plugging into an experience machine limits us to a man-made reality and somebody might object at this point well I'm in wait a second here what we've got a eyes and they're pretty smart and you know we could have a eyes like designing a eyes which then would design the experiment it would still ultimately be man-made or human-made right it would bear the artifact shoe ality of the human even if it winds up being a little bit weird and and beyond us and you can say well what's wrong with with human-made reality I mean music is to a large extent a human made and discovered reality and think about how cool that is right and we could go on and on and on I may mention cooking cooking takes raw materials and transforms them but this is a little bit different this is you know turning it into something that's only the experiences that can be provided there and he says you know a good example of this is psychoactive drugs some people view these as mere experience machines you know you take a drug and you have this kind of experience from it and it might be something that you can't have in your ordinary life like for example taking ecstasy might make you feel differently about other human beings bodies and you can get closer to them and not be turned off by them smoking pot will have certain effects you know amphetamines will have other effects things that actually make you hallucinate will have other effects obviously but it's all basically just it's instead of being human made it's just made by the drug others seem to see drugs as gateways does he says avenues to a deeper reality so you know how we view them determines whether we want to be having that sort of I won't say experience because that's part of what we're debating here but that sort of effect so he says we learn something matters to us in addition to experience by imagining this experience machine and then here's the key step realizing we would not use it but then he says we can go a little bit deeper we could imagine more machines to deal with the fact we want a B in a certain way what if we had a transformation machine that would make us that kind of person this has been thought about in other formats what if you could take a drug that would turn you into a good person and not just a good person where you're like you know your desires have been essentially cut off and you're almost like a robot no you would be a genuinely good person you've opened to the world and you know connected with people and animals and everything else and you walk along and you're like oh let me help the old lady across the street because I love doing this sort of stuff right if you got a machine that could transform you in that way should you use it before you and here's the interesting thing you would use that before you would get into the experience machine according to Nozik and that would solve the problem of wanting to be a certain way right he also talks about a result machine and this is quite interesting here we go is it that we want to make a difference in the world consider them the result machine which produces in the world any result you would produce and injects your vector in point into any joint activity meaning that it like you know the contribution that you would make anything that other people would do it would automatically do that without you having to be there so like you know the group assignment you don't have to actually show up at the library to work with the other people you just have the result machine and it does that that for you so he goes on and he says we're not going to pursue here the fascinating details of these or other machines there is something to stir being about something that's problematic he says they end up living our lives for us now that's an interesting idea they end up living our lives for us so somebody's living our life but it's not us we're just experiencing it we're just along for the ride we've lost a kind of agency we've lost the anxieties that come up as existentialist say when we have to you know decide for ourselves and decide the criterion by which we decide we've lost other things as well in the process and something is living our life for us but it's not really living our life because it's just a machine it doesn't live as such and here he has a really brilliant way of saying this he places it as a suggestion that you can think about he says perhaps what we desire is to live and then he puts that in parentheses an active verb living is not just like anything else living is an activity and he says to live ourselves in contact with reality so there's two components to that one is being in contact with reality and not just something that's that's human manufactured and there we could debate well aren't humans part of reality ok there's there something there but live ourselves to have not just the experiences but the involvement in the production of those experiences to some degree to be you know for better for worse involved in it so this is quite an interesting thought experiment packed in there and it's well worth thinking about yourself would you get into the machine would you not get into the machine more importantly why why wouldn't you why why would you what is the reason behind that because to make reasonable decisions that too seems to be part of what it means to be a human being you

Channel: Gregory B. Sadler

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Length: 20min 8sec (1208 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 04 2020