Friday, April 5, 2019
Plugging into the Experience Machine
Plugging into the give birth rail room carWould you be happy if you were plugged into the go across Machine?If chosen to plug into the experience machine, we can powerfully agree that the agent is choosing for hedonic illusion in order to achieve gaiety. As hedonist would severalise the simulation of amusement is qualitatively the same as real experiences of pleasure. I will discuss the ii main factors which conclude that genius would non be happy when plugged into the Experience Machine. fit to Haybron, hedonism is non a sufficient condition to achieve happiness and the emotional statetime gladness theory is absent when 1 is the Experience Machine.First, we need to identify what happiness is. Taken by Daniel M. Haybron, Happiness A Very trivial Introduction, he identifies nonpareil-third basic theories ab break happiness. Emotional state theory happiness as a positive emotional condition, Hedonism happiness as pleasure and emotional state satisf action at law theo ry happiness as being meet with your life. Both emotional state theory and hedonism identify happiness in scathe of feelings, while the life satisfaction theory identifies happiness in terms of judgments about unrivalleds life. To be satisfied with geniuss life is to regard it as going well by ones standard. By considering all things together, one sees its life as having enough of the things one care about. thence, life satisfaction is the overall evaluation of ones life. Haybron mentions that life satisfaction should non be taken together with pleasure. The focus of life satisfaction which Haybron describes is not about a question of pleasure as people care about separate things besides their own pleasure, tho to track peoples value. An fashion model can be given by a high achieving artist or scientist who might be satisfied with their life even it is not terribly pleasant, she is getting what she cares about.Haybron categorized three terms to describe happiness under life satisfaction theory. Endorsement feeling happy and other classic emotions. This is an emotional state which signifies ones life as good. Engagement vitality and flow. This term concerns the engagement with ones life in the form of energetic, interested, and engaged. However, this can occur even when events are not going well, as an example when struggling to accomplish a difficult goal. There are two types of engagement. The first concerns on the states of push hardlyton or vitality. An example was given by Haybron of a concentrated orchestra conductor who might be smiling(prenominal) or even happy without being obviously glad or happy. The second concerns the notion of flow, essential by Csikszentmihalyi. Flow is the state one experience when fully engaged in an activity, typically a challenging activity performed well. Athletes and musicians describe it as being in the zone. In this state of flow, one loses the smell of self-awareness. To the individual, time tends to pass different to reality and is not aware of feeling anything at all. Yet Csikszentmihalyi describes it as a highly pleasant state, which an individual is happy. It is opposite to boredom. Attunement peace of mind, confidence, expansiveness. To understand this one should understand the font of tranquillity. It is similar to feeling at home, not entirely a peace of mind but a kind confidence, and stability. In this state, one feels relaxed, living seems natural without inhibition.One of the main arguments of Haybron is that hedonism lacks mental state, as pleasure alone cannot prove happiness because pleasure lacks causal depth. I agree on the Haybrons notion that hedonism itself does not constitute happiness. The pleasure of happiness are not the further pleasures to be had, (Haybron, 143) Hedonism focuses happiness on a matter of pleasure, and may have a certain kind of deep (Haybron, 143) pleasure, or the Epicurean pleasures of tranquillity. However, Haybron distinguishes hedonism f rom happiness. An distinguished aspect of hedonisms error is that pleasure lacks what Haybron call casual depth (Haybron, 144) He states that all appearances are that happiness has deep, far-reaching, and typically lasting consequences for a persons state of mind and behaviour. Thus according to Haybron, the problem with most luxurious theories is that they are too inclusive all sorts of shallow, fleeting pleasures are made to count towards happiness (Haybron, 142) Intuitively, the solicitude seems to be that much(prenominal) pleasures dont reach deeply enough, so to speak. They just dont get to us they flit with consciousness and thats the end of it (Haybron, 143). To this extent, Haybron argues that it is a mistake to equalize hedonic states, a states of pleasure with happiness. In the sense, hedonism leaves out too much of what we want to include in our concept of happiness. The problem with hedonism, on this view, centers on the way it relates happiness to time. One of th e central questions we might ask about happiness is what is the time of happiness? According to Haybron, hedonisms answer is that happiness is an essentially episodic and backward-looking phenomenon. (Haybron, 143) While this may be true of pleasurable experiences, it is arguably not true of happiness. Arguably, happiness is not just about ones past but also ones take and ones attitude towards, and expectations of, the future. Thus happiness, to a significant extent, is future oriented. Haybron states that Hedonism does little more than skim the phenomenal come along off of our emotional states and call it happiness. But happiness runs much deeper than that. (Haybron, 144) From this, we could say, by one experiencing the Experience Machine, one is missing the emotion and feeling of psychological state. Thus, when one enters the experience machine to search for happiness, pleasure itself would not suffice because hedonism lacks the detail to handle such cases. Additionally, Nozick provides a similar impudence that the Experience Machine limits us to human-made reality it is no deeper than the people who programmed it. Thus, both Haybron and Nozick agrees that pleasure is neither the only value nor the highest value of achieving happiness.When one is plugged into the Experience Machine, engagement would not occur as all challenge is absent in all activities one do because any action one does for a particular activity would only bring down positive result in order to experience pleasure. It would be unreasonable to assume that in the Experience Machine, one would painfully spend the time and effort to master a skill. Rather one would avoid such challenge and instantly would obtain such skill. Thus the feeling of flow would not be experienced when taken the path without challenge.Attunement cannot be met when plugged into the Experience Machine because the agent is consciously aware that he is not living the reality. The opposite of attunement, disattunment, d efine not about anxiety but more like alienation. (Haybron, 23b) Ones circumstances seem alien to them. Unfamiliar with the surrounding environment, realizing that only outcome is to receipts ones happiness. The world would quickly seem unreal as all feedbacks would be inconsistent with any action the agent does. An example of this peculiar experience would be like committing a crime but to that extent receiving a medal of such action. Thus, one would never feel utterly at home (Haybron, 22b) in the experience machine. The feedback would be different from the reality even though it becomes more pleasurable, it would feel unnatural. Haybron states similar assertion a troubled, anxious, tense, or stressed out person does not seem to be happy, however cheerful she might be. She isnt really at home in her life. (Haybron, 23b) This itself diminishes the dimensions of happiness.Any action one does in the Experience Machine inevitably would not matter because the programmed agents who ha ve social relation with the one in the Experience Machine would only react to bring a positive response in favour of agents desire. Thus any action one performs would not alter the future or have any moment to ones goal. The important aspect of life satisfaction is that it is a judgment of ones life which is independent of ones emotional state. Life satisfaction is not about pleasure but how ones life measures to its value. These values are subjective thither is no objective measure for life satisfaction. Humans value actual experiences, character, achievements and their relationships with others, not solely on pleasure. Thus, when one is in the Experience machine, all pleasure one receive are an illusion, a stupid belief that one believes in experiencing the reality.Haybron explains that hedonism fails in achieving happiness because it lacks causal depth and it is a mistake to equate the state of pleasure with happiness. The definition of life satisfaction theory demonstrates tha t happiness has to include other aspects such as engagement and attunement, thus, in the Experience Machine all these deeper senses of experience are absent. One does not feel the challenge to achieve a certain goal, and all action is immaterial because the feedback is only to bring desirable result. We could conclude that the Experience Machine is missing both emotion and psychological state and without these, one would not be happy as this structure the condition of ones well-being.BibliographyDaniel Haybron, Why Hedonism is False, from Happiness Classic and coetaneous Readings in Philosophy, (eds.), Steven M. Cahn and Christine Vitrano. (Oxford, 2008a).Daniel M. Haybron, Happiness A Very Short Introduction. (Oxford, 2013b).Robert Nozick, The Experience Machine, from Happiness Classic and Contemporary Readings in Philosophy, (eds.), Steven M. Cahn and Christine Vitrano. (Oxford, 2008).Steven M. Cahn and Christine Vitrano, Choosing the Experience Machine, Chapter 14, Cahn Vitrano , Happiness and Goodness Philosophical Reflections on Living Well. (Columbia University Press, 2015).Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Enjoyment and the Quality of Life, from Flow The psychology of Optimal Experience. (HarperCollins Publishers, 1990).
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