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Hedonism: Considering the Options

Mary Crawford

The idea of hedonism is almost as old as western society

itself. During the Hellenic era, Epicureanism, the forerunner of

modern hedonism, was a popular and widespread belief system.

However, in the following centuries, it suffered a decline that

has continued, with very little exception, to the modern day.

Some of the most infamous characters in history have been accused

of being “hedonists” and have, by acting in ways generally held

to be morally unconscionable, created hatred and mistrust for

hedonistic philosophies. In the popular mind, the term hedonism

conjures up images of sexual excess and overindulgent spending.

Although the philosophic community claims to be above these basic

popular misconceptions, the body of literature dealing with

hedonism shows that, for the most part, they are not. Many

philosophers, like most members of the general public, are

deceived by the seeming simplicity of hedonism. They dismiss

hedonism for its seeming simplicity despite its intuitive appeal,

which I shall discuss later. One of the most problematic

consequences of this is that hedonism is often viewed, by those

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not well versed in its diversity, as a monolithic theory. This

means that often it is considered obviously wrong because one

person’s particular hedonistic theory is wrong in one situation.

Instead of understanding the give and take between hedonist

philosophies many decide to dismiss the whole theory in short

order.

This trend is just exacerbated by the extremely defensive

tone in which most hedonistic literature is written. Some writers

do not even offer a particular philosophic view but instead spend

their whole paper defending the fact that hedonism could,

possibly, be viable. Instead of taking a stand on their

positions, they seem to fear their reputations if they came out

as full-fledged hedonists and so attempt to hedge their bets and

take half positions. Worse, in some respects are those who seek

to compromise and change their hedonistic positions so

drastically that they can hardly be considered hedonistic.

However, thus type of behaviour is understandable. Given the

current status of hedonistic philosophy, their fears are well

founded. Because of the radical views of a few hedonists, this

extremely valuable theory is often viewed as a social pariah.

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Ultimately, I would like to use this essay in order to

undermine the credibility of a major objection to hedonism. In

order to do this I shall first discuss the general principles of

hedonism and talk about how they relate to one another. After

this, I will analyse the relationship between hedonism and well-

being theory, positing that hedonism is the most descriptive and

more universal form of well-being theory. After this, I will go

into depth about the many objections against hedonism and the

many counter-arguments that have been proposed to deal with these

objections. For the second half of the paper, I will focus on one

of the most difficult objections to hedonism, an objection rising

from the famous experience machine thought experiment. I will

conclude this paper with a discussion of intuition as it relates

to this example. By the end of the paper, I hope to have

discarded with a major objection to welfare hedonism by

discrediting the intuition that lends it authority.

Introduction to Hedonism

The term “hedonism” is used to refer to an intellectual and

philosophical tradition that spans more than twenty two hundred

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years. It has been used to mean many different things at

different times and, as I mentioned above, it is this ambiguity

that has led to its general dismissal. In the most general sense,

hedonism can be viewed as a set of philosophies that believe (1)

that happiness is the most important end for human beings and (2)

see pleasure and pain as the ultimate goods. However, in order to

facilitate constrictive discussion about this theory, the many

claims the term “hedonism” encompasses, have to be isolated and

dealt with separately. Modern philosophers now divide hedonistic

philosophy into four branches where previously there was only

one.

The four branches of hedonism that exist in current

philosophical discourse are, (1) value hedonism, (2)

psychological hedonism, (3) ethical hedonism and (4) welfare

hedonism. First, value hedonism is the assertion that pleasure

and pain are the only things that have intrinsic value. This is a

very controversial argument and has, as yet, not been Intrinsic goods are things that are good in and of themselves, not because of some result they cause. Within hedonism happiness is the highest intrinsic good because it is desired in and of itself, not because it provides somethingelse. This can be contrasted with the concept of instrumental goods. These arethings that are desired because they lead to an intrinsic good. If I believe that happiness is the intrinsic good, anything that helps me achieve that happiness would be instrumentally good.

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convincingly been defended.1 Secondly, psychological hedonism is

the theory that human beings always act in ways that optimize

their pleasure and reduce their pain.2 This theory states that

all actions are selfish and non-selfish actions cannot exist.

Obviously, many despise this theory because of its implications

or moral theory. While the immediate reaction to this assertion

is generally repulsion, there have been certain philosophers who

have argued this point very convincingly but not definitively.

Thirdly, ethical hedonism states that in order to act ethically,

one must act to optimize overall pleasure and diminish overall

pain.3 This is also a very controversial point because it is not

compatible with most moral codes. This theory is very closely

related to the idea of utility espoused by John Stewart Mill and

Jeremy Bentham†. Lastly, welfare hedonism, the position I am

1 Shelly Kagan, Normative Ethics, (Colorado: Westview Press, 1998), 31.2 Ibid.3 Ibid.†† John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham were economists and philosophers from the 19th century. They were two of the main proponents of utilitarianism, which is the theory that the best form of social arrangement is the one that produces the most good for the highest number of people. In his introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Bentham argues that the principle of utility is correct because it recognizes that it is both natural and right forhumans to pursue things that provide them with the most pleasure. Bentham’s theory is unpopular because it is considered by many to be irreligious and he accuses people of being afraid to own up to their own selfish natures. Mill agreed with Bentham on many points but he was not willing to stomach the

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discussing in this essay, is the theory that pain and pleasure

are the only conditions that increase well-being.4 This

assertion, unlike ethical and value hedonisms, does not have any

moral content and is meant to be purely descriptive. Because of

this, it is the most easily defensible form of hedonism, though

by no means is it widely accepted. It also has a clear advantage

over psychological hedonism because it makes no assumptions about

personal motives, which are generally difficult to elucidate.

Although all of these ideas are closely related, their

distinctions are important and supporting one by no means

necessitates supporting another. From this point on, this paper

will deal exclusively with the debate over welfare hedonism and

leave the other forms for discussion at a later time.

unpopular and distasteful implications of Bentham’s theory. Instead he based his hedonistic utilitarian theory on the idea that physical pleasures are inferior to those of the mind. Bentham’s model of hedonism placed the value ofany pleasurable experience on two factors, intensity and duration of the pleasure, a quantitative model of hedonism. Mill’s model assumes a third aspect to pleasure, quality, which would serve to place intellectual pleasuresabove physical ones. This additional aspect of his theory opened it up to a whole variety of criticisms that qualitative hedonism could not recover from. Just one example was the fact that by creating the idea of “higher” pleasures,he would have to justify why they were higher, who determined which pleasures were higher and whether the same hierarchy existed for everyone. This is stilla major problem today for those who believe that there is a qualitative aspectto pleasure.4 Ibid.

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Introduction to Theories of Well-Being

Generally speaking, well-being theory describes the set of

theories that seek to answer the question: What makes life worth

living? In simple terms, it attempts to find what is good for a

person.5 Welfare hedonism is just one of the many theories that

seek to address this concern. At this point I feel it is

necessary to mention that, although it is common to approach this

question from a political point of view, In this essay I will

discuss personal or individual well-being exclusively. Although

these two concepts are closely linked, I feel that it is more

constructive to determine what makes an individual well off

before studying how interpersonal relationships complicate the

well-being of a society.

There are three distinct subgroups within well-being theory:

(1) Mental State Theories, (2) Desire Theories*, and (3)

5 Roger Crisp, “Well-Being,” The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Winter 2008 Edition, < http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/well-being/>.** Desire theory posits that a person’s well-being is dependent on the degree to which his desires are fulfilled and that someone’s well-being depends completely on the actuality of their desires. Within this theory, the very actof fulfilling a desire increases a person’s well-being. For example, if a person were hungry, the very act of eating would increase the person’s wellbeing because their desire for food is being fulfilled. Each person has their own desires and the proponents of desire theory do not say what those desires are or should be but rather only assert that by fulfilling them a person’s well-being is increased. Theorists argue that external conditions

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Objective List Theories.† Hedonism is one type of mental state

theory. This type of theory asserts that what makes a life good

is the mental state of the person living it.6 A person’s mental

state dictates how that person views the world. For example,

someone who is depressed and unhappy will perceive almost

exclusively bad events and ignore the good ones while someone who

is happy might hardly realize the bad ones at all. Mental state

theories are some of the oldest theories of well-being that

exist.7 Part of the reason that theories of this type have such a

long history is that they are highly intuitive. For most people,

it makes sense that an individual’s well-being is determines by

have intrinsic value in so far as they satisfy a person’s desires. There are many popular objections to this type of theory and as a result many different branches of desire theory. For a more extensive discussion of this topic referto Shelly Kagan’s extremely comprehensive book Normative Ethics.†† Desire theory posits that a person’s well-being is dependent on the degree to which his desires are fulfilled and that someone’s well-being depends completely on the actuality of their desires. Within this theory, the very actof fulfilling a desire increases a person’s well-being. For example, if a person were hungry, the very act of eating would increase the person’s wellbeing because their desire for food is being fulfilled. Each person has their own desires and the proponents of desire theory do not say what those desires are or should be but rather only assert that by fulfilling them a person’s well-being is increased. Theorists argue that external conditions have intrinsic value in so far as they satisfy a person’s desires. There are many popular objections to this type of theory and as a result many different branches of desire theory. For a more extensive discussion of this topic referto Shelly Kagan’s extremely comprehensive book Normative Ethics.6 Ibid.7 Ibid.

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that person’s beliefs about their well-being. This theory is very

appealing because of its flexibility, which gives it the ability

to cross cultural boundaries in order to consider well-being in a

universal sense, transcending any cultural interpretation of

well-being or “goodness”. Even within a culture, it easily allows

for the huge differences we can observe between individuals.

Our mental states are extremely influenced by, but not

solely defined by, the world around us and what is, or appears to

be, happening to us. Most mental state theorists, and most of the

general public, would probably agree that, “the presence of

pleasure and the absence of pain is at least one component of

well-being.”8 Where the dispute occurs within the group of mental

state theorists is over the question of what, if anything else,

also contributes to well-being. Hedonists argue that pleasure and

pain are the only factors that affect well-being. This is the

most popular type of mental state theory but it is by no means

the only one. The problem with most mental state theories is

that, if they do not confine themselves to general mental states

like pleasure and pain, they risk losing the very universality

8 Kagan, Normative Ethics, 33.

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that makes mental state theory appealing in the first place.

Currently, Desire Theories, also known as Preference Theories,

are the most popular type of well-being theories. They gained

credibility in response to some major objections raised against

mental-state theories. The main problem that many philosophers

have with mental-state theories is that they do not account for

the realities of any given situation. For example, a person in a

bad situation would have a high well-being if he thought his life

was ideal. In the next section I will be discussing some of the

criticisms that have been pitted against hedonism and the

solutions devised by hedonists in response. This discussion is

important to establish a firm and philosophically defendable form

of hedonism with which to approach the Experience Machine

objection in the second half of the paper.

Defining Welfare Hedonism

According to L. W. Sumner, the position of the welfare

hedonist can be properly summed up in three propositions. “(1)

Welfare and happiness are the same, (2) Happiness can be reduced

to pleasure and the absence of pain, and (3) adherence to the

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mental state account of the nature of pleasure and pain.”9 This

definition is concise and effective, it adequately describes the

relationships between happiness, welfare and pleasure according

to general welfare hedonism. Most importantly, this definition is

both descriptive and universal. By this, I mean that the

relationships described by welfare hedonism reflect the way

people of all cultures and races actually understand their own

happiness and its relationship to pleasure. There are several

important things to note about this position.

First, welfare hedonism describes the well-being of a person

for that person who lives it.10 This means that each person’s

function in society is not considered. Well-being is merely a

measure of their own understanding of their personal well-being.

This is very important because it is descriptive. Most people do

not base their own happiness on their job or position in society

and so a hedonistic theory that seeks to explain how individuals

feel about their own happiness and pleasure cannot depend on it.

9 L.W. Sumner, Welfare, Happiness and Ethics, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 13810 Fred Feldman, “The Good Life: A Defence of Attitudinal Hedonism,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65, no. 3 (2002): 605.

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Secondly, we must consider how pain and pleasure can be

measured. Obviously, it is impossible for an outside person to

measure any individual’s pleasure but an individual can measure

his or her own pleasure in two dimensions, duration and

intensity. These parameters are self-explanatory and just serve

to represent the fact that pleasure is not experienced at a flat

rate. Measuring intensity accounts for the fact that more

pleasure is gained in total from extremely pleasurable activities

then from slightly pleasurable ones. The duration measure is

meant to represent that fact that pleasurable activities that

continue on for a long time cause more pleasure then ones that

cease quickly. From there, a person’s well-being is defined by

the net pleasures minus the net pains the person experiences. If

they have had more pleasure then pain in their life then they

have a positive well-being. Now, there is one more crucial

consideration in this discussion: the possibility of a deathbed

convert. To explain, consider that there is a young man who lives

his life jus as he pleases, with no regard for religion or

morality. He does many pleasurable things and grows old happily.

However, on his deathbed, he converts to Christianity and is

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dismayed by his earlier immoral actions. At the moment of his

death, he feels that he is very unhappy with his life. Now,

according to the principle stated earlier, only an individual can

measure his own happiness. So, it would seem that the man’s life

was bad because he believed it so at his point of death even

though it was pleasurable for most of his life. This seems to

present quite a conundrum for a hedonist who would be inclined to

say that man’s life had been good because of the pleasure

experienced. However, this problem can be easily solved by taking

into consideration the human tendency to drastically misremember

events. In the case of the deathbed convert, he had in fact had a

good life but just misremembered it when on his deathbed. In

order to prevent this type of human error, a person’s judgement

of pleasure or pain must happen concurrent with the event. The

only time a person can truly judge how much pain or pleasure they

are feeling is at the moment they feel it, and so that judgement

must be authoritative and later judgements ignored. When this is

taken into account, the deathbed convert lived a good life as

long as he experienced more pleasure than pain.

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This measurement method could also be implemented to

consider any particular event. However, an actions is only truly

pleasurable if the pleasure derived from the actions and its

consequences are greater than the pain derived from the action and

its consequences when both pleasure and pain are subject to the

duration / intensity measurement method. Each action has to be

judged with regard to its consequences because these two things

are inseparable by their very nature. For example, if a man was

standing in line at a store and someone cut him, he might have

the urge to hit that person. If he were to divorce the action of

hitting the person from the consequences of the same act, he

would see only the pleasure gained from the satisfaction of the

action without the pain gained from getting hit back or kicked

out of the store. This idea of measuring an action with regard to

its consequences is not unusual. In fact, the Cost benefit

analysis model of decision-making implements this same principle.

However, some philosophers claim that welfare hedonism does

not truly have the descriptive powers it claims to. One argument

that is often raised is about the nature of pleasure. The

question is: what do we mean by pleasure? To this day different

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philosophers have different meanings. Bentham is famous for

asserting that pleasures are primarily sensational. He believed

that, “What they [pleasures] have in common, in virtue of which

they all count as pleasures, is their positive feeling tone: an

intrinsic unanalysible quality of pleasantness which is present

to a greater or lesser degree in all of them.”11 This is called

the internalist or sensational view of pleasure. However, by viewing

the pleasure giving ability of any idea or object as a

characteristic of that idea or object, Bentham exposes his theory

to criticism. The most commonly mentioned critique is that when

well-being enhancing ability rests in the object or idea, the

object or idea cannot fail to increase well-being by its very

nature. Bentham’s interpretation does not account for sensations

that are pleasurable in moderation but one would not want to be

extended.12 Instead, it is more productive to view pleasure as an

attitude toward any given stimuli. This is known as the externalist

view of pleasure and has much more descriptive power than the

internalist view. Feldman says, “Attitudinal pleasure is a mode of

11 Sumner, Welfare, Happiness and Ethics, 88.12 Roger Crisp, “Hedonism Reconsidered,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73,no. 3 (2006): 625.

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consciousness. It is a way of being aware of a state of

affairs.”13 It is clear that a defensible form of hedonism must

implement this attitudinal idea of pleasure lest it loose its

descriptive power. By doing so, it maintains its descriptive

ability and can encompass all forms of pleasure at all times.

This definition of pleasure forms the subset of welfare hedonism

known as Attitudinal Hedonism.

Another criticism of hedonism is the problem of double

counting. This objection is mainly concerned with counting intrinsic

verses instrumental goods. As I alluded to earlier, the difference

between an intrinsic good and an instrumental good is the fact

that an intrinsic good is desired for its own sake whereas an

instrumental good is desired for its ability to help achieve a

intrinsic good. If, when determining a person’s well-being, we

were to count up hypothetical “pleasure points”, for all of the

instrumental and intrinsic goods, we would be greatly over

counting because the two overlap extensively.14 It is essentially

counting the pleasure gained from achieving a goal and then also

counting all of the pleasure that was gained from each step 13 Feldman, “The Good Life: A Defence of Attitudinal Hedonism,” 607.14 Ibid., 612.

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towards achieving that goal as independent pleasures in and of

themselves. The solution to this problem is to only count the

pleasure gained from intrinsic goods. When this is combined with

the attitudinal aspect of hedonism it creates Intrinsic Attitudinal

Hedonism (IAH), one of the forms that is proposed and defined by

Feldman in The Good Life: A Defence of Attitudinal Hedonism. He says, “let

us understand Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism (IAH) to be the view

that the value of a person’s life is determined by the total

amount of intrinsic attitudinal pleasure the person enjoys during

that life (counting intrinsic attitudinal pain as the ‘negative

pleasure’).”15 I believe this definition toutlines the most

defensible form of hedonism. It is this form that I will assume

as the basis for the rest of this paper.

In Feldman’s paper, he goes on to alter and refine this

definition in ways that I do not agree with. For example, he

introduces the idea of desert in response to the argument for

worthless pleasures more dramatically called the philosophy of swine

argument.* Essentially, the argument says that some pleasures are

15 Ibid., 613.** This is the same technique used by Mill when creating his theory of Qualitative Hedonism.

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better than others and that one can only gain pleasure from

something that is worth enjoying.16 Feldman deals with this

problem by creating a type of hedonism that is adjusted based on

how much the object of enjoyment is worth enjoying.17 Later in

the essay he even promotes that idea that well-being should be

adjusted based on the moral goodness of the subject.18 However,

the whole suggestion that some things deserve to be enjoyed more

than others and that some people have a higher well-being through

perceived moral virtue seems horribly moralizing and pushes his

type of hedonism firmly into the realm of Objective List theory.

When well-being theory becomes a question of who deserves to be

well off instead of who is well off, it ceases to be descriptive

at all. In addition to the philosophic problems that come with

that type of theory there are a whole host of logistical problems

about who enjoys what and what can be enjoyed to what extent. So,

while some philosophers will argue for a hierarchy of pleasures,

I will avoid categorizing any pleasure as higher than another in

terms of quality.

16 Ibid., 616.17 Ibid., 619.18 Ibid., 622.

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However, my objection to classification leads to another

complication: If no pleasure has a higher quality then another,

would a person have a higher well-being if he or she could live

as a happy animal forever instead of a person with a limited

life? Many opponents of hedonism argue that according to

hedonistic arithmetic this person would do better as an animal.

In this situation a strict addition of pleasures and pains would

come out in favour of an immortal animal because even if the

animal only experienced the smallest pleasures compared to the

human, small pleasures experienced indefinitely outnumber big

ones for a short period. This seems to be a problem for the

welfare hedonist because most people would never take this option

were it offered. However, this answer is misleading because one

must consider the importance of body on being. I would contend I

could never become an animal because I am essentially human.

Removing me from human form would remove the essence of me.

Thus, since giving up human form would be tantamount to giving up

personhood, no form of hedonism would expect its adherents to do

so.

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Despite these objections, Sumner’s theses still stand. Their

real strength lies in that fact that the relationships they

describe are intuitive. For example, it makes perfect intuitive

sense for someone to equate happiness and welfare. Most of us go

about out daily lives operating in this principle without

acknowledging it explicitly. The other assertions have the same

intuitive appeal allowing them to transcend cultural boundaries

and really draw on something innately human in each person. In

Utilitarianism, Mill calls these intuitively understood ideas first

principles. Although his discussion of them is ultimately flawed,

the idea itself has merit. He says that, “questions of ultimate

ends are not amenable of direct proof.”19 There are no ends as

ultimate as human well-being and because of this, there are parts

to the argument that have to be accepted, not wholly on

intuition, but with intuition in mind. The same idea recurs in

Bentham’s work. He believes that the principle of utility is this

first principle, he says, “Is it susceptible of any direct proof?

It should seem not: for that which is used to prove everything

19 David Brink, "Mill's Moral and Political Philosophy," The Stanford Encyclopedia ofPhilosophy, Fall 2008 Edition, <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-moral-political/>.

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else, cannot itself be proved: a chain of proofs must have their

commencement somewhere. To give such proof is as impossible as it

is needless… By the natural constitution of the human frame, on

most occasions of their lives men in general embrace this

principle.”20 Although I do not believe utility can be accepted

on such a basis, it seems that this idea of first principles does

apply to well-being. However, in debate only the most essential

things can be taken on intuition. For example, the knowledge that

happiness and pleasure are desirable is intuitive knowledge.

Although there is no absolute proof for this point, every person

possesses knowledge of it, perhaps through virtue of our

humanity. Also, it would be unproductive and unnecessary to

attempt to prove this point with formal logic because it is so

fundamental. Obviously, this is a controversial point but it

seems that there is something more essential then logic at work

in these ideas and the fact that intuition supports hedonism

lends it a lot of weight.

However, the appeal to intuition also creates some

significant problems for welfare hedonism; it opens up the 20Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to The Principles of Morals and Legislation, (New York: Hafner Publishing Company, 1948), 4.

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proverbial “can of worms”. Once intuition is accepted as a

reasonable part of argument, every point in which hedonism

differs from intuition becomes extremely significant. In order to

prevent chaos in hedonistic theory, support from intuition needs

to be highly selective. Like Mill said, intuition is not enough

alone to accept an idea, it must also have a basis in logic.

Thus, it is useful to identify an intuition as unreasonable when

it does not possess both an appeal to a first principle and a

grounding in logic. In the second half of this essay I will

discuss the Experience Machine thought experiment and discuss the

objection it raises against hedonism. I will show how it’s appeal

to intuition is invalid because it is not based on a first

principle but actually on the philosophically and spiritually

popular idea of functionalism. While this essay does not seek to

disprove this well ingrained philosophic idea, it does attempt to

point out that it is wrong to presuppose it in debate about well-

being.

The Experience Machine

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The Experience Machine thought experiment forms the basis

for one of the most popular objections to welfare hedonism. It

was first introduced by Robert Nozick in his book Anarchy, State and

Utopia. He gives us the situation: “Suppose there were an

experience machine that would give you any experience you

desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain

so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel,

or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time

you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your

brain. Should you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming

your life’s experiences?”21 The general consensus in response to

this questions seems to be no. On the surface this seems to

provide a problem for the welfare hedonist because this type of

pleasure would be real, and thus beneficial, even if the

situation that caused it were not. If these pleasures are

beneficial, why would most people turn down this opportunity? In

order to discuss the Experience Machine in relation to welfare

hedonism this experiment has to be studied more thoroughly. There

are three possibilities. First, the decisions to turn down the 21 Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, (New York: Basic Books, Inc,. Publishers, 1974), 42.

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experience machine might be made on a logical basis. Second, the

majority of people might turn the opportunity down based on their

intuition. Third, there might be no basis for the response, it

might only be a decision prompted by fear and social

conditioning.

The first option cannot be addressed without considering, in

greater depth, how this experience machine would work. In

Nozick’s discussion of the process he explains that in this

scenario, the participant would decide what experiences they

wished to have before they were plugged into the tank.22 He goes

so far as to ask the reader to suppose a company had done

extensive research on the happiest kinds of lives and could

counsel the chooser so as to help them create the best possible

life including everything they wished to experience. In his

model, the participant would come out of the tank every two years

in order to choose the experiences for his or her next two

years.23 Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the person would

not know they were connected to the machine during the

22 Ibid.23 Ibid.

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experience.24 This last qualification is an important one because

the subject’s reception on the experience would be altered by

this information. If the person were aware they were experiencing

things that were simulated, those experiences would not have the

same ability to increase well-being as things that were

experienced as being real. Nozick uses this thought experiment to

prove that there are things that matter to us outside of our own

mental states. His thinks these things are, (1) we actually want

to do certain things, (2) we want to be a certain way and (3) we

do not want to be limited to a man-made reality.25 However, he

elaborates very lightly on these reasons and I would like to look

at them more in depth. All of these objections seem to assume

something sinister about the experience machine that Nozick never

particularly says, namely, that it overrides one’s personality.

In reference to the second objection he says that, “plugging into

the machine is a kind of suicide.”26 This suggests that he

believes the machine would cause the end of the individual person

despite the fact that he never clearly says so in the explanation

24 Ibid., 43.25 Ibid., 44.26 Ibid., 43.

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of how the machine works. He seems to imagine the experience

machine overriding an individual’s personality by forcing the

person to act or feel in a way that is against their nature. This

point is extremely important despite the fact that Nozick assumes

it. Lets say, my father died and because I didn’t want to feel

bad about his death, I plugged into the experience machine. The

machine then proceeded to make me feel happy about the incident

rather than sad. This would be an example of the experience

machine overriding one’s personality. If this were the case, the

general consensus against this type of machine would be

completely understandable. It would fall into the same category

as the philosophy of swine argument. Very few people have any

urge to end their own lives and letting your emotions and

thoughts be taken over by a machine would, in fact, constitute

suicide. On this point, welfare hedonism would agree with Nozick

because in order to achieve happiness and well-being, the person

who is seeking them must be preserved.

However, if an experience machine, as the name implies, did

nothing more than create an alternate reality for one to exist

within, the situation would be vastly different. If the only

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thing the machine altered was the data a person’s senses were

receiving, this objection would not sbe valid. In a case such as

this the mental integrity of the individual would remain

uncompromised. This would be tantamount to wearing glasses, which

alter the way your senses take in data, or going on holiday far

away from your accustomed setting. It would not alter how you

individually interpret your surroundings; it would only change

the surroundings themselves. For example, if courage is something

I value highly but do not possess I could look to this type of

experience machine for recourse. The earlier type of experience

machine would make me courageous simply by directly influencing

my brain. This type of tampering would not preserve my person.

The individual who came out of the experiment would be different

then the one who went in. However, if I went to the second type

of experience machine and wanted to work on becoming courageous,

the machine could create external stimuli that would encourage me

to become courageous. Perhaps it would put me in a haunted house

with a family member I had to protect or something similar. With

this in mind it becomes clear how complicated this example really

is.

28

The question of preservation of the person is a difficult

one. We must ask: how much change constitutes a change in person?

After explaining the Experience Machine Objection, Nozick goes on

to talk about the possibility of a transformation machine. He

says that this machine would change a person in whatever way they

wanted that was still “compatible with themselves.”27 He decides

not to go into detail on this point so it remains unclear what

changes would qualify as fitting into this category. It is fairly

obvious that if you took away a person’s apathy or ability to

feel sympathy they would become another person but what about if

you just changed their face? Certainly becoming extremely

beautiful or extremely ugly would change the way one experiences

the world but the question is to what degree? Since this is not

the subject of the paper, it will suffice to say that in this

discussion I am assuming a theory of personality that dictates a

personality can endure small adjustments but cannot remain the

same through big changes. This is because some continuity of

character is necessary in order to talk about a person’s well-

being but it would be inaccurate and naive to assume that nothing

27 Ibid., 44.

29

could change a person’s basic character or that no person would

or should mind having their essential character changed.

In the case of the second type of experience machine,

Nozick’s second objection, that we actually want to be a certain

way, would be void. Since the machine does not create or alter

personalities in any direct way, the participants would not be

changed by the machine but only by the experiences themselves.

They would be the person they appeared to be. In this case, all

the machine is doing is facilitating change, not causing or

forcing it. The best example of this is the fact that when one

decides to go into the machine, he or she could pick only the

most enjoyable experiences but that person still maintains the

ability to not enjoy them. His third objection is equally invalid

since the mental integrity of the individual is preserved. One of

the examples he uses is religion. However, there is no reason

that the experience machine should hinder religious awakening

because it is through the mind that a person connects with their

divine. This brings us back to the first objection, that people

actually want to do things.

30

This objection exposes the misleading nature of the

experience machine discussion. It inadequately represents the

position of the person in the experience machine. Although it may

not appear so to an observer, the person connected to the machine

is actively participating in a whole life. Because we are human,

we find it impossible to disregard information that we already

have and so, once we know that the experiences we would have in

the machine are fabricated, we cannot disregard this information

and so we are not able to logically make this decision. It is one

thing to tell a person that they will be happy and another for

them to actually believe they will feel that way.

A clearer example of this phenomenon is the respected

businessman experiment. In this thought experiment, there is a

well-respected businessman who absolutely loves his life. His

wife loves him, his children adore him and his colleagues respect

him. Or so he thinks. In reality his wife is cheating on him, his

children only pretend to adore him to get money from him and all

of his colleagues hold him in contempt.28 When asked whether we

would choose to be that businessman most people would say no.

28 Crisp, “Well-Being,” 61.

31

This answer is reasonable from a hedonistic point of view because

it makes sense to avoid a situation in which ones well-being is

so precarious. It stands to reason that if tipped off about the

actual state of affairs, he would no longer be happy. However, if

included in that deal was a promise that the businessman would

never find out about his wife’s, children’s and colleagues’

deceit, the situation changes drastically. In this case, welfare

hedonism would dictate that the businessman’s position is highly

desirable because he experiences a lot of pleasure and this makes

him happy and gives him a high well-being.

Like the experience machine scenario, human nature makes it

impossible to enter into a situation like the businessman’s

because we suffer from a cognitive bias that does not allow us to

judge the matter clearly. Just as a jury cannot disregard what

they know about a case from the media before they step in a

courtroom, we are also unable to judge this case based on its own

merits. We find it impossible to put ourselves in the shoes of

the happy businessman because we project our own knowledge on

him. Even though it is explicitly denied in the situation, we

subconsciously think that if we know his life is a lie, surely he

32

suspects it as well.29 In addition to this, many people think

that high well-being is not something that should be easily

changeable. For example with the happy businessman, it seems

difficult to understand that one day he could have a high well-

being and the next, after he becomes aware of everyone’s deceit,

his well-being drops to rock bottom.

Both the happy businessman and experience machine thought

experiments misrepresent the situation of the person in them. In

order to avoid human cognitive deficiencies and get at the

philosophical truth, they would have to be presented differently.

One way to do this would be to limit the chooser’s information to

the information available to the first person. For example, if I

asked you to decide between the “happy” businessman who believes

all of the things mentioned above are true, and the happy

businessman for whom all of those things are true, people would

choose the happy businessman every time. However, if I were to

give the choosers information about what each man believes was

true, the two options would be equally desirable because both men

are experiencing the same thing. Without the extra information

29 Feldman, “The Good Life: A Defence of Attitudinal Hedonism,” 615.

33

that is unavailable to the first person, people would consider

these two options equally good. In addition to this, chances are

none of the choosers would even ask whether these men experienced

life the way it really was. It would not even occur as an

important consideration because that person’s happiness would be

directly impacted by what the happy businessmen thought, not what

was true.

The question is, if there is no logical difference between

actually doing things and mentally seeming to do them, why is the

realness of the action so important to people? From where does

its seeming importance arise? Some philosophers, including many

proponents of Hedonism, would dismiss the whole question at this

point and declare victory as soon as the logical basis for this

problem was dispatched. However, I believe this is not thorough.

I spoke earlier at length about the importance of intuition to

hedonistic theories. To deny intuition is to deny one of our

strongest tools in well-being theory. However, in the next

section I will discuss how this need for “realness” is not based

on valid intuition. It is not a first principle but rather a

socialized concept that originates with Aristotle and has found

34

distribution through monotheistic religions. The philosophical

concept of “functionalism” has worked its way into the modern

unconscious and makes most people unable to think about well-

being without presupposing it.

The Problem of Intuition

There has always been friction between the hedonistic and

Aristotelian accounts of well-being. The fundamental difference

rests on perhaps the most important aspect of Aristotelian

philosophy, the idea of function. Aristotle bases almost all of

his philosophy, ethical and biological, on the idea that the best

of a thing is the item that best performs the function of the

thing. This idea can be demonstrated by the example of a fork.

The “best” fork is the one that is good at picking up food and

enabling the user to convey that food to his or her mouth. All of

the characteristics of this “best” fork are created in such a way

as to perform its function. Particularly, it has about four

prongs to enable it to easily pick up food. It also probably has

a handle that is long enough to allow the users hands to remain

clean while being short enough to enable easy use. In the

35

Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle extends this idea of function to

humans. He says that the exclusive ability of humanity is reason

and because of this, reason is the ultimate function of

humanity.30 This paradigm is important because Aristotle believes

humans obtain a high well-being by fulfilling this function and

that and the behaviour that encourages this fulfilment is called

“virtue”. Aristotle spends most of the Nicomachean Ethics discussing

the exact behaviour that is encompassed by the term “virtue”.

However, for our purposes, the important distinction is that for

Aristotle, virtue, not pleasure or happiness, is the determining

factor in human well-being.

This is certainly not to say that Aristotle ignores the idea

of human pleasure and happiness. He does say that the virtuous

person gains pleasure from acting virtuously but it is on this

point that he and the hedonists disagree fundamentally. In his

book Epicureanism, Tim O’Keefe points out that, “Epicurus [the

ancient father of hedonism] would reject all of this [Aristotle’s

human function] argument. Human beings, and their organs, have no

inherent purpose. Our minds were not made in order to think, and 30 Aristotle, “Nichomachean Ethics,” The Basic Works of Aristotle, Ed. Richard McKeon, (NewYork: The Modern Library, 2001), Book I.7 1095a2.

36

our hands were not made to grasp well, even though our minds can

think well and our hands can grasp well, and we can use our minds

and hands to get what we wish. Each is useful, but not designed,

unlike artefacts.”31 So, rather than any particular aspect of

virtue, the Epicurean and hedonistic concern lies with the idea

that human beings achieve well-being by accomplishing their

function.

While this may seem tangential, it is actually of central

importance. No historian or philosopher would deny that Western

Society, through the medium of Christianity, was fundamentally

shaped by the philosophy of Aristotle. In fact, Islam and Judaism

were also deeply affected.* Since the functionalism argument fits

so well with the monotheistic idea of “God’s plan”, it has worked

its way into the philosophical unconscious and now is implicitly

assumed in many arguments rather than challenged. Looking at

welfare hedonism through this lens is frustrating and

unproductive because if one assumes that human beings become

31 Tim O’Keefe, Epicureanism, (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 2010), 112.** This can be seen in Christian philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas, Jewish philosophers such as Maimonides and Islamic philosophers such as Ibn Roshd andIbn Sina.

37

better off and happier by fulfilling their purpose, pleasure

seems consequential instead of causal. Then it seems counter-

productive to argue, as a hedonist would, that pleasure is the

way we increase our well-being.

This problem is just further exasperated by the necessary

connection Aristotle derives between well-being and moral virtue.

If we assume his structure, including the fact that pleasure is

the result of virtue, than it is ridiculous to dissociate

pleasure from virtue because doing so would make both concepts

meaningless. Working off this assumption, it is impossible to

come up with any consistent hedonistic account of welfare.

Although it is not the purpose of this paper to dispute religion

in any way, it does seem flawed to assume it from the beginning,

which is basically what happens if we assume functionalism

uncritically. The more fundamental position is always the one

that makes the fewest assumptions and in this case the non-

functionalist viewpoint is the most fundamental. It makes sense

that in all arguments we should start from the most fundamental

position and argue for any additional suppositions but well-being

theory has been operating under the opposite principle. Instead

38

of dismissing hedonism because it does not conform to

preconceived notions about human value, we should reconsider

those notions.

The functionalist problems with hedonism manifest in the

experience machine objection. The idea that Nozick mentioned,

that people want to do certain things not just think they do

them, is the direct result of the popularity of Aristotelian

functionalism. In his article Hedonism Reconsidered, Roger Crisp

discusses why we might have gained intuitions like the preference

for functionalism, when they do not accurately portray how we

experience happiness and well-being.32 One of the suggestions he

makes is evolutionary. Particularly, that human beings have

experienced more pleasure when they do not seek pleasure as the

only end. Therefore, through our search for pleasure, we have

given up being only pleasure motivated.33 This proposition

functions somewhat like the temporary suspension of disbelief

necessary to enjoy a science fiction movie. It seems though, that

we have forgotten the belief that was suspended. People have

gained immense amounts of pleasure from achieving virtue and 32 Crisp, Hedonism Reconsidered, 637.33 Ibid.

39

fulfilling their function but have forgotten that the ultimate

goal of fulfilling their function is to gain pleasure.

Another proposition that Crisp makes is that there are

social reasons for the abandonment of hedonism. He states that in

order to create social institutions, which have the ultimate aim

of increasing pleasure, humans have had to denounce pleasure

socially so that they could co-exist.34 Functionalism also fits

into this model because it encourages people to seek their own

happiness by performing their function to God and society. This

is further supported by the fact that there is historical

evidence that the confidence forged by religious similarities has

been a vital factor in the creations of societies and trade

networks.* Because of these and other reasons, our hesitancy to

give up functionalism is understandable. However, it is necessary

to realize our deficiencies on this matter, whether they are

cognitive, social or evolutionary. Once the origins of the

objections raised by Nozick are identified, it becomes clear that

while the first one appears to be based on intuition, it is

34 Ibid., 638.** For example, the creation of Christian kingdoms in the Middle Ages and the creation of extensive Arabic Islamic trade networks based on bonds of religious similarity.

40

actually based on learned philosophical behaviour. This learned

behaviour makes it impossible for most philosophers to approach

Hedonistic philosophy with any success.

Determining the fact that this intuitive rejection of

hedonism is neither based on logic nor on a first principle is

the first step to abolishing it as a pre-assumed conclusion. Once

we do this, the field of well-being theory is substantially

opened up and productive discussion can resume on a subject that

has been essentially gridlocked. While the abandonment of

functionalism and religious destiny is far from a foregone

conclusion, it becomes a possibility. Even if some people remain

attached to the idea, progress is possible. This paper makes no

assertions about Aristotelian philosophy or religious beliefs but

I think there is a productive metaphor to be drawn between

children and functionalists. When left alone to play, children

will sometimes create games with elaborate rules or, more often,

add rules to pre-existing games. They do this for a few reasons,

(1) in order to keep their games interesting and prevent boredom,

(2) in order to give themselves a sense of accomplishment when

they beat the game and (3) in order to facilitate social

41

interactions. Perhaps human beings, intimidated by the free reign

they have over their own lives have created elaborate rules of

life for the same reasons. While this does create some

interesting social interactions, it does not really reflect the

way that we actually experience happiness and well-being. It

seems to me that perhaps it is time to recognize the elaborate

rules for what they are and discard them with other remnants of

the past. Only then will discussions on well-being reflect the

reality of happiness.

Concluding Remarks

In this essay I have attempted to debunk the experience

machine objection to welfare hedonism. In the first part of the

essay I discussed the current state of welfare hedonistic theory.

In particular I tried to place welfare hedonism both in its

hedonistic and welfare contexts. Then I discussed the many

objections and proposed solutions made by others philosophers

leading to the establishment of Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism as the

most defensible form of welfare hedonism. The second part of my

paper engaged the Experience Machine example in a new way that

42

clarifies and rebuts its problems with hedonism. Modern

philosophy suffers acutely from being unable to transcend the

Aristotelian function based view of human goodness and by

pointing this out, I showed how the Experience machine plays on

this human weakness encouraging a response that is borne out of

habit and fear more the logic or legitimate intuition. What

Epicurus said, and what modern hedonists are saying, is that we

need to forget about the idea of the human function and instead

focus on the human experience as the human experiences it. While

I recognize that this argument is far from definitive, I believe

it is compelling. It does imply some fascinating consequences for

well-being theory and will hopefully spur debate in the future.

Of course, die-hard functionalists will not find the argument

convincing but hopefully it will encourage them and all other

readers to question their beliefs a little and consider some

alternatives.

43

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