Experience Machines The Philosophy of Virtual Worlds

243 Pages·2017·1.47 MB·English

by  Mark Silcox

Experience Machines

Experience Machines
The Philosophy of Virtual Worlds
Edited by Mark Silcox
London•NewYork
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Title:Experiencemachines:thephilosophyofvirtualworlds/editedbyMarkSilcox.
Description:Lanham:Rowman&LittlefieldInternational,2017.|Includesbibliographicalrefer-
encesandindex.
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tronic)|ISBN9781786600677(cloth:alk.paper)|ISBN9781786600684(pbk.:alk.paper)
Subjects:LCSH:Experience.|Reality.|Virtualreality.|Computersimulation.
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Contents
Introduction:TheExperienceMachine:FromThoughtExperiment
to(Virtual)Reality 1
MarkSilcox
PartI:VirtualExperiencesandHumanWell-Being
1 Cypher’sChoices:TheVarietyandRealityofVirtualExperiences 13
PeterLudlow
2 IntuitionandImaginativeFailure 33
DanielPietrucha
3 GiveMetheConfidence:Nozick’sExperienceMachine,
Hedonism,andConfidentAttitudinalPleasures 43
EmilianoHeynsandJohnnyHartzSøraker
4 Cecin’estpasunecuve:Putnam’sArgumentasInclosureParadox 57
JonCogburn
PartII:Real-WorldExperienceMachines?
5 VirtualRealityand“KnowingWhatIt’sLike”:TheEpistemic
UpSideofExperienceMachines 75
E.M.Dadlez
6 FiguringOutWhoYourRealFriendsAre 87
AlexisElder
7 WelcometotheAchievementMachine:Or,HowtoValueand
EnjoyPointlessThings 99
GrantTavinor
v
vi Contents
8 VirtualWeltschmerz:ThingstoKeepinMindWhileBuilding
ExperienceMachinesandOtherTragicTechnologies 113
StefanoGualeni
PartIII:ExperientialDesign:ProblemsandProspects
9 TheProblemofEvilinVirtualWorlds 137
BrendanShea
10 EpistemicLivesandKnowinginVirtualWorlds 155
JamesMcBain
11 DigitalTearsFellfromHerVirtualEyes:Or,theEthicsof
VirtualBeings 169
MichaelLaBossiere
12 TheMoralityofExperienceMachinesforPalliativeandEnd-of-
LifeCare 183
DanWeijersandRussellDiSilvestro
13 TheExperienceMachineandtheEndoftheWorld(AsWe
KnowIt) 203
StevenMontgomery
Bibliography 219
Index 231
AbouttheAuthors 233
Introduction: The Experience Machine
From Thought Experiment to (Virtual) Reality
Mark Silcox
Robert Nozick, in his 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, described the
experiencemachineasawondrous,butpurelyhypothetical,pieceoftechnol-
ogy:
Supposetherewasanexperiencemachinethatwouldgiveyouanyexperience
youdesired.Superduperneuropsychologistscouldstimulateyourbrainsothat
youwouldthinkandfeelyouwerewritingagreatnovel,ormakingafriend,or
readinganinterestingbook.Allthetimeyouwouldbefloatinginatank,with
electrodesattachedtoyourbrain.(Nozick1974,42)
The question that Nozick’s thought experiment was designed to provoke
inhisreaderswasasimpleone: “Shouldyouplugintothismachineforlife,
preprogrammingyourlife’sexperiences?”
It is less than entirely clear from the book itself exactly what broader
philosophical conclusions Nozick was personally inclined to draw from this
imaginative exercise. But he certainly did think it was obvious that most of
us would answer his question strongly in the negative. He also described at
leastoneinferencehethoughtthatanyonecoulddrawuponbecomingaware
of this inclination. “By imagining an experience machine and then realizing
thatwewouldnotuseit,”heclaimed,“welearnthatsomethingmatterstous
inadditiontoexperience”(Nozick1974,44).
Over the subsequent four decades, Nozick’s brief argument has been
invokedin awidevariety of contextsto defend astartlinglydiversearray of
philosophical claims. It has also become a staple of college classrooms,
internetdiscussionthreads,andenergeticlate-nightbullsessions,bothinside
1
2 Introduction
and outside the walls of the academy. Philosophers who have shared No-
zick’s intuitions about the experience machine’s fundamental unattractive-
nesshaveappealedtothemtocriticizevariousspeciesofhedonism(theview
thatallweultimatelyvalue—orthatallweshouldsovalue—ispleasure),as
wellastodefendthewidespreadbutoftenratherinchoatelyformulatedintui-
tion that what matters above all else to human beings is autonomy. Some,
however, have also expressed doubts that the lessons to be learned from
Nozick’sscenariohaveanythingwhatsoevertodowiththevalueofpleasure.
And still others have raised questions about the very rationality of our aver-
sion to plug in, or simply denied that Nozick is correct in anticipating how
most people would behave if they were presented with the real-life prospect
oflifelongdependenceuponthemachine.
All of this rich and provocative philosophical discussion, however, has
thusfarbeencarriedoutmoreorlesshaphazardly.Therehasbeenverylittle
effortmadetocompareorsynthesizereactionstothethoughtexperimentthat
appeartobeintensionwithoneanother.Andperhapsevenmorepuzzlingly,
few philosophers have attempted (at least in print) to compare intuitions
about the machine’s possible appeal to the attractions of actual, real-life
experiencesprovidedbynewtechnologiesthathaveariseninthewakeofthe
1980s’personalcomputerrevolution.
Here,forthefirsttime,Nozick’sexperiencemachineismadetheexplicit
focus of sustained, concerted scrutiny from a multiplicity of philosophical
perspectives.Theauthorsofthechaptersinthisvolumeexplore(inarguably
unprecedented depth) all of the hypotheses about the philosophical signifi-
canceoftheexperiencemachinealreadymentioned,aswellaslotsofothers.
The conclusions that they reach do not by any means represent the achieve-
ment of some grand consensus. Any reader who makes it to the end of the
book will doubtless be struck above all else by the remarkable diversity of
opinions that the Nozickian gedankenexperiment is capable of provoking.
Theonlysharedpresuppositioninevidencehereisthat,bythinkingcarefully
about why (and whether) we might prefer to avoid the sort of life in which
more of our experiences are productsof humanartifice, newinsightscanbe
gained into the deeper sources of value and obligation for which philoso-
phersalwaysaresearching.
The authorswhose work iscollectedhere havealsopaidsustained atten-
tion to the real-world significance of such investigations for the inhabitants
of technologically advanced societies—implications of his thought experi-
mentthatNozickmightnothimselfhavebeeninapositiontoanticipate.The
enormous cultural and technological changes that occurred near the end of
the twentieth century, thanks mainly to the sudden cheap availability of
powerfulcomputers,andlaterontothegrowthoftheinternet,havemadehis
argument seem considerably more imbued with immediate practical signifi-
cance.
TheExperienceMachine 3
The types of activities in which people engage when they play computer
games, interact via social media, and build computer simulations of real-
worldphenomenaforresearchorentertainmentallproducethesortsofexpe-
riences that one can perfectly well imagine being attractive to anybody at
leastwillingtoconsiderpluggingintoNozick’smachine.Butthesetechnolo-
gies also impose a kind of structure upon the experiences (or, indeed, the
whole lives) of their users that adds a dimension of complexity to any at-
tempt to assess their value. Habitual players of Second Life, World of War-
craft,orLeagueofLegends,aswellasanyonewhohasevertakenanonline
“tour”ofadistantcity,anartgallery,orafamousbuilding,haveall(howev-
er briefly) chosen to inhabit a virtual world, presumably out of a sense that
theirordinary,real-worldenvironmentswereatleastinsomewaytemporari-
lyinadequate.Severalofthecontributorstothepresentvolumehavethought
verycarefullyaboutwhatsuchdecisionsmightshowabouthowrecenttech-
nological developments have already affected our conceptions of what’s
trulyvaluable—withinourownlivesaswellasothers’—andhowtheymight
beexpectedtointhefuture.
AXIOLOGIESOFTHEREAL
Nozick’s own explanation for why at least many people would refuse the
offer of a permanent connection to the experience machine is quite well
known.Heproposesthat,inthefirstplace,ashumaninhabitantsofthe“real”
world “we want to do certain things, and not just have the experience of
doingthem.”Andinthesecondplace,eachofusalsowants “tobeacertain
way, to beacertain sort of person,” ratherthanjustan “indeterminate blob”
hookeduptoamachine.“Whyshouldwebeconcernedwithhowourtimeis
filled,butnotwithwhatweare?”(Nozick1974,43).
Suchconsiderationscannotbethewholeofthestoryaboutwhatmakesus
so averse to plugging in, however, given that (as Nozick himself helpfully
observes)manyofuswouldbeequallydisinclinedtoplugintowhathecalls
a transformation machine or a results machine. The former hypothetical
devicewouldhavethecapacitytochangeanindividualintowhatevertypeof
person she most wanted to be; the latter would produce any outcome what-
soever in the world that one’s own activities would have produced anyway.
Such instruments are perhaps a little harder to envisage than a machine that
simply changed one’s inner states. But if, to the extent that we can imagine
them,wewouldalsorejecttheoffertomakeuseofthem,thenthedefaultset
of values we would be relying on would become even more inscrutable to
ordinaryreflection.
ThethirdreasonthatNozickgivesfornotplugginginisperhapshismost
provocative. The problem with the experience machine isn’t just explicable