Experience Machines Experience Machines The Philosophy of Virtual Worlds Edited by Mark Silcox London•NewYork PublishedbyRowman&LittlefieldInternational,Ltd. UnitA,WhitacreMews,26-34StannaryStreet,LondonSE114AB www.rowmaninternational.com Rowman&LittlefieldInternational,Ltd.isanaffiliateofRowman&Littlefield 4501ForbesBoulevard,Suite200,Lanham,Maryland20706,USA WithadditionalofficesinBoulder,NewYork,Toronto(Canada),andLondon(UK) www.rowman.com Selectionandeditorialmatter©MarkSilcox2017.Copyrightinindividualchaptersis heldbytherespectivechapterauthors. Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereproducedinanyformorbyany electronicormechanicalmeans,includinginformationstorageandretrievalsystems, withoutwrittenpermissionfromthepublisher,exceptbyareviewerwhomayquote passagesinareview. BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationInformationAvailable AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary ISBN:HB978-1-78660-067-7 ISBN:PB978-1-78660-068-4 LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Names:Silcox,Mark,editor. Title:Experiencemachines:thephilosophyofvirtualworlds/editedbyMarkSilcox. Description:Lanham:Rowman&LittlefieldInternational,2017.|Includesbibliographicalrefer- encesandindex. Identifiers::LCCN2017012206(print)|LCCN2017016913(ebook)|ISBN9781786600691(Elec- tronic)|ISBN9781786600677(cloth:alk.paper)|ISBN9781786600684(pbk.:alk.paper) Subjects:LCSH:Experience.|Reality.|Virtualreality.|Computersimulation. Classification:LCCB105.E9(ebook)|LCCB105.E9E94252017(print)|DDC128/.4--dc23 LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2017012206 TMThepaperusedinthispublicationmeetstheminimumrequirementsofAmerican NationalStandardforInformationSciences—PermanenceofPaperforPrintedLibrary Materials,ANSI/NISOZ39.48-1992. PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica 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