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Ethical Hedonism Analysis

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What Matters to Us? Ethical Hedonism explores the maximization of our pleasure and happiness as a fundamental obligation for morality; but Nozick’s experiment demonstrates that pleasure and happiness doesn’t only matters to us. This essay argues that Nozick’s thought experiment, the “experience machine” exemplifies the weaknesses of Ethical Hedonism, as perfecting the machine illustrates that to truly live our lives; we must value other matters besides pleasure. Firstly, this essay will discuss Nozick’s thought experiment “the experience machine” and what the experiment reveals. Secondly, reasonable objections to why I wouldn’t enter a machine that promises me maximal pleasure as Nozick identifies several issues exposed by the thought experiment. …show more content…

Nozick designed the “experience machine” to analyze what matters to us, including pleasure and happiness. The “experience machine” is a machine that’s expertly designed to preprogram life experiences, including the lives of others and is able to give you any experience you desire including eternal pleasure, pain etc. The machine provides a vast selection of experiences of which one can select from for a selected period of time; after such, you’ll have a selected period of time out of the machine to reselect another set of experiences to experience and return back to the machine” (Nozick, 1974). The experiment includes the entire population as maintenance isn’t required and one doesn’t know if they’re inside. Furthermore, Nozick’s experiment highlights that even though the machine may provide us with momentary bliss, intuitively we feel that something is missing from the designed machine. We value the provided pleasure, but at some point, plateauing pleasure and happiness leaves us wanting beyond our selections. The experiment reveals that there’s something additional to pleasure that we value. Even if one designs such a machine we consequentially, would lose our yearning to “live” our true lives in actuality. Therefore, Nozick’s experiment illustrates that the argument for Ethical Hedonism is weak and that something beyond pleasure matters to

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