theories of well-being: hedonism, desire-satisfaction and objective list, and Nozick's experience machine

What this dot point is asking

VCAA wants you to distinguish the three main theories of well-being (what makes a person's life go well for them), reconstruct Robert Nozick's experience machine argument against hedonism, and evaluate which theory survives best. The high-band answer keeps the three theories cleanly apart, states the experience machine as a structured argument rather than a story, considers replies on behalf of hedonism, and reaches a judgement about prudential value.

The three theories of well-being

The question of well-being is the prudential question: what makes a person's life good for that person, as distinct from morally good or aesthetically good. There are three classic families of answer.

Hedonism holds that well-being consists in pleasant experience and the absence of unpleasant experience. A life goes well to the extent it feels good from the inside.

Desire-satisfaction (preference) theory holds that well-being consists in getting what you want, in the satisfaction of your actual or suitably informed desires, whether or not their satisfaction produces pleasure. On this view what is good for you is fixed by you, by your preferences.

Objective-list theory holds that certain things are good for you whether or not you want them or enjoy them: typically knowledge, friendship, achievement, autonomy, health and aesthetic experience. The list is objective because its items benefit you independently of your attitudes toward them.

Nozick's experience machine

Robert Nozick, in Anarchy, State, and Utopia, designs a thought experiment to test hedonism. Imagine a machine that could give you any experience you desired: superneuroscientists stimulate your brain so that you seem to be writing a great novel, making friends, or doing anything you like, while all the time you float in a tank with electrodes attached. The experiences are indistinguishable from the inside from real ones. Would you plug in for life?

Reconstructed as an argument against hedonism:

1. If hedonism is true, the only thing that matters for well-being is the quality of our experiences.
2. The experience machine guarantees experiences at least as pleasant as, and probably better than, any unplugged life.
3. So if hedonism is true, we should be willing, indeed eager, to plug in.
4. But most of us would decline to plug in.
5. So we must value things besides pleasant experience: actually doing certain things (not just having the experience of doing them), actually being a certain kind of person, and being in genuine contact with reality.
6. Therefore hedonism is false as a theory of well-being.

Nozick suggests three reasons we refuse: we want to do things, not merely have the experience of doing them; we want to be a certain way, not just feel that we are; and plugging in limits us to a man-made reality, cutting us off from any deeper or actual contact with the world.

Evaluation

The experience machine is one of the most effective arguments in value theory, and its force is hard to dodge. The widespread refusal to plug in is strong evidence that pleasant experience is not all that matters to us, which is exactly what hedonism denies. It supports desire-satisfaction theory (we desire reality, not just its appearance) and especially objective-list theory (achievement and genuine relationships are goods in their own right).

Hedonists have replies. First, the status-quo bias reply: perhaps our refusal reflects irrational attachment to the familiar rather than insight about value; a reversed case (you are told you are already in a machine and asked whether to leave) may pump weaker intuitions. Second, a hedonist may bite the bullet and say refusal is a mistake driven by distrust of the technology, not a genuine preference for reality. These replies blunt the argument but do not clearly defeat it: the most natural reading is that we care about reality and agency for their own sake.

Each surviving theory has its own troubles. Desire-satisfaction theory faces the problem of defective desires (satisfying a desire based on false belief may not benefit you) and the scope problem (do desires about distant matters count?). Objective-list theory faces the charge of paternalism and arbitrariness: who decides what is on the list, and can something be good for me if I am wholly averse to it (the alienation worry)?

Judgement: the experience machine succeeds in refuting pure hedonism for most reasonable people, because we clearly value actually doing and actually being, not just the inner feel of these. Between the survivors, the objective-list theory best explains the data of the case (it directly names achievement and reality as goods), but it owes an account of why those items belong on the list and how to answer the alienation worry. The most defensible position is a qualified objective-list view, perhaps with a desire-based filter, rather than any of the three pure theories.