Essay on Robert Nozick´s Happiness and the Experience Machine

Robert Nozicks Happiness Many theorist believe that happiness is the only important in peoples life, and all that should matter to a person is being happy. The standard of assessing a good life is how much or quantity of happiness it contains. This openness of happiness, its generosity of spirit and width of appreciation, gets warped and constricted by the claim pretending to be its greatest friend—that only happiness matters, nothing else. Robert Nozick does not on the side of hedonistic utilitarianism, he gives several examples to show that there are other elements of reality we may strive for, even at the expense of pleasure. In this essay, I will focus on Nozicks opinion of the direction of happiness and the experience†¦show more content†¦Nozick briefly discusses the nature of pleasure, as it is clearly an important element of happiness. There are pleasures of the body and mind, as well as pleasures of the emotion. They are all valued for their felt quality that what they have in common That is what a pleasure is, and is different from something like Equality, which is not valued for good feelings , but pleasure is something valued for its felt qualities. The experience machine is one of Nozick’s best-known arguments . The experience machine is a thought experiment which posits the existence of a device that can give its user any experience desired. When one placed in an experience machine, it can program any experience, such as traveling to the moon. The experience machine is supposed to allow someone to have all and any of the pleasures in the world. However, Nozick states that even though if such machine exits no one would use it, which shows that there are more important things than pleasure. What Nozick suggests is that we would not use such a machine. Here are some arguments from Nozick. 1) if the only thing that mattered to us was pleasure, then we would plug ourselves into a machine that could any simulate experiences we desired. 2) Even if the machine existed, we would not plug ourselves into it for three reasons: ï  ¬ What we want not just experience them, but actually do certain things ï  ¬ We want toShow MoreRelatedHappiness By Robert Nozick1500 Words   |  6 PagesLife, philosopher Robert Nozick lists three conceptions of happiness, which he calls the ‘three forms of happiness’ (Nozick, p. 108). The third form of happiness is defined satisfaction with life as a whole--being able to look back on one s life and be satisfied with what one has done/experienced (Nozick, p. 110). He argues it is easy to understand why people long for this type of happiness, as it is pleasurable to experience in itself. 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