Experience Machine

One definition of hedonism is the pursuit of pleasure over all other priorities, the assumption being that pleasure directly feeds our sense of happiness and fulfillment, and is thus the most vital outcome we can pursue.

The philosophy of Hedonism is of course much richer than that succinct definition implies, exploring angles of pleasure that might not be immediately obvious, like the distinctions between short-term, temporal pleasure and what’s generally considered to be richer, higher-order flavors of the same (like “eudaemonia”), alongside how (and whether) pleasure can be limited to experiences, or if it also encompasses seemingly oppositional things we do (delaying gratification, for instance) that can imbue a less-potent, but longer lasting sense of well-being (which we might experience as pleasurable).

A thought experiment proposed in the 1970s asked, if we assume that pleasure is the be all, end all of happiness and fulfillment, and thus that the pursuit of those ends are the most moral thing we can do, would it be ethical and desirable to plug into a machine that could make us feel like we’re having pleasurable experiences—eating delicious foods, having wonderful sex with someone we love, experiencing the rush of finishing a groundbreaking piece of artwork or writing a bestselling book—all day every day, for the rest of our lives?