Boethius argues that happiness is equivalent to being good, since virtue is what leads to happiness — Count Timothy von Icarus

This might be overly blunt, but if my wife dies in a failed conception, my nation's culture is being erased, and the water I drink being poisoned, I don't think I would be happy even with the greatest virtues. But that is me.

All in all, yes, I don't think Nozick's machine is compatible with that definition of happiness, exactly because you pointed out that the person in the machine is sucking up resources while adding nothing to the world themselves, but that is a bit besides the point of Nozick's thought experiment.

And if the real things of interest are Forms, it's not immediately clear why being in a simulation should hurt our ability to discover truth. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is a good question. I would think it does not, as the simulation is just a bit deeper into the cave, but still in the cave nonetheless. It just might take a bit more effort to leave the cave than if we were in the real world.

This might be overly blunt, but if my wife dies in a failed conception, my nation's culture is being erased, and the water I drink being poisoned, I don't think I would be happy even with the greatest virtues. But that is me.

Well, Boethius was awaiting his death, and I believe he was already undergoing torture when he wrote the Consolation, and he was living at sort of the peak of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. But it's unclear if we are supposed to find Lady Philosophy's guidance totally convincing. There is some evidence to suggest that he knows the argument isn't convincing, and that this is why he uses Pagan Philosophy as his interlocutor instead of the divine Sophia of the Old Testament or the divine Logos of Christ. That is, human thought only gets you so far, you need something else to get to the sublimity of St. Irenaeus or St. Paul as they approached grizzly deaths.

E.g. Paul's letter from captivity: According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labour: yet what I shall prefer I know not. For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better: Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you.

All in all, yes, I don't think Nozick's machine is compatible with that definition of happiness, exactly because you pointed out that the person in the machine is sucking up resources while adding nothing to the world themselves, but that is a bit besides the point of Nozick's thought experiment.

I am now thinking there might be two routes to elucidating why it doesn't work. First, it cuts the person off from the whole of reality, a lesser issue. Second, it cuts them off from other persons, the main issues. And maybe personalism could lay this issue out more clearly.

This is a good question. I would think it does not, as the simulation is just a bit deeper into the cave, but still in the cave nonetheless. It just might take a bit more effort to leave the cave than if we were in the real world.

I was actually thinking that it might be easier to access the Forms from within the simulation. None of the distractions of the real world, the machine will keep you from experiencing the extreme pleasures or pains that bind one to the body, etc. And it might even be better at teaching virtue in the same way simulations can help someone learn a skill better than throwing them into the fire of real events. But then it seems like you can't stay in the machine because then you become dependent on it the way Boethius was dependent on Fortune and became miserable when he lost his power, fame, and wealth.

I don't think someone who knows they live in a machine/simulation can truly be happy.

I take your question to be whether God would bless one with knowledge of the good even if that person lived in a world that was merely simulated. I think the answer may be yes, although I do not say this with certainty but with a speculative mind.

Might such a machine invariably force users to voluntarily exit the machine (provided exit is possible)? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I echo NotAristotle's sentiments. If the guy knows he is in a simulation, he also knows that the virtue he is practicing is wasted, benefiting nothing but shadows of people. Knowing this, he happiness would hardly be maximized. The experience machine, to maximize his happiness, would in short order exit him from it to allow him to practice actual virtue that benefits actual people.

If he doesn't know he's in the sim, then he cannot choose an option of which he doesn't have knowledge.

So perhaps the machine will first train our subject in the virtues and, when this training is complete, eject him? And if he doesn't know he is in the machine the machine shall reveal this to him at an opportune time, when he is ready to go into the world and live a virtuous life? Perhaps the last test is in fact the willingness to leave the machine itself?

I can see this making a good analogy for the ideal upbringing/education.

consider Robert Nozick's "Experience Machine" thought experiment. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Isn't the problem with that is that it is entirely artificial? And does a simulcrum of 'true happiness' or 'true virtue' possess either happiness or virtue? Isn't a convincing fake still fake?

And if the real things of interest are Forms, it's not immediately clear why being in a simulation should hurt our ability to discover truth. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Because forms are attributes of beings, not of simulations.

//your subject will be, as a matter of definition, 'a dweller in the cave'.//

I don't think someone who knows they live in a machine/simulation can truly be happy. — NotAristotle

One of the versions of the machine thought experiment is that you don't know you are in a machine, your memories of your previous life are erased.

Because forms are attributes of beings, not of simulations. — Wayfarer

Aren't beings simulations themselves?

Aren't beings simulations themselves? — Lionino

No, on Cartesian grounds - even if everything I experience is illusory, there can be no doubt that I experience it. A simulation is rather like an illusion, but both simulations and illusions occur to an observing mind. The mind itself is not part of the simulation, but what the simulation appears to.

Would an idealist even care about being in the machine or not? After all, if this is all a dream, what does it matter if I dream I'm living a life of luxury vs dreaming I'm in a machine being fed an experience of living a life of luxury? It's all an illusion anyway.

My hypothesis would be that your mind is uneasy about but also somewhat satisfied with identifying goodness with happiness because you recognize that happiness, all else being equal, is good but yet you also intuit, notionally,that what is good is not identical to happiness.

For me, I would say, being a bit of a neo-platonist in a very (very) loose sense when it comes to ethics, that what is identical to goodness is 'being in self-harmony'; and this would explain, in my mind, why happiness, all else being equal, is good but that simulated happiness takes away, by-at-large, from the overall good (because achieving harmony is a process more valuable on the actual as opposed to simulated).

Because forms are attributes of beings, not of simulations

Isn't a convincing fake still fake?

Well, the intelligibility of things seems to be accessible through images of them. For example, if we have a picture of FDR, we would say "FDR is in the picture." The photograph is a likeness of FDR and transmits some of his intelligibility, whereas FDR would not be said to be a "likeness of," photographs of him.

We can learn about things through images of them. Indeed, skillfully shot photography or diagrams often help to bring out the intelligibility of things.

So, I'd agree that intelligibilities are "in" real things. However, they can also be transmitted. The same is true of sensation. The way a thing reflects ambient light waves allows the medium to transmit the intelligibility.

That said, it seems like the person in the machine can learn much about the intelligibilities of things for the same reason a medical student can learn much about the human body from books, diagrams, videos, etc.

But in a view like Hegel or Plato's, where intelligibilities are most real because they are most self-determining, it seems like a perfect simulation of sensory experience should be enough to get one to the true objects of knowledge, provided the simulation is faithful. Obviously, our simulation can't be fully faithful, else it would have to just be a replica of the world, but it might get close.

Would an idealist even care about being in the machine or not?

This is sort of what I was thinking. The Platonic ascent still seems possible in the machine, and it might even be easier to the extent a person is not distracted by the contingencies of the world. But then one might save themselves some effort and run off into the desert to be alone, rather than build such an elaborate machine. I suppose the machine can simulate good teachers though.

My hypothesis would be that your mind is uneasy about but also somewhat satisfied with identifying goodness with happiness because you recognize that happiness, all else being equal, is good but yet you also intuit, notionally,that what is good is not identical to happiness.

Yes, this makes sense to a certain extent. Plato sort of makes this point in the Philemon and Aristotle in the Ethics. It might be that the contemplative life and the life of virtue are what is best, but it is still the case that we want things like good food, wealth, friends, comfort, etc., and that these contribute to happiness. Aristotle allows that a person might be quite happy due to good fortune despite being a novice in the virtues. His critique here is merely that this person's happiness is less stable because it depends on good fortune, and if they lose these external goods they will become unhappy. Conversely, the person who is happy due to self-development and internal goods derives their happiness from things they cannot lose (or that are at least hard to lose). Augustine makes this same point, although he has it that the things that cannot be lost grant a higher sort of happiness, and are thus preferable to the gifts of fortune.

But I think there is a wrinkle here. The person who is dependent on good fortune is less free and less fully developed, being reliant on external goods, and so I think we do have grounds for saying they are less happy/flourishing precisely because they are dependent (Plato in the Republic, Augustine, and Boethius seem to make this point).

Now, can the person in the simulation grasp these immutable goods? It seems they can. So where is the problem? I think the Timaeus might identify it. If our goal is to become "like God," a goal Aristotle also puts at the top of the pyramid in Book X of the Ethics when discussing the contemplative life, the machine is not enough. To become more like God requires that we become self-determining and free, and this would seem to require not being reliant on the machine or fortune. Moreover, God loves all other things because to hate other things or to be indifferent to them is to be defined by what one is not. But in love, the self identifies with the other, and an all embracing love transcends the limits of self-identification. To perfect the virtues of love and charity then, one cannot remain in the machine, since you can't help anyone from there or help "give birth in beauty," as Plato describes it in the Symposium.

A certain degree of self-harmony can be met from within the machine, but not total harmony with the self-in-the-world. This requires harmony with the world, which requires a love that will make one exit the machine.

I think... lol. One might say though that Plato in the Philemon or Aristotle in general are more practical here. Socrates' quip in the Apology that "nothing bad can happen to a good man," rings hollow to the average person, but prehaps it can become true for the best of us.

That said, I have trouble imagining Boethius endorsing the machine, but I can't put my finger on why. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Because "living a virtuous life [...] leads to knowledge of the true good," and someone who is connected to the experience machine is not living life at all. I actually don't understand how Boethius could be imagined to endorse the experience machine.

Nozick's "Experience Machine"– — Count Timothy von Icarus

– I think would render "virtue and The Good" moot for the person trapped inside. The thought-experiment seems more analogous to a fentanyl-induced, permenantly vegetative coma than "Plato's Cave".

Well, the intelligibility of things seems to be accessible through images of them. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Only because beings such as yourself are able to interpret them. Insofar as they're rendered by an artist, and interpreted by subjects, they are imbued with meaning - their intelligibility is extrinsic to them.

Only because beings such as yourself are able to interpret them. — Wayfarer

You seem to be saying that things are intelligible because intelligent beings find them to be so, and that seems kind of tautologous or else one-sided, depending on how you might interpret the saying. Of course, you cannot have manifest intelligibility without intelligent beings finding intelligible things, but it could be said that things were potentially intelligible even prior to the advent of intelligent beings.

it could be said that things were potentially intelligible even prior to the advent of intelligent beings. — Janus

I suppose. I was trying to articulate the idea that images only are intelligible, because they're made by artists and interpreted by subjects. They're not inherently intelligible in the way that beings themselves are, as they don't possess the attribute of intrinsic self-organisation, as do living things. Of course they're simulcra rather than beings per se and so can an evoke ideas of beings, but here we're discussing the distinction between simulation and reality.

Now consider Robert Nozick's "Experience Machine" thought experiment. A person placed in the machine enters a realistic simulation. The machine is precisely calibrated so that the circumstances of the person's simulated life are such that it will maximize their happiness. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There's a report in The Guardian about the deleterious effects of social media ( which can be considered in some degree as 'experience machines').

Dr Vivek Murthy (America’s Surgeon General) went to places including Duke, University of Texas and Arizona State, but so many youngsters were plugged into earphones and gazing into laptops and phones that it was incredibly quiet in the communal areas. Where was the loud chatter Murthy remembered from his college days? ….

Figures published on Wednesday reveal one possible impact of that screen obsession: for the first time since the data was first collected in 2012, 15- to 24-year-olds in North America say they are less happy than older generations. The gap is closing in western European nations and in March Murthy flew to London to further his campaign against falling levels of happiness, particularly among the young. He is also worried about youth wellbeing in Japan, South Korea and India.

The replacement of person-to-person social connection, whether through clubs, sports teams, volunteering or faith groups, is a particular concern to the Yorkshire-born medic. ….

Murthy said that between 2000 and 2020 there has been a 70% decrease in the amount of in-person time young people in the US spent with their friends. Meanwhile, “our recent data is telling us that adolescents are spending on average 4.8 hours a day on social media … a third of adolescents are staying up till midnight or later on weeknights on their devices”. — The Guardian

I was working as a consultant at Apple in the early 90's during the halcyon years of multimedia. Apple had a big investment in educational technology and I attended many conferences with enthusiastic presenters (who were often teachers) extolling the limitless possibilities of educational media. Now, and aside from all of the social isolation issues noted above, there also seems to be a very strong correlation between the advent of smartphones and declining literacy and numeracy and also student's capacity to pay attention (ref).

The point of these examples being that the Utopian dreams of 'simulated reality' may not work out as we would like to imagine.

– I think would render "virtue and The Good" moot for the person trapped inside. The thought-experiment seems more analogous to a fentanyl-induced, permenantly vegetative coma than "Plato's Cave".

Well, here is how he describes it:

Imagine a machine that could give you any experience (or sequence of experiences) you might desire. When connected to this experience machine, you can have the experience of writing a great poem or bringing about world peace or loving someone and being loved in return. You can experience the felt pleasures of these things, how they feel “from the inside.” You can program your experiences for tomorrow, or this week, or this year, or even for the rest of your life. If your imagination is impoverished, you can use the library of suggestions extracted from biographies and enhanced by novelists and psychologists. You can live your fondest dreams “from the inside.” Would you choose to do this for the rest of your life? If not, why not?

It seems like it can involve simulated romances, friends, career success, etc. Given Boethius' definition of happiness, I was thinking that the machine would produce a rigorous training environment for the development of the virtues, since it is attaining these virtues that makes one happy.

Because "living a virtuous life [...] leads to knowledge of the true good," and someone who is connected to the experience machine is not living life at all. I actually don't understand how Boethius could be imagined to endorse the experience machine.

If you're able to get out it seems like it would be a useful way to "train" people in the virtues. Provided it can perfectly simulate anything in the world, it would seem to open up the opportunity of being raised around the very best teachers, with life events precisely calibrated to test you but not overwhelm you. A person who spends some time in the machine might come out a much better, and thus happier person in the same way that a rigorous education program can help develop a person intellectually and morally.

But I guess the problem comes when virtue and attainment of the Good is thought of wholly in terms of internal goods and harmony, which Boethius tends to get towards at times. It seems like the machine could help guide someone to be able to respond virtuously to both real and simulated experiences, since the two are indiscernible for the subject. So how is the person in the machine still deficient in some good?

I think that's the wrinkle, although I think the idea of not being reliant on the machine, and the virtues of "love" and "charity" clear this up. However, Boethius doesn't really focus much on those virtues.

BTW, I also thinks this gets at ways in which Boethius claim that "all fortune is good" could be improved. He looks at fortune exclusively through the individual lens. In this way, his Lady Philosophy starts to look a big like Dr. Pangloss in Candide, claiming that we live in "the best of all possible worlds," against all the evidence.

However, it seems that bad fortune can also ruin people when they are afflicted with it before they have had time to develop the virtues. Obviously, we are not self-determining as infants, and we rely on a certain sort of environment, some minimum standards, to be able to develop the virtues. So, on the grand historical scale, when we think of disasters that befall whole peoples, the collapse of cultures, etc. it seems like bad fortune is a true hindrance to those who might have been virtuous under better circumstances.

But this seems to flow from the individualistic conception of fortune. We tend to think of human freedom in terms of the individual. However, precisely because the development of freedom requires a certain environment, it might be that we should take a broader, more historical view of fortune. From this frame, I can see how bad fortune might be necessary for the free development of humanity, even if it isn't "for the best," if we look at things from the frame of one individual's life. That is, the development of self-determining societies might require periods of collective misfortune. Maybe. It's at least a little more convincing that Book IV, and there is some evidence that Boethius didn't necessarily think he was being convincing either.

Isn't it to be assumed that doing good means doing something that will have actual benefit in the world? If that is the case, then what you do in a simulation is not good. It might lead to some degree of self-satisfaction and happiness, but it would not lead to:

... knowledge of the true Good from which all good flows, God — Count Timothy von Icarus

For the source in the simulation is not God, and what is done is not truly good. At best it might lead to a sense or idea of God as the ultimate doer of good.

Given Boethius' definition of happiness, I was thinking that the machine would produce a rigorous training environment for the development of the virtues, since it is attaining these virtues that makes one happy. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Virtues, in order to have a chance of making one happy, would also need to be attained the right way -- through blood, sweat, and tears. And this cannot be done in a machine.

It's also why fairy tales (roughly an equivalent of an "experience machine") have only a limited use for teaching people virtue: fairy tales can give people ideas of virtue, but until a person actually puts them into practice in relevant real life situations, they won't have the desired effect. One cannot wish oneself happy, but one might work oneself happy.

The more apt name for R. Nozick's thought-experiment is "Hyper-Dopamine Machine" and all any human trapped inside this 'neural-menagerie' would be "trained" to do is, like any other limbic-enabled mammal in such a 'pleasure-on tap' situation, to keep chasing that next spike – this is vice, Count Tim, not virtue – hedonic addiction, not flourishing. Why would one bother with Boethius' "consolation" if one has, in effect, Platonic heroin (re: Renton's rant from Trainspotting)? :yawn:

I won't disagree with you that this is how the machine is often interpreted. However, critics came back with the argument that "real happiness" involves meaningful friendships, romance, introspection, etc. That is why Nozick's later 1989 version, quoted above, allows for those things. Essentially, this makes the machine more like the Matrix than shooting up heroin.

But, to make the thought experiment more interesting, the 1989 version also has it that the machine alters the simulation based on your ideal of happiness. Thus, if Boethius gets in it, and he thinks happiness is the development of the virtues, the machine is going to be more like a rigorous moral education.

I fully agree that Boethius will not get in the machine. However, I do think the portrayal of the virtues almost entirely in terms of internal good in the Consolation makes it difficult to justify this move. So, I think it points out something Boethius sort of leaves out - the importance to us of how our virtues affect others.

It seems like the machine could help guide someone to be able to respond virtuously to both real and simulated experiences, since the two are indiscernible for the subject. So how is the person in the machine still deficient in some good? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Boethius and Aristotle speak about living a virtuous life, not believing you are living a virtuous life. Your crucial premise in all of this is the idea that believing one is doing something or perceiving that one is doing something is the same as doing that something, and this is not granted.

For example, the ground of moral virtue has to do with interacting with other people. Such a thing simply does not occur in the experience machine.

Beyond this, there are interesting arguments to be had about the degree to which one can practice virtue, but rudimentary forms certainly exist in things like the role-playing that some psychological counselors promote.

(Maybe when I have more time I will come back to this. It has been a while since I've read The Consolation.)

For example, the ground of moral virtue has to do with interacting with other people. Such a thing simply does not occur in the experience machine.

I'm simply not sure that this is a key distinction in these authors, particularly not in the Consolation itself. Virtue often seems to be defined almost entirely internally. Aristotle does make some nods to consequentialism in terms of deciding if an action is freely chosen in the Ethics, and he has an idea of negligence in there, but overall virtue is largely about how the person responds to the world. The virtuous person is virtuous if they choose good acts and enjoy doing them. A person who chooses the good in a Matrix-like perfect simulation of the world seems psychologically identical to the one who chooses the good in the real world, particularly if they don't know they are in a simulation.

There is no reason to think the person who acts virtuously in the machine won't act virtuously in the real world, so in what way are they lacking virtue if virtue is an internal disposition or habit of choosing and preferring right action? There is the crux.

Maybe Aristotle gets at the relation to the good of others more directly in the Politics, I am less familiar with that work. Certainly, the Ethics has a sense of a "common good," and virtue supports the common good, but this common good is grounded in being a member of a polis, which the person in the machine is not. This might give Aristotle a reason for people not to enter the machine, but they still seem to be able to meet the psychological conditions of virtue (choosing and enjoying right action) from within it.

The problem of how going into the machine affects others seems to get brought out much easier in a consequentialist framework or if the later Christian virtues of "love" and "charity" from St. Paul get added.

Maybe Aristotle gets at the relation to the good of others more directly in the Politics, I am less familiar with that work. Certainly, the Ethics has a sense of a "common good," and virtue supports the common good, but this common good is grounded in being a member of a polis, which the person in the machine is not. This might give Aristotle a reason for people not to enter the machine, but they still seem to be able to meet the psychological conditions of virtue (choosing and enjoying right action) from within it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't know that you've understood Aristotle at all. For Aristotle the Ethics–Politics is a two-part work, with a common theme of happiness and human flourishing. Yet your position of subjectivistic happiness is also foreign to the Ethics taken in itself, not to mention Aristotle's moral metaphysics regarding acts and passions. Boethius was a rather strong Aristotelian, and offered translations of many of Aristotle's works.

Perhaps in a few days I will have time to gather some direct quotations, but for now I will just note that your prima facie take on Aristotle seems off. For Aristotle the moral virtues regard public life. The distinction becomes explicit when Aristotle contrasts it with intellectual virtue and the contemplative life, as well as the solitary life.

Perhaps in a few days I will have time to gather some direct quotations, but for now I will just note that your prima facie take on Aristotle seems off. For Aristotle the moral virtues regard public life. The distinction becomes explicit when Aristotle contrasts it with intellectual virtue and the contemplative life, as well as the solitary life.

I don't really disagree with any of this. For Aristotle, human beings are fundamentally social creatures whose well-being is intrinsically linked to their relationships with others. Individuals develop and exercise their virtues through interactions with their fellow citizens. However, the person in the simulation experiences relationships with others that are indiscernible from real relationships (given that their memory of the external world has been removed).

That is, since Aristotle's reasons for prioritizing social interaction seem grounded in the individual's psychology and internal goods, the "perfect" simulation seems to present some wrinkles.

Think about it this way: suppose the planet was destroyed and the only way for civilization to survive was for everyone to live in a Matrix-like simulation. To keep people happy, their memories of the external world are erased. Now it seems like the objections to relationships in the simulation not being "real" is met. When a person develops friendships in the simulation, they are real friendships with real people, and when they help their community they are delivering benefits to a true common good. It seems like the person who lives in the communal simulation can be virtuous.

But let's say we have two people, Rob and Bob. Rob and Bob live psychologically indiscernible subjective lives, except Rob is in a simulation and interacts with what are essentially P Zombies and Bob's identical friends and family do have subjective experiences. In virtue of what is one of these a life of virtue and one not?

OK. I was speaking more generally about intelligibility of things. Heidegger's "ready to hand" or Gibson's less human-centric "affordances" for people and the other animals seems plausible. Things are first and foremost intelligible in terms of their uses, their significance for living.

the "perfect" simulation seems to present some wrinkles — Count Timothy von Icarus

The idea of a "perfect simulation" always presents wrinkles because it contains within itself a contradiction. The contradiction is, effectively, that the simulation is both identical to and not identical to reality. In fact it must be recognized that if something is identical to reality, then it isn't a simulation; and if something is a simulation, then it isn't identical to that which it simulates. To argue with someone who presents a "perfect simulation" is to argue with someone who indiscriminately jumps from one side to the other (i.e. to identity or non-identity).

But I also wonder if this idea flows from the recent thread on direct and indirect realism, being based on the sorts of indirect realism we saw in that thread. After all, the whole premise of your thesis is that the human being is unable to distinguish perception from reality. It seems to me that the claim that reality is able to be perfectly simulated already involves deeply materialistic premises.

Sure, but I think that Cartesian metaphysics or epistemology are not relevant when speaking of Forms. I think Count was referring to Platonic forms, which was my point that being in a simulation is just a bit deeper into the cave.
I have to brush up on my Plato — eventually.

Things are first and foremost intelligible in terms of their uses, their significance for living. — Janus

:up: :up:

For example, the ground of moral virtue has to do with interacting with other people. Such a thing simply does not occur in the experience machine.

I'm simply not sure that this is a key distinction in these authors, particularly not in the Consolation itself. Virtue often seems to be defined almost entirely internally. Aristotle does make some nods to consequentialism in terms of deciding if an action is freely chosen in the Ethics, and he has an idea of negligence in there, but overall virtue is largely about how the person responds to the world. — Count Timothy von Icarus

To put a more modern spin on it, for people with neurology like ours, deep learning that arises from time spent engaged in interacting with and learning from and about other people, plays a role in one's ability to do good for other people. So a relevant question would be, do the people' in the simulation serve as a realistic training set, for the development of such deep learning, when it comes to the people in our world?