• Janus
    16.5k


    I think you meant to say
    To know that it's a simulated world you're entering is for it to be subjectively distinguishable (because the two worlds are distinguished into simulated and real).dukkha

    The point is that we can't experience both at the same time; so of course there is no possibility of comparing them one to other as real-time experience. But from the perspective of our everyday experience we can quite easily grasp that it is logically possible that we could be hooked into a simulated world of experience, that is so convincing that we could never tell the difference between it and the real world. Of course our memory of at least some of the conditions of our real life would need to be erased otherwise we could start spotting anomalies. Perhaps we would have to agree to having the entire memory of our real erased and a fake memory of our previous life installed.

    Now, as I already said I don't believe any thing like that will ever be possible, or even that it could ever be really, as opposed to merely logically, possible. But there is no contradiction in the thought experiment, or if there is one, it is yet to be indicated, or at least it has yet to be explained such that I can see it.
  • Janus
    16.5k


    How many times do I have to repeat that from the perspective of your present life you can tell the difference, And it's from there that the decision, as to whether to enter a simulation within which you will think it is your real life, and from within which there will be no possibility of telling that it is a actuality a simulation, will be made with full knowledge of the consequences.
  • Marchesk
    4.6k
    What matters in making the moral judgment is whether the imaginer can tell the difference, not the imagined.The Great Whatever

    The imaginer can tell the difference when choosing to enter the dream machine. The not being able to tell the difference afterward is just to maximize the experience. What's being lost here is the ethical consideration of entering, not the situation after.
  • Marchesk
    4.6k
    But if it was truly subjectively indistinguishable, it would just be a choice between continuing to experience the suffering of real life, or for your real life experience to become far more pleasurable. Almost everyone would pick the latter.dukkha

    Not if when choosing they knew it could cause great suffering to other people. You would have to not care about the fate of others. It doesn't matter that you won't care upon entering the machine. What matters is when making the decision.
  • The Great Whatever
    2.2k
    Maybe I'm not making myself clear. I don't deny that there's a substantive ethical question to entering the machine. What I deny is that it can have the epistemological import that e.g. Nozick wants it to.

    Would a Cyrenaic choose to enter the machine? It's an odd question, in a way, since the Cyrenaic seems committed to thinking we already are in some such machine, and would deny that one could know that one was entering such a metaphysically-altered state, since one does not even know one's current metaphysical state.

    If pleasure is the good, it might seem like the decision is mandated, but then, the Cyrenaics don't seem to care about mandates, and there is no ethical code that obligates them to maximize their own pleasure, present or future. So based on present whim, if entering the machine seemed distasteful, they could refuse, to the extent they understood this as a mere practical action, devoid of metaphysical implications. With metaphysical implications, they could deny that they can coherently imagine the situation Nozick asks us to imagine. And if we're to take Nozick seriously about the 'indistinguishability' of the experience machine from veridical life (that is, it is not just an accident, like there existing children being tortured behind a screen that by happenstance we just couldn't see), then we have the fallacy I mentioned above.
  • Janus
    16.5k
    Maybe I'm not making myself clear.The Great Whatever

    No, you are certainly not making yourself clear. :-}
  • TheWillowOfDarkness
    2.1k


    Which renders this supposed conundrum incoherent. Since the difference is known, there is no "what if the world was illusion?" question to ask.

    Then, once we choose to forget the difference, it has no relevance to our knowledge. It no longer makes sense to challenge the world as it appears. Since it's impossible for us to tell the difference, we can't use the "what if the world's illusion" argument to direct us to recognising the "real world" over the machine. The truth that such doubt seeks to defend is closed to us.
  • The Great Whatever
    2.2k
    Are you aware of the origins of the experience machine thought experiment? If so, is there something you want to use it for?
  • Janus
    16.5k


    My main interest has been to use this kind of thought experiment to expose some of he commitments of the different ethical models; which I think would do quite well, if the respondents answered honestly instead of obfuscating to avoid revealing the true natures of their positions.
  • Janus
    16.5k


    I am not going to respond unless you stop with the relentless bullshit. :-}
  • The Great Whatever
    2.2k
    Why would I engage with you if you're going to be disingenuous?
  • Janus
    16.5k


    I don't know, but the questions not relevant since I'm not being disingenuous. I genuinely cannot make any sense at all of your objection to the though experiment, or of Willow's which seems to be in a similar vein of conveniently rejecting it as incoherent with no cogent supporting argument.
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