No, I think philosophers do not always practice what they preach. My impression of Schopenhauer is that he was a vain, if not spoiled and insincere, arse, as well as somewhat of a hack (however brilliantly gifted). I don't get that impression when I read Kierkegaard, though; and the impression I get from reading Hegel is one of the greatest earnestness.

I agree with you about what seems to be your suggestion of Kant's and Husserls' pedantic, anally retentive tendencies (however brilliantly constructed they might be). On the other hand, I don't know too much about Husserl, but I think Kant genuinely cared about human freedom and the need to rationalize and preserve it. (Actually thinking about what I have heard, not having read it, about The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology probably Husserl cared about human freedom too).

Heidegger I think also had his sincere side, even if he perhaps saw himself as a prophet of 'real' thinking, but by all accounts he was an emotional idiot, (perhaps, in modern terms, a kind of sociopath or psychopath). Derrida, I am ambivalent about, because I find his work really impenetrable (and I have tried) and I honestly doubt he is really worth the effort. He certainly comes across as smug.

The probable fact that not all philosophers (or artists for that matter) tend to live best does not take away from the fact that the good ones have all contributed, in their own unique ways, to an overall understanding that should help to lead to at least the possibility for others to live best, even if only in the sense that their philosophies help others to recognize and avoid the very pitfalls or mistakes that may be embedded or embodied in them.

Yes, yes. If one's goal is a beautiful, joyful life, then everything is lit up by this goal. One can see various fundamental "poses" from the outside. Knowledge is secondary, unless one has committed to this narrowing down of the notion of beauty. I love the objective, if you'll call math objective, but as I writer I want to carve an image of the heroic, beautiful mind --just as I've pursued this image as a reader.

That's such a big goal though! I'm wary of beauty with a capital B. Or at least seeking it explicitly, keeping it in mind. When the vicissitudes of life are working in your favor then, I agree, everything is doubly lit up. But when things are going bad, that badness has one hell of a foil. "If beauty really did exist there, it meant that my own existence was a thing estranged from beauty." At least for the moment, I'm trying to be content with living by a modest set of malleable maxims (which are kinda meta-maxims, less about doing the right thing every time, but littles rules that let me recognize - and so bypass - certain habitual tendencies, in order to confront things I've been avoiding.) But it could just be that, for now, I need to focus on more mundane, life-structural things. (You've quoted Blake a few times. Problem might be that I've been too eager to soar without worrying about whether I actually wings.)

That's such a big goal though! I'm wary of beauty with a capital B. Or at least seeking it explicitly, keeping it in mind. When the vicissitudes of life are working in your favor then, I agree, everything is doubly lit up. But when things are going bad, that badness has one hell of a foil. "If beauty really did exist there, it meant that my own existence was a thing estranged from beauty." — csalisbury

It's hard to write about in black and white with the proper irony. It may come across like some 'duty' to beauty, but really it's the abolition of duties that aren't personal, authentic. (We have no duty to be authentic. It's its own reward. It feels good.) If you love your wife, you're going to risk your serenity a little, for instance, to help her with a malfunction in her serenity, but probably by trying to talk her back up to the mountain-top where you both belong (creative play, smooth function, absorption in freely chosen projects). And maybe you get a wisdom tooth removed, but you try to lose as little "morale" as possible. "The spirit is a stomach." Sometimes you just can't avoid indigestion, but the idea/ideal is a cast-iron stomach for experience, that can usually turn the bad to good and the good to great. There's no question left about whether one should be happy in such an "evil" world. The accusation of that in the world that can't plausibly be fixed is viewed as an inferior form of digestion, an unstable pose. Though of course I'm always really just speaking from this strange little life and hoping for the pleasure of someone else "getting it" in the same particular but only optional way.

At least for the moment, I'm trying to be content with living by a modest set of malleable maxims (which are kinda meta-maxims, less about doing the right thing every time, but littles rules that let me recognize - and so bypass - certain habitual tendencies, in order to confront things I've been avoiding.) But it could just be that, for now, I need to focus on more mundane, life-structural things. (You've quoted Blake a few times. Problem might be that I've been too eager to soar without worrying about whether I actually wings.) — csalisbury

I relate. Pragmatism (and Kojeve) turned my Blakean Romanticism (I was an "experimental" musician with a dead-end day job) in a more worldly direction. I began to want to "spiritualize" the mundane by shaping a life where my job was my passion. I did play Icarus in my 20s. Angst (and boredom) is maybe in the divorce of the ideal from the mundane. We sew them together, so that everyday life really is more of an adventure.

I like "malleable maxims."

I think what's missing from the Cyrenaic position is the importance of suffering - how huge a part of existence it is. The Cyrenaic sees pleasure as something one goes towards. But our lived experience is nothing like this. What motivates action is suffering, we don'tmove towards, rather we are driven away. Basically, we constantly suffer, and so are in a constant striving away from it. We aren't striving towards pleasure, we're striving from suffering. We are perpetually trying to avoid sufferings.

Take eating for example. The Cyrenaic might say that eating is pleasurable (for him), and so he eats. That the sensation of taste and eating is pleasurable. But I think in reality, what we are motivated by is hunger, and something like 'lack of nice mouth sensations'. We are driven to eat, the suffering entailed by hunger, lack of mouth flavour, etc, motivates our running from it. Intellectually we might say we ate because it tasted good, or something along those lines, but this was not the case in reality. What's good about this characterization is it avoids this 'future pleasures' issue. The suffering is presently felt, and we are presently striving from it, we are perpetually motivated away from it.

I think also there's a mischaraterisation about what pleasure actually is. Seems to me the Cyrenaic (note: I've never actually read any Cyrenaic work) sees pleasure as something far more valuable or positive, or 'pleasurable' than it actually is. A kind of pollyannaism about pleasure. Take the example above, where I've written "lack of nice mouth sensations". You might argue here that "ok, the lack of nice mouth sensations is a kind of suffering we are motivated by and strive away from. But those nice mouth sensations we experience (due to striving away from it's lack, and not as the Cyreanic says; because we positively strived towards it) are actually intrinsically good."

But I'm not so sure. If the taste sensation is actually positively pleasurable (over and above a cessation of suffering, or a kind of 'flow' distraction from suffering) and therefore good, shouldn't you want to constantly sense it? I like the taste of orange juice, but I wouldn't want to constantly experience the taste. Or take bodily sensations. I know for sure if given the choice I would want to never experience bodily suffering/pains again, but would I want to constantly experience bodily pleasures? Would I want to constantly orgasm? And if not, what does that say about how pleasurable the actual sensation is? People who orgasm like 100 times a day live in hell it seems. Note that pleasure is also extremely short lived. An orgasm is like 3 seconds, one only gets 'lost in the music' for a single song, at best. Food only tastes good until it's swallowed. A heroin rush fades pretty quickly into a sort of secure numbness, which eventually becomes sickness.

I think (what we call) pleasure really consists of, is a negation in some suffering in another, a relief essentially. An 'ahhh' I'm not being pained anymore. And if you're lucky, there's what I would characterize as a kind of self-less flow experience. Where one loses oneself into the sensation, and hence forgets ones suffering. I don't think pleasure ever actually gets into a genuinely positive thing, whereas suffering is genuinely negative, it has less than zero value, in that we aren't just indifferent to it, but are motivated to avoidance. Action is fundamentally avoidance, we are always striving from some suffering or another. And what we call "pleasure" is relief from suffering, and a loss of self into sensation. And not how I believe the Cyrenaic conceives of pleasure which is of an actual positively good thing, on the opposite side of the scale as pleasure, above neutral.

An analogy for how I conceive of suffering, is imagine say a fish tank, with only a beetle in it. Now someone is holding a heat lamp above the beetle (imagine the heat lamp being held at half the depth of the fish tank). The beetle feels the heat, and is pained, and so is motivated to strive away from the heat. Note he's not motivated towards something, rather he just goes in any aimless direction so long as he avoids the suffering. If he stops striving away from the heat, the heat lamp catches up and is held directly above it. He feels like he's burning and soon dries out to a painful death. If he strives too far away from the heat, so that he goes beyond the limit of the area it heats, he doesn't know what to do with himself. Where to go? What to do? He's in an empty fish tank, there's nowhere to go and nothing to do. He becomes bored and stops moving, and the heat lamp soon catches up, motivating him to strive from it again.

How I think of pleasure is that the beetle escapes the heat from the lamp, and then loses his sense of self by getting lost in a sensation. And not say, the beetle walks towards some corner of the fishtank where some positively valuable thing is. Think of it like the shower temperature thing. Every temperature is either too hot or too cold, except that perfect temperature. Does it make sense to think of this specific temperature as being an actually above neutral value positive sensation (whereas all the others aren't)? I believe this is how the Cyrenaic sees it, the sensation being a genuine good, something which one strives towards. I think rather we strive away from the too cold, and away from the too hot, until we find the perfect trade off between the two - and it is here where we find an opportunity to 'lose ourselves' into the sensation. The feeling of the water on your back. "Ahh, that feels good." - and then one loses their self into the sensation. But not for long, body parts out of the water soon become cold, and besides you're here to clean yourself.

So to summarize this rant, there are no genuine goods, and we strive away from, rather than towards something. Other than that I agreed with your essay and found it interesting.

Also, reading this thread it seems there's some confusion over thinking the Cyrenaic (would) still believe in this idea that one 'has' or possesses beliefs. As things which sort of persist through time. I think a belief is more a sort of lived expectation, rather than some thing which one holds or possesses. The belief is itself experiential. So eg, one doesn't posses a belief that the sun will rise tomorrow, which sort of follows him round ephemerally. Rather, only when one is thinking about the next day, or future next days, one presently expects they'll be bright. It's a sort of lived expectation of future daylight. When one doesn't have this expectation (eg, when thinking about anything else), then one doesn't actually have a belief that the sun will rise tomorrow. Intellectually that's how we speak, as if we have this large set of beliefs which constantly follow us around and are there regardless of our experience, but in reality it's not the case.

Actually, my suffering analogy is wrong. Think of it as like 6 hands stuck in the fish tank holding heat lamps. So, the beetle doesn't strive away from the heat in any aimless direction, rather, his path ahead is shaped by avoiding the other areas of heat/suffering caused by the other heat lamps. The beetle tries to walk in whatever direction has the least amount of heat, which constantly changes because as it walks, the heat lamps move as well. Also note, the hands get in each others way, so the heat lamps can't just converge into a single circle of heat following the beetle. His path is always shaped by avoiding suffering.

The beetle is like a river, trying to take the path of least resistance. The rivers course is guided by whatever forces conform it's direction.

Yes I realize that at this point the analogy has become far too complicated to be worthwhile and I might as well have just talked about suffering directly. Lol.

From what TGW wrote of the Cyrenaic view of the good, it would seem perfectly consistent for my good to be your bad. If it causes me pleasure to torture you, and all goods are subjective and only definable by each individual, then there is nothing wrong for me to torture you, as far as I'm concerned. I have no ethical reason not to. It gives me pleasure. You will disagree, but so what? There is no objective measure by which you are right and I am wrong. For me, is right to torture you. For you, it's not, but I'm not concerned, and cannot be concerned, with what you consider to be bad.

Secondly, we learn from a very young age that instant gratification in all things tends to lead to very bad results. I could empty my bank account right now, max out my credit cards, and have a rip roaring time today. But I know that I will be regretting and paying for that decision for weeks to come. So I employ some modicum of self-control.

Now I could die tonight, and miss out on one last opportunity for maximum pleasure. But that uncertainty about the future doesn't change my calculation to avoid weeks of regret.

So it would seem that consistent application of Cyrenaic ethics is psychopathic and highly irresponsible, leading to a very self-destructive life. The kind that someone with terrible impulse control and no empathy might want to live.

Now the Cyrenaics may not have lived that way, which tells me they either didn't fully embrace their philosophizing as a way of life, or there's so more nuance there than I'm allowing. I guess the admission that there had to be some planning for even the attainment of temporary pleasure is one such nuance, but there would need to be quite a bit more.

Someone in this thread mentioned the pleasure machine, which is a version of the dream machine. In the first Matrix movie, the character Cypher chooses to betray the human resistance in order to be put back into the Matrix as someone rich and famous, provided that he not remember anything about his portrayal, or the real world.

Most people find such an act abhorrent, and if I were given the choice of hooking myself up to a dream machine in which I get to live the most pleasurable life possible, but at the cost of horrible suffering for people I know, I would not do it, even if I forgot. It would be wrong, and most people throughout history would agree.

But the Cyrenaic philosophy does not allow for such ethical considerations. It's similar to making a will. Why bother worrying about others after you're gone? You won't get to enjoy it. But we do. If I knew with certainty I would die tonight, I would not maximize my pleasure, rather, I would make some plans for those who know me post-mortem.

And one other objection concerning long term planning. Plenty of people do engage in long term planning to achieve some goal they highly desire. Professional athletes, musicians, business owners, writers, do this sort of thing. They may put themselves through a great deal of self-discipline and even agony to accomplish their goals. You can't be highly successful in many areas in life without doing so.

But that would be a direct contradiction to what Cyrenaic philosophy proposes. There would be no highly successful people if everyone followed that philosophy. But they don't. Why not? Because I think plenty of people reject hedonism, certainly the "crude" kind of the Cyrenaics. They consider their long-term goal to be more worthy of pursuit than any short term pleasure, even though the future is uncertain for all of us.

From what TGW wrote of the Cyrenaic view of the good, it would seem perfectly consistent for my good to be your bad. — Marchesk

This is a little tricky, because the Greeks don't typically speak in terms of 'my good' versus 'your good;' they just speak of the good. If pleasure is the good, it isn't my good, although it may be a good that I am undergoing rather than someone else, and so one that I have a special epistemic relation to.

What is true is that one individual thing may have good and bad consequences, i.e. may be instrumentally good in some ways and bad in others, and that these goods and bads may be the pleasures and pains of separate people. But the only things that are intrinsically good and bad are pleasures and pains, and here it makes no sense to say that someone's good is someone else's bad.

If it causes me pleasure to torture you, and all goods are subjective and only definable by each individual, — Marchesk

Goods are not subjective on the Cyrenaic view in any fundamental way: pleasure is good tout court. There is a subjectivity in that pleasure is dependent on the existence of what we might call a subject, i.e. an undergoer or mover experiencing the pleasure. But this does not mean that it is in any way a matter of opinion or subject to substantive faultless disagreement which things are good and which not, nor does it mean that anyone ever defines what is good.

then there is nothing wrong for me to torture you, as far as I'm concerned. — Marchesk

It's important to remember that it most Greek ethics there is no 'as far as I'm concerned' as far as the good goes, though there may be goods or bads that disproportionately affect some people over others. Also, the term 'wrong,' or some equivalent, is not used to express these views.

I believe that the experience machine thought experience is subject to a kind of logical fallacy that is common in many thought experiments. The problem is something like this: we want to construct a thought experiment which, by stipulation, involves a situation in which we can't distinguish between two things (being hooked up to a machine and real life). But also by stipulation, the thought experiment itself asks us to distinguish these two things. So it is that the experiment only remains coherent so long as we slide from one to the other in our reasoning.

The reason being hooked up to a machine horrifies some people is because there is a detectable difference between the two (which is why movies like the Matrix, in which Neo comes to find out about this situation, are coherent to us). But then, the experiment falls through because this detectable difference will allow us to coherently prefer being outside the machine rather than in, whether on hedonistic grounds or not.

If on the other hand we take the thought experiment seriously in claiming that we cannot tell the difference even in principle between these two situations, then we lose our ability to coherently imagine the situation that the thought experiment asks us to, and so we cannot claim that such an imagined situation would be bad, because we cannot imagine it ex hypothesi.

I believe that the experience machine thought experience is subject to a kind of logical fallacy that is common in many thought experiments. The problem is something like this: we want to construct a thought experiment which, by stipulation, involves a situation in which we can't distinguish between two things (being hooked up to a machine and real life). But also by stipulation, the thought experiment itself asks us to distinguish these two things. So it is that the experiment only remains coherent so long as we slide from one to the other in our reasoning.

The reason being hooked up to a machine horrifies some people is because there is a detectable difference between the two (which is why movies like the Matrix, in which Neo comes to find out about this situation, are coherent to us). But then, the experiment falls through because this detectable difference will allow us to coherently prefer being outside the machine rather than in, whether on hedonistic grounds or not.

If on the other hand we take the thought experiment seriously in claiming that we cannot tell the difference even in principle between these two situations, then we lose our ability to coherently imagine the situation that the thought experiment asks us to, and so we cannot claim that such an imagined situation would be bad, because we cannot imagine it ex hypothesi. — The Great Whatever

YES! Indeed, great spot. This is very close to what I have been saying about Descartes' evil demon hypothesis (and other global skepticism matters) for a long time. The very meaning our words have are conditioned by the context, and what such hypothetical situations do, is that they remove the context in which the words used to phrase the question have meaning, and then proceed to ask anyways - thus even their question, in truth, become meaningless.

I believe that the experience machine thought experience is subject to a kind of logical fallacy that is common in many thought experiments. The problem is something like this: we want to construct a thought experiment which, by stipulation, involves a situation in which we can't distinguish between two things (being hooked up to a machine and real life). But also by stipulation, the thought experiment itself asks us to distinguish these two things. So it is that the experiment only remains coherent so long as we slide from one to the other in our reasoning. — The Great Whatever

But I can make perfect sense out of an episode of Star Trek where the crew ends up stuck inside a Holodeck program that goes wrong, where the program makes it look they exited the holodeck back to the ship, but are actually still inside the program, since the Holodeck is capable of fully fooling the senses.

I believe this was the plot of at least one episode.

But I can make perfect sense out of an episode of Star Trek where the crew ends up stuck inside a Holodeck program that goes wrong, where the program makes it look they exited the holodeck back to the ship, but are actually still inside the program, since the Holodeck is capable of fully fooling the senses.

I believe this was the plot of at least one episode. — Marchesk

But ultimately they found out no? So that defeats the whole point you're trying to make

Secondly, we learn from a very young age that instant gratification in all things tends to lead to very bad results. I could empty my bank account right now, max out my credit cards, and have a rip roaring time today. But I know that I will be regretting and paying for that decision for weeks to come. So I employ some modicum of self-control. — Marchesk

Does this actually make sense though, to defer current pleasure for future ones?

The only time pleasure can ever be experienced is now. When you defer the possibility of experiencing pleasure now, so that you may experience greater pleasure in the future, I'm not sure you are actually better off. I think this kind of deferring is motivated by seeing pleasure as a sort of quantitative thing. Whereby drinking alcohol on Monday morning you experience say 5 pleasure units, but on Friday night you will experience 12 pleasure units. And so there's more intrinsic goodness on Friday than Monday. But, this is not the case. Pleasure = intrinsically good, and good is good. There can be no greater intrinsic 'goodness' when it's the very same thing in both cases (pleasure). Sure, you may prefer Heroin over Meth, but that doesn't mean Heroin is more intrinsically good. Intrinsic goodness is an all or nothing thing, and not a scale.

Life exists only presently, so pleasures are only experienced now. So to hold off on reaching one's goal (intrinsic 'goodness'), so that you can reach the exact same goal 4 days from now is nonsensical. You could have just not waited and reached the very same goal.
Also, you will never actually get to the future anyway as you never leave the present. The future pleasure you are deferring your possible current pleasurable experience towards will never actually be experienced by you. The future, where you think the greater pleasure experience will be perpetually remains ahead of you. You'll always be deferring towards it. The only time you can possibly experience pleasure is right now. It's like sitting on a donkey with a carrot in your hand ready to eat it, and then putting the carrot on a stick and holding it in front of the donkey because you think you'll be better off when you catch up to it. Intrinsic goodness is intrinsic goodness - it's all or nothing, and not a scale. Something is not more i intrinsically good than another intrinsically good thing.

So, an example. You find alcohol pleasurable, but it's Monday morning. You have the choice to a) drink the alcohol right now and feel pleasure, or b) defer the present experience of pleasurable drunkenness until Friday night because you believe it will be more pleasurable then (because eg, you might be with friends, or you wont have to worry about working hungover the next day). What do you pick?
You could have experienced what's intrinsically good right now, but you chose not to for 4 days so that you can experience what's intrinsically good then. All deferring pleasure is, is you choosing not to do a pleasurable action. Nothing is achieved, you don't actually gain anything.

It's seems warranted on the face of it to balk at this idea of not really planning ahead, but when analysed logically, it makes sense. All deferring to a future, greater experience of pleasure achieves, is to miss an opportunity to experience what's good in life. You missed out on experiencing pleasure for 4 days so that you can finally presently experience pleasure. Well what was the point of that, when you can just presently experience intrinsic goodness right now? Which is the only time you could ever feel pleasure anyway. Pleasure is always experienced presently, so deferring an opportunity for a present experience of pleasure until a future time is pointless, all you've done is chosen not to feel the good in life for 4 days. All so that you can in 4 days do nothing greater than what you could have done now - experience the good in life. Why wait?

Does this actually make sense though, to defer current pleasure for future ones? — dukkha

Yes, if you don't want to end up homeless and bankrupt. Or not achieve any life goals. If you don't care about those things, then well go for it.

So to hold off on reaching one's goal (intrinsic 'goodness'), so that you can reach the exact same goal 4 days from now is nonsensical. You could have just not waited and reached the very same goal. — dukkha

Delay gratification is usually so you can achieve more pleasure, or whatever it is you value than you can in the moment. Or it's to avoid pain and undesirable ends later on.

Also, you will never actually get to the future anyway as you never leave the present. — dukkha

Well, it's late 2016 and I'm years older than when when as kid I wondered what the future would be like, so I would say you're wrong about that.

The only time you can possibly experience pleasure is right now. — dukkha

How does anyone accomplish any goal that's the slightest bit unpleasurable if now is the only consideration? Imagine you wanted to win a marathon. You know that you need to train for it, and then pace yourself accordingly on that day, and then not give up when you're tired late in the race. You have to push yourself, but in a smart way. You do all that for the anticipated feeling of winning the race, or setting a personal best, or just the fact that you were able to run 26.2 miles.

How do you do that just living in the now? Lots of people do this sort of thing, btw. I would say almost everyone in life delay gratifies at some point to achieve something more desireable, or just to avoid disaster. You can't function beyond that of a spoiled child in this life without doing some delay gratification.

But ultimately they found out no? So that defeats the whole point you're trying to make — Agustino

They did, because the main characters on Star Trek always find a way out of every predicament, but one character, the bad guy of the episode, didn't. He thought he escaped into the wider universe, but they were running him on simulator. Granted, he was a holodeck character who gained sentience, but he knew there was an external world, and was trying to get the crew to find a way for him to be transported to it. So the crew fooled him into thinking he had.

It doesn't matter: by your own example, the episode must be such that the viewer can tell the difference, and therefore there is such a difference. That the crew doesn't know is irrelevant: the point is if they did know, whether they would prefer to leave the holodeck. The same is true of our trapped philosophers. As for the philosophers imagining the experiment, they must know the difference for the thought experiment to work, so from within the imagining situation, they are justified in not preferring the experience machine, on whatever ethical grounds they want (if they're inclined to disprefer it).

I don't think this objection works, because people could, if such a thing were available, choose to enter a simulation where they believed they would get to live far better lives, even under the condition that once in the simulation they could never find out it is a simulation. In fact if they could find out from within the simulation it would remove the very thing that makes the simulation attractive; a far better life that is not detectably illusory; that is, that is not subjectively distinguishable form the real thing.

Now, I don't personally believe such a thing could ever be possible, but it is not logically impossible; and therefore there is no contradiction in it as a thought experiment.

The point is not that people couldn't prefer such a thing. It's that the thought experiment's coherency hinges on us being able to imagine something which it stipulates is not imaginable. It's coherent to want to be plugged into the Matrix: what isn't coherent is to believe that this is coherent, while the possibility of distinguishing between the Matrix and the real world is incoherent.

But to distinguish between the real world and the mateix always remains possible, only not from within the matrix. To distinguish you would have to leave the matrix; which you could not do yourself but which might happen if someone unplugs you.

This is similar to how the dreamer usually cannot distinguish (except in the case of lucid dreaming) between her dream and her waking life from within the dream, such as to able to know she is dreaming. When she is awake however, she can make the distinction.

I can see no logical contradiction in those conditions

What matters in making the moral judgment is whether the imaginer can tell the difference, not the imagined.

But the imaginer (me) can tell the difference, and choose accordingly whether or not to enter the condition where I can no longer tell the difference. Once I become the imagined I can no longer choose between reality and matrix, but only within the matrix itself.

Yes, but then the thought experiment has no teeth.

I can't see any reason to think that. The fact remains that we can, in principle, make an ethical decision about whether to choose to enter conditions wherein we will no longer be able to tell illusion from reality.

We could actually make such a decison if the conditions were available to us. It is no different in principle than choosing to be euthanased or put into an induced coma.

The point of experience machine thought experiments is that it is supposed to cause a problem for positions that rely for some consideration, ethical or otherwise, that it be confined to apprehensible distinctions having to do with experience.

But it causes no such problem since, by the nature of the thought experiment, the experimenter access the distinction experientially so long as the experiment is coherent on its own terms.

Whether the person who would enter the situation could tell the difference or not is irrelevant.

The thing is that if you believe pleasure machine experiences could be subjectively indistinguishable from real life experiences, then you at the very least are an epistemological solipsist.

What you are saying is that you could subtract minds from your experience of others and literally nothing would change experientially. And the only way this could be is if you exist in your own private 'experience world'. Which entails epistemological solipsism, because you can't know other minds exist.

And if the pleasure machine experience could be subjectively indistinguishable from real life experience, it therefore must go both ways - real life experience could be subjectively indistinguishable from simulated experience. And if that's the case, how do you even know you're in real life, and not the simulated experience world?

The problem here is thinking that your experience is caused by your brain.

I have absolutely no idea what you think you are trying to argue here.

I don"the know if this post is addressed to me, but this thread has now taken up what was being argued in the BIV thread.

In any case, I don't argue that such a scenario could ever actually exist. All I am arguing is that if for the sake of argument we grant that such a simulation, indistinguishable from real life were possible, then we would be able to choose whether to partake or not; and that the choices we make could arguably depend on our preferred model of ethics.

The experiment supposes it's impossible to distinguish between the machine and " real life," but for the question to have any force requires that very distinction.

If I am to care about "real life" over the machine, I must be able to tell the difference or else I have nothing to seek.The premise of the question: "Do you know the world you experience is real?" relies on being able to distinguish "real life" from the machine.

Let's say Neo did not understand the difference between the Matrix and the world outside. If that were the case, there is no "real life" for him to seek. He couldn't pick it out to prefer it to the Matrix.

We can certainly make the decision to forget the distinction between the machine and "the real world," but it requires we know about it in the first place.

All I am arguing is that if for the sake of argument we grant that such a simulation, indistinguishable from real life were possible, then we would be able to choose whether to partake or not; and that the choices we make could arguably depend on our preferred model of ethics. — John

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. To know that it's a simulated world you're entering is for it to not be subjectively distinguishable (because the two worlds are distinguished into simulated and real).