Online research in philosophy

Robert Nozick’s experience machine thought experiment (Nozick’s scenario) is widely used as the basis for a “knockdown” argument against all internalist mental state theories of well-being. Recently, however, it has been convincingly argued that Nozick’s scenario should not be used in this way because it elicits judgments marred by status quo bias and other irrelevant factors. These arguments all include alternate experience machine thought experiments, but these scenarios also elicit judgments marred by status quo bias and other irrelevant factors. In (...) this paper, several experiments are conducted in order to create and test a relatively bias-free experience machine scenario. It is argued that if an experience machine thought experiment is used to evaluate internalist mental state theories of well-being, then this relatively bias-free scenario should be used over any of the existing scenarios. Unlike the existing experience machine scenarios, when this new scenario is used to assess internalist mental state theories of well-being, it does not provide strong evidence to refute or endorse them. (shrink)

There are enigmas of defining happiness and of discerning what it is that really makes a life go well for someone – topics that positive psychologists have not adequately addressed to date. And this is despite the fact that Ed Diener sees positive psychology as “the endeavour by scientists to answer the classic question posed by philosophers: What is the good life?” What is rarely mentioned by positive psychologists is that, depending on how the specific happiness questions are worded, they (...) can adopt what philosophers see as radically divergent conceptions of happiness. (shrink)