Philosophical Psychology 23 (1):43-57 (2010)
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Abstract |
Most people's intuitive reaction after considering Nozick's experience machine thought-experiment seems to be just like his: we feel very little inclination to plug in to a virtual reality machine capable of providing us with pleasurable experiences. Many philosophers take this empirical fact as sufficient reason to believe that, more than pleasurable experiences, people care about “living in contact with reality.” Such claim, however, assumes that people's reaction to the experience machine thought-experiment is due to the fact that they value reality over virtual experiences—an assumption that has seldom (if ever) been questioned. This paper challenges that very assumption. I report some experimental evidence suggesting that the intuition elicited by the thought-experiment may be explainable by the fact that people are averse to abandon the life they have been experiencing so far, regardless of whether such life is virtual or real. I use then an explanatory model, derived from what behavioral economists and psychologists call the status quo bias, to make sense of these results. Finally, I argue that since this explanation also accounts for people's reaction toward Nozick's thought-experiment, it would be wrong to take such intuition as evidence that people value being in touch with reality
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Keywords | Hed |
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DOI | 10.1080/09515080903532290 |
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References found in this work BETA
Review of Sumner, *Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics*. [REVIEW]Bruce Brower - 1998 - Philosophical Review 107 (2):309.
The Reversal Test: Eliminating Status Quo Bias in Applied Ethics.Nick Bostrom & Toby Ord - 2006 - Ethics 116 (4):656-679.
In Defense of Happiness: A Response to the Experience Machine.Matthew Silverstein - 2000 - Social Theory and Practice 26 (2):279-300.
View all 10 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Will Life Be Worth Living in a World Without Work? Technological Unemployment and the Meaning of Life.John Danaher - 2017 - Science and Engineering Ethics 23 (1):41-64.
Philosophical Intuitions Are Surprisingly Stable Across Both Demographic Groups and Situations.Joshua Knobe - 2021 - Filozofia Nauki 29 (2):11-76.
Demographic Differences in Philosophical Intuition: a Reply to Joshua Knobe.Stephen P. Stich & Edouard Machery - forthcoming - Review of Philosophy and Psychology:1-34.
View all 29 citations / Add more citations
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2010-02-09
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383 ( #25,733 of 2,498,178 )
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50 ( #16,628 of 2,498,178 )
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