Monday, March 13, 2006 PHL105Y

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Monday, March 13, 2006PHL105Y

• For Wednesdays class, finish reading Nozicks
  Defense of Libertarianism, pages 409-423 in the
  Pojman.
• For Fridays tutorial, answer one of the
  following questions
• 1. Explain Nozicks distinction between
  historical principles of justice and end-result
  principles of justice.
• 2. What is a patterned principle of distribution,
  and why does Nozick think that patterns and
  liberty conflict?

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Derek Parfit

• Personal Identity (1971)

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Parfit on successive selves

• When would it make sense to say, It was not I
  who did that, but an earlier self?
• Parfit we should recognize that we are
  psychologically much more connected to the stages
  of ourselves close to us in time if the person
  you were ten years ago had very different plans
  for the future, different values, etc., then you
  can distance yourself from that person
  psychological connectedness is a matter of degree
  (unlike identity, which is all-or-nothing)

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Parfit on successive selves

• On Parfits model, you can think of a human life
  as involving a series of selves there is no
  underlying person who is the 10-year-old and the
  70-year old.
• So, caring about what happens to your future self
  is not radically different from caring about what
  happens to others

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Egoism

• Suppose Parfits model of the self is correct.
  Does it really show that the principle of egoism
  has no special force?

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Egoism

• Suppose Parfits model of the self is correct.
  Does it really show that the principle of egoism
  has no special force?
• One might be concerned that it really shows that
  you should only worry about yourself here and now
  (e.g. dont save for your retirement, because
  that will be enjoyed by another person)

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Egoism

• Suppose Parfits model of the self is correct.
  Does it really show that the principle of egoism
  has no special force?
• One might be concerned that it really shows that
  you should only worry about yourself here and now
  (e.g. dont save for your retirement, because
  that will be enjoyed by another person)
• Then again, if that egoism-of-the-present-moment
  looks problematic or irrational, then maybe this
  should convince us that regular egoism is also
  problematic

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The fear of death

• How is Parfits model of human existence supposed
  to allay the fear of ones own distant death?
• Does it?
• Is he right that this is not a natural fear but
  one generated by questionable philosophical
  considerations?

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Robert Nozick

• The Experience Machine
• (From Anarchy, State and Utopia, 1974)

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What matters in human life?

• According to hedonism all that matters is
  happiness

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What matters in human life?

• According to hedonism all that matters is
  happiness
• According to (crude) subjectivism, all that
  matters is subjective experience

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What matters in human life?

• Subjectivism is a broader position you could be
  a subjectivist while valuing only pleasure, or
  happiness, or pain, or the enjoyment of great
  art, or a stimulating mixture of pleasure and
  pain, or the satisfaction of earlier desires, or
  a stimulating mixture of the satisfaction and
  frustration of earlier desires, or the feeling of
  writing great poetry or
• The key characteristic of subjectivism is that
  how well things are going for a subject is
  assessed from within that subjects perspective.
  Things the subject couldnt know about do not
  affect how well her life is going.

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The Experience Machine

• Suppose you could get a machine to deliver you
  any sort of experience.
• You get to choose in advance what sorts of
  experiences you will receive.
• While you are in the machine you wont be aware
  that you are in a machine

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The Experience Machine

• Suppose you could get a machine to deliver you
  any sort of experience.
• You get to choose in advance what sorts of
  experiences you will receive.
• While you are in the machine you wont be aware
  that you are in a machine (unless of course
  youve pre-selected the option of being aware of
  this)

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The Experience Machine

• Notice that you dont have to choose blandly
  pleasant experiences
• You could choose to experience a life of struggle
  and conflict you could choose to experience the
  inner life of a great artist, war hero, diplomat,
  inventor, surgeon, scientist, actor

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The Experience Machine

• Would you plug in?
• What else can matter to us, other than how our
  lives feel from the inside?

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What is missing in the machine?

• Nozick
• 1. We want to do certain things, not just feel
  that we are doing them. (Is that rational of us?)
• 2. We want to be a certain sort of person. (Is
  that rational? And is it right that the guy
  plugged into the machine isnt any type of
  person? Why does Nozick think you cant say the
  machine-stimulated war hero is brave?)

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What is missing in the machine?

• Nozick
• 3. Contact with a deeper reality. What is wrong
  with being restricted to a man-made virtual
  reality? Why does contact with something more
  matter to us (if it does)?

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Other machines

• What about a transformation machine that could
  turn you into a braver or more artistically
  talented person?
• Do you feel that it would be OK to use such a
  device? How is this different from the
  experience machine?

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What matters?

• What matters for people other than their own
  experiences?
• Why?
• What do we discover about ourselves thinking
  through these experiments?