Into the Pleasure Machine

A lesson on Justice

So I’ve been doing this lesson lately with some of my older students. The topic of the lesson is the nature of justice. I want them to discuss what it is in an ideal and abstract manner. This was honestly far too much to ask of the students, but I think I was able to facilitate it well.

I used a series of three thought experiments to illustrate how to think about making ideal rules for a society, or at least, to think about what we truly value in society. The thought experiments in question were the impartial spectator, the original position, and the experience machine (otherwise known as the pleasure machine).

The Impartial Spectator comes from David Hume (I believe). He was a Scottish philosopher notorious for skeptical quips about the nature of causality. The impartial spectator thought experiment asks us to evaluate actions as if we were a spectator that was unbiased with regard to the parties involved. One question you may have is: “how can someone be TRULY impartial?”. Oh my god, me too! I had the same thought. I think some of the students didn’t really get it so I trashed that thought experiment.

The second one that sort of worked and, in my opinion, is a refinement of the impartial spectator is the Original Position. The Original Position originates from the very original John Rawls, an American philosopher writing in the 20th century. He asks us to imagine that a bunch of people are making the rules for a society. There’s a catch though. They are like disembodied souls that don’t know which body they will inhabit when the rules are ultimately put into place. These disembodied souls don’t know their possible race, gender, wealth level, whether or not they’ll be disabled, etc. I think this rules out any rules made with considerations toward personal identity. Once we’re all disembodied souls untethered from the burdens of the body we can make rules in a truly impartial manner. This is extremely ideal, but it is an interesting way to approach the question of what justice is. I love this thought experiment. I especially love the rules that come out of it.

The students didn’t really do a lot with it. I don’t blame them. There’s this weird American ranting to them about the ideal conditions of justice and they’re just trying to learn English and fit in to the frail and disjointed social life of a teenager. They don’t have time to think of ideal conceptions of justice while they’re studying for the test that will be the culmination of their lives. Such ideal concepts are hard to bring into a concrete structure that the students may walk through as if it were their own space. I risk the possibility of making their home brutalistic, like a soviet bus stop. Just another manmade structure that is made to be functional and to get you to the next stop in life. Something that can be reflected on, but doesn’t jump out to you as a space of your own.

Anyways, that thought experiment was a bit of a dud. At this point in the lesson I’m sweating. I look at the clock and I realize I have 20 minutes left. I start to improvise, fearing I won’t be able to fill up the seconds as they eek by. People are staring at me, the room is silent. You could hear a bee’s expulsive fart if you listened close enough. I crossed my fingers as I pressed the arrow key pointing to the next slide, dreading the possibility of a heavy silence filling the room like a putrid gas.

My dread was unfounded. The next thought experiment was the pleasure machine (or experience machine, depending on your preference for precise descriptions). Imagine that scientists had made a machine that you could go into and forget your previous life. The life in the machine would be simulated, like the matrix, and it would be the most pleasurable life you could ever experience. “Most pleasurable” does not mean constant sex and gummy bears. Get your head out of your ass. It could mean solving a really hard math problem, or reading a good book, or having a really great conversation with friends.

the next objection to the nature of pleasure in the pleasure machine could go along these lines: many events/things give people pleasure because of the pain and hard work required to get those pleasures. I take this to be something really interesting but I don’t think it gets rid of the question of whether the pleasure machine gives the most pleasurable life. In their infinite wisdom, the scientists who made the machine knew that the most pleasurable life requires hardship. In that case, there wouldn’t be a problem. The scientists could tailor pleasure in such a way to make it seem like you earned it.

I won’t talk about what the original philosopher, Robert Nozick, said about the pleasure machine but I will say what some of the students said. One bit the bullet and said that she was living her most pleasurable life. Another said that they would miss their family members when they went into the machine. A lot of the students wanted to go into the machine and said so without hesitation. The conversations on this topic were incredibly fruitful and even illuminating for myself. They said things that I would have never thought. They were like a mine for good ideas and I the foreman, facilitating the extraction of the ideas from their minds. Somewhat creepy hehe.

All in all, the lesson went well. As I gave it more, I got much better at conversing with the students and meeting them in the middle. I even included this cool video on the Ring of Gyges, a reference to Plato’s Republic. You know what the ring does if you've seen Lord of the rings. It makes you invisible for a short time. In the Republic, Socrates asks someone if they would be just for its own sake, with no rewards. He wants to understand if justice is something that is good for its own sake and therefore good for the life of the just person. I replaced the impartial spectator with that, mostly because it’s cooler but also because I got some objections to the very idea of justice.

anyways, I’ve been dormant for too long. I’m back for a short time. Get me before I expire. Beware, European produce expires way earlier than American stuff :)

most of the pictures were made with ChatGPT- thanks ChatGPT.