I take it you have read the new book “Pleasures of the Brain” by Kringelbach & Berridge? I’ve got the book here but haven’t yet had the time/urge to read it bookend to bookend. From what I’ve glimpsed while superficially thumbing through it however, it’s basically your article in book-format. Although I believe I remember that they also give “learning” the same attention as they give to liking and wanting, as one of your last quotations hints at.
It’s quite a fascinating thought, that the “virtue” of curiosity which some people display is simply because they get a major kick out of learning new things—as I suspect most people here do.
Anyway, I’ve never quite bought the experience machine argument for two reasons:
1) As we probably all know: what people say they WOULD DO is next to worthless. Look at the hypnotic pull of World of Warcraft. It’s easy to resist for me, but there may very well be possible virtual realities, that strike my tastes in such an irresistible manner that my willpower will be powerless and I’d prefer the virtual reality over this one. I may feel quite guilty about it, but it may be so heroin-like and/or pleasurable, that there is simply no escape for me. It’s phenomenally easy to bullshit ourselves into thinking we would do what other people and what we ourselves would expect from us, but realistically speaking we’re all suckers for temptation instead of kings of willpower. I’d say that if the experience machine existed and was easily obtainable, then our streets would be deserted.
2) For the sake of argument let’s assume purely on speculation, that the human ability of imagination has brought with it the rise of a kind of psychological fail-safe against losing oneself in pleasurable daydreams—since the ability to vividly imagine things and lose oneself in daydreams may obviously be an evolutionary counter-adaptive feature of the human brain. If we accept this speculative premise, it may be reasonable to expect, that our brain always quickly runs a query about whether the origin of our pleasure has real/tangible or “imaginative” reasons, and makes us value the former more/differently.
(I won’t be nit-picky about the words “real” and “imaginary” here, of cause all feelings are caused by neurological and real phenomena. I trust you catch my drift and understand in which way I use these two words here).
The human brain can tell the difference between fiction and non-fiction very well—it would be rather bothersome to mistake an image of a tiger or even our pure imagination for the real deal. And for similar adaptive reasons it seems, we are very aware of whether our hedonic pleasures have tangible or imaginary origins. So when I ask “do you want to experience “imaginary” pleasures for the rest of your existence even though nothing real or tangible will ever be the source of your pleasure” then of cause people will reject it.
We humans can obviously indulge in imaginary pleasures a lot, but we usually all crave at least some “reality-bound” pleasures as well. So asking someone to hook up to the experience machine is like depriving them of a “distinct form” of pleasure that may absolutely depend on being real.
So I think the experience machine thought experiment isn’t really telling us, whether or not pleasure is the only thing that people desire. Instead, it may simple be the case, that it is indeed an important precondition for a wide range of pleasure to be based on reality—and being entirely deprived of this reality-correlating pleasure may in a way feel like being deprived of water—horrible. People may be right to reject the experience machine, but that tells us nothing about whether or not pleasure is the only thing they desire. So I think the experience machine is a rather poor argument to make in order to illustrate, that there are other things besides pleasure that people care about—the research you cite however is much clearer and quite unmistakable in this respect.
On another note, I think we’re missing the most interesting question here: Indeed, there seem to be other things besides pleasure that people care about… but SHOULD they? Should I ever want something that doesn’t make me happy, just because my genes wired me up to value it? Why should I want something if it doesn’t make me directly or indirectly happy or satisfied?
Wanting something without necessarily liking it may be an integral part of how my human psychology operates, and one that cannot simply be tinkered with… but in the light of advances in neuroscience and nanobots, maybe I should opt to rewire/redesign myself as a hedonist from the ground up?! Valuing things without liking them is no fun… so can someone here tell me why I should want to care about something that doesn’t make me happy in some shape or form?
PS: Sorry for the long comment, I didn’t have time for a short one.
Hey Lukeprog, thanks for your article.
I take it you have read the new book “Pleasures of the Brain” by Kringelbach & Berridge? I’ve got the book here but haven’t yet had the time/urge to read it bookend to bookend. From what I’ve glimpsed while superficially thumbing through it however, it’s basically your article in book-format. Although I believe I remember that they also give “learning” the same attention as they give to liking and wanting, as one of your last quotations hints at.
It’s quite a fascinating thought, that the “virtue” of curiosity which some people display is simply because they get a major kick out of learning new things—as I suspect most people here do.
Anyway, I’ve never quite bought the experience machine argument for two reasons:
1) As we probably all know: what people say they WOULD DO is next to worthless. Look at the hypnotic pull of World of Warcraft. It’s easy to resist for me, but there may very well be possible virtual realities, that strike my tastes in such an irresistible manner that my willpower will be powerless and I’d prefer the virtual reality over this one. I may feel quite guilty about it, but it may be so heroin-like and/or pleasurable, that there is simply no escape for me. It’s phenomenally easy to bullshit ourselves into thinking we would do what other people and what we ourselves would expect from us, but realistically speaking we’re all suckers for temptation instead of kings of willpower. I’d say that if the experience machine existed and was easily obtainable, then our streets would be deserted.
2) For the sake of argument let’s assume purely on speculation, that the human ability of imagination has brought with it the rise of a kind of psychological fail-safe against losing oneself in pleasurable daydreams—since the ability to vividly imagine things and lose oneself in daydreams may obviously be an evolutionary counter-adaptive feature of the human brain. If we accept this speculative premise, it may be reasonable to expect, that our brain always quickly runs a query about whether the origin of our pleasure has real/tangible or “imaginative” reasons, and makes us value the former more/differently.
(I won’t be nit-picky about the words “real” and “imaginary” here, of cause all feelings are caused by neurological and real phenomena. I trust you catch my drift and understand in which way I use these two words here).
The human brain can tell the difference between fiction and non-fiction very well—it would be rather bothersome to mistake an image of a tiger or even our pure imagination for the real deal. And for similar adaptive reasons it seems, we are very aware of whether our hedonic pleasures have tangible or imaginary origins. So when I ask “do you want to experience “imaginary” pleasures for the rest of your existence even though nothing real or tangible will ever be the source of your pleasure” then of cause people will reject it.
We humans can obviously indulge in imaginary pleasures a lot, but we usually all crave at least some “reality-bound” pleasures as well. So asking someone to hook up to the experience machine is like depriving them of a “distinct form” of pleasure that may absolutely depend on being real.
So I think the experience machine thought experiment isn’t really telling us, whether or not pleasure is the only thing that people desire. Instead, it may simple be the case, that it is indeed an important precondition for a wide range of pleasure to be based on reality—and being entirely deprived of this reality-correlating pleasure may in a way feel like being deprived of water—horrible. People may be right to reject the experience machine, but that tells us nothing about whether or not pleasure is the only thing they desire. So I think the experience machine is a rather poor argument to make in order to illustrate, that there are other things besides pleasure that people care about—the research you cite however is much clearer and quite unmistakable in this respect.
On another note, I think we’re missing the most interesting question here: Indeed, there seem to be other things besides pleasure that people care about… but SHOULD they? Should I ever want something that doesn’t make me happy, just because my genes wired me up to value it? Why should I want something if it doesn’t make me directly or indirectly happy or satisfied?
Wanting something without necessarily liking it may be an integral part of how my human psychology operates, and one that cannot simply be tinkered with… but in the light of advances in neuroscience and nanobots, maybe I should opt to rewire/redesign myself as a hedonist from the ground up?! Valuing things without liking them is no fun… so can someone here tell me why I should want to care about something that doesn’t make me happy in some shape or form?
PS: Sorry for the long comment, I didn’t have time for a short one.