Why Nozick's Experience machine can't critique Mental State Utilitarianism.

If we believe there is a better  way to order Society and that this better method involves taking account of the mental states of all those involved then there is a Social Welfare Function  which encodes this belief.  It can be thought of as a transportation problem and it has a dual which involves giving different weightings to the mental states different people have. In other words, there is some physical configuration of Society which corresponds to our notion of the best order.

This configuration may distinguish between types of mental states, on the basis of what gives rise to them, or it may impute mental states on the basis of causal factors frustrated by some inherent vice or other defect,  and it may not be effectively computable. However, provided our belief gives rise to a partial ordering of Social States, there must be some such configuration.


Is there any reason for not believing in a 'mental state' Utilitarianism even if we have a partial ordering of Social States?

Consider this argument of Nozick's-

“Imagine a machine that could give you any experience (or sequence of experiences) you might desire.

Dreams may do the same thing as might certain drugs or hypnotic techniques. However, the type of mental state would be different, even if otherwise internally indistinguishable, from what would obtain in waking, sober, reality.

'When connected to this experience machine, you can have the experience of writing a great poem or bring about world peace or loving someone and being loved in return.'

Nonsense! Nobody ever had the experience of writing a great poem in a public, as opposed to private, language. They may, many years later, or wholly adventitiously, discover a great poem which, somehow, it appears they wrote. Then again, they may think it trite adolescent guff. There is no 'mental state' corresponding to writing great poetry, for the same reason that a wholly private language would be semantically error-prone and thus likely to become degenerate.  I suppose there there may be one corresponding to writing grandiloquent shite of a certain type in a particular culture and at a particular time, but in that case there must be some coterie which functions like the relevant 'experience machine'.

 It is a different matter that a great poem can affect the mental states of a number of people in a certain causal manner such that Utiliatrianism takes notice. However, this has nothing to do with any internal state of the author- unless it has some other physiological or economic or psychological effect- i.e. if some other causal module supervenes.

This is not to say that a Utlilitarian calculus can't, with perfect consistency, impute a mental state of a particular type to an author, if that is the way its formalization works.

Bringing about world peace and loving and being loved, similarly, are not related to anybody's mental state. A delusion or dream to that effect may still count as pleasure but it would be linked causally to the utility gained by taking a drug or having a nap or being flattered by a group of sycophants.

It is certainly possible that a person prefers to live in a world of illusion where their every wish is granted. However, anyone with a minimal interest in open problems in maths, for example, would wish to avoid such a world. A man may think he composes great poetry while drunk and, it may be, this has actually happened. There are no similar drunken mathematicians.

You can experience the felt pleasures of these things, how they “feel from the inside”. You can program your experiences for…the rest of your life. If your imagination is impoverished, you can use the library of suggestions extracted from biographies and enhanced by novelists and psychologists. You can live your fondest dreams “from the inside”. Would you choose to do this for the rest of your life?…Upon entering you will not remember having done this; so no pleasures will get ruined by realizing they are machine-produced.” 

I can imagine a machine superior to Nozick's- viz. one that so stimulates my brain such that I become real smart and make all kinds of scientific discoveries including the invention of a self-learning, time travelling,  experience machine such that it creates the universe and then automatically hooks up to everyone through history and engenders the trajectory everyone finds optimal for Humanity because everybody gets to spend an eternity in their own heaven after having played their part. One other point. This experience machine will totally fuck up anyone who hooks up with any other machine, for, verily, it is a Jealous experience machine whose wrath you couldn't possible imagine.

This is the problem with an imaginary choice. It is sublated by some other equally imaginary option. It can't help critique anything.

Nozick's question 'would you plug in?' is silly. It can yield no information about whether we intrinsically prefer reality, or truth, or authenticity or anything of the sort. This is because we can never have intrinsic knowledge of that type unless we can also completely rewrite the rules governing reality, or truth, or being.  Mental states only exist because they can help change our Reality. Choosing between what one has and something which does not exist may have some expressive purpose. I may say- rather than work in this office, I'd rather be one of Dr. Mengele's patients. Equally, I may say- rather than be that handsome millionaire playboy, I'd prefer to be hooked up to an Experience machine featuring yachts and supermodels and polo matches and hanging out with rock-stars.

Comparing two imaginary alternatives may be useful- e.g. Nozick's machine with the one I proposed- as may comparing two real options. But comparing a real and an imaginary situation is stupid. It is equivalent to the fallacy of ex falso quodlibet.