What if you learned that many people who experienced the Happiness Machine found reality so unsatisfying compared to the Machine that they continue to enter the Machine, become addicted to its pleasures, and believe that reality can never match the experiences in the Machine? Some people, however, decide that reality, however disappointing it often is, is better than the simulations, or fantasies, of the Machine and don’t enter the Machine again.
If happiness is subjective – in the eye of the beholder, we might say – then haven’t those who spend much time in the Machine achieved Happiness?
Aristotle’s ethical philosophy implies that such subjective happiness as this Machine can provide is not happiness at all.
So what is missing? Here are some ideas inspired by Aristotle’s philosophy:
A person in the Machine is purely passive; they never actually do or even choose to do anything. For Aristotle, isn’t an active life essential to genuine happiness, the good life? (An active life means that you must reason, deliberate about what to do, choose, and act.) But in an active life one must face obstacles, including, sometimes, ones that cannot be overcome, and that means failure and disappointment are inevitable – so from the point of view of Aristotle’s ethics, what is the good of dealing with obstacles and failure? What virtues does one need in order to do so well?
It seems impossible that anyone in that Machine, no matter how many times they enter it, could learn virtues, and if that is true, then, for Aristotle, they cannot have achieved happiness. So why can’t a person learn virtues in the Machine?
If such a Machine were available, would you enter it? (Just explain your answer.)
