Philosophy

42 State-of-Nature Theory

of the life of the person you killed? After all, there would be no net diminution in total utility, or even any change in its profile of distribution. Do we forbid murder only to prevent feelings of worry on the part of potential victims? (And how does a utilitarian explain what it is they're worried about, and would he really base a policy on what he must hold to be an irrational fear?) Clearly, a utilitarian needs to supplement his view to handle such issues; perhaps he will find that the supplementary theory becomes the main one, relegating utilitarian considerations to a corner.

But isn't utilitarianism at least adequate for animals? I think not. But if not only the animals' felt experiences are relevant, what else is? Here a tangle of questions arises. How much does an animal's life have to be respected once it's alive, and how can we decide this? Must one also introduce some notion of a nondegraded existence? Would it be all right to use genetic-engineering tech- niques to breed natural slaves who would be contented with their lots? Natural animal slaves? Was that the domestication of ani- mals? Even for animals, utilitarianism won't do as the whole story, but the thicket of questions daunts us.

THE EXPERIENCE MACHINE

There are also substantial puzzles when we ask what matters other than how people's experiences feel "from the inside." Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug into this machine for life, prepro- gramming your life's experiences? If you are worried about missing out on desirable experiences, we can suppose that business en- terprises have researched thoroughly the lives of many others. You can pick and choose from their large library or smorgasbord of such experiences, selecting your life's experiences for, say, the next two years. After two years have passed, you will have ten minutes or ten hours out of the tank, to select the experiences of your next

Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Blackwell 1974.

Moral Constraints and the State 43

two years. Of course, while in the tank you won't know that you're there; you'll think it's all actually happening. Others can also plug in to have the experiences they want, so there's no need to stay unplugged to serve them. (Ignore problems such as who will service the machines if everyone plugs in.) Would you plug in? What else can matter to us, other than how our lives feel from the in- side? Nor should you refrain because of the few moments of distress between the moment you've decided and the moment you're plugged. What's a few moments of distress compared to a lifetime of bliss (if that's what you choose), and why feel any distress at all if your decision is the best one?

What does matter to us in addition to our experiences? First, we want to do certain things, and not just have the experience of doing them. In the case of certain experiences, it is only because first we want to do the actions that we want the experiences of doing them or thinking we've done them. (But why do we want to do the activities rather than merely to experience them?) A second reason for not plugging in is that we want to be a certain way, to be a certain sort of person. Someone floating in a tank is an inde- terminate blob. There is no answer to the question of what a per- son is like who has long been in the tank. Is he courageous, kind, intelligent, witty, loving? It's not merely that it's difficult to tell; there's no way he is. Plugging into the machine is a kind of suicide. It will seem to some, trapped by a picture, that nothing about what we are like can matter except as it gets reflected in our experiences. But should it be surprising that what we are is impor- tant to us? Why should we be concerned only with how our time is filled, but not with what we are?

Thirdly, plugging into an experience machine limits us to a man-made reality, to a world no deeper or more important than that which people can construct. 10 There is no actual contact with any deeper reality, though the experience of it can be simulated. Many persons desire to leave themselves open to such contact and to a plumbing of deeper significance.* This clarifies the intensity

• Traditional religious views differ on the point of contact with a transcen- dent reality. Some say that contact yields eternal bliss or Nirvana, but they have not distinguished this sufficiently from merely a very long run on the experience machine. Others think it is intrinsically desirable to do the will of a higher

44 State-of-Nature Theory

of the conflict over psychoactive drugs, which some view as mere local experience machines, and others view as avenues to a deeper reality; what some view as equivalent to surrender to the experi- ence machine, others view as following one of the reasons not to surrender!

We learn that something matters to us in addition to experience by imagining an experience machine and then realizing that we would not use it. We can continue to imagine a sequence of machines each designed to fill lacks suggested for the earlier ma- chines. For example, since the experience machine doesn't meet our desire to be a certain way, imagine a transformation machine which transforms us into whatever sort of person we'd like to be (compatible with our staying us). Surely one would not use the transformation machine to become as one would wish, and there- upon plug into the experience machine! * So something matters in addition to one's experiences and what one is like. Nor is the reason merely that one's experiences are unconnected with what one is like. For the experience machine might be limited to pro- vide only experiences possible to the sort of person plugged in. Is it that we want to make a difference in the world? Consider then the result machine, which produces in the world any result you would produce and injects your vector input into any joint activity. We shall not pursue here the fascinating details of these or other machines. What is most disturbing about them is their living of our lives for us. Is it misguided to search for particular additional

being which created us all, though presumably no one would think this if we discovered we had been created as an object of amusement by some superpower- ful child from another galaxy or dimension. Still others imagine an eventual merging with a higher reality, leaving unclear its desirability, or where that merging leaves us.

• Some wouldn't use the transformation machine at all; it seems like cheat- ing. But the one-time use of the transformation machine would not remove all challenges; there would still be obstacles for the new us to overcome, a new pla- teau from which co strive even higher. And is this plateau any the less earned or deserved than that provided by genetic endowment and early childhood en- vironment? But if the transformation machine could be used indefinitely often, so that we could accomplish anything by pushing a button to transform our- selves into someone who could do it easily, there would remain no limits we need to strain against or try to transcend. Would there be anything left to do? Do some theological views place God outside of time because an omniscient omnipotent being couldn't fill up his days?

Moral Constraints and the State 45

functions beyond the competence of machines to do for us? Per- haps what we desire is to live (an active verb) ourselves, in contact with reality. (And this, machines cannot do for us.) Without elaborating on the implications of this, which I believe connect surprisingly with issues about free will and causal accounts of knowledge, we need merely note the intricacy of the question of what matters for people other then their experiences. Until one finds a satisfactory answer, and determines that this answer does not also apply to animals, one cannot reasonably claim that only the felt experiences of animals limit what we may do to them.

UNDERDETERMINATION OF MORAL THEORY

What about persons distinguishes them from animals, so that stringent constraints apply to how persons may be treated, yet not to how animals may be treated? 11 Could beings from a!lother galaxy stand to us as it is usually thought we do to animals, and if so, would they be justified in treating us as means a la utilitar- ianism? Are organisms arranged on some ascending scale, so that any may be sacrificed or caused to suffer to achieve a greater total benefit for those not lower on the scale? * Such an elitist hierarchi- cal view would distinguish three moral statuses (forming an inter- val partition of the scale):

Status 1: The being may not be sacrificed, harmed, and so on, for any other organism's sake. Status 2: The being may be sacrificed, harmed, and so on, only for the sake of beings higher on the scale, but not for the sake of beings at the same level.

• We pass over the difficulties about deciding where on the scale to place an organism, and about particular interspecies comparisons. How is it to be de- cided where on the scale a species goes? Is an organism, if defective, to be placed at its species level? Is it an anomaly that it might be impermissible to treat two currently identical organisms similarly (they might even be identical in future and past capacities as well), because one is a normal member of one species and the other is a subnormal member of a species higher on the scale? And the problems of intraspecies interpersonal comparisons pale bdore those of interspecies comparisons.