Exam 4: The Good Life

According to Mill, what are the liabilities of being a being with "higher faculties?"

Talk about: -Hedonism

If all that mattered to us were our experiences, then we would enter the

Talk about: -Intrinsically valuable

While in the experience machine, Nozick claims, we would be

Briefly describe an example of an intuitively valuable life (it can be someone you know personally or someone you just know of). Explain what makes their life valuable. Does hedonism do a good job of capturing all the dimensions of value in the life in your example? Why or why not?

Write an essay critically assessing Mill's doctrine of "higher" and "lower" pleasures. How does Mill think we can determine which kinds of pleasure are most valuable? Do you find his standard plausible? Why or why not? Which kinds of pleasure does Mill claim are most valuable? Do you agree with him about this? Defend your answer.

According to Mill, the view that only the quantity of pleasure matters (and not its quality) is

Write an essay critically assessing Nozick's reasons for not plugging in to the experience machine. Explain each reason clearly, and then say whether you think it is a good reason not to plug in. Defend your answers.

Explain Nozick's "experience machine" thought experiment. Would you plug into the experience machine? Why or why not? What do you think this shows about the good life?

According to Mill, the desirability of a pleasure is determined by its

According to Nozick, the most disturbing thing about the experience, transformation, and results machines is that they all

Mill claims that the only evidence we can have that something is desirable is that

Nozick's aim in discussing the experience machine is to

How does Mill explain the fact that some people pursue lower pleasures rather than higher ones?

Case Study In her essay "The Meanings of Lives," Susan Wolf asks us to consider a case she calls "The Blob." The Blob is a person who spends every day sitting in front of the TV, drinking beer, and watching reruns of the same shows. Imagine that this is truly all the Blob does, day after day. But nevertheless, the Blob is perfectly content-it is all he wants and it makes him happy. He has no health or financial problems, or other things to worry about. This is an extreme example, but not terribly unrealistic. There are some people who have such low expectations for their lives that they are perfectly content engaging in the same seemingly meaningless activities day after day. Such cases might lead us to wonder whether some subjective condition, like pleasure and the absence of pain, or the satisfaction or our desires, is really all there is to living a good life. -What do you think about the case of the Blob? Does the Blob live a good life? If not, what does this say about hedonism? What does it say about desire satisfaction theories?

What does Mill mean by "unhappiness?"

Talk about: -Desire satisfaction theory