Concept tag
#hedonism
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I would plug into the experience machine, and most refusals are just status quo bias
Robert Nozick's thought experiment in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974): a machine can give you any experiences you like, indistinguishable from reality. You'd believe you were writing a great novel or climbing a mountain, but you'd be floating in a tank. Would…
Started by Huang Wei-ting5 replies221 views -
Cārvāka and Epicurus, two ancient materialists at a deathbed
I'm a palliative care nurse in Montreal. Epicurus helped me think about death without flinching: in the Letter to Menoeceus he says death is nothing to us, because where death is, we are not, and where we are, death is not. I've…
Started by Nadia Haddad5 replies242 views -
Epicureans and Cārvākas: two ancient materialisms, two ideas of pleasure?
I teach physics in Mangaluru and have spent years arguing that the Cārvāka or Lokāyata materialists deserved a fairer hearing than their opponents gave them. Reading Epicurus, I keep seeing the comparison, and I want to test it. Both schools hold that…
Started by Arvind Poojary4 replies230 views -
What are the three kinds of theory of well-being that Parfit distinguished?
I ran a startup in Mumbai for six years and burnt out last year. For most of that time I thought I was optimising for happiness, mine and the team's. Now I'm not sure what I was optimising for. A friend pointed…
Started by Rohan Desai4 replies192 views