20585
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If an experience machine gives you any experience you want, should you hook up for life? [Nozick]
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Full Idea:
Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired ...such as writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. ...Should you plug into this machine for life?
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From:
Robert Nozick (Anarchy,State, and Utopia [1974], 3 'Experience')
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A reaction:
A classic though experiment which crystalises a major problem with hedonistic utilitarianism. My addition is a machine which maximises the pleasure of my family and friends, to save me the bother of doing it.
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22090
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For me time stands still, and I with it [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle]
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Full Idea:
Time flows, life is a stream, people say, and so on. I do not notice it. Time stands still, and I with it.
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From:
report of Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843], I:26) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 3
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A reaction:
This is from the spokesman for the aesthetic option in life, which is largely pleasure-seeking. No real choices ever occur.
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5650
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Reason is just abstractions, so our essence needs a subjective 'leap of faith' [Kierkegaard, by Scruton]
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Full Idea:
For Kierkegaard, reason, which produces only abstractions, negates our individual essence; this essence is subjectivity, and subjectivity exists only in the 'leap of faith', whereby the individual casts in his lot with eternity.
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From:
report of Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.13
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A reaction:
Interesting, but this strikes me as a confusion of reason and logic. A logical life would indeed be a sort of death, and need faith as an escape, but a broad view of the rational life includes emotion, imagination and laughter. Blind faith is disaster.
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22095
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There are aesthetic, ethical and religious subjectivity [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle]
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Full Idea:
Kierkegaard distinguishes three main types of subjectivity: aesthetic, ethical and religious. But are these types of people, or different phases of one person's life?
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From:
report of Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 4
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A reaction:
His picture of the religious mode holds no appeal for me. I also can't accept that the aesthetic and the moral are somewho distinct. People may discover they have slipped into one of these modes, but no one chooses them, do they?
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20747
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What matters is not right choice, but energy, earnestness and pathos in the choosing [Kierkegaard]
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Full Idea:
In making a choice, it is not so much a question of choosing the right way as of the energy, the earnestness, and the pathos with which one chooses.
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From:
Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843], p.106), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 2 'Phenomenology'
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A reaction:
I'm struggling to identify with the experience he is describing. I can't imagine a more quintessentially existentialist remark than this. Reference to 'energy' in choosing strikes me as very romantic. Is 'the way not taken' crucial (in 'pathos')?
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