Nozick’s experience machine is viewed to make a convincing, if not irrefutable, the case against hedonism. In Nozick’s experiment, we are summoned to consider the outlook of a fool’s paradise from a given perspective and to choose whether we will prefer the hedonic illusion which the experience machine offers or a hedonically lesser state of doing things. Nozick proposes that we select the latter (Ethem 11).

The experience machine of Robert Nozick, which attacks hedonism, is among the most renowned thought experiments in modern philosophy (Baber). The experience machine has convinced many people that there is more to a sensible value than the feeling quality of people’s experiences. Nevertheless, the experiment has been often misunderstood and very easily dismissed (Baber).

For instance, let’s take hedonism that states that whatever is intrinsically good is nothing but what matters most is the balance of pleasure over the pain experienced. It does not matter how someone understands pleasure, so long as it’s a non-fictive psychological state (Ethem 11). If an individual’s life comprises as much pleasure and as little pain as it is possible for that individual. There exists no way to improve that person’s life. It is just the hedonic excellence of experience that eventually matters for prudential value (Ethem 11).

A primordial counterexample to hedonism suggests that one is worse off, if he falsely believes that his partner is faithful to him (and possibly take pleasure in it) than if his partner is faithful to him. Robert’s Experience Machine experiment extracts the same vein (Ethem 11). However, it further generalizes the point and thus eliminating some distractions like the influence of the thought about cheating that will make one feel bad because of that (Baber). The most basic point is because the Experience Machine offers the perfect illusion of living whatever kind of life they desire, while one sail about in a tank (Kodali & Venkata).