OrangePhilosophy

Patrick says to consider the following cases:

Two highly sophisticated helmets are invented. One, the "depression helmet", when worn allows the person wearing it to go about their life as usual. However, it causes them to believe that all of their desires have been thwarted. The second helmet is called the "ecstasy helmet" and evokes in the subject a pathological optimism: they believe that they have everything in the world they could possibly want and more.

I thought I knew what was going on in this post, then I re-read it, and now I'm not so sure. I can interpret his language in three ways, none of which seems to fit exactly with how he puts it:

(1) The helmets transform the experiences, holding the desires constant. The ecstasy helmet makes me experience things that I consider good, even if bad things are happening. The depression helmet makes me experience things that are bad, even if good things are happening. This description seems to fit this one:

Would you rather actively fulfill all the desires you have in life, or at least see others fulfill them for you (but wear the depression helmet, so as to believe that the opposite is happening and hence be in utter anguish), or would you rather live what you would have called a worthless life, lying in bed all day like a heroin addict (but because you are wearing the ecstasy helmet you think you have everything that you desire, and because of this you are in utter bliss)?

(2) They transform my desires, holding my perceptual experiences constant. The ecstasy helmet makes me enjoy things I would not normally enjoy, and the depression helmet makes me loathe things I would normally enjoy.

This wasn't my first thought upon reading the post, but there's enough evidence against the first interpretation that this seemed worth thinking about. What counts most against it is that your desires would be fulfilled if you had the ecstasy helmet on, and Patrick wants to say that they're not but you think they are.

(3) The experiences are normal, and the desires are also unchanged, but the ecstasy helment makes me believe against all my evidence that my desires are satisfied when in fact they aren't, and the depression helmet makes me believe against all my evidence that my desires are unsatisfied when in fact they are satisfied.

Patrick's statement that the Ecstasy Helmet leads to a pathological optimism suggests version (3). With an Ecstasy Helmet Mark 3, I believe I have everything I could want and more, even though all my experiences give me enough empirical evidence to the contrary, and I really don't desire any of what I get. That would surely be pathological.

What counts against this is this statement of Patrick's, just before he gives the helmet examples: "Perhaps it follows that what a person would most prefer to happen, is for their own informed desires to be fulfilled in fact." If the example is a counterexample to this, it should involve informed beliefs, but the beliefs are exactly what are not informed in the Mark 3 helmets.

Since I don't know which Patrick meant, I'll record my thoughts on all three. I was assuming (1) in my first comment. Here is what I said:

It's interesting that if you're right it doesn't show hedonism to be correct, because then we'd have one case that moves us that way and the pleasure machine that moves us the other way. I think Richard is right to try to find a view that explains both responses, but what if in the end we can't do that? Which of these examples should take precedence?

I think I'm going to bite the bullet on this anyway. If I'm trying to devote my life to helping people out, and I do so, then I think it's so good for me to have my life purpose met that it's still better for that to be the case with my being fooled into thinking I've completely failed than it is for me to be all happy and content thinking I'd succeeded when in fact I've completely hurt everyone and everything I've touched. It's terrible for me that I'm misled about this (which is true of both cases), but it's even worse that my life goal is not only failed but that I never know that, whereas it's not so bad that I simply never know that I've succeeded, because I have succeeded.

With (2), I'm less sure. If the experiences are held constant, and the desires are changed, I'm not as sure what to say. The helmet transforms my desires so that I falsely think my desires are being fulfilled (or not, depending on which helmet we're talking about). If my desires are transformed, it's strange to say the helmets make it so your desires aren't fulfilled. They are fulfilled. It's just that they're not the desires you would have otherwise had.

Even so, I think preference views do better than hedonism with this case. If my desires are changed so I like awful things, and awful things happen and I enjoy it, I think that's bad for me. If my desires are changed so I hate good things, and good things happen, that's also bad for me. In each case I'm conditioned to hate the good or to love the bad. In one case, I'm hating the bad in addition to hating the good. In the other, I'm loving the bad in addition to loving the good. Those seem equally bad to me, so the desire-altering doesn't seem better or worse in either case.

That means two things remain that I can use to decide which is worse for me (both are bad, so it seems weird to ask which is better for me). One is the mere mental state, either enjoyment or unhappiness. The other is the circumstances, either good or bad. Patrick seems to be saying (if this is the right interpretation) that the depression helmet case might be better overall but no better for me. The ecstasy helmet case is better for me, though worse overall.

I just can't accept that. What makes the ecstasy helmet case so bad is that the enjoyment is based on a lie. It's not based on a lie in the way the enjoyment of Ecstasy Helmet Mark 1 was, since I do know exactly what's gone on. Ecstasy Helmet Mark 2 is still based on a lie, because my desires were fashioned into what they are through a transformation against my will of what my desires would normally be into something that I would never have preferred if I had a choice. It just seems to me that it's bad to get what I want when what I want is not only terrible but not what I would want if I hadn't been altered, even if I would enjoy it. Therefore, it's better to get what I don't want given that it's what I would have wanted had I not been changed, even if I wouldn't enjoy it.

I'm having trouble imagining what (3) could possibly be like, if it's even possible. With an Ecstasy Helmet Mark 3, I believe I have everything I could want and more, despite my experiences providing enough empirical evidence to the contrary, and I don't want anything I have. It doesn't make for the best thought experiment if I can't imagine what it would be like or even be sure it's possible.

Even so, the pathology of having false beliefs that my desires are being met when they're not seems worse than the pathology of having false beliefs that my desires are not being met when they are. I'd much rather my desires be fulfilled even if I for some reason can't intellectually grasp that or enjoy the satisfaction of having achieved what I desire. I think that's better for me.

So in all three interpretations I don't see how this example should favor hedonism over a preference theory. If it did, it would just suggest to me that both hedonism and strict preference theories are inadequate, which I believe anyway. I don't think well-being can be reduced to pleasure and pain together with desire-fulfillment. The conjunction of concluding one example shows hedonism is false and concluding the other shows strict preference theories to be false is consistent with my own view.