Department of History and Philosophy of Science will hold the 55th Tokyo Colloquium of Cognitive Philosophy. Everyone is welcome.

Date & Time: 21th May (Thursday), 2015, 18:30-20:30
Venue: the 14th Building, Room 710 on the 7th floor, Komaba Campus
Presenter: Yoshiyuki Hayashi (University of Tokyo)
Title:"Hedonism and Reality"

Abstract:
Some claim that all that matters to one’s own happiness is one’s mental states. According to this view, nothing happening is of any relevance to happiness if it does not affect mental states. However, Nozick’s “experience machine” thought experiment seems to reveal that mental states are not sufficient for our happiness. Even if one could entertain artificially induced experiences that give us much pleasure, as they do not correspond to the reality they are not valuable to our happiness. In this presentation, firstly I try to argue that in some situations everyone can agree that we can obtain happiness even in an artificially constituted virtual world. I then also consider a possible application if we can obtain happiness from a virtual reality.