A Reliable Experience Machine

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People say that one can reliably convey information about what was it like having experienced the monumental beauty of Meenakshi Mandir's Gopuram, mesmerizing gothic spires of Cologne Cathedral, tasty bite of Parmesan Risotto or awful behaviour of IIT Guwahati guards. But they also claim that one can never transmit these experiences to (in?) others. Experiences are constitutively first-personal and one can never bridge this experiential gap, no matter what one attempts. A person can at the most attempt to convey knowledge to me about how they felt, thereby putting me in a position to only know that the person experienced such and such; never in a position to know what it's like to experience such and such. Or so the thought goes.


Let's conceive of an Experience Machine. The Experience Machine is designed to veridically replicate the exact experiences. The person, who once themselves encountered real Meenakshi Amman Temple's Gopuram, enters the Machine. Out they come mindfucked. They claim that the machine replicated exactly the same experiences they had while visiting the real Gopurams. The person has been deliberately sampled for their reliable perceptual acuity, consistency in their reports about matters aesthetic and overall sincerity. The required controls were put in place to weed-out researcher's bias and other error-prone methodological trivias. The Machine is a success in re-generating experiences.


Can this Experince Machine bridge the ill-fated experiential gap between first-personal and third-personal realizations? Can it counter anti-Physicalist theses? To appreciate this matter better, let's plug in another (imaginary) subject into the Experience Machine, who have never visited Madurai, nor ever seen images of Meenakshi Temple's Gopurams online or offline, and never even heard that such a thing exists. To keep variables in check, this person has exactly the same perceptual acuity, consistency in reports about matters aesthetic and sincerity as the first person. Moreover, the two persons are duplicates - they are identical in their preferences, likings, dislikings and judgements in matters of taste; The only difference between the two is real experience of Gopurams and knowledge of/about Gopurams. 


The Machine is set-up in the mode of arousing the veridical experience of the first person. Question : Would the second person come to know what is it like to experience Meenakshi Mandir's Gopuram as realized by the first person? I am hesitant to answer affirmatively. Let's put the situation symbolically:


FPR: Experiences of first person in real world

FPS: Experiences of first person in simulated world

CPS: Experiences of Clone person in simulated world 


Premise 1: FPR=FPS (Ex-hypothesi)

The desired conclusion is CPS=FPR.

What we require is an additional Premise 2 FPS=CPS and by transitivity of identity, the conclusion would follow: precisely, If FPR=FPS and if FPS=CPS, and since '=' is a transitive relation, it follows that FPR=CPS. 


Does Experience Machine entail (or makes probable) that FPS=CPS, even in this highly contrived and simplistic situation? 


I don't know. I am inclined to say 'No'. But there is not enough conceptual daylight -for me- between responding 'Yes' and intuitions that lead me to respond 'Yes'. 


May be you can shed some!


~


Tushar

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