Monthly Archives: March 2013

Depending on one’s perspective, one of the joys (or frustrations) of reading Nozick is his unique style. As Matt Zwolinski recently wrote in reviewing The Cambridge Companion to Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia, (Bader and Meadowcroft eds): “One cannot read too far in it without coming across an idea that is brilliant, fecund, intriguing . . . and dropped almost as soon as it is introduced. Whole books, if not whole academic careers, could be devoted to working out in detail the ideas that Nozick relegates to mere footnotes and asides.” One supposed example of Nozick’s tendency in this regard is his thought experiment involving the “experience machine” (see ASU, 42-5).

This apparent digression has been the subject of extensive analysis and discussion in the literature, and is thus the subject of one of the essays comprising The Cambridge Companion, Fred Feldman’s “What We Learn From the Experience Machine,” at 59-86. I will cut to the chase, and simply say that Feldman’s contribution represents a classic case of not being able to see the forest for the trees. More explicitly, while he correctly identifies what this imaginary case is not about, he misses its point entirely. Continue Reading »