 One can make the machine sound more palatable, by allowing that genuine choices can be made on it, that those plugged in have access to a common ‘virtual world’ shared by other machine-users, a world in which ‘ordinary’ communication is possible, and so on. But this will not be enough for many anti-hedonists. A further line of response begins from so-called ‘externalism’ in the philosophy of mind, according to which the content of mental states is determined by facts external to the experiencer of those states. Thus, the experience of really writing a great novel is quite different from that of apparently writing a great novel, even though ‘from the inside’ they may be indistinguishable. But this is once again sailing close to the wind. If the world can affect the very content of my experience without my being in a position to be aware of it, why should it not directly affect the value of my experience?