Eudaimonists hold that all happiness should be promoted and all suffering should be eliminated. However, Robert Nozick’s ‘experience machine’ casts doubt on the first claim: some happiness is meaningless and there is little if any reason to promote such happiness. Similarly, the author argues that there is no moral duty to eliminate all suffering. Just as some happiness is meaningless, some suffering, grief, for example, is meaningful: grief, when directed toward an appropriate object, represents a justified cognitive response. That the justification of grief is partly epistemological, and not purely ethical, has interesting implications for ethics, practical reasoning, and philosophy of mind.
