Socratic Puzzles
Encyclopedia
Socratic Puzzles is a collection of essays by libertarian
philosopher Robert Nozick
. It was published in 1997 by Harvard University Press
.
as "an accident" that came about because he was "getting nowhere" working on the problem of free will. He discusses his reverence for Socrates
, and his intellectual debts to Sidney Morgenbesser
and Carl Hempel. At "the most consequential party I ever attended," someone told him about a problem posed by a physicist in California, William Newcomb
. Nozick brought this problem into the literature of decision theory
("rational choice theory"). He describes the influence of decision theory on Anarchy, State, and Utopias derivation of the state from individuals' actions, and its game-theoretic analysis of utopia; and especially in The Nature of Rationality
, where he proposed a "decision value" alternative to maximizing expected utility and also extended decision theory to issues about rational belief.
He concludes the introduction by talking about philosophy as a way of life. Although "being philosophical" in the ordinary sense wasn't his motivation for entering philosophy, he found himself being philosophical when diagnosed with stomach cancer and informed about the dire statistics, adding parenthetically an anecdote about the operation in which much of his stomach was removed,
.http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/01.17/99-nozick.html
to Newcomb's problem in Nozick's The Nature of Rationality
.
The problem is whether to take one opaque box or both it and a
transparent box containing one thousand dollars, where you
have very good reason to believe that someone has put one million
dollars into the opaque box if he predicts you will take only
it, and that he will have put nothing in the opaque box if he
predicts you will take both.
The essay reviews decision theory's Expected--Utility Principle (one
should perform that action which has maximal expected utility) and
the Dominance Principle (if action A weakly dominates action B, then
A should be performed rather than B). Action A weakly
dominates action B for person P iff, for each state of the world,
P either prefers the consequences of A to the consequences of B, or
is indifferent between the two consequences, and for some state of
the world, P prefers the consequence of A to the consequence of B.
Newcomb's Problem is a problem because these two principles
can diverge. Nozick runs through examples suggesting that one should
not apply the dominance principle to situations where the outcomes
are not probabilistically independent of the actions, maximizing
expected utility instead and understanding expected utility as
derived from conditional probabilities of the outcomes given that
the action is done. (Such examples support taking only the opaque
box.) He then runs through examples in which your action doesn't
make an outcome more or less likely, and the conditions
affecting the probabilities are already fixed and determined. (Such
examples support taking both boxes.) He considers further examples
that lead him to suggest that "the crucial fact is not
whether the states are already fixed and determined but whether the
actions influence or affect which state obtains." He concludes that one should take what is in both boxes. This is significantly different from his position in The Nature of Rationality, which takes into consideration how much is in the transparent box. This position involves breaking the frame of the problem, imagining cases in which the transparent
box contains one cent or $M minus one cent, as well as the case in which it contains $1K. (He considers the related frame--breaking of reducing the probability of the predictor's being correct.)
Scientific American on Newcomb's Problem.
"How might the topic of interpersonal comparisons of utility
be brought within the domain of positive economic science as
part of a testable and disconfirmable empirical theory?" He
proposes that different procedures for making interpersonal
comparisons, each with its own virtues, be triangulated. One looks
for convergence among plausible and independently motivated
procedures. Then it will be "rational to believe that there is a
real phenomenon `out there' they are delineating and
demarcating."
in economic theory (Carl Menger
, Friedrich von Wieser
, Ludwig von Mises
, Frederick Hayek) in focusing on "the most fundamental features of this framework," namely, the principle of methodogical individualism and the claim that economics is an a priori science of human action; and focusing as well on two issues at the foundation of Austrian theory within this framework, namely, the nature of preference and its relationship to action, and the basis of time--preference.
has called "Socrates' central paradox," his profession of ignorance despite his doctrines, such as its being better to suffer injustice than to do it, etc. He distinguishes such doctrines from answers to "What is F?" questions, which he does not have - and his superior wisdom resides in his knowing that he doesn't know them. He concludes that in addition to his method of elenchus, Socrates has an additional way of teaching, which Nozick calls "the method of embodiment", as in the way he faced death.
) and the deductive structure (where impermissibility, say, of act A follows from A's having such--and--such features and the proposition that any act with such features is impermissible). Nozick presents a "relatively simple structure" that is in harmony with recent writings on prima facie duties and rights, as in W.D. Ross's work.
's work, especially Atlas Shrugged
and the essay "The Objectivist Ethics" in her collection The Virtue of Selfishness
. He concludes that in her published work she doesn't objectively establish her conclusions.
Number of persons eligible to participate in choosing legislator Li
's view that a work has aesthetic merit if it is an aesthetic object and if it significantly changes the way we view the world or conceptually organize the world, performing various cognitive functions.
.
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
philosopher Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick was an American political philosopher, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia , a right-libertarian answer to John Rawls's A Theory of Justice...
. It was published in 1997 by Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Its current director is William P...
.
Introduction
Nozick disclaims the title "political philosopher" and characterizes his Anarchy, State, and UtopiaAnarchy, State, and Utopia
Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a work of political philosophy written by Robert Nozick in 1974. This minarchist book was the winner of the 1975 National Book Award...
as "an accident" that came about because he was "getting nowhere" working on the problem of free will. He discusses his reverence for Socrates
Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
, and his intellectual debts to Sidney Morgenbesser
Sidney Morgenbesser
Sidney Morgenbesser was a Columbia University philosopher. Born in New York City, he undertook philosophical study at the City College of New York and rabbinical study at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, then pursued graduate study in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, where...
and Carl Hempel. At "the most consequential party I ever attended," someone told him about a problem posed by a physicist in California, William Newcomb
William Newcomb
William Newcomb , a professor and theoretical physicist at the University of California's Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, is best known as the creator of Newcomb's paradox, devised in 1960...
. Nozick brought this problem into the literature of decision theory
Decision theory
Decision theory in economics, psychology, philosophy, mathematics, and statistics is concerned with identifying the values, uncertainties and other issues relevant in a given decision, its rationality, and the resulting optimal decision...
("rational choice theory"). He describes the influence of decision theory on Anarchy, State, and Utopias derivation of the state from individuals' actions, and its game-theoretic analysis of utopia; and especially in The Nature of Rationality
The nature of rationality
The Nature of Rationality is an exploration of practical rationality written by Robert Nozick and published in 1993. It views human rationality as an evolutionary adaptation...
, where he proposed a "decision value" alternative to maximizing expected utility and also extended decision theory to issues about rational belief.
He concludes the introduction by talking about philosophy as a way of life. Although "being philosophical" in the ordinary sense wasn't his motivation for entering philosophy, he found himself being philosophical when diagnosed with stomach cancer and informed about the dire statistics, adding parenthetically an anecdote about the operation in which much of his stomach was removed,
I maintain it was not a complaint when the first words I said to the surgeons upon coming up from anaesthesia after seven hours were, "I hope we don't have to do this again. I don't have the stomach for it."Nietzsche's demand, that you should lead a life you would be willing to repeat infinitely often, seems "a bit stringent" but philosophy constitutes a way of life worth continuing to its end. He did exactly that, according to his friend Alan Dershowitz
Alan Dershowitz
Alan Morton Dershowitz is an American lawyer, jurist, and political commentator. He has spent most of his career at Harvard Law School where in 1967, at the age of 28, he became the youngest full professor of law in its history...
.http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/01.17/99-nozick.html
Coercion
Nozick's interest in libertarianism derives from an antecedent interest in coercion. This essay offers an alternative to H.L.A. Hart's account of coercion. A distinction between offers and threats is central. A "Rational Man" would welcome the former but not the latter. He introduces the "science fiction" notion of being n/m coerced, where n is the part of one's total reason that is the threat and n/m is any fraction between 0-coerced and 1-coerced, though "in the absence of precise weights" one would speak of being partially coerced, slightly coerced, almost fully coerced, etc.Newcomb's Problem and Two Principles of Choice
This essay marks a stage of progression toward the "decision value" approachto Newcomb's problem in Nozick's The Nature of Rationality
The nature of rationality
The Nature of Rationality is an exploration of practical rationality written by Robert Nozick and published in 1993. It views human rationality as an evolutionary adaptation...
.
The problem is whether to take one opaque box or both it and a
transparent box containing one thousand dollars, where you
have very good reason to believe that someone has put one million
dollars into the opaque box if he predicts you will take only
it, and that he will have put nothing in the opaque box if he
predicts you will take both.
The essay reviews decision theory's Expected--Utility Principle (one
should perform that action which has maximal expected utility) and
the Dominance Principle (if action A weakly dominates action B, then
A should be performed rather than B). Action A weakly
dominates action B for person P iff, for each state of the world,
P either prefers the consequences of A to the consequences of B, or
is indifferent between the two consequences, and for some state of
the world, P prefers the consequence of A to the consequence of B.
Newcomb's Problem is a problem because these two principles
can diverge. Nozick runs through examples suggesting that one should
not apply the dominance principle to situations where the outcomes
are not probabilistically independent of the actions, maximizing
expected utility instead and understanding expected utility as
derived from conditional probabilities of the outcomes given that
the action is done. (Such examples support taking only the opaque
box.) He then runs through examples in which your action doesn't
make an outcome more or less likely, and the conditions
affecting the probabilities are already fixed and determined. (Such
examples support taking both boxes.) He considers further examples
that lead him to suggest that "the crucial fact is not
whether the states are already fixed and determined but whether the
actions influence or affect which state obtains." He concludes that one should take what is in both boxes. This is significantly different from his position in The Nature of Rationality, which takes into consideration how much is in the transparent box. This position involves breaking the frame of the problem, imagining cases in which the transparent
box contains one cent or $M minus one cent, as well as the case in which it contains $1K. (He considers the related frame--breaking of reducing the probability of the predictor's being correct.)
Reflections on Newcomb's Problem
In this essay Nozick comments on letters sent to Martin Gardner in response to his column inScientific American on Newcomb's Problem.
Interpersonal Utility Theory
In this essay Nozick addresses the question,"How might the topic of interpersonal comparisons of utility
be brought within the domain of positive economic science as
part of a testable and disconfirmable empirical theory?" He
proposes that different procedures for making interpersonal
comparisons, each with its own virtues, be triangulated. One looks
for convergence among plausible and independently motivated
procedures. Then it will be "rational to believe that there is a
real phenomenon `out there' they are delineating and
demarcating."
On Austrian Methodology
Nozick draws on the Austrian traditionAustrian School
The Austrian School of economics is a heterodox school of economic thought. It advocates methodological individualism in interpreting economic developments , the theory that money is non-neutral, the theory that the capital structure of economies consists of heterogeneous goods that have...
in economic theory (Carl Menger
Carl Menger
Carl Menger was the founder of the Austrian School of economics, famous for contributing to the development of the theory of marginal utility, which contested the cost-of-production theories of value, developed by the classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo.- Biography :Menger...
, Friedrich von Wieser
Friedrich von Wieser
Friedrich Freiherr von Wieser was an early member of the Austrian School of economics. Born in Vienna, the son of Privy Councillor Leopold von Wieser, a high official in the war ministry he first trained in sociology and law...
, Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was an Austrian economist, philosopher, and classical liberal who had a significant influence on the modern Libertarian movement and the "Austrian School" of economic thought.-Biography:-Early life:...
, Frederick Hayek) in focusing on "the most fundamental features of this framework," namely, the principle of methodogical individualism and the claim that economics is an a priori science of human action; and focusing as well on two issues at the foundation of Austrian theory within this framework, namely, the nature of preference and its relationship to action, and the basis of time--preference.
Socratic Puzzles
Nozick takes up here what Gregory VlastosGregory Vlastos
Gregory Vlastos was a scholar of ancient philosophy, and author of several works on Plato and Socrates. He was also a Christian and has written on Christian faith as well.-Life and works:...
has called "Socrates' central paradox," his profession of ignorance despite his doctrines, such as its being better to suffer injustice than to do it, etc. He distinguishes such doctrines from answers to "What is F?" questions, which he does not have - and his superior wisdom resides in his knowing that he doesn't know them. He concludes that in addition to his method of elenchus, Socrates has an additional way of teaching, which Nozick calls "the method of embodiment", as in the way he faced death.
Experience, Theory, and Language
This is a self--consciously ambivalent essay about some of Quine's themes. He characterizes Quine as "the theorist of slack" (data undermines theory, theory underdetermines world [ontological relativity], etc.).Simplicity as Fall--Out
If an indefinite number of hypotheses fit the data, why believe the simplest? Nozick offers an answer involving "fall--out" and induction based on it: "Since the past exhibits a correlation between the simplicity and the success of a hypothesis, a modest induction --- to be sure, a simple one, but that's how we tend to think --- leads us to conclude that these do go together, and hence, to rely on simplicity." He recommends this explanation as "simple, elegant, forceful, and lovely. More so, surely, than the reigning hypothesis of a real connection between simplicity and truth."Invisible-Hand Explanations
In this essay Nozick explores some invisible-hand issues raised by his earlier work.Moral Complications and Moral Structures
Nozick considers two types of moral view, the maximization structure (e.g., utilitarianismUtilitarianism
Utilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness", by whatever means necessary. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can...
) and the deductive structure (where impermissibility, say, of act A follows from A's having such--and--such features and the proposition that any act with such features is impermissible). Nozick presents a "relatively simple structure" that is in harmony with recent writings on prima facie duties and rights, as in W.D. Ross's work.
On the Randian Argument
Nozick attempts to formulate a deductive argument that reconstructs and regiments an argument that is implicit in Ayn RandAyn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
's work, especially Atlas Shrugged
Atlas Shrugged
Atlas Shrugged is a novel by Ayn Rand, first published in 1957 in the United States. Rand's fourth and last novel, it was also her longest, and the one she considered to be her magnum opus in the realm of fiction writing...
and the essay "The Objectivist Ethics" in her collection The Virtue of Selfishness
The Virtue of Selfishness
The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism is a 1964 collection of essays and papers by Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden. Most of the essays originally appeared in The Objectivist Newsletter, except for "The Objectivist Ethics", which was a paper Rand delivered at the University of Wisconsin...
. He concludes that in her published work she doesn't objectively establish her conclusions.
Weighted Voting and "One-Man, One-Vote"
Assuming that each person is eligible to participate in choosing a given legislator and has equal power in determining that choice, one wants to equalize, for each i,-
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- Power of legislator Li
- Power of legislator Li
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- ——————
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Number of persons eligible to participate in choosing legislator Li
Nozick discusses some of the factors that make this ratio problematic.
Goodman, Nelson, on Merit, Aesthetic
Nozick discusses GoodmanNelson Goodman
Henry Nelson Goodman was an American philosopher, known for his work on counterfactuals, mereology, the problem of induction, irrealism and aesthetics.-Career:...
's view that a work has aesthetic merit if it is an aesthetic object and if it significantly changes the way we view the world or conceptually organize the world, performing various cognitive functions.
Who Would Choose Socialism?
Nozick arrives at the figure "about six percent" in answer to the question, "Approximately how many people would choose, under highly conducive conditions, to live under socialism?" He bases the figure on the percentage of people in Israel who have chosen to live in a kibbutz. This implies dim prospects for "socialism's coming anywhere voluntarily".Why do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?
Nozick explores the experience of intellectuals who do well in school and enjoy high status there, and resent the fact that the market doesn't echo that experience.War, Terrorism, Reprisals ---Drawing Some Moral lines
Nozick reviews Michael Walzer's Just and Unjust WarsJust and Unjust Wars
Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations is a 1977 book by Michael Walzer published by Basic Books and still in print, now as part of the Basic Books Classics Series.The book resulted from Walzer's reflections on the Vietnam War...
.