Socratic Puzzles
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (September 2007) |
Socratic Puzzles is a collection of essays by libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick. It was published in 1997 by Harvard University Press.
[edit] Synopsis
[edit] Introduction
Nozick disclaims the title "political philosopher" and characterizes his Anarchy, State, and Utopia 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 Utopia's 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,
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.[1]
[edit] 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.
[edit] Newcomb's Problem and Two Principles of Choice
This essay marks a stage of progression toward the "decision value" approach 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.)
[edit] Reflections on Newcomb's Problem
In this essay Nozick comments on letters sent to Martin Gardner in response to his column in Scientific American on Newcomb's Problem.
[edit] 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."
[edit] On Austrian Methodology
Nozick draws on the Austrian tradition in economic theory (Carl Menger, Frederick von Weiser, 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.
[edit] Socratic Puzzles
Nozick takes up here what Gregory Vlastos 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.
[edit] 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.).
[edit] 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."
[edit] Invisible-Hand Explanations
In this essay Nozick explores some invisible-hand issues raised by his earlier work.
[edit] Moral Complications and Moral Structures
Nozick considers two types of moral view, the maximization structure (e.g., utilitarianism) 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.
[edit] On the Randian Argument
Nozick attempts to formulate a deductive argument that reconstructs and regiments an argument that is implicit in Ayn Rand'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.
[edit] 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,
Power of legislator Li
——————
Number of persons eligible to participate in choosing legislator Li
Nozick discusses some of the factors that make this ratio problematic.
[edit] Goodman, Nelson, on Merit, Aesthetic
Nozick discusses Goodman'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.
[edit] 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".
[edit] 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.
[edit] The Characteristic Features of Extremism
Nozick lists eight features of extremism.
[edit] War, Terrorism, Reprisals ---Drawing Some Moral lines
Nozick reviews Michael Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars.
[edit] Do Animals Have Rights?
Nozick reviews Tom Regan's A Case for Animal Rights.
[edit] Fiction
A playful piece that begins, ``I am a fictional character.
[edit] R.S .V.P.
About extraterrestrial intelligence, and whether to broadcast to it, in response to their broadcast, their civilization threatened with doom.
[edit] Testament
An essay that begins, "Once upon a time I decided to make a person." It leads to a new perspective on Descartes' cogito.
[edit] Teleology
He considers God's seeking meaning in his life by creating the universe, and being led to contemplate suicide.
