Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick (
November 16,
1938 â€"
January 23,
2002) was an American
philosopher and
Pellegrino University Professor at
Harvard University. Nozick, schooled at
Columbia,
Oxford and
Princeton, was among the leading figures in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy, making significant contributions to political philosophy, decision theory, and epistemology in particular. His
Anarchy, State, and Utopia (
1974) was a
libertarian answer to
John Rawls's
A Theory of Justice, published in
1971. He was born in Brooklyn, the son of a
Jewish entrepreneur from
Russia. He was married to the American poet
Gjertrud Schnackenberg.
Nozick's
Anarchy, State, and Utopia, which garnered a
National Book Award the following year, argues among other things, that a distribution of goods is just, so long as the distribution was brought about by free exchanges by consenting adults and were made from a just starting position, even if large inequalities emerge from the process. Nozick appealed to the
Kantian idea that people should be treated as rational beings, not merely as a means. For example, forced redistribution of income treated people as if they were merely sources of money. Nozick here challenges John Rawls's arguments in
A Theory of Justice that conclude that just inequalities in distribution must benefit the least well off. Nozick himself later recanted the extreme libertarian views he had earlier expressed in
Anarchy, State, and Utopia in one of his later books,
The Examined Life, calling those views "seriously inadequate." In a
2001 interview, however, he clarified his position: "What I was really saying in
The Examined Life was that I was no longer as hardcore a libertarian as I had been before. But the rumors of my deviation (or apostasy!) from libertarianism were much exaggerated." [
1]
In
Philosophical Explanations (
1981) Nozick provides novel accounts of
knowledge,
free will,
personal identity, the nature of
value, and the meaning of life.
The Examined Life (
1989), pitched to a broader public, explores love, death, faith, reality, and the meaning of life.
The Nature of Rationality (
1993) presents a theory of
practical reason that attempts to embellish notoriously spartan classical
decision theory.
Socratic Puzzles (
1997) is a collection of papers that range from
Ayn Rand and
Austrian economics to
animal rights, while his last production,
Invariances (
2001) applies insights from
physics and
biology to questions of
objectivity in such areas as the nature of
necessity and
moral value.
Nozick was notable for his curious, exploratory style and methodological
ecumenism. Often content to raise tantalizing philosophical possibilities and then leave judgment to the reader, Nozick was also notable for inventively drawing from literature outside of philosophy (e.g.,
economics, physics,
evolutionary biology) to infuse his work with freshness and relevance.
Nozick died in
2002 after a prolonged struggle with
cancer. His remains are interred at
Mount Auburn Cemetery in
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Philosophical Explanations addresses many knotty issues, among them the problem of how to define
knowledge in the wake of the work of
Edmund Gettier, who had offered convincing counter-examples to the classical
Platonic definition.
Nozick offers a review of the (already in 1981 abundant) literature on this subject and then suggests his own solution, called the
Truth-Tracking view. Nozick argues that
p is an instance of knowledge when:#p is true#S believes p#if p were not true, S would not believe p#if p were true, S would believe p
In other words, Nozick replaces Platonic
justification with subjunctive conditionality. Some implications of this replacement are brought out in [
2].
The Closest-Continuer Theory of Personal Identity
Nozick's work on personal identity in
Philosophical Explanations marks a watershed between
Anarchy, State and Utopia and his subsequent writing. A person's identity through time is a process of constructive self-synthesis. The self-synthesis begins early in a human life with the development of the capacity for reflexive self-reference, the sort of reference to a given self that only that self can achieve. (Not "that one" or even "this one" but rather something like "this very one".) There is no preexisting I. Rather the I is synthesized or delineated around an early act of reflexive self-referring, an act without a doer in which a doer first comes to exist. This process is constructive in that dimensions may then be added ("This body belongs to me") and weighted ("Continuation of a normal human form is very important to me"), and a metric for closeness may be determined ("A body without limbs would not be close enough to be me"). Additions or deletions of dimensions, changes of weightings, and changes in the metric are possible throughout life; there is no requirement that they be the same for any two lives. (He sums this up at one point as follows: "...I synthesize myself by specifying, for me, dimensions and metric within a closest-continuer schema, and also view myself as filling in a place-holder and reflexively specifying my own identity over time by specifying the metric in the dimensional space....")
The Closest-Continuer theory deals satisfactorily with many science-fiction scenarios about branching, in which a person-trunk branches or forks into close and less close continuant branches (virtuous Star Trek captains and evil ones, say, as a result of
transporter malfunction). The person-branch who is the same person as the person-trunk is going to be the closest continuer (the most virtuous among the captain-branches, presumably). The theory begins to buckle when attention is turned to
Ship-of-Theseus cases in which the branches are tied for closeness. Then there is no closest continuer, so the original person is dead. It's hard to see such a double success as a lethal failure, however, so critics of the Closest-Continuer theory like
Derek Parfit prefer a different judgment: What's important about personal identity persists in such cases, but the concept of personal identity ceases to be applicable.
Assigning Weights
When human beings become agents through reflexive self-awareness, theyexpress their agency by having reasons for acting, to which theyassign weights. Choosing the dimensions of one's identity is a specialcase, in which the assigning of weight to a dimension is partlyself-constitutive. But all acting for reasons is constitutive of theself in a broader sense, namely, by its shaping one's character andpersonality in a manner analogous to the shaping that law undergoesthrough the precedent set by earlier court decisions. Just as a judgedoes not merely apply the law but to some degree makes itthrough judicial discretion, so too a person does not merely discoverweights but assigns them; one not only weighs reasons but also weightsthem. Set in train is a process of building a "framework" for futuredecisions that we are "tentatively committed to". The life-longprocess of self-definition in this broader sense is construedindeterministically by Nozick. The weighting is "up to us" in thesense that it is undetermined by antecedent causal factors, eventhough subsequent action is fully caused by the reasons one hasaccepted. He compares assigning weights in this deterministic sense to"the currently orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics",following
von Neumann in understanding a quantum mechanicalsystem as in a superposition or probability mixture of states, whichchanges continuously in accordance with quantum mechanical equationsof motion and discontinuously via measurement or observation that"collapses the wave packet" from a superposition to a particularstate. Analogously, a person before decision has reasons withoutfixed weights: he is in a superposition of weights. Theprocess of decision reduces the superposition to a particular statethat causes action. This picture might better be understood as aboutunpredictability rather than indeterminism, since the currentlyfavored
many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics isdeterministic. (At any rate it's probably an overstatement to regard von Neumann's wave-packet-collapse view as the current orthodoxy.) Then the unpredictability might be due to the fact thatthe background field of more or less inchoate reasons that the agentfixes is insufficient by itself, without that fixing, to determineaction. But the process as a whole would be deterministic. The tellinganalogy, as suggested above, would not be to the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics but rather judicialdiscretion: A judge does not in "hard cases" discover the law butrather makes it, according to
Hart's theory of judicialdiscretion; similarly the agent in character-forming decisions doesnot discover his reasons but rather fixes their weight. Neitherjudicial nor personal agency need be construed indeterministically.
Demoktesis
The pivotal role of the closest-continuer theory manifests itself forinstance in Nozick's second thoughts about democracy. In
Anarchy, State and Utopia he was loftily disdainful of democracy for allowingrights restrictions that rational citizens of a minimal state wouldnot agree to. He makes this point with a just-so story about
demoktesis, in which people sell shares in themselves such thateveryone (amazingly) ends up with a share in everyone else. Then, but only then, democraticvoting outcomes could be regarded as fully and rationally consensual; the reader is invited to accept this as a
reductio ad absurdum of democracy. From this point of viewit is out of the question that one could be related to others in asocial union, such that harm to oneself is outweighed by the benefitto the social union that includes oneself. There are only individualpeople, "Nothing more.", as he emphasizes there. In particular there is no "social entity" with a good that could undergo some sacrifice for its own good. But with the closest-continuer theory itbecomes possible for a social union including oneself to be a
dimension of one's identity. In
The Examined Life such a unionis dubbed a
we and admits of large-scale instantiations such asdemocratic states as well as small-scale ones such as marriages. Abenefit to the social union may outweigh a harm to oneself (givensufficient weight of that dimension). Democracy is celebrated as an opportunity to express ourselves as a social union and invest our communal life with meaning.
Symbolic Utility
The theory behind such dimensions of personal identity isn't exhausted by the closest-continuer theory. In
The Nature of Rationality Nozick introduces the idea of symbolic utility, the (subjective) utility that an action or belief may have intrinsically or for its own sake. This may be because of its expressing or representing or meaning something. In any case it is utility that attaches to the action or belief itself, not to its further outcomes.
Nozick sees this as having implications for decision theory's idea of
expected utility, which is oriented exclusively towards outcomes. He replaces expected utility with
decision value, which is the weighted sum of expected and symbolic utility. His approach to the
Prisoner's Dilemma turns on this factoring, as it implies the rationality of taking into account utilities other than the expected utilities in the payoff matrix for the PD, notably the symbolic utility of expressing oneself as a cooperative person (by choosing the "optimal" action of doing what's best for both prisoners collectively, instead of the "dominant" action of doing what's best for me whatever the other prisoner decides.) Also expected utility is factored into the weighted sum of (1) purely probabilistic expected utility, or what he calls "evidential expected utility"; and (2) causal expected utility, which calculates the probabilities of outcomes conditional exclusively upon what the agent can make happen in the choice situation. This further factoring informs his approach to
Newcomb's Problem, calling upon the rational agent to switch between purely probabilistic and causal/probabilistic reasoning depending on whether there is much to gain by reasoning in causal/probabilistic terms ("taking both boxes") or reasoning in purely probabilistic terms (taking only the opaque box that may have a million dollars inside). If there is almost a million dollars in the transparent box, take both boxes; if there is only a penny in the transparent box, take only the opaque box. Both of these situations have the formal structure of Newcomb's Problem, but they differ in their "cash value" from a decision-value perspective.
The utility profile of someone whose construction of personal identity includes a considerably weighted
we will reflect the weight of symbolic utility, as when childless democrats vote for a school-tax law that harms their purchasing power because doing so expresses their society's (
our) commitment to education. Childless minimal-state citizens by contrast would have no such place in their utility profiles, so they would be irrational to bind themselves to such a law, barring the absurd
demoktesis arrangement.
Meta-Utopia
The utopia mentioned in the title of Nozick's first book is a meta-utopia, a framework for voluntary migration between utopias tending towards worlds in which everybody benefits from everybody else's presence. This is meant to be the Lockean "night-watchman state" writ large. That state protects individual rights and makes sure that contracts and other market transactions are voluntary. The meta-utopian framework reveals what is inspiring and noble in this night-watchman function. They both contain the only form of social union that is possible for the atomistic rational agents of
Anarchy, State and Utopia, fully voluntary associations of mutual benefit. The influence of this idea on Nozick's thinking is profound. Even in his last book,
Invariances, he is still concerned to give priority to the mutual-benefit aspect of ethics. This coercively enforceable aspect ideally has an
empty core in the game theorists' sense: the core of a game is all of those payoff vectors to the group wherein no subgroup can do better for itself acting on its own, without cooperating with others not in the subgroup. The worlds in Nozick's meta-utopia have empty cores. No subgroup of a utopian world is better off to emigrate to its own smaller world. The function of ethics is fundamentally to create and stabilize such empty cores of mutually beneficial cooperation. His view is that we are fortunate to live under conditions that favor "more-extensive cores", and less conquest, slavery, and pillaging, "less imposition of noncore vectors upon subgroups." Higher moral goals are real enough, but they are parastic (as described below) upon mutually beneficial cooperation.
Tracking Value
Influenced by the
symbolic anthropology of
Clifford Geertz, Nozick's mature philosophy in
The Nature of Rationality (1993) conceives human beings as creatures of culture whose tracking of value draws upon their culture's store of symbols for making sense of their lives. This view arguably should be read back into the exploratory account of objective value in
Philosophical Explanations (1981), favoring the fifth of five theories of objective value distinguished there, realizationism: "We choose or determine that there be values, that they exist, but their character is independent of us." The first-person plural here can be understood by reference to Nozick's anthropological turn, as designating a cultural
we. When a criminal fails to track value and "gets away with it", Nozick argues in
Philosophical Explanations that he nevertheless suffers a
value sanction. This can now be understood as the criminal's utility profile being dragged down by negative symbolic utility. It may
not be dragged down, the criminal showing every ethnographic sign of unsanctioned flourishing. But detaching oneself from one's culture's values is typically not a trivial exercise. Furthermore, when the criminal is caught and jailed, the punishment sends a message of reduced value. A legal system's nuanced judgments in legislation and judicial decision are one way in which a society studies the independent nature of the values that it created (on the realizationist account). Nozick's "matrix of reality" in
The Examined Life, a four-by-three-by-four polyhedron arranged in forty-eight "organically unified" dimensions such as "Infinite Energy" and "Peace That Passeth Understanding", is dismissed as "schmaltzy" by some readers[
3]. But as his personal study of the nature of his cultural inheritance, it is a subjective take on the positive side of value, comparable to (though more subjective than) the legal system's take on the negative side. He is explicit that his matrix doesn't cut reality at the joints, but rather is more an invitation to others to make their own subjective cuts. Having replaced the argumentative mode of doing philosophy in
Anarchy, State and Utopia by the "explaining possibilities" mode in
Philosophical Explanations, he was experimenting in
The Examined Life with a mode that went beyond encounters between rational minds, to philosophizing that expressed and addressed the full human being.
The Genealogy of Ethics
Nozick's last book,
Invariances, pursues a theme begun in
The Nature of Rationality that he calls the genealogy of ethics, in contrast to ajustificatory account. It identifies coordination of activity formutual benefit as the evolutionary source and function of ethics. Hefocuses on a time frame that starts with our hunter-gathererancestors, though he reckons a genealogy could go down theevolutionary ladder indefinitely (to the cooperation of genes on thechromosome, etc.). He contrasts his genealogical project with
David Gauthier's justificatory account in several respects. One of these is that Nozick does not take cooperation to mutual advantage to be the whole ofethics; rather, his includes other layers as well. He sketchedthese in
The Examined Life as a four-layer structure. Its fundamentallayer is the Ethic of Respect, essentially the deontological ethic ofindividual rights defended in
Anarchy, State, and Utopia as well as inInvariances, where it becomes the functional "core" ofethics. Evolution has selected us to abhor doing certain things toothers and to abhor having those things done to ourselves, and thisabhorrence gets systematized in groups of mutual benefit by moralcodes that protect individual rights and duties. An Ethic ofResponsiveness builds on the fundamental layer, allowing some rightsrestrictions in accordance with a principle of "minimum mutilation" tothe rights being restricted, in order to respond adequately to somehigher value. A school tax would be an example, restricting propertyrights but not outrageously, in order to respond to the worthy valueof an educated citizenry. The next layer in this subsumptionarchitecture is the Ethic of Care, ranging over affective dispositionsand correlative rights/duties ranging from equal concern and respectfor other human beings to love for members of one's family. This layer toois built in accordance with the principle of minimum mutilation,pursuing its higher goals with as little damage as possible to Respectand Responsiveness. The final layer is the Ethic of Light, the ethicof saints and heroes which builds upon the others by one's becoming aselfless vehicle of goodness. Nozick leaves as an open empiricalquestion whether moral progress with regard to the abolition ofslavery, women's rights, the civil rights movement, and gay rights hasbeen propelled by the perception of mutual benefit or the higher layers of ethics. He isagainst the coercive enforceability of the higher moral goals; theirattainment should be left to "individual choice and development".This fits with his attempt to remain true to his libertarian roots,but his new commitment to democracy implies a more or lessconsiderable democratic exploration of higher goals. In
The Examined Life he celebrates the "zigzag" of democratic politics through the values coercively enforced by different elected parties. Assuming thatparticipating in a democratic decision procedure engages one'sindividual choice and development even when voting in the minority, perhaps because participating expresses one's belonging to a social union or
we, the four-layer structure demands a very flexible libertarianism.
Organic Unity
Nozick's criterion of objective value is organic unity: a diversity of elements brought into a unified whole. Organic unity admits of degrees. A sand castle is more valuable than a heap of sand;
Guernica is more valuable than a sand castle; and so forth. He admits that this criterion might not fit all cases. Pleasure is valuable, but phenomenologically devoid of much organic unity. A Jackson Pollock action painting has little organic unity. One might say that the mind-body unity that makes for pleasure is a background feature that makes for pleasure's organic unity, and similarly the place of Pollock's accomplishment in the art world contributes to the organic unity of his canvasses. Whatever the precise scope of his criterion, Nozick never gets beyond pumping intuitions in order to explain why organic unity makes for value. His discussion of objectivity in his last book,
Invariances, may point towards an explanation. The objective value of ethics on his genealogy is its role in giving rise to mutual benefit, but he acknowledges that not all mutual benefit is distinctly ethical. So it is at least a candidate for the broad role of value, which includes ethics but goes beyond it to include aesthetics and other sources of value. Then the explanation of organic unity's importance might be this: Cultures that create and prize artifacts with a high degree of organic unity are more likely to achieve mutual benefit, so there is a broadly consequentialist/evolutionary rationale for Nozick's criterion. Technological artifacts in farming, medicine, and defense are paradigms of organic unities that achieve mutual benefit. In aesthetic cases the mutual benefit may take the form of satisfied aesthetic preferences in the cooperating community. One may do one's part with art as well as with tractors, vaccines, and rifles. In Nozick's game-theoretic terms, the community has an empty core (see above); its members would not want to immigrate to a world without the organic-unity creating artists.
*
Liberalism*
Contributions to liberal theory*
Libertarianism*
Minarchism*Nozick, Robert (1974).
Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Basic Books.
*Robinson, Dave & Groves, Judy (2003).
Introducing Political Philosophy. Icon Books. ISBN 1-84046-450-X.
*
Obituary by The Daily Telegraph*
Obituary by The Guardian *
Obituary by The Independent*
Philosopher Nozick dies at 63 From the Harvard Gazette
*
Robert Nozick Memorial minute*
A summary of the political philosophy of Robert Nozick by R. N. Johnson
*
Robert Nozick, Libertarianism, And Utopia by Jonathan Wolff
*
Nozick on Newcomb's Problem and Prisoners' Dilemma by S. L. Hurley
*
Robert Nozick: Against Distributive Justice by R.J. Kilcullen
*
Tracking, Reliabilism, and Possible Worlds by Wesley Cooper
*
Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism? by Robert Nozick
*
Open Directory Project - Robert Nozick directory category
