Robert Nozick

Newcomb’s Problem and Two Principles of Choice

Suppose a being in whose power to predict your choices you have enormous confidence. (One might tell a science-fiction story about a being from another planet, with an advanced technology and science, who you know to be friendly, etc.) You know that this being has often correctly predicted your choices in the past (and has never, so far as you know, made an incorrect prediction about your choices), and furthermore you know that this being has often correctly predicted the choices of other people, many of whom are similar to you, in the particular situation to be described below. One might tell a longer story, but all this leads you to believe that almost certainly this being’s prediction about your choice in the situation to be discussed will be correct.

On Austrian methodology

The major figures of the Austrian tradition in economic theory are Cad Menger and Frederick yon Weiser, originators of marginal utility theory, Eugen von B6hm-Bawerk, and in this century Ludwig yon Mises and the co-winner of the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economics, Frederick Hayek. 1 A framework of methodological principles and assumptions, which economists in other traditions either do not accept or do not adhere to, shapes and informs the substantive theory of Austrian economics. I shall focus on the most fundamental features of this framework, the principle of methodological individualism and the claim that economics is an a priori science of human action, and upon two issues at the foundation of Austrian theory within this framework: the nature of preference and its relationship to action, and the basis of time-preference. I shall be forced to neglect the farthest reaches of the theory, for example, the Austrian theory of the business cycle, where still the fundamental methodological theses intertwine. I also shall leave untouched other illuminating distinctive emphases and approaches of Austrian theory, e.g. the constant awareness of and attention to processes occurring in and through time, the study of the coordination of actions and projects when information is decentralized, the realistic theory of competitive processes. Nor shall I be able to detail the intricate interconnections of the different Austrian themes.

Libertarianism without Foundations

ly described, this procedure sounds hopelessly misguided. It is hard to see how anyone could seriously arrive at firm moral opinions about the universal principles of human conduct without considering what it would be like if they were universally applied, in iterations which might create complex effects of scale. When we pass from an abstract to a more substantive description, the implausibility of the view increases. For the intuition that Nozick discovers in himself is that everyone has an absolute right to be free from coercion, and an absolute right to acquire and dispose of his property-so long as he is not violating the same rights of others and so long as his acquisition of property does not, for example, give him 6. Nozick defends the procedure in a section entitled Macro and Micro. He says: [C]omplex wholes are not easily scanned; we cannot easily keep track of everything that is relevant. The justice of a whole society may depend on its satisfying a number of distinct principles. These principles, though individually compelling (witness their application to a wide range of particular microcases), may yield surprising results when combined together. . . . [O]ne should not depend upon judgments about the whole as providing the only or even the major body of data against which to check ones principles, One major path to changing ones intuitive judgments about some complex whole is through seeing the larger and often surprising implications of principles solidly founded at the micro level. Pp. 205-06. Obviously; but another way to change ones intuitive judgments about the scope or truth of principles at the micro level is by seeing their larger implications. The fact that the rights of governments derive from the rights of individuals does not imply that we can come to know the rights of individuals without thinking about governments; just as the fact that the properties of molecules derive from the properties of atoms does not imply that we can come to know the properties of atoms without investigating molecules. The logical and the epistemological connections need not go in the same direction: even if political philosophy is logically dependent on ethics, our knowledge of some aspects of ethics may derive from an investigation of political philosophy. Vol. 85: 136, 1975 Libertarianism Without Foundations sole title to the formerly public water supply of a desert community.7 Nozicks intuition is that each person is entitled to his talents and abilities, and to whatever he can make, get, or buy with his own efforts, with the help of others, or with plain luck. He is entitled to keep it or do anything he wants with it, and whomever he gives it to is thereby equally entitled to it. Moreover, anyone is entitled to whatever he ends up with as a result of the indefinite repetition of this process, over however many generations. I assume that most readers of Nozicks book will find no echo of this intuition in themselves, and will feel instead that they can develop no opinion on the universal principles of entitlement, acquisition and transfer of property, or indeed whether there are any such universal principles, without considering the significance of such principles in their universal application. One might even agree in part with Nozicks views about what people should do in the limited circumstances that define interpersonal relations in the state of nature, but not agree that the proper generalization of those judgments is their unmodified application to all cases no matter how complex or extended. They might be based instead on principles which give these results for small-scale individual transactions but rather different results for the specification of general conditions of entitlement to be applied on an indefinitely large scale.s The fact is, however, that Nozicks moral intuitions seem wrong even on a small scale. He denies that any of the rights he detects may be overridden merely to do good or prevent evil. But even if it is not permissible to murder or maim an innocent person to promote some highly desirable result, the protected rights do not all have the same degree of importance. The things one is supposed to be protected against are, in order of gravity: killing, injury, pain, physical force, deprivation of liberty of many different kinds (movement, association, and activity), destruction of ones property, taking of ones property; or the threat of any of the above (with all their variations in gravity). It is far less plausible to maintain that taking some of an innocent mans property is an impermissible means for the prevention of a serious evil, than it is to maintain that killing him is impermis7. The latter is the familiar proviso in Lockes theory of property acquisition, but according to Nozick it will not operate as a serious restriction in a free market system. P. 182. 8. The example of entitlement that he offers (p. 206) as a decisive retort to such skepticism-a natural right not to be deprived of ones vital organs for the benefit of others-is plausible partly because of the extreme character of such an assault and partly because there is no possibility that protection of this right will lead to the accumulation of vast hereditary wealth or inequalities of social and political power. The Yale Law Journal sible. These rights vary in importance and some are not absolute even in the state of nature. The sources of morality are not simple but multiple; therefore its development in political theory will reflect that multiplicity. Rights limit the pursuit of worthwhile ends, but they can also sometimes be overridden if the ends are sufficiently important. The only way to make progress in understanding the nature of individual rights is to investigate their sources and their relations to each other and to the values on whose pursuit they set limits. Nozick says little about the basis of the inviolability of persons, but the following remark indicates where he would be inclined to look: [W]hy may not one violate persons for the greater social good? Individually, we each sometimes choose to undergo some pain or sacrifice for a greater benefit or to avoid a greater harm: we go to the dentist to avoid worse suffering later; we do some unpleasant work for its results; some persons diet to improve their health or looks; some save money to support themselves when they are older. In each case, some cost is borne for the sake of the greater overall good. Why not, similarly, hold that some persons have to bear some costs that benefit other persons more, for the sake of the overall social good? But there is no social entity with a good that undergoes some sacrifice for its own good. There are only individual people, different individual people, with their own individual lives. Using one of these people for the benefit of others, uses him and benefits the others. Nothing more. What happens is that something is done to him for the sake of others. Talk of an overall social good covers this up. (Intentionally?) To use a person in this way does not sufficiently respect and take account of the fact that he is a separate person, that his is the only life he has. He does not .get some overbalancing good from his sacrifice, and no one is entitled to force this upon him-least of all a state or government that claims his allegiance (as other individuals do not) and that therefore scrupulously must be neutral between its citizens.9 It is not clear how Nozick thinks individual rights derive from the fact that each persons life is the only one he has. He appears to draw the implication that a benefit to one or more persons can never outweigh a cost borne by someone else. This, however, is far too broad a claim for Nozicks purposes. It is both obviously false and unsuitable as a basis for constraints on the treatment of individuals. To make sense of interpersonal compensation it is not necessary to invoke the silly idea of a social entity, thus establishing an analogy 9. Pp. 32-33 (emphasis in original; footnote omitted). Vol. 85: 136, 1975 Libertarianism Without Foundations with intrapersonal compensation. All one needs is the belief, shared by most people, that it is better for each of 10 people to receive a benefit than for one person to receive it, worse for 10 people to be harmed than for one person to be similarly harmed, better for one person to benefit greatly than for another to benefit slightly, and so forth. The fact that each persons life is the only one he has does not render us incapable of making these judgments, and if a choice among such alternatives does not involve the violation of any rights or entitlements, but only the allocation of limited time or resources, then we regard those comparisons as excellent reasons for picking one alternative rather than the other. If we can help either 10 people or one person, not included in the 10, and we help the 10, then we can say that rescue of the 10 outweighs the loss of the one, despite the fact that he does not get some overbalancing good from his sacrifice, and his is the only life he has. So for the purpose of comparing possible outcomes of action, where the violation of rights is not in question, it is clear that the distinctness of individuals does not prevent balancing of benefits and harms across persons. If special constraints enter in when a sacrifice is to be imposed on someone as a means to the achievement of a desirable outcome, their source must lie elsewhere. Such constraints should not derive from a principle which also has the consequence that practically nothing can be said about the relative desirability of situations involving numbers of different people. Furthermore, the source of rights of the general kind Nozick advocates cannot be discovered by concentrating, as he suggests we should, on the meaning of individual human lives and the value of shaping ones own life and forming a general conception of it. Vague as hi

Interpersonal utility theory

A “triangulation” strategy is sketched for constructing an empirical testable theory of interpersonal comparisons of utility units. Bargaining theory and the theory of the utility curves of money are tentatively suggested as triangulation points.

Knowledge and Scepticism

You think you are seeing these words, but could you not be hallucinating or dreaming or having your brain stimulated to give you the experience of seeing these marks on paper although no such thing is before you? More extremely, could you not be floating in a tank while super-psychologists stimulate your brain electrochemically to produce exactly the same experiences as you are now having, or even to produce the whole sequence of experiences you have had in your lifetime thus far? If one of these other things was happening, your experience would be exactly the same as it now is. So how can you know none of them is happening? Yet if you do not know these possibilities don’t hold, how can you know you are reading this book now? If you do not know you haven’t always been floating in the tank at the mercy of the psychologists, how can you know anything-what your name is, who your parents were, where you come from?

The case for legalised euthanasia

We cannot be sure, until the Supreme Court decides the assisted suicide cases and its decision is published, how far the justices might have accepted or rejected the arguments of the brief published below. In this introduction I shall describe the oral argument before them last January, and offer some suggestions about how, if they decide against the briefs position, as many commentators now think they will, they might do the least damage to constitutional law.