New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | January 21, 2005

The anniversary of the death of Robert Nozick, influential philosopher of freedom and property rights, is nigh. Take a gander at Julian Sanchez' heady discussion with Nozick.

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|1.21.05 @ 5:00PM|#

That is an interesting cat. Good interview by Julian, too.

I've always been interested in the specifics of what he meant when he called AS&U 'inadequate'. If anyone knows where he spells it out in detail, I'd appreciate a link.

He nails in much more specific terms the problem I've always had with Randian metaphysics - that repeating identity over and over again is an insufficient way to demonstrate that reality maps to pure reason.

I can't help but notice how similar his approach to philosophy is to that of Russell. He has meandering interests, and tries to build a falsifiable, internally consistent model against which he can argue. I also note that he seems like a really smart real person. That might sound odd at first, but most philosophers of note were miserable, obsessed people.

There are different modes of genius, I suppose. If you have your choice, it is probably better to be a Nozick or a Russell than a Wittgenstein or a Nietzsche.

|1.21.05 @ 5:16PM|#

Thanks Jason!

Kidding of course. I tried to read a book once on Russell and Dewey and the experience was way too weird and I couldn't get through it. I guess I've got issues.

|1.21.05 @ 5:37PM|#

For what its worth, today is also the anniversary of the deaths of George Orwell and Vladimir Lenin. FYI.

|1.21.05 @ 5:40PM|#

I like to ask Randroids about Certs and light.
Are they a breath mint or a candy mint, a particle or a wave. For A must be A and can never be B.

Sadly, Rand and her roids fell victim to a phallacy she had previously pointed out: Naming a thing is not the same as understanding a thing.

|1.21.05 @ 7:09PM|#

Speaking of "naming a thing" ... :)

What is a "phallacy"? An argument that doesn't mean dick? Because it just doesn't stand up? :)

|1.21.05 @ 7:38PM|#

There's the rub, I love it when my subconscious sneaks a pun past my inadequate internal spell checker. Fantastic definition, Stevo.

Franklin Harris|1.21.05 @ 9:37PM|#

It took me many years, but I eventually came to the conclusion that it is a shame that Nozick is so underappreciated by the people who should appreciate him the most -- i.e., libertarians. Most libertarians I know buy into the line that "Anarchy, State and Utopia" is somehow incomplete, that it needs "foundations." And I used to agree with that line of thought. But the genius of Nozick's way of arguing, I think, is its very lack of foundations. You can't attack him just by trying to knock his argument off its foundation because he constructs a web of arguments, all intertwined but nevertheless able to stand even if someone cuts a few strands.

|1.22.05 @ 8:50AM|#

Didn't Julian Sanchez supposedly call Nozick drunk in the middle of the night one time, or is that apocryphal?

|1.22.05 @ 1:29PM|#

That is, in fact, apocryphal, but it sounds like an entertaining story.

|1.23.05 @ 12:36AM|#

I first read this interview back when it was new and I remembered all the resultant discussion orbiting around the question of Nozick's fealty to libertarian principles but I'd forgotten how fascinating the rest of the interview was. Great questions and probing, Julian. Your interview is a wellspring of fun things to think about. Now, here are a few questions and comments for you.

When Nozick states that "...libertarianism never really claimed that all of ethics was exhausted by what could be enforced, by what one could legitimately be coerced to do or not do", it seems to me that he is answering some of his own earlier questions about the limits of libertarianism from The Examined Life, before Invariances where he seems to recant this vauge recanting.

When you said that there seems to be a "Kantian flavor to the argument" in Anarchy, State and Utopia, what did you mean?

Do you happen to know where (in which of his books) that Hayek pointed out that "We all benefit from the existence of that free domain of autonomous action, even when we do not choose to (or are unable to) make use of those particular such freedoms ourselves"?

When you asked him about his reference to superstring theory as an "interesting branch of metaphysics", didn't he seem to not really answer the idea, that was implicit in your question, that maybe he views scientists in some cases, as really doing philosophy instead of science?

Do you have any comments on any possible connections or conflicts between his attacking requiring proof in philosophy and his interesting examples of science informing philosophy, as with his "scientific laws of the universe as something like the genetic constitution of the universe"?

On Rand: "Why do you think it is that people of generally illiberal temperament would pick up classical liberal ideas? The combination seems mysterious".

Perhaps it's just the strength of the idea of, the non-initiation of force.

|1.23.05 @ 12:41PM|#

In the old nomenclature, "Science" was "Natural Philosophy." Sciencia is after all, knowledge.

Rand may have had an illiberal temperament, but she did live through the transformation of Tsarist Russia into the totalitarian USSR. Seeing a dictatorship work at close range can be quite a convincer.

I've got to echo the praise for Nozick's sense of inquiry. He's a lot of fun to read.

Kevin

|1.23.05 @ 4:45PM|#

Julian,

I was thinking that if by "Kantian flavor to the argument", you meant an assertion of ethical or moral correctness, perhaps it's because that would be a more natural tone in Anarchy, State and Utopia, which is more devoted only to political philosophy, than Invariances.

|1.23.05 @ 11:15PM|#

Rick:
What I meant by the "Kantian flavor" of the argument was the focus, in his elaboration of "moral side constraints", on the idea (thouhg I don't think he phrases it exactly this way) of treating people always as ends in themselves, rather than mere means (with "mere means" exemplified in his contrast with a tool, which one may "use" to promote either one's own happiness or that of others).

I'm pretty sure the bit about benefiting from freedoms we don't ourselves use is developed at some length in The Constitution of Liberty, though it's been some years since I read that book, so it's possible it's in Rules and Order--I suspect it comes up in both places.

On the string-theory-as-metaphysics bit, I thought the answer was actually not bad to the extent that, if you're familiar with Quine, the "insert Quine here" is actually at least moderately explanatory.

Finally when Nozick characterizes what he's doing as an "attack on requiring proof in philosophy," I don't know that it's really in such tension with the idea of overlap between philosophy and science, where we obviously do want a pretty rigorous standard of demonstration or proof. I think that has to be read in light of his excellent introduction to "Philosophical Explanations" where he contrasts the idea of philosophy as an attempt to convince some skeptic that X must be the case (there exist objective moral principles or free will or knowledge of the external world) with the idea of "explanations" in the form of an exploration of how it could be that X holds, or what it might mean for X to hold, in light of various considerations which appear to rule out that possibility.