NOZICK, ROBERT

(b. Brooklyn, New York, 16 November 1938; d. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 23 January 2002)

political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, theory of rational decision.

Nozick is probably best known for his philosophy of libertarianism in political philosophy and his idea of the “minimal state.” He also made significant contributions in the areas of epistemology and the theory of rational decision in philosophy, as well as metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and ethics.

After obtaining his BA degree (1959) at Columbia University in New York City, he earned his MA degree (1961) and PhD (1963), both at Princeton University in New Jersey. He then taught at Princeton and at Rockefeller University in New York City before coming in 1969 to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he became university professor and also served as chair of the Philosophy Department. Some of his most important works include Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), which won the National Book Award; Philosophical Explanations (1981); The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations (1989); The Nature of Rationality (1993); and Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World (2001).

According to Nozick’s libertarianism, the only just kind of state is a minimal one, in which rights of individuals are primary and the role of the state is limited to the protection of these rights, such as protection against violence, theft, and breach of contracts. His Anarchy, State, and Utopia advocates limited government, individual liberty, and the importance of private property. This book critiques the liberalism of his Harvard colleague, John Rawls, and Rawls’s idea of redistributive justice (the idea that the state should be allowed to and should reallocate wealth in order to promote more equal distribution and to aid the disadvantaged); thus, Nozick, famously, opposed the idea of a welfare state.

In his Philosophical Explanations, Nozick argues for the epistemological view that belief is knowledge just in case the belief in question “tracks the truth” basically, that is, belief is knowledge just (only) in case the believer would have belief in the proposition in question if and only if the proposition in question were true. This is intended to be an answer to some versions of skepticism about the possibility of actual knowledge and as an “externalist” alternative to more traditional “internalist” views of knowledge (according to the latter of which, basically,

a knower must be aware of the factors that constitute warrant for the belief in question). His Philosophical Explanations also develops his “closest continuer” theory of personal identity, a metaphysical issue.

Nozick’s most famous contribution to the theory of rational decision is his 1969 article, “Newcomb’s Problem and Two Principles of Choice,” which introduced Newcomb’s problem to philosophers. In this decision problem, there are two boxes before the decision maker: one transparent, which clearly contains one thousand dollars, and the other opaque, which is known to contain either one million dollars or nothing. The choice is between taking the contents of only the opaque box—act A—and taking the contents of both boxes—act B. So far, it seems that the obviously correct choice is B. But now suppose that the agent is fully (or highly) confident of the following about how the contents of the opaque box were determined: there is a very rich and very accurate predictor (of choices in just this kind of situation) who earlier placed the one million dollars in that box if and only if the predicted act was A—thus almost always rewarding those who choose A (reward equals one million dollars) and not so richly rewarding those who choose B (reward equals one thousand dollars). The agent could reason in either of these two ways: (1) if I choose A, then, since the predictor is so accurate, I will probably walk away with one million dollars, where choosing B would probably give me only one thousand dollars, so I should choose A; or (2) the rich predictor has already made the prediction and put, or did not put, the one million dollars in the opaque box, and either way I get one thousand dollars more with B than with A, so I should choose B. Nozick develops his own solution to the puzzle—involving whether or not there is a cause-effect relation between acts and states of affairs. This introduction of the puzzle has spawned a voluminous literature in the philosophy of rational choice.

In addition to the National Book Award, Nozick was also honored by, among other things, becoming a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and by delivering the John Locke Lectures at Oxford University. He also was active very in practical ways, having, for example, participated in the preparation of a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court urging the protection of individual rights in the matter of whether one should be allowed to have a doctor’s help in ending one’s own life, assuming mental competence and terminal illness.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WORKS BY NOZICK

“Newcomb’s Problem and Two Principles of Choice.” In Essays in Honor of Carl G. Hempel, edited by Nicholas Rescher et al. Dordrecht, Netherlands: D. Reidel Publishing, 1970.

Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books, 1974.

Philosophical Explanations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981.

The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989.

The Nature of Rationality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.

Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.

OTHER SOURCES

Albert, Max, and Ronald A. Heiner. “An Indirect-Evolution Approach to Newcomb’s Problem.” Homo Oeconomicus 20 (2003): 161–191.

Feser, Edward. On Nozick. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2003. Paul, Jeffrey, ed. Reading Nozick: Essays on Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981.

Schmidt, Christian. Newcomb’s Problem: A Case of Pathological Reality? Montreal: Groupe de recherche en épistémologie comparée, Université du Québec à Montréal, 1995.

Schmitz, David, ed. Robert Nozick. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Sobel, Jordan Howard. Taking Chances. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Ellery Eells