Socratic Puzzles

Socratic Puzzles is a collection of essays by libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick. It was published in 1997 by Harvard University Press. 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. ... more

Socratic Puzzles is a collection of essays by libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick. It was published in 1997 by Harvard University Press. 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... less