Freedom and probability: A comment on Goodin and Jackson

Philosophy and Public Affairs

Volumn 36, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 206-220

  Pettit, Philip ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 49549086667     PISSN: 00483915     EISSN: 10884963     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1088-4963.2007.00133.x     Document Type: Article

References (41)

1. Robert E. Goodin and Frank Jackson, "Freedom from Fear," Philosophy & Public Affairs 35(2007): 249-65.
2. Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Quentin Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
3. I have argued against a similar line of criticism by Jeremy Waldron (Philip Pettit, "Joining the Dots", in Common Minds: Themes from the Philosophy of Philip Pettit, ed. M. Smith, H. G. Brennan, R. E. Goodin, and F. C. Jackson [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007], pp. 255-344). For a formalization that offers a wonderfully clear (and to me, congenial) view of how the liberal and republican approaches compare in their treatment of possibility, see
4. Christian List, "The Impossibility of a Paretian Republican? Some Comments on Pettit and Sen," Economics and Philosophy 20(2004): 1-23.
5. They do refer to Hobbes in indicating which impediments they have in mind and Hobbes does only take account of impediments that render the choice of an option impossible, at least when he is thinking of corporeal freedom (Philip Pettit, Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind and Politics [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007]). But they suggest that the notion of freedom is the 'standard' or 'liberal' notion of negative liberty, and on the standard account impediments bear a much wider reading
6. David Miller, "Constraints on Freedom," Ethics 94[1984]: 66-86).
7. For simplicity, I shall assume that to seek the absence of probable interference or the probability of noninterference is equivalent to maximizing expected noninterference.
8. Strictly, the possibilist need not have any special concern even about interference that is actual and has a probability of one. I make the point to emphasize the gross irrationality of the strategy.
9. They do make one remark that supports the second, less intuitive position: "Your freedom is impaired in proportion to the probability of someone interfering with your actions and choices" (p. 250).
10. Goodin and Jackson, surprisingly, do not make the point about actualism.
11. In particular, why worry if worrying involves paying costs in order to protect against such interference? "Probabilistic-freedom tells us not to worry about possible-but-very-improbable events, if eliminating the possibility would involve costs disproportionate to the risks" (p. 252).
12. This supposition is tantamount, in my interpretation of republican language, to supposing that the interference perpetrated is arbitrary rather than nonarbitrary: It is not forced to track the interests of the agent according to the judgments of the agent (Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government), i.e., the interests that the agent is disposed to avow (Philip Pettit, A Theory of Freedom: From the Psychology to the Politics of Agency [Cambridge and New York: Polity and Oxford University Press, 2001]).
13. Goodin and Jackson suggest that it is unlikely that "people can be free or unfree without knowing it" (p. 256). I am puzzled as to why they think this.
14. See
15. Harry Frankfurt, "Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility," Journal of Philosophy 66(1969): 829-39.
16. Other writers sometimes suggest a similar line, as when John Stuart Mill says that "liberty consists in doing what one desires" (On Liberty [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978]). But this sort of comment is ambiguous: Mill may have meant that liberty consists in being able to choose whatever option one might happen to prefer.
17. See Thomas Hobbes and Bishop J. Bramhall, Hobbes and Bramhall on Freedom and Necessity, ed. Vere Chappell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 91.
18. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994), chap. 21, sec. 12.
19. See, for example,
20. J. P. Day, "On Liberty and the Real Will," Philosophy 45(1970): 177-92
21. Amartya Sen, "Well-being, Agency and Freedom," Journal of Philosophy 82(1985): 169-221
22. An action description will identify an option for an agent if things are such at the time of action that the agent can make the description true. That things are this way does not need to be logically guaranteed, only guaranteed by actual, contingent arrangements.
23. Isaiah Berlin, Liberty: Incorporating Four Essays on Liberty, ed. Henry Harding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 41.
24. Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. xxxviii; Sen, "Well-being, Agency and Freedom," p. 191.
25. Philip Pettit, "Dahl's Power and Republican Freedom," Journal of Power 1(2008): 67-74.
26. On this usage, then, B still exercises control in the case when perturbing factors are at work to reverse his or her probabilistic impact. The paradigm of such a case is where A is defiant and countersuggestible and is prepared to suffer a serious loss in order to frustrate B's efforts. B may not raise the probability of A's behaving to B's taste in such a case, but B does require A to endure a heavy cost in order to avoid that effect.
27. The mesmerizing reward, say, the offer of a drink to an alcoholic, would reduce the agent's capacity for rational choice. The nonrefusable reward, like the nonrefusable penalty, would replace the option by an alternative.
28. We are taking interference here to be arbitrary: I.e., not to be subject to the ultimate control of the interferee. Thus, the fully articulated claim is that someone is free in a given choice to the extent that there is no one who exercises a degree of uncongenial, uncontrolled control-in other words, a degree of domination-in that choice. See Philip Pettit, "Republican Liberty: Three Axioms, Four Theorems,"in Republicanism and Political Theory, ed. Cecile Laborde and John Maynor (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008). The republican tradition takes the freedom of a person or citizen, as distinct from the freedom of a particular choice, to depend on the absence of uncongenial, uncontrolled control in those choices that each can enjoy consistently with others enjoying them at the same time (Philip Pettit, "The Basic Liberties, "Essays on H.L.A. Hart, ed. Matthew Kramer [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008]). More specifically, it takes the freedom of the citizen to depend on how far the absence of such control is ensured by the legal and political culture (
29. Philip Pettit, "Free Persons and Free Choices," History of Political Thought 28[2007]: 709-18).
30. In this rendering of republican theory, A's freedom is reduced by the use of uncongenial means-that is, means that jeopardize A's can-do assumptions-such that, absent special factors, this raises the probability that A will choose according to B's taste. In an alternative version, we might say that A's freedom is reduced by the use of uncongenial means in the attempt, successful or unsuccessful, to raise that probability. I follow the first version here, as in "Republican Liberty: Three Axioms, Four Theorems."The different versions offer different but convergent definitions of the notion of uncongenial control. Notice that on either version, the way that human beings reduce the freedom of a person, i.e., by the exercise of uncongenial control, is very different from the way in which natural obstacles may do so; such obstacles do not have tastes and do not exercise control by any means, congenial or uncongenial.
31. See
32. Philip Pettit, "Capability and Freedom: A Defence of Sen," Economics and Philosophy 17(2001): 1-20.
33. There are tricky issues raised by how exactly to interpret such subjunctive as distinct from conditional probabilities. See
34. David Lewis, "Probabilities of Conditionals and Conditional Probabilities," Philosophical Review 85(1976): 297-315
35. "Probabilities of Conditionals and Conditional Probabilities II," Philosophical Review 95(1986): 581-89.
36. See List, "The Impossibility of a Paretian Republican? Some Comments on Pettit and Sen."
37. I describe these possibilities in Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) as possibilities of virtual or potential domination. Actual domination, that is, uncongenial, uncontrolled control, may occur without actual interference, as we have seen; it may materialize by courtesy of invigilation or inhibition. But all such domination, however mediated, is an actual evil and it contrasts with potential domination, which is not. Potential domination represents only the danger of an evil and so is only probabilistically relevant to the cause of freedom.
38. Notice that the requirement is that things be actually organized so that suitable results are likely to materialize in the relevant possible worlds; the focus is on the actual protections against interference that can support those modal results. One early critic of republicans who thought that it is a mistake to concentrate in this way on actual protection against interference is William Paley: "they describe not so much liberty itself, as the safeguards and preservatives of liberty"(The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, Vol. 4, Collected Works [London: C. and J. Rivington, 1825], p. 197).
39. Freedom as noninterference, at least in the sense in which that ideal is associated with Berlin and his ilk, may not be well named, since the name does not signal the modally demanding nature of the ideal; as the text implies, to promote such freedom is not to probabilify noninterference, no matter on what basis.
40. Reducing the capacity for interference in this way amounts to establishing a degree of uncongenial control over the interference. If that control is in A's hands, and A tolerates the interference, then that interference will count as controlled or nonarbitrary interference. See n. 10 and 23 and Pettit, "Republican Liberty: Three Axioms, Four Theorems."
41. Peter Strawson, "Freedom and Resentment," in Free Will, 2nd ed., ed. Gary Watson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).