A question for tomorrow: The robust demands of the good

Humphrey Lyttelton, the English jazz musician, was once asked where he thought jazz was going. He replied that if he knew where jazz was going, he would be there already. I feel the same about being asked about the questions of tomorrow in the moral and political philosophy. If I knew what they were, I would be there already. Which raises an interesting thought. Perhaps the best indication of what I think that the questions are is where I am already. And, following that thought, there is a clear path to follow, however narcissistic it may seem. This is to describe a question that I think important — indeed a question that is something of a personal hobby-horse — despite the fact that it is not currently much discussed. Induction from past evidence suggests that it is unlikely to become a question of tomorrow. But I live, as we all must do, in hope. In thinking over a long period about the various ways in which freedom may be conceptualized, I came to see that it is, as I came to put it, a robustly or modally demanding value. Suppose you agree with Isaiah Berlin and the long tradition beginning with Jeremy Bentham that to be free in a choice between certain options, X, Y and Z, is just to escape the interference of others with any of those options. This ideal requires more than escaping interference with the option you happen to prefer: that is, escaping the frustration of your actual preference. It requires escaping interference and frustration with any of the options that define the choice. You must not be interfered with in your actual choice of, say, X. But equally it must be the case that had you preferred Y or Z, you would not have been interfered with in that event either. Freedom requires actual non-interference but also non-interference in the nearest possible worlds where you choose Y or Z instead. Indeed, plausibly, it requires that for a range of possible worlds where you choose X but in a somewhat different manner from that in which you actually choose it, and for a range of possible worlds in which you choose Y and Z instead, you should escape interference. In a phrase, freedom as Berlin understands it requires robust non-interference: that is, non-interference in a range of relevant possible worlds, including the actual one. It is a robustly or modally demanding value. The range of worlds where you must escape interference for enjoying freedom in this sense may be capable of being identified only on a context-sensitive basis, with intuition playing an important role in determining the boundaries. But one thing that is quite clear is that they may include worlds that are very improbable. You may be very unlikely to choose Y or Z as distinct from X but if you are to enjoy freedom in the exercise of the X-Y-Z choice then you must escape interference even in the unlikely event of choosing one of those options. Freedom, as Berlin puts it, requires each option to be an open door. It is not enough for the door you happen to push on to be open. And it is not enough for doors to be likely to be open in proportion to the probability of your choosing them. They must be open, period. The republican conception of freedom as non-domination that I have defended in earlier work strengthens the modal requirements of freedom as non-interference, even when it is agreed that the non-interference should be present in possible as well as actual worlds. It requires …