ABSTRACT
Our mental concept of ourselves is that of self-aware thinking beings. But contrary to much folklore psychology, we are almost entirely unaware or unconscious of our thinking processes. What we have excellent knowledge of is the results, not processes, of thinking. Empirical studies supporting this conclusion are surveyed in Section 10.2. Criticisms of expected-utility computations are made in Section 10.3. In terms of rational choice, deliberation or calculation is mainly reflected in constraints implemented as habits, which are considered in Section 10.4. Unconscious natural computations are fragmentary, occasional and contextual. They are in fact associations, as argued for in Section 10.5. The role of free associations is the subject of Section 10.6. The traditional characterization of freedom in terms of absence of constraints is reviewed in Section 10.7. Contrary to this long philosophical tradition of defining freedom as mainly the absence of constraints, I argue in Section 10.8 that uncertainty is an essential characteristic of freedom. It is uncertainly in elections, in markets and in competing cultural opportunities that is one of the most important features of free societies. Then in Section 10.9, I argue for entropy as the natural measure of freedom of individual choice, and of freedom of markets and elections. The use of entropy comes from ergodic theory. The basic isomorphism theorem of ergodic theory provides a direct way of comparing the freedom, in terms of uncertainty, of different elections and markets, or, if we wish, individual patterns of choice. Some substantive examples are given in Section 10.10. At the end, in Section 10.11, I sketch some additional measures of freedom that can add to what entropy contributes.
