Will Wilkinson - Latest Comments in Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

EuropeanReader — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 16:17:26 -0000

Noam Chomsky is a respected computer linguist. And for good reason. His political ideas of course are less reasonable.

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

B. Kalafut — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:33:36 -0000

Chrissakes, can you not distinguish between categorical statements and implicit references to polling, distributions, statistics, and the like?

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

simonkinahan — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:10:09 -0000

Who the hell are "the Europeans"? I'm British, and I think Noam Chomsky is only slightly less transparently fraudulent than Naomi Klein.

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

Lemon — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 02:42:17 -0000

Michael Ignatieff was really only a public intellectual when he was living in England or the U.S. He has since returned to Canada and is now the leading candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada - abandoning his intellectualism and his intellectual honesty in the process.

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

GilM — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 18:48:09 -0000

Perhaps you should read Will's paper on happiness research, before you accuse him of mistakes he hasn't made.

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

GilM — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 04:03:46 -0000

Yes, and you wasted it telling others how to beat you to it next time.

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

willwilkinson — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 02:00:35 -0000

I would jump at the chance.

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

JA — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 23:23:56 -0000

Did I just figure out how to have my comment read second?

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

grey davis — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 23:10:47 -0000

mr. wilkinson, you continually rant about naomi. So debate her publically!!! I personally know she loves debating, and loves taking free-market class warriors down. stop crying! DEBATE HER!

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

Ideology Busters Inc — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 19:01:00 -0000

I thought it was Ayn Rand? In any case, every ideologue has their idol, and their idolatry. Speaking of which, at the heart of WW's "thinking" is this little nugget, to which Cato, Objectivists (let's call them our neo-neo-positivists) and their kin cling, and it's an unquestioned faith in empirics, to use a somewhat hoary term. Somewhere, our WW has said, "... their is only one way of knowing: the empirical way". But then, that all depends on what is implied by the phrase "empirical way". Deep inside the ideological cavern of WW's mind is a confusion, and a set of unquestioned axioms.

To begin with, all data require interpretation, and in any act of interpretation, one must supply (at some point) definitions of the terms forming the basis of the interpretation. Not only that; one can ask: what is the best among the potential candidates forming the basis of my interpretation of the data -- that is, one can ask, and cannot avoid asking, a question of *value*. And so we come to the next issue on which any understanding of the " 'empirical way' " of knowing will turn: that fact and value cannot be separated.

With a supposedly "scientific" or empirical study of the question of happiness and meaning, though, we come to a kind of singularity in our analysis: the very fact in question is also itself a value (unlike, say, the structure of the cosmos or the structure and nature of biological change in a species over time, etc. -- such things are more easily value-separable).

But what would the Church of Empirics have us profess here, how are we supposed to treat the question of meaning and happiness according to the sacred way of empirical knowing? Simple: whatever people report or say is the case *is* the case -- if I say that I'm happy, then I'm happy. Simple. And we can supply the statistics to prove it: whenever wealth increases, so too *reports* of people's happiness (and let us grant this point to the Holy Church for the moment). What would you have us do, worries the Holy Empirical Emperor, question (!) whether or not people *really are* happy, despite their proclamations that they are?

Ah ... but that's just it, isn't it? What, truly, is happiness? What people say is happiness, how they report about it on a questionnaire? (After all, says all who accept the empirical way, we've got to some how *measure* it right, and that means that we MUST -- on pains of forbidding science to do its sacred job -- accept the only way of measuring is, which is given in material terms, third-person reports, etc. ... right?)

Hmm ... now we face a dilemma: either happiness is unmeasureable or else science needs to find a way of measurement such that what people report is the case is not necessarily, by its mere reportage, actually the case.

If we want to adhere to some sort of empirical way (now I am going to stop being polemical), then it seems we need to find a measure -- or a framework of what measurement is -- that does not have built into it from the work "go" what we can call the "human measurement problem": which is a problem of "measuring" (or quantifying) those facets of life considered values, constitutive of which is first person experience. Presently, there exists no adequate framework to even characterize, let alone to quantify, 1st person experience in such a way that said experiences are not treated as a kind of scientifically unassailable something or reduced to a fully extra-subjective something else.

There may very well be only "one way" of knowing, which is the "empirical way"; but, as thinkers such as Michael Polanyi and Morris Berman have pointed out (let alone scores of forward-thinking philosophers of mind and cognitive science), science has hit an impasse and we must rethink our fundamental way of theorizing, and ultimately of understanding, the world, experiences and all. There *is* something wrong with quantifying meaning and happiness; but that's because there's something wrong with the framework, not with the world.

And this, finally, brings me back to my original point: that interpretation and data, or empirics, are inseparable. At some point, you get to a stage of theoretical thinking where you face a challenge: do I fit the world into the pre-made framework, or do I change the framework to fit the world, to encompass, perhaps, a new understanding of the world that ditches old way of knowing in favor of knew ones? Indeed, we face such a challenge today; but Cato policy writes would do well to expand their knowledge base to encompass a wider range of thinkers on this very fundamental of questions, which is "what is the best way of knowing the world?" -- whether or not you call is empirical. Asking the former, broader question will keep the latter one in check.

And that's a kind of democracy.

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

Ideology Busters Inc — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 14:25:06 -0000

But of course this argument doesn't work: from the fact that X itself eventually ends, it does NOT follow that the consequences of X's having been introduced thereby also end (I throw a stone into a pond, and the stone may sink far away from view, but its ripples continue to have effects!) -- which point, in the end, is exactly what Klein is trying to get us to see, but which you've failed to appreciate.

Cronies ... beware of the allure of pretty prose; it covers a lack with perfume (ancient Shang Dynasty saying).

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

knockouted — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 13:48:11 -0000

Wow Mr. Wilkinson, I didn't know Milton Friedman was Jesus.

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

stephen — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 13:05:24 -0000

"what she's against is ideologically driven theory, be it left or right."

just had to see that again. thats all, carry on.

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

Ideology Busters Inc — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 12:33:30 -0000

Your assessment pretty much does amount to an ad hominem (or better: an extended genetic fallacy), and, given that you're employed at Cato and subscribe to the very philosophies under criticism in the Klein book, your comments are unsurprising. In any case, aside from your poor review (which really isn't -- just a cut-and-past job from someone else's non-review, all-too-brief gloss of the Klein book), your comments about Klein left me thinking "did we read the same book"; "did I read the same New Yorker piece?".

First: the New Yorker article is a mainly a biographical piece, which implies certain points of criticism rather than gives us their explication -- which point you make (I assume).

But -- and this is where 2 and 2 don't make 5 for me -- you then say that Klein comes off as *seeming* to be a certain sort of thing ("an incoherent bundle of reflexes"). This places your post squarely in the genetic fallacy domain.

Pardon, but when do appearances make for an argument of truth? Maybe that's just your problem: that she seems like a certain sort of thinker. Someone (like me, an anti-Sophist Sophist) could equally well say that: I think that you seem to be a kind of self-interested, egoistic Randian arch-Rationalist Ideologue, whose interest in happiness and policy no doubt implies a life filled with frustration, regret and the pursuit of ideals, like that happiness and wealth go hand in hand (your Wikipedia entry, no doubt self-composed, is a case in point). My impressions about you (and this is a basic point) don't prove the case; but they do, however, color anything that is said in their wake -- a classic form of sophistry (it should be noted that even the Sophists like to talk about truth and facts, etc.; the best of us do rely on these important things). Maybe you should think less like a polemicist and more like the "thinker" you claim to be. Bloviating (perhaps silver-tongued) against those who radically diverge from your axioms (as Klein so obviously does) will only win you cronies; thus, the tenor of many of your (ego-stroking) comments found herein. (But hey, that's what Objectivism is all about, no? The Happiness of #1, the Ego. Or is that uncharitable?)

More to the point: what does any of this post have to do with the arguments of her book? She may be a romantic (but yet she is quoted as saying that she doesn't kid herself about the realities of Communism and, as her books are meant to demonstrate *journalistically*, no illusions about Capitalism either); but she's certainly no "anti-intellectual" (what you suggest is that she's against "book-knowledge" and hence (though this is surely invalid) anti-intellectual -- but of course that's off-base and not a little uncharitable: what she's against is ideologically driven theory, be it left or right. I would say -- with a great many others -- that your Cato is a veritable Mill of such types, but that's another story).

Now, in all fairness: you claim (or imply) that you've written on Klein before but I've failed to find that. Can you let me on to your (hopefully cogent) work on that?

Sincerely,

Ideology Busters, Inc
(Aka, Against the Sophists)

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

ElamBend — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 12:28:09 -0000

Ms. Klein strikes me as someone who could only be the product of an orderly, wealthy, and safe society.

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

B. Kalafut — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 01:53:01 -0000

It's worth remembering that the Europeans think Noam Chomsky is a leading US public intellectual.

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

B. Kalafut — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 01:50:31 -0000

You don't get it, do you?

That doesn't help me connect you to a reputation, let alone one that would justify you posting in the comments section of Wilkinson's 'blog as though you're conducting a seminar.

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

Bob — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:58:52 -0000

BobRoth66601@gmail.com

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

Craig — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:58:52 -0000

Let me chime in here as a Canuck, albeit an expatriate.
I don't know anyone serious in Canada (even on the left) who thinks
she's a leading public intellectual. Or an intellectual at all.
We're nutty but not that nutty.
My vote would go to Charles Taylor, despite my reservations about his endorsement of group rights.
And we once had a PM who was a serious intellectual, although that didn't work out too well.

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

B. Kalafut — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:43:23 -0000

Bennett S. Kalafut
1939 E Hedrick Drive
Tucson AZ 85719-2420

But you could have found that all out by yourself just by clicking the link to my 'blog. Who I am is rather obvious.

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

Socrates — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:34:37 -0000

Rationalism minus Understanding = Debate camp, or fashionable nihilism

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

boB — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:23:58 -0000

A joke B. Kalafut, if that is your name? Sounds kinda fake to me. Maybe you real name is Tufalak. That sounds right. But I see a lot of folks posting with strange handles, so when full names and emalis addresses come into vogue here I will join right in. Tell you what, if you reply with your addey I will post mine. Same goes for any of the folks posting here. But you post is just foolish, and I really doubt that most people want their emails out in public, I get too much unwanted mail as it is. I wonder what others think of your idea.

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

Nonny Mouse — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:14:13 -0000

Bob must be Kerry Howley in disguise.

Take your flirtations off the comments page!

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

B. Kalafut — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:44:27 -0000

Perhaps he ought to do so as soon as "you" provide your legal name, full address, and some means by which to ascertain your "reputation".

We all know who Will Wilkinson is, what he as done, his thoughts on numerous matters, and how to contact him--even show up on his doorstep--if we would like. On the other hand, "Bob" might not even be a person and thus unworthy of time or moral consideration.

So are you an Eliza-bot or are you not? Can "Bob" pass the modern, social Turing Test?

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

Fred — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 20:50:11 -0000

quick refresher on what the ad hominem fallacy actually is:

http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html