(2) Who are your favorite recent-ish philosophers (other than Derek Parfit)?
(3) Over/Under-rated: David Lewis, W.V.O. Quine, Ludwig Wittgenstein.
(4) When will we get the CWT with Scott Alexander?
In order:
1. Jeffrey Sachs is a brilliant and much underrated economist, here is my early CWT with him. His work on economic geography and development remains neglected, his “shock therapy” reforms in Poland worked, they didn’t listen to him in Russia, and the Millennium Villages project, while it did not obviously succeed, was a noble and impressive attempt. He deserves a Nobel Prize for that work. His marginal input in Bolivia was positive. That said, I find some of his recent comments on China/Lab Leak and Russia/Nordstream deeply objectionable and one can only theorize about what is going on there. In part he imbibed too much “New Left” foreign policy reasoning from the 1960s crew, but I don’t think that is the entirety of it by any means.
2. Is there any point in my mentioning the obvious famous figures such as Kripke, Bernard Williams, Latour, and so on? As for other favorites, see CWT! (Unlike Paul McCartney, most philosophers will in fact say yes to these dialogues.) I also would stress that a lot of the best philosophy is done by “drive-by commentators” on the internet, and what is philosophical is the dialogical internet mechanism as a whole, as a kind of epistemic computer above and beyond any individual’s contributions.
3. Most major philosophers are underrated, with the exception of Althusser, who strangled and murdered his wife.
4. Some individuals have been invited who still have not yet said yes. Not just Paul McCartney.
In order:
1. Jeffrey Sachs is a brilliant and much underrated economist, here is my early CWT with him. His work on economic geography and development remains neglected, his “shock therapy” reforms in Poland worked, they didn’t listen to him in Russia, and the Millennium Villages project, while it did not obviously succeed, was a noble and impressive attempt. He deserves a Nobel Prize for that work. His marginal input in Bolivia was positive. That said, I find some of his recent comments on China/Lab Leak and Russia/Nordstream deeply objectionable and one can only theorize about what is going on there. In part he imbibed too much “New Left” foreign policy reasoning from the 1960s crew, but I don’t think that is the entirety of it by any means.
2. Is there any point in my mentioning the obvious famous figures such as Kripke, Bernard Williams, Latour, and so on? As for other favorites, see CWT! (Unlike Paul McCartney, most philosophers will in fact say yes to these dialogues.) I also would stress that a lot of the best philosophy is done by “drive-by commentators” on the internet, and what is philosophical is the dialogical internet mechanism as a whole, as a kind of epistemic computer above and beyond any individual’s contributions.
3. Most major philosophers are underrated, with the exception of Althusser, who strangled and murdered his wife.
4. Some individuals have been invited who still have not yet said yes. Not just Paul McCartney.