Intellectuals And Society

Post Reply New Topic

Thomas Sowell wrote a book about how "intellectuals" are often too highly esteemed.

I will explain his thesis in a nutshell:
1. He defines intellectuals as idea-workers whose work starts and ends with ideas. Engineers, architects, doctors, and other professions which produce tangible results are often not usually referred to as "intellectuals". Instead, intellectuals is used to refer to journalists, historians, philosophers, etc.

2. The work of intellectuals can only be measured subjectively: whether the idea sounds good and if other intellectuals like it. The performance of architects for example, on the other hand, can be measured objectively. If the bridge collapses, it does not matter how good their plan sounded.

3. Intellectuals are highly knowledgable in the field they specialize in, but when intellectuals try to dive into a different field, they lose their comparative advantage. For example, Noam Chomsky isn't a linguist anymore.

4. Even the most brilliant intellectuals are capable of being wrong. Often, they are wrong because they may lack mundane, but important knowledge.

5. No one, not even the most brilliant intellectual in the world, has more than 1% of all the total knowledge known by all people. The masses of ordinary people have more total knowledge than a small group of intellectuals, even if the knowledge is scattered in individually unimpressive fragments.

Agree or disagree? Discuss.

Really? Is the work of theoretical physicists measured only subjectively. Think again.

ruveyn

Thomas Sowell wrote a book about how "intellectuals" are often too highly esteemed.

I will explain his thesis in a nutshell:
1. He defines intellectuals as idea-workers whose work starts and ends with ideas. Engineers, architects, doctors, and other professions which produce tangible results are often not usually referred to as "intellectuals". Instead, intellectuals is used to refer to journalists, historians, philosophers, etc.

There's more to the quality of a building than it's structural rigidness, and more to an idea than its charm. The explanatory power of an idea in Science is what gives it merit, and less so it's elegance or simplicity. Journalism and Philosophy are inherently subjective, although the later is to a lesser degree. A lot of Philosophy is intertwined with Science (a lot of Hume's stuff), so I'm not content to brush off all philosophy as being "subjective".



And they are often less esteemed in that field. Dawkin's a fantastic Biologist, and a mediocre Theologian (although most are, in my opinion).



That just sounds like an extension of the absent minded professor stereotype. I'd like evidence, because I won't accept conjecture in this case.



So? Only a fool takes everything an intellectual says at face value. And again, I doubt that the masses have a higher understanding of philosophy and science than the couple of hundred influential thinkers that have shaped their respective fields. It just sounds like conjecture again.

Agree or disagree? Discuss.

How can a group that gets no respect have too much respect?

"Intellectuals" arent held in any esteem in the first place, so how can they be held in too "high esteem"?

I think intellectuals and philosophers are more famous and talked about in "high brow" societies like france, not because they're useful to society but just because people find them and their ideas interesting, the same way people here find famous novel authors, rock song writers and movie directors interesting.

I agree with everything said here. This is the result of living in an ivory tower.

[quote="AceOfSpades"I agree with everything said here. This is the result of living in an ivory tower.[/quote]

The ivory tower boys made your computer possible.

ruveyn

The ivory tower boys made your computer possible.

ruveyn[/quote]


and look at all the crap social sites, porn, bullying, weapons crime etc on computers. they messed up. We should have killed the intellectuals, destroyed their technology and gone back to nature.

Look guys, I didn't say intellectuals were useless. But when you are cerebral to the point where you live in an ivory tower, you not only become specialized in that but you also get isolated from everything else. Of course intellectuals are valuable to society, but I see intellectualism as one facet of intelligence rather than being all three dimensions.

He lost me right here. I think this is too narrow a definition of an intellectual. Something only counts as an intellectual idea if you don't act on it?

What intellectual claimed complete mastery of understanding and application of said understanding? Your making assumptions about how philosophers and theoretical scientists view themselves I have seen no evidence for your assumptions.

There are many intelligent people who dislike the term intellectual. I know what Ace is talking about, there are several 'breeds' of intellectual, if I may put it that way. Often the ones that are most appreciated won't be appreciated until after their death when people go back and read their works. Then you get the guys who write to journals with typically uninformed but still intelligent opinions. A generic 'intellectual' opinion I once read, that sounds reasonable but is actually dumb:
"Haiti is incapable of taking care of its own people, let alone infrastructure. The best thing it can do is voluntarily annex itself to the Dominican Republic (which is shares the isle of Hispaniola with)"
This is a bad idea for a number of reasons (such as Haiti's past brutal invasions of the DR, including attempts at ethnic cleansing of Spanish-speakers, the much higher population growth rate of Haiti, the economic downturn the DR would likely go through - akin to the German Democratic Republic reuniting with West Germany... etc)
This opinion definitely leaves out the 'mundane details' Dubya mentioned
So I think the OP and Ace do have a fair point, there are definitely people who wear the 'intellectual' brand proudly but they really do live in an ivory tower in a sense
But I disagree that the work of historians and other workers who aren't using their hands is in some way of subjective value. I don't expect blue collar Jimbob to understand why the work I do as a historian is good for his life, but the least he could do is stfu about the subjective value of work since much of the anti-intellectual sentiment in the lower/middle class is actually put there by people in the upper class

In what parallel universe do you live, where intellectuals are too highly esteemed? Have you heard all the pseudo-populist anti-"elitism" rhetoric being tossed around in American politics these days? There actually exists an entire subset of Americans (and before someone screams at me for picking on conservatives or Republicans in general, let me assure you that I'm not referring to any specific political ideology, nor am I trying to condemn an entire party) who see ignorance as a virtue, and take pride in it.



The very people who document and comment on the current level of political discourse, and draw analytical parallels to previous occurrences, and give the public at large some idea of how badly the laissez-faire capitalist system has been screwing them. What a coincidence that these are the people he'd single out, considering Sowell himself is an avowed defender of laissez-faire capitalism.

and look at all the crap social sites, porn, bullying, weapons crime etc on computers. they messed up. We should have killed the intellectuals, destroyed their technology and gone back to nature.[/quote]

that is the fault of the people who used the computers the ivory tower boys made possible.

ruveyn

Physics is an objective field of study, a hard science. Dr. Sowell did not target scientists in his book. He refered to an "intellectual" as someone who works in the soft sciences such as history, psychology, sociology, and such.

By Sowell's very definition theoretical physicists are intellectuals.

Think again.

ruveyn