My favourite Joseph Heath articles: Canada’s most important Canadian thinker
There are a lot of Canadian superstars. In the world of ideas, there are individuals like Philip Tetlock, Steven Pinker, Alex Tabarrok, and David Card. But like most Canadian superstars, these people became recognized in the context of working in the United States, and speaking about American or global issues. In contrast, Joseph Heath is a Canadian superstar, who works in Canada and primarily publishes in the Canadian context. Heath is as sharp as any thinker in the US and merits my strongest endorsement.
What I most appreciate about Heath is how simple yet compelling his writing is. Reading Heath is rarely mind-blowing, but it is almost always a mind-expanding. He is incredibly effective at helping you crystallize fundamental concepts that, despite thinking about for many hours, you never truly grasped.
Heath achieves this by constructing simple systems that allow the reader to understand the exact mechanics of how some idea or policy will interact with reality. As a professor of philosophy, Heath is extremely analytical. H e has an incredible ability to explain economic concepts and issues of social justice by clearly articulating the expected consequences a proposed intervention has to our broader systems. Heath’s bread and butter is noticing collective action problems most people overlook, and identifying Pareto improving choices that society should be making.
