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.

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

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