Ross, Steve

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ISSN 1526-0569 
Book Review
Philosophy Bites Again
Volume 18, Issue 2 (2017)
Philosophy Bites Again
David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton Oxford University Press, 282 pages plus notes, 2014
ISBN 978-0198702696
Steven Ross
Hunter College/The Graduate Center CUNY
Essays Philos (2017)18:2  |  DOI:  10.7710/1526-0569.1592
Correspondence:  sonokal@earthlink.net
Essays in Philosophy
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Twenty-seven short interviews with prominent philosophers on a wide range of subjects, 
Philosophy Bites Again (“PBA”) is indeed pretty much as it advertises itself – lively, 
intriguing, sometimes remarkably helpful, to even the most experienced of philosophers. 
But the “pretty much” is warranted because some of the entries are a bit disappointing, 
even by the forgiving standards one rightly brings to a collection of this kind. It is of 
course unsurprising that not every interview is as good as the best. In reading through 
PBA, the reader is certainly struck by something we all already know in the abstract: 
philosophers have wildly varying abilities when it comes to presenting their subjects 
in a way that is both clear and does justice to the complexity at issue. But other factors 
play a role in this variation across the chapters too. Sometimes one feels the subject just 
may not admit of all that much philosophical depth to begin with (the “Dirty Hands in 
Politics” segment would be a case in point). And sometimes the reason for a less that 
satisfactory interview is that hosts are too passive and just don’t press their guests with 
the right demands. If the philosopher before us presents the subject in the right way, all 
goes swimmingly. If the guest gives an unbalanced or biased account – nothing wrong 
with that, as such – Edmonds and Warburton generally do not do too much to counter 
it. Generally, as I say, their kindness as interviewers is benign and no harm is done. 
Once in a while though, one wishes for something more like what we have all seen from 
a moderator on a philosophy panel – just some general prodding to be fairer to the 
contrary intuition, or to say more in defense of the so far not very well defended view in 
question. 
But let me be clear: the good here far outweighs the bad, and this is a very nice book 
under several quite different descriptions. It provides a very good introduction to the 
layman of what philosophy is all about. (Truly, if you are looking for a gift for that well-
meaning relative who always, and sincerely, asks you what exactly is philosophy, this 
would is a surprisingly excellent choice.) It offers a good contribution to certain subjects 
of general interest in our intellectual culture today, such animal rights, torture, and the 
nature of the self. And sometimes, as I say, it offers a nice addition even for the specialist 
to his or her sense of the subject. Let me say a little about some of better ones first then 
turn to what were for me some of the disappointments. 
One of the better, longer, segments is Stephen Neale’s on language and interpretation. 
Anyone looking for a concise, clear, and very persuasive account of the Grice-ian 
approach to language and meaning could not do better than what Neale offers here. 
Neale takes up the way a theory like his draws on notions of reciprocity, of mutually 
recognized intentions, very nicely. The reader certainly feels the force of this approach 
by the time Neale is done. Then, Neale is asked about legal interpretation and the appeals 
to “plain meaning” versus “interpretation” we often come across in that context. What 
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follows is a real tour de force on how our legal culture tends to misdescribe these ideas 
in the law. The idea that semantic meaning is a kind of blueprint, filled in or realized by 
the specific intentions of the speaker is very well laid out, and the myriad difficulties of 
applying this model to the legal context are taken up with great panache. A statute that, 
in light of its semantic ambiguity, might or might not support additional sentencing 
if a gun was used, in barter, to buy drugs, serves as an illustration, and I am sure that 
no one who reads Neale’s analysis will ever forget it. Those skeptical that anything so 
abstract as philosophy of language might helpfully bear upon legal interpretation will 
be very impressed, as was I. 
Galen Strawson does a very good job of presenting the murkiness that always seems 
to attend talking about the self as something we probably just have to come to terms 
with. Before some subjects (the explanatory gap is probably another) we just have to 
forgive ourselves for failing to make complete sense of it all. And he is excellent at 
presenting the views he himself does not like so much with fairness and respect. His 
gentle rejection of a conception of self that leans heavily on the idea of a “narrative” was, 
for this reader, a model of how one might separate oneself from views that dominate 
in our culture today in the most respectful way imaginable, and for excellent reasons. 
Noel Carroll takes us briskly through a variety of explanations of how humor works with 
great clarity. Generalizations are appropriately modified, the role of deep psychological 
forces, such as confronting incongruity, exploring our own sentimentality, are 
considered and given their due. There is throughout this collection a deep strand of 
naturalism – philosophers very much want to connect their philosophical accounts 
to plausible accounts of evolution or our biological nature – and Carroll’s remarks 
on humor do this with a very light touch. The connections are there, but they are not 
made reductively. 
Sometimes a heavy touch is exactly what comes to be impressive. Gary Francione’s 
defense of “animal abolitionism” (not using animals in any way, for anything, at all 
– even as pets) is without doubt the most unqualified view of anything I have ever 
seen in print. I recommend it for its single mindedness, for Francione’s refusal to be 
distracted by anything that might even be taken to masquerade as a consideration 
counting towards the other side. That many people have found in their relations to pets 
or farm animals a satisfying way into their own emotional nature is just not taken up 
at all. (Take that, Temple Grandin.) But not since Peter Singer challenged us regarding 
our spending on frivolous things when others would benefit so much more from these 
sums has a public intellectual mounted so fierce a challenge to our everyday habits.
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The sections with Daniel Dennett on free will, Frank Jackson on Mary, and Ned Block on 
consciousness are all fine, workable, and worth reading, if generally not all that exciting. 
Dennett and Jackson both seem a bit exhausted by the subjects that have made them 
famous. In Jackson’s case, what comes to dominate his talk in the end is the story of how 
he came to change his mind about Mary, and why he no longer sees it as a counter example 
to materialism after all. With admirable self-deprecation, he recounts how he came to 
find his own appeal to these experiences when making his argument incompatible with 
his epiphenomenalism (something must be causing my memory of these things when I 
talk about them, he thinks), and he comes to think that accepting representationalism 
about perception makes it possible to redescribe the Mary story in a way that no longer 
comes tied to non-material fact talk, talk he himself pressed so hard, and for a while, so 
successfully, against materialism. Of course, “something happens” to Mary when she 
sees that tomato, (she can represent something in the world she could not before) but 
with representationalism in the background, Jackson thinks there is now no need to say 
she learns about a new fact or property. And rounding out the section on consciousness, 
Ned Block makes a very nice point several times in his talk – if consciousness really is a 
thing, and not something we will learn about a priori, then, we must expect we will be 
sometimes surprised by what we find when we investigate it. 
And now to some of the less satisfying entries. It is very much to PBA’s credit that 
punishment and responsibility get the attention that they do. In a way, these subjects 
have receded from the philosophical spotlight in recent years. Topics like the problem 
of consciousness, or how best to understand intentionality, or global inequality, or what 
it means to respect religious identity, occupy the philosophically ambitious today. And 
so, as I say, it is very much a good thing to see these almost old-fashioned subjects get 
here the consideration they so very much deserve. Victor Tadros speaks on punishment 
generally, and Nicola Lacey on criminal responsibility in back to back sections. But both 
are by turns misleading and incomplete. Tadros quite naturally, begins by rehearsing 
consequentialist and retributivist views. But readers beware: these are not at all 
satisfactory or accurate accounts. When considering consequentialism Tadros “does not 
think we could rule out the possibility” that “we could do more good than harm by 
punishing an innocent person.” (153 – 154) I was quite surprised to read this. I thought it 
was understood, ever since Rawls made this point in “Two Concepts of Rules” (now sixty 
years ago) that institutions – such as telishment, in which we would inflict suffering on 
the innocent for allegedly good consequences – must be taken up and assessed publicly. 
It is certainly not all obvious that we could produce “more good than harm” when it is 
known that the bearer of such treatment is not in fact guilty of anything in the first place, 
and nothing follows, nothing at all, about a so-called justification story if we assume 
the truth of what we are doing is kept hidden. I was quite surprised Warburton did not 
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offer any form of this objection. Further, Tadros’ characterization of retributivism was 
highly objectionable. For Tadros, retributivism is the view that the “suffering of offenders 
is a good thing” and that we should “take pleasure or satisfaction at the suffering of 
other people.” (155) Kant would be aghast at this brute, intuition like characterization of 
retributivist justifications. There is no mention of the way retributivist conceptions grow 
out of a contract like view or a conception of reciprocity. Much as in a tort context, if you 
do not keep your contract, and damage the other party as a result, it seems reasonable 
to say that you then ought to make the other party whole, so the retributivist sees 
punishment in the criminal context as a response to the violation of an already agreed 
upon obligation, proportional to the wrongness of the intention. Tadros’ hostility to any 
sort of retributivist justification leads him, rather shamelessly I would say, to claim there 
just is no good reason to punish at all besides deterrence. He will handle the so-called 
problem of punishing the innocent by simply stipulating that “punishment” (logically, 
as it were) must be of the guilty alone. Fine. But he quite fails to see how little this gives 
him. If we are driven solely by deterrence considerations, and we assume those punished 
will be guilty, the earlier problem now just presents itself as a question of limits. Someone 
guilty of non-violent drug use or prostitution is still guilty. If the only way to prevent 
others from engaging in this behavior is to sentence those we catch to twenty years, 
do we do it? I don’t think so. Without retributivist intuitions about the wrongness (or 
relative innocence) of the intent, the whole enterprise is hopeless. Tadros’ failure even to 
mention these considerations as possible reasons to move away from a wholly deterrence 
centered conception (which he clearly favors) was for this reader a real low point in 
PBA’s presentation of an issue. 
Less egregious but still annoying is Nicola Lacey’s discussion of criminal responsibility. 
After a tour of various conceptions of responsibility, some requiring the intentional 
act to be expressive of character, and some not, she provokes the reader with the claim 
that “criminal law often holds us responsible for outcomes we cause even without these 
more muscular forms of responsibility, like negligence, let alone foresight, knowledge or 
intention.” (150) When a clearly surprised Warburton asks for an example, she speaks of 
speeding tickets(!). While it is true that claims you did not do it intentionally tend not to 
matter in traffic court, this is for several reasons. First it is just not credible, when you are 
doing something as intentionally rich as driving, that you are unaware of your speed; as 
a result, we are rightly not interested in taking seriously any claim to the contrary along 
those lines. (It is sort of the same with perpetrating investment fraud over a period of 
time – it’s hard to claim you were not aware of what you were doing.) And second, this 
is just not a central case of criminal responsibility. It is, for public policy reasons, a “strict 
liability” crime (handgun possession may be the same). Nothing interesting follows from 
the fact that, on the margins of criminal law, we treat certain acts more like torts, in which 
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we put parties on notice that they must be vigilant; being innocent of intending the harm 
here will not defeat the charge. And in these cases, unsurprisingly, the “punishment” is 
typically a fine, not imprisonment. It is again a disappointment to the reader the host was 
not a bit more demanding of the guest in the face of such claims. 
Finally, a brief remark, perhaps partisan, on Rae Langton on hate speech. Langton furrows 
her brow and professes to find it “odd” that America has not adopted constraints on so 
called hate speech, because as far as she can see, “there is nothing in the Constitution 
itself that should really prevent the U.S. from having laws that were similar to those that 
are in force in Europe.” (201 – 202) Well, perhaps a look at the case law might dissolve 
the mystery. Nor does Langton, who can find no justification at all for American First 
Amendment jurisprudence, ever take up the tricky matter of disallowing hate speech 
but allowing the publication of objectionable ideology. Will we make it impossible to 
read Mein Kampf (or Nietzsche for that matter) or to see Birth of A Nation? If not, if that 
sort of thing is not going to be interfered with, then expressing certain remarks we could 
find in such works, outside of a context where they can induce violence, is not easy to 
prohibit either. Reflecting on these considerations might make American law seem less 
“unjustifiable.”
But on the whole, this is an impressive book. Not only is there a lot of variety, in subject 
matter and in the temperament of the philosophers who speak to these subjects, there 
is a lot for the reader even (perhaps especially) when disagreeing. Anyone considering 
presenting any of these subjects to an introductory class would be very well served 
by using the relevant section in this book, and anyone interested, as a professional 
philosopher, in these subjects will certainly come away stimulated. It is not common to 
recommend a series of brief treatments. We live an era that prizes the detailed argument 
the specialist can appreciate. But in reading PBA we are reminded of how much we prize 
to the point conversation on an interesting subject. It seems philosophers have a lot to 
say, of interest to any curious person, about the real world after all. 


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