A selection of the best from recent issues of the Philosopher

Martin Cohen finds a funny taste in the latest philosophy blockbuster:

The Pig that Wants to be Eaten

Anyway, now I see the book, which has been preceded by extensive coverage in all the main UK papers and quite a few of the minor ones too. That is perhaps the main difference between the two books. It is what the French call 'le marketing'. Stephen Law, who has a particular interest in philosophical stories for teaching philosophy with children, reviewed it for Baggini's own newspaper, The Guardian, (which had already extensively 'trailed' the release by inviting the usual 'famous philosophers' to comment on it) in terms that seemed to confirm its origins thus:

The format is essentially the same as that first successfully introduced by Martin Cohen's 101 Philosophy Problems. Each thought experiment is set up in one or two paragraphs, followed by a few hundred words of thought-provoking discussion.

Actually, it is not only is 'the format' that is similar (not identical of course, for there are only 100 'problems' in Baginni's book and one more in mine!) , but there is also substantial duplication of content, and various stylistic and narrative devices developed needed in order to create the large number of little stories that make up both the 101 Philosophy Problems and the 101 Ethical Dilemmas .

For example, devices such as little snatches of conversation between made-up characters used to enliven debates that up until then always seemed to be stuck in the 'dispassionate report' style of academe. What do I mean by that? ) The favoured kind of prose, typical of philosophers is that of the learned academic. Garrett Hardin, introducing the 'original lifeboat' analogy writes thus:

Metaphorically, each rich nation amounts to a lifeboat full of comparatively rich people. The poor of the world are in other, much more crowded, lifeboats. Continuously, so to speak, the poor fall out of their lifeboats and swim for a while in the water outside, hoping to be admitted to a rich lifeboat, or in some other way to benefit from the 'goodies' on board. What should the passengers on a rich lifeboat do? This is the central problem of 'the ethics of a lifeboat'

Lifeboat Earth deaths will be unavoidable because of the killer's ignorance of some relevant circumstance at the time of his decision to act. If B is driving a train, and A blunders onto the track and is either unnoticed ... 

Let us imagine six survivors on a lifeboat. ...On an under-equipped lifeboat with six persons, water is so scarce that only four can survive (perhaps the distillation unit ... 

Most 'interesting' (to use one Baggini's favourite words) of all the similarities arises in comparing Philosophy Problems 54 and 55, with Baggini's 'Thought Experiment' 32. I offered what I believed to be a novel take on Turing's argument about computer intelligence - I imagined a court case in which a computer takes proceedings against its owner - a Mr Megasoft. The scenario is centered on the computer speaking. In Thought Experiment 32 in The Pig, Baggini features a novel way of presenting Turing's argument about computer intelligence - he imagines a court case in which a computer takes proceedings against its owner who is called (because Baggini has no use for irrelevancy) Mr Gates! The scenario is centered on the computer speaking. 

Could Bagginni have read and reviewed both the '101s'? Indeed, he has. In fact, of the first he was enthusiastic saying that:

"Each Problem is related in the form of a short (rarely more than one page) narrative. There are paradoxes, moral dilemmas, scientific and religious problems among others. It is some achievement that Cohen succeeds, not only in getting the problems across clearly and succinctly, but also in raising a smile and occasional full-blown hoot."

Far from 'the Pig' being a series of clumsy retreads from the two '101s', Julian tells me that there are additional examples of the more conventional kind of 'thought experiments' favoured by the likes of Derek Parfit, plus a couple from Bernard Williams and David Hume. However, again, it is not clear quite why the experiments are sourced to these philosophers, or what their opinions were. Baggini prefers to present the reader with 'his' insights, and rarely offers any direct quotation from philosophical works. 

This is particularly a shame with Hume, who wrote very clearly, and from whom he might also have taken the convention of printing 'The same subject discuss'd again' in the margins (as indeed Baggini often returns to essentially the same problem).

And then, interspersed throughout are what I believe must be Baginni's own ideas, such as the problem of having your curry served by a white person, or whether it is ever right to buy coffee beans that have been picked by people abroad on low wages. There are several scenarios on 'rationality' such as the bizarre discussion of 'Squaring the Circle'. This, let me quickly say, it is certainly not in any of my books, but is rather Baggini returning to his favoured topic of the superiority of 'rationality' over faith. He offers, as he puts it, a 'smart arse philosopher' defying religious types who want to say that a circle is a square! Yet he exhibits a curious ignorance of the problem of 'squaring the circle' which indeed perplexed philosophers from Plato to Hobbes and beyond. The problem is nothing to do with definitions of squares and circles but is rather to do with methods of proofs in geometry, and the 'irrationality' of the number pi. Baggini seems to be imagining that philosophers decide which numbers are rational or irrational. At least it is an original discussion.

But isn't The Pig to be praised for ranging so widely across the various disciplines? Again, the ground covered is similar to the two original '101' books concealed, under the breezy surface, the simple appeal, is a more complex pedagogy. They came from efforts to develop a series of philosophical and ethical scenarios that could be copied onto a single sheet of A4 and presented for discussion to small groups of students drawn from different disciplines. Hence the scenarios had to be written without presupposing any philosophical knowledge. Naturally, each presents or prompts a question with 'philosophical aspects', covering a range of issues. And these issues, which was a novelty for academic philosophy, stretched widely in the original 101s. They were interdisciplinary in scope, cutting freely across the studies of philosophy, psychology, economics, cosmology, politics, art, and of course ethics. 

Baggini's book follows many of the same interests, it appears. Suffice to say, that here is considerable overlap in content. Many of these ideas, it is true, are old favourites, to be found in many places. I did not invent all my stories but researched them using many books. Naturally many books 'share' some ideas . But Baginni's book is remarkable in containing so many of the same ones! 
The style of discussion in the Pig is however very different. Baggini writes as though a Professor of Great Philosophical Wisdom, not unlike those people who write columns in the Sunday papers on ethics, and offers pronouncements on a wide range of issues. 'Therefore either one of the two arguments is flawed, or there is some kind of incoherence or contradiction in the problem itself which makes it irresolvable' he offers helpfully in reference to 'Newcomb's Problem', in his 'breezy and accessible style' (The New Humanist).

The aim of the original strategy and original books was always to encourage debate. I would say that that is perhaps the main difference. Curiously, in his emails to me over the similarities of the books, Bagginni agreed this was the main difference, but put it exactly the other way round! I offered pronouncements or 'answers' and he offered 'discussions'. (That despite my section being headed 'discussions' and the foreword having advised the reader that seeing the 'problems' was more important than seeing the 'answers'). 

Baggini is not a bad chap, I'm sure, and his book has been the subject of rave reviews in the Times, the London Review of Books, The New Statesman, the Morning Star - everywhere except here in fact. Of the 100 Thought Experiments I quite liked 'The Elusive I', for example, and the Pig itself, although pointlessly 'academicised' from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, is still quite fun. But there is general point about 'introducing philosophy' that makes airing my doubts of perhaps more than personal interest.

As far as I know, prior to the 101 Philosophy Problems no one had similarly combined 'philosophical' and 'ethical' problems in the same book. This made sense to me, as central to our research at Leeds University was the idea that philosophy is not a body of knowledge but a technique. Baggini combines ethical and philosophical problems as though trying to deliver a double dose of philosophical and ethical knowledge. This would only make sense to me if he were to have tried to reproduce something like the book without agreeing or perhaps even understanding the pedagogical strategy that inspired it. 

Reviewed by Martin Cohen

I offered to settle our disagreement by publishing a kind of medieval 'disputation', but Baggini preferred not to follow up this proposal . The reader however is allowed a little taste of the style of two - let us be generous! - philosophers arguing here.