Abstract
This book is the third volume of transcribed interviews between its compilers and their interviewees, comprising linguists, psychologists, and social scientists as well as philosophers. These recorded interviews first appeared in the podcast series ‘philosophy bites’, and the front flap boasts that they have been downloaded over 22 million times. The book offers transcriptions, which have been adapted to ‘work on the page’ (p. v), but it’s not entirely clear why.
The dust jacket explains that this represents a ‘rare chance to read top level philosophers speaking extemporaneously about the subjects they know best.’ A prospective purchaser might wonder, though, why they should buy a book in order to ‘read’ philosophers ‘speaking’, when it would be just as convenient to listen to them doing so for free. Aspects of the material have not translated well into print. For example, a preserved joke, whose humour depends on audible dialogue, is tiresome on the page (p. 125). And, rather than providing broad overviews, as one might expect from an accessible volume, the interviewees tend unapologetically to defend their own views on the subjects under discussion. The reader might wonder, therefore, whether the interviews did not work better in their original format.
The interviews are organised under broad headings, while each chapter focusses on a single issue. Each chapter is short enough to be accessible but long enough to address the issue in a thought-provoking way. There is a range of topics, theoretical and applied, from ‘Consciousness’ (ch. 8) to ‘Hate Speech’ (ch. 20). The interviewers introduce each topic in clear, accessible terms, using concrete illustrations. They helpfully recapitulate their interlocutors’ views in plain English, which is especially helpful if, as sometimes happens, the latter use technical terms or words (like ‘Lockean’) whose implications won’t be clear to all readers.
Of particular interest are some unconventional or counterintuitive perspectives that the book allows to emerge. For example, Ned Block’s suggestion that one can be conscious of something without realising it (p. 77) and Samuel Scheffler’s use of his chapter on ‘the Afterlife’ (ch. 27) to examine the widespread assumption that other people will continue to live after we have died (p. 273) and to illustrate the highly significant role that this assumption plays in most people’s lives (pp. 276, 280).
This book will be of particular interest to those who want to know what some philosophers think about the topics discussed, especially those who find the podcast format inconvenient.