KEY PHILOSOPHERS IN CONVERSATION ‘Interesting, straightforward and wide-ranging, this book is an excellent introduction to the current state of philosophy.’ Nigel Warburton, Open University ‘The interviews are typically engaging, informative and free of needless technicalities. They contribute to a real clarification of important views.’ Paul Moser, Loyola University, Chicago Key Philosophers in Conversation: The Cogito interviews presents twenty of the most important interviews which the philosophical journal Cogito conducted between 1987 and 1996. The following eminent philosophers discuss their writings and philosophical concerns in a direct and accessible manner which will appeal to specialists and non-specialists alike: Michael Dummett Stephan Körner Bernard Williams Mary Warnock Richard Dawkins Adam Morton Willard Van Orman Alasdair Maclntyre Derek Parfit Quine Dan Dennett Nancy Cartwright Roger Scruton Hugh Mellor John Cottingham Peter Strawson Richard Sorabji Jean Hampton Hilary Putnam David Gauthier Martha Nussbaum Covering a wide spectrum of intellectual enquiry, from logic and metaphysics to philosophy of mind, ethics, and political philosophy, the interviews provide an excellent introduction to philosophy in the English-speaking world at the end of the century. The reader already familiar with the work of these thinkers will gain a fresh perspective on their motivations, influences and personal evaluations of their work, while the non-specialist reader will find much that is enthralling and stimulating about the human face of some of the world’s leading philosophers today. Andrew Pyle is former editor of Cogito and is Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bristol. KEY PHILOSOPHERS IN CONVERSATION The Cogito interviews Edited by Andrew Pyle London and New York First published 1999 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1999 Selection and editorial matter, Andrew Pyle; individual chapters, the Cogito Society All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-01680-7 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-22354-3 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-18036-8 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-18037-6 (pbk) CONTENTS Introduction vii ANDREW PYLE 1 Michael Dummett 1 2 Mary Warnock 8 3 Willard Van Orman Quine 17 4 Roger Scruton 26 5 Peter Strawson 36 6 Hilary Putnam 44 7 Stephan Körner 55 8 Richard Dawkins 65 9 Alasdair Maclntyre 75 10 Dan Dennett 85 11 Hugh Mellor 101 12 Richard Sorabji 114 13 David Gauthier 129 14 Bernard Williams 142 v CONTENTS 15 Adam Morton 164 16 Derek Parfit 179 17 Nancy Cartwright 196 18 John Cottingham 215 19 Jean Hampton 231 20 Martha Nussbaum 239 vi INTRODUCTION The journal Cogito, brainchild of Edo Pivcevic, was launched with a pilot issue in 1986, and had its first full issue in January 1987. For the first two years it was not only edited but also published by the Department of Philosophy of the University of Bristol; then in its third year it was taken on by Carfax of Abingdon. Although its precise form and contents have altered over the years, its mission has remained unchanged: to bring good quality philosophy to a non-specialist readership. Articles had to be short (less than 4,000 words) and clear (avoiding technical jargon), accessible to readers without a formal training in philosophy. There was also an editorial policy of including a more diverse range of materials than the normal scholarly journal: dialogues, short stories, polemics, paradoxes and puzzles have all found space on our pages. Successive editors also strove to preserve a light touch, to enliven the journal with pictures and the occasional dash of humour. We may not always have succeeded, but we have tried to ensure that the journal was never boring. From the very first issue, a key feature of every number of Cogito has been the interview, invariably given pride of place at the front. Indeed, editors such as myself tend to identify a given number with its interviewee, so that Volume 3 No. 2 became ‘Hilary Putnam’ and Volume 8 No. 1 ‘Bernard Williams’. Over the years, the interview has consistently been one of our most popular features, read by philosophers and non-philosophers alike. Non-philosophers might find it hard to read and understand the books and articles on which the reputation of a given thinker depends, but anyone can skim through an informal ten-page interview and obtain some sense both of the gist of his or her work and of the personality that lies behind the writings. It is this last feature, surely, which explains the perennial appeal of the interview: however impersonal the arguments of a philosopher may appear, most readers find themselves drawn to look for the subjective factor, the bit of human (often, all-too-human) biography that ‘explains’ the philosophy. Even fellow-professionals found the interviews well worth reading: the interviewee might provide some insight into the philosophical motivation behind a piece of work, gives an overview emphasising some vii INTRODUCTION things at the expense of others, or indicate a change of mind, emphasis, or even direction. The nature of Cogito’s readership allowed interviewers freedom to roam more widely than would be possible in a professional journal. Our interviewees thus find themselves invited to step outside the ivory tower of academia and address wider questions. They might be asked to explain why non-philosophers should care about the technical details of their work, or why the public purse should support their research. Or they might be asked how they became interested in modal logic, artificial intelligence, or Aristotelian ethics, and how their philosophy has affected more down-to- earth aspects of their life and thought. The interviews are by no means uniform in this regard, but none of them is exclusively professional and technical. As Hume said long ago, ‘Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.’ Or, we must add, a woman—it is good to see that the growing number of women in modern Anglo-American philosophy is well represented among our interviewees. This volume contains twenty of the thirty interviews that appeared during the first ten years of the journal’s existence, from 1987 until 1996. The nature of the interviews was not fixed during this period: as a rough generalisation, the earlier ones tend to be shorter, and to contain rather more biography and rather less philosophy. Interviewers were given considerable liberty to shape each interview as they thought fit, without much attempt at standardisation. So the interviews that make up this volume differ in terms of their length, their style, and their degree of philosophical difficulty. In every case, however, interviewer and interviewee alike were aware of the intended readership of the journal, and under instructions to try to keep the material accessible to the general reader. Some philosophers, the reader of this volume will soon discover, are better communicators of difficult thoughts than others. We have been fortunate, over the years, to have obtained interviews with many of the great figures in modern Anglo-American philosophy. Some big names did escape us (e.g. Kripke, Rawls, Lewis) but our final list of twenty names will still look impressive to any modern philosopher. It also covers the field both geographically and intellectually. If there is a slight British bias, that is perhaps inevitable in a British-based journal, but does not preclude interviews with the Americans Quine, Putnam, Dennett, Cartwright, Nussbaum and Hampton, not to mention Canadians Morton and Gauthier. Intellectually, we cover virtually all aspects of the subject from logic and philosophy of science through metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of mind to ethics and political philosophy, not forgetting parts of the history of philosophy. Anyone reading this volume will get a fair impression of the range of activities that go on in philosophy departments in the English- speaking world, and of the men and women engaging in those activities. Speaking from experience, I can say that our interviewees were without viii INTRODUCTION exception helpful and considerate, willing to give up their time both for the interview itself and for the subsequent editorial process. Our thanks to all these eminent people, who found time to fit in a Cogito interview, often into an already busy schedule. In one or two of the earlier interviews, the name of the interviewer appeared alongside that of the interviewee. In the later issues of the journal, the anonymous ‘Cogito’ was found preferable. This anonymous form has been standardised in this volume. The point is of course to concentrate the minds of readers on the responses of the interviewee, and to make the role of the interviewer(s) as self-effacing as possible. The interview is not a true dialogue, but a sort of assisted monologue, in which the job of the interviewer is not to advance his or her views, but merely to draw out and clarify the opinions of the interviewee, to act as a sort of transparent medium between the interviewee and the readers. But the anonymous interviewers are not forgotten. In addition to thanking the interviewees we must also thank the interviewers, who gave equally of their time and labour, but whose names are not recorded here for posterity.