390 Teaching Philosophy 39:3, September 2016

No resolution available here will please everyone. But, even worse, since
both A and C—a majority—prefer (3) to (2) it seems that the preferable
ranking should be (3)>(2). But by exactly the same token regarding A and B
we have (2)>(1). And again by the same token regarding C and A, we have
(1)>(3). (161)
You will pardon your students if they scratch their heads over the last two
sentences. Clearly, they should have read, “. . . regarding B and C we have . . .”
and then, “. . . regarding A and B we have . . .” Condorcet’s paradox raises
an important point about the limitations of democratic process, and Rescher
explains it beautifully, except for this blatant error.
One more example:
Zeno’s paradox thus affords a far-reaching methodological lesson, namely,
that situations of approaching inconsistency can elicit a philosophical de-
liberation and that driving distinction affords an effective and substantive
means of coping with the problem of consistency and restoration that be-
comes unavoidable here. (26)
Frankly, I don’t know what that means.
Carping about copyediting seems small-minded, but I do so because
otherwise this is a beautiful little book. I know no other like it. You and your
students can dip in anywhere and follow the connections from one anecdote to
another. Students who find themselves interested in one of Rescher’s puzzles
or illustrations can follow his suggestions for further reading at the end of
each chapter. And there it is even possible that students who openly proclaim
the uselessness of philosophy will find their curiosity piqued.
I hope there’s a second, and better edited, edition soon.
Philip Smith, College of Christian Studies, Box 6042, George Fox University, 414 N.
Meridian Street, Newberg OR 97132; [email protected]

What Philosophy Can Do

Gary Gutting
New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2015; hardcover, 320 pp., $27.95; 978-0-
393-24227-0

MATTHEW VAN CLEAVE

If Gutting’s What Philosophy Can Do feels a bit didactic at times, that’s be-
cause it’s supposed to be. As a work of public philosophy, it seeks not only
to explain what philosophy is, but also to demonstrate what philosophy can
do for society—i.e., why it is important for people other than academic phi-
losophers. The fundamental question that animates the book is one that any
undergraduate philosophy major should wrestle with: what is philosophy and
what is its significance not only historically, but also for our society today?
Ultimately Gutting’s book is a work of metaphilosophy. The book is divided
© Teaching Philosophy, 2016. All rights reserved. 0145-5788 pp. 390–394
DOI: 10.5840/teachphil201639373
 REVIEWS 391

into ten chapters, nine of which consider various polarizing issues that exist
within society (political disagreement, the nature and limits of science, the
nature of religion and of its relationship with science, the nature capitalism
and its relationship with work and education, the nature of art, and the moral
permissibility of abortion) and the last of which articulates the metaphilosophy
that has animated Gutting’s discussion of the first-order issues in the first
nine chapters. As Gutting notes in the introduction, the book itself derives
from a number of shorter pieces he has written for the New York Times’s
philosophy blog, The Stone.
Philosophy has not been without its detractors, many of which, in re-
cent years, have been scientists of some repute (Hawking, deGrasse Tyson,
Krauss, Harris, etc.). A common, if often implicit, assumption of many of
these criticisms is that the goal of philosophy is to produce definitive, agreed-
upon answers to perennial philosophical questions (e.g., questions about
the soul, free will, justice, morality, etc.). One way of explaining Gutting’s
metaphilosophy is by contrasting it with this assumption. Indeed, if the goal
of philosophy really were to secure such definitive answer, we should agree
with the detractors that philosophy hasn’t much to show for itself. But this
would be to hold philosophy to the wrong standard, according to Gutting. It
is one of Gutting’s central contentions that for any set of beliefs some subset
of them are axiomatic and cannot (and need not) be supported by rational
argument. He calls these unsupported axioms “convictions” (16). Since people
can plausibly start with different convictions, the positions that can be ratio-
nally defended will be plural, not singular. That doesn’t mean that anything
goes—far from it. Rather, it means that the aspiration of philosophy isn’t to
find the One Right Answer, but to articulate the different possible positions
which rest on different sets of convictions (“pictures”) (18). Gutting calls
this articulation of one’s convictions “intellectual maintenance” and claims
that it consists of two parts: responding to objections to our convictions and
clarifying what our convictions entail and what other convictions they’re
consistent/inconsistent with (258). In a pluralistic society in which there are
many different sets of convictions, intellectual maintenance is important be-
cause it is a means by which we maintain our identity (267). One might wish
that Gutting’s line of reasoning were a bit clearer on this point, but as I see
it the basic idea is that one’s deeply held beliefs and values (convictions) are
central to one’s identity, thus being able to maintain these beliefs and values
is crucial for maintaining our identities. But philosophical thinking is the
means by which we maintain these beliefs—i.e., articulate their consistency
and defend them against attack.
If the goal of philosophy is the articulation of the relationship between
ideas rather than determining which ideas are true, then those who criticize
philosophy for failing to attain the latter are attacking a straw man. But ac-
cording to Gutting, philosophy “is more than a series of disparate interven-
tions to help with isolated intellectual problems” (259). There is a framework
392 Teaching Philosophy 39:3, September 2016

within which we can understand modern philosophical disagreements. Gut-

ting uses Wilfrid Sellars’s distinction between the “manifest image” and the
“scientific image” to explain this framework. Whereas the manifest image
understands human beings from a perspective according to which conscious-
ness, perception, and thought are explanatorily basic, the scientific image
understands human beings from a perspective according to which, ultimately,
electrons and quarks, not human beings, are basic. Whereas an older tradition
of philosophy concerned itself with articulating answers to questions from
within the manifest image, the emergence the scientific image has raised a
new question: what is the relationship between the manifest and scientific
image of human beings? This new task of philosophy conforms to Gutting’s
view of philosophy as answering questions of relationships between ideas.
Importantly, this isn’t something that science itself can do.
Gutting attempts to walk a line between a textbook and an original work.
This is tough to do, but I think he does it reasonably well. As I see it, the best
use of this text would be in a capstone-type course in philosophy, although
some of the chapters could be used to supplement topics in more bread-and-
butter type philosophy courses. In the rest of this review, I’ll briefly consider
some of first-order issues that constitute the bulk of the book. I’ll be specifi-
cally concerned to highlight issues that relate to his metaphilosophy or that I
think would be interesting to discuss in an undergraduate philosophy course.
In chapter 1, after laying out some basic concepts about the nature of
argument and after arguing that unargued-for assumptions (convictions) are
at the root of every argument, Gutting considers the epistemic problem of
disagreement between epistemic peers. In the case of disagreement between
me and an epistemic peer (roughly, a person who I see as well-informed
and reasonable as I am), should I give up my belief (or at least back off the
strength with which I hold it) or cling to it? The former seems like it would
lead towards skepticism, but it could also put into jeopardy our personal in-
tegrity and identity. If what’s at stake in a disagreement is a conviction, and
if my deepest convictions are an integral part of my identity, then there are
pragmatic reasons that I should stick to my convictions rather than abandon
them when in disagreement with an epistemic peer (p. 26). However, when the
issue is not one of personal integrity, I should perhaps be willing to back off
my claims in the face of disagreements with epistemic peers (28). Engaging
in argument is valuable because it can actually occasion self-understanding
regarding what my convictions are and how deeply I hold them (27).
In chapters 2–3, Gutting considers the nature and limits of science. In
particular, he considers a number of question that science cannot by itself
answer, including the nature of consciousness, morality, and the origin of
the universe. In every case his conclusion is that “the scientific challenge
to philosophy ultimately rests on philosophical assumptions” (87). I think
Gutting is right about this, but I think he could have more clearly articulated
the relationship between philosophy and science in these chapters. At one
 REVIEWS 393

point, while considering the implications of findings in neuroscience for the

question of free will, Gutting says,
It may well be that philosophers will never arrive at a full understanding
of what, in all possible circumstances, it means for choices to be free. But
working with brain scientists, they may learn enough to decide whether the
choices we make in ordinary circumstances are free. Science and philoso-
phy together may reach a solution to the problem of free will that neither
alone could achieve. (68–69)
Here, I think Gutting has missed an opportunity to apply (and perhaps misap-
plied) his metaphilosophy. It is not the task of philosophy to produce the one,
correct view of “free will.” Rather, it is the task of philosophy to articulate dif-
ferent conceptions of free will and then to trace out the conceptual connections
between those conceptions, the science, and other convictions and commit-
ments. It may well be that certain conceptions of free will (such as Chisholm’s
agent causation view) do not sit comfortably with our scientific understanding
of the brain. If so, I would count this as a philosophy’s contribution to our
understanding of free will, regardless of whether philosophers ever come to
agree on “what, in all possible circumstances, it means for choices to be free.”
In chapters 4–5, Gutting considers the existence of god and religious
belief, criticizing the arguments of the so-called “new atheists” as too facile.
On the other side, although Gutting thinks that many of the theistic arguments
are left standing in the “wake” of the new atheists, these arguments push the
theist towards ever more rarefied conceptions of a divine being. The god of
the philosophers is not really anything close to the god of religious experience
and practice. The problem of evil can be answered, but only by reference to
god’s omniscience, which raises the possibility that human beings themselves
are simply a means to an end of god’s plan, not the end itself. Once a greater
good and god’s omniscience is invoked, “we . . . have no way of knowing
whether [human misery] is an unavoidable step in the soul-making process
of a super-race whose eventual achievements would make our ultimate loss
acceptable to God” (124). Gutting defends a kind of religious agnosticism,
according to which we can uphold the moral and aesthetic elements of re-
ligion while rejecting the metaphysical elements. Indeed, we should reject
the metaphysical claims religions make since they “do not meet ordinary
(common-sense or scientific) standards for establishing a body of knowledge”
(p. 135). Philosophers such as William Alston and Alvin Plantinga (whose
work Gutting knows well) would disagree here. At the very least, this would
be a point of departure for further philosophical dialogue.
In chapters 6–7, Gutting considers the nature of happiness, work, and
education in a capitalistic society. Gutting sees capitalism not so much as
bad, but dangerous (borrowing a nice turn of phrase from Foucault) (163).
The dangers are to individual happiness and freedom. Gutting’s analysis of
capitalism turns on the idea that we need to distinguish between what truly
makes us happy and what we desire, which is a substantial ethical commit-
394 Teaching Philosophy 39:3, September 2016

ment (conviction?) on his part. True happiness requires fulfilling work as well
as leisure time, but capitalism can threaten both. To neutralize this threat we
must set up institutions that function as a check on the tendency of capital-
ism to push in the direction of a world in which we act to fulfill desires that
we have acquired under the influence of advertising—a “WALL-E” world.
Hence the need for education. Gutting puts forward a view of the function
of education, and of college in particular, that would be interesting for un-
dergraduates to discuss. Very roughly, he claims that there are two kinds of
education: the instrumental, job training sort that supports capitalism (which
he thinks should be the domain of primary and secondary education) and col-
lege education, which is not instrumentally tied to job training and skills, but
to the promotion of “intellectual culture: a world of ideas dedicated to what
we can know scientifically, understand humanistically, or express artistically”
(172). The point of college education is to be exposed to this intellectual
culture, which the good professor does by “helping students have certain
experiences: intellectual, emotional, aesthetic, and even moral experiences
of reading, discussing, and writing about classic works,” the point of which
is to “make students aware of new possibilities for intellectual and aesthetic
fulfillment” (184). The aesthetic value of thinking can act as a counterweight
to the aesthetic value of consumption—a balance that is needed in order for
people to achieve freedom and happiness in a capitalistic society (185). Thus,
a college education, unlike primary/secondary education, tempers, rather
than supports, capitalism. This bifurcated view of the education system is
interesting, but it is hard to imagine how it could be just and equitable un-
less a college education were as accessible as primary/secondary education.
Matthew Van Cleave, Lansing Community College, 411 N. Grand Avenue, Lansing MI
48933; [email protected]

Mass Moralizing: Marketing and Moral Storytelling

Phil Hopkins
Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2015; hardcover, 225 pp., $90.00; 978-0-7391-
8851-4

ANDY WIBLE
McDonald’s instructs us how to be good parents, Saturn cars persuade us to see
ourselves as members of a caring support group, and Warby Parker induces us
to feel like humanitarians just for buying a pair of glasses: Phil Hopkins’s Mass
Moralizing: Marketing and Moral Storytelling is a unique analysis of the perva-
siveness of this kind of moralizing discourse in contemporary mass marketing.
Hopkins worries that marketers today co-opt prevailing values to manipulate
susceptible populations into actually attributing those values to their products.
We may feel virtuous for choosing certain cleverly advertised products, but we
© Teaching Philosophy, 2016. All rights reserved. 0145-5788 pp. 394–397
DOI: 10.5840/teachphil201639374