Customer Reviews

Pig That Wants to Be Eaten

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Douglas Adams posed many a philosophical question in his works. For some, the most hilarious - or disturbing, was the meal that introduced itself and recommended certain portions for consumption. In a society fully detached from the processing of living flesh into oven-ready tidbits, Adams portrayal of "the pig that wants to be eaten" seems outlandish. Yet, is there truly a moral issue in developing a food that not only embraces the opportunity to be consumed, but has the capacity to help the diner choose the more desireable cut. ?

Julian Baggini poses this and ninety-nine other questions in this tantalising collection. Many of the topics he raises have been with us for millennia - remaining unresolved today. The author draws the old questions to centre stage, clad in modern finery and make-up. The new appearance helps bring the reader into the questions with a greater sense of comfort, one hopes. But when the last line has been read, it's clear that this isn't just an entertaining recasting of old conundrums, but of serious issues we confront daily. Reading them all in one go could be dangerous to your mental health!

Many readers will have encountered these issues previously: if your brain is transplanted to another body, are you still you? Or if that bastion of "consciousness" is instead placed in a vat of nutrients and wired into a computer that feeds it sensory information, are you still "real"? If your ATM grants you ten thousand dollars when you asked for a hundred, are you "morally bound" to return it [assuming the bank's auditors can't track where it went]? On a lighter note, we might consider whether a sculpture produced by Nature is a work of art. If it is, who sets a value on it? How much would you pay for it?

Baggini manages to prompt us with [mostly] plausible circumstances and definitely important questions. He does it in a couple of pages dedicated to each, and never provides a satisfactory answer to any of them. That's right and proper, since the questions posed must be applied by the reader to their own circumstances. He raises questions of who can pollute and the options confronting us all on how far our committments can reach in an increasingly interconnected world. The author's style is that of a fellow commuter on the bus or train every morning. The reading is easy, the format is simple. And each question generates long periods of reflection or exchanges over a beer. Few are resolved easily. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

"The Pig That Wants to be Eaten" presents a number (100, actually!) of interesting philosophical puzzles and paradoxes that can be used as a starting point for deeper inspection on topics such as consciousness, self, and other philosophical goodies.

In the sense that the book's short vignettes each for the most part illustrate or introduce one particular philosophical issue, I guess it could be considered a success. However, some minor kudos for compiling a list of 100 such topics / vignettes notwithstanding, part of me thinks that it's a rather low bar to set. After all, one can spend a lifetime contemplating almost any statement. Even a straightforward statement such as "This is a pencil" can be analyzed without limit.

So the interest is not so much in the questions, but in the author's guidance as to what the interesting things about such statements are. In this, I found the book a bit shallow and condescending. The readers of this book are likely to be relatively smart people looking for an intellectual workout. The book reads like a substitute junior high school teaching trying to "blow the minds" of a sleepy and none-too-bright bunch of children. We are handheld to conclusions and paradoxes that we see from miles away. This book would have been far more obvious if it spared us the obvious and was a bit, well, more intelligent and nuanced.

I'm not saying that writing "more intelligently" on such topics, while maintaining the book's admiral simplicity and clarity is particularly easy. But, I am saying that it would have made the book far better and also stimulated more thought.

As it were, I wouldn't go out of my way for this book, though I'd consider giving it as a gift to a particularly bright junior high school student who is at that stage where he/she thinks that he/she is the first person in the universe to ask the "big questions."

The experiment in the title of this book is taken from 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where it is done in a light and amusing way, but still makes a philosophical point. Some of the other experiments are obviously rewritten from Martin Cohen's earlier classic book of 101 thought experiments, others are old 'evergreens', but this Bagini book is a useful rewrite of the present range of philosophical stories.

Was in the library some months back to check on a book and had paused for a bit to read a few magazine articles. Suddenly another library patron at the other end of the table broke out loud laughing, enough so that she had to put the book down and walk outside while trying to regain control of herself.

Curiosity got the better of me, and I had to take a glance at the book title: it was Julian Baggini's The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, which I thought was quite an unusual title. I went on the library's wait list, then got it a few days later.

The key experiment in the title of this book is taken from Douglas Adams' The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, where it is covered in an often buoyant and entertaining way, but still makes a philosophical point.

Must admit that I often like philosophical subjects when they border on the unusual, and the more peculiar, the better. This 'thought-experiment' book seems to fit that bill quite well. The author is Dr. Julian Baggini, editor and co-founder of 'The Philosopher's Magazine', where they've recently had a fascinating dialogue going on about the now-infamous "Joe the Plumber" issue, but that's another story in itself. This quarterly features "a variety of articles around a specific theme, such as bioethics, existentialism, sex, after 11 September and women thinkers," according to the author. He's also an occasional columnist at 'Butterflies and Wheels' if you're inclined to read about "Pseudoscience that is ideologically and politically motivated", which I am.

The title story of the pig that wants to be eaten is based on the talking cow from Douglas Adams' book, a creature that presents itself to diners as the main course before parting with "A very wise choice, sir, if I may say so ... I'll just nip off and shoot myself." Baggini presents us with a man who had previously been a vegetarian, but was about to sit down to a true feast of pork and chicken, and able to indulge in meat with a clear conscience. The pork had come from a genetically engineered pig that had been able to speak... and also truly wanted to be eaten.

Baggini asks if there would be anything morally wrong with killing and eating an animal that had been genetically engineered to want to speak and be eaten, pointing out that while most of us find the idea of killing, then eating such an animal doesn't necessarily establish that we would be morally wrong to do so. He offers a hundred philosophical conundrums that will stimulate thought on a multitude of social, moral, and individual dilemmas.

On the other hand, one could also say that there are no talking pigs, so no tales like this can offer anything of importance. Or can they? And what if the pig could talk? As the 'The Sunday Times' (London) observed, this book is "a portable feast for the mind that is sure to satisfy any intellectual appetite," and I must agree

If you find books like this thought-provoking, then you might also wish to look into his other works, such as What's It All About?: Philosophy and the Meaning of Life and his newest offering The Duck That Won the Lottery, which is about how to avoid making, and being taken in by bad arguments and rhetoric.

Must explain that that I often try to find some humor in philosophical thoughts and writings, and for that it's pretty hard to beat Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein. As the product description explains: "Some of the Big Ideas are Existentialism (what do Hegel and Bette Midler have in common?), Philosophy of Language (how to express what it's like being stranded on a desert island with Halle Berry), Feminist Philosophy (why, in the end, a man is always a man), and much more." Sounds about right to me.

In any case, I never did find out what caused the woman at the library to go into spontaneous outbursts of laughter, but there were parts of this philosophical book that did indeed cause me to smile. Savor this offering, a taste or two at a time. It's an interesting read, to say the least.