Dial P for Philosophy (Review of Mary Midgley's Utopias, Dolphins and Computers.)

Mary Midgley's book Utopias, Dolphins and Computers will be needed to recharge our more philosophical approach to life as new problems present themselves to humanity at an accelerated rate. The most dangerous attitude to these challenges, Midgley argues, is an anti-intellectualism that fails to see that all approaches presuppose tacit or hidden assumptions, that is a philosophy. One part of our tacit philosophy that is now breaking up is the social contract, according to Mary Midgley in Utopias, Dolphins and Computers It needs tempering with a vision of people in relationships bordering on the organic—ideas with their roots in ecology—rather than as fundamentally isolated atoms in contractual union.