Against Biting Bullets (700 words)

Jephthah's Vow, Edwin Long (1829-1891)

Back in spring 2019, I listened to a talk by an undergraduate who defended prison abolition before it was cool. The presenter capably argued that, given the deplorable condition of American prisons, all prisoners are morally justified in trying to escape. My memory of the talk is quite muddled now, but perhaps his argument was based on the right to self-defense: If a specific person puts me in physical danger, then I am justified in defending myself with force, and sometimes even lethal force. As long as I didn't initiate the violence in this particular situation, my right to defend myself does not depend on anything I've done up to this point. Shouldn't it follow that, when prisoners face an exaggerated risk of physical abuse, murder, and sexual assault, and when even their normal conditions threaten to damage their health in the long term, they are justified in simply walking away? 

During the Q&A, a professor asked whether this argument applies to even the very worst and most dangerous offenders, such as Ted Bundy. The presenter thought about this for a moment and said, "I'm going to bite the bullet and say that Ted Bundy has a right to escape, too." 

I don't mean to pick on this presenter: I really liked his talk, I roughly agree with him, and I enjoyed speaking with him that weekend. Still, I think that his presentation will be helpful for articulating my problem with biting philosophical bullets, that is, accepting an undesirable or unintuitive outcome of one's views while also acknowledging that the view is costly. Although this move is common in analytic philosophy, we should jettison it entirely.

Suppose it's true that Ted Bundy had a moral right to escape from prison. Far from being an undesirable outcome of the theory, this would be an important moral insight. The student would not have bitten a bullet so much as found a diamond in the rough. There would be no cost and no need to apologize. 

Suppose, however, that this view is false, and that it would have been immoral for Bundy to escape from prison. If a theory entails a false view, then it must be wrong; logic leaves no room for differences in taste. At a minimum, the student would have to explain why his arguments apply to most prisoners but not to Ted Bundy.

"Biting the bullet" is a rhetorical move that creates the illusion of philosophical content. It's as if the speaker says, "I recognize that you have distaste for this feature of my view. I have distaste for it, too. However, I suspect that you like the rest of my arguments enough to accept them anyway. I'm content with this outcome, and I think you should feel the same way." This move often succeeds at quieting concerns that should be taken more seriously, trivializing the implications of good arguments while obscuring problems for weak ones.

Even when they don't use this phrase, philosophers make a similar error when they evaluate theories based on their preferences for some conclusions over others. Peter Forrest, for example, argues against a view in the metaphysics of time partly on the basis that it implies that we are distressingly cut off from other people, each of us occupying a different time-slice. Our emotions clearly have no bearing on the nature of time; in fact, if Forrest doesn't like this outcome, then he should probably be very displeased with the conclusions of modern physics. Just as bullet-biting is a non-rational means of relieving anxiety about a view, Forrest uses a non-rational strategy to create worries for his opponent.

I don't mean to suggest that philosophers need to have ready responses to every possible worry for their views; it's perfectly fine to set aside some questions for later consideration. The student presenter might have said, "I haven't fully thought this through, so I'll have to think about whether the theory makes sense for Ted Bundy. I might need to make a few modifications, but I'm not sure yet." Rather than giving the impression that the speaker has somehow dealt with the problem, this response acknowledges that there are important questions he hasn't addressed and flags those questions for further consideration.