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 Philosophy Through Film
“Outstanding! I am a major fan of this book and have used it with great success
in my philosophy and film classes. The 4th edition continues to give philosophical
substance to course content that might otherwise wander too far in
the direction of mere film review. The writing style is down to earth, and the
philosophical topics are traditional ones that work perfectly in introduction to
philosophy courses. The authors smartly confine the book to just 16 films that
Fourth Edition
can realistically be viewed during a single semester, and their choice of films is
spot on, including both current and classic ones.”
James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin Philosophy Through Film
In Philosophy through Film, Amy Karofsky and Mary M. Litch use recently released, well-received films
to explore answers to classic questions in philosophy in an approachable yet philosophically rigorous
manner. Each chapter incorporates one or more films to examine one longstanding philosophical
question or problem and assess some of the best solutions that have been offered to it. The authors
fully integrate the films into their discussion of the issues, using them to help students become familiar Amy Karofsky and Mary M. Litch
with key topics in all major areas of Western philosophy and master the techniques of philosophical

Fourth Edition
argumentation.

Revised and expanded, changes to the Fourth Edition include:

• A brand new chapter on the mind-body problem (chapter 4), which includes discussions of
substance dualism, physicalism, eliminativism, functionalism, and other relevant theories.

• The replacement of older movies with nine new focus films: Ad Astra, Arrival, Beautiful Boy,
Divergent, Ex Machina, Her, Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow, A Serious Man, and Silence.

Amy Karofsky and Mary M. Litch

• The addition of two new primary readings to the appendix of source materials: excerpts from
Patricia Smith Churchland’s, “Can Neurobiology Teach Us Anything about Consciousness?” and
Frank Jackson’s “What Mary Didn’t Know.”

• The inclusion of a Website, with Story Lines of Films by Elapsed Time for each focus film.

The films examined in depth are: Ad Astra, Arrival, Beautiful Boy, Crimes and Misdemeanors,
Divergent, Equilibrium, Ex Machina, Gone Baby Gone, Her, Inception, Live Die Repeat: Edge of
Tomorrow, The Matrix, Memento, Minority Report, Moon, A Serious Man, Silence

Amy Karofsky is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Hofstra University.

Mary M. Litch is now retired. Most recently, she served as Director of Learning Spaces at Chapman
University. She has taught philosophy at Chapman University, Yale University, University of Alabama at
Birmingham, and University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Cover image: Still from Arrival (2016). © Paramount Pictures. Used with permission of Paramount Pictures and FilmNation. Courtesy AF Archive.

PHILOSOPHY

ISBN 978-0-367-40850-3

http://www.routledge.com/CW/Karofsky

Routledge titles are available as eBook editions in a range of digital formats 9 780367 408503
“Outstanding! I am a major fan of this book and have used it with great suc-
cess in my philosophy and film classes. The 4th edition continues to give phi-
losophical substance to course content that might otherwise wander too far in
the direction of mere film review. The writing style is down to earth, and the
philosophical topics are traditional ones that work perfectly in introduction to
philosophy courses. The authors smartly confine the book to just 16 films that
can realistically be viewed during a single semester, and their choice of films is
spot on, including both current and classic ones.”
James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin

Praise for previous editions:

“A valuable book for introducing students to the wonder of philosophical
exploration and the power of philosophical reasoning to force us to reevaluate
our reflexive responses to fundamental questions, such as the nature of truth
or the self.”
Jennifer Hansen, St. Lawrence University

“With clarity that doesn’t compromise rigor, Mary Litch and Amy Karofsky
introduce readers new to philosophy to some of its most enduring concerns
and seminal questions, including skepticism, personal identity, artificial intelli-
gence, and political philosophy”
Mark Uffelman, Millersville University

“Highly recommended for the introductory philosophy classroom, as well as

for anyone who likes movies that make you think.”
Nathan Andersen, Collegium of Letters, Saint Petersburg, FL
 PHILOSOPHY THROUGH FILM

In Philosophy Through Film, Amy Karofsky and Mary M. Litch use recently
released, well-received films to explore answers to classic questions in philoso-
phy in an approachable yet philosophically rigorous manner. Each chapter
incorporates two or three films to examine one longstanding philosophical
question or problem and assess some of the best solutions that have been
offered to it. The authors fully integrate the films into their discussion of the
issues, using them to help students to become familiar with key topics in all
major areas of Western philosophy and master the techniques of philosophical
argumentation. Revised and expanded, changes to the Fourth Edition include:

A brand new chapter on the mind-body problem (chapter four), which

includes discussions of substance dualism, physicalism, eliminativism,
functionalism, and other relevant theories.

The replacement of older movies with nine new focus films: Ad Astra,
Arrival, Beautiful Boy, Divergent, Ex Machina, Her, Live Die Repeat: Edge of
Tomorrow, A Serious Man, and Silence.

The addition of two new primary readings: excerpts from Patricia Smith
Churchland’s, “Can Neurobiology Teach Us Anything about Conscious-
ness?” and Frank Jackson’s “What Mary Didn’t Know”

Story Lines of Films by Elapsed Time for each focus film are included in
an accompanying eResource.

The films examined in depth are: Ad Astra, Arrival, Beautiful Boy, Crimes and
Misdemeanors, Divergent, Equilibrium, Ex Machina, Gone Baby Gone, Her, Inception,
Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow, The Matrix, Memento, Minority Report, Moon, A
Serious Man, and Silence

Amy Karofsky is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Hofstra University, USA.

Mary M. Litch is now retired. Most recently, she served as Director of

Learning Spaces at Chapman University, USA. She has taught philosophy at
Chapman University, Yale University, University of Alabama at Birmingham,
and University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
PHILOSOPHY THROUGH
FILM

Fourth edition

Amy Karofsky and Mary M. Litch

Fourth edition published
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Taylor & Francis
The right of Amy Karofsky and Mary M. Litch to be identified as authors
of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Visit the eResources: www.routledge.com/9780367408503
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-0-367-40848-0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-40850-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-80942-3 (ebk)

Typeset in Baskerville
by Taylor & Francis Books
 CONTENTS

Preface vii
Acknowledgments x

Introduction 1
1 Truth 8
Arrival

2 Skepticism 30
The Matrix
Inception

3 Personal Identity 58
Memento
Moon

4 The Mind−Body Problem 83

The Matrix
Live, Die, Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow

5 Artificial Intelligence 104

Her
Ex Machina

6 Free Will, Determinism, and Moral Responsibility 130

Minority Report
Beautiful Boy

7 Ethics 154
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Gone Baby Gone

8 Political Philosophy 183

Equilibrium
Divergent

v
 CONTENTS

9 Philosophy of Religion 203

A Serious Man
Silence

10 The Meaning of Life 230

A Serious Man
Ad Astra

Readings from Primary Sources 251

0 Plato, “Allegory of the Cave” (from The Republic) 253
1a Bertrand Russell excerpts from The Problems of Philosophy 256
1b William James excerpts from Pragmatism: A New Way for Some Old
Ways of Thinking 259
2a René Descartes, “Meditation One” (from Meditations on First
Philosophy) 262
2b George Berkeley, excerpts from A Treatise Concerning the
Principles of Human Knowledge 267
3a John Locke, excerpts from An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding 278
3b David Hume, excerpts from A Treatise of Human Nature 283
4a Patricia Smith Churchland, excerpts from Can Neurobiology Teach us
Anything about Consciousness? 289
4b Frank Jackson, What Mary Didn’t Know 294
5a Alan Turing, excerpts from Computing Machinery and
Intelligence 299
5b John Searle, excerpts from Minds, Brains, and Programs 304
6a David Hume, excerpts from An Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding 310
6b Jean-Paul Sartre, excerpts from Existentialism is a Humanism 319
7a John Stuart Mill, excerpts from Utilitarianism 327
7b Immanuel Kant, excerpts from Fundamental Principles of the
Metaphysics of Morals 332
8a Thomas Hobbes, excerpts from Leviathan 339
8b John Stuart Mill, excerpts from On Liberty 346
9a J. L. Mackie, excerpts from Evil and Omnipotence 353
9b Augustine, excerpts from On Free Choice of the Will 359
10a Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus 363

Index 366

vi
 PREFACE

Philosophy Through Film is geared for use as the primary textbook in a first
course in philosophy and covers the same topics as a standard introductory
text. However, the novel avenues for philosophic exploration opened up by
the use of film make Philosophy Through Film appropriate for an upper-level
course in some contexts. The movie enthusiast interested in a deeper under-
standing and appreciation of films could also find the book engaging and
informative.
Some feature films can be interpreted as attempts to provide answers to
classic questions within philosophy. This is an underlying assumption of Phi-
losophy Through Film. Each chapter examines one such question in an
approachable yet philosophically rigorous manner, using one or two focus
films as a source for the standard positions and arguments associated with that
question. The discussion of the films in question is fully integrated into the
discussion of the philosophical issue within the authored portion of the book:
the films are not mere “add-ons” to an otherwise straightforward introductory
philosophy text. One consequence is that the bulk of each chapter is most
fruitfully read after viewing the relevant films. Each chapter begins with a
brief introduction (to the topic and to the films) to be read first; however, the
remainder of each chapter assumes that the reader has already seen the one
or two films associated with that chapter and has them freshly in mind. Asso-
ciated with each chapter are one, two, or three readings from primary sources
that are collected together at the end of the book. For those instructors who
wish to assign readings from the most historically significant texts mentioned
in each chapter, those readings are available. For those instructors who prefer
to use Philosophy Through Film as an authored text, that is also an option: while
occasional reference is made to a relevant reading, any passages from these
texts discussed in detail in a chapter will be quoted in that chapter.
The focus films associated with each chapter run the gamut of styles and
genres. The main requirement for inclusion was philosophical relevance: Does
the movie “cover the topic” in a way that will be familiar to philosophers? A
second requirement for inclusion is that the film is engaging for the typical
American undergraduate. This means that many of the focus films are

vii
 PREFACE

high-budget, high-production value films that initially saw wide theatrical

release. However, with the advent of streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and
Amazon Prime Video, some very good films go straight to video and cannot
be seen in theaters. While we continue to use the blockbuster test that we
applied when choosing titles for the earlier editions, we will also consider films
that have excellent ratings and have had wide-viewership online.
For the fourth edition, a new chapter, “The Mind-Body Problem,” has
been added. It appears as the fourth chapter and uses The Matrix as well as the
recent film, Live, Die, Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow (2014). Patricia Churchland’s
piece, “Can Neurobiology Teach us Anything about Consciousness?” and
Frank Jackson’s article, “What Mary Didn’t Know,” have been added to
Readings from Primary Sources for that new chapter. In addition, two exist-
ing chapters have been revised to cover the relevant problem being considered
more generally. The chapter that was originally titled “The Problem of Evil”
is now “Philosophy of Religion.” And what was “Existentialism” is now “The
Meaning of Life.” For those and other chapters, some older films were swap-
ped out in favor of the following recent releases: Arrival (2016), Her (2013), Ex
Machina (2015), Beautiful Boy (2018), Divergent (2014), A Serious Man (2009),
Silence (2016), and Ad Astra (2019). Finally, in an attempt to avoid “page creep”
and to keep the cost of the book down for students, we have eliminated some
of the lists of books and articles at the end of each chapter, although we have
kept the lists of relevant films. To further save space, we have moved the
‘Story Lines of Films by Elapsed Time’ online. These are useful in helping
locate particular scenes for classroom or home viewing, and they can be
accessed via a link on the book’s product page found here: www.routledge.
com/9780367408503.
We would like to thank two Hofstra University faculty members—Amy
Baehr and John Farley—for reading drafts of chapters and offering comments
on some of the films. Thanks, also, to many Hofstra students who were in
Philosophic Themes in Film courses in the Spring of 2019 and the students in
Introduction to Philosophy in the Fall of 2019. We would also like to thank the
members of the Chapman University Philosophy Club. As always, responsi-
bility for any leftover errors remains our own.

Notes on using this book

Films: The structure within all of the chapters follows the same pattern. The
first two or three sections serve as a general introduction to the topic and are
intended to be read before that chapter’s focus film or films are screened. Sec-
tions thereafter will make repeated reference to the film(s), so they are best
read only afterward.

Readings: Corresponding to each chapter are readings from primary sour-

ces. These readings have been selected based on their significance within the

viii
 PREFACE

history of philosophy and their offering of complete arguments on central

issues within the space of just a few pages. The readings are printed at the
back of the book.

eResource: To assist with finding specific moments in the films, storylines by

elapsed time are available for each film on the Routledge website: www.rou
tledge.com/9780367408503.

ix
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The American Philosophical Association for excerpts from Patricia Smith

Churchland, “Can Neurobiology Teach us Anything about Consciousness?”
published in The American Philosophical Association Centennial Series (2013).

The Journal of Philosophy and Frank Jackson for Frank Jackson, “What Mary
Didn’t Know” published in The Journal of Philosophy (1986).

Oxford University Press for excerpts from A.M. Turing, “Computing

Machinery and Intelligence” published in Mind (1950).

Cambridge University Press for excerpts from John Searle, “Minds, Brains,
and Programs” published in The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Vol. 3 (1980),
pp. 417–457.

Philosophical Library for excerpts from Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism is a

Humanism” from Existentialism and Human Emotions, trans. Bernard Frechtman.

Oxford University Press for excerpts from J. L. Mackie, “Evil and Omnipotence”
published in Mind (1955).

Cambridge University Press for excerpts from St. Augustine, On Free Choice
of the Will, 1st edn, trans. Peter King.

Penguin Random House LLC, Penguin Books UK, Éditions Gallimard, and
the Albert Camus estate for excerpts from Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus,
trans. Justin O’Brien (1955).

x
 INTRODUCTION

0.1 What Is Philosophy?

While it is hard to give a one-sentence definition of the term philosophy, it is
relatively easy to describe the field by reviewing some of the classic questions
philosophers study. Here are some examples. What is truth? Is it objective or
subjective? What are the limits of human knowledge (for example, can I know
that an external world exists?) Does it even make sense to talk about the way
that the world is apart from our conceptualization of it? What is the nature of
reality? What makes me me? What does it mean to have a mind? Is there a
difference between the mind and the brain? What distinguishes morally right
from morally wrong action? Under what circumstances can I be held morally
responsible for my actions? Do I have an obligation to obey the laws of the
state? Does God exist? If so, why is there so much evil in the world? Does life
have meaning? At first glance, nothing seems to tie these diverse questions
together, leaving the impression that they are all considered “philosophical”
questions only because of some historical accident in the development of the
Western intellectual tradition. On closer examination, however, the questions
are seen to share at least one attribute in common—they are all basic ques-
tions. By basic, we mean that each of these questions must be among the first
questions asked when building a framework for thinking about and acting in
the world.
The usual method employed by philosophers in examining one of these
questions is to describe and then argue for a particular answer to it. An
argument is nothing but a set of reasons that are given to back up or justify
some statement. For example, the skeptic argues for the view that we cannot
know that an external world exists by giving us reasons to believe that we
cannot have such knowledge.

Can a Film Carry Philosophical Content?

The usual form in which philosophical discussions are carried out is the writ-
ten or spoken word. But is the written or spoken word the only medium in
which philosophical positions and arguments can be expressed? An

1
 PHILOSOPHY THROUGH FILM

assumption of this book is that a film, with the assistance of some supple-
mentary written material to guide the viewer in the right direction, can be
used to present philosophical positions and arguments in a way that is both
rigorous and entertaining.
Over the past couple of decades, academic philosophy has seen significant
growth in interest in the question: Can a film carry philosophical content? In a
way, though, this question is not new. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato,
in his Allegory of the Cave, described a rudimentary movie house 2,300 years
before the invention of moving pictures. According to Plato, nothing of phi-
losophical interest could go on in that rudimentary movie house. To see why
Plato held this view, and, more importantly, to see if his reasoning is relevant
to us, it is useful to consider the role that the Allegory played in the larger
work, The Republic, of which it is a small portion. The Allegory of the Cave is
included in Readings from Primary Sources.
In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato asks us to imagine prisoners chained
from birth in an underground cave. They are each chained in a way that
severely restricts movement. As a result, they can see only one of the cave
walls. The cave is poorly illuminated by a single torch a considerable distance
behind the chained row of prisoners. Occasionally, a guard will walk between
the torch and row of prisoners, and his shadow or the shadow of some object
he is carrying will be cast on the wall in front of the prisoners. As the prisoners
cannot turn their heads to see the torch or the guard (or their fellow prison-
ers), they naturally mistake the shadows they are seeing for “reality.” If the
guard speaks while walking past, the prisoners are likely to assume that it is
the shadow that is speaking. There are several points of similarity between the
prisoners in Plato’s cave and people in a movie house. One point of similarity
is that both sets of people have their attention focused on what is being pro-
jected on the wall in front of them. Also, both sets of people can become so
drawn in to what is happening in the fictional shadow world that they mistake
it for reality. (It is part of the folklore of early cinema that movie-goers occa-
sionally mistook movies for reality; thus, the screening of a short film showing
a locomotive speeding towards the camera would cause everyone to run out of
the theater in panic. Even today, one regularly sees viewers so drawn in to the
fictional world presented in a film that they cry when a sympathetic character
suffers or become embarrassed when a character does something silly.) There
are some important differences between the prisoners in the Allegory of the
Cave and modern movie-goers. The most obvious of these is that modern
movie-goers know about the outside world and its relationship to the movie
that they are watching; whereas, Plato’s prisoners know only the shadow
world.
After describing the cave interior and the situation of the prisoners, the
Allegory of the Cave continues as follows. Plato asks us to imagine that one of
the prisoners is freed and struggles out of the cave. His initial response would
be confusion: What is this I am seeing now? He might desire to return to the

2
 INTRODUCTION

safety and familiarity of the cave environment. If he perseveres in the outside

world, he will come to understand that everything that he experienced in the
cave was unreal, and he will begin to pity the prisoners who are still chained
there. If one examines the Allegory of the Cave in the context of the sur-
rounding text in The Republic, one sees that the story is much more than a
premonition of cinema. For Plato, the prisoners chained in the cave are the
masses of humankind who walk around in the visible world, mistaking it for
reality. These masses fail to understand that the world they experience
through the senses is a poor reflection of true reality—a reality that is acces-
sible only through philosophical inquiry. To the extent that we have our
attention drawn away from the world of the intellect and toward the world of
the senses, to that extent we move away from philosophy. So, for Plato, the
cave symbolizes a mistake about what is real and about where knowledge of
true reality is to be found.
Does this mean that Plato would have a similarly dim view of the ability of
cinema to offer us philosophical insight? It seems not. First, in rejecting the cave
as a possible venue for philosophical inquiry, Plato was thinking of the cave as a
place of sense-based experience only—not a place in which abstract ideas could
be communicated. His rejection of the cave as a possible locale for philosophical
inquiry was a rejection of an empirically based method for doing philosophy,
not a rejection of “shadows” as a possible medium for reproducing philosophi-
cal arguments. Second, Plato wrote most of his works (including The Republic) in
dialogue form. Many scholars believe that this choice of the dialogue form was
based on his view that discussion—dialectical give and take—was the best, and
perhaps the only means for gaining philosophical insight. The Republic is a work
of philosophy because it reproduces a discussion on an appropriate set of topics.
Is there any difference between a written copy of The Republic and a dramatic
reading of it that bears on its status as a work of philosophy? Is there any dif-
ference between a dramatic reading of The Republic and a screening of a filmed
dramatic reading of it that bears on its status as a work of philosophy? We
believe that the answer to both of these questions is no.
Some contemporary philosophers would disallow a filmed dramatic reading
of The Republic as positive evidence that a film can carry philosophical content.
They would object that the question: Can a film carry philosophical content?
presupposes that we consider only the specifically cinematic attributes of film
(that is, a film’s visual and the narrative elements) in answering the question.1
Thus, philosophy that takes place in dialogue or is embedded in structural
elements of a film is off-limits. Given our present interest in using film in the
instruction in philosophy, we have no qualms about taking philosophical con-
tent wherever we can find it.
Thus, film offers the philosopher the full expressive power of language, plus
the visual and narrative elements that makes film such a good vehicle for
introducing students to philosophy. Film, like other forms of fiction, can even
make the transition to philosophical thinking easier. We mentioned above that

3
 PHILOSOPHY THROUGH FILM

one of the classic questions within philosophy is: Can I know that an external
(mind-independent) world exists? At first glance, this might strike you as an
absolutely preposterous question. “Of course, I can!” you answer. Indeed, the
original question might strike you as so preposterous that it does not deserve
serious thought. A movie can be an effective tool for introducing a philoso-
phical topic, because it allows the viewer to drop many preconceived notions.
We are all used to suspending our commonsense views about how the world
works in the context of fiction. This suspension can be used to the philoso-
pher’s advantage. Consider the film Inception. It first draws the viewer into the
fictional world created by the film, pointing out that the protagonist cannot
know that his experiences represent an external world or that his memories
correspond to experiences that he had in the past. It is only once the viewer
has accepted this that the film’s subtext becomes clear: the viewer is in exactly
the same position as the character. This realization can produce an “Aha!”
experience—a sense of sudden understanding—that skepticism (the thesis that
we cannot know that an external world exists) is not so preposterous after all!
Other films can have the same force. Indeed, our main criterion for using
films in this book is that they do just that—that they present and defend an
answer to one of philosophy’s classic questions. Whether the writer or director
responsible for a film had the intention of doing philosophy is beside the
point. Each film that we will be discussing deals with one or more of the
questions posed in the first paragraph of this chapter. Arrival could be inter-
preted as presenting arguments for relativism—the view that the truth of all
statements can be judged only relative to a conceptual scheme and other
background assumptions. As already noted, Inception offers us a defense of
skepticism, as does The Matrix. Moon and Memento consider what makes a
person who they are: Is it my body, my mind, or my immaterial soul that
identifies me at birth as the same person I am now? The Matrix and Live, Die,
Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow help to explore the question whether the mind is a
distinct entity from the brain. Her and Ex Machina pose questions at the inter-
section of philosophy and artificial intelligence: What does it mean to have a
mind? What does it mean to be a person (in the sense of someone who has
moral rights)? Minority Report and Beautiful Boy consider the question of whether
human beings are free: Do I have free will, or are all of my actions deter-
mined by the laws of nature governing the universe? Gone Baby Gone and Crimes
and Misdemeanors examine the nature of morality: When faced with a decision,
how do I know which choice is right? And which ethical theory is the correct
one to use to figure that out? Divergent and Equilibrium address problems within
political philosophy: Do I have an obligation to obey laws? What is a just
state? A Serious Man and Silence concern philosophical issues with respect to
religion: Is there proof that God exists? And, if God does exist, why is there so
much pain and suffering in the world? A Serious Man and Ad Astra are useful
sources to consider the questions, Does human life has meaning? If so, is it
subjective or objective? And can life have meaning if there is no God?

4
 INTRODUCTION

Tips on How to Watch a Film Philosophically

Films can offer philosophical content in several different ways. As we have
noted, a film can simply reproduce a position or an argument in its entirety
via dialogue, thereby offering up philosophy in its usual linguistic form. While
this does occasionally occur, it is quite rare. Much more common is the case
in which a film offers us a fictional world with the key elements of a thought
experiment and sufficient context within the film to interpret those elements as
a thought experiment.
When presenting a thought experiment within the more traditional vehi-
cle for philosophy—the essay—a philosopher describes a hypothetical situa-
tion and asks the reader how they interpret what is going on: for example,
would they assent to statement X’s being an accurate description of the
situation? To take a particular example, suppose a philosopher were inves-
tigating what criteria determine whether a person at one time is the same
person as a person at another time. The philosopher might describe the case
of someone who has a form of amnesia that causes them to forget everything
that happened prior to a few minutes ago.2 The philosopher might then pose
the following question: Is the person who goes to bed at the end of the day
the same person as the person who wakes up that next morning? The reader
would then be left to determine what their intuitions tell them about such a
case. The role that this particular thought experiment plays would depend
on the context in which the philosopher is using the thought experiment; the
philosopher perhaps assumes that the reader will say that the person who
wakes is a different person from the person who went to bed. This response
would then be used by the philosopher as evidence against a theory that tied
personal identity to physical continuity of the body. The pattern exemplified
in this thought experiment is typical: a philosopher (i) presents theory T; (ii)
presents a hypothetical situation, S; (iii) notes that T makes some prediction,
P, related to S; (iv) asks the reader whether they agree with P; and (v)
explicitly notes that a discrepancy between P and the reader’s intuitive
response implies that T is false. How would this pattern of thought experi-
ment be realized in film? Step (ii) is easy, as it is the job of a fiction film to
present a series of hypothetical situations. Steps (i), (iii), and (v) are a bit
trickier, but not impossible: they might be stated or at least alluded to in
dialogue. Step (iv) is something that the viewer does on their own. The film
can encourage the viewer to take this step in various ways; the most common
method is to depict a conversation among several characters in which one
character insists that P is true and the other insists that P is false. Once steps
(i) through (v) have been recognized by the viewer, the argument is com-
plete. Films differ in how explicit the various steps are: in some cases, one or
more of the steps are a bit of a stretch. In that case, some prior knowledge of
the relevant philosophic topic can help to fill in the gaps. That is one of the
functions performed by this book.

5
 PHILOSOPHY THROUGH FILM

It should be noted that the legitimacy of thought experiments within phi-

losophical argumentation has been a controversial topic within academic phi-
losophy. Given that a significant number of the film-based arguments that we
will consider in the following chapters involve the use of thought experiments,
this debate affects the legitimacy of using film to explore philosophical topics.
Unfortunately, examining this debate further would take us too far afield.
Therefore, throughout this book, we will assume that the use of thought
experiments in argumentation is legitimate.
Obviously, for Hollywood blockbusters, the purpose of the film is to enter-
tain audiences and, ultimately, to make money; the purpose is not to engage
in philosophy. However, many screenwriters and directors have at least some
background in philosophy. This is why, even in some very mainstream com-
mercial films, one sees in the construction of the story, the dialogue, and the
visual elements that the screenwriter and director are running into philoso-
phical topics and discovering independently how to reason through them.
Writing such thought experiments that appear in films involves creative
thinking. The creative thinker develops novel ways to think about old pro-
blems; comes up with innovative solutions to those problems; and devises ori-
ginal methods to help others to understand the relevant issues. Learning how
to think creatively is a useful tool not only for the philosopher and the
screenwriter, but for the physician attempting to diagnose an unusual case; the
scientist working to find a cure for Alzheimer’s; and the inventor searching for
a new technological advance.
There is one other role that film can play in the context of philosophy. In
addition to helping a viewer to think creatively, a movie can also help the
viewer to think critically by presenting them with views to which they have not
(yet) been exposed. Think back, again, to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The
prisoners believe that the shadows on the wall are real people and real objects
and not merely shadows of them. They believe this because this is all they
have ever known and because everyone else in the cave believes the same.
When the prisoner who has been freed leaves the cave, the brightness of the
sun is painful to his eyes (remember, he has been in a dark cave all of his life).
But slowly he becomes acclimated to the light and is able to look around at
the world outside of the cave. He sees real trees and real animals and, as a
result, comes to realize that much of what he took to be true about the world
when he was in the cave is in fact false.
A critical thinker will be open to examining their own beliefs and the
reasons that they have for holding them. They will try to recognize when a
belief is the product of their upbringing or the culture in which they live and
to be aware of any biases that they might have as a result. For example, if I
was raised by my parents and community to believe that guns are bad, I could
tend to reject any reasons in support of gun ownership, even if they are strong.
To think critically, I must try to avoid being too emotionally or psychologi-
cally attached to my anti-gun position that I will not allow anything to count

6
 INTRODUCTION

against it. Instead, I will work to be open-minded about views that differ from
my own and to take opposing views seriously, without immediately rejecting
them. I will also accept the possibility that my own beliefs could turn out to be
false. Like the prisoner coming into the bright sun for the first time, it can be
disconcerting to come face to face with a new and different perspective. It can
also be quite troubling to discover that a long-held belief might not be true,
especially when it is a core belief upon which many life-decisions are based.
But a critical thinker will recognize that it is better to hold a belief for good
reasons, than to hold it only because it is the view that they have always held
or because their family and friends believe it to be true.
Most likely, you already hold some views with respect to many of the issues
that will be explored in the movies and covered in the following chapters. You
might find that some views match up with your own and that some do not.
There could be some explanations that you have never encountered before
and some accounts that differ from the one that you take to be correct. As you
explore various solutions to the problems, try to evaluate them as a critical
thinker. As much as possible, attempt to maintain some distance from your
own views, consider different notions in a fair-minded way, and assess whether
there are good reasons supporting a position before accepting or rejecting it.

Layout of the Book

Even though philosophy through film is an unorthodox approach to teaching
philosophy, the topics have been chosen to cover roughly the same material as
a standard introductory textbook. Each chapter corresponds to one of the
classic questions within philosophy. The structure within all of the chapters
follows the same pattern. The first two or three sections serve as a general
introduction to the topic and are intended to be read before that chapter’s focus
film or films are screened. Sections thereafter will make repeated reference to
the film(s), so they are best read only afterward. A discussion of a specific scene
includes a minute mark (MM), indicating the elapsed time in the film from when
the scene starts. Corresponding to each chapter is one or more readings from
primary sources. These readings have been selected based on their significance
within the history of philosophy and their offering of complete arguments on
central issues within the space of just a few pages. The readings themselves are
printed in the Appendix at the back of the book.

Notes
1. See, for example, Thomas Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy (New
York: Routledge, 2007).
2. What we have described is the story line for the film Memento, one of the focus films
for Chapter 3 on personal identity.

7
 1
TRUTH
Arrival (2016)

LOUISE: We don’t know if they understand the difference between a weapon and
a tool. Our language, like our culture, is messy, and sometimes one can be both.
IAN: And it’s quite possible that they’re asking us to offer them something,
not the other way around.
WEBER: So, how do we clarify their intentions beyond those two words?
Arrival

LOUISE: The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The theory that … the language you
speak determines how you think and, yeah, it affects how you see everything.
Arrival

A philosopher searches for the truth about the world. But what is the nature
of truth? What does it mean for a statement to be true? In this chapter, we will
consider various responses to these questions. In the first section, we will dis-
cuss some issues with respect to truth. Then we will provide a brief introduc-
tion to the film Arrival, drawing your attention to certain elements to watch for
watch during your viewing. The next few sections will lay out various theories
of truth, using scenes from the movie to help to explain and assess those
theories.

1.1 Issues with Respect to Truth

The Greek philosopher, Aristotle (384 BCE−322 BCE), one of the earliest
and most influential philosophers in the history of Western thought, explains
truth and falsity like this: “To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not
that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is
not, is true.”1 Notice that Aristotle defines truth and falsity in terms of what
we say. We communicate by using combinations of words that form statements.
Some statements are questions like “Are you feeling ill?” and some statements
are warnings like “Be careful!” Notice that such statements are not asserting
that something is true or false. Statements that do propose that a certain idea

8
 TRUTH

is true or false are propositions. The following are examples of propositions:

“brown is a color,” “some dogs are brown,” and “all birds are brown.” The
same proposition can be expressed by different statements. Thus, the English
statement “brown is a color,” the Spanish statement “el marrón es un color,”
and the Icelandic statement “brúnn er litur” all express the same proposition.
According to Aristotle, each proposition that we use to express the facts
about the world is either true, or it is false. Notice that because Aristotle takes
truth to be a property of a proposition, truth is not appropriately applied to
objects or events. So, for him, it is not appropriate to say that heptapods (the
creatures in Arrival) are true aliens, but it is appropriate to consider whether the
proposition “heptapods are aliens” is true. Different philosophers provide dif-
ferent theories concerning how we ought to assess the truth-value of proposi-
tions. We will examine some of those theories of truth in this chapter.
We might wonder whether any propositions are objectively true—that is,
true independent of the perceptions, biases, feelings, and opinions of thinking
beings. An objective truth would be a proposition that is true at all times, in
all places, and for all rational beings. Many believe that mathematical truths,
like “1 + 2 = 3,” are objective, as it seems that no matter who you are or
where or when you live, it is true that 1 + 2 = 3. However, one might main-
tain that because math is a human invention, mathematical propositions
cannot be objectively true. Perhaps we could have decided to use 6 (instead of
2) to name this many objects: * *. And in that case “1 + 2 = 3” would be false
and “1 + 6 = 3” would be true, instead. But as we saw above, there could be
different ways to express the same proposition. So, it is important to keep in
mind that in the discussion of truth we are not so much interested in the
symbols or the words used to express a proposition; instead we are interested
in the proposition that those symbols and words are expressing. When asses-
sing the truth of the proposition “1 + 2 = 3,” we focus not on the symbols (1,
+, = and so on) but on the proposition that is being expressed by those sym-
bols. In this case, the proposition indicates that when we put this many: *
together with this many: * * we get this many: * * *. Indeed, we could use the
word “Fred” to indicate this many objects: * *. But that would not change the
fact that there are still just this many objects: * *. And because it is difficult to
see how this many: * added to this many: * * could be anything other than this
many: * * *, we can understand why so many philosophers believe that
mathematical propositions are objectively true.
But even if there are some objectively true propositions, one might maintain
that there are also subjective truths. A claim is subjectively true when it
depends on what a person feels or perceives. Because two people can have
different experiences of the same thing, and because beliefs and opinions can
differ from person to person, it would seem that the same proposition could
be true for one person but false for another. For example, Mary and Amy
walk outside. Mary thinks that it is cold, and Amy thinks that it is hot. But
then the proposition “it is cold outside” looks to be true for Mary, but false for

9
 PHILOSOPHY THROUGH FILM

Amy, in which case it would seem that the proposition must be subjectively—
and not objectively—true. However, Aristotle would explain that the state-
ment “it is cold outside” when uttered by Mary is not expressing the same
proposition as it is when uttered by Amy. When Mary says, “It’s cold out-
side,” her statement expresses the proposition “it feels to me (Mary) that it is
cold.” When Amy disagrees with Mary, Amy is not saying that Mary’s claim
is false; instead, Amy is saying that a different proposition is true: “it feels to
me (Amy) that it is hot.” Because Mary’s statement expresses what Mary is
feeling and Amy’s statement is about what Amy is perceiving, the example is not
of a single proposition that is true for one person and false for another;
there are actually two different propositions being asserted, both of which
can be true. Aristotle explains that, in general, whenever someone says, “It’s
true for me that …,” what they are really saying is, “I believe that it is
true.”
But how do we know whether a proposition is true or false? Before we
examine the various theories of truth, let us first take a look at the film.

1.2 An Overview of the Movie

ARRIVAL (2016). DIRECTED BY DENIS VILLENEUVE

STARRING AMY ADAMS, JEREMY RENNER, FOREST WHITAKER
Based on Ted Chiang’s short story entitled Story of Your Life, the film Arrival
follows the experiences of Louise Banks, a linguist, and Ian Donnelly, a sci-
entist, both of whom have been enlisted by U.S. Army officer, Colonel Weber,
to figure out why a group of aliens—called heptapods—have arrived in 12 dif-
ferent places on Earth. The heptapods do not speak any human language, so
in order determine what the purpose of the alien visit is, Louise must first
figure out how to communicate with them. In accordance with the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis, as Louise becomes fluent in the alien language, she begins to see and
think about the world in the way that the heptapods do. In particular, whereas
humans experience time linearly and sequentially—one moment following
another—heptapods experience time simultaneously—all moments all at once.
Thus, as Louise becomes immersed in the heptapod language, she develops
the ability to experience future events.
The film highlights the role that language plays when assessing truth.
Sometimes a word in one language does not translate well to another, and
sometimes a word might have two different interpretations. But if we are
uncertain whether a certain heptapod term means “gift” or whether it means
“weapon,” then a statement indicating that we ought to use it will mean one
action if taken to mean “gift,” and a very different action when interpreted
to mean “weapon.” How can we assess whether a statement is true or false if
we are not certain what the words in the statement mean? And if there are
different interpretations of the same term, how do we know which

10
 TRUTH

interpretation is correct? Or could it be the case that there is no one correct

interpretation? As we will see in the next few sections, there are different
answers to such questions depending on the theory of truth that is being
considered.

1.3 The Correspondence Theory of Truth

In Section 1.1, we saw that Aristotle maintains that a proposition is such that
it is either true, or it is false (what is known as the law of excluded middle). But
what makes a true proposition true? According to Aristotle, a proposition is
true when it corresponds to what is in fact the case, and a proposition is false
when it does not correspond with what is in fact the case. For example, the
proposition “a dog is an animal” is true because a dog that is in fact an
animal. The proposition “a dog is not an animal” is false because it does not
align with the facts. So, Aristotle seems to posit a straight-forward theory of
truth: a proposition is true if it matches up with reality or what is in fact
the case.
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) offers a theory of truth that is similar
to Aristotle’s. Russell provides an explanation of his theory of truth in his
book, The Problems of Philosophy (1912). Selections from the chapter, “Truth
and Falsehood,” are provided in Readings from Primary Sources (Reading
1a, 256). Russell focuses on beliefs, rather than propositions. For him, a
belief, like a proposition, proposes that an idea is either true or false. And
on his account, “[A] belief is true when there is a corresponding fact, and
is false when there is no corresponding fact.”2 In other words, a true belief
matches up with what is in fact the case, and a false belief does not. So,
according to both Aristotle and Russell, truth must include: (1) a proposi-
tion or belief and (2) reality or facts. When (1) corresponds with (2), we have
a true proposition or belief. This is the correspondence theory of
truth.
Russell explains that facts about the world are independent of thought, and
thus there is a mind-independent reality—a world made up of objects that
exists independently of what anyone or any group of people happens to think.
Cognitive objectivism is the position that combines the thesis that the
world is mind-independent and the correspondence theory of truth. So, the
cognitive objectivist holds that what makes a proposition or a belief true is its
relationship to a fact about the world. And because the world is mind-
independent, minds do not decide what is true and what is false. For the
cognitive objectivist, then, there are only objective truths and no subjective
truths. This means that if two people hold opposing views, they cannot both
be asserting the truth. As Russell writes, “We know that on very many subjects
different people hold different and incompatible opinions: hence some beliefs
must be erroneous.” However, Russell explains, it is not always easy to know
which beliefs are true and which are false: “Since erroneous beliefs are often

11
 PHILOSOPHY THROUGH FILM

held just as strongly as true beliefs, it becomes a difficult question how they
are to be distinguished from true beliefs.”3
Consider one of the crucial moments in the film: Louise asks the two hep-
tapods—whom they have named Abbott and Costello—why they came to earth.
The heptapods reply is “offer weapon” (MM 1:06:53). The Chinese General,
Shang, interprets the phrase offer weapon as a threat to humanity; he believes that
the heptapods want to turn humans against themselves in order to eliminate
the human race. As a result of Shang’s interpretation, China declares war
against the aliens and delivers an ultimatum to them: leave in 24 hours or face
destruction. But Louise believes that the heptapods want to save humanity. She
thinks that the aliens are offering a gift, not a weapon; the gift that is offered
is the heptapod language and, with it, the ability to see the future. So, there
are two opposing beliefs: Shang believes that the heptapods want to destroy
humanity, and Louise believes that they do not. However, it soon becomes
clear that Louise has a better understanding of the heptapod language, and it
also becomes evident that her belief about the heptapods’ purpose on earth
matches up with reality. By the end of the film, when Louise is able to read
the heptapod writing, she learns that the heptapods need to help humanity so
that three thousand years from now humans can help to save the heptapods.
Thus, according to the correspondence theory, Louise’s belief—“the hepta-
pods want to save humanity”—is true because it corresponds with the facts,
and Shang’s belief—“the heptapods want to destroy humanity”—is false
because it does not.
The above example presents another problem for the correspondence
theory of truth. Although we do our best to use words to express what is going
on in the world, there is an imperfect relationship between language and
reality. Just try to get a group of words to perfectly convey a beautiful sunset;
can anything that you say or write even come close to expressing it? In gen-
eral, it seems that no group of words could ever come close to matching up
exactly with actual objects. (In the next section, we will see that William James
raises a similar objection against the correspondence theory). The correspon-
dence theorist might respond by explaining that a true proposition only needs
to correspond with the facts and does not need to be an exact depiction of them.
Moreover, as we explained in Section 1.1 of this chapter, it is not the words
that matter, but the concepts and ideas that the words express. However, even
our concepts and ideas are incapable of matching up with the features of
something like a sunset. In the end, we are left to wonder: Just how much
correspondence is needed for a belief to be true?
Some might also worry that there are many instances when we just do not
know which of two opposing beliefs is true and which is false. In fact, the
skeptic (whom we will discuss in detail in the next chapter) argues that it is
impossible to ever know whether any belief corresponds to reality. The skeptic
will maintain that a person can only have direct access to their own sense data.
You might have the sensation that a ball is red because that is how it looks to

12
 TRUTH

you. But, the skeptic argues, how do you know that the ball is really red? How
can you ever be sure that the way that the ball appears to you inside your head
is the way that the ball really is in the external world? You would have to “get
outside your own head” to compare your perception of the red ball with the ball
as it is in reality in order to determine whether what you are seeing matches
up with a ball that is really red. But you can’t get outside of your own head! You can
never have direct access to the external world of mind-independent objects; you
only have direct access to your own internal world of sensations and percep-
tions. Because you can never compare your sense data with some fact out
there in the world, it seems that you can never know whether how things appear
to you corresponds to how things really are. And, if you can never know whe-
ther your beliefs match up with a mind-independent fact, then you will never
be able to use the correspondence theory of truth to show that any of your
beliefs is true. The skeptic concludes that the correspondence theory fails as a
theory of truth because it cannot work to give a definite answer about whether
any proposition is true.
Aristotle considers another problem with his theory of truth that is directly
relevant to the film. Aristotle wonders whether propositions about future facts
are true now. (Fatalism is the position that true propositions about the future
are true now). The problem is that because future facts are not facts yet, there
are no actual facts to which a proposition about the future could correspond.
Consider, for example, Louise’s belief that Hannah will die of an incurable disease.
In the time period that is portrayed in the film (the present-day events that
begin with Louise in the college classroom and end with Louise and Ian hug-
ging as the heptapod vessel disappears), there is no actual fact of Hannah’s
dying; indeed, Hannah does not even exist, yet. But if there is no fact that
corresponds to Louise’s belief that Hannah will die of an incurable disease,
does that mean that Louise’s belief is false? Perhaps a correspondence theorist
would explain that because Louise can see and experience the (future) fact of
Hannah’s death, there is a fact that corresponds to her belief, in which case
her belief is true. But then a new problem arises: if the future must happen in
accordance with the series of events that the heptapods and Louise foresee, it
seems that there is only one way that the future can unfold. That future
includes Louise’s choosing to marry Ian and choosing to have a child with
him. And if those are the only possible choices that Louise could make, it
would seem that she does not have free will. (We will take up the issue of free
will in Chapter 6.) Aristotle also worries that if propositions about the future
are true now, then there would be only one possible path that the future can
take. He attempts to solve the problem by claiming that propositions about
the future are neither true nor false now; instead, they become true (or false)
when the future actually unfolds. However, recall that Aristotle defends the
law of excluded middle, according to which every proposition is either such that
it is true, or it is false. How can Aristotle defend that law and, at the same
time, maintain that propositions about the future are neither true nor false

13
 PHILOSOPHY THROUGH FILM

until the future events occur? Furthermore, it seems strange to say that the
proposition “Hannah will die of an incurable disease” is neither true nor false,
even though Louise has the ability to experience and foresee her daughter’s
death from an incurable disease.

1.4 The Pragmatist Theory of Truth

William James (1842–1910), an American philosopher and psychologist,
raises a different objection against the correspondence theory of truth.
Excerpts from James’s book, Pragmatism, are provided in the Readings from
Primary Sources (Reading 1b, 259). In the first passage, James explains
that the correspondence theorist (whom James calls the “intellectualist”) is
right to characterize a true idea as one that is in “agreement” with reality.
(Notice that James uses the term “idea” to mean essentially the same as
Russell’s use of “belief.” For the sake of our discussion, we can take the two
terms to be essentially synonymous.) However, James argues that the defi-
nition of agreement that the correspondence theorist uses is in some sense too
strict because many of our ideas are not exact copies of reality. James asks
the reader to think of a clock and the way that it works. If you are like
James, your idea of the time keeping function of the clock fails to accurately
capture the real workings of the clock (unless, of course, you are a clock-
maker). And, when you consider the elasticity of the clock’s springs, most
likely your idea of elasticity does not exactly match up with what elasticity
really is. James concludes that the correspondence theory cannot work
because so many of our ideas fail to be exact copies of reality: “Where our
ideas cannot copy definitely their object, what does agreement with that
object mean?”4
Rather than taking agreement to mean “corresponding to reality,” James
maintains that an idea agrees with reality when its being true is “helpful in life’s
practical struggles.” A true idea has “cash-value in experiential terms,” in
other words, it is useful in helping the person to function in the world:

If I am lost in the woods and starved, and find what looks like a cow-
path, it is of the utmost importance that I should think of a human
habitation at the end of it, for if I do so and follow it, I save myself.
The true thought is useful here because the house which is its object
is useful.5

Thus, according to the pragmatist theory of truth, an idea is true when it

is practical. Unlike the correspondence theory, the pragmatist theory does not
require “complete verification” that the idea matches up exactly with reality,
we only need to show that the belief works: “Just as we here assume Japan to
exist without ever having been there, because it WORKS to do so.”6 In this
way, the pragmatist can avoid the skeptic’s objection that is raised against the

14
 TRUTH

correspondence theory. Whereas the correspondence theorist must prove that

a belief matches up with reality, the pragmatist only needs to show that the
consequences of holding the idea will have practical value:

Any idea that helps us DEAL, whether practically or intellectually,

with either the reality or its belongings, that doesn’t entangle our
progress in frustrations, that FITS, in fact, and adapts our life to the
reality’s whole setting, will agree sufficiently to meet the requirement.
It will hold true of that reality.7

So, both Russell and James believe that there is a mind-independent world
and both hold that a true belief or idea must agree with that world. However,
the two philosophers differ with respect to what it means for an idea to
“agree” with reality: Russell claims that a belief agrees with reality when it
corresponds with it, and James maintains that agreement occurs when an idea is
useful when dealing with reality.
Russell raises an objection against James’s pragmatist theory of truth. Rus-
sell explains that since it works to believe that Santa Claus exists, then, on
James’s account, the idea that Santa Claus exists must be true—even though
we know that it is false that Santa Claus exists.8 Because this objection can
work for many such beliefs, it seems to follow that pragmatism encourages the
belief in false propositions. This objection might seem a bit childish. However,
in another work, James makes the case that religious belief is justifiable
because a person is better off believing that God exists.9 Because James makes
the case that a person’s belief that God exists is true when it is pragmatic for
them to do so, he would need to show why that same line of reasoning would
not work in the case of the belief in Santa Claus.
Perhaps a more pressing problem for the pragmatist account concerns the
characterization of a true idea. According to James, an idea is true if it is
useful and helps to lead to a better life. But what does it mean to say that an
idea is useful? And does a true idea need to be useful to everyone or just the
person who is considering the idea? Also, the skeptic might argue that because
we cannot see the future, we can never know whether a particular idea will
have good consequences and lead to a better life. Think back to the cow-path
example. Say that I follow James’s advice and take the path because I believe
that there is a house at the end of it. But as it turns out, I am mistaken. There
is no house at the end of the path; there is just a big old grizzly bear that eats
anything that comes his way. One might argue that the pragmatist theory is
problematic because it could encourage us to adopt beliefs that result in very
bad consequences that we cannot foresee. Or consider an example from the
film: before Ian knows that Hannah will die at a young age, he has the idea
that it would be good for him to marry Louise and have a child. When Louise
(in the future) tells Ian that Hannah will die, he can neither look at Hannah
the same way again nor remain in a relationship with Louise. Thus, before

15
 PHILOSOPHY THROUGH FILM

knowing that Hannah will die, Ian believes that marrying Louise and fathering her
child will lead to a better life. After he comes to learn about Hannah’s fate, he
no longer thinks that that belief is useful or beneficial for his life or Hannah’s, for
that matter, but at that point it is too late; Hannah has already been born.
Finally, one might argue that the pragmatist must concede that the same
idea could be true for one person but false for another. If an idea works for
one person but not for another, it would seem that the idea could be both true
(for the person for whom it works) and false (for the person for whom it does
not work). Louise has the idea that it was beneficial to have Hannah and Ian
(after Louise tells him that Hannah will die) believes that it was not beneficial.
Both Louise and Ian can provide support showing the benefit of their two
opposing ideas, and there seems to be no clear method to determine which of
those two ideas is useful and so no way to determine which idea is true.
However, if both ideas are beneficial, it would seem that the pragmatist is
committed to the claim that two opposing ideas can both be true. In other words,
the pragmatist could be committed to some form of relativism with respect to
the truth—a position that the pragmatist rejects. We will be able to better
consider this objection, once we have examined various forms of relativism.

1.5 Cognitive Relativism

In Section 1.3, we saw that the skeptic raises an objection against the corre-
spondence theory of truth: because we can’t get outside our own heads to see
whether a belief matches up with the external world, we can never use
the correspondence theory to determine whether any given belief is true.
The skeptic’s objection concerns the fact that we do not have direct access to
the external world; we only have direct access to our own internal world of
perceptions and beliefs.
The cognitive relativist takes seriously the skeptic’s concern that there is no
way to verify whether the information that a person has about the mind-
independent world is true. The cognitive relativist does not necessarily deny
that there is a mind-independent world; they might merely think that we can
never have direct access to it. Either way, the cognitive relativist maintains that we
ought to define truth only in terms of what we can have access to, namely, our
beliefs. Thus, rather than characterizing truth as a relation between beliefs
and facts in the mind-independent world, the cognitive relativist maintains
that truth is relative—relative to a person’s beliefs and, in particular, relative to
a person’s conceptual scheme. A conceptual scheme is the set of concepts and
rules that a person uses to shape and organize their thoughts and to process
sensory information to form their system of beliefs. When a person receives
sense data, the cognitive machinery of the mind works on the sensory stream
to produce a coherent account of the world. So, as I look around right now,
I am receiving visual sense data—I see colors and shapes in various positions.
My mind interprets that sensory information in terms of interrelated objects.

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The colors and shapes that I see are immediately interpreted as a white and
yellow coffee cup on a desk next to a stack of books. Without concepts like “white,”
“yellow,” “coffee cup,” “on,” “desk,” “next to,” “stack,” and “books,” my
sensory stream would not reveal a coherent world. Rather, it would be pure
confusion; there would be no regularity from one moment to the next and no
objects persisting through time. For that matter, there would be no objects at
all; there would just be uninterpreted patches of color of various shades. If
I lacked the concept “coffee cup,” I might interpret the set of white and yellow
patches that I experience as part of the desk, or I might interpret the patches
of color as distinct objects that do not go together to form a larger object. My
conceptual scheme is the set of concepts that I use to interpret the sense data into
diverse objects related in various ways, and it is what allows me to divide up
the world in a way that makes sense to me and helps me to interact with it.
When I drink from the coffee cup, I manipulate it in a particular way, with
the result that there is less liquid in the cup than when I started the action. All
this is as it should be—as common sense and my conceptual scheme tells me
that the world is.
One of the less radical forms of cognitive relativism is the coherence
theory of truth, according to which a belief is true when it coheres with the
person’s conceptual scheme. For the coherentist, I know that a certain belief is
true by holding it up against all of my other beliefs. If that belief is consistent
with my other beliefs, then it is true; if it contradicts my other beliefs, then it is
false. For example, consider, again, Louise’s belief that it is false that the
heptapods want to destroy the human race. Louise thinks that the belief that
the heptapods want to destroy us is false because it does not cohere with her
other beliefs about the aliens, including her beliefs that: the heptapod lan-
guage is a gift and not a weapon; the heptapods are trying to connect with her
(as when Abbott puts a tentacle up to the barrier where Louise’s hand rests);
and the heptapods and humans “are part of a larger whole.” The belief that
the heptapods are a threat to humanity just does not accord with these and other
beliefs that Louise has and so, on the coherence theory, the belief that the
heptapods want to destroy humanity is false for Louise.
It could be the case that different individuals have different conceptual
schemes. Cultural anthropologists return from the field with reports of
individuals who seem to use quite different conceptual schemes to interpret
their experiences. What initially appear to be irrational beliefs are shown to
“make sense” in the context of the culture-specific conceptual schemes.
And, it may be the case that individuals within a culture have varying con-
ceptual schemes. In fact, it might even be possible for an individual to have
a different conceptual scheme than the one they previously had. Louise’s
conceptual scheme at the beginning of the film and her conceptual scheme
at the end are very different. At the beginning of the film, Louise, like most
humans, interprets her experience of time linearly, as a series of events that
occur in a sequence of present moments passing from one to the next.

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Now think about Louise’s “memory” at the beginning of the film, before she
has learned the heptapod language; she “remembers” holding her baby’s
hand. But when Louise compares the “memory” of holding her baby’s hand
with her beliefs that she is not married and that she does not have a child, it is
clear that her belief that she has held her baby’s hand does not cohere with her
other beliefs, and so, at that time, it must be false that Louise has held her
baby’s hand. Yet by the end of the film, when Louise has mastered the
heptapod language, the way that she sees and thinks about the world is
affected, and her conceptual scheme has changed. At one point, Louise
explains to Ian that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests that a language
determines the way that one categorizes their experiences. In Louise’s case,
learning the heptapod language affects her experience of time. Rather than
interpreting time linearly, she interprets it simultaneously; she experiences
past, present and future all at once and is no longer “so bound by time, by its
order.” Towards the end of the film, Louise’s altered conceptual scheme
allows her to make sense of her experience of holding her baby’s hand in
such a way that she is able to hold the belief that she has held her baby’s hand
consistently with her other beliefs. Thus, a coherentist might appeal to the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and maintain that after learning the heptapod lan-
guage, Louise’s conceptual scheme changes and she begins to interpret
and experience time simultaneously. As a result, for Louise, her belief that
she has not yet had a baby coheres with her belief that she has held her
baby’s hand.
It is important to see that the coherentist and cognitive relativists, in gen-
eral, can maintain that some conceptual schemes ought to be rejected as
irrational. The coherentist will maintain that a conceptual scheme is irrational
if it allows the person to hold two incoherent beliefs. However, Russell raises
an objection against the coherentist’s claim that a conceptual scheme is irrational if
it contains two contradictory beliefs. In a passage from “Truth and Falsehood,”
Russell argues that even though the coherentist wants to maintain that we
cannot get at objective truths, the coherentist must actually make use of at
least one objective truth in the defense of the coherence theory. For when the
coherentist maintains that a conceptual scheme is irrational if it allows a
person to hold two contradictory beliefs, the coherentist must hold that it is
true that two incoherent beliefs cannot both be true. But then there is (at least) one
objective truth—that two incoherent beliefs cannot both be true. The claim that two
contradictory statements cannot both be true is called the principle of non-
contradiction (what Russell calls the principle of contradiction). Russell con-
cludes that although the coherentist claims that objective truth is beyond our
grasp, the coherence theory of truth ends up resting upon the objective truth
of the principle of noncontradiction.
Whereas coherentism rejects a conceptual scheme that is irrational,
according to relativism of rationality, there is no way to determine that
any given conceptual scheme is better or worse than any other. Some

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rationality relativists might argue that since there is no objective truth, there is
no available criterion to use to judge between any two schemes. Other
rationality relativists might argue that because rationality, itself, is internal to
a conceptual scheme, there is no such thing as a conceptually neutral ver-
sion of rationality that could be used to compare the two different con-
ceptual schemes with one another. Instead, according to the relativity of
rationality, “what warrants belief depends on canons of reasoning … that should
properly be seen as social norms, relative to culture and period.”10 Protagoras
(ca. 480 BCE–421 BCE), a slightly older contemporary of Socrates, appears to
have defended a version of relativism of rationality. Although the bulk of Pro-
tagoras’s writings is no longer in existence, a few fragments have managed to
survive (mostly in the context of criticisms of relativism by subsequent genera-
tions of Greek philosophers). The most famous among these is: “A [hu]man is
the measure of all things: of what is, that it is; of what is not, that it is not.”11
Here we see that what is true is entirely up to us to decide. According to Prota-
goras, humans are the ultimate arbiter of what is true and what is false and
perhaps, even, of what is rational and what is irrational.

1.6 Nietzschean Perspectivism and Postmodernism

In its most extreme form, relativism of rationality rejects the objective truth of
any proposition and even questions whether the laws of logic (like the law of
noncontradiction) have any sort of objective status. According to relativism
of logic, laws of logic are merely social norms; they do not reflect laws gov-
erning the mind-independent world. The most radical relativists do not even
require that I be minimally consistent in my beliefs, assuming that my con-
ceptual scheme does not recognize the law of noncontradiction. In the words
of Walt Whitman, “Do I contradict myself?/ very well then I contradict
myself,/ (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”12 In this section, we look at the
two most radical members of the cognitive relativism family: Nietzschean
perspectivism and postmodernist relativism.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) lived in the 19th century, and thus he
predates the birth of postmodernism. However, he is the first major philoso-
pher to espouse relativism of rationality, which is the point of departure for
postmodernism. Indeed, he was also prescient of postmodernism in empha-
sizing the role that language plays both in fixing our conceptual schemes and
in creating the very idea of objective truth.
Nietzsche had a rather strange writing style, preferring to express his ideas
with highly elliptical prose and copious self-contradictions. Some have argued
that this writing style was exactly what was called for, given the message:
Nietzsche wanted to force his readers into seeing that many of the things that
they currently believed were not objectively true, without thereby putting
something equally untrue in their place.13 The use of multiple perspectives, in
both film and literature, serves a similar purpose. We, as viewers, are shown

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several incompatible descriptions of the world and asked not to pick which
one is the objectively correct one (or even which is closest to objective truth),
but to conclude that they are all true relative to the perspective of their
respective narrators. As Nietzsche tells us:

There are no facts, only interpretations.

As though there would be a world left over once we subtracted the
perspectival!14

Contrary to the implication of the second quotation above, he was no idealist:

there was a world left over after the subtraction of the perspectival. As Arthur
Danto notes in writing about Nietzsche, “[T]here was a world which
remained over, tossing blackly like the sea, chaotic relative to our distinctions
and perhaps to all distinctions, but there nevertheless. … A blind, empty,
structureless thereness.”15 So, Nietzsche’s conceptual relativism was the result
of what he saw as a qualitative mismatch between our distinctions (that is, the
concepts that we use in structuring the world of experience) and the mind-
independent world.
Because of his repeated emphasis on the ineluctably perspectival nature of
all observation and knowledge, Nietzsche’s version of cognitive relativism has
come to be called perspectivism. But Nietzsche did not stop there, with
merely a negative description of what the world was not. His perspectivism
had a positive aspect as well. To the extent that you can say what it is, the
world is “made up of points of origin for perspectives, … occupied by active
powers, wills, each seeking to organize the world from its perspective, each
locked in combat with the rest.”16
Does this mean that every conceptual scheme is as good as every other one?
Nietzsche would answer: no. The wills are in combat. The victor shall be the
will whose perspective incorporates the conceptual scheme that most facilitates
life. For Nietzsche, “Truth is that sort of error without which a particular class
of living creatures could not live.”17 So, Nietzsche does not use some objective
standard of rationality in judging the adequacy of a conceptual scheme, but
rather a pragmatic standard: a conceptual scheme is adequate if it allows one
to thrive.
Postmodernism’s history as a distinct school of thought begins in the mid-
20th century within the philosophy and literary criticism in France and
Germany, as a reaction to the devastation of the Second World War.
For the postmodernists, Hiroshima and the Holocaust showed without a
doubt that humanity is not progressing toward some objective goal, as the
modernists’ inherent faith in the universality of rationality had led many to
believe.
Postmodernism’s starting point is the claim that there are no objective
standards either for determining the truth or falsity of individual judgments or
for judging the adequacy of conceptual schemes. Members of the mainstream

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Western tradition mistakenly believe in objective standards because our lan-

guage has created the myth of a mind-independent world against which
judgments can be compared. According to Gene Blocker, one of the goals of
postmodernism is to expose this myth of the mind-independent world

by “deconstructing” language, that is, by showing first the gap

between word and object, language and reality, and then by showing
that the so-called reality is simply created by the language itself.
Deconstruction shows how language has constructed what we call
“reality”; it then deconstructs these linguistic constructions. What this
basically accomplishes, where successful, is to expose as myths lin-
guistic descriptions which masquerade as reality—the myth of [the
correspondence theory of truth], the myth of universal cross-cultural
objectivity and rationality, the myth of neutral, value-free scientific
investigation, and so on. … The things we refer to are not real,
objective parts of reality; they are just ways of speaking which have
caught on, become popular and then “internalized” so that we
wrongly assume they accurately describe and reveal an independent
reality.18

Even the distinction between what is or is not a value judgment is over-

thrown. According to postmodernism, all judgments are colored by human
values and emotions. Even if the notion of a “disinterested observer” made
sense, there is no neutral, value-free vocabulary in which to express judg-
ments. As noted in the quote above, even science, presumed by many to be
the epitome of rationality and the search for objective truth, is value-laden.
As such, Alison Jaggar notes, “the conclusions of western science thus are
presumed … [to be] uncontaminated by the supposedly ‘subjective’ values
and emotions that might bias individual investigators. … [However,] it has
been argued that it does not, indeed cannot, eliminate generally accepted
social values.”19
Towards the beginning of Arrival, Colonel Weber lets Louise know that he is
considering a different linguist to take on the job of translating the heptapod
language. Louise tells Weber that she knows the other linguist and that Weber
ought to ask him the Sanskrit word for “war” and its translation. Later, Weber
comes back to request that Louise help with the mission. She asks him how
the other linguist responded to the translation question. Weber says that the
linguist replied that it means “an argument.” He then asks Louise how she
would translate the term; she says it means “a desire for more cows” (MM
14:52). It is interesting that there is no discussion about which one of the two
interpretations is correct; it seems that Louise assumes that both are acceptable
translations, and perhaps there is no correct interpretation of the term. How-
ever, there is the understanding between Louise and Weber that translating
the term as an argument will have very different implications with respect to

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values than it will when interpreted as a desire for more cows. In fact, that differ-
ence is the reason why Weber selects Louise over the other linguist for the job.
There is one other element of the film that is relevant to postmodernism:
Ian, the scientist, initially maintains that unlike Louise, who thinks that lan-
guage is the foundation of civilization, he thinks that science is the foundation.
However, as we have seen, the heptapods have a different experience of time,
and that difference in experience could well affect their scientific under-
standing of the way that the world works. Humans experience a continuous
flow and sequence of events; a cause leads to an effect, which in turn causes
another effect, and so on and so on. Our laws of nature and science reflect
that perspective. The heptapods, who see all things all at once, would prob-
ably not interpret their experiences in terms of cause and effect, and thus their
laws of nature and science would be very different from ours—so different
that it might not be possible to interpret a human scientific law in terms that
would make sense to the heptapods. Is one of these perspectives better than or
more accurate than the other? I cannot grasp what it would be like to have a
simultaneous experience of time in part because I cannot understand how an
effect happens if it is not preceded by a cause: How could I have arrived on
campus, if I did not first get in my car and drive there? However, there are
many theists who maintain that God sees everything all at once, so the con-
cept of a simultaneous experience of time is not entirely alien to us. If there are
two possible interpretations of time, then it could well be the case that there
are (at least) two possible interpretations of the way that the world works. And
according to the postmodernist, both interpretations are right.
The upshot of postmodernist relativism is the legitimization of all points
of view. There is no such thing as objective truth. There is no such thing as
universal rationality. The canons of logic are merely one set of social norms
among others with no special claim to universal acceptance. Many post-
modernists even reject the possibility of employing pragmatic criteria for adju-
dicating between conceptual schemes.20 Taken to its extreme, in postmodernism

[t]here are no external standards nor even internal standards of per-

sonal or cultural consistency and coherence to restrict us. We are
therefore free to go with what seems at the moment compelling to us
and we are guided in our articulations only by the desire to persuade,
to gain a receptive following.21

To many objectivists, and even modernist (truth) relativists, this sounds like
intellectual anarchy. It should therefore come as no surprise that the post-
modernist challenge to modernism’s assumption of the universality of reason
has been greeted with great apprehension within mainstream Anglo-American
philosophy.
It could be useful at this point to offer a condensed description of all the
theories of truth that we have discussed (Table 1.1).

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 TRUTH

Table 1.1 Theories of Truth

Correspondence theory of truth: a proposition or belief is true when it corresponds
to reality
Cognitive Objectivism: (1) the world is mind-independent; and (2) the corre-
spondence theory of truth
Pragmatist theory of truth: an idea is true when it is practical
Cognitive relativism: truth is relative to a conceptual scheme
Coherence theory of truth: a person’s belief is true if it coheres with their con-
ceptual scheme
Relativism of rationality: a person’s belief is true if it coheres with their con-
ceptual scheme, but there is no way to adjudicate between competing conceptual
schemes
Relativism of logic: laws of logic are merely social norms and do not reflect laws
governing the mind-independent world; no such laws are objective
Perspectivism: there are no objective truths because all we can have are per-
spectives of the world; yet, a conceptual scheme that allows one to thrive is better
than one that doesn’t
Postmodernist relativism: the mind-independent world is a myth, and there
are no objective standards for determining the truth of any belief or for judging the
adequacy of any conceptual scheme, so there are no objective truths

1.7 An Assessment of Relativism

Let us examine some of the main empirical arguments for cognitive relativism.
The first argument begins with the pervasive differences of opinion one
observes among people, coupled with the claim that there is no objective
standard to use in adjudicating between the differing views—no objective
standard to use in deciding which view is true and which view is false. Does
difference of opinion by itself constitute evidence in favor of cognitive relati-
vism? We think not. This can be seen by considering a related argument—one
that shows the structural unsoundness of inferring cognitive relativism based
solely on a difference of opinion.
This related argument goes as follows:22 different individuals have different
views on whether the earth is flat or not. In general, there is a high degree of
intracultural agreement on this question. Thus, among adults within a given
culture, the probability that an individual holds the flat-earth hypothesis is
closely correlated with whether their cultural peers hold this hypothesis.
(Because conceptual schemes play a large role in cognitive relativism, and
because conceptual schemes are largely culture-specific, this intracultural
agreement is potentially relevant to the argument—it strengthens the relati-
vist’s case.) However, intercultural diversity and intracultural uniformity on
the question of the earth’s shape do not entail that there is no objective fact of
the matter about whether the earth is flat or not. A consistent cognitive
objectivist can say that some cultures (namely, those cultures in which the flat-
earth hypothesis is widespread) are just mistaken on this point. The burden of
proof is on the relativist to show how difference of opinion implies relativism;

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so, the objectivist’s response is not begging the question. In general, mere
difference of opinion does not constitute evidence in favor of relativism. In
order to argue for cognitive relativism, we must be offered more; we must be
offered reasons to believe that there is no way of adjudicating between the
differing views.
A second argument used to support relativism appeals to tolerance. It goes
something like this: in a pluralistic society like the United States, tolerance is
an absolute necessity. Some argue that one way to foster tolerance is to con-
vince everyone that cognitive relativism is correct. If there is no such thing as
absolute truth, but only truth relative to a conceptual scheme, then two indi-
viduals can both be right on some issue, even if those two individuals disagree
with one another. I am less likely to act intolerantly toward someone with
whom I disagree if I think that that person’s views could be true (relative to
their own conceptual scheme, of course). While the above line of reasoning
looks good on the surface, we believe it has one serious flaw: the form of tol-
erance that emerges from relativism is not very attractive. It should not be
confused with the form of tolerance that emerges from traditional liberalism.
However, suppose that I am someone who categorizes members of certain
races as fully rational and members of other races as less than fully rational.
Suppose further that I am someone who holds that I have serious moral
obligations only to creatures that are fully rational. Thus, I believe that I do
not have serious moral obligations to members of some racial groups. As a
result, when I make decisions, I might not take their well-being into account
to the extent that I take into account the well-being of those whom I judge to
be fully rational humans. A consistent cognitive relativist would have to admit
that a racist conceptual scheme is not objectively better or worse than any
other. Thus, a consistent cognitive relativist cannot reject my conceptual
scheme on the grounds that it is mistaken. Similarly, a consistent cognitive
relativist cannot object that those actions of mine based on my racist categor-
ization of humans are done in error, so long as my actions are consistent with
my racist conceptual scheme. Even more importantly, moral condemnation of
my racist actions is beyond the reach of the cognitive relativist.
This is the version of tolerance that arises out of cognitive relativism: so
long as someone is acting in a way that “makes sense” given their (or their
culture’s) conceptual scheme, that person is not acting in an incorrect or
immoral manner. But this is not a version of tolerance that is very appealing,
for it requires that we must tolerate individuals and societies, no matter what
they do. Genocide, human slavery, the subjugation of women—all of these
things have been practiced by some societies. (Alas, some societies continue to
practice them even now.) The consistent cognitive relativist must tolerate these
sorts of practices, along with the less objectionable ones. Contrast the version
of tolerance emerging out of relativism with that emerging out of traditional
liberalism, according to which individuals could act as they like as long as they
do not infringe on the rights of others. It is this latter version of tolerance that

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 TRUTH

is required to prevent a society from succumbing to either tyranny by the

dominant group or Balkanization as the society is torn apart into its separate
subcultures. If a stable pluralism is a benefit for society (as we believe it is),
then it is not relativism but objectivism that is most likely to achieve it.
So, the argument for cognitive relativism based on its relationship with tol-
erance is actually an argument against cognitive relativism. Are there other
such arguments? One problem that the cognitive relativist faces is explaining
just what intellectual investigation (within the sciences and the humanities
alike) is striving for, if not knowledge of the objective truth. It seems as though
we already have knowledge in the relativist sense, so what’s the point of con-
tinuing the search?
Another difficulty for cognitive relativism is explaining why science and
technology have been so successful. This difficulty is especially acute for post-
modernism, which classifies science as “just one among many equally good
approaches to improving our understanding of the world.” The postmodernist
responds by noting that science and technology are successful relative to their
own criterion for success (namely, controlling the environment); but not
necessarily successful relative to some other criterion (for example, living in
harmony with the environment). One person’s idea of success is another per-
son’s idea of failure. We will leave it for you, the reader, to decide whether
this response is adequate.
Yet another difficulty arises for the relativist who wants to maintain that
there are no objective truths. In Section 1.1, we explained that many people
believe that mathematical truths must be objectively true. However, the post-
modern relativist would maintain that even mathematical truths lack objective
status. Ian is surprised when he discovers that the aliens cannot seem to follow
(human) algebra, and the film seems to suggest that the heptapods have a
different system of mathematics. The postmodernist would say that algebra is
merely a human construct and the conclusions that result from it are not
objectively true. Such a relativist would argue that, in general, no truths of
any mathematical system are objective. But, as we explained in Section 1.1, it
seems that no matter who is doing the counting—whether human or alien—it
must be the case that this many: * and this many: * * amounts to this many:
* * *. And if that is the case, wouldn’t at least that law of mathematics be
objectively true?
Even if the postmodernist digs in and maintains that even the above
example from mathematics could differ according to perspective and that there
are no objective truths, it seems that such a relativist would ultimately be com-
mitted to at least one objective truth, namely, that there are no objective truths.
Relatedly, and by far the most oft-cited criticism of cognitive relativism is that
it is self-refuting.23 If the truth of all judgments is relative, then the truth of the
judgment “cognitive relativism is correct” is itself relative: it is true according
to some conceptual schemes and false according to others. If one goes the
extra step to relativism of rationality, those conceptual schemes in which

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conceptual relativism is true have no better claim to our allegiance than those
conceptual schemes in which it is false. Thus, for the relativist about ration-
ality, anyone with a conceptual scheme that makes cognitive relativism false
can truly say that cognitive relativism is false.
For these and other reasons, most philosophers maintain that there is at
least some objective truth. It is important to see that truth is not merely the
philosopher’s concern; truth affects us all every day. And, yet, too often it
can be difficult to know whether certain information that we are receiving is
in fact true. If 12 alien vessels appeared on earth, or if there were a world-
wide pandemic, we would need to know what was happening. The way that
we typically get such information is from the news, and we tend to assume
that what is asserted in a news broadcast is true. So, it can be downright
dangerous when a newscaster or someone in a position of authority asserts
false claims as though they were true. In several scenes in Arrival, we see
newscasts on different channels from around the world. Although many of
the reports appear to coincide with what is actually happening, the talking
head, Richard Riley, argues that the U.S. government is failing in its hand-
ling of the situation and that we should give the aliens “a show of force.”
Similarly, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was difficult to
determine how dangerous the situation was and what ought to be done to
avoid the spread of the virus, in part because there was a lot of mis-
information—and sometimes even outright lies—asserted by public officials,
including the public officials in the White House. If the relativist is right,
there would be no way to maintain that a newscaster or any public official is
lying or in some way making stuff up.
Where does this leave us? What is the best theory of truth? Given all of the
arguments against relativism, we can begin to understand why so many phi-
losophers have come to reject it, while at the same time conceding that it may
be difficult to know whether any given proposition or idea is true. We will
examine this problem in more detail in the next chapter.

Readings from Primary Sources

1a: Excerpts from: Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, 1912, p. 256
1b: Excerpts from: William James, Pragmatism: A New Way for Some Old
Ways of Thinking, 1907, p. 259

Discussion Questions
1. Look, again, at James’s example involving the cow-path. How would the
correspondence theorist assess the truth-value of the belief “there is a
house at the end of the path?” How would the coherentist assess it? And
the perspectivist?

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 TRUTH

2. What are similarities between Nietzsche’s perspectivism and James’s

pragmatism? What are some differences? How might James argue that
pragmatism is not a form of relativism?
3. Did you start out the chapter as a cognitive relativist? Or now, after
having finished the chapter, are you a cognitive relativist? If your view
changed, why did it change?
4. Russell objects to cognitive relativism because it entails that no belief can be
false. First explain Russell’s objection against cognitive relativism. Then
try to come up with a statement that must be false.
5. Does the universality of rationality necessarily mean that humanity must
progress towards a common goal? Can you provide an example of two dif-
ferent cultures that each has a different idea about what the ultimate goal
really is? Now take a look at those goals again and explain the underlying
basis for each. Is the basis the same? Does this affect the way that you initi-
ally responded to the first question of this discussion question?
6. What are the “memories” that Louise has at the beginning of the film? Can
you provide an explanation of them that is consistent with the rest of the film?
7. Is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis true? If one never learns a language can they
still think?
8. Can one language ever be accurately and adequately translated into another?
9. Towards the end of the movie, Louise asks Ian the question, “If you could
see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?” How
would you respond to that question?

Annotated List of Film Titles Relevant to Truth

Citizen Kane (1941). Directed by Orson Welles. Starring Orson Welles, Joseph
Cotten, Ray Collins, Dorothy Comingore.
Citizen Kane is the reconstruction of one man’s life, as told from the points of
view of several people who knew him. Whose portrayal is most accurate?
Does that question even make sense?
Rashomon (1950). Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Starring Toshiro Mifune,
Masayuki Mori, Machiko Kyo, Takashi Shimura, Minoru Chiaki.
Rashomon, like Hilary and Jackie, is a multiple-perspective film: it tells the
same story several times over from the point of view of different characters.
He Said, She Said (1991). Directed by Ken Kwapis, Marisa Silver. Starring
Kevin Bacon, Elizabeth Perkins, Sharon Stone.
This lightweight comedy attempts to answer the question: Do men and
women live in different worlds? It offers the male and the female perspec-
tive on a love affair that develops between two polar-opposite newspaper
editorial writers.
Courage Under Fire (1996). Directed by Edward Zwick. Starring Denzel
Washington, Meg Ryan, Matt Damon.
A classic example of the multiple-perspective film.

27
 PHILOSOPHY THROUGH FILM

Hilary and Jackie (1998). Directed by Anand Tucker. Starring Emily Watson,
Rachel Griffiths, James Frain, David Morrissey.
Based on the book by brother and sister Hilary and Piers du Pré, Hilary and
Jackie is a multiple-perspective film, telling the story of the lives of the two
du Pré sisters from the changing perspectives of the two sisters.
Go (1999). Directed by Doug Liman. Starring Sarah Polley, Desmond Askew,
Katie Holmes.
Drug deals, sex, violence, pyramid schemes, a road trip to Las Vegas,
supermarket check-out cashiers: these elements are thrown into the hopper,
shaken, and strewn out to form the backbone of a multiple-perspective film.
Go has the fast-paced, almost frenetic feel typical of young directors weaned
on music videos. It is a fun, darkly comic ride.
Melinda and Melinda (2004). Directed by Woody Allen. Starring Radha
Mitchell, Chloë Sevigny, Johnny Lee Miller, Amanda Peet, Will Ferrell.
Several old friends meet at a restaurant for dinner and end up in a heated
debate over whether life is essentially comic or tragic. They decide to settle
matters by considering and then retelling the “same” story first as a tragedy,
then as a comedy.

Notes
1. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book IV, part 7.
2. Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (1912), (The Project Gutenberg, 2009),
Chapter XII, “Truth and Falsehood”.
3. Ibid.
4. William James, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, (1907), (The
Project Gutenberg, 2004), Lecture VI, “Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth”.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (London: George Allen and Unwin
Ltd, 1946), “William James,” Chapter 29, 845–846.
9. William James, Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, (New York:
Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912), Chapter 1, “The Will to Believe”.
10. Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes, Rationality and Relativism (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1982), 10.
11. This is the opening sentence from Protagoras’s book On Truth. It is the only sur-
viving fragment from that work.
12. Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” in Leaves of Grass (Philadelphia, PA: David McKay,
1891–92), 51.
13. See, for example, Arthur Danto’s Nietzsche as Philosopher (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1965), 97.
14. Friedrich Nietzsche, Aus dem Nachlass der Achtzigerjahre, vol. 3 of Nietzsches Werke in
Drei Bände, ed. Karl Schlechta (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1958), 903 and 705,
respectively. These passages are as translated by Danto in Nietzsche as Philosopher.
15. Danto, Nietzsche as Philosopher (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), 96.
16. Ibid., 80.
17. Friedrich Nietzsche, Aus dem Nachlass, 814.

28
 TRUTH

18. Gene Blocker, “The Challenge of Post-Modernism” in Introduction to Modern Philo-

sophy, 7th ed. Alburey Castell, Donald Borchert, and Arthur Zucker (Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001), 554–555.
19. Alison Jaggar, “Love and Knowledge: Emotion in Feminist Epistemology” in
Introduction to Modern Philosophy, Castell, Borchert, and Zucker (eds.), 535.
20. Nietzsche, a postmodernist in all but name, held that a pragmatic criterion for
judging adequacy was universally valid.
21. Blocker, “The Challenge of Post-Modernism,” 558–559.
22. The following is a reworking of the argument against relativism in James Rachels,
The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 3d ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999).
23. The criticism originates with Plato, in his discussion of Protagoras’s views in the
Theaetetus.

29
 2
SKEPTICISM
The Matrix (1999) and Inception (2010)

MORPHEUS: You have the look of a man who accepts

what he sees, because he is expecting to wake up.
Ironically, this is not far from the truth.
The Matrix
COBB: If this is my dream why can’t I control this?
MAL: Because you don’t know you’re dreaming!
Inception

We are all used to thinking that our senses reveal a world that exists independently of
our minds. But is this belief justified? What can I know about this external world?
Can I be sure that what my senses report to me is accurate? Maybe my senses are
giving me radically misleading information about what is going on in the world
outside of my mind. Can I even know that an external world exists? Philosophers
have been examining these questions for centuries. As we saw in the Introduction
and in Chapter 1, some philosophers hold a position called skepticism, according
to which genuine knowledge in such matters is unattainable. The science-fiction
virtual-reality genre is ideal for introducing this topic. The movies The Matrix and
Inception are both excellent sources for the standard arguments supporting skepticism
and for hints at how modern philosophers have reacted to these arguments. Our
advice is to read up to and including Section 2.3, then to watch the movies before
resuming reading the rest of the chapter. The first two sections introduce the topic of
skepticism in very general terms; having it under your belt before viewing The Matrix
and Inception will help you to extract more of the philosophical content out of the
movies. The material beginning in Section 2.4 makes constant reference to the
movies, so it would be most profitably read after viewing the movies.

2.1 What is Skepticism?

In everyday discourse, to call someone skeptical is to say that that person is
prone to disbelieve what others say. It is commonplace to show distrust or
disbelief in what a politician is promising by stating, “I’m skeptical.” The term

30
 SKEPTICISM

skepticism as it is used within philosophy has a slightly different, albeit related

meaning. Someone who is skeptical about X in the philosophical sense is some-
one who claims that it is impossible to know whether X is true or false. To see
this more clearly, consider the following propositions:

P1: George Washington was the twenty-first president of the United States.
P2: 2,356,717 is a prime number.
P3: I am not dreaming right now.

Suppose you were asked, for each of P1, P2, P3, whether you know with
absolute certainty that that proposition is true. What would your response be?
Here is how your answers might go:

P1 ́ : I know that P1 is definitely false.

P2 ́ : I don’t know about P2, maybe it’s true, maybe it’s false. If I were a math
whiz or someone with some time to kill, I could probably figure out,
though, whether P2 is true or false.
P3 ́ : I’m not quite sure what to make of P3. I tend to believe that I’m not
dreaming right now, but I can remember times in the past when
I thought I wasn’t dreaming, only to wake up a few minutes later when
my alarm went off. The more I think about P3, the weirder P3 seems. At
least if asked whether P2 was true or false, I could think of a way to figure
it out. But P3 is qualitatively different. I can’t think of a calculation I can
carry out or a test I can perform that would give me conclusive evidence
either way. I guess the correct thing to say in this case is that I can’t know
with absolute certainty whether P3 is true or false.

The response given in P3 ́ above captures exactly what philosophers mean by

skepticism: skepticism is the view that we cannot know with certainty whether
any proposition is true. Note the difference between skepticism in its everyday
usage and its philosophical usage. According to the former, skeptics are
deniers. According to the latter, skeptics are doubters.
It is possible for someone to be skeptical about some domains but not about
others. Thus, a moral skeptic claims that it is not possible to know whether moral
propositions are true or false; however, this moral skeptic could think that
knowledge is attainable in other areas. Such circumscribed versions of skepticism
will not be discussed further. The version of skepticism that this chapter deals
with is all-encompassing. Sometimes the term epistemological skepticism is used to
distinguish this all-encompassing version of skepticism from versions that involve
more limited claims. (Epistemology is the name of the sub-area of philosophy that
studies what knowledge is and how knowledge claims are justified.)
Skepticism has a long history, which predates the advent of virtual reality
movies by some 2,300 years. The first skeptics lived in ancient Greece in the
third and fourth centuries BCE in the generation after Aristotle. While none

31
 PHILOSOPHY THROUGH FILM

of the writings from these very early skeptics survived, we are familiar with
their views based on the writings of later skeptics who had had access to those
original documents. Among the latter group, Sextus Empiricus (175–225 CE)
has been the most influential in defining ancient skepticism. According to the
ancient skeptics, all one’s claims to knowledge are to be rejected, except for
the knowledge of one’s current perceptual state. Thus, I can know that I am
having a visual impression of redness right now (a current perceptual state), but
I cannot know that that impression of redness is caused by, or represents, or has
anything whatsoever to do with goings-on outside of my own mind. Notice that
these ancient skeptics are not claiming that my current impression of redness is
not caused by something outside of my mind (remember, skeptics are doubters,
not deniers). They are merely claiming that I have insufficient evidence to know
whether my current impression of redness is thus caused by an external object
(that is, an object that is mind-independent, that exists external to the mind).
The ancient skeptic, just like his modern counterpart, would say that active dis-
belief in the existence of an external world is just as unfounded as active belief in
such a world. Strange as it might sound, the ancient skeptics held that the nat-
ural psychological response to adopting skepticism would be a blissful detach-
ment from the world. Whether the ancient skeptics were blissfully detached is
anyone’s guess; the modern response to skepticism has been repugnance. (Watch
for the responses offered by characters in The Matrix and Inception when the
skeptical hypothesis enters the picture—do they become blissfully detached?)
Philosophers are like other people in finding something profoundly unsettling
about skepticism. Indeed, much of the epistemology done in the modern era can
be interpreted as an attempt to refute skepticism. So deep is the disdain for
skepticism among some philosophers (e.g., George Berkeley, whom we shall
meet in Section 2.6) that they will reject any assumption, solely on the grounds
that it will lead to skepticism.
The strain of skepticism that began in ancient Greece died out during
the Early Middle Ages and had no or only very few adherents in Europe
for over a thousand years. It was not until the religious and scientific
revolutions of the 15th and 16th centuries that interest in skepticism re-
emerged. This re-emergence was further spurred by the republication of
the writings of Sextus Empiricus in the middle of the 16th century. The
time was ripe for philosophers to grapple once again with doubt. By far
the most influential writer on the topic of skepticism during this time was
the French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650). In retrospect, his-
torians of philosophy have marked his emergence as the beginning of phi-
losophy in the modern period.1 Descartes laid out skepticism in the form
that it has retained to this day. Because of his influence, we have allocated
all of Section 2.2 to a discussion of his views. Skepticism remained on phi-
losophy’s front burner for the rest of the 17th and most of the 18th centuries.
Another highly influential philosopher of this period, David Hume (1711–76),
refined the arguments for skepticism still further, showing just what would be

32
 SKEPTICISM

required to justify a claim to know that an external world exists, and showing
how this requirement could not be satisfied—not even in theory. We shall
discuss some of these arguments in Sections 2.4 and 2.5.

2.2 Descartes’s Formulation

The most influential work ever written on skepticism is the first essay in
Meditations on First Philosophy, originally published by René Descartes in
1641. In this essay, Descartes lays the framework for modern skepticism
and sets the standard according to which any presumed refutation of
skepticism must pass muster. In the remaining five essays that make up the
Meditations, Descartes sets forth what he believes to be a refutation of
skepticism. While philosophers greatly admire the thoroughness and
ingenuity of the arguments that Descartes offers in favor of skepticism,
most philosophers believe Descartes’s solution to the problem of skepti-
cism presented in the second through sixth essays does not work. Thus,
Descartes’s Meditations have become the classic source for skepticism,
rather than the refutation of skepticism that Descartes had intended the
work to be.
The complete first essay from Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy is
reproduced in Readings from Primary Sources (Reading 2a, 262). In this
essay, Descartes sets about trying to find a belief whose truth he cannot
possibly doubt. He notes that his senses have deceived him in the past; so,
any belief based on the report of his senses can be doubted. (Recall the dis-
tinction emphasized above between doubting the truth of a proposition and
believing it to be false.) Furthermore, he recalls having experiences while
dreaming that were indistinguishable at the time from experiences while
awake. Thus, while close and careful examination of an object in good light
is normally sufficient to dispel concerns that his senses are deceiving him,
close and careful examination in good light is wholly insufficient for distin-
guishing real reality from the virtual reality created within a dream. He deci-
des that he is looking for indubitability in the wrong place. If he has any
indubitable beliefs, they are more likely to be found within the domain of
pure mathematics (for example, arithmetic statements such as “2 + 3 = 5”).
On further consideration, however, he decides that, even here, doubt is
possible. Descartes believes that an all-powerful God exists—a God who
created him and would not allow him to be massively deceived. He admits,
though, that his belief in the existence of God can be doubted. Perhaps the
truth is that, instead of God, an all-powerful and evil demon exists; this
demon has created Descartes so that he constantly falls into error, even
when he performs simple calculations such as adding 2 and 3. He cannot
know for sure that this is not the case. If such an evil demon exists, then even
beliefs based solely on his powers of reason are called into doubt. Descartes
decides to adopt the hypothesis that just such an evil demon exists, not

33
 PHILOSOPHY THROUGH FILM

because this hypothesis is well founded (quite the contrary, Descartes would
say), but because such a hypothesis will steel Descartes in his resolve not to
allow in any belief as indubitable if that belief has the slightest shred of
grounds for doubt. It is on this note of abject skepticism that his first medi-
tation ends.
As mentioned above, Descartes believed he had refuted skepticism in the
later essays. While most of the remainder of the Meditations on First Philosophy
lie outside the scope of this chapter, there is one item from the beginning of
the second meditation that bears remarking upon. In his search for a belief
whose truth he could not possibly doubt, Descartes settles upon the proposi-
tion “I exist.” He bases the indubitability of this proposition on the reasoning
that even if the evil demon exists and is constantly causing him to fall into
error, Descartes could not possibly be mistaken in believing he exists as a
thing that thinks—as a thing that doubts. This is because he would at least
have to exist as a thing that was being deceived. Thus, Descartes formulates
the argument “I think; therefore, I exist” (in its original Latin, cogito, ergo sum)
as showing beyond a shadow of a doubt that he exists.

2.3 An Overview of the Movies

THE MATRIX (1999). DIRECTED BY ANDY AND LARRY WACHOWSKI

STARRING KEANU REEVES, LAURENCE FISHBURNE, CARRIE-ANNE MOSS
The Matrix is the first film released in what eventually became a movie trilogy
exploring a futuristic world in which computers have enslaved humankind. The
humans are farmed as an energy source, and their nervous systems are hooked
into computers that create a perfect virtual world for each of them. While fancy
computers are not, strictly speaking, necessary for a discussion of skepticism
(after all, Descartes managed to do just fine back in the 17th century making
reference only to the virtual world created in normal, human dreams), bringing
technology into the picture makes skepticism an easier sell. Neo, the main
character in The Matrix, is asked the question “How would you know the dif-
ference between [a] dream world and a real one?” He (and we, the viewers)
realize that there is no way to tell the difference.

INCEPTION (2010). WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

STARRING LEONARDO DICAPRIO, JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT, ELLEN PAGE.
Inception allows us to explore the question whether we can ever be certain that
we are not dreaming. The main character, Dominic Cobb, is a thief-for-hire.
He and his team of specialists have figured out how to enter a person’s dream
and extract valuable secrets from that person’s subconscious. This time, how-
ever, rather than stealing an idea, Cobb and his team must figure out how to
plant an idea in the victim’s mind, a process called inception. They devise a

34
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me in the dusk, a strong defense. His introspective vision penetrated
further than the eye could follow.
“Who do you think was speaking to us, back there in the hut?” I
asked.
“Why, Mattie,” he answered in a surprised tone.
“But I do not understand it.”
Judge Bell smiled slowly, making no reply. He did not expect me to
understand.

We descended from the dripping dunes at the place where the judge
had left his handkerchief tied to a tree-top to mark the path that
dipped into the thicket. The groaning of a fog-horn at the coast-guard
station followed us, and the tidal breeze laid an icy hand upon our
backs.
The way home was traversed quickly, for it was downhill most of the
distance. When we drew near the railroad tracks I caught the judge
by his coat.
“Judge,” I said, “I was going to the Sailor’s Rest, because I can’t stay
in the House of the Five Pines any longer, but if you will come up
and spend the night there, too, I will go back. I hadn’t intended to tell
you, but—there are very strange manifestations in that old house, far
more amazing than what we saw this afternoon, and you ought to
know about them. You owe it to yourself not to miss them; it is
research work. I’ll stay there once more if you will. Can you come?”
The judge’s face glowed like a scientist about to resolve the
atmosphere into its component parts.
“I’ll come,” he swore. “I’ll be there; watch out for me!”
“Well, then, now!”
“No,” he insisted, “not right away. I’ve got to go home first—the cow
—but I’ll be back. Depend on me!”
He started off on a dog-trot up the railroad track, making a short-cut
through the back of the town. Reluctantly I turned away toward my
own house and sat down on the step. It did not seem worth while to
go in and unpack any more of Jasper’s things. I might never live
there.
While light lasted I lingered outside and looked at the quiet bay and
the fishermen returning from their boats. They wore high red rubber
boots and gray flannel shirts open at the throat. Barefooted children
in denim overalls came running to meet them on the boardwalk, and
tugged at their brown hands and begged for rides upon their
shoulders.... And I had thought that some day children might be
running down our flagging—but now, I did not know.
I could see the old arcade grinning at me, were I forced to go back to
New York, and the sign in the corridors leaped into malicious letters,
“Dogs and children not allowed.” I remembered the sort of man who
returned there at night, stepping languidly out of a yellow cab, light-
wood cane under one arm while he paid the driver, nothing waiting
for him but a fresh bunch of bills under his door. And those other
ne’er-do-well tenants, hatless and unpressed, affecting sandals to
save socks, having nothing in common with their sporty neighbors
but the garbage-pail on the fire-escape. After three days of the
promised land, must I go back to that?
Why didn’t the judge come?
I went inside and lit the lamps, because I dared not let the house
grow dark before entering, then sank down by the window and
rocked nervously, watching the street. But what I saw was not the
stalwart figure of my old friend approaching through the evening
haze, but the grotesque contour of the town crier, preceded by his
bell.
Clang, clang, clankety-clang! He swung the big brass tongue as if all
the world were waiting for his message.
In front of the House of the Five Pines he stopped short and with his
back to it, read out to the bay: “Burr ... buzz.... Sheriff’s auction ...
Long Nook Road ... Monday....”
He swung his bell again and hobbled up the street. It was late for the
town crier to be abroad and he was in a hurry.
“That will be the next thing,” I thought; “that will happen to me. Some
day the bell-man will be going up and down the boardwalk
advertising another house for sale, and that one will be mine.”
The idea was so discouraging that I tried to think of something not so
lugubrious. Where was the judge? I picked up the magazine that he
had thrust upon me earlier in the day and began to read it.
The cover had a large eye in the center from which shot orange rays,
and underneath were symbols I did not understand. The paper was
cheap but well printed, one of those ventures in sect literature which,
like those dedicated to social propaganda, are always coming and
going on the market and sending out subscription-blanks with every
issue. The advertisements were, for the most part, how to get fat and
how to get thin, where to send words for songs and how to sell
motion-picture scenarios. The editorial matter was equally erratic.
One erudite article held my interest: a savant had written of the
“aura” that surrounds a person. This is the light which exudes from
his body, an excrescence imperceptible to the agnostic outside the
realm of “truth,” but plainly visible to the initiate. The aura was
supposed to radiate various distances, depending on the magnetism
of the subject, and its hue changed with the individual. Red was the
color of youth and exuberance, blue designated the purist, purple
betrayed sex passion, and yellow surrounded the intellectual. Pink
and heliotrope were the auras of the artistic; green was the halo of
genius. In life this color might not be evident, but after death, the
body being expressed in highly magnetized atoms, the color of the
aura was quite clear, being, in fact, the sole attribute of the
apparition. That is, instead of being visited by the subject
reincarnated in mortal form, you beheld his astral color.
Understanding his temperament in life, you recognized him by the
aura which represented him. Although most difficult to discern with
the naked eye, this aura could easily be photographed, and
photographs were reproduced on the next page—shadowy outlines
of nude figures. Much space was devoted to the female aura, posed
in interesting silhouette with a wavy water-line around it, like the
coast upon a map. The subjects’ names were given. It was hoped
that later they would be able to reproduce the aura of a specter, to
print a colored photograph of light alone.
I shut the magazine. It had made fascinating reading, but I would
have to procure the observations of more than one savant to be
convinced. I began to see how profound a study the psychic might
become, and why Mattie and the New Captain had spent all their
time on it and gathered together so many books on the occult. It was
not so simple as I had supposed when I knew nothing at all about it.
Did the judge believe this? I wished that he would come.
It was nine o’clock.
If only this gnawing in my fagged brain to discover the cause of my
nocturnal obsessions had taken some other form of elucidation! Why
did I force my addled intellect to prove or disprove this theory of
spiritism, this revived dogma of the Dark Ages, culled from all
religions? I had never subjected Christianity to such severe criticism.
After childhood, one ceases to question the code of morality under
which he has been brought up; it is his then, for better or for worse.
To argue is to lose the nuance of faith. Would a child, I wondered,
brought up in the House of the Five Pines, take ghosts as easily as I
took Jonah? He certainly would not grow up into materialism by
believing that the age of miracles was past. He would take the
supernatural as a matter of course. One could hear the family
arguing at the breakfast-table:
“I heard something last night; it must have been grandmother.”
And another child, with its mouth full of grapefruit: “No, great-
grandmother. I saw her.”
And the bobbed-hair one: “It couldn’t have been Grandmother
Brown, because the aura was yellow, and she never had anything in
her bean.”
Then they would go roller-skating, leaving the subleties of color
emanations to solve or dissolve themselves.
But I had not been brought up that way. I had plunged into this
atmosphere unprepared. I never felt more ancient than at that
moment, when I realized that I was too old to learn.
What was keeping the judge?
It was ten o’clock.
I got up and looked out of the window. The street was quiet and dark
as the water beyond it. Cold stars shone feebly through the clouds
above the bay, and the revolving planet at the lighthouse on Long
Point blinked every minute. From the highlands another light shone
steadily, and at the entrance to the harbor a bell-buoy swung sadly
back and forth. The waves, rocking the floating tongue, set it ringing
louder as they rose in strength, and let it die away again to the tinkle
of a tea-bell. I was glad the fog-horns were not groaning in the
harbor. I hate fog-horns.
No man ever knows the weariness of a woman who waits for him.
No man has ever experienced to the full the hours when the night
grows longest, when the mind catches at the faintest sound in the
thoroughfare and listens to the ebb of footsteps that after all were not
quite the ones expected. Because, universally, it is the woman who
is in the house and the man who is outside, he has missed for
centuries the finest form of torture devised by the unthinking and the
tardy and the dissipated for those who must sit at the window. There
is no use in saying afterward, “Why did you wait up?” and the tired
reply, “I won’t again.” She will do so again, goaded by forebodings
that grow with the minutes, and she will keep on sitting up for him
until the end of life, when, if there is any justice, the man will go first
into the meandering meadows and on the banks of the last river wait
for a cycle or two.
Every far-away sound attaches profound significance to itself—a
piano, a child crying, a window being raised; and the night seems full
of freight-trains chugging up a grade, although you never hear an
engine all day long. I have heard the whistle of steamboats in inland
cities. But worse is that rattle and bang up the street, that clinking of
bottles and running feet, that continued panting of the engine which it
is not worth while to shut off, by which you know that you have sat
up till the milk is being delivered and that it is too late!
Why did the judge not come? It was after eleven o’clock.
I wished that it was Jasper for whom I was waiting, for more reasons
than the obvious one. Jasper would prove that the phenomena which
had harassed the House of the Five Pines were not psychic; Judge
Bell would prove that they were.

A hand on the window-pane! On the outside of the window-pane was

a hand. There was no body to it, but in the lower corner of the
window where I sat a hand was feeling around. It was a small hand.
It knocked.
At the sound of flesh on glass my heart rebelled; it ceased
functioning altogether.
The hand knocked again, impatiently. Then a voice was added.
“Let me in! Anybody home?”
Something about the homely words released a spring, and my heart
jumped.
“Who is it?”
“Me! Open the door!”
I unlatched the kitchen shutter and peered out. A diminutive
youngster, too short to be visible above the window-sash, was
coming around from the side of the captain’s wing.
“Gee, I pretty near went away again, only I saw the window was
lighted.”
“Why didn’t you go to the door?”
“I did! The front door.”
That was why I had not heard him.
“I would have gone,” the boy continued, still full of his own troubles,
“only he give me the quarter before I came.”
“The judge?” I interrupted.
“No, Isabella; he broke his arm.”
“He broke his arm?”
“Cranking his Ford.” The boy made a windmill motion. “He was just
starting out.”
“Coming here?”
“I don’t know. My mother said likely—She leave me come to tell you,
but she said it was just as well.”
“Just as well?”
“Yes, she was helpin’ over there to-night; everybody is. He said to tell
you if you was afraid to stay here alone all night, to come back down
to his house with me; but my mother says she wouldn’t if she was
you, and anyway, there ain’t room.”
For a moment I was too stunned to be angry. Then I thought I might
as well take the matter easily. The child had no idea what he was
repeating.
“Tell the judge it will be all right,” I answered. “And tell your mother—
Don’t tell your mother anything!”
He had admitted receiving his quarter, and he had frightened me so
badly that I would not offer him more. He backed away and slid
through the hedge, and then he ran.
However, I did not immediately reënter the house. With my cape
wrapped round me I stood outside, wondering what to do.
It was too late to go anywhere. Alf locked up the Sailor’s Rest at the
respectable hour of ten, and every cottage in the village was dark by
half-past. Even before that they would have given me scant
welcome, for I could tell from the remarks repeated by the boy that I
had fallen heir to the suspicion in which they held Mattie. The judge’s
home, my natural refuge, was full of sickness and of gossips, of
bandages and hostility. I was furious with the judge for breaking his
arm. Why didn’t he install a self-starter?
I considered the possibility of finding my way to the Winkle-Man’s or
to Mrs. Dove’s, my old laundress, but as I never had taken them into
my confidence before, it was literally too late to begin. I could not
imagine living in the town longer than to-morrow morning if I was
found in the position of begging lodging from door to door. And I had
not actually made up my mind to abandon the place altogether; the
instinct for home-making was too strong.
The night was damp and foggy, but still I lingered in the yard.
The old house fairly yawned with peace. Such a quiet, innocent,
companionable house! The five pine-trees swept the roof with the
rhythm of the sea in their misty branches.
My chance glance clung to them.
There was a red light in the tops of the trees.
The red light came from the skylight—the skylight of my house—in
the roof of the loft. The red light was shining from the little secret
room.
Could it be a fire? No flames crackled up through the rotten
shingles.... Some one—? There had not been a sound to-night.
The red light made a glowing rectangle so bright that the roof was
invisible. It had the effect of being suspended high in space, like a
phantasmagoric banner of the witches. The outlines of four panes of
glass made a black cross upon it.
“The attribute of the apparition.... The aura of youth is red,” said the
savant.
I did not stay to take any photographs. I fled.
Like the boy before me, I backed out of the yard, stumbled through
the hedge, and then ran. Turning to look back, I saw that the skylight
still burned on redly through the branches of the pines.
I spent the night under an old dory on the beach.
 CHAPTER XV
BEACH-PLUMS

DID you ever wake up looking at the inside of a boat?

My impulse to sit up came to an abrupt finish with a stunning blow on
the head, where the seat struck me across the eyes. I lay blinking at
it. The roof of the interior rounded over me securely, resting upon the
beach on one gunwale and on the other side leaving a tipped-up
opening under which I had crawled. Through this slit I could see
waves curling up at the water’s edge and was glad that whoever
owned the dory had pulled it well beyond the rising. Had it stood
where the tide reached it I would have been under it just the same.
I was wondering how I had come there and why, when two
mammoth feet crunched across the sand toward me. Before I had
time to slide out of my retreat, great hands turned the dory over and I
was gazing into the face of a fisherman. He held a pair of bleached
oars under one arm and from his hairy fist dripped a punctured bait-
bucket.
“Gosh!” was all he said.
He set down his pail, dropped his oars, and, wiping his hands across
his mouth, sized me up with unmixed disapproval in which there was
no particle of respect.
I tried to twist my damp hair out of my face, but the pins had fallen
from it and were lost, and my dress, drenched with sea salt, clung to
me like the shriveled skin of a dead fish. I staggered to my feet, not
knowing how to explain myself.
But by this time the fisherman had his own line of attack well in hand.
“Where’s your partner?” he asked rudely.
“My—?”
“You don’t sleep down here on the beach alone, do you?”
The hot blood rushed to my colorless face, and for the first time that
dreadful foggy morning I felt warm. Who or what did the creature
think I was?
“You do not understand!”
He was pushing the dory across the beach with great sweeping pulls
along one side. “Oh,” he grunted, between jerks, “I—think—I—do!”
The evil imagination of these people was too much for me to cope
with. I could neither forestall nor refute it. I stood wretchedly
watching him, without trying to say a word in my defense.
Prow in the water, he turned back accusingly. “You been here
before,” he sneered; “night after night.”
“I haven’t!”
“I seen the marks in the sand!” His brute eyes leered at me. “What’s
your name?”
“I live in the House of the Five Pines,” I answered, with all the dignity
that five hours’ sleep on a wet beach could put into my limp manner.
“I’m the woman who bought it.”
With one foot in the dory, he looked me up and down.
“I thought as much!”
He pushed out into the bay.
I was sorry then that I had told him who I was. I ought to have
answered, “Maud Smith,” or something. I was only adding to the ill-
repute that surrounded that luckless dwelling and any one who set
his foot within it. Last night insinuations had been made about my
having asked the judge to stay with me; this morning a vile
construction had been placed upon my sleeping on the beach. For
innocence and charity and sweet faith in each other, let me
commend the country mind! It is as willing to wallow in scandal as a
pig in mud.
After the fisherman’s appraisal I dared not face any one without
going back to the house and cleaning up. Ghost or no, some sort of
toilet would have to be made before I was ready to face the world. I
felt shaken and degraded, and as willing as any one else to believe
the worst about myself. Perhaps my traveling clothes would restore
my self-respect.
I was leaving.

The green-shuttered door of the kitchen was open, as I had left it last
night, and, turning up the broken flagging, the house seemed so
beseechingly friendly that I was half-ashamed of my mood of hatred.
I was even willing to believe that the trouble was with me, instead of
with the house. It was not its fault that hateful mysteries had
attached themselves to it with the grafting on of the captain’s wing.
Probably the old house resented the secret room and the apparitions
as much as I did, for in its youth it had been highly respected,
holding its head above all the other houses on the cape. I felt the
same sort of pity for it that I had for myself after my recent
experience on the beach.
“We’re both old ruins,” I said to the House of the Five Pines. “We
ought to stick together.”
Everything within was just as I had left it, the door of the closet
downstairs locked and the one upstairs nailed. I felt like a deserter all
the time I packed my trunk. With tears in my eyes and a heavy pain
in my heart, I went out of the front door, which Jasper and I had
opened so hopefully, and closed it after me.
On the flagging was the boy from the telegraph-office, snapping a
yellow envelope at the tall grass as he loitered along.
“Is that for me?” I ripped it open before I paused to sign.
Don’t give up house. Am returning Saturday morning.
Wait.
 Jasper.
And this was Friday! Our trains would pass each other.
Well, if I were out of my mind, as I more than half-suspected, one
night more or less would not make any difference. A sanatorium was
very much like a jail. I put my hat and bag inside the door and
wandered off to think it over. This might be my last day of freedom.
I had no impulse to call on the judge. He could not help me solve
anything, because his point of view was too much like mine.
Moreover, I was still angry with him in an unreasonable way because
he had failed me last night. Why hadn’t he arrived quietly, as he had
promised, instead of getting into a scrape which necessitated
explanations to the whole town? He had no right to break his arm!
I took the back street and followed it to the edge of the village, and
there, in front of Mrs. Dove’s cottage, met her coming out of the
white picket-gate with a tin pail on her arm. She smiled as if the
world were just as usual and I one of her best friends. I was so
surprised and grateful to meet some one who still considered me a
normal human being that I could have kissed her.
“Do you want to join me?” asked Mrs. Dove. “I’m going to pick
beach-plums. If you are going to be a regular householder up here,
you ought to learn where to find them.”
“What do you do with them after you get them?”
I was already suiting my step to hers.
“Jelly.”
“Will you put mine up for me?”
“Why, the idea! Anybody can do it. There’s no trick to beach-plums.”
“But I want you to come down to the house to-night, and we’ll do
them together.”
“Down to your house?” Mrs. Dove looked at me strangely.
“There’s a good range in the House of the Five Pines,” I hastened to
add, “and everything is convenient.”
She opened her mouth and closed it again without speaking.
“You can stay all night with me,” I hurried on, before she had the
courage to refuse, “and we can work all evening.”
Mrs. Dove was flustered, but at last had an excuse. “Why, I don’t
know whatever in the world Will would say!” she answered, “I ain’t
used to going out nights, unless it’s to nurse somebody—”
I took hold of both of her hands, much to her embarrassment. “Mrs.
Dove,” I said, “pretend you are nursing me. The truth is, I’m afraid to
stay alone. To-morrow my husband will return. I’ll promise you, this is
the very last night.”
She drew back like a shy girl. “If that’s the case, I guess Will will
leave me come over.”
I drew a breath of relief. That settled that. I began to enjoy the
scenery.
We had passed the last straggling house, and, following the pike
down the cape, had come to a high, wide part of it where the dunes
were covered with coarse grass and bordered little fresh-water lakes.
Leaving the main road for a path between the rushes, we came to a
height which commanded a view of the sea in all directions—before
us, to the left, where the backbone of the cape turned east to the
mainland, and behind us, where it rounded northwest toward the
outside lighthouse. Three miles of moors separated us from its deep
blue, but it looked almost as close as the bay on our immediate right.
At our feet was a fourth bit of water, Pink Pond, where lilies were cut
in the summer and ice in the winter, a bright blue sheet bordered
with tall brown cat-tails. Far away, on the outside sea, jetties of
suspended smoke marked the passing of an invisible ocean liner;
near at hand, in the bay, rocked the fishing-boats; and at the
entrance to Star Harbor a government cruiser was turning its gray
nose northward.
I remembered my sailor, whom I had promised to meet at three
o’clock this afternoon, but even as I wished that I might in some way
take advantage of his eagerness to help me smoke burst out of the
black funnels and the cruiser glided past the point. The sailor would
have to pursue his investigations of the psychic in some other port.
“Pretty, ain’t it?” said Mrs. Dove. “The beach-plums is further on.”
We found them growing on a hillside on stunted trees no larger than
bushes, as wild and untended as a patch of blackberries whose
briers were all around us and hindered our progress. They were a
hard, cherry-sized fruit all shades of ripening-red and purple, thick
upon each tree, but the trees were separated by clumps of sassafras
and the low brittle bayberry whose pale wax clusters are used for
candle-making. I tasted a beach-plum and found it juicy and tart, but
almost all pit.
“The green ones is good, too,” Mrs. Dove advised me. “They make it
jell.”
The day was as warm as Indian summer, now that the early fog had
melted, and the moist heat, oozing up from the humid ground, was
soothing to my tired body. The convolutions of my brain seemed to
uncoil and extend themselves into a flat surface, like a piece of table-
linen laid in the sun to bleach. I did not pick as many beach-plums,
perhaps, as Mrs. Dove, but I was more benefited by the day’s work. I
began to feel revived and almost normal.
“I brought lunch along,” announced my wonderful companion. She
pulled some paper-wrapped packages out of her capacious pockets,
and we sat on a rock and ate lobster-sandwiches and muffins spread
with sweet butter till I was ashamed. It seemed a long time since I
had tasted anything that I ate. I felt so grateful that I wanted to cry.
Mrs. Dove sensed my mood and my need, and kept right on
mothering me.
“We’ll put the plums on as soon as we get back,” she said, “and have
some jam for supper, maybe, or to-morrow when your husband
comes, anyway. He’ll enjoy them; mine always does.”
It was hard to tell her that to-morrow I was going to leave, her plans
sounded so pleasant.
“That house is funny, Mrs. Dove,” I said; “I don’t know whether I will
live in it.”
“I thought you’d come to that!” she answered.
And another time, when we were picking plums, I tried again to
explain to her how things stood, because I felt that if she were going
to be any help to me she must know the truth about the House of the
Five Pines, in so far as that was possible.
“I know what you heard crying in the captain’s buggy, that night you
told me about when he brought Mattie home.”
And she said, “I’ve often wondered.”
“There’s a secret room in the loft of the captain’s wing; it’s a child’s
room.”
“You don’t say!”
“That’s why he wouldn’t ask any men to help him build it.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
She bore with me in that patient way which country women have of
greeting life, expecting nothing and counting extraordinary
circumstances as merely phases of the conditions they have always
known. Something like children, to whom all things are strange and
equally incredible.
“How many have you in that poke?” she changed the subject. And
when I held up the juice-stained bag to show her, “We’ll keep on till
we get a gallon.”
We said no more, and nothing was heard but the thud of the beach-
plums as the fruit fell into her pail. I was so drowsy I did not pick very
fast.
“I bet they hated each other,” Mrs. Dove said, unexpectedly.
I had been thinking about Mattie and the New Captain, too; I thought
of little else. But the intensity of her remark, coming as it did out of
nothing and cutting the still afternoon like a curse, surprised me.
“Nobody could keep it up,” she went on deliberately, giving me the
sum of her silent rumination, “a secret like that. Always guarding,
always watching, always afraid the other one would do something to
give it away! Between watching it and each other they must have
been wore out. Beats me how old Mis’ Hawes never got on to it. She
must ’a’ been dead.”
“It died before she did; I saw the little coffin in the vault.”
“How did it die?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did you go over to the cemetery for?”
“To see if the captain was in his coffin.”
“Was he?”
“Yes,—that is, the coffin was there; I didn’t open it.”
“I would ’a’!” said Mrs. Dove.
It struck me that she had put her finger on two weak parts of the
story. I was resting on the belief that I knew all there was to know
about the history of Mattie’s life, but it was true that I had not looked
inside any of the coffins, and it was equally true that I did not know—
yet—how the child met his death.
I was well enough informed in occultism by now to realize that this
spectral apparition had not put in its last appearance. It would keep
on coming, like Hamlet’s ghost, until its tragedy was explained. That
was what was keeping it near this plane, hovering about the scene of
its death till it had made itself understood. Not until the evil done to it
in life had been revenged could its spirit move on into the higher
astral regions and be at peace with the infinite. As long as I did not
know how the child had died, I might be sure of phantoms.
“Poor Mattie!” sighed Mrs. Dove.
“Her coffin wasn’t there,” said I.
“Of course not!”
“Where did they bury her?”
“They didn’t bury her.”
But before my horror had reached articulation she added, absent-
mindedly, “They never found her.”
I put my bag of beach-plums down and began to reconstruct my
ideas. What had been told me and what I had imagined were
confused in my mind.
“Do you mean to say,” I asked, “that they never found Mattie out
there on the flats, caught in the lobster-pots after the tide had gone
out?”
“Law!” said Mrs. Dove, “She went out with it. They scarcely ever gets
’em back from behind the breakwater. The current is too strong.”
I wondered why the judge had not told me that. He must have been
thinking of something else when I asked him where Mattie was. I
remembered his wide gesture toward the bay, which I had
misconstrued into meaning that she had been buried in some place
other than the family vault. Evidently I was the only one who knew
she had committed suicide. I had never told any one of the note I
had found in the bookcase, and I was glad now that I had not. Her
message was safe with me. I resolved that I would have a tombstone
erected for Mattie in that part of the cemetery which is sacred to
those who are lost at sea.
At four o’clock we walked back to Mrs. Dove’s house and gained her
husband’s consent to her staying all night with me. We asked Mr.
Dove if he wanted to come, too, but he scorned the idea. And Mrs.
Dove did not urge it, I noticed; she seemed to think that this was
something we had planned by ourselves and that no men-folks were
wanted. She divided the beach-plums scrupulously in half, in spite of
my protest, and soon had my share simmering upon the range. The
House of the Five Pines relaxed and became filled with good smells
and homelike noises and made a pretense of being all that a house
should be.
Mrs. Dove ran from room to room, exclaiming with enthusiasm over
what she found, just as Jasper and I had done. She was so pleased
with everything that she restored my courage.
“You never in the world are going to give this up,” she said. “I won’t
let you.”
The secret stairs did not interest her half as much as the Canton
china and the patchwork quilts.
“I never knew Mis’ Hawes had that pattern,” she would say; or, “It’s a
wonder they never put that out on the line!” I could see that she was
going to relish telling the rest of the town what the House of the Five
Pines contained. She was stealing a march on them.
“Didn’t you ever come here?” I asked.
She was scandalized at the suggestion.
“Nobody did. Not since old Mother Hawes died, anyway. And before
that we just used to talk to her through the window. That was her
room, that nice one across the hall in front of the dining-room. Shall
we sleep there?”
I showed her Mattie’s little room upstairs.
“But this is the hired girl’s bedroom,” she objected. “With all them
grand rooms furnished with mahogany, I don’t see why you should
pick this one out for yourself.”
I confessed to her my attachment for the little room in the loft behind
it and my feeling that if I did decide to stay here, this was the very
part of the house I would want.
“You never can tell about people,” said Mrs. Dove.
She was more moved by the reason for my desire to stay in the old
house than she had been by any of the mysteries.
“I would never have thought it of you,” she kept saying. And when
she took the beach-plum jelly off the stove and hung it up in a bag to
drip overnight, she added: “It’s just as well you are learning how to
make this. They like lots of it. I know. I raised seven.”
We let the cat in and went to bed. As I settled down behind the portly
back of Mrs. Dove, I reassured myself with the thought that in the
morning Jasper would surely be here and that, no matter what might
happen, this would be my last night in the House of the Five Pines.
One never knows.
 CHAPTER XVI
THE FIFTH NIGHT

MY sense of security was so natural that housekeeping was my last

thought. I fell to thinking of how I would have made over the room if I
had decided to stay in the house. The dark walls would have to be
painted lighter and the stuffy feather-bed changed for new box-
springs. I turned over and over, trying to find a place that was neither
on the hard edge of the frame of the bed nor directly under my
comfortable companion.
It was not easy to be neurasthenic when in the society of Mrs. Dove,
even if she was asleep. To look at her and hear her quiet breathing
was like watching a peaceful baby. All the repose of the country was
embodied in her relaxed form, from the tired hand resting on the
patchwork quilt, to the head indulging in its one vanity of hair-curlers.
I was wishing that Mrs. Dove had stayed at the house on the four
preceding nights when, unconsciously, I drifted off into dreams.
Nothing untoward could happen, I thought, when Mrs. Dove was
near. What I had needed was another woman to keep the vigil with
me.

The house was too still.

I woke up thinking that I heard something, but there was not a
sound.
The tide was out and there was no noise of waves lapping the
beach. There was no wind and no murmur in the pine-trees. Then I
heard what I had heard before. Some one was crying!