Why Jon Snow Knows Nothing (from Game of Thrones and Philosophy)

The writers for the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series (such as The Hunger Games and Philosophy and The Walking Dead and Philosophy) offer an array of essays over a number of thought-provoking topics .

 My first post from Game of Thrones and Philosophy covered several essays on politics; the second post looked at competing ethical theories.This post will highlight the pursuit of knowledge as discussed in Abraham Schwab's “’You Know Nothing, Jon Snow’: Epistemic Humility Beyond The Wall.”

Epistemology is the study of what we know and how we know. Epistemic humility is when we recognize what we don’t know. So how confident can we be that we know anything? A popular candidate is something called justified true belief. In order to have JTB, at least three criteria must be met:

• One has to believe it’s true (Jon refuses to believe Benjen is dead)
•  It must actually be true (I can know that George R.R. Martin will finish the series only if Martin finishes the series)
•  It must be justified (A guess is not knowledge. Sam could not have given a reason why Dragonglass worked on the Other because he didn't know why it did. He was lucky, that's all.)

Unfortunately, even justified beliefs might be false. The Night Watch is certainly justified in believing dead people stay dead – at least until some of them come back as Wights. So what theories have been offered to help us see if we are justified in our belief that we actually have knowledge about anything?*

The Ethics of Virtue and Consequence (from Game of Thrones and Philosophy)

Game of Thrones presents Eddard Stark as a good, heroic protagonist, while Cersei stands out among many characters who fit the mold of the classic evil antagonist. Is this too simplistic and judgmental? Is it unfair to think of people in such stark moral distinctions? Should words like ‘good’ and ‘evil’ even be used in the conversation?

Games of Thrones and Philosophy, one of many books in the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series, offers an array of essays over a number of thought-provoking topics (see my reviews on The Hunger Games and Philosophy and The Walking Dead and Philosophy).

My first post in this series covered several essays on politics as seen through the eyes of Hobbes and Machiavelli. This post will look at ethical systems discussed in “Lord Eddard Stark, Queen Cersei Lannister: Moral Judgments From Different Perspectives”(Albert F. F. Anglberger and Alexander Heike), and “No One Dances The Water Dance” (Henry Jacoby). 

If we are going to talk about what’s good or evil, we will need at least some idea about what these terms mean.

Aristotle used the the term ‘virtue’ to talk about the good. He claimed that virtues (honesty, courage, justice, etc) were character traits that brought about eudaimonia, or well-being, in the people who had them. In eudaimonia, rationality controls the desires and appetites. Any time people let their appetites override their rationality, they were going to get into trouble. People not controlled by reason may find pleasure in the indulgence of their appetites, but they will never find true happiness since that can only be found in the goodness of virtue. The Big Three – Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle – all agreed on this point.

"You Win Or Your Die" (from Game of Thrones and Philosophy)

Considering the popularity of the Game of Thrones series, it’s probably worth considering the worldviews and philosophies that emerge throughout the story. Games of Thrones and Philosophy, one of many books in the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series, gives an array of essays that are helpful in at least starting the discussion. (For similar posts, see my reviews on The Hunger Games and Philosophy and The Walking Dead and Philosophy).

The book begins by looking at the game of politics through the eyes of Hobbes and Machiavelli in “Maester Hobbes goes to King’s Landing” (Greg Littmann),“Playing the Game of Thrones: Some Lessons from Machiavelli” (Marcus Schulzke), and “The Death of Lord Stark: The Perils of Idealism” (David Hahn).

Thomas Hobbes, famous for his Leviathan, lived through a real-life version of Game of Thrones when the Stuarts fell to a civil uprising then rose to power again. Hobbes observed that this kind of conflict arose because of three key reasons: greed, self-defense, and glory. These three base drives bring about a life that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” No one is safe. Even champions like Clegane can be killed by the lowly Samwell Tarleys of the world.

Eventually, people tire of this violent and chaotic “state of nature” and agree to societal rules, willingly giving up some measure of freedom and comfort for the sake of stability. When that happens, someone will need to enforce the rules. This enforcer will be the king, a sovereign power that will keep us from returning to brutish anarchy and to whom everyone must give complete allegiance. This is the Leviathan. 

Rebellion, Freedom and Art

From Paul Gregory Alm's "Songs Without Borders" (in the September/October 2014 edition of Touchstone Magazine):

"This is the great irony in the popular art of the last sixty years. Its forms thrive on rebellion and the overturning of conventional limits and expectations and even of morality. Popular art often seeks to break conventional patterns and to ignore what society expects. Singers cry out for personal freedom. Painters disregard normal rules of color and perspective and form in order to transgress a boundary. Writers sketch narratives that investigate the immoral or amoral, or sometimes abandon standard narrative altogether.

But the irony is that for such art to work, in order for it to make a statement, such rules and boundaries and markers have to be in place. If one wishes to deface a wall with graffiti or some other outrageous markings, the wall must be there to be defaced… If one wishes to scale a barbed-wire fence marked "no trespassing" and wave his arms and say, "Look at me," there must be a fence to scale. If one wants to sneer at conventional rules of behavior, there must actually be rules that govern how most people act… 

Those boundaries and rules are increasingly absent in today's society. But without such restrictions, popular music and art more and more become a rebellion in search of something to rebel against." 

I'm not sure I fully agree with the entirety of this author's analysis - surely some conventional patterns and expectations are worth challenging - but I find his broader idea thought-provoking. What happens as the rebellion against all the moral walls created by social, moral and legal boundaries becomes increasingly successful? After all, there is more than one kind of wall. Some keep us prisoner; others keep us safe. We may think we are destroying our captor when we are actually destroying our protector. 

Uglies, Pretties and Specials: Scott Westerfield's Brave New YA World

To help us enter into and better understand the entertainment shaping today's youth, I offer my latest review of books effecting a primarily YA audience. My goal is not to critique the art form as much as look at the worldview in the story.

This review will look at Scott Westerfield’s Uglies, Pretties and Specials. In spite of mixed reviews, the series has consistently been on the New York Times bestseller list with more than 3 million copies sold. Uglies, which was nominated as a Best Book For Young Adults in 2006 by the ALA, has been turned into a mange-style graphic novel and is on the way to the big screen (there have been several false starts so far).

Mr. Westerfield has a B.A. in philosophy, so it's no surprise this book series seeks to dig deeply into culture and humanity.The series isn’t destined to become part of any literary canon, but it offers a YA Brave New World that highlight the dangers of our culture's idolization and seemingly endless pursuit of youth, pleasure and beauty.

In Westerfield’s world, everyone can become beautiful, fixed and enhanced by a pretty invasive surgery that radically changes one's appearance while altering one's brain to bring about obedience. Upon completion, the Pretties enter into a “bubbly” world, a lifestyle that makes the most extravagant Hollywood excesses seem tame. The theory behind this seems to be that people fight each other and pillage the planet because they are unhappy, and they are unhappy because they are ugly and/or poor. The solution must be to make them pretty and rich.

It doesn’t work.