Arrested Development and Philosophy (14 page)

The second way that this objection hits the Cartesian account is related to the first; it is an evidential objection. Even if Oscar does share a soul with another person from the past, he has no way of knowing this fact. Locke even takes it a step farther, suggesting that, for all we know, we may well have, over the course of our lives, dozens of souls being swapped out. What seems constant, and what seems to be good evidence for our identity isn’t an ethereal soul that, by definition cannot be experienced, but rather the continuity of our memory (or mental states more broadly construed, as contemporary philosophers have argued). Doesn’t it seem, Locke suggests, a flimsy basis for identity to say that what makes us who we are, and who we are over time, is something that we can’t experience, like a soul?

Think of George Sr.’s surrogate, Larry Middleton. He was hired by Bob Loblaw to be George’s eyes and ears when meetings were going on outside of the penthouse where George was under house arrest. During one of these meetings, it becomes clear that somebody (namely, Tobias, or “Mr. F”) has tipped off the Bluth Company’s investors that the family hasn’t yet begun construction on their next phase of development, resulting in the investors coming to inspect the land. Gob comes up with a plan to try to fool the investors by building a model town (complete with a model train) just outside the window of the Bluth model home. Larry inadvertently ends up being controlled by Buster, and notably nothing about Larry’s external appearance changes, nothing about his verbal delivery changes, and nothing about his mind changes, despite the drastic “internal” change in control from George to Buster. What changes is who’s in control of Larry. Most of the time it’s George Sr., but when he gets stuck in the wall trying to find a way to escape his house arrest, Buster takes over and manages to fool Gob into thinking that it’s still his father in control. In this case, what is changing could be construed as analogous to souls being swapped out. It is important to note here that Larry’s mind survives the switch of souls. Larry’s mind operates just as it did under George Sr., and as the Narrator says, “only Larry was disappointed, but he was such a pro, you’d never know it” when he (controlled by Buster) and Gob begin building their “tiny town.” The episode (“Mr. F”) continues, and the deception is nearly perfect. Gob, Lucille, and everyone else see Larry
as
George Sr. Of course, he’s not George, nor is he Buster, he’s Larry, but we don’t know anything about him, other than that he’s some “stupid parrot man with a camera in his hat” who nicely illustrates Locke’s objection to Descartes.

The very nature of the soul is that it’s not something we can experience, either from the inside or the outside. Thus, Locke’s objection works on two levels, and Larry illustrates both nicely. But he also exhibits Locke’s own account of personal identity in much the same way. We already noted that Locke’s objection functions, at least partly, on the evidential level. Locke was primarily worried about how we could
know
that we have one and only one soul, and that it is specific to us. He was also concerned to point out that our experience of identity is consistent with having infinitely many souls over the course of our lives. As such, he wanted to focus on how we experience our uniqueness, and our persistence over time. As we have noted, Larry, himself, did not experience a change in his own mind when the “soul” that was underlying his experiences changed. He was still unhappy about having to spend time with Gob, as we might all be, despite what he was obliged to say and do. We certainly wouldn’t want to say that
Larry
became a different person when he was controlled by different people, but, it might be said, this is required on the Cartesian account of personal identity—at least as far as the analogy goes. But, what might we say if Larry were to lose his memory? Well, this hasn’t happened to Larry, but there are others in the show to whom it has happened.

It’s no secret that Gob maintains a ready supply of “forget-me-nows” (roofies). What might Locke say about the “temporary forgettiness” that, for example, Rita feels when Gob feeds her a roofie? If Gob’s audience members learn how a trick is done, or if Buster happens to club a lady-friend of Michael’s, or worse yet, Gob happens across George Sr. and Lucille becoming intimate in a marital trailer, you can bet that Gob will do anything he can to wipe their (or his) memory clean. But in what sense, then, can we say that the
same
person saw or knew these things? Locke has this to say, “to punish [George Sr.] waking for what sleeping [George] thought, and waking [George] was never conscious of, would be no more right, than to punish one twin for what his brother-twin did, whereof he knew nothing, because their outsides were so like that they could not be distinguished . . .”
6

So Locke suggests that the very reasons that we must reject the Cartesian picture imply a more plausible account—one where identity is determined not by the physically essential features or by some immaterial and inexperienced soul but, rather, by a connectedness of memory. Oscar cannot be held responsible for the actions of his “brother-twin,” because he had no knowledge or memory of doing those things. Oscar didn’t do them. Similarly, George can’t be held responsible for selling marijuana in Mexico, since his “brother-twin,” you know, “brothero,” had all the memories of doing that, and George didn’t. Gob even recoils in horror at the suggestion that he had seen his parents becoming intimate—“What is wrong with you!? I did no such thing!” This seems to imply that Gob is, himself, a Lockean about personal identity.
He
didn’t see his parents. He has no memory of it, so it must’ve been somebody else.

Locke’s memory criterion, as philosophers call it, offers us an answer to the evidential problem of personal identity, and offers an intuitive answer to the persistence problem, but doesn’t give us as much by way of a metaphysical explanation as the Cartesian picture does. Still, many philosophers find such an approach immediately appealing. True to form, however, as a philosophical position it has its problems—problems that can be illustrated by way of Gob’s commitment to this view.

Thomas Reid, Gob, and the Problem of the “Forget-Me-Now”

Thomas Reid (1710–1796) thought that Locke had made a number of mistakes in his assessment of what makes us who we are. Reid thought that the evidential problem of personal identity often results in a confusion—specifically, we confuse the
evidence
that we have for the belief that we are who we are (and that we exist over time) for what
actually makes us
who we are (and are over time).
7
This is an important point, but it may not be the most important objection that Reid lodged against Locke’s memory criterion.

Reid’s most famous objection can be paraphrased in the following way: Imagine an aged Gob, looking back on his life. No doubt he’ll want to write a memoir about his life, taking himself far more seriously than he should, and despite the fact that it
should
be called “huge mistakes” it’ll probably not include any mention of such events (“I’ve never admitted to a mistake . . . what would I have made a mistake about?”).

As he looks back on his life in preparation for writing his masterpiece, he remembers the time that he released a seal into the wild after giving it the taste for mammal blood. By Locke’s criterion, this makes the aged Gob the same person as the middle-aged-seal-watching Gob, because they share a memory of this event. At the time that Gob heard about Buster’s hand, he remembered from his childhood one of the elaborate lessons that George Sr. had orchestrated using a one-armed man (J. Walter Weatherman). This makes the middle-aged-seal-watching Gob the same person, by Locke’s memory criterion, as the child, lesson-learning Gob.

But, so the story might go, a lifetime of taking roofies in order to wipe his memory free of having seen his parents becoming intimate, or to forget bonding with his son, has caused some serious damage to the aged Gob’s brain, and as a result, the aged Gob doesn’t remember that elaborate J. Walter Weatherman lesson. By Locke’s criterion then, the aged Gob is not the same person as the child Gob. Reid points out that identity is a transitive relationship (if
x
is equal to
y
, and
y
is equal to
z
, then it simply must be the case that
x
is equal to
z
), and, in light of this logical truth, we have a problem for Locke’s conception of personal identity. Old Gob is identical to middle-aged Gob, and middle-aged Gob is identical to young Gob, and so (by the transitivity of identity), old Gob must be identical to young Gob. But since old Gob does not remember what young Gob did, they cannot be the same person. Since Locke is committed to holding that old Gob both is and is not identical to young Gob, we have a serious problem. This seems especially bad for Gob, since he at least tacitly endorses Locke’s view—Gob is now committed to believing that he
both
is and is not himself, and while this would not be the only time he’s held obviously false or problematic beliefs,
we
don’t want to be forced to believe crazy things like this.

Some philosophers have learned a lesson from Gob, and developed more nuanced variations of Locke’s criterion in an attempt to provide answers to the problems Reid raised for Locke, and by association Gob. But Lockean attempts aren’t the only game in town. A revised essentialism is seeing an increase in popularity in some philosophical circles (though it does look quite different from Aristotle’s essentialism).

Even though we haven’t resolved the problems of personal identity, I think that we’ve learned a lot about the problems facing us around every turn. As Michael would say, “that’s enough family stuff for today.”

NOTES

1.
Aristotle,
Metaphysics
Z 3–4.

2.
Such characterizations of essences can be dangerous though. For a more full exposition of how dangerous essentialism can be, see Chapter 8, “What Whitey Isn’t Ready to Hear.”

3.
Strictly speaking, Augustine was more heavily influenced by Plato (Aristotle’s teacher), but for our purposes, this is fair enough, as Augustine was hugely influential on Descartes, whom we’ll consider momentarily. And, to the best of my knowledge, Augustine had nothing to do with hippopotamuses.

4.
We call Descartes’ view
Cartesian
because of the name Descartes used (Cartesius) for his writings in Latin.

5.
Locke,
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
(EHU), vol. II (New York: Dover Press, 1959), Chap. 27, p. 455.

6.
Ibid., p. 460.

7.
Thomas Reid, “Of Mr. Locke’s Account of Our Personal Identity,” in
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man,
first published 1785.

PART FOUR

THE ONE WHERE THEY DO EPISTEMOLOGY

Chapter 12

YOU CAN’T DO MAGIC

Gob Bluth and the Illusionists’ Craft

Michael Cholbi

“Magic is the simplest kind of primal escape form. We take Mother Nature and turn it upside down, to be able to dream about something that doesn’t really exist.”

—(David Copperfield)
1

“I’ve made a huge mistake.”

—(Gob Bluth)

The Bluths are a vocationally challenged bunch. Indeed, not a single member of the extended Bluth clan enjoys legitimate, continuous, satisfying employment. But would-be illusionist Gob Bluth is perhaps the most vocationally challenged of them all. Gob destroys the (often live) props used in his act (seeking a refund for a dove that he smothered in his jacket, “Top banana”); forms a “Magician’s Alliance” to protect illusionists’ secrets, only to inadvertently disclose such a secret (first in the “Pilot” and again in “Storming the Castle”); horrifies children with his botched illusions (causing a bloody wound in his neck, “Storming the Castle”); and patches over his ineptitude with cheap theatrics, including his signature reliance on the ’80s power-pop anthem “Final Countdown.” Indeed, his one apparent success as an illusionist—making the Bluth family yacht disappear—turns out not to be an illusion at all. (He simply sinks the yacht.) But despite this apparent incompetence, Gob insists that he’s a consummate professional.

Michael Bluth:
So this is the magic trick, huh?

Gob:
Illusion, Michael. A trick is something a whore does for money. [“Pilot”]

Career Advice from Aristotle

That Gob so clearly wants to be a competent illusionist, but so routinely fails at his chosen profession, raises the question: Why does he fail? Perhaps surprisingly, this is a question that philosophy, and more particularly, ethics (the branch of philosophy concerned with how to live) can help us answer. Philosophers have long been interested in why some human beings excel at what they do whereas others fail. For example, Aristotle (384–322 bce) argued that many activities, including the activities characteristic of different professions, realize their purpose when those activities produce the goods associated with them. For instance, the activity of medicine, when done well, results in healthy patients. Hence, doctors, who are supposed to be experts in the activity of medicine, do their jobs well when the treatments they prescribe make their patients healthier. The same philosophy holds for every other professional activity. A professional succeeds at her chosen profession when she produces the good results the profession aims at. A successful teacher makes her students more knowledgeable; a successful architect or developer designs buildings that are attractive, durable, and functional (unlike the Bluth Company homes); a successful airplane pilot delivers passengers to their destinations promptly, safely, and comfortably; and so on.

Aristotle’s account of how people excel in various activities implies that there are three explanations of why people fail at their chosen professions. The first is that a person may not appreciate the aims of her profession. For instance, a doctor who thought that the aim of medicine is to entertain his patients with wisecracks would be seriously confused about what medicine is
for.
This doesn’t mean that cracking jokes has
no
place in the medical profession. Rather, a doctor who thought that making jokes, instead of making people healthier, was the aim of medicine would have the wrong professional priorities and would probably make for a poor doctor. Comedy is his calling.

But there’s no evidence that Gob misunderstands the aims of his profession. If anything, Gob understands all too well that an illusionist is an entertainer, and the competent illusionist entertains her audience by surprising, delighting, or puzzling them. So Gob doesn’t fail as an illusionist because he fails to appreciate the aims of that profession.

Aristotle’s account offers a second possible explanation for Gob’s failure: Some people simply don’t care about the aims of their chosen profession. Many people fail at their professions, often becoming jaded and unhappy, because they’re not strongly committed to the profession’s aims. A successful doctor must actually care about, and be motivated by, improving people’s health; a successful teacher must actually care about, and be motivated by, students’ learning; and so on. A professional who never cares about the profession’s aim, or one who cares for a while but suffers midcareer “burnout,” will not be motivated enough to produce the good results associated with the profession.

But this won’t explain Gob’s failed career as an illusionist. If anything, Gob shows extraordinary motivation to continue his career, despite a long record of failure. No matter the setback, Gob ends up back on stage, dagger in his mouth, attempting to saw people in half or make a yacht disappear. He’s got both the appreciation of and the desire to realize the aims of an illusionist.

The Virtues of an Illusionist

Aristotle has a third explanation of professional incompetence. Some people lack the appropriate traits or knowledge needed to succeed in a profession. Aristotle refers to the traits or knowledge required to excel in a profession as “crafts,” and each profession has not only its own distinctive aim or result but also a body of knowledge, methods, or traits through which that aim or result is produced.

A successful doctor, for instance, has to know the workings of the human body, as well as the likely effects of different drugs, surgeries, or other treatments. (The lack of this knowledge explains why Michael’s surgeon, Dr. Frank Stein, has so many “little whoopsies,” like leaving his snippers in Michael’s abdomen in “Sword of Destiny.”) A doctor also has to know a variety of investigative and diagnostic methods (checking a patient’s pulse, examining a patient’s throat, ordering a CAT scan, and so on) and when to use these. And a successful physician also must have certain traits of character: compassion, attention to detail, judicious judgment, a welcoming but authoritative presence, and strong communication skills (not exactly a strong suit for the all-too-literal Dr. “I’m sorry to say this, but it’s too late for me to do anything for your son” Fishman). Without these traits, a doctor will not make people healthier, no matter how committed she is or how fully she appreciates this aim.

So what kinds of knowledge or traits are necessary to succeed as an illusionist? Magicians and illusionists are entertainers, but they entertain their audiences in a very specific way. Audiences are delighted and intrigued by illusions because, when they’re taken at face value at least, illusions are impossible events. Handkerchiefs cannot turn into doves. A person cannot be sawed in half, survive, and then be joined together again. In prescientific times, audiences likely thought that illusionists actually were conjuring up magic, channeling demonic or supernatural powers. Modern audiences, on the other hand, are curious and puzzled by illusions, but understand the illusion as the product of the entertainer’s technical ability (her “sleight of hand”). They are deceived by the illusion, but also intrigued to understand how that deception occurs.
2

What does it take for aspiring Gobs to be, unlike Gob himself,
competent
illusionists? Modern illusionists are not conjurers, but methodical, diligent, scientifically oriented engineers of human experience. The task of creating an illusion is one of
reverse engineering,
usually involving the conceptualization of the illusion (what the audience is supposed to believe they saw) followed by the development of the techniques through which the illusion will be accomplished. Complex illusions, such as David Copperfield’s making the Statue of Liberty disappear, are the product of trial and error overseen by teams of expert craftsmen, including the performer. Such illusions can require many years of preparation and hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment and overhead costs. Moreover, just as in scientific experimentation, illusionists must perfect their illusions through repeated practice, modifying and refining illusions until the desired effect is achieved. The modern illusionist must, therefore, be
dogged
and
diligent.

On top of that, an illusionist needs a wide range of
technical knowhow.
The illusionist’s ability to create a sense of bafflement or surprise in her audience depends first on her knowing how to manipulate the objects used in her act—be they playing cards, rabbits, silk scarves, or the sword of destiny—so as to give the audience the impression that she’s done the impossible. So it’s not just the kinesthetic ability to move these objects in the desired ways; it’s also the knowledge of how manipulating these objects produces beliefs in the audience—beliefs that what was witnessed couldn’t have actually happened. A successful illusion requires the complex understanding of how, by seeing stage objects in motion, observers will be led to believe they perceived something impossible. This is why illusionists deploy a variety of dramatic techniques—distraction, building tension, and so on—that psychologically prime the audience to experience the sense of illusion. Of course, the illusionist understands how the impossible was made to seem possible, but the audience does not. For the illusionist, there’s no illusion going on. As the science fiction writer Robert Heinlein put it, “One man’s ‘magic’ is another man’s engineering.”
3

Lastly, magic is a profession that thrives on
humility
. Being a magician is surprisingly challenging work, and an illusionist is no more successful than her illusions. She cannot simply will herself to success. Ultimately, an illusionist must respect the limits set by the laws of nature and by the audiences’ expectations of what they perceive. For it is only by knowing these limits that she can create illusions that seem to transcend them. Tricks fail, props don’t work, the audience can see through the ruse. A person without humility, someone who cannot be humbled by the labor and insight needed to make illusions succeed, is not cut out for this profession.

Why Gob Can’t Do Magic

Doggedness, diligence, technical knowhow, knowledge of human psychology, and humility: Doubtless there are other traits or skills a successful illusionist needs, but these are central to her success. What is crystal clear is that Gob Bluth is sorely lacking in all of these virtues, and actually has the corresponding vices in abundance.

Let’s start with those two D-words, doggedness and diligence. Loath though he would be to admit it, Gob Bluth is a slacker. Aristotle once remarked, “What we learn to do, we learn by doing.”
4
But Gob hardly appears to prepare for or practice his performances at all, and what preparation he does is ridiculous (painting a Q and a diamond on his chest and asking his nephew to pick a playing card from a deck in the hope that it will be a queen of diamonds). He is seemingly unable to learn from his mistakes, and his inattention to detail is staggering. In “The Cabin Show,” he misreads a letter from “S.A.D.” (a company that reunites long-lost fathers and sons) as a letter inviting Gob to reunite with George Sr., when in fact it was an attempt by Gob’s illegitimate son, Steve Holt (!), to reunite with Gob. As for technical knowhow, Gob cannot operate a trapdoor or keep a dove alive long enough to use it in his act. In the episode “Public Relations,” Gob gives the elderly volunteer (for his illusion, the Aztec Tomb, err, box, we’ll just say “box”), the founder of the prestigious Milford School, last-minute instructions about a “hidden panel” inside a coffin, only to end up “killing” him. Gob aspires to grand illusions, but struggles to perform simple sleights of hand that can be mastered by anyone with a library card (or a connection to the Internet) willing to practice them. His struggles are captured on a “Girls with Low Self-Esteem” video, where Gob repeatedly fails at basic tricks.

But of all Gob’s shortcomings, his lack of humility is most responsible for his failed magic career. Hardly an episode passes where we’re not reminded of Gob’s perpetually low self-esteem and his parents’ indifference to him. In a classic case of overcompensation, Gob appears to deal with this poor self-image by fancying himself a heroic and misunderstood genius, ready to serve as the president of the Bluth Company, fool a polygraph, or break into the Orange County prison using a jetpack, all in vain efforts to win his father’s love. In the eyes of modern psychiatry, Gob exhibits symptoms of bipolar disorder, alternating between depressive phases (feeling despondent and worthless) and manic phases (feeling elated and highly confident, as if he is on a mission). Whenever Gob’s self-image is punctured, he breaks down, sometimes being pushed over the edge, as when he attempts to hang himself for making a fool of himself in front of the prosecutor, or when he swallows a “forget-me-now” to cloud his memory of having bonded with his illegitimate son. We see both the fragility of Gob’s confidence and his need to compensate for low self-esteem in this memorable exchange with his brother Michael, who is ever eager to puncture Gob’s inflated self-image:

Gob:
It’s a classic bait and switch. This is a decoy cooler. We take it in, switch it with the one from the photo, and get out of there. Kitty comes back, everything’s normal. It’s like we were never there.

Michael:
But Dad’s gone.

Gob:
Long gone. But it buys us all the time in the world. I got it back, Mikey, the self-confidence. I am a magician.

Michael:
No, I’m saying, when Kitty comes back and notices that Dad’s gone, the first thing she’s going to do is check the cooler to see if the evidence is there. It buys us, like, one second.

Gob:
I’m a worthless magician. [“Spring Breakout”]

But it’s the manic phases that seem to influence Gob’s behavior more and that derail his magic career. Not only does Gob lack humility; he has its opposite, the excessive and tragic pride Aristotle called
hubris.
This lack of humility can be played for laughs precisely because Gob himself is blithely unaware of both his incompetence and his lack of humility. Gob’s failures are not only professional, of course. Other human beings and their motivations are opaque to him. But his ultimate failure is that he is not self-critical in the least, and as a result, he is opaque to himself.