Arrested Development and Philosophy (16 page)

Finally, one might proceed by trying to locate a fourth condition necessary for knowledge. Proponents of this view also differ wildly in what they take to be the fourth condition, and a survey of such views would be far beyond what we care to do here. However, we can briefly consider one type of approach, where the necessary addition to JTB is that the belief in question be caused in the right kind of way.
7
Thus, it could be argued that in the Gettier cases, the belief fails to be knowledge because it was not caused in the right kind of way. In effect, the belief only turned out to be true due to sheer luck, and not because of an appropriate belief-forming process. Clearly though, this approach requires an adequate analysis of “appropriate belief-forming processes,” which is far from easy. Finally, solutions of this sort take as necessary for knowledge something external to the knower. As a result, such a view is at odds with much of the history of epistemology. After all, don’t we want to know when we have knowledge?

Despite the difficulties involved with each approach, we are left with the intuition that in many cases we do have knowledge. In fact, even people like the Bluths often know things, yet clearly the project of figuring out just what knowledge is, and what kinds of things can be known, is still far from done. If only the series had not been canceled, maybe these issues could have finally been resolved.

NOTES

1.
Of course by “trick” I mean “illusion,” since a trick is something a whore does for money . . . or cocaine!

2.
Edmund Gettier, “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?”
Analysis
23 (1963), pp. 121–123.

3.
In fact, there is a debate about whether there can be Gettier-style examples that do not involve any inference. Although this might not seem important, the crux of some responses to the Gettier problem relies on the existence of an inference.

4.
This case is a paraphrased version of the Gettier-style case that appears in Alvin Goldman, “Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge,”
The Journal of Philosophy
73 (1976), pp. 771–791.

5.
For a defense of this type of approach, see Timothy Williamson,
Knowledge and its Limits
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

6.
For what could be interpreted as an approach of this type, see Bertrand Russell,
The Problems of Philosophy
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959).

7.
For a view of this type, see Alvin Goldman, “A Causal Theory of Knowing,”
The Journal of Philosophy
64 (1967), pp. 357–372.

Chapter 14

BUNKERS AND BALLS

Arrested Development
, Underdetermination, and the Theory-ladenness of Observation

Michael Da Silva

Choosing Between Wayne Jarvis and Barry Zuckerkorn

In the first season of
Arrested Development
, the Bluth family is forced to continue using Barry Zuckerkorn as their lawyer, much to Michael’s consternation. Michael would rather have the highly professional services of Wayne Jarvis, who ultimately instead prosecutes the case against George Sr. But in at least one area Jarvis doesn’t measure up to Zuckerkorn. Jarvis doesn’t know balls.

Wayne Jarvis:
Michael, this is a close-up satellite photograph of the Iraqi countryside. See this little series of hills around that stream? Those are bunkers. We believe those bunkers contain weapons of mass destruction. We also believe that your father was building on that land to hide them.

The Bluth family fears, and Wayne Jarvis is certain, that George Sr. helped hide the weapons by building bunkers. The U.S. government agrees and begins to mobilize troops, including Buster Bluth, to escalate the war in Iraq. It’s only at the end of the episode that the family’s ambiguously homosexual (bisexual?) lawyer, Barry Zuckerkorn, rightly points out that the landscapes in the photographs are actually testicles.

Wayne Jarvis:
Michael, when we started talking to you, we didn’t have anything. But now . . . we got something. And you’re going to do time for it.

Barry Zuckerkorn:
Those are the pictures? Those are balls . . . This close they always look like landscapes. Those are balls.

Thus, the episode “Sad Sack” raises the question: Do we see only what we expect to see?

Following the work of Pierre Duhem (1861–1916) and W.V.O. Quine (1908–2000), many philosophers in the twentieth century accepted that theories “underdetermine” facts, or that there are rival and competing views on what a given image may be or what a given piece of data may mean. No theory can exclude its rivals by appeal to the world alone. The problem is that there are lots of different ways to describe the world, all of which are compatible with what we see
in
the world. In the bunker-balls photo, for example, there’s nothing in the photograph itself to tell a viewer whether he or she is looking at bunkers in Iraq or an analrapist’s testicles.

Rather than test a theory against data, people often use the theory to explain the data. Philosophers call this the “theory-ladenness of observation”: The very theories we advocate can
determine
what we see. What one imagines or sees is constrained by the dominant theory one is working with. In our day-to-day lives, we accept theoretical commitments and these commitments affect how we interpret the world around us. If one expects to see balls, one will see balls; if one expects to see bunkers, one will see bunkers.

The theory one chooses is thus very important. If one accepts the theory, for instance, that George Sr. helped hide weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and thus sees bunkers in the photograph, then war follows. This is a significant result of the theory-ladenness of observation for policy procedures. For an unprepared soldier like Buster Bluth, it could have disastrous consequences.

Wayne Jarvis’s desire to do his job and convict George Sr. colors Jarvis’s interpretation of what he’s looking at. Zuckerkorn’s interpretation, too, reflects his own deep interests. Fortunately, the narrator knows all. He solves the debate by coming in as the “voice of God” and clearing things up, telling us, “Tobias had inadvertently photographed himself while learning to use his camera phone” (cut to scene of Tobias in the bathtub with Gob’s phone). The viewer, then, has enough information to decide between two competing theories.

As much as we like Ron Howard telling us what’s what on
Arrested Development
, we don’t have the benefit of an omniscient narrator in everyday life. How do we choose? How
can
we choose a theory? How do we know whether we’re looking at bunkers or balls?

The Lenses of Wayne Jarvis, Barry Zuckerkorn, and George Michael Bluth

In
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
, American philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996), a follower of the Duhem-Quine thesis, suggests that we all see things through the lens of the dominant theory (or paradigm) in society. We live our day-to-day lives as if the dominant theory
did
fully determine the facts of the matter. Our observations, then, are theory-laden. Scientific revolutions occur when our paradigms fall into crisis—when we want to answer questions our paradigms make it difficult to even
pose
.

The theory that George Sr. is a criminal and conspired with Saddam Hussein is dominant at the time that the photographs are discovered. Bluth is a known criminal, has escaped prisons in two different countries, and has been seen with Hussein by the time the “bunker” photographs are found. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination for Wayne Jarvis to accuse George Sr. of the “medium to heavy treason” that the photographs apparently prove. It’s also not too difficult to understand how the key seats of knowledge, such as the government and media, can accept Jarvis’s suggestion. When there is no agreement on what the dominant theory about a given topic should be, however, the foundation of the dominant theory erodes. Barry Zuckerkorn’s new theory on what the photographs could be showing created a crisis, which (in this case quickly) necessitated the selection of a new dominant theory. It also raised new questions that couldn’t be asked before, like, “Whose balls are these anyway?” and, “Why would someone take a picture of his balls?”

Not all crises, however, are so easily resolved. George Michael’s inability to pass the eye exam in “Sad Sack” makes this clear. While George Michael is not explicitly testing out new theories, he is literally testing out new lenses through which to see the world. He’s unable to find one that allows him to see things clearly. Thus, when Maeby asks George Michael if he has seen her mother, George Michael is only able to commit to a “seems possible.” In the absence of the right lens through which to see the world, or an objective criterion for picking the right lenses, George Michael is stuck in a skeptical moment: he knows not what he sees. It’s only when he abandons his glasses that he’s able to say he’s seen the now infamous image on the cover of the magazine before. He’s seen Tobias’s testicles as Tobias clumsily climbed to the top bunk of the bed they share. But George Michael still can’t take on the role of a privileged observer, helping to solve the theory crisis. He doesn’t say where he saw the balls in question. He just says, “I’ve seen this before.”

Thus far, there are no set criteria for choosing between competing theories in a moment of crisis. Without the right theoretical lens through which to see the world, we’re stuck in a skeptical moment. We’re left wondering how to choose between competing theories. Kuhn’s answer is that our theory choices are largely determined by social and political factors, not by appeals to truth. Who we are and where we’ve been matters a great deal when it comes to choosing between theories. In the absence of clear criteria for choosing between competing theories, we often rely on social and political concerns to make a choice. In this case, the government’s desire to convict George Sr. (and, perhaps, the Bush administration’s desire to invade Iraq and defeat Saddam Hussein) makes Jarvis’s theory easy to accept.

But Jarvis’s theory doesn’t get to the truth of the matter. Jarvis’s theoretical commitments lead him to see bunkers that just aren’t there. Political concerns lead to accepting the wrong view in this case. Of course, Kuhn would point out that calling the interpretation wrong
already
depends on a scientific paradigm. Paradigms are inescapable—but that doesn’t mean every paradigm is as good as every other. If we don’t want to mistake balls for bunkers, or to be led erroneously to war, the Zuckerkorn paradigm is a pretty darn good one.

Q: War! What Is It Good For?! A: Well, Certainly Not Buster Bluth

Kuhn has often been charged with epistemic relativism, the faulty doctrine that knowledge is relative to (or determined by) one’s culture. When accompanied by a belief that no culture is superior to any other, a relativistic position can reduce conversation to a “Who’s to say?” argument. There are neither facts of the matter, nor superior theories. There are only local truths. But, as we’ve seen, some theories have better results than others, though determining which results are better will obviously depend on what we’re interested in, be it going to war, appreciating testicles, or something else.

While choosing Jarvis’s theory may have positive political consequences for the Bush administration, which can use the photographs to justify invading Iraq, it has a negative political impact on Buster Bluth, who must either fail his military training or be mobilized long before he’s ready. Given Buster’s inability to hold down any job or perform any tasks not designed for a specialist at a university (or arcade), it’s unlikely that he’d survive the war. Moreover, many other young Americans would surely die. Even though Jarvis’s theory is defeated, Buster still takes a punch from his motivational coach, Gob, as a result of his perceived need to climb a wall in order to finish military training before the new mobilization date. Letting the powerful people in a paradigm determine the limits of knowledge can have undesirable consequences, to say the least.

Kuhn denies that there are “facts of the matter” that allow us to choose theories, but he doesn’t hold an “all theories are created equal” view in
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
. Rather, Kuhn uses an evolutionary metaphor to describe different criteria for determining when a dominant theory rules. According to Charles Darwin, the species that survive are those whose random mutations are best suited to their environment. And according to Kuhn, the theories that survive are those best suited to solve the problems they establish: “Later scientific theories are better than earlier ones for solving problems in the often quite different environments to which they are applied.”
1
But solving problems isn’t the same as moving closer to a theory that explains everything. It’s part of the nature of scientific theories to have anomalies (things that can’t be explained). Nevertheless, some paradigms are better at answering certain questions than others, even if we can’t say that they’re a “better representation of what nature is really like.”
2
Kuhn doesn’t believe in ultimate Truth. He thinks the question of which theories better represent what’s “really there” in nature is impossible to answer.
3

Does the narrator in “Sad Sack” refute Kuhn’s claim that there’s no ultimate truth? Has Ron Howard, the brilliant actor, producer, and director managed to refute one of the greatest philosopher’s of science of the twentieth century? The Lord God Opie tells us that Tobias took a photograph of himself in the bathtub—and we
see
it. Is this trouble for Kuhn?

Not really. Kuhn acknowledges that we can determine (in retrospect) which theory is better suited to answering questions that interested and perplexed scientists at a particular time. We can determine which theory is better, in retrospect, when the epistemic crisis is solved and the military crisis is averted; even fighter pilots are able to confidently assert that they were “looking at balls.”

But if our paradigms determine what we can see, where do crises come from? As we’ve seen,
all
paradigms have anomalies. These are usually just dismissed (science will figure it out eventually, c’mon!), but every once in a great while, resolving the anomaly becomes all important. In this sense, it’s a good thing Barry is there to challenge Jarvis. “Those are balls!” is a challenge to a whole dominant regime. Barry’s sexual experimentation and consequent familiarity with how male genitals look “close up” helps us get outside of our theory-laden perspective.

How to Choose Between Bunkers and Balls

The “Sad Sack” scenario shows us how important it is to be able to decide between competing theories. To avoid the feedback loop in which the theory determines what one sees, and what one sees determines whether there is a problem with a theory, there must be something outside of a theory to determine whether it’s worth adopting or not.

Kuhn, in fact, recognized the necessity of external criteria for choosing a theory. In “Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice,” Kuhn outlines “five standard criteria for evaluating the adequacy of a theory” and says that he agrees “entirely with the traditional view that they play a vital role when scientists choose between an established theory and an upstart competitor.”
4
Kuhn’s five criteria are accuracy, consistency, scope, simplicity, and fruitfulness. As the word
standard
implies, these are hardly novel criteria, leading many of Kuhn’s critics to accuse him of turning away from what made his position interesting in the first place. Nevertheless, there is intuitive appeal to these criteria, and it’s worth considering whether the Jarvis Theory of Iraqi Thunder (JTIT) or the Zuckerkorn Testicular Closeup Theory (ZTCP) better meets these criteria.

Accuracy is mostly a predictive criterion; the theory that better predicts occurrences is the better theory. When we’re concerned with something that has already happened, like the bunker-ball quandary, this concept of accuracy isn’t a useful criterion. A more useful concept of accuracy, but one that Kuhn neglects, is based on correspondence. Which theory better matches the world? Where Barry has seen testicles and George Michael has seen Tobias’s testicles, ZTCP is the more accurate theory. To this day, no one has seen WMDs in Iraq. Both theories are internally consistent, but only ZTCP is consistent with things that we know to exist in the world. JTIT posits a previously unseen entity, the Iraqi WMD bunker, which is inconsistent with what we know exists in the world. On the other hand, the criterion of fruitfulness is defined by the ability to produce new phenomena for research. So the discovery of WMDs would make JTIT the more fruitful theory.