The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir, is a 1998 science fiction comedy-drama starring Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank, an average twenty-nine-year-old insurance salesman who, unbeknownst to him, has been living his entire life on the set of a live television program called The Truman Show. Every detail of Truman's life, down to his career, friendships, and marriage, have been fabricated by the creator of the show, a man named Christof. The set of The Truman Show, an artificial community called Sea Haven, is equipped with over  5000 hidden cameras that monitor Truman's every move, and each citizen down to his 'best friend,' 'wife,' and even 'mother' are merely actors and actresses who have been hired to sustain the illusion that he leads and ordinary life. When props start to malfunction however, Truman begins to suspect the nature of his reality and eventually plans a successful escape.

On the surface, The Truman Show can be taken as an inspiring and relatively light-hearted story about overcoming society's constructs and seizing opportunities. I mean, especially considering Jim Carrey's reputation for goofy, tongue-in-cheek roles, these types of themes can be expected. The Truman Show also raises a number of deeply philosophical questions though, and when observed through the right lens, it speaks profoundly to the epistemological concepts of skepticism and knowledge.

Skepticism traces back thousands of years, but Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy, published in 1641, was one of the first texts to clearly accentuate and delineate the idea that almost all things have reasonable cause for doubt. If you've been following my Perspectives series from the beginning, you might remember some of the concepts presented in Descartes' first two meditations. Almost two months ago I deconstructed and interpreted some of his conclusions, and if you missed that post (or if you want a refresher), you can follow this link to check it out. 

So as you may recall, Descartes identifies his own mind as the only indisputable absolute truth of existence, and goes on to suggest that an evil genius, equally omnipotent as he is deceitful, may have made it his sole objective to deceive humankind by manipulating their perceptions and experiences. Descartes writes: "I shall consider that the heavens, the earth, colours, figures, sound, and all other external things are nought but the illusions and dreams of which this genius has availed himself in order to lay traps for my credulity." In acknowledging the possibility of the existence of such a being, Descartes introduces a reason to question and disbelieve every aspect of his life.

In terms of The Truman Show, Christof, who is the inventor and designer of the television program, is akin to the evil genius presented by Descartes' meditations. Outwardly this may not seem to be the case, because the film presents Christof as a godly character, both through his name which is a derivative of Christ, as well as through the camera angles which emphasize the way he sits above his creation and talks down to Truman from the sky. On watching The Truman Show with a more cynical perspective however, it becomes clear that Christof is analogous to Descartes’ deceiver rather than to God, because his whole life’s work involves manipulating Truman’s world in order to mislead and delude him for entertainment’s sake. The way Christof’s character is disguised as divine and saintlike on the surface may even be a reflection of the deceptive nature of Descartes’ evil genius. 

Even though every aspect of Truman’s life is entirely contrived, he is nevertheless comfortable in it, at least during the beginning of the film before he begins to suspect any falsehood. This blissful unawareness is commensurate with Greek skeptic Pyrrho of Elis’ philosophy, called Pyrrhonism. Pyrrhonism is centered on acatalepsy, which in simplest terms is the inability to comprehend anything as it actually is, and while at first it may seem disencouraging, Pyrrho thought that the hypothesis that one could not understand anything in its entirety was ataraxia, which is a state of serenity characterized by a permanent freedom from distress. In other words, Pyrrho believed that his ignorance was bliss. The Truman Show’s take on ataraxia is summarized about two thirds into the film when Christof says: “we accept the reality of the world with which we’re presented. It’s as simple as that. If [Truman] was absolutely determined to discover the truth, there’s no way we could prevent him … Ultimately Truman prefers his cell.” Namely, Truman had every reason to be satisfied with his life because, fictitious as it was, he was safe, healthy and relatively well-off.

Despite his being set up for a fundamentally gratifying life however, Truman eventually becomes unhappy in his artificial world, and resolves to escape Sea Haven. His dissatisfaction stems from suspicion, confusion, and a lack of understanding which is evident because he is content at the beginning of the movie, and only when malfunctioning props, interfering actors, and glitches in the system give him cause for doubt does he become discontented with his existence. In this way, the nature of Truman’s search for truth is comparable to that of the prisoners in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. 

The Allegory of the Cave is a philosophical dialogue that was first presented in Plato’s Republic. Socrates, the narrator of the allegory tells of a group of prisoners who have spent all their lives chained to the back of a cave, facing a blank wall. Occasionally, objects pass in front of a fire behind them, and those objects’ shadows are cast on the wall they are facing. In this manner, the prisoners are taught that reality consists of nothing more than shadows and echoes. When a prisoner is released from the cave though, he perceives the true form of reality rather than the fabricated reality to which he had grown accustomed. Until he is released however, he has no reason to doubt that the shadows he perceives are anything other than the truth. Similarly, when the Truman Show’s system malfunctions, Truman’s eyes are opened to the possibility of something more, and only then is he able to escape his cave, so to speak, and experience reality for what it truly is. 

And while Plato’s Allegory of the Cave perfectly illustrates Truman’s situation, it also applies to our own experiences, because one of the main concepts that Plato was trying to communicate with his allegory is that there are two worlds: the world of becoming (the material world) and the world of being (the immaterial world). Plato believed that it was wise to reject the unclear, misshapen forms of the world of becoming, and to embrace the pure forms of the world of being. If you replace the set of The Truman Show with Plato’s world of becoming, and replace the reality outside of Sea Haven with the world of being, then it becomes evident that in escaping the show, Truman was opening himself to a  conversion from being deceived by material things to embracing the truth. 

So although we may not be imprisoned in a complex television program in which all our experiences are contrived by an enterprising producer, there are ways in today’s society that we can be deceived. From politicians that lie in their campaigns to earn votes to companies that lie in their advertisements to earn money, if we want to open ourselves to truth, we must follow Truman in abandoning those things that make us vulnerable to manipulation. However deception may manifest itself, Truman Burbank represents a paradigm by which we must adhere if we want to detach ourselves from deception and metaphorically release ourselves from the cave wall we are chained to.

And that's why The Truman Show holds lasting relevance.

One fateful Saturday afternoon last December, I was driving through a thick Canadian winter snowfall to the dress rehearsal of a holiday concert that I had rehearsed diligently in another city, but regrettably never in the town that was host to this particular rehearsal. That's how it came to be that I was driving down an unfamiliar highway, heading into an unfamiliar part of the country, with GPS directions that I was altogether unfamiliar with. Whether it was simply a coincidence or it was a result of divine providence, I happened to be carpooling with one of the other performers that day, so I wasn't completely alone when I took the wrong turn off the highway and steered my ill-fated little Kia Forte onto an old country road. My friend and I didn't notice at first, but as we travelled further and further down the lane, the road got narrower and narrower and the snow got deeper and deeper, until turning around was completely out of the question. See, although it was unbeknownst to the two of us at the time, Google maps hadn't turned me onto a public-use roadway at all, but rather onto the ill-maintained entrance to a provincial park. Somehow I had missed the "WARNING: NO WINTER-MAINTENANCE" signs that had been posted along the path, and my friend and I wound up stranded in what felt like two or more feet of snow in the middle of nowhere.

And you may think that's bad enough, but buckle up (car pun intended), because this story is just getting started.

After spending a good hour or so pushing, digging, reversing, and pushing some more, my friend and I finally came to terms with the reality that we didn't have the strength, knowledge, or tools to get out of the wintry ditch by ourselves. Resorting to our cellphones, we discovered that the battery on mine had been completely drained from the cold, and my friend's wasn't getting any service from the middle of the forest. And so having no other option, we left our car, half-submerged in snow as it was, and walked aimlessly up the frozen pathway in search of either cell reception or human contact, whichever came first. 

Perhaps it comes as no surprise, considering we were on a summer hiking trail a few days from Christmas, but cell reception came long before human contact. After walking for about ten minutes in the bitter cold, we picked up barely a bar of service and got through to my dad. Then it was up to him to decipher our situation based on our low-quality call for help, map out our location based on our directional oblivion, and come to our rescue. Almost two hours, three shovels, and half a tank of gas later, and my Kia was free from its snowy confinement.

Now although I didn't realize it in the moment, while I was frantically shoveling snow out of the wheels of my immobilized car, my accidental adventure was actually the perfect analogy for how 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche considered the Age of Enlightenment to have influenced the concept of God in Western civilization.

You may have heard of Nietzsche's God Is Dead before. The statement first appeared in 1882 and has since become one of the most popular and well-known philosophical excerpts from throughout history. It's been misquoted, or at least misinterpreted, time and time again, and its implications are widely debated. Because while the title lends itself to setting up the plot for some kind of religious family/drama coming-of-age film, Nietzsche had very different intentions that are frequently overlooked.

"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him."

In order to fully grasp the implications of God Is Dead, it's important to first consider the historical time period during which Nietzsche wrote. See, Nietzsche's philosophical model was most prevalent around the turn of the twentieth century, during which culture had started moving towards a place where a collective belief in God held less relevance, and society didn't need religion to explain things like creation or human origin. As you may recall from last week's blog post, the concept of Darwinism became prominent in the 1870s, and along with other new scientific concepts and technological advances, God was no longer the foundation of society like it had been in previous centuries.

So when Nietzsche claims so assuredly that God is dead, and accuses so convincingly that we have killed him, it isn't to say that we have literally murdered a physical being, but rather that our changing principles have made a belief in God irrelevant. God Is Dead isn't the set-up to a murder mystery, but rather an account of a steady rise of secularity and abandonment of traditional beliefs.

"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives."

After dropping the bombshell that was his first sentence, Nietzsche goes on to establish why it matters. God is dead, so what? 

Well, God was "the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned." The influences of religion were the foundation of meaning, morality, purpose, and even aesthetic beauty for centuries. Once those principles become irrelevant, there's no longer a universal truth, and without God, we're left without a way of determining right from wrong. How can humans atone for this huge gap in meaning that the death of God has left?

 "Who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"

One of the assignments from the philosophy course I took this summer was to design a philosophical comic strip that outlined a key metaphysical concept of our choice. Now, I'm no Bill Watterson but between my limited comedy writing skills and my best friend's compensating artistic talent, this is what we were able to come up with. 

Hopefully it goes without saying, but the philosophical concept I chose to comicize was determinism, which along with the concept of free will and the perhaps less-well-known theory of compatibalism, has drastic implications both on the future, as well as on each individual's present, daily lives.

You've probably heard of free will before— it's the theory that human beings have the ability to make their own conscious choices that have influence over the future. Free will permits us to act at our own discretion without the constraints of necessity or fate. 

Determinism on the other hand, is the idea that all our choices are already predetermined, and that there is nothing anyone can do to change the past, present, or future. There are a couple different approaches to determinism, including causal determinism which theorizes that cause and effect relationships invariably lead from one to the other to determine the future, theological determinism which theorizes that a God determines the future, and biological determinism which concludes that the genetic programming of living creatures establishes everything they do, which consequently determines the future. Each of these methods differs from the others, but fundamentally, they all suggest an external influence, independent from human will, that has authority over human action and human thought. 

And if you're having trouble coming to terms with the implications of free will or determinism, perhaps you'll be more inclined to adopt compatibilism, which in simplest terms, is a compromise between the two theories. A compatibilist would suggest that humans get a small amount of options in an essentially determined universe. If the universe was a road trip, compatibilism might allow you to choose the radio station and snacks for the drive, even though you have no say in the destination.

The Determinist Argument

The Free Will Argument

A lot of free will adherents would call on German philosopher Immanuel Kant's arguments against determinism, which touch on a concept that the Christian tradition would label our "moral liberty." Essentially, humans have an undeniable innate obligation to chose between right over wrong, which is made apparent through the inherent guilt we feel when we neglect that duty, and as Kant put it, "if we are not free to choose, then it would make no sense to say we ought to choose the path of righteousness." Of course, some would suggest that we don't ought to choose the path of righteousness, but this counterargument is simply ignorant to the structures our society is based on. Incarceration systems, the Nobel Peace Prize, and everything in between is more or less established on a universal accountability for doing the right thing.

But moral liberty aside, one of the biggest problems I have with determinism is that it contains a logical fallacy. The fact that a determinist would even attempt to convince others of their position shows that they rely on the free will and volition of the people they are trying to convince. The theory of determinism implies that everything, including an individual's thoughts and beliefs, are determined by some kind of preexisting cause, which means it would be impossible to change another person's stance.

* * * * * 

As you're probably discovering, free will and determinism are far more complex and far less fathomable than they're often credited as. But whether you're compelled by the implications of the free will argument, convinced by the assertions of the determinist argument, or merely disoriented and confused by it all, assumptions of free will run through every aspect of our lives. From politics, welfare provisions and incarceration to world sports championships and Academy Awards, a general acceptance of free will is the foundation for a functioning society. I mean, can we really justify imprisoning criminals for crimes they had no choice but to commit? And are anyone's accomplishments truly deserving of praise if they were simply predetermined? Even the century-old American dream— the belief that anyone can make something of themselves regardless of their start in life— is entirely based on the ideals of conscious, intentional choice.

The importance of free will also transcends society's constructs, and appertains to individual moral conduct. A 2002 study was conducted by psychologist Kathleen Vohs and Jonathon Schooler, in which one group of participants was asked to read a passage arguing that free will was false, and another group was given a passage that was neutral on the topic of free will. Each group was then asked to perform a number of tasks (eg. take a math test in which cheating was made easy, or hand in an unsealed envelope full of loose change), and the participants who were conditioned to deny free will were proven more likely to behave immorally.

There is advantage to regarding free will as real, not because it is necessarily true (although I believe it is), but because, in the words of Barack Obama, "values are rooted in a basic optimism about life and a faith in free will."

And that's why we should believe in free will whether it exists or not.

When I was a kid, my parents never engaged my siblings or me with the Santa Claus story. It wasn't that they thought it was immoral per say; Santa was just never something we did as a family. For a while, the height of my understanding was that Santa was nothing more than a television character— just a fictitious accessory to make Christmas more fun. So maybe it's simply because I don't have much experience in the Santa department, but nonetheless, I can't help but wonder what role his story plays in a family's dynamics, and whether or not that kind of deception is as innocent as we take it for. In other words, I can't help but wonder whether teaching kids about Santa is "right" or "wrong."

The criteria for what is "right" and what is "wrong" has been debated by philosophers for generations, and there are countless different approaches— called "ethical normative systems"— that aim at providing concrete answers. These systems, although they are widely diverse, can be divided into three broad categories: virtue ethics, duty ethics, and consequential ethics.

Virtue Ethics

Duty Ethics

Consequential Ethics

Aside from being my personal favourite comic, Calvin and Hobbes is one of the most popular comic strips of all time, both because of its enrapturing storytelling and its brilliant philosophical influences. It follows the childhood adventures of six-year-old Calvin, who is just as precocious as he is rambunctious, and his stuffed tiger Hobbes. And while these quirky and lovable title characters can be taken as nothing more than such, it's certainly no coincidence that their namesakes are 16th-century theologian John Calvin and 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. There are countless examples of strips that have underlying academic themes, and the following is one of my (many) favourites. 

Leave it to Calvin to perfectly outline a 400-year-old metaphysical concept. 

Pascal's Wager is an argument presented by French theologian Balise Pascal, which suggest that one's belief in God is a bet on their own life. Essentially, the theory states that everyone should live as though God does exist because if they're wrong, they'll only have a finite loss but if they're right, they'll be rewarded infinite gains and avoid suffering from infinite punishment.

That being said, believing in God for the sake of believing in God is like being "good for goodness' sake." If your intentions behind "being good" are selfish in nature, such as being a means of waking up to presents on Christmas morning, then are you really "being good" at all? Even if it's logically sound and ultimately rewarding to believe in God, Pascal's reasoning is void of substance, and in order for someone to truly believe in anything, let alone a Supreme Being, I think there must be reason beyond personal gain. In the comic strip, Calvin doesn't necessarily believe in Santa per say; he merely believes in his own wants. 

For thousands of years, religious faith has been vehemently supported by some and dismissed with just as much vehemence by others. There are a few key arguments in support of God's existence, but as is the case with any philosophical debate, each argument opens up for a world of challenges and critiques. 

The Cosmological Argument

The Ontological Argument

The Teleological Argument

The Argument For Morality

In my opinion, the argument of morality is one of the most convincing. It suggests that because humanity has at least some innate morality, God must exist. It's summarized by C.S. Lewis in his Mere Christianity: "conscience reveals to us a moral law whose source cannot be found in the natural world, thus pointing to a supernatural Lawgiver." Oftentimes an individual's sense of morality opposes their personal interests and desires, and even if one doesn't follow their morality, there's almost always an inherent sense of guilt that accompanies that decision. Without a "supernatural Lawgiver," a human being's only inclination would be towards their own personal fulfillment.

* * * * * 

Of course, all of these arguments can and have been refuted in many ways by many people. I'm sure you've heard, or maybe even used the age-old "if God is so powerful, can he create a mountain so heavy he couldn't move it?" rebuttal. Besides, if God exists, why is there so much hurt in the world? What about free will? Or hate crimes committed in God's name? Some of these questions will be answered from my perspective in the weeks to come, and some of them won't. But ultimately, I feel that at the core of my being, there's inviolable love, life, morality, and purpose that surpasses own judgement, and even though there are still questions left unanswered and mysteries left unknown, that's why I believe in God.

The month of August, although it has been taxing at times, has also been pretty eventful in terms of my academics (though I can't say the same about the productivity of my blog). I took an online Intro to Philosophy course as well as two RCM exams, and even though I would have liked to keep up my writing in the meantime, I was fairly swamped as it was. The chaos of the past few weeks is finally starting to die down though, and I thought I would ease back into Reasons Why with a blog series called Perspectives, outlining my personal perspectives as well as the perspectives of other scholars on a few of the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical concept I learned about in my philosophy course this summer. I found the nature of the course's required readings especially fascinating because when combined, they read more-so as conversations rather than objective texts. Each successive paper built on the last, whether deliberately or coincidentally, and it was highly fulfilling to indulge in that on-going discussion with my own opinions and beliefs. I can only hope that this blog series will serve as an invitation to partake in the conversation yourself, because it's certainly a worthwhile one to have.

You may have heard of French philosopher Rene Descartes' famous-to-some-but-infamous-to-others statement: "cogito ergo sum," or perhaps more recognizably: "I think; therefore I am." This widely-debated declaration was first stated in Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy, and has since been quoted, requoted, and misquoted time and time again. 

Descartes' was one of the first and most influential skeptics, and his objective in recording his meditations was to detach himself from any assumptions and beliefs that had reasonable cause for doubt, and consequently, to discover through logic and reasoning which elements of his experience truly existed. In order to do so, Descartes starts off his first meditation by unpacking some of the supposed absolutes that people often rely on as starting points for determining what is true. For example, he acknowledges that sensory experiences such as sight and touch are widely accepted as absolute truths, but he rejects sensory data as a reliable starting point because no sound evidence exists to prove that those experiences are not products of the imagination. Hallucinations and dreams can be just as engaging and stimulating to the senses as conscious encounters, but have no more validity than a story or a fairytale.

Once he has removed himself from the biases of doubtful absolutes, Descartes expands with his second meditation by taking a dualistic perspective (separating the human mind from the human body) and identifying the mind as the only indisputable basis for determining what is true. From this line of reasoning emerges Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am,” which refers to proof of existence based solely on the ability to form thought. 

Descartes' methods aren't convincing to me, but they do have their strengths, one of which being their acknowledgement that there are many things we accept as being true merely because we have been accustomed to accept them as such. Descartes insists on discovering a completely objective starting point—if such a thing exists— and eliminates as much bias from his reasoning as possible. That kind of objectivity is valuable because when people's beliefs are based solely on subjective constructs, they become unstable and unsound.

Another merit of Descartes’ method is its opposition of materialism. Materialism is the philosophical theory that nothing exists except that which can be experienced with the senses, and it presents a number of problems, the central one being that human societies rely on and are held together by unseen things— ethics, morality, justice, etc. Since Descartes believes the foundation of reality to be a product of the mind, he acknowledges the existence of the unseen, an acknowledgement that I consider to be highly valuable in navigating and fully grasping the world. 

Despite its strengths however, Descartes’ position, which is purely based on doubt and suspicion, has essentially created a closed feedback loop in that none of his beliefs can be reasonably disputed while still supporting his disbeliefs. Descartes opens by stating, “we may, generally speaking, doubt about all things and especially about material things, at least so long as we have no other foundations for the sciences than those which we have hitherto possessed.” His arguments disregard science, divinity, and sensory data, and are thus indisputable because any argument one may raise against his claims would have to appeal to one of those bases of knowledge to make its case. For example, a neuroscientist might argue that thoughts are the results of chemical reactions transmitted via the dendrites of neurons, which implies that they are no different than other forms of sensory data, but because Descartes starts off by discounting biological science, that kind of a rebuttal would be completely senseless. This philosophical method is contradictory however, because after disregarding physical sciences such as physics and medicine, Descartes goes on to use psychological sciences to prove his conclusion that the mind is the only absolute. He writes: “Arithmetic, Geometry and other sciences of that kind which only treat of things that are very simple and very general, without taking great trouble to ascertain whether they are actually existent or not, contain some measure of certainty and an element of the indubitable. For whether I am awake or asleep, two and three together always form five, and the square can never have more than four sides, and it does not seem possible that truths so clear and apparent can be suspected of any falsity.” Descartes chooses which sources of knowledge to accept and which ones to disregard based on whether or not they support his personal beliefs, and because of this, it is impossible to dispute his opinion. 

A number of philosophers have tried to refute however, including David Hume, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Baruch Spinoza— most of whom were monists (they believed that the human mind and the human body were unified and inseparable). Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature suggests that there is no proof that one is the same “thinking thing” from one moment to another. Descartes states in his meditations: “I persuade myself that nothing has ever existed of all that my fallacious memory represents to me,” and Hume uses this admittance to the possibility that memories can be false to support his own opposing view. 

Additionally, Nietzsche's argument is formed around the fact that Descartes bases his evidence for existence on the thought processes in his mind because he has rejected external data as a grounds for proving existence. Nietzsche argued that internal thoughts cannot be separated from external data, because the only reason thoughts exist is because external data, such as social constructs and interactions, put them there.

Whether or not it is sound in reasoning though, the fundamental problem with Descartes' model is that it isn't the kind of philosophy one can live by, because it doesn't play out in day to day interactions. Descartes was a white, upper-class male in a society where he had the privilege to study and think about logic and philosophy, but personally I can't picture myself overlooking physical pain, fear, or heartache in any situation that really presented it. If Descartes were surrounded by hungry predators, caught in the hold of a capsizing ship, or trapped in a burning building, I doubt he would have the presence of mind to uphold that he "can't say for sure that [he] now sees the flames, hears the wood crackling, and feels the heat of the fire."

And that's why "I think; therefore I am" is fundamentally flawed.