Game of Thrones and Philosophy

by Jacoby, Henry, Irwin, William

  Magic in Westeros often involves exceptions to usually reliable generalizations. For example, under normal circumstances, it would be exceedingly unlikely that untutored children would be capable of training large and dangerous wild animals to respond to complex voice commands; yet the Starks’ direwolves are capable of following complicated commands quickly. And Bran’s connection to his direwolf Summer is far stronger than could be explained by any ordinary training or bonding.20 The exceptional bond between the Stark children and their direwolves is not the sort of thing one would find in a purely natural world.

  In other cases, there are no regularities. The length and timing of summers and winters follow no regular, predictable pattern, and although there apparently is “a hundred-year-old discourse” on the subject by “a long-dead maester,” no scientific or natural explanation is ever suggested for this fact.21 The only pattern appears to be that long winters follow long summers. A particularly long winter, however, is related to the activity of the Others. Either something about the onset of a long winter awakens them, or they bring on the long winter by their presence or by their activity. Whichever it is, the seasons illustrate another way in which magic, presuming the Others are supernatural and their relation to the seasons is supernatural, does not follow regular patterns.

  These irregularities appear to be violations of physical laws. The strongest argument that these are violations involves Daenerys hatching her dragons in the funeral pyre of her husband, Khal Drogo.22 Her willpower, along with an enormous number of perfectly aligned circumstances, such as her heritage as “the blood of the dragon,” the sacrifice of the maegi Mirri Maz Duur, and the appearance of the blood-red comet, appear essential to her body’s not burning in the conflagration. When Drogo’s funeral pyre starts, Daenerys and everyone else step back from the intense heat of the flames. Daenerys’s steeling herself, reminding herself of her decision before stepping into the fire, suggests that her immunity is not somehow a purely physical aspect of her body; she does not ordinarily have an inhuman body chemistry that prevents burning or feeling heat. So in order for her mental resolve to protect her from the flames, there must be a change in the chemical process of combustion that would ordinarily cause a human body to burn in that intense heat. This example suggests that when magic affects the world, it does so by disrupting physical, chemical, or biological processes.

  What follows from these examples is that all causation requires physical causation. Daenerys’s belief and determination alone cannot cause a change in her overall state without influencing the chemical process of combustion. The corollary of this conclusion is that in our world, nonphysical things, such as immaterial souls, could not have an effect on the world without having a physical effect. The more scientists are able to explain events in our world through physics, chemistry, and biology, the less likely it is that there are nonphysical influences that exist. And the more we think that everything else depends on the physical, the less likely it is that any nonphysical thing can have any causal influence at all. Given this argument, the only way for there to be souls, or nonphysical minds, is for there to be violations of the laws of physics.

  Are souls and vital forces magic? Would there have to be magic for physicalism to be false? Souls and vital forces might be perfectly natural phenomena—predictable and verifiable by the methods of science—but not explainable in physical terms. But for them to be real, according to the argument I have presented, they would have to affect the physical world in violation of the laws of physics, chemistry, or biology. Advances in science make such violations increasingly unlikely. So in our world, immaterial stuff may turn out to be just as improbable as magic.

  NOTES

  1. George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones (New York: Bantam Dell, 2005). I speak only of Westeros, but strictly speaking, some of the events I describe occur beyond the Narrow Sea.

  2. Ibid., p. 85.

  3. Ibid., p. 384.

  4. Ibid., p. 374.

  5. Ibid., p. 274.

  6. Ibid., p. 486.

  7. It is tempting to describe the black-hair gene as dominant since all Baratheon are black-haired and they always have only black-haired children. This, however, would not fit what we know of genetics, even with the oversimplifying assumption that there are only two hair-color genes that are either recessive or dominant. Assuming that the gene for black hair is dominant, and for fair-hair recessive, the Baratheons would be black-haired even if they had one dominant black-hair gene and one recessive fair-hair gene. In that case, a Baratheon child could be fair-haired if both parents had at least one recessive fair-hair gene. Thus, a black-haired Baratheon could have a fair-haired child if the Baratheon parent had a recessive fair-hair gene that was not expressed because he or she also had the dominant black-hair gene. Since the genes of both parents, at least one of whom must have the recessive fair-hair gene, given the case in which one parent has fair hair, are randomly inherited by the children, there is no way to guarantee that Baratheon children always have two dominant black-hair genes and never get a recessive fair-hair gene from the other parent. In this sense, the universal black hair of the Baratheon family cannot be explained in terms of simple genetics. Either Martin did not understand how genetics works or it works slightly differently in Westeros. But there do seem to be units of inheritance, since children seem to receive the characteristics of one parent or the other.

  8. These facts about the inheritance of features are, I think, important clues to Jon Snow’s true parentage.

  9. Martin, A Game of Thrones, p. 235.

  10. Ibid., pp. 556–557.

  11. Some philosophers believe that consciousness is an exception to this principle, since we can imagine there being changes in conscious states without a change in the physical state. This is not the place to investigate such an argument in detail, but see Henry Jacoby, “Wargs, Wights, and Wolves That Are Dire,” in this volume, for a discussion of consciousness.

  12. Martin, A Game of Thrones, p. 736.

  13. Ibid., p. 756.

  14. Ibid., pp. 162–163.

  15. Ibid., p. 736.

  16. Citing all thirteen volumes of the Wheel of Time series would take more space than I have available, but the first volume is The Eye of the World (New York: Tor Fantasy, 1990).

  17. Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind (Kingkiller Chronicles, Day 1) (New York: Daw Books, 2009).

  18. Lyndon Hardy, Master of the Five Magics (New York: Del Rey Books, 1984).

  19. For a different view, see Jacoby, “Wargs, Wights, and Wolves That Are Dire.”

  20. This bond is especially noticeable when Summer saves Bran from attempted murder. Martin, A Game of Thrones, p. 133.

  21. No author or title is listed for the book that Tyrion is reading in the library at Winterfell in ibid., p. 86.

  22. Ibid., pp. 805–807.

  Chapter 11

  “YOU KNOW NOTHING, JON SNOW”: EPISTEMIC HUMILITY BEYOND THE WALL

  Abraham P. Schwab

  The world beyond the Wall serves as a constant reminder to the Black Brothers of their vast expanses of ignorance. The first pages of A Game of Thrones alert us to this ignorance—Gared, Will, and Ser Waymar Royce do not know what has happened to the wildlings they were chasing, or why the bodies have disappeared. They understand neither why it is so cold, nor the nature of the enemies that are about to kill Will and Ser Waymar. If only Royce had not assumed that the enemies were mere wildlings, he might have saved Will’s life and his own. This kind of ignorance comes up again and again as the men of the Night’s Watch encounter Others, wildlings, and everything else beyond the Wall.

  We should not be surprised that the men of the Night’s Watch are ignorant in some areas. Epistemology, a major branch of philosophical inquiry, is the study of what we know, how we know it, and what it means to know something. Understood in a certain way, it’s an exploration of our ignorance and has led to the views that there is no truth (nihilism), that you already know what you will know
(recollection), and that there is truth, but we can’t know it (skepticism).

  The study of epistemology is valuable for lots of reasons; done right, it can help us make informed decisions. While many chapters in this volume deal with philosophical questions of how one should behave, answering those questions depends first on determining what one knows. Think, for example, of Stannis’s offer to Jon to take control of Winterfell. What Jon should do takes on a different cast depending on whether he knows, or even believes, that Bran and Rickon are dead.1

  Not Knowing That You Know Nothing

  Ygritte’s refrain “You know nothing, Jon Snow” marks spaces of ignorance. In some cases, it marks a disagreement, as when Jon and Ygritte argue about whether Mance can defeat the Night’s Watch. In others, it’s an expression of pleasure, as when Jon and Ygritte flirt and fool around. In most of the twenty or so times that Ygritte utters these words, it implies that Jon misunderstands something about wildlings. They mark Jon’s failure to be epistemically humble.

  Take, for example, the exchange between Ygritte and Jon about the courting rituals between a man and a woman.2 Jon can not abide the physical taking of women by wildling raids. Ygritte argues that the man who could take her would be strong and smart, and she asks, “What’s bad about that?” Jon retorts that the man may never bathe—Ygritte says she would throw him in the river or dump water on him. What if he were brutal and beat her? Ygritte says she would kill him in his sleep. Though Jon recognizes wildlings are different, he fails to grasp the extent to which “he knows nothing.” He doesn’t know or understand the norms that govern wildlings’ social interactions, and fails to apply this ignorance to particular judgments. He still assumes that the norms that govern wildlings should be commensurate with the norms that govern people in the Seven Kingdoms. Aware of his ignorance in the abstract, he still assumes too much in the particular.

  Jon is far from alone in this problem. Samwell Tarly also assumes too much. When Small Paul comes back as a wight and attacks, Sam assumes that the dragonglass dagger will be effective. And why wouldn’t it? He killed one of the Others with the dagger, and the Others turned Small Paul into a wight, so the dagger should work on wights as well. Right? And yet the dagger shatters on the armor of Small Paul, laying bare Sam’s epistemic overreach.3

  This comparison is a little unfair to Sam, though. Sam’s decision is constrained by time, whereas Jon’s decisions are not (or at least not as much). Sam wasn’t expecting the wights to show up right then and so must make a decision right now. Jon’s judgments, however, aren’t needed immediately for his survival. We might excuse Sam for failing to be epistemically humble—he simply doesn’t have the time to evaluate whether dragonglass will harm wights. Jon, however, has the time to invoke the cool calm of reflection.

  Consider now how Lord Commander Mormont and others view Mance Raydar as King-beyond-the-Wall. Along with Jon, and later on, Stannis Baratheon, Mormont takes Mance to be king in the way Robert Baratheon was king. Beyond the Wall, Jon soon finds out about the dangers of homonyms. Mance Raydar may be a “king,” but he is a king of “free men,” and so the term “king” has a different meaning beyond the Wall. There are no worries about speaking one’s mind beyond the Wall, even if the king should find it offensive. There is also little pomp, and the infrastructure of authority is not so rigid. Because Lord Commander Mormont failed to understand that Mance was a different kind of king entirely, he failed to recognize that warfare could be entirely different as well. As we can see from the Old Bear’s orders and actions, he “knew” that the force that Mance was gathering was like a force that the king of the Seven Kingdoms would gather. He “knew” that the best way to attack and defend was in the same manner as one attacks and defends south of the Wall: direct violent confrontation. For contrast, think of how Dany deals with the sellswords as she is preparing to take Yunkai. She recognizes the fault lines in the relationships between the sellswords and the city. This allows her to defeat the sellswords more easily and take Yunkai.4 If only Lord Mormont had doubted that the wildlings were a force like his own, a group of similarly committed individuals who follow a common disciplinary structure, he might have considered alternatives to violent confrontation, which may have kept him from waiting on the Fist of First Men.

  What Even a Blind Man Can See

  Epistemic humility requires the ability to recognize what we don’t know, but often think we do. Epistemic humility also requires us to recognize what we should know. It requires that we believe those things for which we have seen robust evidence. Maester Aemon Targaryen, and not Sam, can tell that Gilly no longer has her own baby but is caring for Mance’s. Sam “knows” that Gilly is upset because she has to travel by boat and go far south of the Wall. But Maester Aemon knows that her cries are the cries of a mother in mourning. Sam fails to recognize what he should know—that Gilly is upset because she left her baby at the Wall.

  Jon never seems to fully accept his special connection with Ghost. I’m not talking here about his fellow-feeling, his love, or his compassion for the animal, but rather of his ability to literally feel what Ghost is feeling, to see what Ghost is seeing, to hear what Ghost is hearing. He is told by many friends and foes that he is a warg, and yet he persists in his doubts. As a result, he fails to take advantage of the possibilities of his connection to Ghost, as Bran does with Summer. Sam has similarly unfounded doubts about himself. Sam doesn’t know he’s brave, yet he attacks and kills an Other. He doesn’t know he’s brave, but he attacks the wight Small Paul in the hopes that Gilly and her baby can escape.5 Because he believes he is not brave, Sam’s brave actions are random and poorly planned.

  In one way or another, both Sam and Jon are stymied by their failure to know themselves. Compare these two with Arya, who redefines herself at every turn and in significant ways (she is a boy, then a mouse, then a ghost, and so on). Arya, in contrast to Sam and Jon, recognizes the nature of her current role (as a mouse she hides, as a ghost she uses her unseen influence) because what she knows is accurate (she is powerless, but she has unseen power). If she, like Sam and Jon, had failed to understand the uniqueness of her situation, it’s unlikely she would have survived. Look also to Bran. Like Jon, he has a special connection to his direwolf, Summer, but for him there is no gnawing doubt. This recognition makes it possible for him, through Summer, to help Jon escape from the wildlings. Jon’s and Sam’s failures to believe are illustrations of lacking appropriate confidence. They fail to be epistemically humble because they fail to recognize when a claim to ignorance has been undermined by robust evidence.

  What we have, then, is a view of epistemic humility as a governor of beliefs, similar to some mechanized device like a piston. At one extreme, it keeps the piston from aiming too high, from claiming too much. On the other extreme, it keeps the piston from dropping too low, from claiming too little. As a governor, epistemic humility keeps us from claiming to know that which we should not, and keeps us from ignoring that which we should claim to know.

  Calibrating Confidence in What We (Don’t) Know

  Up to now we’ve been talking about epistemic humility in two extreme cases—when we’ve reached the limits of what we know (and so must recognize our ignorance beyond that point), and when we have robust support for something we know (and so must recognize that we do in fact know something). Most of what we know, though, falls somewhere between those two extremes. Take, for example, when Jon takes his vows in a weirwood grove outside the Wall.6 In doing so, he becomes a member of the Night’s Watch. At this point, does he know that this will require him to kill a wildling? No, but he should have a great deal of confidence that this will be the case. Epistemic humility, then, also requires an attempt to calibrate the confidence we have in things we claim to know.

  In calibrating our confidence, we must distinguish between times when we know something and when we do not, and we must distinguish between different levels of support for the things we know. In contemporary epistemology, the strongest
candidate for such a standard is the three-pronged requirement of justified true belief (also known as JTB).

  Justified True Belief

  To know something, you have to believe it. If you don’t believe that George R. R. Martin will finish A Song of Ice and Fire, you don’t know it. Or, for example, take the fact that Jon refuses to believe that Benjen Stark is dead. Because he does not believe that Benjen Stark is dead, he could not possibly know it. To know something, one has to believe it.

  To know something, it must also be true. Even if I believe Martin will finish the series, to know that he will requires that it be true. I can’t know that he will finish the series if, in fact, he will not. I may believe it (and so satisfy the first condition), but if it’s not true, it can’t be known.

  Finally, to know something, the belief not only has to be true, but it has to be justified. When Samwell Tarly and the rest of the Night’s Watch are retreating from the Fist of First Men, he, Grenn, and Small Paul are attacked by an Other. Small Paul disarms the Other as he dies and Sam attacks. He thrusts at the Other with his dragonglass dagger even though he has no reason to believe it will be more effective than Small Paul’s axe.7 And yet, it turns out the dragonglass kills the Other. Still, Sam could not know that the dragonglass would be effective because he lacked a justification. Guessing correctly does not constitute knowledge.

  At the same time, some justified beliefs may turn out not to be true. Remember the Night’s Watch’s first encounter with wights? They found two members of Benjen Stark’s party (Othor and Jafer Flowers) lying cold and still, not far from the Wall.8 They have good reason to believe these men, as dead men, will not lead to any harm. They show no signs of life and none of the men of the Night’s Watch has ever encountered a dead man who comes back to kill them. But we know how that turns out.