The Problem for Nozick: Abominable Conjunctions
Although Nozick’s account of knowledge looks good at first glance, it does have problems. If Nozick’s right, then it seems as if we can imagine some hypothetical situations that would result in some very awkward results. Consider the following couple of examples:
Example 1
Imagine that the Nazis have conspired to murder the Crown Prince of Japan. Now suppose that the statement that Jones murdered the Crown Prince is true and I believe it. I believe it on the basis of a newspaper I read. That would fit Nozick’s theory: according to Nozick, I would know that Jones murdered the Crown Prince.
But now, consider the following circumstances. Jones was ordered to murder the Crown Prince by an SS officer who was very cautious. To ensure the Crown Prince’s death, the SS officer ordered ten other hit-men to carry out the assignment. Each individual hit-man had instructions to kill the Crown Prince only if the hit-man in front of them failed.
Furthermore, this very cautious mastermind also hired someone to falsely report to the newspaper that Jones murdered the Crown Prince in case all the hit-men failed. As a result, it seems as if, according to Nozick’s account, I know that Jones murdered the Crown Prince. This is because in the closest possible worlds where it was false that Jones murdered the Crown Prince I would not have believed it (I would have read in the paper that one of the other hit-men murdered the Crown Prince). However, even though I can know that Jones murdered the Crown Prince, it seems as if I do not know that someone murdered the Crown Prince. This is because, in the closest possible worlds where that statement would be false, I would still believe that it was true (even though the Crown Prince was not murdered, the newspaper would still report that he was). So, I’m left with the conclusion that I can know that Jones murdered the Crown Prince, but at the same time not know that the Crown Prince was murdered. And this is weird!
Example 2
After making it to the Neutral Zone, Trudy is famished—and broke. Imagine that she finds herself at an all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast. Trudy allows herself to indulge; she will worry about how to pay later.
Consider the statement that Trudy ate less than a pound of pancakes. Suppose that this statement is true, and that she believes it. Perhaps she loves eating pancakes, does it often, and has become very good at judging how much pancakes she consumes. However, imagine the possibility that she eats more than fourteen pounds of pancakes. In such a case let’s say it’s true that such over-eating would result in hallucination: Trudy’s accurate sense of how many pancakes she had eaten would completely desert her.
So, in the case where she eats more than fourteen pounds of pancakes she cannot know that she has eaten less than fourteen pounds of pancakes. But then we’re left with the conclusion that Trudy can know that she ate less than a pound of pancakes, but at the same time not that she ate less than fourteen pounds of pancakes. And that is weird!
What each of these examples is illustrates is that our beliefs, even if tracking the truth, can fail to amount to knowledge.
Returning to the High Castle
Even if the implication of Abominable Conjunctions proves too bitter a pill to swallow for an account of knowledge, it might still be interesting to consider how safe and sensitive the beliefs of the characters in The Man in the High Castle are. Or, to put it another way, just how close is that world to our world?
Much of the commonsensical knowledge of the characters tracks the truth. I know that the Moon travels around the Earth. I know that Germany during the 1940s was a country. Each of these beliefs (and many, many more) would count as knowledge in the actual world and in the fictional dystopia of The Man in the High Castle. In the closest possible world where the Moon does not orbit the Earth, the Earth would have no Moon. But, in that world I would not believe the Moon orbits the Earth. In the closest possible world where Germany was not a country, I would never have learned about Germany being a country.
In addition to the knowledge that overlaps, there is also knowledge that is relative to each specific world. That the characters know that the Nazis won the war is safe. If the Nazis had not won, then none of them would have believed that the Nazis had won. Similarly, in the actual world, we know that the Nazis lost. In the closest possible worlds in which the Nazis had won, we would believe that they had won.
The Man in the High Castle consistently plays on the idea that this dystopian world is so close to our own world. We seem to have so many truths in common. The realization that our world could have been so easily this eerily different world is captured by the idea that so much of our knowledge in this world would still be knowledge in that world. In fact, it’s suggested that it was just the actions of a select few that separate that world from our world.
In the closing scenes of the last episode of Season One, Adolf Hitler asserts that “Destiny lies in the hands of a few men.” While there are many different possible worlds, it’s most interesting to consider those possible worlds that, while being mostly like ours, are just a few big events from being very different.
17
When Worlds Diverge
ANANYA CHATTORAJ
“If the Allies had lost World War II, then North America would have been ruled by Germany and Japan.”
That’s a pretty common thought going through the heads of many students learning about world history for the first time. When trying to figure out whether that statement would be true or not, I’m betting that you’ll imagine a new world that’s exactly like our world up to the point of World War II. You’ll probably try to figure out whether this world you’re imagining is plausible, given what you know about our world.
In our world, you exist, I exist, and this volume of The Man in the High Castle and Philosophy exists. We also know that in our world, Nazi Germany lost World War II to the Allies, which led to the events of Nazi Germany not taking over North America. Our world is basically the world whose events and objects feel the most familiar to us. In Philip K. Dick’s new world, instead of the Allies winning the war, the Allies end up losing the war. Dick provides us with the details of this new world in The Man in the High Castle.
Philosophers talk about counterfactuals (if-then statements), like the one above, through the use of possible worlds. A possible world is exactly what it sounds like—a world that resembles our own but is different in some meaningful way. It’s just a way our world could have turned out if things had been slightly different. Nazi Germany winning World War II is definitely one of the possible ways in which our history could have been different.
In The Man in the High Castle, the Allies did lose the war, and now, much of North America belongs to the Nazis, and the West Coast of North America belongs to the Japanese with something like a demilitarized zone of the Rocky Mountain States separating the two regimes. When reading or watching The Man in the High Castle, we realize that though this fictional world is definitely different from ours, it’s not that different. It’s not like pigs fly around in The Man in the High Castle, or it’s not like gravity flipped the other way, or it’s not like aliens are controlling everyone’s minds (well, they might be, but much like if we were being controlled in our world, The Man in the High Castle’s characters wouldn’t know about it, just as we don’t).
Let’s assume that in the fictional Man in the High Castle world, all pre-1933 events were the same as in our world. The people who existed in our world before 1933 also existed in the pre-1933 Man in the High Castle world. The difference only starts in 1933 with the assasination of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. So what’s the deal with Tagomi travelling between the two worlds? Is that even possible if the two worlds are actually distinct possible worlds? And if it is possible to travel between worlds in the way that Tagomi does, are they really separate worlds or just parts of some larger world that seems to revolve around Tagomi?
What in the World Is a Possible World?
The main philosophers’ definition of possible world comes from David
Lewis. Lewis (while he was alive) argued that possible worlds are quite real in the same sense that our actual world is real. We really have no reason to think that possible worlds aren’t real—after all, we use them when thinking of the if-then statements for events that didn’t occur like the one I mentioned at the start of this essay. Lewis outlines four doctrines of possible worlds in his book Counterfactuals (pp. 85–87):
1. Possible worlds exist
2.Possible worlds are the same sorts of things as our world
3.Possible worlds cannot be reduced to something more basic
4.When we distinguish our world from others by claiming that it alone is actual, we only mean that we live here. “Actual” has no meaning other than referring to the world we live in.
Lewis also goes on to describe more about possible worlds in his book On the Plurality of Worlds (pp. 69–81) which leads us to two more criteria for possible worlds:
5.Possible worlds are spatiotemporally isolated from each other (worlds cannot be related to each other either in space or time)
6.Possible worlds are causally isolated from each other (the events of one world can’t affect the events of another world if both are separate possible worlds).
Given these six criteria a possible world must fulfill, we can start assessing the world portrayed in The Man in the High Castle to see whether or not it really is a possible world. Points #2, #3, and #4 may be the easiest to show, so I’ll start with those ones.
The Same Sort of Thing as Our World
When Lewis says that possible worlds are the same sorts of things as our world, he asks the reader to explain what sort of world our world is. Whatever sort of world that is, he claims, is the same kind of thing as a possible world (Counterfactuals, p. 85). When thinking of possible worlds in this way, we can merge points two and three. Our current world is just the type of world with some sort of a structure filled with a bunch of stuff. For instance, our world is the type of world that has objects (whatever these objects may be), but it is not reducible to these objects. Regardless of whether these are your favourite pencils, toasters, and people, you wouldn’t say that the world is reducible to a pencil, toaster, or even a person that exists in our world. The world simply is something which has objects in existence.
Our world is also generally accepted to be the type of world that has some form of causality, so there’s a predictable order of events; if I place a piece of paper over a campfire, it will burn. The fire causes the paper to burn. Again, the world is not reducible to any one set of chain of events or even any physical laws. If we were to try to describe our world to the aliens that may or may not be controlling us, we wouldn’t just say that the world is defined as someplace where fire causes paper to burn. This obviously wouldn’t be an exhaustive description of our world, but it’s enough for us to begin to understand what type of world our world and a possible world must be. A possible world must be the same type as our world, one with objects and events maybe some other stuff.
With this description, it certainly seems pretty clear that the world represented in The Man in the High Castle meets points #2 and #3 as well. It seems like there are objects in this world—Mr. Childan makes sure of that with his shop of “antiques,” Tagomi has his Zen garden, and The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is certainly a thing of great interest for our main characters.
There are even people in the Man in the High Castle world similar to how our world has people. These people do the same sorts of things as our people—they fall in love, they go on adventures, and they work in cubicle-esque government jobs hoping to someday fall in love and go on adventures. There’s also some sort of structure in the way objects are that is similar to the structure in our world—gravity certainly still exists in The Man in the High Castle. The world is also not reducible to either its objects or its structure alone. The Man in the High Castle’s world is as rich in its history, people, and culture as our world.
What if Our World Wasn’t the Actual World?
Point #4 refers to how the term “actual” relates to us. This means that our world isn’t the actual world for people like Tagomi, Mr. Childan, Frank, or Juliana. Our world is only the actual world for us because it’s our frame of reference when talking about other worlds. Mr. Childan, Frank, or Julia think that their world, the Man in the High Castle world, is the actual world and the videos from the High Castle represent the “possible world” where the Allies won the war.
Tagomi, on the other hand, might be more confused about which world is the actual world, because he has had the opportunity to see both our actual world and his own actual world. What he identifies as the actual world is still presumably the Man in the High Castle world, because he supposedly has more ties to that world and he knows how to navigate the Man in the High Castle world (after all, he was confused by seeing the freeway construction in the TV show and by not being respected at the coffee shop in the book).
The key point to take away is that a possible world will be the actual world to the inhabitant of the possible world. This doesn’t conflict with anything we’ve learned about the Man in the High Castle world either through the TV show or through the book. Going back to point #2, since the inhabitants of our world are the types of objects to assume that the world we live in is the actual world, it only makes sense to assume that the inhabitants of the The Man in the High Castle world are the type of people to assume that the world they live in is the actual world.
What if Tagomi Got to Visit Our World?
Point #5 is where things start to get complicated, thanks to Tagomi being able to “visit” our actual world (his possible world). Remember that Lewis’s fifth point in the list above states that possible worlds are not connected to each other through space or time. This means that if any two parts of a world are related in space or time, then they are part of the same world. If Tagomi is related to our world in some way, then it must mean that the Man in the High Castle world is actually part of the world we live in. Now, I don’t think this is necessarily the case, at least not in Season One of the TV show. Despite Tagomi’s “visits” to our world as represented in the show, the Man in the High Castle world is still distinct from our actual world due to the nature of Tagomi’s “visits.” Mr. Tagomi’s relation to our actual world in the book is slightly more complicated due to his interactions with the police officer and the people on the street.
In the show, we don’t get to see very much about Tagomi’s visit—we can’t even be sure it is a visit. He doesn’t interact with people by speaking to them, and nobody acknowledges him. He just stands up from the bench and looks around in awe at the vastly different world. To us, the viewers of the show, it could just be a vision he got from holding onto the new American jewelry. Going off of what we saw in the last episode of Season One, his first experience in our actual world had no interaction.
Going back to what point #5 actually means, Lewis writes that for any possible individual, if every part of them is related to another possible individual’s parts, then the two individuals must inhabit the same world as “worldmates” (Plurality of Worlds, p. 71). Worldmates are simply beings who belong to the same world (not people who live in different possible worlds)—if I may be so bold, you’re my worldmate and I’m yours.
Being spatially related to someone essentially means that you can measure a distance between them and yourself, and being temporally related to someone means that you can use phrases like “I bought a miniature pig ten minutes after I saw that eccentric couple have a fist fight under this streetlamp,” or “I ate all the chocolate cake an hour after she told me not to touch it, since it was for our friend’s birthday”—you can relate yourself to the other individual using time as a metric. TV-show Tagomi cannot boast any such relation to our actual world just from what was shown in the last episode alone. Since TV Tagomi did not interact with any person, nor did he have a two-way interaction with any object in our actual world, it’s not clear that he really visited our actual world. It’s q
uite possible that all he had was some sort of a vision, or an imaginative experience about what seems to him to be a possible world.
The book version of Tagomi, however, is a whole different story. In the book, Mr. Tagomi interacts with a police officer regarding his puzzle jewelry, a passerby regarding the upcoming Embarcadero Freeway, and a coffee shop patron regarding his lack of respect for Mr. Tagomi (The Man in the High Castle, pp. 220–26). Not only can Tagomi now say that “I spoke with a police officer before speaking to a passerby before speaking to a man in the coffee shop,” but those individuals can say the same thing; the police officer can tell his child, “I spoke to a man who has the same puzzle as you earlier today”; the passerby can tell his friends, “I spoke to a man who had never even seen the freeway before!”; and the coffee shop patron can certainly make a remark about this odd Japanese fellow expecting to be revered. They all now have a story they can tell about Tagomi, some more interesting stories than others. Book Tagomi is related to these individuals, and the individuals are now related to Tagomi. This means that the Man in the High Castle world presented in the book fails criterion #5, and now it cannot be considered a possible world. Instead, it must be a part of our own world.
Lewis does briefly discuss island worlds in his talk of possible worlds (Plurality of Worlds, pp. 75–76). Island worlds are connected worlds that could form a possible world when taken as a whole. For instance, in the book, the world where Mr. Childan, Frank, and Juliana reside is one island world where the Allies lost World War II, and the world where Mr. Tagomi visits and interacts with the three people is another island world where the Allies won World War II. We can take the two worlds to be islands of the same, larger possible world. Tagomi is essentially the bridge between the two islands.
The Man in the High Castle and Philosophy Page 18