Scott Adams and Philosophy
Page 15
Seriously
Simone de Beauvoir’s concept of the serious man (from her book, The Ethics of Ambiguity) should really drive home just how it is that Dilbert has chosen to live miserably, and how he’s not only responsible for his misery (in a causal sense), but how his pitiful mode of existence is actually a moral failing.
In the greatest book on ethics written in the twentieth century, the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir specifies what sorts of people deserve to be punched in the face. Dilbert is definitely punchable. Writing right after the Second World War, Beauvoir knew that some of the worst people in the world are Nazis. (Sadly, this is a fundamental ethical truth that too many Americans have seem to have forgotten.) Of all the types of people that are deserving of a punch in the face, perhaps the most punchable, are what Beauvoir classifies as “serious men”, who—more than anything else—value advancing up the hierarchy of the corporate or governmental system that they know is complete bullshit.
Beauvoir illustrates the nature of the serious man through the example of the colonial administrator who would gladly condemn a bunch of laborers to death, in order to complete the construction of a highway. What sort of monster thinks that his completion of a project is more important than the lives of workers? A serious man, that’s who. It might be tempting to think of serious men as buffoons of diminished intelligence (not unlike a baboon flinging his own feces), but this is wrong. Beauvoir points out that serious men are intelligent enough to recognize that the system in which they operate is without moral justification and they also recognize the criteria that they must satisfy to achieve success in this system. Serious men are sell-outs, who know damn well that they have sold out and who are too morally vacant to give a shit. It’s not just that the serious man’s moral values are utterly skewed, it’s that the serious man has decided that some artificial (corporate or governmental) system of values is more important than any moral system which values human life. The serious man is not deplorable. He is contemptible.
Dilbert is a serious man. In a series of comic strips that ran from December 16th 2017 to December 20th 2017 Dilbert points out that the corporation he works for has invented an “app” that is addictive. While he first seems to have some misgivings about the effects of the app, he quickly gets over any moral qualms when he is offered a raise to suppress his findings. Later on, Dilbert points out that the app has triggered a “Zombie Apocalypse.” Even Dilbert’s idiotic manager is alarmed by the threat of a bunch of desperate, emotionally isolated, half-mad people wandering around the streets looking for a dopamine fix. Dilbert assures him that this aspect of the app has been monetized. Further testing shows that the app causes a monkey to eat its own hand. Dilbert proudly reports these findings to a board meeting. He’s the engineer who is responsible for the unleashing the technological equivalent of a biblical plague.
Dilbert has a funny haircut. He seems to be a mild-mannered office stooge who is just trying to get by. Dilbert might seem eminently insignificant, utterly ignorable, but he is, in fact, much worse. Dilbert is a serious asshole.
13
The Essence of Dogbert
ELLIOT KNUTHS
Dogbert, Catbert, Ratbert, and Bob the Dinosaur play a unique role in Scott Adams’s Dilbert universe. On one hand, they are animals, and on the other, they’re basically just human characters in animal bodies.
Sometimes they don’t even behave like members of their own species. In a strip from May 16th 1989, Dogbert expresses a desire to become friends with other dogs but confesses he doesn’t really know what ordinary dogs are like. Later, on August 18th of that year, Dogbert is taken aback when he encounters a normal dog. Despite, however, his resemblance and preference for humans, Dogbert is obviously still a dog. And this raises some interesting philosophical questions and challenges.
Is Dogbert a dog in the same way that your Labradoodle is? If so, is Dogbert real in some sense? Furthermore, how do our answers to these questions matter at all? Do they impact our appreciation of the Dilbert series or other works of fiction?
What Makes Dogbert Whatever He Is?
Metaphysics, classically but vaguely defined as the study of being, deals not only with what is but also with what could and could not possibly be. Put another way, it’s the area of philosophy concerned with the nature of reality as it exists, apart from human experience.
One issue frequently discussed in metaphysics is which properties are essential to an object and which are those it has accidentally. Which properties must an object necessarily continue to possess in order to remain that very same object (its essential properties), and which could it lose without becoming something else (its accidental ones)? If essential properties change, then an object becomes something else. Accidental properties, on the other hand, may come and go without changing an object’s identity. Plenty of philosophers reject the theory of essentialism just characterized, but this chapter will take it for granted, since it’s a popular starting point for learning a little metaphysics.
For a concrete illustration of the distinction between essential and accidental properties, think about yourself for a moment. According to one popular type of essentialism, species essentialism, being human is one of your essential properties. You cannot both exist and fail to be human. You couldn’t be a peregrine falcon or a pile of snow or the number seventeen or Bob the Dinosaur; you can only be a human person. Having hair, however, is an accidental property of yours (if you have it at all). You could lose all of your hair overnight or shave it all off in the morning and you would still be the same person you are right now.
Similarly, we can think about the essential and accidental properties of the characters in Dilbert. For example, Dogbert is essentially a dog. If you’re reading a Dilbert strip and a non-dog character appears in it, you can, according to the species essentialist, be sure it is not Dogbert (assuming, of course, the non-dog is not really just Dogbert in disguise). The only plausible exception to this rule is that Dogbert might miraculously transform into some other object like a tree or a brick wall, which has happened in previous strips, for instance the one from October 31th 2003.
Transformations like these are incompatible with species essentialism, but for argument’s sake, we’ll proceed by assuming that Dogbert is essentially a dog. He’s probably not essentially white, though. Imagine that, in a plot to win favor with Bob and Dawn, Dogbert drinks a potion that turns him green. Although he now has a dramatically different appearance, he’s still the same being he was before the potion. So, having white fur is an accidental property of Dogbert’s, albeit one that, to my knowledge, remains present throughout the series.
The Modal Account of Essences
The distinction between essential and accidental properties discussed above has been around for millennia. Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) gave the first systematic account in his Metaphysics, written nearly 2,400 years ago. The idea of essences has remained important in Western metaphysics ever since. Despite its age, however, essence is not an unchanging or dusty topic in philosophy. In fact, a revolutionary new approach to thinking about essences emerged in the last century alongside developments in modal logic.
Modal logic is a special logical framework that helps philosophers deal with questions of necessity and possibility. When we talk about something being necessary, we mean it must be or must have been the way it is or was. When we talk about something being possible, we mean that it could have been different or it might be different in some way.
Modal logic is a powerful tool when thinking about what must be the case as opposed to what might have been the case or what could never have been the case. Although philosophers usually apply modal logic by using tons of abstract, quasi-mathematical symbols, they also employ it in less formal terms when appealing to possible worlds.
Philosophers say that necessary truths, such as facts from arithmetic like “2 + 2 = 4,” are by definition true and can never be false. Thus, they are true in all possible worlds. Necessarily
false statements which lead to contradictions, like “1 + 1 = 3,” are not true in any possible world.
There is also much that lies in between the two extremes of necessary truth and necessary falsehood which might be true in some worlds and false in others. A proposition which might be true or false is a contingent one, depending on which world we consider. There are possible worlds where I have an uncle who is an avid Dilbert reader, but there are also possible worlds where I exist but do not have an uncle who reads Dilbert.
Keep in mind that references to possible worlds do not commit philosophers to believing in some comic-book-style multiverse where all possible worlds spatiotemporally exist in the same way our world does. Although some philosophers, like David Lewis (1941–2001), do endorse a position somewhat like this, many, probably most, philosophers view possible worlds as descriptions of ways the world could have been, not as other universes parallel to our own.
Modal logic works well with the concepts of essential and accidental properties. Those properties that an object or person possesses in all possible worlds (that is, possesses necessarily) are essential to that object or person. Those properties that an object or person does not possess necessarily, but still possesses in some possible world, are its accidental ones. So, looking back to our earlier examples, you are human in all possible worlds in which you exist, but you lack hair on your head in some, but not all, possible worlds in which you exist. Applying the same reasoning to Dogbert, because he is essentially a dog, he is a dog in all possible worlds where he exists. Likewise, there are one or more possible worlds where Dogbert has green fur at some point in time, and one or more possible worlds where he does not.
A popular approach among philosophers working in metaphysics is to treat possible worlds as abstract objects. Philosophers who believe in abstract objects consider them to be entities not located anywhere in space or time, but which nonetheless are as real as you or me. Typical examples of abstract objects include numbers, shapes considered in the abstract (a triangle, not the triangle you see in front of you), properties (like “being a dog”), and propositions. When thinking about possible worlds as abstract objects, you can think about them as sets of propositions, each of which exhaustively describes a way a world possibly could be. Relationships among properties can then be assessed in terms of when they hold and in which possible worlds they hold.
Consider the following properties: “being more than five feet tall,” “being more than six feet tall,” “having only brown hair,” and “not having only brown hair.” For all objects in all possible worlds, the property “being more than six feet tall” holds only if “being more than five feet tall” also holds, since nothing can be over six feet tall unless it’s also more than five feet tall. But, an object can have the property of “being more than five feet tall” without having the property of “being more than six feet tall.” There are also possible objects that exist that have the properties of “being more than five feet tall” and “having only brown hair.” Likewise, “being more than five feet tall” is compatible with “not having only brown hair.” No possible object has both the properties of “having only brown hair” and “not having only brown hair,” simultaneously, as that would imply an impossibility.
Dogbert: King of Elbonia, Threat to Metaphysics
As mentioned earlier, we’re assuming that Dogbert is essentially a dog. In the modal lingo of possible worlds, this means that Dogbert is a dog in all possible worlds where he exists. Suppose we also recognize that Dogbert is intelligent, speaks fluent English, and has worked as a CEO and a business consultant, because there is a possible world, the one described in Dilbert, where this occurs. From these observations and Dogbert’s essentially being a dog, it follows that it is possible for a dog to be intelligent, speak fluent English, and work as a CEO or a business consultant.
The problem is this: suppose we’re having a conversation about some company. I am considering buying stock in the company and you tell me that I ought to wait and see how the company’s new CEO adapts before I decide whether to invest. I had not heard about the change of leadership that you had, so I know nothing about this new CEO. However, having recently read Dilbert, the idea of a canine CEO is fresh in my mind. I ask you whether the CEO is a dog or not. You likely chuckle at the absurdity of my question, or else politely ignore it, quietly suspecting I have gone mad. I persist, though, explaining that Dogbert was appointed CEO of Dilbert’s company in the November 15th 2014 strip. Since being a dog is one of Dogbert’s essential properties, the fact that Dogbert became a CEO means that there is a possible world where a dog is a CEO, so it’s possible for dogs to be CEOs and my question is justified.
Is this too literal a reading of Dilbert, though? That’s the worry. An approach like this allows facts internal to the Dilbert universe to influence our intuitions about what’s true and false in the actual world. At the same time, we definitely do want to say that Dogbert has some of his properties essentially. The reason for this is that we want to be able to say that the assertions “Dogbert is essentially a dog” and “Dogbert is essentially a cat” are different because one is true and the other false. If we say that the first assertion is also false, then we cannot say anything at all meaningful about Dilbert’s fictional universe. Thus, our explanation of exactly what the world of Dilbert metaphysically is must not logically undermine our self-evident ability to speak meaningfully about the world of Dilbert.
Furthermore, we don’t want to prevent ourselves from saying that the scenarios presented in Dilbert have nothing to say about the real world. They would hardly be funny or worth reading if that were the case. A large part of the success of the Dilbert franchise comes from the way it mirrors American professional life. Scott Adams has even released Dilbert-themed books about professional life. Both The Dilbert Principle and Dogbert’s Top Secret Management Handbook were bestsellers, which is pretty compelling evidence that Dilbert does reveal some insight about real life.
Three Ways to Solve It
The philosophical problem posed by Dogbert is now in sight. How might we resolve it? There are several popular ways of understanding fictions like Scott Adams’s Dilbert universe that respond to the issues I’ve mentioned. They are possibilism, Meinongianism, and creationism.
Somebody who thinks authors do not create a fictional world but rather discover some non-actual possible world is a possibilist. Such a person might claim Dilbert actually does tell us something important about the metaphysical properties of dogs and CEOs. Philosophers who approach fictions this way believe that if the world of Dilbert described by Scott Adams could possibly exist, then the beings in it, like Dogbert or Bob the Dinosaur, can be discussed as though they exist in the actual world because they exist as abstract objects contained in a possible world (itself an abstract object).
Philosophers who view fictional beings as existing in a possible world are generally prepared to countenance the often-bizarre implications of fiction. In this case, someone who deems the world described in Dilbert a possible world will be committed to the possibility of a dog working his way up to a CEO position in a major company. On the other hand, this position arguably does the best job of explaining what we’re doing when we discuss Dilbert and preserving our intuition that we can discuss the events which occur in Dilbert the same way we discuss events which happen in the actual world.
Meinongianism is a similar view, originally defended by the Austrian philosopher Alexius Meinong (1853–1920), which holds that all things that can be referred to have being in some sense, even if they are impossible objects which could never exist, like square circles. Impossible or fictional objects like square circles or Dogbert may not actually exist, but they do possess properties attributed to them (in the case of the square circle, the properties of being square and of being circular; in the case of Dogbert, the property of being a dog, being Dilbert’s closest friend, and being a CEO). Meinongianism allows us to preserve the ability to speak meaningfully abou
t Dogbert and his properties but at a high cost: we must also grant being to everything else we could speak of, including such impossibilities as square circles.
In the context of fictional objects, creationism is the view that fictions like Dogbert, Elbonia, and Dilbert himself are not discovered but made. Creationists would say that Dogbert is an abstract object, but one which, unlike eternal numbers and shapes, has a temporal beginning, namely at the moment when Scott Adams first imagined him. Thus, Dogbert’s existence depends upon Scott Adams’s existing and thinking up Dogbert.
According to the creationist, even though we can speak meaningfully about Dogbert in this world, there are worlds where we could not because Dogbert does not exist in those worlds. Such worlds include those where Scott Adams never existed or ones where, for one reason or another, he did not create Dilbert. This theory agrees with our intuition that Adams created, rather than discovered, Dogbert. It has its own weaknesses, though.
Imagine that, at the very moment that Scott Adams was creating Dilbert, another fellow, call him “Not-Adams” was independently creating the exact same fictional universe. The internal narratives and the characters are all identical. Now suppose that Scott Adams never existed, or for some reason never created Dilbert. If we grant that Not-Adams could create the same fictional universe at the same time as Scott, there should be no reason he could not likewise create it without Scott. If we believe that two different authors could possibly have created the same exact work of fiction, the view that fictional objects depend upon their creators for existence doesn’t look too promising.