How I Met Your Mother and Philosophy (27 page)

So, what does Barney have to do with all this? Here are a just a few occasions Barney mentions truth:

       
•
  
When I'm sad, I stop being sad, and be awesome instead. True story.
(“Where Were We?”)

       
•
  
Whenever I start feeling sick, I just stop being sick and be awesome instead. True story.
(“How Lily Stole Christmas”)

       
•
  
In my body, where the shame gland should be, there's a second awesome gland. True story.
(“Columns”)

       
•
  
. . . we wait three days to call a woman, because that's how long Jesus wanted us to wait. True story.
(“The Three Days Rule”)

       
•
  
Pamela Anderson is Canadian. But, more important, she was Canadian even back when she was hot. True story.
(Barney Stinson and Matt Kuhn,
The Playbook: Suit Up. Score Chicks. Be Awesome
, 2010, p. 33. Written in justifying attempting to sleep with Canadians)

As these examples testify, Barney attributes truth pretty generously. You might think that reconciling all such statements into one sensible account of truth isn't sensible or possible. Though perhaps not sensible, I'd like to compare Barney's conception of truth (the BS theory) with a view espoused by the American pragmatist William James and suggest that in some ways it is surprisingly similar! Though James was by no means the only pragmatist to talk about truth—pragmatism has developed considerably and many present-day advocates may well disagree with much of what he said—I will call James's classic pragmatist view
the
pragmatist view.

Sneaky Squirrels

Most philosophers are either rationalists (believing that reason is the source of knowledge) or empiricists (believing that the evidence of our senses is the source of knowledge). James thought that rationalists were too abstract and too far away from the real world and empiricists were too reliant on the evidence of their senses.

James saw pragmatism as an alternative, a third way. James's pragmatism looks at whether the answers to questions make any practical difference. He demonstrated his point with an example about a squirrel. Briefly summarizing what James says, it goes like this:

Walking next to the woods, you see a tree—as you often do in the woods. In the far side of the tree, through some leaves, there is a squirrel. You walk around to the other side of the tree, but the squirrel is sneaky. While you walk around, he runs the other way around the tree. Whatever you do, he stays on the other side of the tree. You go around the tree several times, and the squirrel continues to adjust himself to the opposite side of the tree. Did you go round the squirrel? (
Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking
, 1946, p. 43)

William James tells of friends of his having an argument about whether or not you've been round the squirrel in this case. He obviously had some weird friends, but you have to understand that they didn't have TV back then. James's answer to this problem was that it depends what you “practically mean.” If
you want to say you've been in a circle north, east, south, west and north again, which the squirrel is inside, then it seems you can. You could have drawn a circle around the squirrel, if you wanted to. If you wanted to go around it so you could see every side of the squirrel, perhaps because of some weird fetish—I'm not here to judge—then you'd have failed to achieve your somewhat peculiar endeavor.

James thought that the squirrel case was similar to several metaphysical disputes in philosophy, like whether God exists or whether we have free will. What James wanted was to focus on ‘practical consequences'. Barney Stinson is similarly focussed upon practical goals when discussing the truth of a story.

The Monkey-Mugging

The episode of
How I Met Your Mother
in which truth is most discussed is called “Zoo or False.” Here Marshall tells two contradictory stories about how he came to lose his wallet. In one version it was taken by a man at gun-point and in the other he was mugged by a monkey.

After Marshall's flip-flopping leaves Ted and Barney confused as to what happened, Barney
decides
that the mugging by a monkey did happen. He also makes it clear that he intends to tell the monkey-mugging story to his colleagues. Obviously, the monkey story is more entertaining than the alternative, so far more practical as a means for entertaining co-workers.

The other examples where Barney invokes truth can also be seen as practical. The ‘true story' of his stopping being sad to be awesome instead, is both amusing to Ted and Robin and the solution he offers for Marshall's depression over Lily leaving him that summer. Noting that Pamela Anderson is both Canadian
and
hot promises to be useful in convincing the reader that sleeping with Canadian women is a respectable goal. All of the examples have some form of practical upshot.

The monkey-mugging story might seem like an odd example. We're put in a situation where, let's assume, it's impossible to know what happened. Either way, the wallet is gone and no additional evidence can be found for or against either version of events. For James, we must remember here, that without any practical effect that would result from either notion, the
dispute is an idle one, just as useless as the ‘round the squirrel' question is without some practical motivations. What then, would James say about what one should believe the monkey-mugging case?

Free Will, God, and More Monkey-Muggings

Let's think about how we form beliefs. What we regard as making something true may affect our belief-forming process, as we want our beliefs to be true. Holding different beliefs will result in acting differently. The gun-point mugging belief makes Lily want to buy a gun. The monkey-mugging belief leads Robin to want the news story. How then do we decide what to believe? In “Zoo or False,” the characters first hear that Marshall was mugged by a man with a gun. At this point they have no evidence to doubt his testimony, so it's completely reasonable to believe him and accept, as they do, that he was robbed by an armed man. Later, this is called into question, when Marshall, fearful that Lily may purchase a gun, tells an alternative story, of his being mugged by a monkey. At this point, with embarrassment as the explanation for the first story, the group reasonably believe the monkey-mugging story.

When facing the consequences of the monkey-mugging story—the sending of Captain Bobo the monkey to a wildlife sanctuary away from his long-term mate Milly—Marshall leaves the group without confirming either story. It seems the evidence is inconclusive. This situation seems to leave us with three obvious options.

       
•
  
believe Marshall was mugged at gunpoint

       
•
  
believe Marshall was mugged by a monkey

       
•
  
suspend belief on what happened

There is a fourth option of believing something else, perhaps that he was robbed by an alien, but that would seem unmotivated (and Marshall would certainly have broadcast that to the world!). Many people would think that the third option is the most rational. However, this position does not seem to be required by either pragmatism or the Barney Stinson account.

This question seems reminiscent of William James's views on the existence of God or free will. Practical utility is the guiding force for answering these questions. With regard to many questions, the possession of a true belief will guide a person to do something that relies upon the belief being true. Ted's believing that the bar is downstairs and that Barney and Marshall are at the bar allows him to go to the bar and meet them there. If, instead, he believed they were at the Lusty Leopard, he would be disappointed. The truth of the belief has a direct relevance to his acting successfully.

James compares these sorts of directly-useful truths with those which are true merely in an instrumental way. He claims that any idea that's successful in our experience in “linking things satisfactorily, working securely simplifying, saving labor; is true just so much . . . true
instrumentally
.” Ideas “become true just in so far as they help us get into satisfactory relation with other parts of our experience” (p. 58). The ‘satisfactory relation' James talks about seems very loose. To illustrate this, we can look at his discussion of free will.

Whether or not people have free will is an ancient debate in philosophy. If the world is deterministic, then everything that has ever happened and ever will happen has been
fixed
since time began, or God has always known exactly what you're going to do. That everything you have ever and will ever do was already known long before you were born seems to threaten your autonomy and your ability to really make decisions for yourself. If we accept that, how can we say anyone is responsible for anything they do?

James writes a considerable amount on the subject of free will, but with regard to pragmatism, he talks of free will as “novelties in the world” (p. 118). Free will would be an exception to the uniform laws of nature. He notes that knowledge of history and of the terrible pains and atrocities that have occurred, in conjunction with a deterministic outlook, can cause pessimism, as those uniform laws have caused all the horrible events of the past and that they are still in place seem destined to preclude improvement in the world. Free will, however, “holds up improvement as at least possible.” James claims that there's no significance to the free will question at all, but for this practical significance (
Pragmatism
, p. 121). This practical significance, for James is enough to make free will ‘become true'.

The novelty of free will doesn't seem to help in any specific practical tasks, but only with regards to a general attitude or outlook. James makes a pragmatic argument of the same sort for truth of the existence of God, arguing that “if theological ideas prove to have a value for concrete life, they will be true, for pragmatism” (p. 73). He talks about the “religious comfort” some people experience as a result of religion.

Now, back to monkeys. In deciding that the monkey-mugging story is true, Barney doesn't seem to be doing anything that James wouldn't endorse himself. How Marshall came to lose his wallet is a question which won't have any ordinary practical bearing (accepting that the mugger won't be caught, that Marshall won't get his wallet back; basically that nothing else in the lives of the group will depend upon it), this is what James would call an idle dispute, just like the squirrel question. If in the squirrel case, planting squirrel traps or satisfying some unusual fetish is the goal, the question has a different answer. Similarly, as soon as Barney's amusement comes into play, there is one reason to believe the monkey story over the alternative. This amusing story, which he can then tell in whatever way he may like, seems to provide a much more satisfactory relation to Barney's experience, thus, seemingly even for James's pragmatism, this is true.

Making Stories True and False

For both William James and Barney Stinson, an idea or story, can be
made true
by some convenience of its being true. For different people, however, this may well yield different truths. Whereas for Barney, believing the monkey-mugging story is most useful, and therefore true, it may be much more convenient for the zookeeper not to believe this, as it might mean a lot of extra paperwork. Though he doesn't state this explicitly, this must be the case for James too; if a person did not experience the “religious comfort” James mentioned, but instead lived in constant and paralyzing fear of eternal punishment, this presumably wouldn't be a satisfactory relation with her experiences, so would (without any other particular reasons) be false.

James discusses how ideas can be made true or replaced, as it becomes more practical to hold one theory over another.
James talks about this in a scientific context, explaining how one theory can replace another if it seems more useful. For Barney, I will suggest that the same is true. When Marshall first suggests that the monkey story was made up to prevent Lily buying a gun, Ted and Barney are unsure, but Barney announces that he is sticking to the monkey-mugging story. Ted is against the idea, arguing that people don't like to be lied to. Barney rejects this, instead arguing that “a lie is just a great story that someone ruined with the truth.” “The truth” in question here refers to the new truth. Just as a new scientific theory replaces an old one, once a story is admitted as made up, it is replaced by a more suitable story. When you're presented with information which makes it impractical to hold your current beliefs any more, you reject them in favor of newer, more practical beliefs.

For example, also in “Zoo or False,” Barney hooks up with a girl he thinks is twenty-eight, by telling her that he is Neil Armstrong. Later, she discovers he's not Neil Armstrong, and is at first angry, but then remembers that she lied to him about being twenty-eight too, as she was actually thirty-one. For Barney, her being twenty-eight (“with some sun damage”) was true, until he was told that she'd lied, at which point it was replaced by a new truth, that she was thirty-one. His “great story” of having sex with a twenty-eight-year-old was “ruined by the truth.”