How I Met Your Mother and Philosophy (28 page)

William James claims that if any idea would help us to lead a better life “then it would be really
better for us
to believe that idea, unless, indeed, belief in it incidentally clashed with other greater vital benefits” (p. 76) and equates
this
with truth. The “greater vital benefits” here are crucial. They mainly demand that you don't form beliefs that clash with your other beliefs (as they may defeat benefits reaped by
those
beliefs). So having consistent beliefs is necessary for James. This requirement is also prevalent in Barney's belief forming; when he learns something (like a woman being thirty-one years old) he must reject whatever contradicts that.

How then, do we explain situations where Barney himself seems to have broken this rule? If making a better story was the crucial goal, why would Barney have admitted to Ted and Marshall that the woman was thirty-one, and not twenty-eight “with some sun-damage”? Barney uses this to illustrate the
point that people hate to
find out
that they've been lied to. Barney would have been happier believing the girl was twenty-eight, just as the world would be better off believing that Marshall was mugged by a monkey. This example seems to meet the “greater vital benefits” requirement. Other examples where Barney doesn't tell the most entertaining story, when it seems that he could easily have done so could be explained in a variety of ways. Perhaps the most entertaining story wasn't one he thought the gang would believe, perhaps it's one that would be easily disproved, or perhaps there are other “vital benefits” being pursued.

Barney's Truth for Everyone!

When Barney tells one of his ‘true stories', he doesn't do so to convince himself. He does so to convince others of the true story; to make it true
for them
. Not all of these stories that he attempts to make true for other people will even be true for himself. This is ideal for Barney's nefarious methods of seducing women.

When seducing a target, Barney often adopts a guise or a story to help him do so (many of which are detailed in
The Playbook
). When this is the case, he aims for the girl to be in the sort of position we are placed in with regard to the monkey-mugging, the squirrel question, or James's view of free will. There is no practical effect upon them of the story in question, thus no immediate way of disproving the story. The girls Barney preys on are usually the gullible or ignorant too, meaning there are a great many stories that the girl would be unable to reject by careful scrutiny, consideration, or general knowledge. As such, Barney will ideally pick a story that the girl in question cannot immediately disprove, would like to sleep with him because of it, and then give her reasons to believe it.

Therein lies the primary difference between BS and pragmatism. BS is self-serving and designed for the benefit of its practitioner, and occasionally his friends. If you didn't already know it, Barney is a master of BS. He makes others buy into truths that will satisfy his own pleasure. Pragmatism, on the other hand, would value the practical relations of an idea not only to the lives of Barney, but to everyone, and what is true would be appropriate to that.

The Barney Stinson Theory of Truth

To give a formula, then, for what counts as true for BS, we must take into account that something ‘true' must be consistent with your other beliefs. Barney doesn't say this explicitly, but, it can be inferred from his backing down when contradictory information is divulged, as with his admission of the falsity of the three-way story. As in James's pragmatism, it seems permitted for different people to count different things as true, in accordance with the utility of the belief. However, in the BS account, entertainment is the primary utility. Like James, BS doesn't require that a belief's truth at one time entails its truth at another; it can change as and when it's convenient.

To prove that this chapter is a really serious piece of philosophy, we can put our conclusion more formally. An unverified (ideally, unverifiable) idea (or story),
S
, can be made true for person,
X
, at time,
t
if:

S
is consistent with
X
's other beliefs, AND

Either

       
A.
  
There is good reason to believe
S
(like seeing something that suggests
S
or hearing
S
from a reliable source), or

       
B.
  
It is practically useful (often meaning entertaining) for
X
to believe
S
.

For Barney, the “practically useful” aspect of this account, means practically useful
for Barney
. This includes a great many things. It is practically useful
for Barney
, that some girls believe that he is Neil Armstrong, that he has just been mugged, or that his penis grants wishes. If other people were to adopt this theory of truth, however, it would make sense for them to play the role of Barney, telling stories that would benefit themselves, rather than merely stories that would play to the practical utility of Barney Stinson (he'll do okay without you).

I've said that the above formula accounts only for what “can be made true” for a person, because it will still require that they are put in a position where they may believe it. Also, some people may be less likely to believe some stories than others, so
an appropriate amount of convincing (or guidance from
The Playbook
) may be necessary.

So, what do we make of the BS theory of truth? Compared to William James's account, it's certainly more flexible, but this seems purely because it has entrenched within it a personal value system of entertaining oneself. William James wasn't quite so hedonistic.

I should warn you, that if you follow the BS account with the stories you tell your friends, your friends may avoid you after a while. Despite all this, the show implies that even Ted comes round to the theory eventually: Barney informs Ted that when he depicts Marshall's mugging, he will tell the monkey-mugging story. Ted then challenges Barney, claiming that you “can't just tack on a new ending because you're not satisfied with how a story wraps up.” Barney tells Ted that he'll change his mind. We then see a satisfying ending tacked on, in which we see the monkey steal a doll and climb the Empire State Building, echoing the imagery of
King Kong
. Future Ted then utters a convincing “True story,” hinting that he has come around to Barney's way of thinking.

If even the wise Future Ted (Bob Saget) adopts the Barney Stinson Theory of Truth, who are we to question it? This completes my rigorous philosophical analysis of the Barney Stinson Theory of Truth. True story.
¹

¹
Special thanks to my flatmate, Elspeth Gillespie, for tolerating and joining in with the extensive amount of television-related ‘research' I engaged in while writing this.

15

The Pick-Up Game

B
ART VAN
B
EEK

K
ids, that's enough about how I met your mother, let's see if there's a game on.

        
J
IM
:
Hello friends, I'm Jim Nantz. We have a full program ahead of us, so let's go to our pick-up game of the evening. Stinson is six for six and this is a tense moment. Will he complete a perfect week for the first time in his career as a player, banging seven chicks on seven consecutive nights without a single rejection? He's called his shot and is ready to run home with Christy, a blond hottie. But oh no! There's Nick Swisher, a member of the 2009 World Series Champion New York Yankees. This is going to be a rack jack for sure, unless a miracle happens. But wait for it, there's wingwoman Lily stepping up to the plate, distracting Christy and allowing Barney to score an all-hitter. The crowd roars, his team members hoist Barney up on their shoulders. What a game. What a player.

                  
Barney's achievement is legendary. Few bros can honestly say they've done the same. This must be a proud moment for the man with a tally of two hundred random hotties without as much as a single fatty. I can't think of anyone who deserves reaching this very special milestone more than he does. As you loyal fans know, this guy is one of the most gifted and skillful players of all time. He even manages to score chicks by making them think he is a member of Secret NASA. Barney is the living
embodiment of the rules and the spirit of the game as so eloquently described in the Bro Code. Nobody exercises his inalienable right to pursue tail quite like The Barnacle.

                  
You may wonder, viewers, where this right comes from. It certainly doesn't come from God. Nor does it come from the President of the United States of America. Although Kennedy and Clinton clearly honed their skills while they were on top. With its emphasis on getting it on it appears more like a law of nature. But it's not a law of nature in the sense that the laws of gravity are, because these laws merely
describe
what happens. For example, they tell us how fast Mabel, Marshall's barrel, will fall if released from an apartment window. No, this law
prescribes
what ought to be done. Bros should score any way they can, because it's the natural thing to do. But is this really the natural thing to do, and does that mean bros ought to do it? Here's a big guy with a beard to help us answer those questions, it's my cohost and philosopher Aristotle.

Be All You Can Be

        
A
RI
:
Thank you, Jim. Many of today's players lack focus. They don't know what their goal is in playing the game of life. Fortunately for them, I do. Every bro should strive to live a life informed by reason, because if he uses his rational faculty, then he does what best fits his purpose as a human being. For a bro's rationality is what distinguishes him from other animals. It's the specific difference that defines his human nature. To live in accordance with that nature is to live a good life and in living a good life a bro flourishes. Back to you Jim.

        
J
IM
:
I get it Ari, we should let biology inform our ethics, but isn't all this stuff about reason defining our human nature a bit old?

        
A
RI
:
Of course Jim, but then again, I've been dead for over two thousand years.

        
J
IM
:
Ari, let me switch over to fellow philosophers Larry Arnhart and James Chisholm for some contemporary insight.

        
L
ARRY AND
J
AMES
:
Welcome viewers. Things today are quite different, because the theory of evolution tells us that our ultimate biological function is not to contemplate but to copulate, as the following replay shows:

                  
Here we see Barney and Robin some weeks into their first relationship. They hate each other so much, and on top of that have become so unattractive to each other that they stop having sex. Instead they much prefer just to eat pizza and moan. Now imagine a world where everyone is like Barney and Robin during this awful phase, lacking any urge to play ball. Without the desire to do it, people would probably stop doing it altogether in favor of pursuing other passions, like laser tag. In this kind of world our fathers would never have met our mothers, because they wouldn't have hooked up. So you wouldn't be here and in fact your father and mother would never have been born either, because your grandpa and grandma would have been too busy fragging each other rather than getting it on. But we're all here, so it must be part of human nature that we like to have sex.

        
J
IM
:
Ari says the game of life is all about thinking, are you saying it's about doing something else that rhymes with ‘thinking' and starts with an ‘f'?

        
L
ARRY AND
J
AMES
:
In a way yes, because only through having sex can we spread our genome, which is what evolution is all about. Yet enabling us to pass on our genetic material is not just the function of our desire for sex; in fact it's the ultimate function of every trait. For we may want to nail chicks, but our desire alone is not enough to score. Sheer awesomeness and a great suit help, but sometimes we need a play, a stratagem, a gambit, a bamboozle to allow us to land that plane. Say you want to pull a Lorenzo von Matterhorn, one of our favorite plays. Given the complexity of this move you need numerous skills: being able to come up with a creative fake name, knowing how to build web sites, and using the right tricks to deceive someone into believing that you're someone you're not, to name but a few. All of these skills require a certain degree of intellect, and this is where
spreading our genetic material comes in. For intelligence is hereditary at least in part, and given that it's still around, it must not only be making some contribution to reproductive success in the present, but it will have made a similar contribution to copulation in the past. For if that contribution were lacking, then all the relatively intelligent cavemen probably didn't score and the “smart genes” would not have been passed on. So it's the ultimate function of all our traits, not just the desire to have sex, that they contribute to procreation. For any trait that doesn't live up to this standard fails to get passed on, and will die out.