Andrew Zimmerman Jones
Han Solo gives the Force no credit when he first discusses it with Luke and Obi-Wan on the way to Alderaan. When Luke blocks the training remote's blaster bolts with his lightsaber, Han dismisses it as luck. He is, without a doubt, wrong. Or is he?
As an audience, we know that Han Solo's belief about the Force is an untrue belief. It doesn't conform to the reality of how the Star Wars universe operates. But does this mean that Han is actually wrong to hold that belief, at that time, given the evidence he has at his disposal?
In our galaxy, in a time much more recent than the Battle of Endor, Greek philosophers came up with the idea that orderly causal laws regulate the universe. One of the earliest thinkers credited with this notion is the philosopher Thales (620–546 BCE). Much like ancient Jedi Masters after the fall of the Republic (about whom information is scattered in rare Jedi holocrons), little is known of Thales, though he is referenced by other, better-known Greek philosophers, such as Aristotle (384–322 BCE):
Thales, too, to judge from what is recorded about him, seems to have held soul to be a motive force, since he says that the magnet has a soul because it moves the iron.1
Certain thinkers say that the soul is intermingled in the whole universe, and it is perhaps for that reason that Thales came to the opinion that all things are full of gods.2
Here, at the very dawn of Western philosophy, we find that the first attempts to make sense of the universe are eerily similar to the concept of the Force. Perhaps someday a historian will unearth some of Thales's actual writings – prequels to Aristotle, if you will – and find that he called these “gods” midi-chlorians.
The ancient Greeks established a philosophical standard for what knowledge is, a standard that remains heavily endorsed today: “justified true belief.” It is somewhat (though not completely) trivial to say that knowledge must consist of things that I believe and that are also true. If I have a belief that Yoda is a Sith Lord, it is hard to legitimately classify that view as knowledge. In fact, even if Episode VII were to reveal that Yoda had indeed been a Sith Lord all along, making the statement “Yoda is a Sith Lord” true, it still wouldn't classify as knowledge, because I don't believe it now as I'm writing it.
However, let's assume that I did believe firmly that Yoda was a Sith Lord and it was revealed that Yoda was indeed a Sith Lord. Could this “true belief” be classified as knowledge? Socrates argued against the view that “true judgment” alone is enough for knowledge:
Suppose a jury, none of whom are eyewitnesses to a crime, listen to testimony and come to the same judgment an eyewitness would have made. It turns out that their judgment is true, though only by coincidence; but it's not real knowledge – only the eyewitness has that. So true judgment is not the same as knowledge.3
Socrates argues that some sort of justification beyond the mere holding of a true belief is required for knowledge. If I hold a belief for a good reason, and that belief is in fact true, it's considered knowledge. And, indeed, Socrates ultimately argues that right opinions can be trusted only because they are inspired by something divine … an argument that continues to resonate in some quarters today.4
These days, the average third-grader probably holds more true beliefs about the physical world than Thales, Socrates, or even Aristotle did. Philosophers love to debate the nature of truth, while scientists love trying to find it. Scientists have shown us that theories based on belief in “souls” or “gods” that cause movements within inanimate objects – such as a magnet moving toward a piece of iron – are neither justified nor true. But let's set aside the question of truth. We know, after all, that Han's belief is false. The more interesting question is whether Han's belief is justified.
A scruffy-looking Corellian smuggler may seem an odd choice to embody the philosophical value of skepticism, but pickings are slim in the Star Wars galaxy if we're to find someone who embraces a rational, scientific worldview. The only other evident example is Admiral Motti, who foolishly taunts Darth Vader about his “sad devotion to that ancient religion.” For his part, Han's default skepticism is established early on:
| HAN SOLO: | Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid. |
| LUKE SKYWALKER: | You don't believe in the Force, do you? |
| HAN SOLO: | Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful Force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field controls my destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense. |
In a sense, calling a lightsaber “ancient” is like calling a Sony Walkman “ancient.”5 Only twenty years earlier, when Solo was a boy on Corellia, the Jedi were prominent warriors during the Clone Wars and celebrated heroes of the Republic. Young Anakin Skywalker instantly recognizes Qui-Gon Jinn's lightsaber, identifying him as a Jedi, even on backwater Tatooine. So we should interpret Han's dismissal of the Force not as merely a rejection of the unknown, but as a considered rejection of an explanation that he's heard before. Still, why would Han dismiss something like the Force without any direct knowledge of it?
To answer these questions, we turn to the philosopher David Hume (1711–1776), who sought to understand how humans gain knowledge and understanding without any appeal to a deity. More specifically, Hume argued against belief in miracles based on human testimony – precisely the sort of testimony Han Solo would need in order to believe that miracles supposedly arise from the Force. As Hume explains, we believe human testimony because, in our experience, people – or at least some people – are trustworthy. Our experience also tells us that the universe operates by consistent laws of nature. If someone is describing a genuine miracle – something that occurs outside of, or in direct violation of, the laws of nature – then these two sources of experiences are in conflict. And for Hume, there's no contest as to which should win, as established by his general maxim, “That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.”6 For Han Solo, who has lived among pirates, con artists, and smugglers, the scales should tip against the trustworthiness of human testimony. Han's experience offers no alternative other than the idea that alleged “miracles” are the result of “simple tricks and nonsense.”
At the time of Han's glib dismissal of “hokey religions,” Luke's own experience with the Force consists of exactly two pieces of evidence: Obi-Wan's “These aren't the droids you're looking for” mind-trick and his literal disarming of a Mos Eisley ruffian with his lightsaber. The second of these, though impressive for a man of Obi-Wan's age, doesn't require any miraculous powers.7 So, Luke's initial belief in the Force is based on little more than a great deal of faith in the claims of a reclusive hermit who's been lying about his name and who his Uncle Owen called a “crazy old man.” Luke's beliefs could just as easily be a result of his moisture-farm-boy gullibility as of his future destiny as a Jedi … and even Socrates would argue that such a belief is unjustified.
Though Han eventually befriends Luke, it's not clear that he ever truly adopts a belief in the Force. Han knows an accomplished pilot could've made the shot that destroyed the Death Star. Indeed, Luke himself claimed to have previously “bulls-eyed” womp rats of the same size. He isn't present when Luke telekinetically summons his lightsaber to escape the Wampa on Hoth. When Han's unfrozen from carbonite in Jabba's palace, he responds to Chewbacca's claim that Luke is a Jedi Knight as a “delusion of grandeur.” He's fatalistic and sarcastic when Luke tells him his friends have a rescue plan in place. Essentially blind during the battle at the Sarlacc pit, Han doesn't directly witness the full scope of Luke's growing abilities. Han isn't present for either of Luke's confrontations with Vader, so he never witnesses the telekinetic battle on Cloud City or the Emperor throwing around Sith lightning. When Luke senses Vader on the Executor as the Rebels approach Endor and claims he's endangering their mission, Han says dismissively, “It's your imagination, kid.” Han has every reason to believe that Luke is an unparalleled pilot and an exceptional soldier, but he isn't compelled to believe the Force actually exists.
Han does have some direct experience that's difficult to challenge, though. On Bespin, Darth Vader absorbs several blaster bolts into his gauntlet and then telekinetically rips Solo's blaster from his hand. Though these are manifestations of Vader's Force powers, they could be explained through some form of advanced technology built into Vader's cybernetic suit. Nevertheless, in the decades following the Battle of Endor, having married a woman who grows to become a powerful Jedi herself, and having produced three Jedi children, Han witnesses sufficient evidence of the Force to acknowledge that it has real power, that there is an invisible energy field flowing through the universe that some people can learn to manipulate. How should he interpret such new evidence? Must one resort to mysticism, or is there a role for scientific inquiry within the Star Wars universe?
There must be recurring natural laws at work in the universe for devices as complex as starships, droids, and Death Stars to function in predictable ways. Though we see technicians and mechanics in the Star Wars films, no characters actively conduct scientific research. Presumably, the Kaminoans have scientists working on the clone army project, but they get no screen time.
The products of science have a role in Star Wars, but there's no indication that the process of science does. Science isn't merely about creating stuff, but also about providing explanatory frameworks that make sense of physical phenomena. Science plays an explanatory role only twice in the films, when the plot advances through direct appeals to scientific reasoning:
The Jedi—and, presumably, the larger society of the Republic—have a general grasp on scientific reasoning. They understand that nature behaves in ways that make sense by following repeated patterns.
In fact, the very act of wielding the Force requires this understanding. Yoda uses the Force to levitate an X-wing because he knows with certainty that he can. When Luke expresses disbelief, Yoda explains that is why he failed in his own attempt to do so. Though this statement appears to be an appeal to the importance of faith prior to evidence, Yoda's own belief is not at all prior to evidence. Though Yoda doesn't adopt Han's skeptical view of the Force, his belief in his own abilities to manipulate the Force is based on the same justification as Han's dismissal of it: inference from past experience.
Darth Vader applies his reliance on the power of the Force in a particularly deft way when he structures his plan to capture Luke on Bespin by first capturing Han and Leia. Vader tortures them, not to extract information, but for the express purpose of sending a message to distant Luke through the Force. It's a bold plan, but is based firmly on Vader's own experience. His major steps toward the dark side were triggered by prophetic visions of his mother's torture and his wife's death in childbirth. So he had every reason to think that similar visions would lead Luke into a rash response. He must've believed that his son would be powerful enough to sense not just his friends' suffering, but also their location on Bespin, or else the trap couldn't possibly have worked.
Compare this to the cloudiness that Yoda and Mace Windu experience in foretelling anything through the Force in the final years before the fall of the Jedi. During this time, they openly declare that their ability to wield the Force is “diminished,” and a Sith Lord is allowed to gain power while sitting right across the table from them. It's clear that Vader and Luke retain some sort of consistent clarity in the Force that eluded the more disciplined Jedi Masters at a time when “the dark side clouds everything.”
Though wielding the Force is based upon willpower, and belief plays a role in this, the Force itself seems to follow rules, even if those rules may be difficult to discern. The Jedi are able to grow and thrive precisely because training to perceive, manipulate, and flow with the Force is an activity with repeatable patterns. Find young kids with high midi-chlorian counts, put them through a thousand-year tested training regimen, and you'll end up with accomplished Jedi. This isn't mysticism; it's science.
The process of inferring a general rule or prediction from individual experiences is known as induction, and the fact that it works so well is the cornerstone of our scientific understanding of the world. Though this process is often called inductive reasoning, Hume claims that induction itself isn't actually reasoning at all. There is no line of reasoning, he says, that can take a person from seeing one, two, or even a dozen examples to creating a general rule that applies in all similar situations.
Hume doesn't say that inferences from individual cases to a general rule are always unjustified. Indeed, all evidence seems to suggest that they are justified: using induction actually seems to work! But Hume's grand question is: why does it work? The answer that Hume offers is the principle of custom or habit: “Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone which renders our experience useful to us, and which makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past.”8 It's force of habit that justifies Han's opinion about Luke's first success with the training remote being mere luck, but custom also justifies Obi-Wan's observation, “In my experience, there's no such thing as luck.” Custom justifies Luke's disbelief in his own ability to levitate large objects, but also justifies Yoda's conviction that “size matters not.”
As these examples demonstrate, it's possible for beliefs justified by custom to be true in some respects and yet false in others. Hume is aware of this, recognizing that we experience specific events in a specific time and place; although we must generalize these experiences to function as predictions in the world, we can't guarantee these generalizations will hold. The mere observation of events that seem connected together can't lead directly to a generalization, however. We can observe a great many connections and see that probability increases as the number of observed connections increases, but this isn't the same as identifying a connection with any degree of certainty. If Luke were to watch the twin suns rising on Tatooine day after day for a year, he'd be justified in his belief that the twin suns would rise the following day, but there's no certainty that this is the case – particularly if Tarkin's Sun Crusher project had succeeded!9
There's no “tipping point” where the probability or number of examples is so great that it becomes one hundred percent. There's always the possibility of an outlier coming along that defies all odds. Indeed, it's precisely with this in mind that Han Solo declares, “Never tell me the odds,” as he plans to act in defiance of them.
The lack of a clear, precise, and logically sure path between individual events and general rules or explanations is a big problem for the school of thought that holds that “knowledge is justified true belief.” This has become known as the problem of induction.
One way around this problem is to not merely rely on connections between events, but also focus on our understanding of the process by which certain causes trigger certain effects. If we know that two things happen in connection by time and space, but don't know the causal relationship between them, then we don't understand them.
This is where inductive reasoning comes into play. It allows the scientist (or philosopher, or Jedi) to move from discrete observations of events connected together to an explanatory framework of why these events are connected together. Vader doesn't just observe passively that when he holds up his hand, Imperial Admirals happen to choke to death. Rather, he has an understanding of how he causes these deaths. In just the way that Vader cannot fully explain his understanding of the Force – beyond warning that it shouldn't be “underestimated” – so we humans are unable to explain induction. The best we can do is to test whether our explanations hold up as we attempt to apply them in various experiments. This constitutes the scientific method.
But the ancient Greeks, like Dark Lords of the Sith, spring up to cause problems. If scientific knowledge is built on induction, and the problem of induction is real, then this knowledge isn't actually justified. And if it's not justified, then it isn't actually knowledge, according to the justified true belief criterion. This would seem to lead to skepticism: the idea that truth or knowledge either doesn't exist or can't be known at all. A strict philosophical skeptic is forced to refrain from holding any belief or claiming any true knowledge.
One attempt to resolve this dilemma is fallibilism. An outgrowth of the pragmatic skepticism suggested by Hume himself, it was given a name by the American scientist and philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914):
We cannot in any way reach perfect certitude nor exactitude. We can never be absolutely sure of anything, nor can we with any probability ascertain the exact value of any measure or general ratio.… Indeed, most everybody will admit it until they begin to see what is involved in the admission – and then most people will draw back. It will not be admitted by persons utterly incapable of philosophical reflection.… The doctrine of fallibilism will also be denied by those who fear its consequences for science, for religion, and for morality.… It is precisely among those animated by a spirit of science that the doctrine of fallibilism should find its supporters.10
Fallibilism is not so much a distinct philosophy as a claim about how to approach knowledge, claiming that no belief is infallible. We can hold a belief, and call it knowledge, even without certainty (or conclusive justification), because certainty doesn't exist for knowledge claims.
This doesn't, however, mean that we're wrong in holding such beliefs. As the contemporary philosopher Hilary Putnam puts it, “[F]allibilism does not entail skepticism … real doubt, as opposed to paper doubt, requires a context-specific reason for doubting – a reason with practical bearing – and the general fact that we are not infallible is, in any normal context, not such a reason.”11
From the perspective of fallibilism, Han Solo can claim he knows that no “mystical energy field” controls his destiny, while Obi-Wan knows that such a field does exist. There's a disagreement here and, in the Star Wars universe, Obi-Wan is right and Han is wrong. Neither of them is being inherently unreasonable, however.
Fallibilism teaches an important lesson: the truths that we understand about the universe can only be the truths available to us at that specific time. This is one way of interpreting Obi-Wan's statement to Luke, “You're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” In this case, truth isn't reduced to my subjective evaluation of the facts at hand, but rather my subjective experience of certain facts that really are relevant in shaping what I believe or claim to know. Failure to acknowledge the conditional nature of our beliefs and knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Therein lies the path to the dark side.