Dennis Knepp
Aside from providing hours of fun, Star Wars action figures can help illuminate some theories about the science of the mind and how religious thinking originated. This may sound weird, since action figures don't have minds. Nevertheless, the different ways we play with action figures reveal what the philosopher Daniel Dennett identifies as three stances we can take in understanding something.1 From a physical stance, we understand the figures as molded pieces of plastic. From a design stance, we understand the figures to be molded such that their hands can hold weapons. And from an intentional stance, we think of the figures as having plans and projects of their own, like Han's intention to shoot Greedo before Greedo has a chance to shoot him. Playing with action figures involves all three stances in interesting ways. Since playing with action figures involves treating things that don't have intentions as if they did, we can also learn something, according to Dennett, about the origins of religion in terms of superstitious minds ascribing intentions to things that don't have them. Playing with action figures illustrates how a science of the mind is possible and what can go wrong in the religious mind.
You'd think it would be easy to study the mind, since we all have one: you, me, J. J. Abrams … everybody. Understanding the mind should be as easy as lounging like a Hutt and eating a Klatooine paddy frog. “Your Jedi mind tricks don't work here because I'm the master of my own mind,” so would say a Huttese or Toydarian version of René Descartes (1596–1650). In his Meditations, Descartes tells about how he sat in a stove-heated room in November 1619 thinking about his mind.2 “I am my mind and I know my mind better than anything else”: this is the method of introspection. Descartes sat and thought about his mind, concluding that his mind was completely distinct from his body. It sure feels that way to me as well. My experience of my mind is very different than that of my stomach or my feet. Descartes's dualist theory of mind and body has been influential for centuries, but the method of introspection isn't very scientific. Science is all about verifying observations in objective ways, and a person can't objectively verify personal experiences about his own mind. Nor could I look into your mind to see if you're having the same experience as me because our mental lives are entirely personal. It would, of course, be cool if our mental life were like Darth Vader's helmet and could be removed so that someone else could look through the same eyes. But it's not. One's first-person perspective is not a mask that can be removed and shared. No one else can look through my eyes. I know you don't want to hear the odds, but a dualist theory of the mind doesn't fly as a true science. If the only way to study the mind is from the first-person perspective, there can be no verification: you're better off trying to fly through an asteroid belt.
In the twentieth century, philosophers began to think of new ways to study the mind. The key is to switch from a first-person (introspective) view to a third-person (objective) perspective. Instead of studying my own personal mind, I can study how someone else uses her mind. This investigation can be scientific since other people can verify the conclusions I draw. In short, give up the Hutt's lounger and instead think about what the other killers in Jabba's hideout are thinking. At first, this seems impossible. After all, didn't we agree that we can't have access to other minds? The mind is not like Vader's mask – we can't look through someone else's eyes. But actually, we do it all the time, as shown by how we play with Star Wars action figures.
Daniel Dennett is one of the most famous philosophers in America today and one of “The Four Horsemen” (as in the Apocalypse) alongside Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens – part of the “New Atheists” movement.3 Maybe Dennett's not as famous as Mark Hamill, but he represents philosophers who study how the mind works without appealing to a mysterious “ghost in the machine.” Dennett also doesn't believe in “hokey religions” that postulate supernatural spirits with mental lives. As we'll see, playing with Star Wars action figures illustrates Dennett's theory of how a science of the mind is possible.
To illustrate, I have a vintage Blue Snaggletooth action figure that sells for hundreds of dollars on eBay.4 His name is Zutton or Zutmore (depending on the source), but everyone knows him as “Snaggletooth” because he has a single sharp tooth pointing up the left side of his mouth. Zutton is described by one source as a “Snivvian artist,” as well as a bounty hunter who has “a reputation in the Outer Rim as an efficient, decent hunter, whom even his targets and law enforcement could respect.”5 But, according to another source, his name is “Zutmore” and he's based on a character from the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special.6 Zutmore is a short character in a red jumpsuit sitting in the cantina. Apparently, Kenner tried to make his action figure based upon a black-and-white photo, resulting in a figure as tall as other Star Wars figures and wearing a blue jumpsuit with silver boots and gloves. This “Blue Snaggletooth” was sold exclusively through Sears in 1978 in the Cantina Scene collection with three other figures: Walrus Man, Greedo, and Hammerhead.7 The Blue Snaggletooth figure is rare because the following year his form was corrected: short with red clothing and furry feet. Mistakes from the manufacturer are always more valuable to the collector; so the tall Blue Snaggletooth with silver boots is more valuable than the corrected short Red Snaggletooth with furry feet.
At the most basic level of understanding, Blue Snaggletooth is a piece of molded plastic. This is the level of physics and chemistry: what Dennett calls the physical stance.8 We can understand that Blue Snaggletooth was created with a certain kind of plastic in a certain shape through use of a mold. Notably, some of the Blue Snaggletooths (Snaggleteeth?) have a little dent on the big toe of the right boot while others don't – mine doesn't have this dent.
Understanding Blue Snaggletooth from the physical stance also includes understanding how it would perform in physical situations. If I launch him with enough force from my homemade catapult, he'll land safely on a cushion; if not, he'll crash on the floor. That's physics. It would pain collectors to know that, in my childhood, I did such things with my Blue Snaggletooth and my other action figures. Many days of play involved some sort of combat between Star Wars characters in which action figures were smashed together. As a result, my action figures show signs of wear and tear. Rare vintage action figure buyers commonly use the AFA Action Figure Authority scale, from 10 to 100, to grade the wear and tear of toys.9 I'd be surprised if my Blue Snaggletooth is beyond the “very good” scale at AFA 50. This estimation involves looking at Blue Snaggletooth as a physical thing with physical marks that would bring his grading lower on the AFA scale and thereby cause him to have less value on the collector's market. This is the physical stance.
Of course, Blue Snaggletooth is more than just a physical piece of plastic. It has a design. Blue Snaggletooth has more value on the collector's market because its design is rare among other Snaggleteeth out there. Coin collectors always value mistakes over exact copies, and so it is among vintage action figure collectors. For starters, Blue Snaggletooth is designed to look like a character from the notorious Star Wars Holiday Special – itself a rarity given that it was broadcast only once (November 17, 1978, on CBS) in the United States.10 There's a good reason for this. The Holiday Special is so bad that George Lucas has said that he'd like to smash every copy of it with a sledgehammer; and Carrie Fisher has said that she plays it at parties “mainly at the end of the night when I want people to leave.”11 So an action figure from the Holiday Special is even rarer given its unpopularity and the difficulty in obtaining a copy of it – at least before the advent of YouTube.12 This is compounded by the fact that, as we've seen, Blue Snaggletooth was a mistake that was replaced by the shorter Red Snaggletooth the following year. The action figure's increased value is explained by its faulty design. Understanding Blue Snaggletooth from what Dennett calls the design stance gives us information about it that's not available from the purely physical stance.13
Other elements of design are common to most other vintage Star Wars action figures. They typically have five movement points: the head swivels, the pairs of legs and arms move, while the arms and legs themselves stay straight. Many have hands designed to grip weapons that could be mixed and matched: you could put a Jawa's ionization blaster in the hands of Boba Fett because their hands are generically designed to hold nearly any type of weapon. They also have holes on the bottom of their feet so they can be put onto pegs in various action sets to reenact important scenes. In the Kenner Land of the Jawas playset, you can sit your R2-D2 on a spot that will allow the Jawa to shoot him with an ionization blaster and make him fall over. Since all the action figures have peg holes, I could put any figure on these pegs, pull the lever, and make them fall down. This level of understanding is only available if we consider the design of the action figures. Other rare designs include the retractable telescoping light saber in the 1978 Luke, Ben Kenobi, and Darth Vader; the 1978 Jawa with a vinyl cape; the 1980 rocket-firing Boba Fett; and the 1985 Yak Face.14 The design stance allows us to understand why these figures are rare and valuable to the collector, an understanding not available from a purely physical stance.
The physical stance covers looking at an action figure as a piece of molded plastic, with all its colors and abrasions. The design stance includes identifying which character the plastic is supposed to represent, as well as how the shape of its hands allows it to hold weapons, how the peg holes enable it to stand on various playsets, and how its legs bend to sit in vehicles like a landspeeder or through the saddle of a dewback. But that's not enough to fully understand and appreciate the playtime value of this action figure. When you play, you don't just put the designed plastic figure in the pilot's seat of the Millennium Falcon. When the Falcon takes off, you pretend the figure is brave enough to fly that “hunk of junk.” Sometimes you reenact famous scenes like in the Mos Eisley cantina when Han Solo brags, “It's the ship that made the Kessel run is less than 12 parsecs.” Sometimes you modify or create your own scenes, such as using Blue Snaggletooth to call Han's goof and say with a know-it-all chortle, “A parsec is a unit of distance, not time.” What would Han say or do in response? Would Han shoot Blue Snaggletooth for embarrassing him? Or would Han out-geek him by responding that “he was referring to the shorter route he was able to travel by skirting the nearby Maw black hole cluster, thus making the run in under the standard distance”?15
Playing with action figures gets us to think about what someone else would think. You think about their intentions: what will Han do or say to Blue Snaggletooth? And you decide based upon your understanding of Han's character, his beliefs, and the situation in the Mos Eisley cantina as you've set it up. In short, you do exactly what Descartes said was impossible to do: you imagine being Han Solo and think about what Han Solo would think. You think about someone else's mind. Instead of being a rare and exotic experience, this turns out to be a common practice. This is the third level of understanding, which Dennett calls the intentional stance. A science of the mind thus seems possible because we think about the thoughts of others all the time; and since this is a third-person perspective, we can verify when others do this as well. Here's Dennett's description of how it works:
First you decide to treat the object whose behavior is to be predicted as a rational agent; then you figure out what beliefs that agent ought to have, given its place in the world and its purpose. Then you figure out what desires it ought to have, on the same considerations, and finally you predict that this rational agent will act to further its goals in the light of its beliefs. A little practical reasoning from the chosen set of beliefs and desires will in many – but not all – instances yield a decision about what the agent ought to do; that is what you predict the agent will do.16
So first we decide to treat Han as a rational agent. He's not an idiot. Then we figure out Han's beliefs given the evidence, and his desires, and then what he would do to further his goals. We can now ask, in the Mos Eisley cantina, would Han Solo shoot a bounty hunter like Blue Snaggletooth first without provocation? Or would he shoot only in self-defense after the bounty hunter had shot first? If Descartes is right, then maybe only Han Solo could know the mind of Han Solo. But from a third-person perspective, different people can think about this and discuss what Han would do. For example, I disagree with George Lucas on this issue: the Han Solo I know would shoot first rather than give a nerdy lecture on the Kessel Run. So in my play-acting, Han shoots first. He's a scoundrel.
You might think it goes too far to attribute goals and rational agency to Han Solo or Blue Snaggletooth because plastic action figures clearly don't have intentions. When you play with an action figure, you give it intentions. You decide what it will do in the circumstances in which you've chosen for it to act; and this is completely different than predicting what a real person would do in similar circumstances. Thinking about how Harrison Ford will act in Episode VII to portray an older, grizzled Han Solo is different than playing with an Episode VII Han Solo action figure. The action figure can't and won't do anything without you initiating things, because they have no intentions of their own. Unlike you or Harrison Ford, they aren't “intentional systems.”17
In discussing superstitious beliefs, Dennett warns about wrongly projecting intentions onto intention-less objects.18 If, like Han Solo, you've ever begged your vehicle to “hold together,” then you've done this. Cars and starships don't respond to begging, and yet people beg theirs cars to start and Han begs the Falcon to hold together under fire – even affectionately calling it “baby” – because they attribute intentions to these machines as if they could act in certain ways if only they felt like it. Dennett thinks that superstitious beliefs are like this. Lightning strikes because Zeus is angry; corn grows in the spring because Demeter is pleased; the sun makes it across the sky because Apollo carries it in his chariot. In each case, intentions are projected upon intention-less objects: lightning, corn, and the sun are not thinking things that have moods or minds. But by attributing their actions to Zeus, Demeter, and Apollo, the superstitious mind projects intentions onto these natural things and then tries to appease the gods. Dennett, however, rejects the reality of supernatural forces and understands religion as a “natural phenomenon” – just as Han Solo expresses his disbelief in “an all-powerful Force controlling everything.” Dennett rejects supernatural beliefs as wrongheaded uses of the intentional stance. Projecting intentions onto intention-less systems betrays a “sad devotion” to “ancient religion.”
Playing with action figures is different, however, because we know that we're projecting intentions onto things without minds. That's the crucial difference. The superstitious mind thinks that lightning really does act with intention; whereas playing with action figures involves pretending that the designed piece of molded plastic has intentions. As kids, we practice using the intentional stance and so get better at it. We know that we're using the intentional stance creatively in a context where it wouldn't work without our creative input. We can play with action figures by giving them beliefs and having them act accordingly, yet still understand that it's we who are giving them those beliefs. I thus think that understanding what happens when we play with action figures can reveal how a science of mind is possible and illuminate a theory of the origins of the religious mind. That's pretty good for a group of characters from a “wretched hive of scum and villainy.”19