The Philosophy of The X-Files

Introduction

Mulder, Scully, Plato, Aristotle, and Dawkins

Dean A. Kowalski

That The X-Files is such a natural choice for a book like this is not for the reason you might initially think. Its not that it was metaphysical in the sense that it was about extraterrestrials and various otherworldly topics that no one could ever really prove true or false. This reminds me of all the times I would find a new bookstore, eagerly throw the doors open, and march straight back to its Metaphysics section, merely to be disappointed — again — at finding only volumes on the healing power of white crystals and how-to books about tarot card reading (once, I swear, with the faces of Stu Charno and Alex Diakun on the cover).

Rather, the very premise of the show incessantly reminded you (and once in Navajo) that the truth was out there, and then every week beguiled you to find it. Yes, sometimes the truth pursued was about conscious black oil and shape-shifting aliens. But the deeper point remains: we were to search for the truth and were determined to find it, even though we didn’t have all the information or all the tools to unearth it that we’d like. This is exactly the mind-set of the philosopher.

Furthermore, the shows two heroes represent two fundamental but disparate search methods. Special Agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), a trained medical doctor who also studied physics in college, is the consummate scientist. The default starting position for her search is to set a naturalistic and empirical course. Her partner, Special Agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny), also possesses an impressive educational pedigree. He is an Oxford-educated psychologist and an intuitively gifted FBI profiler. In fact, he is considered one of the best analysts ever assigned to the Violent Crimes Division. However, his methods are anything but conventional. Because his interests invariably involve unexplained phenomena, he often sets methodological courses for extreme possibilities that transcend conventional scientific wisdom. Yet, Mulder and Scully invariably engage in respectful, honest dialogue. They regularly insist on substantiating their approaches and hypotheses with evidence (broadly conceived) and logical rigor, all in hopes of locating the truth out there that continually eludes them. This, again, is a staple of quality philosophical inquiry.

The School of Athens Analogy

I would like to say—and, dare I say, want to believe—that the divergent approaches embodied in the characters of Dana Scully and Fox Mulder are a bit analogous to those of two giants from the history of philosophy: Plato and Aristotle. I suspect that many of my professionally trained colleagues will scoff at this purported analogy and accuse me of speaking tongue in cheek. But allow me to explain.

There is a famous painting by Raphael called The School of Athens. The two focal points are Plato and his star pupil, Aristotle. Curiously, the two philosophers are looking at each other, with Plato pointing to the sky and Aristotle with his arm stretched out horizontally, palm facing down in a cautionary manner. It is widely believed that Raphael was attempting to capture the basic philosophical difference between the two greats: Plato believed that one must reach a nonearthly plane in order to unlock the deepest secrets of truth and knowledge — his realm of the forms—but Aristotle believed that truth and knowledge can be obtained through carefully constructed hypotheses grounded in astute observations of our earthly surroundings. Aristotle, then, is cautioning his teacher not to (literally) overlook or underappreciate that which is directly in front of him.

Mulder and Scully are just a bit like that. Mulder is insistent that a complete explanation for what he often experiences must include an unearthly source. If we stay at the conventional level of straightforward empiricism, our account of things will forever remain incomplete. Is Mulder too quick in searching the heavens? Is he irrational in doing so? Perhaps Mulder’s methodology has been shaped by nonrational elements; it seems conceivable that his witnessing his sisters alleged alien abduction and his father’s involvement in some of the early X-Files somehow help to explain Mulder’s psychological penchant for looking skyward. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that Mulder is irrational. After all, similar nonrational explanations have also been offered for Plato’s proclivities to look toward an unearthly realm, specifically his early involvement with Pythagorean mathematics and the psychological effects of witnessing his teacher’s abduction by the Athenian court. These facts might drive Plato to believe that the truth is out there; in this way it is beyond the seditious grip of the Sophists, or the untrained Athenian assembly. Scully embodies Aristotle’s warning about keeping oneself grounded. Both see the value of empirical study and rigorous scientific testing. The sort of ideal explanations that Plato and Mulder’seek are, at best, unwarranted or simply cannot be had, and, at worst, they are merely whims of fancy.

Contemporary philosopher Norman Melchert seems to confirm the developing analogy in this way: Two quite different intellectual styles are exemplified by Plato and Aristotle. Plato is a man with one big problem, one passion, one concern; everything he touches is transformed by that concern. Aristotle has many smaller problems. These are not unrelated to each other, and there is a pattern in his treatment of them all.¹ I don’t know whether series creator Chris Carter had Plato and Aristotle in mind when originally crafting his protagonists — I doubt it—but Melchert seems to be equally describing Mulder and Scully. Melchert continues, One feels in Plato a profound dissatisfaction with the familiar world of sense … Plato is a combination of rationalist and mystic. For Aristotle, however, truth concerns the sensible world, and our knowledge of it begins with actually seeing, touching, and hearing the things of the world. The senses, although not sufficient in themselves to lead us to knowledge, are the only reasonable avenues along which to pursue knowledge.² Everyone is clear that Scully, especially early in the series, is true to Melchert’s description of Aristotle; however, some often overlook the fact that Mulder can be understood as a combination of rationalist and mystic.³ (More on this later.)

Just as there are disagreements in the ivory tower of academia about whether Plato’s approach to finding the truth is more effective than Aristotles, we in the marketplace of popular culture can ask the same question about Mulder’s and Scully’s. Moreover, just as few philosophers anymore are strictly Platonists or strictly Aristotelians, we can also ask how the methods of Mulder and Scully might be beneficially combined. Might doing so give us a better picture of how the world out there really is? With a hybrid approach might we be able to answer some questions that we couldn’t answer otherwise? If so, which? If not, why not? Questions like these, it seems to me, begin to capture the inherent philosophical significance of The X-Files at the most foundational level. And such questions are not idle. Some philosophers believe that, even with all the scientific data we have amassed about human beings, an adequate account of what persons are as conscious beings must go beyond the physical facts about us. Other philosophers reason that if we are free and responsible for our choices and actions, as our experiences seem to indicate, then it cannot be that we are merely the sum total of our physical parts. Therefore, without disparaging or discounting the importance of Scully’s trust in quality scientific research, it seems that we might do well to follow Mulder’s lead (or something like it) in articulating a complete account of how things are.

Nevertheless, the School of Athens analogy cannot be pushed too far. It begins to break down as soon as we remember that Mulder and Scully are television characters and not philosophers. Moreover, Plato offered astute philosophical arguments why his realm of the forms must exist; he was not merely driven by nonrational, psychological factors in seeking the unearthly explanation, as, arguably, Mulder initially was. So, why press the analogy at all? Paradoxically, its useful because it fails in other, more instructive, ways. When Raphael depicts Plato pointing to the sky, Plato is not literally pointing up to some extraterrestrial plane, even if Mulder might be. The unearthly plane Plato seeks is not some distant planet but an abstraction. While Mulder might countenance the idea that all of his earthly experiences are ultimately explained by ancient visitors from a different solar system, Plato would stress that his realm of the forms exists nowhere in physical space but yet contains all the unchanging truths and concepts that literally explain everything we experience (and even some things we don’t). Therefore, Plato is the only nonnaturalist in this regard. Moreover, Mulder isn’t a straightforward supernaturalist either. He is more suspicious of the dogmatism of organized religion than of Aristotelian attempts to capture the truth. Rather, Mulder’s default position (especially once the character is established) seems to be that Scully’s naturalism often isn’t inclusive enough. If aliens exist and if they somehow account for life on this planet, then Scully’s stockpile of current scientific wisdom must be revised and expanded. Thus Mulder isn’t antiscience (even if he sometimes comes off that way) so much as he is skeptical of how science rules out some phenomena by fiat merely because they don’t accord with what scientists currently know.

The basic point of Mulder’s character in this regard is that we should be open to exploring unexplained phenomena via extreme possibilities, especially if no other, more conventional scientific approach seems viable. This doesn’t mean that they always warrant such treatment. After all, in Beyond the Sea Mulder himself tells Scully, Dana,… open yourself up to extreme possibilities only when they’re the truth. However, to rule out these possibilities simply by fiat runs the danger of trapping oneself in a myopic view of the world. Of course, Mulder’sometimes errs in the other direction. He occasionally eschews sound investigative modes of inquiry, typically by not carefully considering competing hypotheses to his extreme possibilities mentality. (Anybody recall the ill-conceived drowning by ectoplasm hypothesis?⁴) This tenuous methodology walks a razors edge. It often causes strife between Mulder and Scully. Recall Born Again, in which Mulder asks Scully, Why is it still so hard for you to believe, even when all the evidence suggests extraordinary phenomena? Scully deliberately answers, Because sometimes … looking for extreme possibilities makes you blind to the probable explanation right in front of you. Also, recall the classic exchange about Robert Modell (Robert Wisden), aka Pusher, in which Mulder comments, Modell psyched the guy out. He put the whammy on him. Scully immediately quips, Please explain to me the scientific nature of the ‘whammy.’ A bit perturbed, Mulder asks for Scully’s take on the Modell case. Scully admits that she believes Modell is guilty but adds, I’m just looking for an explanation a little more mundane than ‘the whammy.’⁵

Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that somehow they were successful in blending their two respective approaches to seeking the truth. This is what we would expect from two intelligent truth seekers engaged in honest dialogue. The goal takes precedence over the idiosyncrasies of the individuals engaged in reaching it. Perhaps this is why Mulder’s work became more refined once Scully joined him on the X-Files. Perhaps their interactions also explain Scully’s slow transformation away from her strict Aristotelianism. They become united without completely giving up their preferred mindsets. A scene from Fight the Future (just before the infamous non-kiss) substantiates these claims. Scully arrives at Mulder’s apartment to inform him that she is leaving the bureau. He pleads with her not to resign. She reminds him that they were teamed up only because she was to debunk his unconventional work—to ruin him. He confides in her, But you saved me! As difficult and as frustrating as it’s been sometimes, your goddamned strict rationalism and science have saved me a thousand times over! You’ve kept me honest … you’ve made me a whole person. I owe you everything.⁶

Professor Dawkins and The X-Files

Even after the admission that the analogy to Raphael’s School of Athens can only be pressed so far, some philosophers will no doubt argue that it is completely misguided, bordering on dangerous. Here I have in mind Richard Dawkins. In 1996, Dawkins blamed The X-Files for making the paranormal fashionable at the expense of careful scientific research:

Less portentously it [the paranormal vogue in popular media] may be an attempt to cash in on the success of The X-Files. This is fiction and therefore defensible as pure entertainment. A fair defense, you might think. But soap operas, cop series and the like are justly criticized if, week after week, they ram home the same prejudice or bias. Each week The X-Files poses a mystery and offers two rival kinds of explanation, the rational theory and the paranormal theory. And, week after week, the rational explanation loses. But it is only fiction, a bit of fun, why get so hot under the collar? Imagine a crime series in which, every week, there is a white suspect and a black suspect. And every week, lo and behold, the black one turns out to have done it. Unpardonable, of course. And my point is that you could not defend it by saying: But its only fiction, only entertainment.

Let’s not go back to a dark age of superstition and unreason, a world in which every time you lose your keys you suspect poltergeists, demons or alien abduction.⁷

Here, Dawkins seems to be offering an argument by analogy. It invites us to imagine a show like Law and Order—lets call it Law and Smorder. Weekly, on Law and Smorder, there are two primary suspects for committing the featured crime; one is African American and the other Caucasian, but, as it turns out, every week the African American is the perpetrator. Dawkins (rightly) believes that such a fictionalized crime drama is socially irresponsible, and perhaps morally objectionable, presumably because it week after week rams home the same prejudice or bias, and doing so has negative or harmful effects on its audience (or society at large). But, continues Dawkins, The X-Files is just like Law and Smorder in this regard. A mystery is proposed and then investigated, but week after week, Mulder’s paranormal theory wins out over Scully’s more rational and conventionally scientific explanation. Therefore, because it, too, weekly rams home the same prejudice or bias that has negative or harmful effects on its audience, it is just as socially irresponsible (and perhaps morally objectionable) as Law and Smorder is (or would be, if it were actually on the air).

There are two controversial components to Dawkins’s argument. First, some prejudices or biases are morally objectionable, but not all. My bias that the Green Bay Packers are the best NFL football team ever doesn’t seem morally objectionable in and of itself. So, we must take care in determining whether the bias in question results in negative or harmful effects. Thus, of course, the bias Dawkins implies about racial stereotypes as they pertain to crime is clearly socially irresponsible, if not morally objectionable; it heightens social tensions and propagates general malaise. But what about Dawkins’s contention that The X-Files conveys a similar irresponsible or objectionable bias? What negative or otherwise harmful effect might there be in glorifying Mulder’s paranormal theories and denigrating Scully’s more rational and scientific approach? Perhaps Dawkins is assuming something akin to what W. K. Clifford famously argues in The Ethics of Belief. Clifford writes:

Every time we let ourselves believe for unworthy reasons, we weaken our powers of self-control, of doubting, of judicially and fairly weighing the evidence. We all suffer severely enough from the maintenance and support of false beliefs and the fatally wrong actions which they lead to … But a greater and wider evil arises when the credulous character is maintained and supported, when a habit of believing for unworthy reasons is fostered and made permanent … The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though this is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery⁸

Presumably, then, Dawkins finds The X-Files socially irresponsible because it tends to make its millions of viewers, and thus a significant fraction of society, into gullible, simple-minded folk who habitually believe for unworthy reasons (and invariably act on those unjustified beliefs). This would explain his closing comment that we must guard against going back to an age of unreason such that whenever something goes wrong, we blame the grays (as Mulder would say). Therefore, the first controversial component of Dawkins’s argument is whether The X-Files has the kind of mesmerizing grip on society necessary to turn us into the sort of dullards Dawkins and Clifford fear.

Even though The X-Files was extremely popular, we must conclude that Dawkins missed the mark on this one. Yes, The X-Files spawned a devoted fan following that became incredibly active on the Internet. In fact, fans became so vocal that it was necessary to give them a name for easy reference—the X-Philes. But I don’t know of any X-Phile who bought crates of sunflower seeds, donned a pair of red Speedos, and traveled directly to his local university to upstage its science faculty. Further, I don’t know of any X-Phile who avoided vacationing in Cabo because she feared that Mexican goat-sucking thing would mortally slime visitors with deadly bacteria. Nor do I know of any X-Phile who traveled far and wide to see Cher concerts in hopes of catching a glimpse of the Great Mutato chomping on a peanut butter sandwich. These suggestions are admittedly tongue-in-cheek, but I suspect that most X-Philes find them well placed.

For all that shameless hyperbole, Richard Dawkins is an incredibly gifted philosopher and scientist. Any second-rate philosopher can critique an argument grounded in empirical predictions about the future that never come to fruition. So, being as charitable as possible to Dawkins’s position, perhaps The X-Files fueled the paranoia of those prone to adopt governmental conspiracies and in this way may have indirectly spawned various new but unfounded theories about the governments covert involvement in our lives. However, this recent domestic development might also be explained by the (more or less) simultaneous end of the cold war: without the Soviet Union to worry about, who should the paranoid distrust now? Even so, there simply isn’t any evidence to the effect that The X-Files had (or continues to have) the kind of negative influence on society that Dawkins claims.⁹

The second controversial component of Dawkins’s argument is whether he accurately portrays the show. That he doesn’t may be even more unpardonable for X-Philes. Consider the following trips down memory lane. In Beyond the Sea, Mulder questions Scully’s appeal to the paranormal in the Boggs case because Boggs is the greatest of liars. This is evidence of Mulder’s discriminatory powers. Furthermore, as early as Pilot (the show’s very first episode) we see Mulder using empirical methods to substantiate his paranormal claims. When he and Scully are driving down a highway, the radio and clock in their rented car spontaneously malfunction. Mulder recognizes this and suspects extraterrestrial activity. He immediately stops the car, opens the trunk, and (very fittingly) spray paints a large X on the highway. His doing so proves crucial to substantiating his missing time hypothesis later in the episode. In E.B.E. Mulder refines this testing procedure by using two stopwatches to demarcate his missing time phenomenon.

Three further examples are especially telling against Dawkins’s position. First, in the attempt to determine whether Agent Jack Willis (Christopher Allport) or Warren James Dupre (Jason Schombing) survived a gun battle in Lazarus, Mulder asks Willis to sign a birthday card for Scully. Willis, one of Scully’s former lovers, shares the same birthday as Dana. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that Willis would have known that Scully’s birthday was still two months away at the time he was approached by Mulder. The man appearing to be Willis immediately signs the card (with his left hand even though Willis is right-handed). Mulder presents this evidence to Scully, implicitly arguing as follows: If the person who signed this card was Jack Willis, he would have known that it wasn’t Scully’s birthday (and, in any event, would have signed it with his right hand); because the man who signed the card didn’t know it wasn’t Scully’s birthday (and used his left hand to sign the phony card), it follows that the person who signed it wasn’t Jack Willis, even if it looks like him. Mulder used this argument to further substantiate his paranormal theory that Willis and Dupre have undergone some sort of psychic transfer such that Dupre now inhabits Willis’s body. Second, in Piper Maru, a season 3 episode, we see Mulder testing his hypothesis that French salvage-ship operators suffer from high levels of radiation due to exposure from an alien craft. Scully offers the competing hypothesis that the sailors could have been affected because the French have resumed nuclear testing. Mulder replies, I checked. It’s [the course of the French salvage ship] thousands of miles away from any test sites. Disconfirming competing hypotheses is the hallmark of good scientific inquiry. Therefore, finally, we shouldn’t be too surprised to find Mulder being interested in substantiating his hypotheses with evidence. Recall Little Green Men, in which Scully tries to comfort a dejected Mulder: But, Mulder … during your time with the X-Files, you’ve seen so much, to which Mulder candidly replies, That’s just the point. Seeing is not enough, I should have something to hold on to. Some solid evidence. I learned that from you.

While it should now be clearer why Melchert’s rationalist and mystic moniker seems applicable to Mulder (as well as Plato), Dawkins’s complaints against The X-Files run into other problems. It simply isn’t clear that the paranormal theory always wins out. In War of the Coprophages, Scully’s more conventional explanation is superior. Sometimes, as in Quagmire, Mulder eventually agrees with Scully that the more naturalistic explanation is epistemically preferable (even though it turns out to be false). There are numerous cases, like Grotesque, in which we are left to wonder which protagonist offers the preferable theory. This is the real beauty of the show: invariably we are left to decide for ourselves.

In any event, time and time again, Scully’s careful empirical methods save the day. Her efforts are significant factors in Ice, The Erlenmeyer Flask, The Host, Firewalker, and Dod Kalm—and these examples all come from the first two seasons alone. Furthermore, why would Mulder encourage Scully to perform autopsy after autopsy if he weren’t at all interested in empirical findings? Mulder is no Gil Grissom, but he’s not Scooby Doo either. Thus it is far from clear that the show disparages careful scientific inquiry in the way Dawkins suggests.

If that weren’t enough, consider that after Scully has saved Mulder’s life in End Game, we hear her in a voice-over as she sits at Mulder’s bedside:

Transfusions and an aggressive treatment with anti-viral agents have resulted in a steady but gradual improvement in Agent Mulder’s condition. Blood tests have confirmed his exposure to the still unidentified retrovirus whose origin remains a mystery. The search team that found Agent Mulder has located neither the missing submarine nor the man he was looking for. Several aspects of this case remain unexplained, suggesting the possibility of paranormal phenomena … but I am convinced that to accept such conclusions is to abandon all hope of understanding the scientific events behind them. Many of the things I have seen have challenged my faith and my belief in an ordered universe … but this uncertainty has only strengthened my need to know, to understand, to apply reason to those things which seem to defy it. It was science that isolated the retrovirus Agent Mulder was exposed to, and science that allowed us to understand its behavior. And ultimately, it was science that saved Agent Mulder’s life.

Three years and dozens of bizarre cases later, Scully never deviates from this mission. In attempting to discover hidden truths about her cancer (in Redux), she tells us:

If my work with Agent Mulder has tested the foundation of my beliefs, science has been and continues to be my guiding light. Now I’m again relying on its familiar and systematic methods to arrive at a truth, a fact that might explain the fate that has befallen me … If science serves me to these ends … it is not lost on me that the tool which I’ve come to depend on absolutely cannot save or protect me … but only bring into focus the darkness that lies ahead.

Clearly, careful scientific inquiry has an important role to play in The X-Files; thus, it simply isn’t clear that the show denigrates science in any obvious way. And if a careful inspection of the show does not support Dawkins’s claim that it invariably glorifies irrational paranormal explanations over more-traditional, rational scientific explanations, then Dawkins is not entitled to his conclusion that The X-Files is socially irresponsible, let alone morally objectionable, because it fosters credulity in its audience.¹⁰

Nevertheless, the contributors to this volume owe a debt of gratitude to Professor Dawkins. Ironically, he was among the very first philosophers to publicize the philosophical significance of The X-Files. My co-contributors and I wish to follow his lead. We only regret that we couldn’t get our act together sooner and realize what Dawkins did a decade ago: The X-Files is incredibly rich in philosophical content, as I hope you soon discover.

While I expect you to enjoy reliving your favorite X-Files moments, I truly hope that by the time you’ve studied the pages to come, you’ll better understand why I believe that this book will take its rightful place next to similar books about Seinfeld, The Simpsons, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. However, I will leave that judgment up to you. If nothing else, like me, you’ll never see The School of Athens or the Metaphysics section of a bookstore the same way again.

Notes

1. Norman Melchert, The Great Conversation, Volume 1, 4th ed. (San Francisco: McGraw-Hill, 2002), 160.

2. Melchert, The Great Conversation, 157–58.

3. I don’t believe that this description is either anecdotal or anomalous. We can find it in the work of other professional philosophers. Consider W. T. Jones:

It has been remarked that everyone is born either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. Plato and Aristotle, that is, represent two different attitudes toward the world … Where Plato was otherworldly and idealistic, Aristotle was practical and empirical … Whether one prefers Plato’s philosophy or Aristotle’s depends in large measure on one’s own basic temperamental bias. To some Plato may seem too visionary and impractical; these people will probably prefer Aristotle as a cool, level-headed rationalist. Those who are moved by Plato’s lofty idealism will probably feel that Aristotle by comparison is pedestrian and uninspiring. (The Classic Mind, 2nd ed. [New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970], 217–18)

4. The relevant dialogue from the season 7 episode all things is simply too good not to revisit:

SCULLY: (To Mulder, annoyed) I said, I got the lab to rush the results of the Szczesny autopsy, if you’re interested.

MULDER: I heard you, Scully.

SCULLY: And Szczesny did indeed drown but not as the result of the inhalation of ectoplasm as you so vehemently suggested.

MULDER: Well, what else could she possibly have drowned in?

SCULLY: Margarita mix, upchucked with about forty ounces of Corcovado Gold tequila which, as it turns out, she and her friends rapidly consumed in the woods while trying to re-enact the Blair Witch Project.

MULDER: Well, I think that demands a little deeper investigation, don’t you?

SCULLY: No, I don’t.

5. This exchange also deserves to be rehearsed more fully:

MULDER: [In response to Scully’s scientific query about the whammy] I don’t know, maybe, maybe its some mental aspect of some eastern martial art. You know, the temporary suppression of the brains chemistry, produced by a specific timbre or cadence in Modell’s voice. His voice seems to be the key.

SCULLY: Mulder, Modell’s last known employment was as a convenience store clerk. He has never been trained by ninjas. He has never even been out of the U.S. He is just a little man who wishes that he were someone big … and, and, we’re feeding that wish. That, that failed psyche screening … if, if Modell could actually control people’s minds, right now, he’d be an F.B.I, agent, right? He’d be a Green Beret, uh, a Navy Seal.

MULDER: Maybe the ability came to him more recently, like in the last two years.

(Scully looks unsatisfied)

MULDER: Well, o, o, okay. What’s your big theory? How do you explain what Agent Collins did? I mean, this was a sane man, a family man with no prior history of psychological problems, sets himself on fire. You witnessed that. How does that happen?

SCULLY: What do you need me to say, Mulder, that I believe that Modell is guilty of murder? I do. I’m just looking for an explanation a little more mundane than the whammy.

What is so interesting about this exchange is that moments before, Mulder utilizes his training (and incredible intuitive gift) to give an astounding off-the-cuff profile of Modell that impresses Scully. This substantiates the view of Mulder being developed here: he is something of an intuitive mystic (even if mystic isn’t quite the right term) and rational (social) scientist.

6. The closing dialogue from the movie further substantiates the idea that their approaches are beneficially blended but still remain distinct. Consider:

MULDER: You were right to want to quit! You were right to want to leave me! You should get as far away from me as you can! I’m not going to watch you die, Scully, because of some hollow personal cause of mine. Go be a doctor. Go be a doctor while you still can.

SCULLY: I cant. I won’t. Mulder, I’ll be a doctor, but my work is here with you now. That virus that I was exposed to, whatever it is, it has a cure. You held it in your hand. How many other lives can we save? Look … (She clasps his hand.)… If I quit now, they win. (They walk off together.)

7. The passage is taken from Dawkins’s 1996 BBC1 Richard Dimbleby Lecture, "Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder’’ It can still be found on the Web in its entirety. For the specific quote, see http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dawkins/lecture_p12.html. (Accessed Oct. 25, 2006.)

8. Quoted in Michael Peterson, ed., Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 69–70.

9. Wouldn’t Star Wars or Star Trek be just as damaging to society? What evidence is there that we will travel faster than the speed of light and meet friendly extraterrestrials with something called a universal translator pinned to the front of our jumpsuits? Perhaps Dawkins and his scientific skeptical community would reply that these shows are clearly pieces of science fiction, but some shows, like The X-Files and now Medium, straddle and blur the lines between science fiction, fictional drama, and nonfictional drama. There may be something to this complaint; it would help to explain Darin Morgan’s inexplicit statement in "Jose Chung’s From Outer Space’ that the X-Files (and thus The X-Files) are somehow responsible for the non-fiction science fiction genre. Even with this admission, however, it still remains unclear clear that Dawkins accurately predicted The X-Files’ grip on society.

10. The counterargument here can be put like this: Even if there is a stereotype against the benefit of good scientific inquiry in Anglo-American culture (something that I’m not willing to automatically grant), only the most serious X-Philes would begin to show the signs of credulity Dawkins fears. However, those who know the show best — the X-Philes — also know that the show doesn’t propagate an antiscientific message, as demonstrated with just a few examples above. Therefore, even if there is an antiscientific bias that might be exploited by the media, it is false that The X-Files exploits it. Thus, Chris Carter and his production team are not guilty of any social irresponsibility. My thanks go to Evan Kreider, Al White, Tim Dunn, Joe Foy, Mark Peterson, and Greg Ahrenhoerster for a lively debate about Dawkins’s position.

For a different potential response to Dawkins’s argument, please see chapter 1. In fact, it seems that this book itself is reason to believe that Dawkins has overstated his case.

Part I

THE CREDOS

The Truth Is Out There

Abduction, Aliens, and Alienation

Mark C. E. Peterson

Philosophy and Bad Puns

Each episode of The X-Files invariably begins by reminding its viewers that the truth is out there. This banner, this motto, the show’s central epistemic and ontological axiom, conceals a jaw-droppingly awful pun. The pun has two parts. Part one: The truth out there, the truth from which we are alienated, is that there are aliens. That’s bad enough, but the second part is worse and begins like this: Mulder overcomes his alienation by questioning not only the official denial that aliens exist but also the official mind-set that defines which explanations are permitted and which explanations are crazy. Officially speaking, from the FBI’s point of view, extraterrestrial aliens are not thinkable at all or, if they are, thinking about them is defined as crazy. Mulder climbs around such doublethink by using a kind of logical inference discussed at length by the father of American pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914). And, thus, part two: In contrast to the FBI’s privileged standard for explanatory or inferential methods, deduction and induction, Mulder uses a kind of inference that Peirce called the inference of hypothesis formation, or abduction. Therefore, the epistemic and ontological theme embedded in The X-Files central axiom (The truth is out there) is that Mulder, alienated from the truth that there are aliens, overcomes his alienation by using abduction to infer the existence of aliens.

This is bad enough to bear repeating: The aliens abduct human victims, but Mulder’s abductive inference abducts the existence of aliens.¹

The idea of overcoming your alienation from the truth is familiar territory to philosophy and specifically to existentialism, an area of philosophy concerned with the foundations of meaning—but, with a pun this bad, we will need to exercise a bit of caution before jumping in. Horrible puns like this one are a good example of why articles that poke around in popular fiction looking for philosophical themes can seem to be as meaningful or logically rigorous as Madame Zelma’s palmistry. On the one hand, it happens that some analyses of literature and art are actually built entirely upon the sand of clever jokes rather than on the more time-consuming—and admittedly less hilarious—archaeological excavation of a text required to find buried philosophical treasure.² They seem to let amusing verbal coincidences stand in for understanding and are not, therefore, taken seriously by academically respectable philosophers. On the other hand, philosophical analyses of popular art and literature have one advantage. They return philosophy to its roots in the real world, to the marketplace where people barter, lie, tell stories, waste their time, and undertake the most vital activity connected with the advancement of human culture: leisure.³ To put this a bit more metaphorically, if philosophers define themselves as too good for the Agora (the main market area in ancient Athens, where Socrates blocked traffic), then we exile ourselves to the Acropolis and its lofty, theoretical point of view—high above the marketplace and closer to the gods but disconnected from the concerns of real life.⁴

Testing for Philosophical Depth

So, before launching into a discussion of philosophical themes in The X-Files, we must determine whether this pun is simply a joke masquerading as profound philosophical reflection, or something philosophically deep but (thank goodness) funny too. Puns like this can be suggestive, but by itself Mulder abducting aliens is not enough to assert that The X-Files embodies anything philosophically interesting. Something can look philosophically interesting without being philosophically interesting in the same way something can look like a rare seventeenth-century French writing desk without being one. In the same way, any story can be given the look of an existentially rich narrative by dressing it up with a few characteristic features (like darkness, meaninglessness, hopelessness, or