The Good Place and Philosophy by Steven A. Benko & Andrew Pavelich

Author:Steven A. Benko & Andrew Pavelich [Benko, Steven A. & Pavelich, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Court
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

13

The Vessel of Knowledge Who Stole Our Hearts

ELIZABETH SCHILTZ

While there are many traits that endear Janet to her fans and friends in The Good Place, the one that is most essential to her character is her charmingly unabashed and often repeated claim to know “literally everything.”

As everyone’s favorite “anthropomorphized vessel of knowledge,” Janet can break it to Eleanor that Kevin Paltonic just wasn’t that into her. She can carefully explain to Jason that Derek is her “son/rebound/booty call.” She can even use her knowledge of everything about “computer programming and virtual reality and artificial intelligence and the human brain and everything else” to build a virtual reality simulator that allows Chidi to determine which break-up scenario is least painful for Simone (as she notes, she is “kind of a nerd”) (“The Ballad of Donkey Doug”).

Philosophers typically call the possession of all knowledge “omniscience,” such that an omniscient being is one who, like Janet, “knows everything.” The tricky thing, then, is how to define this state of “omniscience”—what, really, is it to “contain all the knowledge in the universe”? Is Janet omniscient in this way? And most importantly: is it possible that philosophical reflection on the nature of omniscience can help us to understand and appreciate Janet even more?

Janet and Omniscience

Many contemporary philosophers think that the definition of omniscience has to do with what we call “propositions”—roughly, objects of belief that may be expressed in declarative sentences. When Jason asserts that the approaching police officer can’t arrest him if they quickly get married, he is uttering a sentence which expresses something that he believes—namely, that the world is such that spouses can’t arrest each other, even if one is a police officer and the other is a criminal who has initiated a quickie wedding by offering half the stuff that he has just stolen. The proposition here is this view (or representation) of the world, and Jason is expressing his belief in it by proposing marriage to his arresting officer.

Some propositions are true, and some are false. While Jason really believes that spouses can’t arrest one another, this is not actually the case—a fact that Jason quickly learns as “Officer K” proceeds to detain him. Many philosophers also think that it follows from the definition of knowledge that we can only actually know true things. We may say we know something that turns out to be false, but if we do that we’re making a mistake: we, like Jason, may believe the false thing, but are wrong in saying that we know it. So, philosophers will point out that, while people can believe either kind of propositions, we can only be said to actually know true ones. According to this analysis, then, being omniscient is about believing all of the true propositions. (Some thinkers would want me to add that it also means not believing any of the false ones.)

This description of omniscience seems to fit very well with Janet, our beloved “walking database.” Janet is repeatedly described in ways that

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