Whose Truth Is Out There? By Phil Farrand, from The Nitpicker's guide for 
X-philes pages 85-88

Epistemological Thoughts on the Games Mulder and Scully play.

	If there is any one statemnet that succinctly summarizes The X-Files, 
it would have to be the trademarked catchphrase, "the truth is out there." 
Those five simple words evoke images of an ultimate goal, and arduous quest, 
a determined spirit. These ideas alone probably could have carrried the 
series. Thankfully Chris Carter and company saw more than just the first 
level in those words and gave us a fascinating pair of characters in Mulder 
and Scully, who speak to the essence of an age-old philosophical conflict - 
one that is often categorized as "faith versus science." As you already know,
Mulder plays the believer and Scully plays the scientist in this weekly 
reenactment of the conflict. However, that simple categorization - while it 
is useful - doesn't quite fit the complexities that the creators have birthed 
in their two lead characters. For Carter and company - whether intuitively or
analytically - understand that "truth" can twist in odd ways within the human
spirit and that we as fallible creatures often choose the path to the "truth"
that best serves us rather than the path that will ultimately lead us to our 
destination.

	In discussing the X-Files with others, I have often found confusion 
over the actions of our intrepid pair. I've heard nitpickers complain about 
Mulder's illegalities; about the "believer's" behavior not befitting a real 
FBI agent. While willing to attribute these elements to his obsession to find
"the truth," nitpickers soon turn to other perplexities - episodes such as 
"REVELATIONS" (see Addendum at the bottom of this page) where Mulder suddenly
turns into the skeptic. Or "PAPER HEARTS," where Mulder instantly abandons 
everything he "believes" about his sister's abduction and fully commits to a 
mundane, terrestrial explanation. Scully has her share of peculiar episodes as
well when held to a rigid embodiment of the disinterested researcher. In 
"THE ERLENMEYER FLASK" she encounters hard scientific evidence for the 
existance of extraterrestrials. She even holds what appears to be an alien 
fetus in her hands. Yet only ten episodes later, in "RED MUSEUM," she - a 
scientist - questions the scientific findings. And in "OUBLIETTE" she even 
accuses Mulder of protecting Lucy Householder "beyond the point of reason" 
when, in fact, dispassionate reason and logic would demand a conclusion that 
Householder had no role in the kidnapping. (Scully believes that Householder 
is involved because she had Amy Jacob's blood on her fast-food restaurant 
uniform. But dozens of witnesses placed Householder at the restaurant at the 
time of the kidnapping. Those same witnesses would confirm that her uniform 
was clean prior to her collapse. In addition, Householder was taken straight 
to the hospital and held overnight. Apparently her uniform was taken at that 
time and submitted for testing. There was simply no opportunity for Householder
to encounter the kidnap victim.)

	Are these examples simple inconsistencies in the characterization? Did
they just slip through because no one was paying attention? For me, the answer
to both questions is a resounding "No!" If there's one thing the X-Files has 
done consistantly right in episode after episode, it's the accurate 
charcterizations of Mulder and Scully. Here's why.

	Human's find many disciplines in their pursuit of "the truth." Chris 
Carter and company have chosen two different approaches for their lead 
characters - that of subjective truth versus objective truth.

	Mulder is a subjectivist. For the most part, when he says, "The truth 
is out there," what he really means is, "Someday, what I believe will be shown 
to be the truth, and everyone will know that I was right all along." In other 
words, he establishes truth simply because he believes that a certain thing is 
true. Note the words at the beginning of "COLONY." He says that he has lived 
with a "fragile faith built on the ether of vague memories from an experience 
that I could neither prove nor explain." He adds that his sister was abducted 
by what he believes were extraterrestrials and that belief has sustained him, 
fueling him to his quest for truths that are as elusive as the memory itself. 
Having just come from an encounter with an extraterrestrial in the Artic Circle,
Mulder lies immersed in a tub, barely alive, while his narration continues - 
stating that what happened to him on the ice has justified every belief; that 
if he dies, it will be with a certainty that his "faith has been righteous."

	As a subjectivist, Mulder not only decides what is true by intuition, 
he also expects others to realize immediately the brilliance of his leaps. I 
could write dozens of pages documenting this trait, but suffice it to say that 
the X-Files is replete with Mulder jumping to conclusions with little or no 
evidence and then justifying his beliefs with the statements "I know it" or 
"I'm sure of it" - often deriding Scully because she's not willing to make the 
same leap as he. And when she does open herself to "extreme possibilities," 
as in "BEYOND THE SEA," he decides that they are the wrong possibilities 
(because he has come to a different conclusion) and chastises her for it!

	Interestingly enough, because Mulder expects near-instantaneous 
approval for his theories (they are "true," after all, at least in his mind), 
he has little patience to educate those who do not believe as he does. In 
"SQUEEZE" he tells Scully that he runs into so many people who don't believe 
that sometimes he can't resists playing with their minds. At the beginning of 
"TOOMS," Mulder has an opportunity to testify that Tooms should remain in 
custody. Instead of attempting to prove the believable - that Tooms recently 
murdered four people - Mulder immediately goes for the fantastic, trying to 
convince the panel that Tooms is a mutant. (The result is Toom's release.) 
Likewise, he pontificates belligerently in front of a Senante subcommittee at 
the end of "TUNGUSKA," when a more reasoned approach woulde bring him closer 
to his goal. But then again, he's not really interested in persuading or 
convincing. He expects that his statements should be enough to definitively 
establish "the truth." After all, he's Mulder!

	In addition, Mulder's subjectivism often exhibits scant concern for 
the human element in his quest. In "BORN AGAIN" he campaigns to have a little 
girl rehypnotized, disregarding what effect it might have on her. He's more 
intersted in "proving" transmigration of the soul. Near the end of "OUBLIETTE"
he actually smiles when he hears that Lucy Householder drowned in the back of 
a car because it shows that his intuition was correct. (Yes, Mulder seemed to 
demonstrate compassion toward Householder in this episode, but compassion for 
what purpose? Ultimately, I would content that Mulder's emotions are based on 
the hope that Householder will prove the extreme possibility of psychic 
connections.) And during the emotionally powerful ending of "NEVER AGAIN," 
as Scully explains that not everything is about him, Mulder responds, "Yes, 
but it's..." before falling to silence.

	Not surprisingly, Mulder's subjectivism also mates him with strange 
bedfellows. There is an old saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." 
Mulder finds extreme possibilities in anything ridiculed by those who  
ridicule him. He even validates the concept of Roky Crikenson's screenplay, 
The Truth About Aliens, in "JOSE' CHUNG'S FROM OUTERSPACE" - despite it's 
inclusion of Lord Kinbote, a red, Cyclops-like alien who speaks in King 
James English, and the graphic depictions of underworld sex orgies! And 
what about "QUAGMIRE"? In that episode, Mulder and Scully chase after Big 
Blue - a Loch Ness-type sea monster. Why? Beacuse - to pull a quation from 
the end of the episode - Mulder "sees hope in such a possibility." In Mulder's
mind, if Big Blue exists, so do aliens. In fact, Scully's statements in 
"QUAGMIRE" accurately describe his condition when she observes that everything
takes on a warped significancce to fit his meglomaniacal cosmology. (An 
interesting side note here: Mulder also rejects Melissa Scully's New Age 
espousals in "ONE BREATH." Perhaps they're too "mainstream" for him?)

	Worst of all, though, Mulder's "subjective truth" is only as strong 
as his emotional state. Becoming depressed in "LITTLE GREEN MEN," he begins 
to wonder if his sister's abduction really happened. And - as metioned above
- he is willing in "PAPER HEARTS" to abandon all the evidence of 
extraterrestrial involvement in his sister's abduction ("COLONY," "END GAME,"
"PAPER CLIP," "HERRENVOLK") because he has begun to believe that she was 
taken by a serial murderer.

	On the other hand, Scully is an objectivist. When she says "The truth
is out there," she means that "the truth" exists whether she believes in it 
or not, and its very existence is a call to discovery through careful 
investigation. She takes the reductive science approach: Gather the evidence,
analyze it, develop a hypothesis, test the hypothesis through experimentation,
adjust the hypothesis to account for the results. In "PILOT," Scully tells 
Mulder that she finds it "fantastic" that there are answers beyond the realm 
of science. She adds that the answers are there, "you just have to know where 
to look."

	No matter what Scully encounters, she must always return to objectivism,
because it gives her a sense that there is order and persistant principles in 
the universe (and we'll see in a moment why that's important). At the 
conclusion of "END GAME," sitting beside Mulder's bed, Scully narrates that 
many of the things she has seen have calllenged her belief in an ordered 
universe, but this uncertainty has only strengthened her need to know, to 
apply reason to those things that seem to defy it.

	To her credit, Scully's objectivism allows her to understand Mulder. 
She's not afraid to demand more proof from him. She accurately identifies the 
blinding quality of his obsession in "E. B. E." And she even redefines her 
vocabulary to help him understand the thing for which she searches. Sitting 
in an empty hospital room after the death of her sister in "PAPER CLIP," 
Scully tells her partner, "I've heard the truth, Mulder. Now what I want are 
the answers." This statement comes on the heals of an episode that provided 
evidence for two contradictory "truths." Mulder has concluded that alien 
abductions are vehicles to create an alien/human hybrid. Scully has concluded 
that alien abductions are cover stories for the monstrous experiments conducted
by humans on humans. By the end of the episode, Scully realizes she and Mulder 
will forever argue over this "truth," so she turns her attention away from such
futility. Now she wants hard data.

	There is only one problem with Scully's objectivism. It relies on a 
fundamental - and potentially flawed - assumption. To be an objectivist, she 
not only believes that "the truth is out there," she must also believe that 
the human mind has the capability to comprehend it (hence the need for an 
ordered and persistent universe). Count on it. Anything that pricks this 
assumption of human competence will evoke fear and uncertainty in Scully. In 
the same bedside narration mentioned above, Scully acknowledges that several 
aspects of the case covered by "COLONY" and "END GAME" remain unexplained and 
suggest paranormal phenomena. She then adds that she is convinced that to 
accept those conclusions would be to "abandon all hope of understanding the 
scientific events behind them." This is the reason Scully must reject the 
reasonable and logical conclusion that Householder was not involved in the 
kidnapping of Amy Jacobs during "OUBLIETTE." To accept the evidence that Amy 
Jacobs's blood magically appeared on Householder's uniform - without any 
possible scientific theory or methodology to explain it - would be to allow 
the possibility that "truth" lies beyond the realm of human understanding. 
That thought strikes terror in her heart, for with it, objectivism comes 
undone. 

	Unfortunately for Scully, the caseload of the X-Files often leads our 
favorite FBI agents into domains that do not readily respond to scientific 
investigation, and - at times - it even leads them into areas that do not lend 
themselves to Mulder's divination. But then, these journeys are by design are 
they not? And Chris Carter and company have used them to supply us with some 
fascinating mind candy.

	(By the way, there is another discipline in this ultimate pursuit of 
life. It's called "revealed truth," and it posits a final Truth that resides 
beyond the bounds of human intuition and investigation - a Truth so fundamental
and trascendent that it cannot be known unless it chooses to communicate with 
us.)

********************************************************************************

Addendum: On REVELATIONS. Because REVELATIONS is my favorite Scullycentric 
episode I am going to include a portion of Phil Farrand's Ruminations on the 
episode which can be found in the Nitpicker's Guide for X-Philes, page 216

	But I still contend that the characterization in this episode is...
perfect! The question is: Why? Let's consider Scully's actions first. Certainly,
her deep-seated religious belief rooted in Catholicism would create no conflict
with her trained scientific mind. In reality, science depends on a universe that
is ordered and knowable, a universe that operates according to some persistant 
principles. It's a small step for a person who holds to the existence of those 
principles to believe that such order and persistence have a Source. Especially
a Source that "played fair" with the analytical mind.

	With regard to Mulder, it is this very Source that fires his 
contentiousness, however. In the sidebar "Whose Truth Is Out There?" I discuss 
the dramatically different approaches by which Mulder and Scully arrive at "the
truth." Mulder's method begins and ends...with Mulder! He creates the theory. 
He sets the criteria by which the theory is judged. He evaluates the evidence 
by the criteria he establishes to prove or disprove his theory. In short, he 
decides when something is true, and it really doesn't matter to him what anyone
else thinks.

	For Mulder to admit that the events in this episode might have some 
extranatural component, he must allow the possibility of merit in the core 
belief system that surrounds the events. And - aside from the fact that Mulder 
makes a practice of rejecting anything arising from the religious "mainstream" 
- entertaining, however temporarily, the concept of the transcendent Being 
espoused by the Judeo-Christian belief system would seriously disrupt his 
fundamentals.

	The Judeo-Christian belief system lays claim to a Source who not only 
calls all things into existance but also a Being who is the final arbiter of 
truth; a Being whose very nature is Absolute Truth. Given Mulder's subjectivism,
the notion of such a Being is abhorrent. Even approaching it turns him crotchety
and "tests his patience" (to borrow Mulder's own terminology),. for the 
existance of this Being would destroy Mulder's sovereignty over "the truth" and
vest it beyond his appeal, correction, or postulation. The only remaining 
question would be, "What does the Being say is the truth?"

	Doesn't it seem reasonable, then, that Mulder would make every effort to
dismiss Scully's suspicions? (Not that he would admit any of this to himself, of
course, because according to his truth, he always believes in everything that 
has merit!)