So, is Sirius a man or a dog?12 That depends on what he looks like. When he looks like a man, he’s a man. When he looks like a dog, he’s neither. Padfoot—Sirius, when he looks like a dog—is a third kind of thing, reducible to neither a dog nor a man. He’s a unique kind of being—a man-dog—that combines features of both humans and dogs. This view, I claim, makes the most sense of Rowling’s text and accords well with our best contemporary theories of the self. As Descartes said, mind and body truly do form a “single whole.” The nature of this entity is determined by both one’s mind and one’s body, even if one’s body happens to be the body of a dog.
NOTES
1 The Resurrection Stone being irretrievably lost, we can’t use that avenue of inquiry. Of course, you might think there’s a more fundamental problem: Sirius is a fictional character. Details, details. Regardless, I think we can learn something about real people if we pay careful attention to this mystery about Sirius. So I plan to ignore the pesky detail that Sirius is fictional and instead treat Rowling as if she were a historian of a previously unknown part of reality. I’ll take what she says to be relatively accurate, with the goal of making sense of Sirius’s behavior and perhaps shedding some light on ourselves in the process.
2 Unlike the rest of these transformers, boggarts are not examples of humans transformed into other shapes.
3 Tolkien fans will recognize similarities between Rowling’s Animagi and J. R. R. Tolkien’s “skin-changers,” such as Beorn in The Hobbit. Tolkien clearly presents Beorn as a human who can magically transform his human body into the body of a large bear. His behavior as a bear is quite unhuman. Interestingly, in contrast to the way Rowling typically portrays Animagi, Beorn has bearlike habits when he is in human form, such as a taste for honey, a lack of interest in wealth or jewels, and an “appalling” temper.
4 You might agree with me that Crouch/Moody’s behavior is out of character for Crouch. If so, then you are likely to find his behavior just as puzzling as Sirius’s behavior. Or you might think that Crouch is simply trying to make himself fit in better at Hogwarts. Unscientific polling tells me that I am in the minority. So be it. I’ll touch, but not dwell, on Crouch/Moody’s behavior further on.
5 Deathly Hallows, p. 591.
6 Polyjuice cases are much clearer; when Harry becomes Gregory Goyle, it’s not the case that Goyle has two bodies, one in the closet, the other in the Slytherin common room. Instead, Harry’s body now looks like Goyle’s, as if they were identical twins.
7 Order of the Phoenix, p. 183.
8 René Descartes, Meditations, translated by F. E. Sutcliffe (Harmondworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1968), p. 159.
9 As an aside, I don’t want to leave the impression that Descartes had this view. His view was quite the opposite, for although he did think the mind and the body were “tightly joined,” he also thought that the mind and the body were essentially distinct. The view I am proposing is that the mind and the body together form a whole that is the self. The mind, I suggest, cannot exist without the body.
10 Deathly Hallows, p. 240.
11 When Harry takes Polyjuice in Chamber of Secrets, Rowling reports that “Goyle’s low rasp of a voice issued from his mouth” (p. 217). Compare this to the movie, which depicts Harry as trying to imitate Goyle’s voice. I hope that you agree with me that Rowling is more accurate on this point than the movie is: the voice with which Harry speaks is determined by his body. If his body is shaped like Goyle’s, then his voice should sound like Goyle’s.
12 There are other related questions particular to the world of Harry Potter that are worth investigating. For example, notice that even when adopting the body of a Muggle, witches and wizards retain their magical powers. So, what’s the source of one’s magical powers? And how does the shape a boggart takes affect its identity? In Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry’s Patronus only prevents the boggart-dementor from bothering him, but (unlike the portrayal in the movie), Lupin needs to use the Riddikulus charm to force the boggart back into the chest. This suggests that while the boggart might be affected by the body it adopts (the boggart as Severus Snape moves the way Snape moves), something of its boggart-ness remains; one needs magic appropriate to boggarts to deal with it completely. These questions are worth pursuing, but we don’t have time here. Those of you pursuing your N.E.W.T.s in Transfiguration should write eighteen inches on these questions.
3
DESTINY IN THE WIZARDING WORLD
Jeremy Pierce
The Potter stories portray Professor Sybill Trelawney, Hogwarts’ Divination teacher, as an “old fraud” whose sooth-saying comes in pseudoscientific trappings. She teaches various techniques for predicting the future, including tea leaves, planetary orbits, palm reading, dream interpretation, tarot cards, and crystal balls. Each method has rules for students to follow, but they have little scientific basis. Trelawney’s predictions often turn out wrong, such as her constantly repeated forecast of Harry’s premature death. She also accepts others’ fabricated predictions that fit her preconceived ideas, for example, when she awards Harry and Ron Weasley top marks for predicting tragic misfortunes in their immediate futures.
Nevertheless, at least two of Trelawney’s prophecies are different. Professor Dumbledore calls them her only two “real predictions.”1 Normally, Trelawney speaks in such elastic generalities about common-enough occurrences that she’ll usually find something that fits. A science-minded Muggle like Vernon Dursley might reject divination as a reliable predictor. What do the alignment of the planets and the random assignment of tarot cards in a deck have to do with the processes that lead to certain events happening rather than others? But this is a magical world, even if the Dursleys don’t like it. Couldn’t magic connect tea leaves or dreams with actual future events?
Unfortunately, Trelawney usually comes across as a complete fraud, and her usual methods are probably either nonmagical or unreliable magic. Professor McGonagall tells Harry’s class that divination “is one of the most imprecise branches of magic. I shall not conceal from you that I have very little patience with it. True Seers are very rare, and Professor Trelawney--.” 2 She stops short to avoid speaking ill of a colleague, but the point is clear. Sybill Trelawney isn’t a true Seer.
Similarly, the centaur Firenze distinguishes between Trelawney and genuine Seers. “Sybill Trelawney may have Seen, I do not know.... But she wastes her time, in the main, on the self-flattering nonsense humans call fortune-telling.”3 He respects and practices prophecy, despite acknowledging its fallibility, but he distinguishes it from the nonsense of fortune-telling. That raises a question about genuine prophecies. What does it mean to say they’re real, and how are they different from the others? Even Dumbledore, skeptical about most divination, acknowledges two of Trelawney’s predictions as different, and Firenze also admits the possibility. So, what is this distinction?
Varieties of Prophecy
Do “real predictions” derive from what will actually happen? Is the future “fixed” so that there’s just one future? Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.) gets credit for first raising this issue.4 Is it true when Harry first attends Hogwarts that he’ll have a final face-off with Voldemort seven years later?
If the future is fixed, there’s only one future, and it will happen. This isn’t to say that it will happen no matter what anyone does. It could happen because of what they do, and if they did something else, a different future would happen. But part of the fixed future is what they’ll do. Being fixed also doesn’t necessarily mean the future is predetermined. People who believe the future is fixed may not be determinists, although some are.
Prophecies can be fallible or infallible. An infallible prophecy is guaranteed to be true. It couldn’t have been wrong. By contrast, fallible prophecies could be wrong. False prophecies are fallible because they’re actually wrong, but true prophecies can also be fallible. All it takes is possibly getting it wrong. Fallibility isn’t about how sure we can be of whether a prophecy will come true. I might
be very unsure of an infallible prophecy if I don’t understand its secure basis. I might be very sure of a fallible prophecy, even a false one, if I lack crucial facts.
Exactly how does a Seer gain access to information in a prophecy? Here are several possibilities:1. A prophecy might be a fallible prediction based on human observations through the five senses. Muggle weather reports and Trelawney’s prophecies are like this.
2. If the future isn’t fixed, all of the information in the universe wouldn’t be enough to guarantee a correct prediction. But there might be enough to expect probabilities. Perhaps the Seer gains access to possible or likely futures. Maybe Trelawney sees possible futures but can’t discern the most likely ones and must speak in vague generalities. Dumbledore says, “The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed.... Professor Trelawney, bless her, is living proof of that.”5
3. A prophecy might be a fallible prediction based on a limited understanding of a deterministic world. If the future is predetermined by the current state of the world and the laws of nature, and the Seer has imperfect access to it through signs of what causes it, then the Seer views a fixed future. Magic derives information from the natural forces that lead to that future, but it may not give perfect information. Or the Seer might magically behold a fixed future without interpreting it correctly, perhaps because of partial information.
4. A soothsayer may be skilled at using predictions to make people do things. Such a “Seer” could influence people by knowing how an audience is likely to respond to a prophecy. As we’ll see shortly, Dumbledore thinks Trelawney’s first “real prediction” led Voldemort to choose Harry to kill, marking Harry as his equal. Trelawney didn’t intend anything, but the prophecy plays a role in its own fulfillment.
5. An infallible prediction might come from a complete understanding of the deterministic processes that guarantee an outcome. This would need an all-knowing being or magical forces influenced by deterministic processes.
6. An infallible prediction might come from infallible access to the actual future. This might be by magic or through someone who has direct contact with the future, perhaps a divine being or a person with cross-time communication. Or a Seer might have the ability to see into the actual future (not merely into possible futures).
7. Finally, a prophecy could combine fallibility and infallibility, with infallible access to some fixed fact about the future and fallibility about another aspect. The fallibility might come either from imperfect access to a fixed fact or from information about likely futures.
So, the question before us is what kind of prophecy Professor Trelawney’s genuine prophecies are, as opposed to her usual fortune-telling.
Fallible Prophecies
Most of Trelawney’s predictions are perfect examples of the first category—fallible predictions based on sensory experience. They’re usually vague or open-ended enough to find something to fit them, but there may be no guarantee, and it won’t always fit well.
It’s easy to see how general prophecies might at best be only probable, even if some are very likely. Trelawney’s predictions don’t come from an infallible source but from her ability to predict likely enough things, sometimes based on background information. Many of her predictions are easy to fulfill. Others may happen to be right by accident. Some are false, such as her forecasts of Harry’s imminent death.
Dumbledore seems to treat all prophecies as fallible when he tells Harry that the first of Trelawney’s real prophecies didn’t have to come true:“The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches.... Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies . . . and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not . . . and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives.”6
Dumbledore suggests to Harry that some prophecies turn out to be false. “Do you think every prophecy in the Hall of Prophecy has been fulfilled?”7 He continues, “The prophecy does not mean you have to do anything! . . . In other words, you are free to choose your way, quite free to turn your back on the prophecy!”8 Voldemort’s obsession with the prophecy will lead him to seek out Harry, and as a result, they’ll almost certainly face off, but not because this was “fated” by the prophecy.
So, prophecies can vary in likelihood. Is that the distinguishing factor between “real predictions” and Trelawney’s usual sayings? Some are likely to be true because they’re based on her perceptions of what tends to happen, and she makes them vague enough to be likely. Others are more genuine because they’re more likely. This is a difference of degree. They’re both matters of likelihood, although some are more likely. But when Dumbledore treats two prophecies as special, doesn’t it seem as if they’re more special than that? Indeed, there’s still something different about them. The two “real predictions” were purely involuntary and have a magical source. They aren’t category 1, which involves actively paying attention. Trelawney must have had a stronger connection with the future, an occasional ability to connect with an actual, fixed future (category 3) or possible futures (category 2).
There are also some indications that Professor Trelawney has inconsistent access to the future or to possible futures, even when conscious. Consider the following example when Harry is heading to his first private lesson with Dumbledore in Half-Blood Prince:Harry proceeded through deserted corridors, though he had to step hastily behind a statue when Professor Trelawney appeared around a corner, muttering to herself as she shuffled a pack of dirty-looking playing cards, reading them as she walked.
“Two of spades: conflict,” she murmured, as she passed the place where Harry crouched, hidden. “Seven of spades: an ill omen. Ten of spades: violence. Knave of spades: a dark young man, possibly troubled, one who dislikes the questioner—” She stopped dead, right on the other side of Harry’s statue. “Well, that can’t be right,” she said, annoyed, and Harry heard her reshuffling vigorously as she set off again, leaving nothing but a whiff of cooking sherry behind her.9
What she says could easily apply to Harry, but she has no inkling of his presence. Is that likely to be a coincidence?
Harry encounters her again on his way to his last appointment with Dumbledore before they leave for Voldemort’s cave:“If Dumbledore chooses to ignore the warnings the cards show—” Her bony hand closed suddenly around Harry’s wrist. “Again and again, no matter how I lay them out—” And she pulled a card dramatically from underneath her shawls. “—the lightning-struck tower,” she whispered. “Calamity. Disaster. Coming nearer all the time.”10
This is so vague that it might just be category 1, but the tower is significant in light of the book’s finale, which not only includes Dumbledore’s death but even leads to a bigger disaster, as the Death Eaters seize power.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
Dumbledore suggests that Trelawney’s first real prediction might be self-fulfilling. He tells Harry, “It may not have meant you at all,” because Neville Longbottom had been born a day earlier, and his parents had also thrice defied Voldemort.11 But then a few paragraphs later, he tells Harry, “There is no doubt that it is you,” because Voldemort’s choice to go after Harry, rather than Neville, led to his marking Harry as his equal. According to Dumbledore’s interpretation, the prophecy didn’t itself determine whether it was about Harry or Neville. Voldemort’s choice of Harry made it true of Harry. He wouldn’t have attacked Harry had there not been a prophecy, and so the prophecy led him to fulfill that part of itself.
Alexander of Aphrodisias, a philosopher during the late first and early second centuries, discussed self-fulfilling predictions. In the story of Oedipus, Apollo makes a prophecy to King Laius that his future son will kill him. Some of Alexander’s contemporaries believed that Apollo’s prophecy caused Laius to try to kill his son, which eventually led Oedipus to kill his father (without knowing it was his father). A
lexander gives a number of arguments against this position, but one response is telling:Well, if someone says these things, how does he . . . preserve prophecy . . . ? For prophecy is thought to be prediction of the things that are going to happen, but they make Apollo the author of the things he predicts.... How is this not the deed of him who prophesied, rather than revelation of the things that were going to be?12
We can imagine someone seeming to foretell the future but really just causing the events that lead to the predicted future. Alexander says it’s not a genuine prophecy unless it’s already true that those events are going to happen, and the speaker predicts them because he knows they’ll happen. If the words are simply an attempt to manipulate events, they’re not a genuine prophecy.
The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy: Hogwarts for Muggles Page 5
