The Witness as Philosophy: How Knowledge Is Constructed

Abstract

When innovative game designer Jonathan Blow released his second game, The Witness, after a roughly 7-year development process, it was to instant critical acclaim. The few critics who were less impressed said nothing about any serious flaw in the game design; they just said it was too hard. Indeed, as a puzzle game in which the player must solve increasingly sophisticated puzzles that test the limits of her deductive and inductive reasoning abilities, The Witness is incredibly frustrating. But why? Perhaps the frustration results from a theory of knowledge (or epistemology) that Blow built into the game, both explicitly and implicitly. Perhaps the game is making an argument about knowledge construction that incorporates this frustration. After carefully examining the game itself (with special attention to the windmill videos), the most plausible epistemological arguments the game could be making will be examined, on both a subjective and species-wide level. A frustrated critic might think that the game isn’t making an argument at all, or that, if anything, it represents some version of epistemological relativism: the view that what we define as knowledge/truth is dependent upon perception. A case will be made, however, that the game argues that true knowledge is attainable, both individually and collectively, even if it is difficult to acquire.