Post by mrperson on Oct 7, 2015 21:16:49 GMT
I had gotten into a debate with another individual over on Gallifrey Base about whether or not "canon" even exists regarding Doctor Who, particularly post-Time-War when everything other than the laws of physics could have changed. This grew out of a prior debate about how you might rank something like a NA novel written in the wilderness years vs. Big Finish main range vs. McGann's audios vs. at least those companions named in Night of the Doctor vs. something that appeared on the TV show. (Relatedly, how "canon" will the coming War Doctor series be, given that BBC first established the War Doctor, then contracted Big Finish to produce his stories).
I started spinning my wheels, which as usual sent me off on a tangent: way back to college, where we were debating about whether terms can be said to have meaning and if so, what is the meaning of a term. What is "meaning," basically.
So the long discourse I accidentally slapped together addresses whether "canon" can be considered a term that has meaning when you have such vast disagreements about what is "canon". For example, "table" and "chair" have very clear meanings. Save for some very creative woodworking, you aren't going to find people arguing about whether something is in fact a chair. But with very broad terms like "canon" and "art", you can find all sorts of disputes about whether something is or is not "canon" or "art". Can a term mean something if there is no cohesive agreement as to what that term refers to?
What follows may be interesting or worth ignoring. Your honor, I plead "brain that won't shut up".
(Summary, yes "canon" has meaning; the degree to which something is canon turns on the degree to which BBC has put its stamp on it. With the caveat that of course, you are obviously free to imagine whatever you'd like in your own head).
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Well, I'm always tempted to sink back into philosophy when a question like this comes up.
Does the fact that we cannot all agree on what is "canon" - or relatedly, does the fact that X percent of us cannot agree on what is "canon" - mean that the term does not have meaning; In other words, that "canon" does not exist?
My counter-point would be: No, of course not. Consider the term "art." There are countless debates about whether or not a given piece is art, be it a canvas painted in one shade of blue, a blank canvas ("invisible art" - google it, there was such a display), a woman pretending to be asleep in a tank of glass, a defaced religious icon, sexually explicit photographs (Maplethorpe), etc. Yet do we not agree that "art" is nonetheless a thing that exists.
Now, how many here are familiar with the philosopher Quine? He postulated that meaning is not an objectively real thing. "Objective reality" being defined as the provable external world (we here ignore anyone who sincerely asserts that the external world is all in your head, rather than merely asserts the possibility). Fine. Meanings are not floating around in the universe waiting to be had by words that refer to them. Very good. Meaning, to Quine, was the set of things to which a given term is commonly held to relate. "Commonly" is not explicitly defined, nor could it be. The closest you get to the meaning of a term is a certain critical mass of instances in which a term is used to refer to an objectively real thing.
Which brings us back to "canon" and "art". Do these terms have meaning despite the vast disagreements between individuals as to whether a given piece of something said to be "canon" or "art" is in fact canon or art? Or does it mean that there are no such things as canon or art? Or, contrarily, is it simply a situation where "canon" and "art" exist, but simply have loosely defined meanings, subject to interpretation. I say the latter.
I say there is such a thing and canon and art; they exist in the sense that any other meaning exists, as a subjective-objective mishmash; the common set of things that users of the terms "canon" and "art" intend to refer to when they utter those terms. They exist. It's just that they may be loosely defined, which in turn leads to all the disagreements (many discussed by Cohen). But, of course, we are each alone free to decide whether we care about the definition, and if we do, what is and is not canon or art. We are not free to declare that they don't exist at all.
I think this Paul Cornell fellow is wrong. He focuses on authorship of the fiction. I say that he should focus on ownership of the rights to produce the fiction.
Something that Neil Gaimann writes becomes fiction if it is produced by an entity owning the ultimate rights to the show: BBC. Specifically, if BBC includes something in an episode that it produces, that thing is "canon". They have the right to say what is and is not. I think that's the only sensible way to define it, and that is indeed the definition I generally find when I poke around google. Quine would likely agree.
Disputes about what is canon are no different than disputes about what is art. The existence of those disputes do not mean there is no such thing as "art" or "canon."
(I think that if you disagree with me about canon, you are logically bound to conclude that "art" does not exist. It has no meaning and therefore is not a term)
Unless..... see below
______________
An aside: I've often thought of getting back to the philosophy I studied way back in college, but my my, that would take a lot of effort. If anyone is currently studying it, I'd suggest analyzing whether terms like "canon" and "art" disprove Quine's Ontological Relativity lectures/theory. Those lectures being what I refer to above.
I've often played around with the notion that terms like "art" and "canon" make a strong counter-point to Quine. On the one hand, you could simply say that Quine is right and these are not terms because there is no set of things to which they commonly are used to refer. On the other hand, you could say that "set of things to which a term commonly refers" is a false test for meaning, because there is no objective measurement (calculation/percentage/etc) of what is enough agreement to constitute "commonly refer": there is no objective dividing line that could test whether or not a term is a term and hence has meaning.
In other words, when I said "X percent" above, does the fact that there is no objective way to determine X mean that Quine's theory is bad?
(And yet, on the other hand, meaning obviously isn't an objectively real thing. So if Quine is wrong, what is meaning? Does it exist in any sense outside each specific individual's mind? Is provable objective reality - physical laws, a carbon atom, etc. - the only things that can be said to exist?)
____________________
Now that was a mouthful, no?
I started spinning my wheels, which as usual sent me off on a tangent: way back to college, where we were debating about whether terms can be said to have meaning and if so, what is the meaning of a term. What is "meaning," basically.
So the long discourse I accidentally slapped together addresses whether "canon" can be considered a term that has meaning when you have such vast disagreements about what is "canon". For example, "table" and "chair" have very clear meanings. Save for some very creative woodworking, you aren't going to find people arguing about whether something is in fact a chair. But with very broad terms like "canon" and "art", you can find all sorts of disputes about whether something is or is not "canon" or "art". Can a term mean something if there is no cohesive agreement as to what that term refers to?
What follows may be interesting or worth ignoring. Your honor, I plead "brain that won't shut up".
(Summary, yes "canon" has meaning; the degree to which something is canon turns on the degree to which BBC has put its stamp on it. With the caveat that of course, you are obviously free to imagine whatever you'd like in your own head).
_______________________
Well, I'm always tempted to sink back into philosophy when a question like this comes up.
Does the fact that we cannot all agree on what is "canon" - or relatedly, does the fact that X percent of us cannot agree on what is "canon" - mean that the term does not have meaning; In other words, that "canon" does not exist?
My counter-point would be: No, of course not. Consider the term "art." There are countless debates about whether or not a given piece is art, be it a canvas painted in one shade of blue, a blank canvas ("invisible art" - google it, there was such a display), a woman pretending to be asleep in a tank of glass, a defaced religious icon, sexually explicit photographs (Maplethorpe), etc. Yet do we not agree that "art" is nonetheless a thing that exists.
Now, how many here are familiar with the philosopher Quine? He postulated that meaning is not an objectively real thing. "Objective reality" being defined as the provable external world (we here ignore anyone who sincerely asserts that the external world is all in your head, rather than merely asserts the possibility). Fine. Meanings are not floating around in the universe waiting to be had by words that refer to them. Very good. Meaning, to Quine, was the set of things to which a given term is commonly held to relate. "Commonly" is not explicitly defined, nor could it be. The closest you get to the meaning of a term is a certain critical mass of instances in which a term is used to refer to an objectively real thing.
Which brings us back to "canon" and "art". Do these terms have meaning despite the vast disagreements between individuals as to whether a given piece of something said to be "canon" or "art" is in fact canon or art? Or does it mean that there are no such things as canon or art? Or, contrarily, is it simply a situation where "canon" and "art" exist, but simply have loosely defined meanings, subject to interpretation. I say the latter.
I say there is such a thing and canon and art; they exist in the sense that any other meaning exists, as a subjective-objective mishmash; the common set of things that users of the terms "canon" and "art" intend to refer to when they utter those terms. They exist. It's just that they may be loosely defined, which in turn leads to all the disagreements (many discussed by Cohen). But, of course, we are each alone free to decide whether we care about the definition, and if we do, what is and is not canon or art. We are not free to declare that they don't exist at all.
I think this Paul Cornell fellow is wrong. He focuses on authorship of the fiction. I say that he should focus on ownership of the rights to produce the fiction.
Something that Neil Gaimann writes becomes fiction if it is produced by an entity owning the ultimate rights to the show: BBC. Specifically, if BBC includes something in an episode that it produces, that thing is "canon". They have the right to say what is and is not. I think that's the only sensible way to define it, and that is indeed the definition I generally find when I poke around google. Quine would likely agree.
Disputes about what is canon are no different than disputes about what is art. The existence of those disputes do not mean there is no such thing as "art" or "canon."
(I think that if you disagree with me about canon, you are logically bound to conclude that "art" does not exist. It has no meaning and therefore is not a term)
Unless..... see below
______________
An aside: I've often thought of getting back to the philosophy I studied way back in college, but my my, that would take a lot of effort. If anyone is currently studying it, I'd suggest analyzing whether terms like "canon" and "art" disprove Quine's Ontological Relativity lectures/theory. Those lectures being what I refer to above.
I've often played around with the notion that terms like "art" and "canon" make a strong counter-point to Quine. On the one hand, you could simply say that Quine is right and these are not terms because there is no set of things to which they commonly are used to refer. On the other hand, you could say that "set of things to which a term commonly refers" is a false test for meaning, because there is no objective measurement (calculation/percentage/etc) of what is enough agreement to constitute "commonly refer": there is no objective dividing line that could test whether or not a term is a term and hence has meaning.
In other words, when I said "X percent" above, does the fact that there is no objective way to determine X mean that Quine's theory is bad?
(And yet, on the other hand, meaning obviously isn't an objectively real thing. So if Quine is wrong, what is meaning? Does it exist in any sense outside each specific individual's mind? Is provable objective reality - physical laws, a carbon atom, etc. - the only things that can be said to exist?)
____________________
Now that was a mouthful, no?
