Reasoning about the Potterverse

[David <dfrankiswork@netscape.net>]

Well, this is my main response to Grey Wolf's 51793.  I can't tell 
if it makes a canon point or not, so I've put it here.  I think it's 
really about the fandom, with a big slice of amateur philosophy.  If 
any of you can spot a canon point, let me know and I will atone by 
posting a food question on the movie list and a GOF casting 
suggestion on the main list - that'll even things out, won't it?

I (David) wrote:

> > Grey Wolf has identified one of the fundamental differences 
between 
> > our interpretations of literature and our interpretations of 
real 
> > life.  In RL, we usually assume that only one interpretation is 
> > true, even if with our limited information many are possible.  
We 
> > tend to think that if only we knew a bit more then all the 
> > possibilities except one would disappear.

Grey Wolf replied:
> Errr... my point was not that, exactly. I supose that, since I am a
> pessimist, and have a scientific mind, I know that we will never 
reach
> the single solution. In fact, Science depends on it. Heisenbergs's
> uncertainty principle says that, in any given paradigm, there are
> things that cannot be explained - and that we cannot know, a 
priori,
> what those things are. But never mind - it's close enough to your 
idea:
> in a book series like HP, we will never have all the data - that 
would
> require entire dictionaries of nothing but data, which no-one would
> ever read, but never mind, since they are not going to happen.

To be honest, I'm not really talking about scientific investigation, 
or tricky issues such as Schrödinger's cat.  My point is, that the 
everyday interpretation of normal reality by most people is that 
there is only one truth of what happens.  Scientists may mutter 
about 'collapsing the wave function', and postmodernists jabber 
about 'constructing reality', but courts go on reaching verdicts on 
the assumption that, though they may be wrong in any given verdict, 
the *idea* that there is a single truth to be approximated by 
investigation is reliable.  No court is going to say both 'guilty' 
and 'not guilty' for the same trial.

Of course, different people may have different interpretations of 
reality, just as they do of literature.  But when they do, they 
usually accept that at least one of them must be wrong.  The whole 
point of all sorts of enquiry about the real world is to narrow down 
the possibilities that could be right.

Literature is, IMO, quite different.  There is no reason why there 
should be a unique interpretation that is consistent with canon.  In 
some cases there may be *no* satisfactory interpretation - we call 
these FLINTs on HPFGU.  In others, there may be more than one.  It 
was here that I felt your discussion of the nature of theory was 
helpful: the idea that there can be different theories which are all 
consistent with canon, but not necessarily with one another.

Where I think we diverge is that I do not believe that the 'right' 
theory will emerge when more 'facts' become available.  It is true 
that some theories may get unlucky and be effectively torpedoed (oh 
dear, I seem to be falling into nautical terminology here), which 
may help their rivals.  Other differences will likely not be 
resolved, and some previously universally accepted theories will 
unexpectedly split into new competing alternatives.

I think the underlying issue is that the existence of data outside 
existing canon is problematic.  What is this data?  Leave aside the 
purists who define that canon = that which is published, and we 
still have huge difficulties.  What guarantee is there that JKR has 
extended her universe and subplots in a consistent manner beyond the 
confines of what we see?  It is like asking an artist to tell us 
what is just outside the frame of their painting.  *We*, the viewers 
may claim that 'science' allows us to project the horizon of a 
seascape beyond the frame, but why should the artist, or anyone else 
for that matter, agree?  The picture is paint on a canvas, not a 
photograph of a scene that can be examined by forensic scientists.

Grey Wolf again:

> (I have to point out that the same thing happens in RL sciences,
> except the purely theorical ones like maths, and even those have
> certain theories that cannot be proved - due to Heisenberg's 
principle
> which I've mentioned above. For example, can any of our resident
> mathematics demonstrate that any even number is sum of two primes? 
No
> - no-one can, for now, and possibly noone will ever be able to, in 
the
> present maths paradigm).

I agree.  However, I think it is the case that the undecidability 
of, say, R/H versus H/H is not like quantum uncertainty, nor like 
Gödel's logical undecidability (see note 1), nor like the 
unpredictability of chaotic systems.  It is more like a badly-
devised logic puzzle where there are two answers instead of one.  (I 
don't mean that the HP stories are badly devised - just that they 
contain ambiguity which would be inappropriate in a logic puzzle.)  
The two 'answers', R/H and H/H, can be made to fit the 'clues' that 
are given - canon, but the reason is not some intrinsic limitation 
of logic, it's the ambiguous formulation of the 'clues'.

Me again (David):
> 
> > My question is, if more than one theory is considered 
*possible*, 
> > and exhaustive (and exhausting) argumentation has failed to 
> > eliminate either on logical grounds, is there any way of 
agreeing 
> > which theory is *better*?
> 
> The short answer is: no. 

Ah, but is there a long answer which is different?

> There is no official method to decide what theory is better than
> another one, except by careful statistical studies (i.e. which is 
less
> wrong). Generally, however, the correct theory when several are
> present is the one most people believe in. Which, however, doesn't
> make it right - but it is a democratical approach. There have been
> times in history when two theories have coexisted for a long time
> before one was tuned into more correctness, at which point the 
other
> is normally discarded.

To be honest, I wasn't asking for an 'official' method, though I 
would be delighted to hear of any from the literary experts here.  I 
doubt there is one, though, because the idea of deciding between 
theories by any other means than absolute reader discretion is so 
alien to the way most literary theory, as I understand it, 
approaches text.

No, I am suggesting we should *make one up*.  Invent new theory and 
methodology.  New philosophy.  Why not?  We are in a unique 
situation here.  We have a text with sufficient depth and richness 
to keep conventional literary scholarship busy, while at the same 
time we grapple with the fact that that text is both incomplete and 
will one day be completed.  It seems to me that conventional 
literary theory (OK I'm pretty ignorant here) doesn't cope well with 
the concept or practice of fandom, while fans for the most part lack 
the intellectual tools to succeed in all the things they would like 
to.

I would say that one way to open up the may be to pose the 
question: "To what extent does the Potterverse exist?"

We have several putative answers.

Literary: only in the mind of the (individual) reader;
Intentional: in the intention of the author;
Future: in canon, when complete;
Fanon: in the corpus of canon-consistent material that fans write - 
a special case is the movies;
Fandom: in the collective mind of the readers, expressed through 
what consensus they can find in lists like this one.

(Please forgive me if any of the above labels are confusing or 
misleading - as I say, this is about making things up as we go 
along.)

I would say that all these answers fail to capture something that is 
expressed in the others.  The first isolates the fan.  The second 
denies the reader's imagination.  The third is provisional: at the 
end, you have to map the completed canon into one of the other 
answers.  The fourth gains enormous richness and extensiveness at 
the expense of the distinctiveness of JKR's creation.  The last is 
potentially a tyranny, and may suffer from a lack of content, since 
we seem unable to agree on anything beyond the fact that Harry's 
cousin is called Dudley.

They all have something positive to contribute, too: reader 
interaction with the text; the confidence that the Potterverse is 
*meant* to be consistent; the reminder that there is a yet-active 
author who will shortly constrain our interpretations; the extension 
of the initial base that tradition provides; the fellowship of 
shared experience.

But one answer that I cannot see any way to avoid rejecting is:

Realist: subject to the kinds of investigation we would apply to 
real life.

To those who would say that the question is meaningless, or that the 
answer is whatever you want it to be, I would say: yes, I see your 
point of view, but nevertheless this list beats itself relentlessly 
upon that question like a moth against a lampshade.  Again and again 
we argue about what is 'really' the case.  At any time we can  - or 
we tell ourselves we can - say that the books are just fiction and 
walk away from them.  Yet the passion with which positions are 
argued belies it.  Fans are in the position of the lady in Bath who 
could not stop reading, or of Ginny, hostage to the realism of the 
illusion that is projected on them.  (JKR laughs at her fans, does 
she not, making them captive to a Riddle.)  So to you, I pose the 
question as follows: "To what extent is it possible to give 
intellectual legitimacy to the idea that some proposition 
is 'really' the case in the Potterverse?"

> I think that the method of choosing is neither right nor wrong 
myself
> - I select theories because they make sense in my mind, but others 
use
> other methods. Why people choose or reject theories is not somehing
> that bothers me - they can do so (I do so on ocasions, rejecting
> theories even while defending them). The bottom line is that each
> person likes or not a theory for reasons of its own. However, the 
fact
> that they don't like a theory is not a good reason to believe it is
> wrong  - the only way to prove a theory wrong is to find canon
> against it.

That is true.  However, we are at the stage where we are finding 
that 'proving' or 'disproving' is impossible for many of the 
controversial theories on the list, or at least not worth pursuing.  
What I am trying to do is give you all - or rather, get you all to 
make for yourselves -  the tools to pursue legitimately the oh-so-
human drive to persuade your opponents, and to be persuaded by them, 
without getting bogged down in sterile arguments about proof.  Proof 
is unattainable.  Can we settle for something less that still does 
the job of persuading?

David

Note 1.  Kurt Gödel proved in the thirties that in any logical 
system based on the predicate calculus (ie logic as we know it) that 
contains the integers (ie the most basic numerical part of maths) it 
is possible to frame questions the answers to which cannot be 
decided from within the system.   The theorem is generally supposed 
to mean that mathemetics is infinite, since it will always be 
possible to pose questions that can only be answered by extending 
the framework of axioms used.  I doubt its relevance to Hermione's 
ability to decide who she likes.