Why (In)Canon exists
(In)Canon is an epistemic control layer: a deterministic boundary condition that governs when interpretation may begin without silent reconstruction. It exists to make structural absence visible and to prevent reconstructed material from being mistaken for stated evidence.
(In)Canon does not establish truth, correctness, quality, compliance, or adequacy. It reports only whether required structural elements are explicitly stated or not stated. “Admissible” means structurally permissible only.
Many analytical and governance workflows assume that source material is already fit for interpretation. In practice, inputs can appear coherent while still missing key structural bindings. When that happens, interpretation begins on reconstructed material rather than on stated evidence.
What usually happens
When information is incomplete, readers supply missing structure automatically. This reconstructive step is rarely named or logged, yet it determines what counts as “the story”.
- Missing actor, action, time, or consequence are supplied
- Reconstruction becomes indistinguishable from evidence
- Audit trails begin after the critical boundary is crossed
Why this matters
Once reconstruction is invisible, disagreements look like interpretive differences, when they are often differences in what was silently assembled.
- Confidence exceeds explicit support
- Accountability becomes blurred
- Downstream automation amplifies the problem
Before interpretation can begin without silent reconstruction, a narrative needs explicit structural preconditions. The exact schema varies by domain, but the core requirement is that key bindings are present in the source material itself.
Typical prerequisites
- Actor (who)
- Action (what happened)
- Time (when / under what timeframe)
- Outcome (what resulted)
- Scope or constraint (where applicable)
Core stance
- Admissibility precedes interpretation
- Absence is a first-class result
- If it isn’t explicitly there, it isn’t there (for evidence purposes)
Most systems try to improve interpretation. (In)Canon makes the pre-interpretive stage explicit by asking a single question: Is this material structurally admissible for interpretation without reconstruction?
If prerequisites are missing, (In)Canon records absence rather than repairing it. Interpretation can still occur, but it must occur with an explicit acknowledgement that reconstruction was required.
Upstream boundary
- Checks explicit presence of required structural elements
- Refuses to infer or fill gaps
- Produces deterministic, repeatable outputs
- Remains upstream of reasoning, scoring, or decisioning
Not a validator
- Not a reasoning engine
- Not a schema-only validator
- Not a classifier or scorer
- Not a decision-making system
When structural gaps are invisible
- Assumptions are mistaken for evidence
- Audit trails begin too late
- Accountability is unclear
- Automation becomes overconfident
When admissibility is explicit
- Reconstruction becomes visible
- Interpretation can be scoped and justified
- Disagreements become diagnosable
- Governance becomes tractable
(In)Canon does not replace analysis. It makes analysis honest about its starting point. It does not tell you what something means. It reports whether the prerequisites for assigning meaning are explicitly present in the source, or whether reconstruction is required.
(In)Canon exists because modern systems are very good at producing answers and very poor at recognising when inputs cannot support them without reconstruction. It makes absence visible, prevents silent reconstruction, and ensures downstream interpretation is clearly bounded to what is explicitly stated.
(In)Canon identifies structure and reports stated vs not stated. It does not assess meaning, correctness, quality, compliance, or adequacy.