February 2025

The selection of subject matter remains arbitrary. Sitting on the overground to my workplace, surrounded by a sea of other individuals, this is but an exercise in thinking. Writing, merely a medium*. Indeed, this aforementioned arbitrariness is but partially true. Indeed, it is not that the selection is arbitrary but rather my desire for it to be agentic seems to have ceased presently.

Acutely aware of individuals having an immediate access to these notes is something. 

I find myself noticing, if not at once scrutinising, utterances made by others, including online. This observation is but a new one. 

Individuals are compelled to given an account of their and in their current state.

Expressed words deviate from their formal meaning.*1

This deviation is unnoticed or beyond the sensitivity of the speaker.

This deviation is inconsistently distributed within the population, predicated by social, cultural, and political factors.

Each instance, as well as the permutation, of individuals interacting with each other is a unique configuration of deviation from meaning.

My immediate objection is of disapproval. Indeed, it is emergent as well as unsolicited and, thus, remains withheld. To state that seldom is my disapproval placed onto the individual would be to a complete lie. Indeed, occasionally I find myself privately reproaching them. However, more often than not, I’m left remarking at this wider social state. A state where utterances, for the most part, are expressed nearly automatically, without epistemological reflection. Indeed, it does not seem to be the case that every part of one’s everyday life warrants such a reflection. Indeed, some would argue that none of it does. 

This disapproval of an external other remains but a precursor to an internal one. Assuredly earlier and perhaps certainly now, I have deviated from the formal meaning of my utterances. This was acutely the case prior to the epistemic disaster during my master’s, which, in itself, culminated into the disaster itself. The detail of this disaster to be available in the future. Even now, I remain ever vigilant about committing this error. Undoubtedly, the decision to take this position was not my own. Indeed, this was not a decision at all, in any more than being hungry would be. 

Why should formal meaning be important? Why should one adhere to exercising meaning formally and by the dictates of some consensus? Why can one not generate their own private meaning? 

Alternatively, meaning is subjective. Meaning is contingent on the context of its use. Perhaps, people do not necessarily deviate from the formal meaning of their utterances but rather these deviations in themselves are about something else. If one were to somehow codify and quantify these deviations, we’d know better. Unfortunately and yet again, we’re gracing the foremost problem, albeit merely.

*1 Formal meaning predicated by its corresponding dictionary definition is but a function of consensus of a particular majority at a particular time in history (Mackinnon & Heise, 2010).

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Bibliography

Chandler, Daniel. Semiotics: The Basics. (3rd Edition, 2022). London: Routledge. An accessible introduction to the study of signs and meaning-making. Available at: Semiotics: The Basics on Amazon.

Hannon, M., & Nguyen, J. (2022). Understanding philosophy. Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 1–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2022.2146186

Heidegger, M. (2019). Being and Time (Paperback ed.). London: Harper Perennial Modern Classics. Available at: https://amzn.to/4hlIJMS

Roberts, Peter. “Learning to Live with Doubt.” London Review of Education, 15(2), 2017. A reflective analysis on embracing uncertainty in educational and philosophical contexts. Available at: Learning to Live with Doubt.