Expressive indeterminacy and empowerment

by Suspended Reason

Indeterminacy and ambiguity are ways of staying empowered. By not committing to one single, advanced, common-knowledge-creating self-interpretation in public, I retain the option of later explaining away (offering a strategically useful self-interpretation, or “conceptualization”) when the moment comes. By keeping commitments more open-ended, generic, or underspecified, I increases my degrees of freedom (wriggle room) to act later. By keeping my self-interpretation of desire more relaxed, I leaves open future possibilities.