Opinion Category Obfuscation
Opinion followed by a colon refers to editorials in newspaper headlines. This information cannot be known without familiarity with newspaper reportage categories. One may use this word followed by a colon to distinguish their opinion from text that isn’t. Quotation marks render this use moot as the distinction refers to two categories: a text that isn’t their own and a text that is. This is true by the implication of the quotation mark, unless the writer erred on its use. If the quotation mark is left out of negligence or plagiarism, the text cannot be the writer’s own but it can be their opinion that coincides with the person they should’ve quoted. It nullifies the overlapping categories of text that’s their own and text that isn’t with that of category of opinion. Because one cannot hold an opinion that isn’t their own, even when the text expressing this opinion isn’t their own, the opinion category eludes this question of ownership that elevates this expression beyond what it states as opinion.
If one gets a hold of an opinion, it implies acquisition. This process picks and chooses from parts to form a whole considered their own. Scholarly papers eschew this transformative formation to present what was picked and chosen. But it doesn’t present every part that informed the paper, just the ones that support its thesis. How different this category is then that of ordinary opinion if its expression differentiates between what is and isn’t their own, but also omits what informed this expression that presents a whole. Is it merely the context this category of opinion emerges that’s different?
Common to all opinion is their form that arises to something else. What arises as opinion is a relation to other things coming forth as expression. In this sense, every expression is an opinion. This won’t do since it strips opinion from its categorical position. Let’s have a look at how other categories discern opinion as category. Empiricism differentiates itself from opinion by scientific method, journalism by journalistic method, and so on. Method is a form of expression based on collective agreement of expression. Opinion by contrast lacks preceding agreement upon which an expression is formed. Difference in opinion then cannot emerge since opinions without preceding agreement cannot be compared. Once this preceding step has been cleared, then it ceases to be an opinion because an agreement has been reached.
Agreements preceding expression differ in kind that makes methods and categories that follow different as well. Scientific methods clarify methods in greater detail than journalistic ones that correlates with the amount of time it takes producing them. One might say that one is more methodical than the other based on this reduction of quality to quantity. But how is time spent on producing an expression relates to making it one’s own? If one’s expression starts to become more methodical as they spend time with methodical expression, then their opinion ceases to be an opinion. While if we take that language itself is a collective agreement, that is, an opinion, then methods can only arise from opinion.
Opinion and method thus depend on context. This text implies connection upon which communication occur that forms context. But as it is based on language as context that engenders communication that establishes connection that implies context, methods following this context remain more or less obscure depending on the clarity of agreement they are established on. That is to say text necessitates preceding text that proclaims it as such that cannot do so without implications open to interpretation of opinion. Thus it is opinion that establishes criteria upon which methods and categories rest. Differentiation between categories and methods, the elevation, self-affirmation and modalities these imply and express depend on the kind of opinion they rest on. This opinion changes in kind as it comes to contact with difference in opinion that arises by looking at itself. Opinion precedes and follows an agreed upon method without such agreement. It becomes increasingly concerned with itself through methods that proclaim to expunge opinion without collective agreement. To achieve this, opinion have to stop following and preceding this method, but it can only determine its success by agreement with itself. This makes reconciliation conceivable in case difference between methods ceases to be, such as the case between collective agreement and agreement by itself these methods hinge on. It needs to become a part of this method by its method that means becoming one with it. Whether it is possible becomes a question of commensurability between what precedes opinion with that of precedings of method.
