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Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

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Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#151

Post by bnralt »

somesortofthing wrote: post #47

I think this article makes a key mistake that I see almost all commentators make of visions of free speech less radical than, say, the first amendment: They consider only the direct effects of speech on those who hear it. If you accept this, it's very easy to(correctly) respond that it's not the state's job to police mere offense, no matter how grave it may be. Some people who try to make criticisms of a radical free…

I think everyone is able to see how the other side incites violence, but thinks the rule doesn't apply to them. For instance, there was a lot of rhetoric about how dangerous it was when Donald Trump was elected - that it would be the end of Democracy, that fascism was coming to the U.S., that we could well end up with concentration camps and nuclear war. The man who shot up the Congressional baseball game[1] was a member of pages dedicated to how threatening Trump and the Republicans were. Are the people who said that responsible for his attempt at political assassination?

I guess you can argue that. But most people I see bringing up "stochastic terrorism" suddenly say that those types of violence don't count. It's not just that this outlook is controversial - I've yet to meet anyone who has applied it consistently.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_baseball_shootin...

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#152

Post by ReptileMan »

somesortofthing wrote: post #47

I think this article makes a key mistake that I see almost all commentators make of visions of free speech less radical than, say, the first amendment: They consider only the direct effects of speech on those who hear it. If you accept this, it's very easy to(correctly) respond that it's not the state's job to police mere offense, no matter how grave it may be. Some people who try to make criticisms of a radical free…

>denial of the means to live a dignified life

That is not violence, not sure why you put some weasel statements in.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#153

Post by ReptileMan »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #146
kneebonian wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but at the same time, it's undeniable that a lot of money and attention is flowing to ever-bolder provocateurs whose only possible goal is to escalate existing tensions and iniquities to violence in service of their political aims. Then you should defeat them in the marketplace of ideas and be able to counter their facillous words. To suggest otherwise is to stand in a position where you claim that some people are…

The marketplace of ideas is a completely made up thing to justify a stance of political non-action against real harms. People who are for example planning a mass shooting against a demonized minority are not participating in such a market, to the extent it exists at all.

And the people planning shooting against a demonized majority?

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#154

Post by OkayPhysicist »

rootusrootus wrote: post #137
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #111

On the other hand, you can't have your liberal, intellectual society if you allow people to go around making credible threats of violence, which are "just speech" if you subscribe to the speech-is-speech, violence-is-violence approach. If you have to wait until the threat is realized, then any group capable of having members take the punishment for individual acts of violence can grant credibility to making threats t…

> The question is simply where the line gets drawn. Not that simple. First you have to decide who gets to draw it.

In a "liberal, intellectual society", surely each individual would choose for themselves where the line is drawn, and then vigorously debate amongst themselves until a position wins out in the marketplace of ideas, right?

Nothing says liberal and intellectual like unquestioningly handing off decision making to some authority figure.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#155

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

kneebonian wrote: post #69
somesortofthing wrote: post #47

I think this article makes a key mistake that I see almost all commentators make of visions of free speech less radical than, say, the first amendment: They consider only the direct effects of speech on those who hear it. If you accept this, it's very easy to(correctly) respond that it's not the state's job to police mere offense, no matter how grave it may be. Some people who try to make criticisms of a radical free…

> but at the same time, it's undeniable that a lot of money and attention is flowing to ever-bolder provocateurs whose only possible goal is to escalate existing tensions and iniquities to violence in service of their political aims. Then you should defeat them in the marketplace of ideas and be able to counter their facillous words. To suggest otherwise is to stand in a position where you claim that some people are…

This isn't really about whose ideas are more correct. The strategy is, as Steve Bannon infamously put it, to "flood the zone with shit". They're basically doing a DDoS against the marketplace of ideas.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#156

Post by wwweston »

henrikschroder wrote: post #28
giantg2 wrote: post #2

"To be sure, that doesn’t mean that deliberately offending people for its own sake is morally acceptable, or that people should be entitled to use speech to incite violence, harass, or threaten." The difficulty is knowing what the intent was. Usually there are ways of "non-violent" communication. But it seems a lot of it is subjective. By far it seems the most restrictive places are primary and secondary schools.

> The difficulty is knowing what the intent was. It's not a coincidence that the postmodern thoughts that underpin a lot of this bullshit simply does away with intent, declaring it to be completely useless, and saying that the only thing that can be used to judge a message is how it affected the recipient. Combine that with "words are violence", and you can manufacture physical abuse out of thin air. It's really not…

Postmodernism absolutely does not deny intent. In fact, motivation behind texts/speech (as well as interpretation by readers/hearers) is such an important part of it that you can't really do postmodern analysis without accounting for motives.

The closest thing I can imagine for any kind of defense of your statement is that postmodernism will not let the declared or conscious intent of the speaker absolutely constrain a text. The logical distinctions between "not absolutely constraining" and "declaring it to be completely useless" should be clear. And the idea that people don't always declare their intent accurately should also be uncontroversial.

Really, postmodernism is essentially very big elaboration on the principles underlying Sinclair's observation "it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#157

Post by giraffe_lady »

luckylion wrote: post #102
keerthiko wrote: post #68

[flagged]

> For example, "cancel culture" doesn't seem like a problem to me. It's a pretty reasonable and sensible response by people who disagree with opinions shared by individuals with large platforms taking liberties to hurt people. Would you feel differently if it wasn't about canceling those who "hurt people" (where we again would need a definition of what is violent speech that hurts)? Like, if some group went out to ca…

"Would you feel differently if this thing were different?" ya maybe why do u ask.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#158

Post by gigibec »

breadbreadbread wrote: post #144

I think this article comes very close to saying "don't let words affect you", which is fundamentally impossible to ask anyone to do and taken to it's logical conclusion I should also not absorb anything in the article. I also think this article also ignores the fact that hateful people often use the language of free speech to justify their own behavior and to punish their critics. Everyday on the internet I see trans…

[dead]

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#159

Post by teolandon »

TheFreim wrote: post #138
jzb wrote: post #134

If we want a "liberal, intellectual society" we absolutely have to consider some speech "violence." To use one current example: The people pushing the idea of trans people as "groomers" is violence. It is not an intellectual debate, it's not necessary to entertain in order to preserve free thought, etc. The goal of that speech is to other trans people and it endangers them. Tolerance of that kind of speech ensures th…

[flagged]

Did you misread something in the parent comment? They were talking about pushing the idea of trans people as groomers, in general. Trans people existing doesn't mean they're performing any type of child abuse.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#160

Post by llbeansandrice »

luckylion wrote: post #102
keerthiko wrote: post #68

[flagged]

> For example, "cancel culture" doesn't seem like a problem to me. It's a pretty reasonable and sensible response by people who disagree with opinions shared by individuals with large platforms taking liberties to hurt people. Would you feel differently if it wasn't about canceling those who "hurt people" (where we again would need a definition of what is violent speech that hurts)? Like, if some group went out to ca…

> would that also fall under "reasonable and sensible"?

No, because discrimination against someone ("canceling" them) for their race, religion, or sexual orientation is explicitly illegal in many circumstances.

You should put more effort into your strawmen.

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