I'm trying to build a philosophical argument against free speech. Any ideas...

I'm trying to build a philosophical argument against free speech. Any ideas? So far I've been trying to approach the subject from the point of it's inherent individualistic quality having a disintegrating effect on the society's cohesiveness

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low effort and mob mentallity

Most people, especially among the youth, don't even have any idea on what "freedom" is. All they can think of is "free speech". I find it depressing and have the impression that "free speech" ends up weakening, if not destroying, the idea of a higher, stronger "freedom" (like, ACTING free). Fuck free speech.

What's the difference between free speech and acting free?

i want her to sit on my face and rub her ass and cunt all over it until she comes

>So far I've been trying to approach the subject from the point of it's inherent individualistic quality having a disintegrating effect on the society's cohesiveness
Which isn't exactly new since it's been the number one argument for burning books and sending dissidents into prison for centuries. You can make a philosophical argument for and against anything, including why we should cast out the sick, kill our elders, late-term abort, and so on.
Which is why every consitution puts 90% of their effort into making sure certain rights are eternally protected agains the government and the mob.
So good luck but there's really already been a lot of thought put into this.

That may be the dumbest thing I have ever read. But someone has to write those pronoun laws I guess.

Easy: free speech is an open clause for the strongest type of discourse to reign over all. It's ideological and dialectical anarchism. Of what use is positivism or scientism when everything can be proven with a specific amount of funding? If everything can be proven, then of what use is free speech if not as an illusion for propaganda to subsist as information? If this all true, then you don't have free speech, since discourse is oriented by the wealthiest through the means funding certain papers that back their own agenda, so they can use it as a form of legitimacy to their own political or axiological discourse. I repeat: free speech is an open clause for private actors to control indoctrination of other less powerful private actors.

>Those thighs

>I'm trying to build a philosophical argument against free speech
>I'm trying to build a philosophical argument
>I'm trying to build
congrats, stopped reading here

I agree but you don't think it through to the end.

What will happen (and is happening right now) is that those most powerful actors also control to which extent free speech is limited - via algorithms they finance, "fake news" accusations they finance, lobbying the government to ban "hate speech" which is defined by - surprise - them, and so on.
Information overload and and controlled mass media are a serious problem but at least it leaves the option of the strongest argument still winning.

>having a disintegrating effect on the society's cohesiveness

Well it doesn't. In fact, I would argue that not allowing free speech will destroy your country and your culture eventually.

Saying something is just a very small part of doing something. Many people care more about their right to talk than about their right to actually do this or that.

OP, you may want to refutate in advance Spinoza's chapter XX of Tractatus politico-theologicus, check it if you can.

Spinoza promotes free speech within rational/moral limits (hate speech, defamation etc.), but it sometimes seems that people awarded with free speech cannot understand and accept that ANY kind of speech at all shouldn't be tolerated. Free speech is spontaneously understood as the right to accuse the innocent, lie, provoke, encourage violence etc. It's not what it is ; but it may be unavoidable that it will be understood as such.

>since discourse is oriented by the wealthiest through the means funding certain papers that back their own agenda

What's wrong with that? I think you're conflating the idea of freedom with equality, as in you can only be free with equality and I don't see the justification for this belief. Freedom under law means that everyone is guaranteed an equal opportunity, not an equal outcome. Some people will be better speakers than others, but this fact wouldn't diminish the mush-mouth's freedom of speech.

>China
>strict control of free speech, the government actively kept the population illiterate to prevent any sort of dissent
>5000 years and counting
>about to dominate free world
Hmmmm really makes one ponder

free speech and freedom of religion allows groups like islam to subvert nations in the name of their religion

You're just creating a strawman by focusing on a fool's spontaneous understanding of free speech. It's like asking a naive person "Have you ever taken drugs? Don't lie or I will kill you" and beheading them when they didn't disclose their coffee or painkiller use.

More than 99% of people will absolutely understand you and agree with you if you explain why you're not allowed to yell FIRE in a theatre.

The intellectual dishonesty starts when you put that on the same level as "hate speech" while simultaneously defining hate speech as any kind of criticism against a mainstream view.

And don't pretend we aren't already calling it hate speech when someone says "I don't think our country should be 50% Moroccans and rising".

>about to dominate free world

Sure it is Chang. Dream on.

I'm not him and I agree with you to some extent but it obviously depends on the parameters you choose. Ask yourself if you would rather live in China. Destroying the very air you breathe and fedding your child toxic waste without any chance to sue while expanding globally because White nations are now feeling really guilty about colonialism isn't exactly proof.

I'd argue the opposite. If people were allowed to say what they think without fear of state-sponsored ridicule, being fired etc., a lot of monsters would have been stopped already.

>More than 99% of people will absolutely understand you and agree with you if you explain why you're not allowed to yell FIRE in a theatre.
No. Maybe 70% if you insist.
You seem to assume that people are actually rational. What I said about "a fool's spontaneous understanding of free speech" can be confirmed quite easily if you spend a lot of time with teenagers or just browsing the internet.
I don't think I defined hate speech at all.
>"I don't think our country should be 50% Moroccans and rising"
This should not be called hate speech. I guess we agree here. It's the perfectly legit side of "free speech". What I meant is, if you allow this, a large part of the people will not understand and accept that some more serious hate speech should be banned. The line is thin and the average guy ain't no genius.

>What's wrong with that?
Was I ambiguous enough that you started to project possible values of judgment that I could have?

>I think you're conflating the idea of freedom with equality, as in you can only be free with equality and I don't see the justification for this belief.
No. I'm making the assumption that liberalism flirts with feudalism and therefore allowing for neo-feudalism to be created. The state by denying itself the power of indoctrination of its own people creates an ideological vacuum that allows other actors to fulfill that power vacuum, which allows for an ideological war to start between different entities.

>Freedom under law means that everyone is guaranteed an equal opportunity, not an equal outcome.
Freedom doesn't mean equal opportunities nor does it mean an equal outcome. It's a meaningless romantic term.

>Some people will be better speakers than others, but this fact wouldn't diminish the mush-mouth's freedom of speech.
It wouldn't, we agree. But in comparison others with less charisma would be ignored. This is why Canada has Justin Trudeau as the leader of it's Executive and not an ugly, mumbling, short, wise old man. Formality over substance.

>I'd argue the opposite. If people were allowed to say what they think without fear of state-sponsored ridicule, being fired etc., a lot of monsters would have been stopped already.

This is where we're getting into the specific restrictions of speech rather than the general argument.

>if you spend a lot of time with teenagers
Nice try, FBI.

Seriously though, even teenagers understand my FIRE example or why it's illegal to spread obvious lies about someone. People are idiots and don't think about these things, but they'll understand them once explained.

And I agree the line is thin - the main conflict is around whether we should make sure no bad word is uttered and err on the side of caution, or whether we should make sure that no one is censored, in dubio pro reo.
And my argument is that it will always be too tempting for certain groups to censor dissidents under the guise of "kindness and tolerance". Fighting back against the smallest infringement onto free speech is the most important thing there is, to me. Because people are being convicted of hate speech for things like the example I gave already and it's only going to get worse.

Freedom of speech IS freedom of action. Society advances through its constitution of performative speech acts such as passing a bill, marriage, political negotiation, executive orders, criminal sentences, etc.. Without freedom of speech, we have no freedom to act because the action cannot even be proposed.

It's bad because revolutions are never created. We have our heads so up in our asses with speech acts that we forgot what really made us evolve throughout the ages: physical acts. What does it matter to communicate and to make use of discussions if it is all meaningless in the end? Is an ideology better than the other if it has more footnotes? Why do the footnotes matter anyway? My problem with free speech is that it allows for the illusion of change to subsist in our civilizations: dialogue barely changes everything, it only confirms it. Maybe if we had less free speech a lot things would have already changed. Who even respects anyone who's all talk and no action? No one that is.

>No. I'm making the assumption that liberalism flirts with feudalism and therefore allowing for neo-feudalism to be created. The state by denying itself the power of indoctrination of its own people creates an ideological vacuum that allows other actors to fulfill that power vacuum, which allows for an ideological war to start between different entities.

Isn't this inevitable, though? That some idea will take hold amongst the populace through some manner of authority, and thereby apply a soft coercion to other points of view? It feels like this is just an excuse for a government to say, "Truly free speech isn't possible under liberalism, because corporations will send their ideas out, so why should it be any different for us to say what is acceptable and unacceptable?" This isn't just a problem of liberalism either, even libertarian socialists acknowledge that there would be forms of social pressure and crystallization of opinion under their ideal social order.

Please tell me you are just fucking with me because your posts are really long just to be bait and I'd be genuinely sad if someone that stupid really existed.

>Isn't this inevitable, though?
We agree. It is inevitable but death is also inevitable. Should any of us kill ourselves? The underlying premise is that I favor the state or any other sovereign entity to assertively define its position so it can allow for a revolution/counter-revolution to be made. It's the will of the strongest. Nonetheless, an entity can be strong and stupid: e.g. western nations. They're strong but they allowed foreign backed discourse to infiltrate their colleges and intellectual circles. I'm all about for natural cycle of the ouroboros, but if we can delay while being at the top...why shouldn't we do it?

Free speech in the mode of dissent (and this is the only mode we ever find it in; otherwise it has no significance) has transformed itself into a system, supplied and maintained by the excess energy of modern leisure and narcissism, wherein people who have serious investment into the economies (small and large) of modern society also invest a cynicism “against” it. Nick Land proposes a high-Exit system where serious dissenters (critics) have the ability to completely disconnect from the environment, contrasting the normalcy of modern dissent as a blatant neuroticism; In a high-Voice low-Exit system, the myth of being-stuck-in-one-place creates a sort of dreamer economy where merely present utopias are exchanged in dialogues of dissent and neurosis, whereas in a high-Exit low-Voice system serious dissent (critique) is filtered out and any cynical dialogue becomes unintrusive to the common man (at least not in the way it intrudes today). Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean that the free exit society is free of critique; it is just that critique will be much more honest, and will ultimately sublate itself to the movement of society in reality.

>The state by denying itself the power of indoctrination of its own people

Every single country that has a public school system has a state that indoctrinates its own people.

I agree with you and I understand your point. Although we're thinking of different types of indoctrination. My indoctrination is intolerant, while the current indoctrination is tolerant. It's counterproductive to have a doctrine that says "Follow other doctrines".

You coincidentally confirmed his point.

Yeah but you're operating on a strawman of liberal ideology.

Accepting liberal principles doesn't mean you're a moral relativist.

Where did I approved of moral relativism? And let me warn you that if you accuse me of logical fallacies without proving them first I won't be responding to you again.

It's a strawman to say that liberal tolerance means that you tolerate people who are intolerant.

If that is true: why do feminists and members of the LGBT community tolerate Muslims? Why do the European leaders tolerate the refugees? I could go on.

Here's a conundrum for free speech advocates:
If words are harmless and have no power, why does it matter if speech is entirely free or not?
If words are powerful and can have effect on lives of others, why are you against the protection (censorship) of of some people from some kinds of hate speech, cyberbullying, propaganda etc? Wouldn't it make sense? We regulate all things that can have devastating effects: we don't give guns to mentally ill, we don't sell cigarettes and alcohol to children.
Which is it, then?

>I'm trying to build a philosophical argument against free speech.

Why?

OP, you're an idiot.

Words are powerful and have meaning, which is why it's illegal to threaten someone's life in every single Western country.

Which I agree with.

But what I don't agree with is that saying you don't like Muslims on a public radio should be an offense, nor should it be an offense to deny the Holocaust.

These are ideological differences, and should be legal to say out loud without state reprisal.

But if you threaten someone's life, I think there should be a reaction.

Imagine I just said the following:
>HEY user. I'M GOING TO KILL YOU.
Is it illegal? No, it's not. Assuming you're American and I'm European the possibility of this threat to become a fact is nearly impossible. Ergo, a threat is only illegal when the possible of damage exists in relevant way.

Alright. Who gets to decide what's permitted and what isnt

Start with the acknowledgement that some things are of greater value than others and that it's wrong to treat them as of equal merit. Not all opinion should are worth hearing and in fact some are so seditious that they need to be squelched for the good of the polis. God save the monarch.

words are powerful and suffering is not immoral but the natural condition of mankind.

>words are harmless
no one actually believes this except for controversial superstar trolls who bask in the penetrating light of the media. Meanings are contingent on context, as is the reception of offence. You don't get offended if your close friend makes a comical remark about your ethnicity or gender (so long as they have a sense of humour) because casual obscenities break down the uncomfortable formalities of social life. That said, a politicised crusade against a crude strawman of your culture of origin, perpetuated by people you've never met, is obviously going to be received poorly.

>Wouldn't it make sense? We regulate all things that can have devastating effects: we don't give guns to mentally ill, we don't sell cigarettes and alcohol to children.
false equivalency, those are all industries who would be shut down for malpractice if they weren't rigorous in applying the law. Their interests are to make money, not to preserve well-being. Someone who goes out of their way to offend should have the right to do so, but that obviously comes with the responsibility of knowing the right time and place to speak it, without it having to be an enforced rule of law. Regulations on free speech would merely stifle the potential for productive discourse.

There is none. "society's cohesiveness" has no value in and of itself; society's proper role is to protect individual liberty.

>society's proper role is to protect individual liberty.

Lol how do you even type something this ridiculous without a shred of irony

Why do you think it's ridiculous?

You're a fucking idiot and all have that has been answered in this very thread already, let alone a million times in other places.
How the fuck do you not forget to breathe.

Because "liberty" in every modern sense is a philosophy moderated by a state. Human nature is social; antisocial behavior (protected by unadulterated liberty) is destructive to a society. See the paradox?

I guess "ridiculous" is too strong a word but the moral sentiment behind that statement is silly

The problem with that is that it is an appeal to the majority. Individual liberty is great if you're a working, white american who is capable of thriving independently; it's not so great for those excluded from your social sphere who sacrifice their liberty for the commodities which furnish yours. Individual liberty should be a global concern, but it can't be protected until every individual possesses it.

You're a tool and the other guy is right.
The social contract wasn't designed to first create a society for the greater good and then protect it, it was designed to protect individual rights.

>Because "liberty" in every modern sense is a philosophy moderated by a state
No idea what you're even trying to say. It's as simple as making sure your neighbour doesn't steal your cow just because he is stronger.

Western society = sacrifice individual rights only to the extent that it ensures someone else's individual rights aren't infringed on

Collectivist commie states and totalitarians = sacrifice individual rights for the greater good of the society

Who the fuck has to sacrifice their liberty for the sake of A FUCKING WHITE MALE in today's age?

China will be eaten alive by it's Hubris and inability to reign in the newly wealthy.

The point is there is no final stage of absolute liberty, because at that point there is also no state.

>It's as simple as making sure your neighbour doesn't steal your cow just because he is stronger

But there will always be a rival society that is

Yes, the social contract is a compromise, we'd all rather have security without taxation. But that has absolutely nothing to do with your original point.

>Is it illegal? No, it's not.

It is illegal. Just because you aren't being prosecuted for it, doesn't mean it isn't illegal.

Who is this lovely boy

There is virtually no argument against free speech that isn't consequentialist and therefore vulgar as fuck. Almost nobody with serious philosophical inclinations is going to argue against freedom of thought, especially now that language is virtually equated with thought. Except in extremely qualified ways like restricting it to the elite, but even those will often be circular in a sense, because the reasoning for such a restriction will be that the mob is not capable of meaningful freedom (so still, "those who are free should be free").

If you want to make philosophical arguments for restricting speech, and therefore almost certainly the free malleability and development of thought in general, you're either going to have to resort to surface level ethical consequentialisms that don't touch on any fundamental philosophical anthropology, or you're going to have to resort to caricaturish and brutish philosophies that probably nobody actually, seriously believes, like some hyper-mechanistic accelerationism where all you care about is creating the great Machine God.

You might want to limit your domain to contemporary political philosophy, which has much more of a pragmatic bent, focused on real situations and real problems in contemporary society. If you have access to a university library, just go read the Oxford/Blackwell/Cambridge/Whatever Handbook of Political Science and skim for articles on free speech, and you should eventually get a nice little summary of the current major analytic arguments for not yelling fire in a crowded theatre because P' does not equal P, therefore Q.

It's not though, it's the equivalent of telling your sister you're gonna kill her if she eats your cereal again.

>Anlagenbau

>freedom of thought

You're just being pedantic.

>it's illegal
>no it's not
>well you're just being pedantic
Are you stupid or is this some kind of humour I don't get

>old hag
Fuck off

>max stirner
spooks

freedom of thought and action is stirner's entire fucking philosophical program

he's so radical about it that he says we shouldn't even try to encapsulate it in programmatic or moralistic statements, individual autonomy to change one's mind and do what one wills in every new and spontaneous moment is all that matters

A threat of bodily injury or a threat of killing someone is ILLEGAL in every single American state you fucking moron.

I don't give a shit if you can conjure up a retarded scenario where you're eating dinner with your sister and say you're gonna kill her but don't mean it. It's still fucking illegal.

International Penal Law doesn't contemplate verbal threats. It's not illegal.

You've never read Stirner if you think he was in favor of "freedom of thought," or "freedom of action." He uses the word "freedom" to mean "dominion." Freedom of thought over you, freedom of action over you, etc. Rather than you disposing with your thought or action as it does not suit you, your actions and thoughts dispose of you. And this is possession like any other kind

>Western society = sacrifice individual rights only to the extent that it ensures someone else's individual rights aren't infringed on
Entirely wrong. Stop romanticizing bad government.

>International Penal Law

>le green frog xD
nice

"This rejection of conventional forms of intellectual discussion is linked to Stirner's substantive views about language and rationality. His unusual style reflects a conviction that both language and rationality are human products which have come to constrain and oppress their creators. Stirner maintains that accepted meanings and traditional standards of argumentation are underpinned by a conception of truth as a privileged realm beyond individual control. As a result, individuals who accept this conception are abandoning a potential area of creative self-expression in favour of adopting a subordinate role as servants of truth. In stark contrast, Stirner insists that the only legitimate restriction on the form of our language, or on the structure of our arguments, is that they should serve our individual ends."

"Stirner once described himself as writing only to procure for his thoughts an existence in the world, insisting that what subsequently happened to these ideas ‘is your affair and does not trouble me’ (263)."

i'm not interested in quibbling over semantics so reply however you want, but if anyone's actually interested in what stirner might feel about restrictions on his """"""""""""""freedom of expression"""""""""" (however you want to problematize this phrase), see above

Why is leftism even allowed in Veeky Forums? Why don't you faggots go back to Plebbit? Why do you have to cancer up my place with your autism and ridiculous ideas? This place has been dead since m00t left.

'I'm trying to build and argument for a conclusion I like, and not drawing conclusion from arguments. Any idea?'

We regulate the things you mentioned, not only due to the potentially devastating effects, but due to the absence of benefits to compensate. Freedom of speech does however have benefits, and these are widely considered to outweigh the downsides.

An absence of freedom of speech must be accompanied unambiguous and non-expoloitable legisaltion detailing what one can and cannot say; which is sufficiently robust to remain just, independent of the context. This problem is intractable.

Contemporary "hate speech" legislation, and the social tyranny that accompanies it, prevents legitimate criticisms from being disclosed at the risk of causing offence. This causes future discussions to become increasingly biased towards the subjects of the criticism, whilst marginalising those with opposing views; resulting in echo chambers on either side. We've seen the fruits of this in the development of today's radical psuedo-liberalism and the alt-right movement. And so we live in a world where to state such things as "To be male or female is a biological property, not a choice," or to conjecture that "A disgust response towards homosexual romantic displays is due to the absence of attraction masking body fluid exchange" is not fruit for discussion and debate; but an abhorrent view that must be treated with contempt.

Look up Elonis vs. United States, you're simply wrong. I don't know why that's so hard to accept for you.

I'm talking about the origin of the social contract, not about what bad governments have made of it. It's not wrong.

Totalitarianism and Authoritarianism are apolitical.

Yeah, man, I mean, s was way better before x took over. Why can't they just go back to z? Nowadays it's nothing but x and y.
This place has been dead since p.
Fucking ((((((the other))))))

>quoting an analysis of Stirner's work rather than the work itself

That's funny.

"To this day we use the Romance word “religion,” which expresses the concept of a condition of being bound. To be sure, we remain bound, so far as religion takes possession of our inward parts; but is the mind also bound? On the contrary, that is free, is sole lord, is not our mind, but absolute. Therefore the correct affirmative translation of the word religion would be “freedom of mind”! In whomsoever the mind is free, he is religious in just the same way as he in whom the senses have free course is called a sensual man. The mind binds the former, the desires the latter. Religion, therefore, is boundness or religion with reference to me — I am bound; it is freedom with reference to the mind — the mind is free, or has freedom of mind. Many know from experience how hard it is on us when the desires run away with us, free and unbridled; but that the free mind, splendid intellectuality, enthusiasm for intellectual interests, or however this jewel may in the most various phrase be named, brings us into yet more grievous straits than even the wildest impropriety, people will not perceive; nor can they perceive it without being consciously egoists."
-Stirner

The social contract is bad government.

Miss Alice has actually been an inspiration to my writing.

Jesus why does it hurt people here so badly to just say "ah okay" instead of trying desperately to keep face.

Regardless of whether or not it's bad (and God knows what you think is "good" government"), our "wish" to be governed stems from wanting to protect individual liberties, not from creating a vague greater good even if it costs us our liberties.

liberty is good because memes

She only fucks girls now I hear

Milo Yianoupolos

>"was a United States Supreme Court case concerning whether conviction of threatening another person over interstate lines"
>"over interstate lines"

Lol okay, as if this proves me wrong.

bonald.wordpress.com/in-defense-of-censorship/

you might like this mook

dang you really showed me, negro

Are you clinically retarded? We were discussing threats between Americans and Europeans, but suddenly interstate lines matter?
Not to mention that the entire case is about how to determine whether something is a "true threat", i.e. a legally relevant threat, as opposed to something you say as a joke.

I can't even fathom how insecure you must be behind that screen if it physically hurts to admit you're wrong.

sure did, my dear negrito

>We were discussing threats between Americans and Europeans

I wasn't. I was discussing whether threats are illegal in the first place.

>and say you're gonna kill her but don't mean it. It's still fucking illegal.

>it's still illegal even if you don't mean it
>Supreme Court explicitly states it's not a true threat if you don't mean it and therefore not illegal

I refer you back to the last line of my previous post.

He's saving face. Forget about it.

you're misunderstanding
the argument is that a statement doesn't need to be true to believed, it just needs enough incentive

>China
>literacy rises massively under Mao
>this leads to an industrial revolution which combined with their huge population makes them a superpower

>India
>very low literacy
>still a relatively powerless country despite its population
really fires your neurons

>Massively divided society by a chaste system is crap
Who would have thought!

just read Marx, he shits on liberal rights all the time

you made me break nofap yoi cunt

It's still illegal even if the court has to arbitrate if it's a "true threat" or not you fucking imbeciles.

I'll respond to you one last time. It's not illegal in Romano-Germanic Law because we have something called "objective actualist" interpretation that means that doctrine, the consensus of the legal community, says it is not illegal because the underlying legal requirements for the legal concept of threat to be applied aren't fulfilled. It's also not illegal in Common Law because of the precedent the American user posted. It doesn't matter if you follow and exegetic or an interpretationist position on this matter. You don't know what you're talking about. Therefore, stop wasting our time and stop going off-topic. You're anonymous. There's no need in saving ace. We don't know you. No one does. So just stop already. And if you really want to discuss this, go open a thread so all the people on this board who study law can have a good time explaining you how dumb you are and how much of a pseud you are.