Free Speech & Postmodernism
Contents:
Caleb Yong - - Res Publica 17 4: Electronic Commerce and Free Speech.
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Jessica Litman - - Ethics and Information Technology 1 3: Controversies Over Free Speech. Fiss, The Irony of Free Speech: The Irony of Free Speech. Robert Amdur - - Ethics 4: Added to PP index Total downloads 35 , of 2,, Recent downloads 6 months 4 , of 2,, How can I increase my downloads? Sign in to use this feature. This article has no associated abstract. Open Preview See a Problem? Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. The liberal case for free speech won out in the modern world, but it has been under strong attack in the past generation. The attacks have come not only from traditional conservatives but increasingly from the postmodern left.
In this essay, Stephen Hicks presents and dissects the philosophical arguments made by the postmoderns for speech restrictions and responds with a v The liberal case for free speech won out in the modern world, but it has been under strong attack in the past generation. In this essay, Stephen Hicks presents and dissects the philosophical arguments made by the postmoderns for speech restrictions and responds with a vigorous and updated liberal case for free speech.
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Clear description of the postmodernist argument against free speech Rational discussion presumes the other side values truth and holds their beliefs because they believe them to be an accurate predictive model of the world and would enthusiastically welcome correction to their beliefs in order to build a better predictive model.
This is clearly not the case here.
Postmodernism Is Nonsensical Anti-Free Speech
I dislike the fact that the author took the postmodernist arguments at face value and tried to dispute them for the simple reason that Clear description of the postmodernist argument against free speech Rational discussion presumes the other side values truth and holds their beliefs because they believe them to be an accurate predictive model of the world and would enthusiastically welcome correction to their beliefs in order to build a better predictive model.
I dislike the fact that the author took the postmodernist arguments at face value and tried to dispute them for the simple reason that this strategy does not change minds. The arguments exist merely to justify beliefs that are held for other reasons. I am interested in actually changing minds so that we can build a better world not having a useless philosophical discussion. A superior approach to argument with those who do not value truth, is to acknowledge that people hold the beliefs that they do because they believe they will help them to meet their needs.
Then seek to understand how these beliefs are helping them to meet their needs. Finally illustrate to them how these zero sum beliefs are actually destructive to them in the long term and to propose alternative positive sum beliefs that would more fully meet their needs in a more stable and enduring fashion. Short pointed demonstration of postmodernism's premises and refutations of each.
Both Michael and I chose to play. When I challenged him, I knew who he is. Michael has worked hard to develop the skills that he has acquired. By contrast, I have worked less hard to acquire the lesser number of skills that I have. Also, we both know the rules of the game, and there is a referee who is impartially enforcing those rules.
When the game was played, Michael shot the ball into the basket the number of times needed to earn his points. He deserves the points. And I deserve my three points as well. So, Michael won the game fair and square—and if my goal is to win at basketball then I should seek out other people to play with. That is the liberal individualist answer to the question. This is where the principle of altruism comes in.
Altruism says that in order to equalize opportunities we must take from the strong and give to the weak; that is, we must engage in redistribution. What we can do, in the basketball case, is equalize by, say, not allowing Michael Jordan to use his right hand; or if it is a matter of jumping, by making him wear weights on his ankles so that his jumping and my jumping are equalized.
That is the principle of sports handicapping, which is widely used, and it entails not letting someone employ an asset so that the little guy has a chance. The other possible strategy is to give me a point head start.
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That is, we would not take anything away from Michael that he has earned, but rather it would give me something that I have not earned. Or of course we could employ both remedies simultaneously. So, there are three approaches. Or 3 we can do both. There is a general pattern here. The egalitarian starts with the premise that it is not fair unless the parties who are competing are equal.
Then, the egalitarian points out that some parties are stronger in some respect than others. Finally, the egalitarian seeks to redistribute in some way in order to make the parties equal or it seeks to prevent the stronger from using their greater assets. Postmodern leftists apply all of this to speech and say something like the following: But some people have more speech than others, and some have more effective speech than others.
So what we need to do, in order to equalize speech, is to limit the speech of the stronger parties in order to equalize or give more speech opportunities to the weaker parties.
Or we need to do both. The parallel with affirmative action is clear. The next question is: Who are the stronger and the weaker parties that we are talking about? Well, not surprisingly, the Left again emphasizes racial and sexual classes as the groups in need of help. What is the racial and sexual composition of various professions? Then they will argue that racism and sexism are the causes of those disparities and that we need to attack those disparities by redistribution. How do individualists and liberals respond to the postmodern-Leftist-egalitarian arguments? In some cases, the disparities that leftists find are genuine and racism and sexism do factor into those disparities.
Free Speech & Postmodernism. By Stephen R.C. Hicks, Ph.D. Stephen Hicks is Professor of Philosophy at Rockford College, where he also is. Executive. Free Speech & Postmodernism has 51 ratings and 4 reviews. Alex said: Clear description of the postmodernist argument against free speech Rational discu.
But instead of engaging in redistribution, individualists argue, we should solve those problems by teaching individuals to be rational, in two ways. First, we should teach them to develop their skills and talents and be ambitious, so they can make their own way in the world. To this, the postmodernists respond that the advice is pointless in the real world. And here is where the postmodernist arguments, though they have been used in the case of affirmative action, are new with respect to speech. What they do is introduce a new epistemology—a social constructionist epistemology—into the censorship debates.
Traditionally, speech has been seen as an individual cognitive act. The postmodern view, by contrast, is that speech is formed socially in the individual. And since what we think is a function of what we learn linguistically, our thinking processes are constructed socially, depending on the linguistic habits of the groups we belong to. From this epistemological perspective, the notion that individuals can teach themselves or go their own way is a myth. Also, the notion that we can take someone who has been constructed as a racist and simply teach him to unlearn his bad habits, or teach a whole group to unlearn its bad habits, by appealing to their reason—that also is a myth.
The point here is not primarily political but epistemological. My point, not engaged by the letters, is that constraint of an ideological kind is generative of speech and that therefore the very intelligibility of speech as assertion rather than noise is radically dependent on what free-speech ideologues would push away.