Academic discussion of pornography is generally restricted to issues arising from the depiction of adults. I argue that child-pornography is a more complex matter, and that generally accepted moral judgements concerning pornography in general have to be revised when children are involved. I look at the question of harm to the children involved, the consumers, and society in general, at the question of blame, and at the possibility of a morally acceptable form of child-pornography. My approach involves an objectivist meta-ethics (...) and a utilitarian view of practical ethics, and I bring out the advantages of these theories to the consideration of moral issues such as this one. (shrink)

Silencing is a speech-related harm. We here focus on one particular account of silencing offered by Jennifer Hornsby and Rae Langton. According to this account, silencing is systematically generated, illocutionary-communicative failure. We here raise an apparent challenge to that account. In particular, we offer an example—the drowning case—that meets these conditions of silencing but does not intuitively seem to be an instance of it. First, we explore several conditions one might add to the Hornsby-Langton account, but we argue that none (...) are satisfactory. Then, we further explore the systematicity condition, which is insufficiently characterized in the current literature. Although we explore several promising ways to further characterize this condition, we ultimately conclude that more work needs to be done. Consequently, because this systematicity condition is under-specified, the Hornsby-Langton account of silencing is incomplete. (shrink)

I argue that there are strong consequentialist grounds for thinking that hate speech should be legally protected. The protection of hate speech allows those who are hateful to make their beliefs public, thereby exposing prejudices that might otherwise be suppressed to evaluation by other members of society. This greater transparency about prejudices has two social benefits. First, it facilitates social trust by making it easier to discover who holds beliefs that should exclude them from positions of authority, responsibility, and influence. (...) Second, it facilitates efforts to combat hatred by revealing which prejudiced members of society must be persuaded or discredited by those seeking to promote tolerance. (shrink)

Philosophical interest in state power has tended to focus on the state’s coercive powers rather than its expressive powers. I consider an underexplored aspect of the state’s expressive capacity: its capacity to use symbols (such as monuments, memorials, and street names) to promote political ends. In particular, I argue that the liberal state’s deployment of symbols to promote its members’ commitment to liberal ideals is in need of special justification. This is because the state’s exercise of its capacity to use (...) symbols may be in tension with respecting individual autonomy, particularly in cases in which the symbols exert influence without engaging citizens’ rational capacities. But despite the fact that the state’s deployment of symbols may circumvent citizens’ rational capacities, I argue that it may nonetheless be permissible when surrounded by certain liberal institutions and brought about via democratic procedures. (shrink)

Legal coercion seems morally problematic because it is susceptible to the Hegelian objection that it fails to respect individuals in a way that is ‘due to them as men’. But in what sense does legal coercion fail to do so? And what are the grounds for this requirement to respect? This paper is an attempt to answer these questions. It argues that legal coercion fails to respect individuals as reason-responsive agents; and individuals ought to be respected as such in virtue (...) of the fact that they are human beings. Thus it is in this sense that legal coercion fails to treat individuals with the kind of respect ‘due to them as men’. (shrink)

In this paper I provide an interpretation of Kant’s conception of free speech. Free speech is understood as the kind of speech that is constitutive of interaction respectful of everybody’s right to freedom, and it requires what we with John Rawls may call ‘public reason’. Public reason so understood refers to how the public authority must reason in order to properly specify the political relation between citizens. My main aim is to give us some reasons for taking a renewed interest (...) in Kant’s conception of free speech, including his account public reason. Kant’s position provides resources for dealing with many of the legal and political problems we currently struggle to analyze under this heading, such as the proper distinction between the sphere of justice and the sphere of ethics, hate speech, freedom of speech, defamation, and the public guarantee of reliable media and universal education. (shrink)

This paper suggests the democratic direction in which the right of freedom of expression should be conceived and applied. In the first two sections it suggests some counter-examples to, and diagnoses of, the libertarian and liberal conceptions of freedom of expression, taking Scanlon (1972) and Scanlon (1979), respectively, to be their chief proponents. The paper suggests that these conceptions cannot take into account clear examples, like fraudulent propaganda, which should not be legal. The democratic conception takes it to heart that (...) the pillars upon which the right of freedom of expression is founded are individual and collective autonomy, the right to know facts of public interest and information necessary for effective democratic control of government. The paper suggests that in a time when private powers seriously threaten these pillars, it is correct for the government to step in to provide the framework in which genuine discussion geared toward fulfilling the objectives of these pillars can take place. (shrink)

Political liberals argue that the classical conception of autonomy must be discarded because it is sectarian and metaphysical. This article rejects that a commitment to autonomy necessarily leads to sectarianism and questions the notion that respect for persons is separable from the commitment to autonomy. It defends a Kantian approach to autonomy, as belonging to the standpoint of practical reason, and argues that in this approach autonomy is a norm regulating how we should treat each other as opposed to a (...) good to be promoted. This approach also avoids the metaphysical idea of autonomy as self-origination of binding principles. (shrink)

I take it that liberal justice recognises special protections against the restriction of speech and expression; this is what I call the Free Speech Principle. I ask if this Principle includes speech acts which might broadly be termed ‘hate speech’, where ‘includes’ is sensitive to the distinction between coverage and protection , and between speech that is regulable and speech that should be regulated . I suggest that ‘hate speech’ is too broad a designation to be usefully analysed as a (...) single category, since it includes many different kinds of speech acts, each of which involves very different kinds of free speech interests, and may cause very different kinds of harm. I therefore propose to disaggregate hate speech into various categories which are analysed in turn. I distinguish four main categories of hate speech, namely (1) targeted vilification, (2) diffuse vilification, (3) organised political advocacy for exclusionary and/or eliminationist policies, and (4) other assertions of fact or value which constitute an adverse judgment on an identifiable racial or religious group. Reviewing these categories in the light of the justifications for the Free Speech Principle, I will argue that category (1) is uncovered by the Principle, categories (2) and (3) are covered but unprotected , and that category (4) is protected speech. (shrink)

With the publication of A Theory of Justice in 1971, John Rawls not only rejuvenated contemporary political philosophy but also defended a Kantian form of Enlightenment liberalism called “justice as fairness.” Enlightenment liberalism stresses the development and exercise of our capacity for autonomy, while Reformation liberalism emphasizes diversity and the toleration that encourages it. These two strands of liberalism are often mutually supporting, but they conflict in a surprising number of cases, whether over the accommodation of group difference, the design (...) of civic education, or the promotion of liberal values internationally. During the 1980’s, however, Rawls began to jettison key Kantian characteristics of his theory, a process culminating in the 1993 release of Political Liberalism and completing the transformation of justice as fairness into a Reformation liberalism. -/- Reconstructing Rawls argues that this transformation was a tragic mistake because it jeopardized the most important features of his theory, viz. the lexical priorities of right, liberty, and fair equality of opportunity as well as the difference principle. Controversially, this book contends that Rawls’s so-called “political turn,” motivated by a newfound interest in diversity and the accommodation of difference, has been unhealthy for autonomy-based liberalism and has pushed liberalism more broadly towards cultural relativism, be it in the guise of liberal multiculturalism or critiques of cosmopolitan distributive-justice theories. The book then demonstrates that the central elements of justice as fairness can only be defended within the context of a Kantian Enlightenment liberalism and that Rawls’s hope for a more pluralistic grounding for his theory, endorsed by a wide variety of belief systems present in modern democratic societies, is illusory. -/- Reconstructing Rawls is the first book to systematically compare Rawls’s and Kant’s theories and the first to offer an internal critique and reconstruction of justice as fairness, reconceiving it as a comprehensive, universalistic Kantian liberalism. By doing so, it gives us both the vision of a liberal world order—“a republicanism of all states, together and separately,” as Kant put it—and a mode of justification addressed to all men and women, not as members of particular nations, races, and faiths, but as human beings, as citizens of the world. In short, it reclaims Rawls for the Enlightenment. (shrink)

Are government restrictions on hate speech consistent with the priority of liberty? This relatively narrow policy question will serve as the starting point for a wider discussion of the use and abuse of nonideal theory in contemporary political philosophy, especially as practiced on the academic left. I begin by showing that hate speech (understood as group libel) can undermine fair equality of opportunity for historically-oppressed groups but that the priority of liberty seems to forbid its restriction. This tension between free (...) speech and equal opportunity creates a dilemma for liberal egalitarians. Nonideal theory apparently offers an escape from this dilemma, but after examining three versions of such an escape strategy, I conclude that none is possible: liberal egalitarians are indeed forced to choose between liberty and equality in this case and others. I finish the paper by examining its implications for other policy arenas, including markets in transplantable human organs and women’s reproductive services. (shrink)

The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 represents a significant development in UK law. It extends the offence of incitement to racial hatred set out in the Public Order Act 1986 to make it also an offence to stir up hatred against persons on religious grounds. As the most celebrated liberal thinker of the nineteenth century, J.S. Mill might be expected to offer some lessons about the possible dangers of this sort of legislation. A Millian response to the 2006 Act (...) is developed here by first applying Mill’s famous defence of free speech to the Lords amendments to the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill 2005 and then by looking at potential cases in which even freedom of expression loses its immunity when this is necessary to prevent harm to others. Three versions of the harm‐prevention justification for liberty‐limiting restrictions are assessed and it is argued that the most promising version is the claim that it may be permissible to punish incitement to racial and religious hatred not so much because it is itself a kind of harm but by virtue of the acts of discrimination, violence and injustice that are more likely to occur within a climate of hatred. Ultimately, however, this rationale must be weighed against what is, for Mill, the special value of free speech and may in the end justify intervention in only the most acute cases. (shrink)

I propose a set of distinctions that demarcate the structure that I consider suitable for the study and determination of the true value of the thesis of conceptual incompatibility between authority and autonomy. I begin with an analysis of the standard conception of authority, i.e., correlativism. I distinguish two versions: the epistemic and the voluntarist. Then I offer an analysis of two conceptions of moral autonomy: self-legislation and self-judgment. I conclude by remarking that we should distinguish two different versions of (...) the conceptual incompatibility thesis: a) the conflict is unsolvable because moral autonomy requires that we always be the authors of the norms we have to obey, while the authority claims that its will is a source of such standards; and b) the conflict is unsolvable because moral autonomy requires that we always judge for ourselves what categorical reasons should guide our action and that we act accordingly. Authority, on the contrary intends that we rest on its judgment and give up acting on our own. (shrink)

Philosophers have tended to dismiss John Stuart Mill’s claim that ‘all silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility’. I argue that Mill’s ‘infallibility claim’ is indeed open to many objections, but that, contrary to the consensus, those objections fail to defeat the anti-authoritarian thesis which lies at its core. I then argue that Mill’s consequentialist case for the liberty of thought and discussion is likewise capable of withstanding some familiar objections. My purpose is to suggest that Mill’s anti-authoritarianism and (...) his faith in thought and discussion, when taken seriously, supply the basis for a ‘public interest’ account of ‘freedom of expression as the liberty of thought and discussion’ which is faithful to Mill in spirit, if not to the precise letter. I outline such an account, which – as I say in conclusion – can serve as a valuable safeguard against ad hoc, reactive legislation, and the demands of a spurious communitarianism. (shrink)

This paper develops an account of freedom of expression by drawing lessons from the strategic logic of China’s censorship regime. It argues that freedom of expression helps build the common knowledge needed for overcoming coordination problems and is, thus, a source of collective power. However, realizing the full empowering potential of freedom of expression requires supplementing it with (a) public sources of information that are reliable, trusted, and democratically accountable and (b) measures that will provide citizens with equal opportunity to (...) speak and be heard in ways that will enable them to contribute to their society’s stock of common knowledge. (shrink)

This paper presents a new version of the democratic argument for the freedom of expression that has the resources to give a plausible reply to the perennial objection—ordinarily considered fatal—that such accounts fail to deliver protections for abstract art, instrumental music, and lots of other deserving nonpolitical speech. The argument begins with the observation that there are different things that a free speech theory might aim to accomplish. It will hope to justify a right to free speech, of course, with (...) a particular scope and shape, but that right might be a moral right, an ordinary legal right, or a specifically constitutional right. The new version of the argument—the refined argument from democracy—aims to justify a specifically constitutional right to political speech, administered by strong-form judicial review. The democracy theorist can accommodate the intuition that abstract art deserves protection by agreeing that we have a moral right, and probably ought to have an ordinary legal right, to produce and view abstract art. She must only insist that abstract art should not be protected by a specifically constitutional right administered by strong-form judicial review. Not because abstract art does not deserve constitutional protection, but because, on this view, whether a particular right ought to be enshrined in the constitution and administered by judicial review is not solely a matter of the importance of the right or the value of the interests it protects. (shrink)

Censorship involves, inter alia, adopting a certain type of epistemic policy. While much has been written on the harms and benefits of free expression, and the associated rights thereof, the epistemic preconditions of justified censorship are relatively underexplored. In this paper, I argue that examining intrapersonal norms of how we ought to treat evidence that might come to us over time can shed light on interpersonal norms of evidence generation and sharing that are relevant in the context of censorship. The (...) upshot is that justified censorship requires the censor to meet a very high epistemic burden regarding the target proposition(s)—importantly, one that exceeds knowledge. (shrink)

What should be the rules governing campus speech in a liberal democratic society? On one side are those arguing for maximal protections for campus speech analogous to the First Amendment in the United States. On the other are those promoting stricter regulation of speech through formal and informal speech codes. This paper aims to carve a new path in the conversation. Both sides agree that the mission of the university is the discovery and dissemination of knowledge and that achieving this (...) mission requires tolerant and open-minded students, faculty, and administrators. However, neither side has explicitly connected its advocacy for specific speech policies with these shared goals. Our paper advances the conversation by proposing a series of empirically testable mechanisms for connecting speech policies to the desired outcomes. We also argue that focusing on these mechanisms opens the way towards new and more tractable conceptual and normative debates. (shrink)

Autonomy is a core value that is deeply entrenched in the moral, legal, and political practices of many societies. The development and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) have raised new questions about AI’s impacts on human autonomy. However, systematic assessments of these impacts are still rare and often held on a case-by-case basis. In this article, I provide a conceptual framework that both ties together seemingly disjoint issues about human autonomy, as well as highlights differences between them. In the first (...) part, I distinguish between distinct concerns that are currently addressed under the umbrella term ‘human autonomy’. In particular, I show how differentiating between autonomy-as-authenticity and autonomy-as-agency helps us to pinpoint separate challenges from AI deployment. Some of these challenges are already well-known (e.g. online manipulation or limitation of freedom), whereas others have received much less attention (e.g. adaptive preference formation). In the second part, I address the different roles AI systems can assume in the context of autonomy. In particular, I differentiate between AI systems taking on agential roles and AI systems being used as tools. I conclude that while there is no ‘silver bullet’ to address concerns about human autonomy, considering its various dimensions can help us to systematically address the associated risks. (shrink)

This paper provides an introduction to the special issue on the philosophy of epistemic autonomy. In addition to giving some background on various conceptions of epistemic autonomy it provides brief summaries of the articles in the special issue.

A provocative case for the inherently political nature of language In The Politics of Language, David Beaver and Jason Stanley present a radical new approach to the theory of meaning, offering an account of communication in which political and social identity, affect, and shared practices play as important a role as information. This new view of language, they argue, has dramatic consequences for free speech, democracy, and a range of other areas in which speech plays a central role. Drawing on (...) a wealth of disciplines, The Politics of Language argues that the function of speech—whether in dialogue, larger group interactions, or mass communication—is to attune people to something, be it a shared reality, emotion, or identity. Reconceptualizing the central ideas of pragmatics and semantics, Beaver and Stanley apply their account to a range of phenomena that defy standard frameworks in linguistics and philosophy of language—from dog whistles and covert persuasion to echo chambers and genocidal speech. The authors use their framework to show that speech is inevitably political because all communication is imbued with the resonances of particular ideologies and their normative perspectives on reality. At a time when democracy is under attack, authoritarianism is on the rise, and diversity and equality are being demanded, The Politics of Language offers a powerful new vision of the language of politics, ideology, and protest. (shrink)

This chapter examines two ways in which liberal thinkers have appealed to claims about disagreement in order to defend a principle of free speech. One argument, from Mill, says that free speech is a necessary condition for healthy disagreement, and that healthy disagreement is conducive to human flourishing. The other argument says that in a community of people who disagree about questions of value, free speech is a necessary condition of legitimate democratic government. We argue that both of these arguments, (...) in their standard guises, are premised upon contestable views about the realpolitik of disagreement in a liberal society. (shrink)

To what extent are authors morally culpable for harms caused by their published work? Can authors be culpable even if their ideas are misused, perhaps because they failed to take precautions to prevent harmful misinterpretations? Might authors be culpable even if they do take precautions—if, for example, they publish ideas that others can be reasonably expected to put to harmful uses, precautions notwithstanding? Although complete answers to these questions depend upon controversial views about the right to free speech, this paper (...) argues that five notions from philosophy of law and legal practice—liability, burden of proof, legal causation, mens rea, and reasoning by precedent—can be adapted to provide an attractive moral framework for determining whether an author’s work causes harm, whether and how culpable the author is for causing such harm, steps authors may take to immunize themselves from culpability, and how to responsibly develop new rules for publishing ethics. (shrink)

Why pursue economic growth? For poor countries this is an easy question to answer, but it is more difficult for rich ones. Some of the world's greatest philosophers and economists – such as John Stuart Mill, John Maynard Keynes, and John Rawls – thought that, once a certain material standard of well-being has been achieved, economic growth should stop. I argue the opposite in this article. We always have reason to pursue economic growth. My argument is indirect. I shall not (...) argue that economic growthitselfis always better. Rather, I shall argue thatstoppinggrowth requires morally objectionable actions. Economic growth tends to occur naturally if certain underlying conditions are in place. We have moral reasons to insist on these conditions independent their effect on growth, however. Halting growth requires that we alter these conditions, but we ought not do this. (shrink)

Mill didn't resolve this puzzle: if prostitution must be tolerated according to his principle of liberty as it doesn't non-consensually harm others, why punish the accessory – the pimp? Yet in On Liberty's passage on pimps (CW 18:296–7) Mill seriously considers restricting pimps’ speech for reasons other than preventing harm: pimps’ speech undermines decisional autonomy for purposes the state regards as immoral, and in response the state may use coercion to counteract such immoral influences. In light of this, I argue (...) that we need to rethink the standard view that Mill opposes restrictions on speech that does not harm others. (shrink)

This article focuses on the epistemic transition to testimonial justice. It argues that the recognition of testimonial injustice in the context of reproductive rights may play a central role in this transition. First, I show how testimonial injustice undermines women’s legal protection against sexual violence and rights triggered by it such as the right to abortion. Second, I argue that the epistemic transition initiated by the #MeToo and #YoSiTeCreo movements call for transitional justice. In support, I review the circumstances of (...) transitional justice for cases like the transition to testimonial justice. Finally, I focus on the area of reproductive rights. I argue that policies of recognition contribute to epistemic transitional justice and complement other strategies aimed to overcome testimonial injustice such as the virtue of the responsible hearer and institutional compensatory virtues. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 4, Page 515-529, May 2022. Much of the recent literature on freedom of speech has focused on the arguments for and against the regulation of certain kinds of speech. Discussions of hate speech and offensive speech, for example, abound in this literature, as do debates concerning the permissibility of pornography. Less attention has been paid, however, at least recently, to the normative foundations of freedom of speech where three classic justifications still prevail, based (...) on the values of truth, autonomy and democracy. In this paper we argue, first, that none of these justifications meet all four intuitive desiderata for an adequate theory of free speech. We go on to sketch an original relational view of free speech, one which grounds its value in the recognition that speakers grant each other when engaging in speech practices, and its limits in the republican ideal of non-dominated co-exercisable liberty. We briefly illustrate the relational approach’s implications for the debate on hate speech regulation and for the response to fake news. (shrink)

In debates over the regulation of communication related to dual-use research, the risks that such communication creates must be weighed against against the value of scientific autonomy. The censorship of such communication seems justifiable in certain cases, given the potentially catastrophic applications of some dual-use research. This conclusion however, gives rise to another kind of danger: that regulators will use overly simplistic cost-benefit analysis to rationalize excessive regulation of scientific research. In response to this, we show how institutional design principles (...) and normative frameworks from free speech theory can be used to help extend the argument for regulating dangerous dual-use research beyond overly simplistic cost-benefit reasoning, but without reverting to an implausibly absolutist view of scientific autonomy. (shrink)

This chapter sets out John Rawls’s conception of autonomy and considers the role that it plays in his thought across A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism. I suggest that one distinctive but overlooked feature of this conception is that it takes seriously the threat to autonomy that arises from how individuals are shaped by their social and political institutions. After setting out this conception and tracing its connections to wider discussions of autonomy, I argue for two main conclusions. First, (...) that despite appearances to the contrary, Rawls’s autonomy-based commitments are broadly speaking consistent across his two main works. Second, that these autonomy-based commitments are not in fact disbarred from playing a grounding role in Political Liberalism. On the contrary, I suggest that Rawls’s conception of autonomy motivates his aim of finding principles of justice that can be stable, and that this in turn illuminates his later commitment to a political liberalism. (shrink)

Most Western democracies and international institutions have currently adopted a range of policies aimed at regulating hate speech. However, the kinds of target groups that hate speech regulations seek to protect have not been clearly defined yet. In a series of publications, Eric Heinze has challenged the coherence of such regulations. His core thesis is that hate speech laws have simply no place in longstanding, stable, and prosperous democracies. In this paper, I examine the three main charges Heinze raises against (...) hate speech laws—namely, discriminatory selectivity, impermissible censorship, and arbitrariness—and I seek to demonstrate that none of them can withstand critical analysis. (shrink)

Two prejudices have hampered our understanding of John Stuart Mill’s central argument for free speech. One prejudice is that arguments for free speech can only be made in terms of values or rights. This prejudice causes us to miss the depth of Mill’s argument. He does not argue that silencing speech is harmful or violates rights, but instead that silencing speech is a uniquely self-undermining act; it undermines the ground upon which it is based. But even if we overcome this (...) prejudice and appreciate the self-undermining character of Mill’s argument, the prejudice that epistemic justification is a completable task blinds us to the role of open-mindedness in his argument; and failing to see this leads us to wrongly conclude that his argument is invalid. It is only once we have overcome both prejudices that we can appreciate the depth and power of Mill’s argument for free speech. (shrink)

This article surveys the classic and contemporary literature on the nature and limits of freedom of expression (or free speech). It begins by surveying the main philosophical justifications for free speech, before moving to consider the two most discussed topics in the free speech literature: hate speech and pornography. The article offers some brief reflections on the large number of arguments which have been offered on these topics. Three newer battlegrounds for free speech are examined at the end: no platforming, (...) fake news and online shaming. (shrink)

Philosophers who publish articles that make practical ethical recommendations are thereby offering advice. I consider what obligations they incur in advising. I analyse the giving of advice as a communicative act whose defining and characteristic aim is to secure acceptance of what is advised. Such advice need not be solicited or taken up. I distinguish advice from incitement and threats and specify the scope of the adviser's responsibility for others acting upon the advice. I explore how advice can be bad (...) in how it is given and what is given. I consider, and criticise, various pleas for exemption from the responsibilities of philosophical advising: that advice was not meant; that it wouldn't make any difference anyway; and that the writing was not for those who might act on it. I examine the offering of philosophical advice to policy makers, comparing the views on this of Mary Warnock and Dan Brock. I conclude by asking practical normative philosophers to consider what they should do inasmuch as they are advising. (shrink)

The classical liberal doctrine of free expression asserts the priority of speech as an extension of the freedom of thought. Yet its critics argue that freedom of expression, itself, demands the suppression of the so-called “silencing speech” of racists, sexists, and so on, as a threat to the equal expressive rights of others. This essay argues that the claim to free expression must be distinguished from claims to equal speech. The former asserts an equal right to express one’s thoughts without (...) interference; the latter the right to address others, and to receive a hearing and consideration from them, in turn. I explore the theory of equal speech in light of the ancient Athenian practice of isegoria and argue that the equality demanded is not distributive but relational: an equal speaker’s voice should be counted as “on a par” with others. This ideal better captures critics’ concerns about silencing speech than do their appeals to free expression. Insofar as epistemic and status-harms provide grounds for the suppression and exclusion of some speech and speakers, the ideal of equal speech is more closely connected with the freedom of association than of thought. Noticing this draws attention to the continuing—and potentially problematic—importance of exclusion in constituting effective sites of equal speech today. (shrink)

Neo-Kantian philosophers see accountability as a key property of autonomy, or of social freedom more broadly. Autonomy, among those theorists, is, I contend, implicitly co-conceived with responsibility, producing a quasi-juridical conception of autonomy and a limiting notion of freedom. This article criticizes the connecting of freedom with accountability on a number of grounds. First, various conceptions of autonomy not only operate without a notion of accountability, but, in fact, would be impaired by an accountability requirement. Second, the neo-Kantians are unable (...) to defend the freedom enhancing properties that are supposedly brought about by the giving of reasons for one’s beliefs and actions. Third, the project of accountability is indifferent to personal outlooks, not because it takes a holistic perspective, but because of its interest in social convergence. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to consider the question of whether democratic legitimacy requires viewpoint neutrality with regard to political speech – including extremist political speech, such as hate speech. The starting point of my discussion is Jeremy Waldron’s negative answer to this question. He argues that it is permissible for liberal democracies to ban certain extremist viewpoints – such as vituperative hate speech – because such viewpoint-based restrictions protect the dignity of persons and a social and moral environment (...) of mutual respect. According to Waldron, well-drafted narrow hate speech bans are not democratically illegitimate, and they do not undermine systemic democratic legitimacy – that is, the legitimacy of a democratic political system. In contrast to Waldron, I will argue that democratic legitimacy requires viewpoint neutrality to respect persons as thinking agents. I will defend a civil libertarian doctrine of viewpoint neutrality, and this doctrine requires that citizens in liberal democracies ought to have a legal free speech right to do moral wrong – that is, a legal right to express and defend any political viewpoint or idea, even if it is morally wrong to express, or expose others to, such views. It will be argued that any viewpoint-based restriction on public discourse (including narrow hate speech bans) is democratically illegitimate, and that such restrictions undermine systemic democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

In the philosophy of liberalism, freedom of speech is one of the fundamental rights of the individual, one that is guaranteed by the constitution of a liberal democratic state. Contemporary Western democracies are based on the political culture in which human rights, including the right to free speech, play an important role. This right, however, can be violated by demagogic propaganda both in totalitarian regimes and in democracies. The propaganda mechanism, reaching into the sphere of community values and concepts, presently (...) operates also through the Internet, in which expressions of anger and hatred are disseminated and can lead to the destruction of democracy. I will argue that, in today’s world, restrictions on the freedom of speech through legal norms are necessary, because the threat comes not only in the form of censorship, but also the manipulation techniques used by politicians in democratic regimes. Advances in modern technology can be of service to dictatorship when the media and the Internet are used for propaganda or surveillance purposes, but they also provide a support to freedom and democracy when they serve as the means of the transmission of reliable information, initiating public discussions. As such, they establish a framework for rational debates and peaceful activities that contribute to the maintenance of the democratic political culture. The basic elements of this culture, i.e. legal rules, pluralist media, and education systems are all necessary for the defence of its core value, namely the freedom of speech. (shrink)

This paper explains how the practice of ‘no platforming’ can be reconciled with a liberal politics. While opponents say that no platforming flouts ideals of open public discourse, and defenders see it as a justifiable harm-prevention measure, both sides mistakenly treat the debate like a run-of-the-mill free speech conflict, rather than an issue of academic freedom specifically. Content-based restrictions on speech in universities are ubiquitous. And this is no affront to a liberal conception of academic freedom, whose purpose isn’t just (...) to protect the speech of academics, but also to give them the prerogative to determine which views and speakers have sufficient disciplinary credentials to receive a hearing in academic contexts. No platforming should therefore be acceptable to liberals, in principle, in cases where it is used to support a university culture that maintains rigorous disciplinary standards, by denying attention and credibility to speakers without appropriate disciplinary credentials. (shrink)

It is often held that people have a moral right to believe and say whatever they want. For instance, one might claim that they have a right to believe racist things as long as they keep those thoughts to themselves. Or, one might claim that they have a right to pursue any philosophical question they want as long as they do so with a civil tone. In this paper I object to those claims and argue that no one has such (...) unlimited moral rights. In Part 1 I explore the value of the freedoms of thought and expression. In Part 2 I argue against the unlimited moral right to free expression, focusing in particular on the special obligations and moral constraints that obtain for academics. In Part 3 I argue against the unlimited moral right to free thought. (shrink)

Anonymity promotes free speech by protecting the identity of people who might otherwise face negative consequences for expressing their ideas. Wrongdoers, however, often abuse this invisibility cloak. Defenders of anonymity online emphasise its value in advancing public debate and safeguarding political dissension. Critics emphasise the need for identifiability in order to achieve accountability for wrongdoers such as trolls. The problematic tension between anonymity and identifiability online lies in the desirability of having low costs (no repercussions) for desirable speech and high (...) costs (appropriate repercussions) for undesirable speech. If we practice either full anonymity or identifiability, we end up having either low or high costs in all online contexts and for all kinds of speech. I argue that free speech is compatible with instituting costs in the form of repercussions and penalties for controversial and unacceptable speech. Costs can minimise the risks of anonymity by providing a reasonable degree of accountability. Pseudonymity is a tool that can help us regulate those costs while furthering free speech. This article argues that, in order to redesign the Internet to better serve free speech, we should shape much of it to resemble an online masquerade. (shrink)

SUMMARYDue to his famous conflict with John Stuart Mill, James Fitzjames Stephen is often assumed to have been an opponent of toleration and intellectual freedom and a defender of authoritarian or reactionary principles. These assumptions are misleading. Stephen was, and was known in his time to have been, a champion of toleration. This essay provides a comprehensive overview of his writing on these themes, drawing from a wider array of texts than is usually considered in the study of the Stephen-Mill (...) controversy. Contrary to popular belief, Stephen had a deep and multi-faceted argument in favor of toleration. As a critic of contending theories of toleration and freedom of discussion, Stephen was concerned to defeat what he saw as the resurgence of a priori principles in Victorian political philosophy and to combat the expansion of a proper notion of toleration to include a cluster of beliefs and attitudes of which he disapproved. In his approach to these issues Stephen was, arguably, as representative of Victorian thinking as the author of On Liberty. (shrink)

In free speech theory ‘speech’ has to be defined as a special term of art. I argue that much free speech discourse comes with a tacit commitment to a ‘Subtractive Approach’ to defining speech. As an initial default, all communicative acts are assumed to qualify as speech, before exceptions are made to ‘subtract’ those acts that don’t warrant the special legal protections owed to ‘speech’. I examine how different versions of the Subtractive Approach operate, and criticise them in terms of (...) their ability to yield a substantive definition of speech which covers all and only those forms of communicative action that – so our arguments for free speech indicate – really do merit special legal protection. In exploring alternative definitional approaches, I argue that what ultimately compromises definitional adequacy in this arena is a theoretical commitment to the significance of a single unified class of privileged communicative acts. I then propose an approach to free speech theory that eschews this theoretical commitment. (shrink)

The philosophical problems of liberty may be classified as those of definition, of justification and of distribution. They are so complex that there is a danger of being unable to see the wood for the trees. It may be helpful, therefore, to provide an aerial photograph of a large part of the wood, namely, the liberty ofindividual persons. But it is, of course, a photograph taken from an individual point of view, as Leibniz would have put it.

Comments and reports on synthetic biology often focus on the idea that this field may lead to synthetic life or life forms. Such claims attract general attention because “life” is a basic concept that is understood, interpreted and explained in multiple ways. While these different understandings of life may influence the ethical assessment of synthetic biology by experts and the public, this field might, in turn, influence how academics or the public view life. We suggest in this paper that synthetic (...) biology provides an opportunity to discuss and compare different views and explanations of the world, starting from the concept of life. We argue that a narrow focus on just one interpretation of this concept may be harmful and that people will benefit from being aware of a diversity of understandings of life because they provide answers to different questions. Moreover, the confrontation among views is important for the development of reasoning abilities, and a nuanced view on our world will be useful for integrating scientific findings and their implications into a wider context. At the same time, we should not only consider other understandings of life for our own benefit but also because a moral attitude of respect for and toleration toward others implies permission to express and maintain their views. For these reasons, we suggest that a diversity of views on life should be included in public education and in public engagement events on synthetic biology. Moreover, they should be on the research agenda of technology assessment studies within the ELSA or RRI frameworks. (shrink)

The risk that direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription pharmaceuticals (DTCA) may increase inappropriate medicine use is well recognized. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration addresses this concern by subjecting DTCA content to strict scrutiny. Its strictures are, however, heavily focused on the explicit claims made in commercials, what we term their “propositional content.” Yet research in social psychology suggests advertising employs techniques to influence viewers via nonpropositional content, for example, images and music. We argue that one such technique, evaluative conditioning, is (...) operative in DTCA. We further argue that evaluative conditioning fosters unjustified beliefs about drug safety and efficacy, antagonising the autonomy of viewers’ choices about advertised medicines. We conclude that current guidelines are deficient in failing to account for evaluative conditioning, and that more research and debate are needed to determine the permissibility of this and other forms of nonpropositional persuasion. (shrink)