3 ms·

Your claim is that some form of censorship may be permissible if the harm is direct, but I think this carries with it a certain ideological slant - what harm i

Your claim is that some form of censorship may be permissible if the harm is direct, but I think this carries with it a certain ideological slant - what harm is 'direct' and 'indirect' has vastly different consequences; for instance, prevention of direct harm may be sufficient to protect children, but it probably isn't enough to protect the proliferation of racist or sexist ideas which have historically led to widespread oppression on those fronts. What is your threshold for harm? Here we see the vacuity of the harm principle: one can claim anything is (or isn't) harmful in order to attach their favorite idea to it. As an example, some people may be said to be harmed simply by the knowledge that someone is watching pornography in their house. You'd likely say that doesn't "count" as harm - well then what does? As it turns out, controlling speech under your schema is simply a matter of defining what counts as harm and what doesn't. Yet philosophers such as Joel Feinberg and Catherine MacKinnon have pointed out, very few people (if any) would like to live in a society in which only harmful speech (or acts, since there is no meaningful distinction between speech and acts other than invoking body-mind dualism) is not permitted. Then we get to ideas: who's to say that threats or child porn can't carry ideas in them? In censoring them, aren't we censoring ideas too? Some would say the idea that "it's not so bad to have sex with children" is encoded in every instance of child pornography. What if I made my threat into an art piece?

hackinthebochs 8y ago
Your argument is unmoving. Child pornography isn't speech nor it is an idea. Images are records of events and the dissemination of such records can be directly harmful. There is no ambiguity about the harm principle to be mined from this example. > In censoring them, aren't we censoring ideas too? Ideas are by definition abstract and so they should be communicable through some other medium.
- claudiawerner 8y ago
  You've managed to circumvent my entire post and you're still wrong; my point was that ideas are communicated through a medium, and they can even be communicated through, for instance, threats and pornography. You have given no convincing reason to single out child-pornographic images for censorship while allowing others, such as regular pornography. What differentiates the free speech content of child pornography from other pornography, or even art which required harm in its creation? Obviously I'm not defending child pornography here, but I think there's a logical flaw in your reasoning. The fact that ideas can be communicated through other media is irrelevant, since it would mean that we can censor whatever ideas we like in any major category (e.g ideas conveyed in photography and film) but thereby only farcically allow them otherwise (e.g the expression of the idea is only allowed through physical speech).
  - hackinthebochs 8y ago
    >and they can even be communicated through, for instance, threats and pornography. But censoring one particular medium is not censoring the idea. So your attempt at finding a contradiction doesn't hold water. >What differentiates the free speech content of child pornography from other pornography, or even art which required harm in its creation? Consent. >since it would mean that we can censor whatever ideas we like in any major category This doesn't follow from my argument that censoring one particular medium is OK. Child porn is a genuine special case (direct harm in its production, lack of consent in dissemination) that doesn't transfer to other mediums that don't have the same problems.
    - claudiawerner 8y ago
      Censoring a medium is an instance of censoring the idea, and if censoring one particular medium is permissible, then any number of media may be therefore censored. >This doesn't follow from my argument that censoring one particular medium is OK. It does, since by your own admission, censoring a particular medium does not entail censoring the idea. >Child porn is a genuine special case (direct harm in its production, lack of consent in dissemination) So this is what I was getting at - you say it's fine to censor a particular way of conveying an idea due to other harms being associated with that particular way of conveying. In child pornography it's the violation of consent in its production and violation of privacy in its reproduction. Extending this argument from child pornography to regular pornography, some would say there are significant harms involved there too (e.g it conveys the idea that women ought to be subservient to men), and then to hate speech. The core idea is that speech is not absolute, just like actions aren't absolute. You're free to swing your fist so long as it doesn't hurt anyone, and you're free to say things so long as they don't hurt anyone (or require anyone to be hurt, of course). This means that with a sufficiently convincing empirical dataset, we can outlaw regular pornography and hate speech.

hackinthebochs 8y ago

Your argument is unmoving. Child pornography isn't speech nor it is an idea. Images are records of events and the dissemination of such records can be directly harmful. There is no ambiguity about the harm principle to be mined from this example. > In censoring them, aren't we censoring ideas too? Ideas are by definition abstract and so they should be communicable through some other medium.

claudiawerner 8y ago
You've managed to circumvent my entire post and you're still wrong; my point was that ideas are communicated through a medium, and they can even be communicated through, for instance, threats and pornography. You have given no convincing reason to single out child-pornographic images for censorship while allowing others, such as regular pornography. What differentiates the free speech content of child pornography from other pornography, or even art which required harm in its creation? Obviously I'm not defending child pornography here, but I think there's a logical flaw in your reasoning. The fact that ideas can be communicated through other media is irrelevant, since it would mean that we can censor whatever ideas we like in any major category (e.g ideas conveyed in photography and film) but thereby only farcically allow them otherwise (e.g the expression of the idea is only allowed through physical speech).
- hackinthebochs 8y ago
  >and they can even be communicated through, for instance, threats and pornography. But censoring one particular medium is not censoring the idea. So your attempt at finding a contradiction doesn't hold water. >What differentiates the free speech content of child pornography from other pornography, or even art which required harm in its creation? Consent. >since it would mean that we can censor whatever ideas we like in any major category This doesn't follow from my argument that censoring one particular medium is OK. Child porn is a genuine special case (direct harm in its production, lack of consent in dissemination) that doesn't transfer to other mediums that don't have the same problems.
  - claudiawerner 8y ago
    Censoring a medium is an instance of censoring the idea, and if censoring one particular medium is permissible, then any number of media may be therefore censored. >This doesn't follow from my argument that censoring one particular medium is OK. It does, since by your own admission, censoring a particular medium does not entail censoring the idea. >Child porn is a genuine special case (direct harm in its production, lack of consent in dissemination) So this is what I was getting at - you say it's fine to censor a particular way of conveying an idea due to other harms being associated with that particular way of conveying. In child pornography it's the violation of consent in its production and violation of privacy in its reproduction. Extending this argument from child pornography to regular pornography, some would say there are significant harms involved there too (e.g it conveys the idea that women ought to be subservient to men), and then to hate speech. The core idea is that speech is not absolute, just like actions aren't absolute. You're free to swing your fist so long as it doesn't hurt anyone, and you're free to say things so long as they don't hurt anyone (or require anyone to be hurt, of course). This means that with a sufficiently convincing empirical dataset, we can outlaw regular pornography and hate speech.