08/10/19

Do I Have The Right To Offend?

Attendance: 34

1. Should I have to limit my language for others’ benefit?
   1. Inappropriateness
   2. Legal realm – who should decide? – right to freedom of speech – COMEDY and free speech – is shutting down a comedian for telling dodgy jokes right? – Count Dankula – Aravind’s Law: discouraging repetition of social position being exploited to make jokes – French Law prohibiting catcalling – Singaporean libel laws allowing one-party government
      1. PROBLEM with legality – defining intent difficult
   3. Jordan Peterson – misrepresented C16 bill? Ethical responsibility to respect people’s identities
   4. Deplatforming of those that incite violence? vs. moralising certain values
   5. Quantity of people offended = validity of feeling offence
   6. Increased civil discourse tends to improve things
2. How free is free speech? How free should it be?
   1. Isn’t defining limiting? – should we ever limit?
   2. Focault – hierarchy of ethical actions defining normativity; legality doesn’t matter when deciding ethics because society/culture decides
   3. Legality kickstarting awareness of moral virtues
   4. Doesn’t everyone have a responsibility to contribute to discourse in a fair way?
   5. Morality as a social construct – laws are made by certain people
3. Is it ever right to offend someone?
   1. Offence as kickstarting necessary action
   2. Self-expression (i.e. coming out as homosexual even if that would offend somebody)
   3. Good friends as knowing when to offend
   4. How is society ever supposed to change without allowing new opinions?
   5. Do we ever want to live as people without conflict?
      1. Why is peace so important?
   6. We all have the right to give offence as much as to receive it.
   7. There are different spaces in the world in which different levels of offence are more or less permitted.
      1. E.g. theatre and art – but these are just resemblances of offence, not real – but the artist or playwright takes the blame, not the art or the actor – why do we give artists/comedians a pedestal to offend – if we got rid of it, everyone would go out and offend not expecting repercussions – but there is comedy in the offence, which is what permits the offence (you have to be at least twice as funny as offensive)
      2. Agreement of the suspension of belief in entering into artistic places
      3. Socially, are we taught that only in these spaces are we allowed to be offensive? Or even, in safe friend groups? Offensive jokes can make you good friends
   8. IMPORTANCE OF INTENTION
   1. Is it right to cause pain in others? In yourself?
   10. If I’m not offended, it’s not offensive – but then intentionality doesn’t matter…!
4. Where do language and ethics meet?
   1. Defining ‘being offended’
      1. Just a negative feeling caused by what’s someone said to you when they meant to offend you?

1. 1. 2. Can you be offended on someone’s behalf? Is that just being offended that someone did something (with bad intentions)?
         1. Does this posit abstract, normative, subconscious list of rights and wrongs? – very Chomskyan
      3. There is nothing within the nature of words that makes them offensive – it is in the reception that offence occurs
   2. Intersubjectively

 

And then we went to the pub.