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Notes -
I think there's a difference between censoring speech made for claims that we cannot really settle beyond raw power or tolerance and censoring research that theoretically can settle those claims. It leads to a strange agreement between the censor and their victim on the stakes in a way that doesn't have to be true in other case.
Maybe Frankfurt's distinction between lying and bullshit - lying at least acknowledges the concept of truth even as you point people away from it, bullshit denies that the truth is meaningful in the first place.
Yes, statements can be truth-apt without being empirically verifiable in practice. OrAnd there are cases where the stakes or what would settle the issue are themselves in doubt. In which case there's nothing for it but philosophy I suppose , since that's the role it can maintain in a world where science is ascendant.
I think a lot of the actual culture war debates do not escape empiricism in practice though, even if people try to insist that it's just a matter of differing definitions floating in the ether.
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