I've written about freedom of speech extensively in all manner of forums, but the one thing that has become clear to me lately, is that people are genuinely uninterested in the philosophical underpinnings of freedom of speech. Today they would rather quote an XKCD comic, than John Stuart Mill's seminar work On Liberty.
Because of this, I've decided to try to reframe the original notion of freedom of speech, into a term I coined: Open Ideas.
Open Ideas is nothing more than what freedom of speech has always been historically: a philosophical declaration that the open contestation of ideas is the engine of progress that keeps moving society forward.
Today the tyranny of the majority believes freedom of speech is anything but that. They believe that "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences", despite the fact that such term came from nowhere, has no author, and in addition all great free speech thinkers argued precisely the opposite. The great thinkers argued that if people are afraid of expressing unpopular opinions, that is functionally the same as government censorship: ideas are suppressed, society stagnates, and progress is halted.
So far I have not yet heard any sound refutation of any of these ideas. All people do is repeat the aforementioned dogmatic slogan with zero philosophical foundation, or mention First Amendment details, which obviously is not equal to freedom of speech.
How is anything I've stated in any way an inaccurate assessment of what is happening?
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Notes -
We should tabboo both "freedom of speech" and your proposed "Open Ideas." The contention in these debates is that we have an obligation to forebear from certain courses of action in response to certain speech acts by others. Almost all the discussion of interest is in: what actions? What speech acts? The First Amendment concerns certain actions and certain speech acts but once we go beyond it things rapidly become murky.
Imagine I have a friend A and one day A shared with me some opinion I consider repugnant. So much so it makes me rethink my friendship with A. I act cooler and more aloof in our interactions. I don't invite A to social events as I once would. Did I breach an obligation to A by these actions? Was I obliged to continue being A's friend? Does it depend on the details of what they said?
Go a step further. I accurately relay A's remark to other individuals who are mutual friends. They decide to end their friendship with A, similarly to me. Did our mutual friends have an obligation to remain friends with A? Did I have an obligation not to relate true information to my friends?
To the extent we may accurately portray A as being our feeling censored, that someone has breached a moral obligation, who did so and how did they do it?
But humans need words to communicate -- and apparently so do other rational agents. It's nearly imposible to talk about empathy, mass formation psychosis, rent-seeking, woke ideology, frequency illusion, etc. without using these words.
That doesn't depend on either freedom of speech or Open Ideas.
That sounds like a non-answer, but it helps narrow your opinion down a lot: Your idea of Freedom of Speech and Open Ideas is constrained to a narrow field (everywhere except interpersonal relationships?). I've seen it linked to fully-general ideas of tolerance and non-judgment before, which do apply to things as simple as friendships.
No. I believe Open Ideas / Freedom of speech applies to interpersonal relationships as well.
But the reason why you decide to distance yourself from a person matters. If the reason why you personally decided to distance yourself is because you personally find some of his/her views detestable, that's a personal choice. But if the reason is that the tyranny of the majority has decreed that's what everyone should do, that's entirely different.
The key factor is not whether or not you distance yourself. It's what are the consequences for society.
If you make your decision based on personal criteria, it's likely there will be no repercussions to society. But you make it based on societal decrees, it's very likely that other people would do the same, and that would almost certainly blow back on society.
So basically if a social ostracism decision has a potential to affect society, freedom of speech has something to say about it.
So I'm not allowed to have the same opinion as many other people? I'm allowed to be intolerant inasmuch as my intolerance is arbitrarily formed and odd (I hate the Beatles) but not where it's common?
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