How does one separate feelings from perception?
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You can't. The point is that what you feel about what someone says is not a good enough reason to take away their freedom to say it.
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Always with certain exceptions. Slander for example.
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A slanderer has the right to speak, and the obligation to pay a penalty for each malicious falsehood.
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Yes. I put it badly. Slander is not about the feeling response or the absence of a right to speak but about the content of what is said.
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Strongly disagree. Emotional response is not so easily separated from expression, and some responsibility should be borne by speaker.
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If natural language were perfect and formal, the separation would be easier. But communication is messy, at both sending and receiving ends.
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Feelings in speech as not irrelevant to either the listener or the speaker. Speech also conveys "content" but also generates affect.
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2. Being able to generate emotional responses in listeners & discern the emotional state of speakers in a core human capability.
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3. However being able to manage our emotional responses to the speech of others is part of being an adult.
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4. I have wanted to kill numerous people as a result of their speech (esp. my accountant) & yet they remain unharmed.
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5. So despite the emotional power of words, we should only restrict them under extreme circumstances.
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We have to trust people to evaluate that content on its mertits. "Safeguarding" people from challenging ideas is misguided, anti-progress.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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Even if some people aren't the better for it the societal and personal downsides of limiting speech that upsets some people are far greater.
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So you're OK with verbally abusive parents? You don't see that as a form of emotional violence with long-lasting negative effects?
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Wiio's 2nd law again people; If a message can be interpreted in several ways, it will be interpreted in a manner that maximizes the damage.
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Seems more like reductio ad absurdum to me. The proposition that we are always “better for hearing it” does not hold in general, as claimed.
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If you interpret everything literally in a strict sense, then maybe so, but that's not how human speech works most of the time
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It's not about taking things literally or strictly. Speech can be harmful even to the most generous interpreter.
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Returning to the original example: is the child of abusive parents at fault for failing to find the beneficial content in that abuse?
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Yes, it's an extreme example, but Pinker's argument about the harmfulness of speech is AFAICT an equally extreme one
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I doubt Pinker meant to make an absolute statement, which is why I'd give him the benefit of the doubt here. Anybody speaking enough
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