Re:UK court rules MI5 agents can murder, kidnap, and torture
by treden on Sunday December 22, 2019 @06:10AM
(#21856495)
I upvoted you because I agree that thought and speech are clearly different things.
However, regulating people's speech leads to contradictions that can only be solved by picking a side- the side that the government decides is the right one, ie the more powerful side. If you're on this side, it's clear that you think it's the true one.
How do you balance the "harm" (hurt feelings, something that all but the most isolated delicacies learn to deal with by the age of 15) against the harm of restricting someone's speech? Certainly there's a similar psychological harm in not being allowed to express one's thoughts? (Not to mention the lost opportunity to engage in productive development of one's understanding..)
Speech is an action, just like any other. Like other actions, it is expressive, context-dependent, subject to interpretation, it is a physical phenomenon, that has physical effects on its listeners. It was also shown by Brison[0], Schauer[1] and others that the consequences of speech, in particular ones of harm, can be remarkably similar metaphysically and in gravity.
Whether or not the German government's regulations are good ones, the conclusion that a government should have no right to regulate speech (just as it regulates other actions) seems to be on shaky ground.
[0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/legal-theory/article...
[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/2381631?seq=1#metadata_info_tab...