Philosophy Discussion Forums

The defining feature of "cancel culture" is declining to provide another person with a platform for communication. So it is the exercise of free speech. If I had previously decided that I was going to amplify your words, but I then discover that you've said something that causes me, for reasons of my own, to decline to amplify your words, I am exercising my right to free speech. I'm not physically harming anyone. I'm not waving a pitchfork.

Therefore a self-consistent free speech absolutist would see nothing immoral in any aspect of cancel culture unless it involved physically restraining another person from using some other platform to air their views. I don't know of any instances of cancel culture which involve any actions like that.

(Personally I'm not a free speech absolutist.)

Steve3007 wrote: ↑January 3rd, 2021, 6:18 pm The defining feature of "cancel culture" is declining to provide another person with a platform for communication. So it is the exercise of free speech.

Speech is obviously one of the many targets of cancel culture, but certainly not the only one. You might want to check out a Twitter account by the name @SoOpressed, which has started a thread with a list of cases.

Steve3007 wrote: ↑January 3rd, 2021, 6:18 pm The defining feature of "cancel culture" is declining to provide another person with a platform for communication. So it is the exercise of free speech. If I had previously decided that I was going to amplify your words, but I then discover that you've said something that causes me, for reasons of my own, to decline to amplify your words, I am exercising my right to free speech. I'm not physically harming anyone. I'm not waving a pitchfork.

Therefore a self-consistent free speech absolutist would see nothing immoral in any aspect of cancel culture unless it involved physically restraining another person from using some other platform to air their views. I don't know of any instances of cancel culture which involve any actions like that.

(Personally I'm not a free speech absolutist.)

Exactly. In addition, most on this thread ignore the fact that what ends up happening to the targets is not actually decided by the cancel culture participants, but rather by the power structure if it caves (or doesn't cave in) to the cancel culture media storm.

Count Lucanor wrote:

Steve3007 wrote:The defining feature of "cancel culture" is declining to provide another person with a platform for communication. So it is the exercise of free speech.

Speech is obviously one of the many targets of cancel culture, but certainly not the only one.

I wasn't talking there about the speech which is the target of cancel culture. I was proposing that cancel culture is the exercise of free speech, by the canceller, and that therefore advocates of complete free speech should have no moral problem with any aspect of cancel culture unless it involves actual physical restraint. All the talk of such things as "mobs waving pitchforks" earlier in this thread should cause the absolutist free speech advocates here (if they're being consistent) to point out that nobody is waving any pitchforks.

LuckyR wrote:Exactly. In addition, most on this thread ignore the fact that what ends up happening to the targets is not actually decided by the cancel culture participants, but rather by the power structure if it caves (or doesn't cave in) to the cancel culture media storm.

Yes, and my point was that a "cancel culture media storm" is another term for a bunch of people saying some stuff. Absolute free speech advocates would presumably regard that activity as morally neutral, no matter what stuff is said or how aggressively it is said.

The focus on cancel culture is misleading IMO. What we have is a subset of bullying - mobbing. It's one thing for a number of people to add fresh criticisms, but it's irrationally cruel and when many people pile on, offering only repetitious slurs, adding no insights, only venom.

What about when people are piling on the defend the oppressed? All they do is pass on the oppression (a la Black Mirror).

What prompts people to engage in mobbing behaviour? Revenge? Sadism? Competitiveness? A blend, probably. We have ever more people wanting ever better lifestyles from an ever shrinking resource pie. People are going to fight and they will take any advantage they can, including elevating themselves at someone else's expense and forming blocs against perceived common enemies.

Greta wrote: ↑January 4th, 2021, 5:46 am What prompts people to engage in mobbing behaviour? Revenge? Sadism? Competitiveness? A blend, probably. We have ever more people wanting ever better lifestyles from an ever shrinking resource pie. People are going to fight and they will take any advantage they can, including elevating themselves at someone else's expense and forming blocs against perceived common enemies.

There's also that people are carrying pain from all kinds of different places, don't know how to let it out, haven't taken the self-authorship masterclasses, and there seem to be a lot of release valves that are in some way tantamount to cutting in the sense that they're indirect and pernicious but these quite often are focused outward on other people. That does tie in to bullying in the sense that having a moral right to bully is what one would look for in order to do these things with impunity, and one looks back at historical incidents like the Catholic church rounding up the Cathars in Spain - I wonder what kinds of people were on horseback enforcing the will of the Vatican - likely some combination of mercenaries and people who wanted legitimized outlets for sadism.

Greta wrote: ↑January 4th, 2021, 5:46 amWhat prompts people to engage in mobbing behaviour? Revenge? Sadism? Competitiveness? A blend, probably.

Mobbing is also a form of communality, of being social, of bonding, connecting with one another. Then there's the effect of feeling strong emotions.

People can be social by holding hands and singing kumbaya. They can also be social by holdig hands and spitting verbal poison. The latter perhaps has an even stronger bonding effect.
Haters seem to be more connected with eachother through their joint hate, than do the lovers through their joint love. Hating gives one a strong adrenaline rush, it's addictive.

And then the sense of intense moral indignation, amplified many times when one is joined with others who feel the same moral indignation -- that's a powerful feeling, for some, if not many, a peak experience in life. No wonder people seek it.

You are somehow conform to nietzsches depiction of nihilism in the form of heideggers interpretation of nietzsches nihilsm.
After the wikipedia this is : Heidegger tries to understand Nietzsche's nihilism as trying to achieve a victory through the devaluation of the, until then, highest values.

Nietzsche describes moral values in his famous works , will to power, as values that a lie created for the benefit of the few which is abolished due to public discovery of the treason, which was the basis of the foundation of the creation of these moral values.

Culture then would be after Heideggers interpretation of Nietzsches way to nihilism be seen in the same way. Would you then agree with this position?

Steve3007 wrote:The defining feature of "cancel culture" is declining to provide another person with a platform for communication. So it is the exercise of free speech.

Steve3007 wrote: ↑January 4th, 2021, 5:22 am

Count Lucanor wrote:Speech is obviously one of the many targets of cancel culture, but certainly not the only one.

I wasn't talking there about the speech which is the target of cancel culture. I was proposing that cancel culture is the exercise of free speech, by the canceller,

That last statement does not match the previous one. The first one talks about deplatforming another person (a physical restraint) by the canceller to effectively ban their exercise of free speech, the second one about cancellers having such platforms for themselves. No matter which speech platform we are dealing with, still your subject is the limitations in the exercise of free speech (that is, free speech rights) as the defining feature of "cancel culture", and so my observation still stands: this is one of the many targets of cancel culture (to limit the exercise of free speech), but certainly not the only one.

Steve3007 wrote: ↑January 4th, 2021, 5:22 am therefore advocates of complete free speech should have no moral problem with any aspect of cancel culture unless it involves actual physical restraint. All the talk of such things as "mobs waving pitchforks" earlier in this thread should cause the absolutist free speech advocates here (if they're being consistent) to point out that nobody is waving any pitchforks.

Yes, I agree and this makes sense. It must be noted, however (for the benefit of such free speech absolutists), that the whole point of cancel culture is to actually, effectively, achieving a ban on other people's behavior, that is, to affect their personal freedom of action, including their right to have platforms to speak about anything the cancel culture advocates despise. And I think most people concerned with the negative aspects of cancel culture are focused on these actual bans, more than the communication platforms of the cancel culture advocates. This goes beyond the subjective moral aspect (being right or wrong) and goes into the political freedom territory, given a society supposedly founded on it.

baker wrote: ↑January 4th, 2021, 7:30 am

Greta wrote: ↑January 4th, 2021, 5:46 amWhat prompts people to engage in mobbing behaviour? Revenge? Sadism? Competitiveness? A blend, probably.

Haters seem to be more connected with each other through their joint hate, than do the lovers through their joint love. Hating gives one a strong adrenaline rush, it's addictive.

Fair point. Add adrenaline rush to the list. It's suggestive of naturally aggressive people who lack positive outlets for their emotions and have a need for stimulation.

Count Lucanor wrote:That last statement does not match the previous one. The first one talks about deplatforming another person (a physical restraint)....

I don't think that de-platforming another person, in general, constitutes a physical restraint. If I invite someone to (metaphorically) stand on my platform to speak, and I then decide to withdraw that invitation I'm not physically restraining them. I'm not gagging them. I'm not stopping them from standing on some other platform to speak, or making their own platform and then standing on it and speaking. I'm merely withdrawing an invitation. So, that being the case, as I said I think a consistent free speech absolutist would see nothing immoral in cancel culture or de-platforming (if they're being self-consistent).

But I'll reiterate that I'm not a free speech absolutist myself and I do have ethical problems with cancel culture for the same general reasons that I have problems with various other forms of intimidatory speech.

Count Lucanor wrote:Yes, I agree and this makes sense. It must be noted, however (for the benefit of such free speech absolutists), that the whole point of cancel culture is to actually, effectively, achieving a ban on other people's behavior, that is, to affect their personal freedom of action, including their right to have platforms to speak about anything the cancel culture advocates despise.

Yes indeed. The point of cancel culture, and other forms of intimidatory speech, is to curtail other people's feeling that they can speak freely (not their physical ability to do so), by using speech, not physical force. There are a lot of examples of speech which intimidates others into silence in this way, from the subtle to the obvious. For example:

"I know where you and your family live. If you say XYZ, I think you'd be well advised to take care when you and your children leave the house."

That example is the speaker stating some information about himself (about his knowledge of something) and giving some advise. "What's wrong with that?" He might faux-innocently ask. Of course, we all know that it's designed to use fear to curtail the other's free speech. It often works, especially when done more subtly. As a non free speech absolutist I naturally regard it as morally wrong and think it should potentially be illegal.

I think one of the usual free speech absolutist arguments is that the libertarian-style principle of individual freedom (of which speech is an aspect) is so important that it must be applied universally, because if it is applied only partially then the problem of when to apply it ends up being a matter of personal taste, and I think they would argue that legislation shouldn't be based on personal tastes, because then it would just be the personal tastes of the people who happen to hold legislative power. So I think it's mostly a consistency argument. The trouble is, in my view, these simplistic applications of universal principles in ethics often would lead, when actually put into practice, to results that almost everybody, including the person advocating the principle, wouldn't want. Attempting universal adherence to a simple principle (political idealism), without engaging common sense and accepting that ethics is complicated and messy, often leads to real-world end results that end up violating the underlying reason for the invention of the principle.

Count Lucanor wrote:...to affect their personal freedom of action...

This part, by the way, would be disputed by Terrapin Station (the clearest advocate of free speech absolutism currently posting here) because the word "action", in this context, is apparently used to specifically refer to things that humans do which have no causal relationship at all with prior events. So, by this definition (as I understand it) the idea of anything affecting a person's freedom to act would be regarded as oxymoronic. That curious view of human actions seems to be another root of the free speech absolutism because it leads to the equally curious conclusion that my actions can never to any degree be said to be caused by another person's words. Hence, all words are regarded as morally neutral.

Greta wrote: ↑January 4th, 2021, 4:16 pmFair point. Add adrenaline rush to the list. It's suggestive of naturally aggressive people who lack positive outlets for their emotions and have a need for stimulation.

"Positive outlets" don't work. One seeks to express one's emotions in some _relevant_ way, in some _relevant_ context.
Punching bags or screaming inside of soundproof rooms is insulting to one's moral indignation.