What Does Free Speech Mean (to you?)

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We can also distinguish "free speech" and "freedom of speech".

Many people believe (erroneously, I think) that free speech is the right to say whatever you like about whatever you like, whenever you like. Not quite.

The right to "freedom of speech" is the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, by any means.
It concerns the posession and communication of information, ideas (including feelings), facts and knowledge. (Information, ideas, facts and knowledge are not exactly the same thing as opinions, though opinions can meet the criterias for any of those four.)

"Free speech" is speech or expression that neither causes harm nor is itself harmed.

As you can see, freedom of expression does not imply that all expression would be free expression, although that's the ideal goal.

Free expression and the right to freedom of expression can be applied to ideas of all kinds (yes, including those that may be deeply offensive), but they always do come with implicit or explicit responsibilities, which makes them inherently restrictive by themselves. They carry an inherent responsibility to not cause harm.

It is because such acts of expression come with inherent responsibilities that the way in which they are performed can be legitimately restricted. Restrictions can be justified if they protect specific public interest or the rights and reputations of others from unjust harm. There is the complication that some harm is echically just and good. For example, harming a person or group's reputation may be an inevitable consequence of publishing some truth about their characteristics or actions (the good of the publication then also depends on wether or not it's actually true).

This much, most people agree on.

The root of the issue then is what exactly constitutes harm?

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a word could not possibly cause "physical" harm to someone.

Harm can be caused by words just as by deeds, the old saying "sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me" is utter bullshit. As a conscious Human, harm can be defined in many ways, physical, mental and emotional to name 3 that are quite relevant to this discussion, the concept of harm must be weighed in each situation, I may not care that you call me a "insert derogatory term here", however some other person with a different mindset/psychological make up could suffer sever damage if you used that same term to refer to them.

So where does Freedom begin and end?

A good libertarian would say it begins at the center of my body and ends at end of the longest hair. So as long as you cause me no harm, I shall cause you no harm, Live and let live. The reliance on self-determination in the libertarian vain is unfortunately flawed as the human condition prevents the mentally deranged from harming others. I use the term "mentally deranged" not as term to imply mental illness although being a sociopath is a psychological condition and could be termed a mental illness, but as a qualifier for a human who no longer subscribes to the concept of another's right to live peaceably.

Your right to free speech with regard to my right of free speech is not only a subtle but also a conditional construct. If I tell you to stop communicating with me because you are causing me distress and you continue said communication you are infringing upon my right to live peaceably. So your action of speech is no longer with out detrimental effect, thus harm is caused and off to the races we go.

Now your right to free speech in conjunction with your right, in the USA and other parts of the world, of assembly to redress grievances to the government is a completely different scenario than your right to say what ever the hell you want to say where ever you want to say it. The freedoms granted citizens by constitution or other laws are wholly subject to the situation of dealing with that particular government which follows and enforces that constitution or laws. Germany has been brought up few times in this discussion due to the rigorous Hate Speech laws and enforcement of those laws. The German People, citizens of Germany, live in a representative democracy, with a constitutional construct that specifically outlaws any form of speech which the government deems inappropriate. The government which is selected fairly by the will of the people is entrusted to enforce these restrictions both fairly and equally, and from my research through out the last 75 or so years the German government has not broken that trust with the citizens of Germany, if it does break that trust then it falls to the citizens to remove the offending government and replace it with one that is trustworthy.

In summation, freedom of speech is subjective. It is subject to context. Your personal dealings with other conscious beings is one context while dealing with your government is another context and dealing with a business or commercial entity is yet another context. Each of these has different laws or rules which should guide your interactions, some of these "laws" and rules are natural laws, some are penal and others are civil. The issue is who gets to determine when you have crossed a line and are infringing on my right to live peaceably or vice versa?

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64

Hurt feelings?

If I say something so completely horrific to you in a way that would make you consider suicide... But in a language you don't understand, makes apparent that what is said does not matter.

Edit: for a more complete thought, no harm is done from words alone. The person listening is the party at fault.

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So you are advocating that the other person is at fault for you being a rude jackass?

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For reacting to me being a rude jackass. Absolutely.

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I like the idea, though there would be a problem when one person doesn't grant equal rights to another. Which leads me to believe those rights are whole and inalienable without being given.

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Ah ok, so if you call me a name and I punch you in the face, I am at fault criminally for committing battery.

If you threaten my life or well being, you are however at fault and criminally responsible for assault.

If you threaten my life or well being and I shoot you, everything is good, I am safe and you are dead.

If i react to you calling me a name or threatening me either through words or actions, by turning and walking away, which is what most mature people would do, you are still a rude jackass and I am a mature adult. There is no fault in this scenario other than you actually harmed yourself by no longer having access to my fabulous fortune which I was going to leave to you because at some point I thought you were a nice guy until you called me a name.

Edit: I used the term mature adult, I should have used the term mature person.

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So, verbal harrassment and bullying is somehow not harmful in a civil society?

We have to consider people's actions collectively.

Having many individual people treat you like shit throughout your life does have a significant collective impact on a person. An impact which is objectively measurable and reproductible.
There's tons of scientific research on this matter.

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Unfortunately, or fortunately. To consider words to hold essentially no power is just untrue, and kind of an insult to our species ability to form language.

Words hold tremendous power, whether you like it or not words can form and topple governments, decide if someone lives or dies and push us forward.

To suggest they have no power, and that the words someone speaks should hold no consequence alone because words themselves don't kill people is to suggest for example that Adolf Hitler never did anything wrong. After-all he never killed anyone, he just manipulated people through his words, created a power hierarchy with his words then used his words to order other people to kill millions. Hitler never did anything wrong, and wasn't responsible for the deaths of anyone.

That's just one example of.. well literally everything in history that can be sourced back to the words someone speaks.

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AFAIK, that's a common misconception. He saw combat action during the first world war and was one of the very few members of his regiment to survive.

He may have never commited first or second degree murder, sure, but he most definitely had several times been in a situation where he had to kill on the battlefield.

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@GabDube again I don't see any reason to believe speech extends beyond perception. Also focusing on verbal abuse on individuals is a minor aspect to freedom of speech and quite uncommon considering all communication between people.

More important is the ability to criticize the status quo without repercussion. Or being able to question authority and find truth.

Exceptions to the matter inhibit the ability to express yourself freely. New law that claims you cant say something bad to the mentally ill? Someones says something shitty to you, say you're ill and sue the pants off them or have them incarcerated, deal done

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I am talking specifically about Hitler's rise to power leading up to the second world war and the extermination and concentration camps. He never killed anyone to make that happen.

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I mentioned that sort of thing specifically because it is one of the very justifiable restrictions to human expression.

I don't think that the freedom and ability to criticize and question would be something that people here would disagree on.
Most of the times when people disagree on these things, it boils down to wether or not case of expression actually constitutes criticism or questioning, not wether or not people should be free to do so without repercussion.

We shouldn't be free to spread errors or misinformation (knowingly or not) without correcting it, but misinformation is communicated most effectively when it can pass as criticism.

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Incumbents before hitler began by disarming the populous. Nor did they have freedom of speech including the capacity to question authority. And with capital punishment or imprisonment looming over your head who would say otherwise?

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So his words did or did not have power? It sounds like your saying he did? Did his words cause or not cause death and should he be responsible for it?

It sounds like your saying it's ok if your words lead to someone's death so long as everyone is able to do that too. But if not everyone has absolute free speech then it's not ok to use your words to lead to someone's death..

But there's no such thing as absolute free speech. It's always dictated by standards of society.

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I think jailing people for being even slightly skeptical of some things in WWII in Germany is not even remotely close to freedom.

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I highly doubt there was a singularity that caused ww2 but to appease the example:
He had the power to command an army to commit genocide. Once he gave that single order, the people taking the orders should have had the ability to ask why or say no without being shot for treason.

Free must be absolute, otherwise, its not free.

Edit: and I'm not considering social stigma. The only consideration is civil justice or government.

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Hence why a ton of philosophers of materialism think that absolute freedom is absolutely impossible; or more rigorously, that freedom is a concept inapplicable to a material universe, and can only exist in a universe where the only thing that exists is a single immaterial singularity.

You can be "more free" or "less free", as in more or less constrained by context and external factors, but you can never be just "free" without being somehow both omnipotent and omnipresent.
Being free means being outside of any context.

And if we wanted to be really anal about it, we should be talking about being "unconstrained by unjust or illegitimate human-controlled factors".
(Which still requires agreeing on what is unjust and/or illegimate, and/or human-controlled.)

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As for how expression and the use of language can be having an effect on people :

Speech is physical, not immaterial. It has physical effect in the brains of the humans that recieve it.

Our thoughts, decisions, reasonings, and cogitations make a difference in our actual behaviour. And our sensory inputs, our perception of external actions, context and events also makes a difference in our thoughts, decisions and mindset.

There are all sorts of experiences that we have in life where it seems just a fact of our experiences that though we did none thing, we feel we know perfectly well that we could have done something else. We know we could have dome something else, because we chose one thing for certain reasons.
We might have, but we couldn't have acted on those reasons for doing something else. Because the reasons that made the difference did so in a way that led us to do what we did, and not something else, otherwise we just wouldn't have done what we ended up doing.

Human thoughts and behaviors may be almost unpredictable, but they are not random, they are physically determined like everything else.

Edit: And by "almost unpredictable", I mean that there is never a single cause for a single action. It's the collective weight, the sum of a person's lifetime of experiences that determines a person's actions in any given context.
For example, the whole "girlfriend killed boyfriend with just her words" thing is too superficial an explanation. She effectively took part in the collective of causes that were eventually responsible for his action of suicide. The impact of her speech in that context cannot be precisely measured, since the major source of data would be the boyfriend (and he's dead), but it certainly did not weigh against the action of suicide.

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In my heart, outside of a legal definition, freedom of speech is an extension of free thought and free will. Language is a tool of the mind, so it follows that the speech is vital in allowing people to pursue their own thoughts, find their identity and reach their full potential as individuals.

This supposition would also imply that freedom of speech demands some measure of intelligence to what is actually said. When people talk utter trash they are exercising this right the same way a dog might express it's right to being a dog by shitting on a footpath. To an extent this topic is about deciding what is the trash and what is of merit?

Real life makes this philosophical debate more complicated, while you may be legally protected in expressing yourself, negative consequences are still a real hazard. Average people rarely need to fear the government in the west but there is a real risk of judgement from peers, losing one's livelihood or social standing.

I'd probably say that the spirit of freedom of speech hinges on:

  • The speaker, speaking the truth. Or as @Eden referenced “speak the truth as best as you are able”

  • The speakers comments (or expression through action) not being said with the sole intent of distressing another. Contentious perhaps but I don't see the point in non-constructive discussion and insults are not constructive.

  • A willingness to listen when someone observes the prior two points.

  • Never forcing someone to act in opposition to their free will. E.g. you can't force a baker to add your slogans to a cake.

I'd be interested to hear what others think about the points I suggested above. Looking at my own words leaves me with many questions. For instance, does this mean utter idiots or inflexible ideologues should be denied free speech?

disclaimer: still carefully reading my way through this very interesting topic.

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