Free speech has become a problem. Provocateurs and trolls routinely appeal to free speech as license to say things they know will be hurtful or outrageous. Of course, there is nothing principled about the rhetorical bully’s appeal to free speech as license to abuse. The same parties are often enough eager to punish universities like this one for allowing speech they don’t like. So, free speech has been abused and weaponized. It’s no surprise that some are losing faith in free speech. Clearly, we aren’t doing free speech very well.
Still, free expression has a critical role to play in inquiry, democracy and human autonomy. Free expression is an engine of inquiry. Open sharing of diverse views expands our base of evidence to reason from. Of course this is true for cutting edge research, but the sort of inquiry I’m primarily concerned with here is that of ordinary people trying to make sense of things and sort out what is true. Free speech is foundational to free and open democratic society. We can hardly participate in self-governance without free and open advocacy. Perhaps most basically, free expression is a critical aspect of human liberty. Respect for persons demands that we allow people to speak for themselves.
So, I’m committed to free speech, but I don’t think this means we have to just live with the problems we’ve identified. Rather, I think it will be worthwhile to look into how we can get the best out of free speech while mitigating the worst.
We might start with itemizing some of the assorted things we do with speech. Sometimes we express ourselves clearly and thoughtfully. The goal here may be simply to share with others so that they might better understand us. But then we also use speech to amuse people, make ourselves look good, manipulate people, deceive people, or to instill fear and dominate people. I do think there is value in making people laugh, but maybe not so much for some of these other things.
I’d submit that using speech to better understand each other, in dialogue especially, is liberating. Aside from its obvious practical value, understanding each other can help to free us from our own fetters, including false views, biases, confusions and other sorts of problematic neural pathways. Here I’m alluding mainly to the epistemic value of understanding through speech, but this often overlaps with the moral value of understanding. People who understand each other have a shared foundation for mutual respect. I don’t really know how to treat another with respect if I don’t understand them. Mutual respect, as opposed to domination and subordination, enhances human liberty.
So, clear and thoughtful expression through speech can further the cause of human freedom. Some of the other uses of speech aren’t so liberating. Leaving laughter aside, using speech to polish your image, manipulate, deceive, or to instill fear and dominate are all ways of using speech to enhance or exert influence or power. And herein lies the risk of undermining liberty. It is clear enough that speech used to deceive, intimidate or dominate is liable to undermine liberty.
Perhaps we’ve already given the lie to the postmodern slogan that every claim to truth is a claim to power. It’s hard to see how speech as sharing constitutes a claim to power. Our assorted assertions can be, in various ways and to varying degrees, assertions of power or ways of enhancing liberty through facilitating understanding.
It won’t do to simply bless speech as sharing and condemn speech as assertion of power. There is no clean distinction to draw between these in our acts of speech. When I advocate for a cause I believe in, I am both sharing and aiming to influence others. When I argue against some bit of misinformation, I am both sharing a perspective and hoping to steer others clear of deception. Further, as both these examples suggest, not every exertion of power through speech is a bad thing. In inquiry, for instance, it is a good thing when criticism of a faulty view nudges people closer to the truth. In democratic government it is a good thing when sharing my legitimate concerns helps guide us towards creative solutions that helps to accommodate these.
Perhaps it is just manipulating, deceiving or dominating through speech that is problematic. The problem here is not one with speech per se. Manipulating, deceiving and dominating are morally problematic ends regardless of the mode of action through with they are pursued.
As with other modes of action, we do regulate speech in some cases where the motives are morally problematic. Threatening speech is assault and can be prosecuted as such. Hate speech is not covered under a right to free speech. Manipulative or deceitful speech can count as fraud. Our right to free speech is not absolute. Yet perhaps we should worry that these modest limitations on free speech error on the side of liberty, at the expense of allowing harms including systematically unjust harms, say in the case of coded racial denigration microaggressions.
Can further regulation of speech help? The history of racist speech is instructive here. In the wake of the civil rights movement, overt racial epithets became taboo. Informal social regulation of speech was significantly successful. The response by racists to this social regulation of racist speech was to deploy coded language with plausible deniability in denigrating others. This deception is, I think, quite pernicious. It combines domineering aggression with evasion of accountability. So, I worry that the successful social regulation of overt racist speech has backfired to some degree. And I worry that further attempts at regulating speech would be similarly gamed.
So, if regulation of speech is not helpful, how then can we mitigate against the harms we see propagated so routinely under the guise of free speech. Here I would suggest more sharing and less power. We push discourse towards building community and trust and away from harmful speech whenever we steer discourse towards sharing and at least de-emphasize the role of influence and power. As educators we are well positioned to do this as we guide students in inquiry and try to instill intellectual virtues like open mindedness an intellectual humility. Ours is one of the few remaining social contexts where our students participate in speech that is not necessarily about influence and power.
Would that I could stop on that hopeful note. But we should be clear about how precarious our position is in the age of the “attention economy.” Attention is what we have. I’m not sure there is anything more intimate and personal than our attention. And yet much of is it auctioned off to the highest bidder in our online lives. Functionally, much of what passes for entertainment is just advertising for other advertising. Peddling junk entertainment engineered for addiction that benefits advertisers is the business model for social media. And our speech is often the raw material for this junk entertainment. When speech is commodified, as it routinely is on social media, it becomes manipulative as such. Hence, our orators are now known as influencers. As divisive outrage consumes more and more of our attention for the sake of selling Toyotas and such, less and less attention remains available for the sort of sharing that builds community and trust. It would be wonderful if we could regulate the algorithms. This could help to give speech as sharing a bit more space.
My goal here is just to seed discussion with a couple of thoughts about how to approach the matter of free speech. At this point, my proposed prescription for getting the best out of free speech while avoiding the worst looks like basic playground guidance: more sharing and less shoving, please.