PPESextonPhil2025

I don't exactly know why I am so insistent on disagreeing with Shiffrin's basis, particularly because I think she puts forth an account that categorizes many actions I find frustrating and wrong as immoral. My guess is because I feel even if I explained this argument, many of the people I find myself frustrated with would not be convinced to change. I agree with a thinker-based approach and think Shiffrin provides a defensible account of how it could legally interact with non-standard cases as with children and lying, I'm just not convinced its basis is as universal as I would like it to be. Shiffrin champions the necessity of free-speech in two ways (excluding arguments directly from political checks and balances). One is through the reasoning that because free speech is essential to the development of thought, and thought is essential to the development of morality, free speech must also be essential to morality and should be protected. The second is an appeal to free exp...

 The Supreme Court in practice has accorded certain kinds of speech, in particular political speech, the highest level of protection, in effect deploying a system of tiers of protected speech, with commercial speech entitled to comparatively less protection, and other forms of speech, e.g. hate speech, entitled to virtually no protection at all.  This tiered approach might be thought to be implicit in the approach to free speech that focuses primarily on securing "the conditions of a functioning, often deliberative, democracy." (82)  It is a striking feature of Shiffrin's thinker-based approach that it seems to do away with tiers (92b, 93t).  The rationale is straightforward.  What is it that is important about speech?  It is the main avenue through which we develop as the distinctive people that we are, and to value persons is to make sure that this avenue remains open in every dimension that is important to developing as a person, whether religion, or sci...

I often find myself at odds with the limits of language (and demonstration, performance, art, etc.) to express myself. This often arises when I have a unique experience and I try to convey that to others. Sometimes, it is even a struggle for me to find the right words, expressions, or even images of memories to think about the experience I had. I assume I am not alone in this. In Chapter 3, Shiffrin presents her “thinker-based” approach to free speech rights. She writes, “given that our minds are not directly accessible to one another, speech and expression are the only precise avenues by which one can be known as the individual one is by others” (88-89). She continues, “to be known by others requires the ability to transmit the contents of one’s mind to others” (89). We are all humans with thoughts that we wish others to know in order for them to know ourselves. Therefore, we have an interest in supporting rights to speech and expression as means to transmit thoughts between us—to kn...

Prompt - " Write a blog post about Seana Shiffrin's interpretation of Free Speech as shown through her book "Speech Matters".  Connect it to a current issue or a different interpretation of Free Speech. It should be around 300 words.  Response -  Seana Shiffrin’s Ethical Free Speech and the Limits of “Say Anything” Culture In Speech Matters , Seana Shiffrin reimagines free speech not simply as a legal right but as a moral practice—one deeply intertwined with the values of honesty, trust, and respect. Unlike traditional First Amendment interpretations that focus on limiting government censorship, Shiffrin’s approach begins with our responsibilities to one another as speakers and listeners in a shared society. She argues that speech is not just a tool for self-expression or persuasion, but a fundamental way we build relationships and sustain democratic life. That means lying, deception, and even careless speech aren’t just bad behavior—they’re violations of a shared mo...

I like a lot of the work Shiffrin does to categorize human communication. The distinction between lying and deception is particularly useful in that it both clarifies sources of moral wrong while also enabling a more focused discussion into what is inherently bad about lying. Although lying is clearly morally suboptimal by intuition and comparison to truth, I feel Shiffrin's account presents an overly binary depiction of communication that obscures nuance in the morals of communication.  I think the focus on the epistemic importance of truth telling makes good sense, and better fleshes out a motivation for honest interaction than what I had attempted in my dramatic post on escaping nihilism. The values of any philosophy are clearly enhanced through collaboration with other people. Due to the inability to precisely know what someone else experiences, it seems truth telling and a refrain from lying has clear inherent value even distinct from the immorality of deception. Lying is wron...

Sorry if my thoughts are a bit scattered (aka make no sense) in this post; I just woke up and had a barely coherent string of tho ughts hit my brain. Hopefully something interesting comes out of me posting this! Promises as a Form of Truthful Communication Here's the quote from Shiffrin that for whatever reason triggered thoughts in my mind about the toxin problem: "Relationships of recognition and close relationships–both necessary for full self-development and flourishing–rely on access to the contents of one another's minds (10)." Specifically, these thoughts center around our discussion of promises/agreements in relation to the problem that rational choice theorists have in not being able to make promises (as the toxin problem illustrates). My first thought when reading this was that Shiffrin's observation that "relationships...rely on access to the contents of one another's minds" suggests a potential framework where promises function as a parti...

Reading Shiffrin's work immediately set off my Dark Ghettos alarm. Please strap in, this is going to be quite the long and convoluted blog post. I've been wrestling with the tension between Shiffrin's absolutist view of lying and truthful communication and Shelby's nonideal theory and reflections on oppressive systems in Dark Ghettos. Let's get my initial feelings out of the way first. To me, Shiffrin's Speech Matters feels like it exists in a romanticized moral universe. She positions truth-telling as this foundation of a "cooperative and collaborative project of fostering everyone's moral agency" (2). For Shiffrin, lying destroys the very mechanisms by which moral community and growth is made possible. When we lie, we're wrongly sabotaging the infrastructure that allows us to grow as moral agents (20-21). But here's where Shelby's work continues to hit home for me. In Dark Ghettos, he's dealing with communities where calls for con...

  I want to use this blog post to focus on one specific line in the reading: “One may not perjure oneself in court (at least if the system is reasonably just)” (28). That second half, “at least if the system is reasonably just” jumped out at me as very important. It immediately raises a big question: if the system is not just, is lying then okay? Or even required? This is specifically important in America, where the legal system is continually established to be unjust. If we apply Shiffrin’s ideas to how we live a moral life, is perjury okay in America?  In the example of Murderer-at-the-door, truth-telling seems wrong based on the outcome. But Shiffrin resists the simple utilitarian conclusions. Lying, she argues, isn’t just a pragmatic problem of a single situation; it’s a deep moral one about humans together. According to Shiffrin, the wrong of lying has three parts: It wrongs the listener, by presenting unreliable testimonial warrants (23). It wrongs the liar, by removing ...

 According to Shiffrin, although people who lie are often also engaging in deception, people can in some cases deceive others, and wrongfully deceive others, without lying to them, and can lie to others, wronging them, without deceiving them.  That lying and deception can come apart, she argues, shows that the wrong of deception is distinct from the wrong of lying.  Deceiving focuses on the psychological state of the target of the deception, whereas lying focuses on the psychological state of the person lying.  In deceiving another, I treat them as a mere means, manipulating them in the pursuit of ends that they do not share.  The wrong is one of manipulating and abusing the trust of another human being for ends that she does not share.  In lying, I act on a principle (a "Maxim") that could not be endorsed by others insofar as they are committed to interacting with dignity and respect.  If everyone accepted and acted on my reasons for lying, communicat...

 OK pretend this is in the sequence of Katie's posts + the replies. Blogger is being annoying and won't let me post.  Ok really cool stuff going on in this sequence of posts. I want to add some thoughts as an international student myself! First, I want to build on Gabe’s point about the high exit costs of deportation. He hits a lot of the main points but I want to add that the assumption that one can build a new life relatively easily also doesn’t consider the long-term reputational and bureaucratic consequences that follow a deportation. Once a student is deported, they often face serious difficulties re-entering the U.S. or even applying for visas elsewhere, as deportation can mark their immigration record with a form of institutional stigma. This undermines not only their educational trajectory but also their global mobility and professional aspirations.  Furthermore, the assumption that deported students can “pivot and get an education somewhere else” relies on a deep...

       Economics is a powerful tool for developing the science of society, and so its both frustrating and confusing to me why so many are content to form it to the status-quo. Cowen's comments carry the familiar attitude of a modern economist. Its as if they only half-listen to any argument of how we can improve society because of an underlying belief that virtue is unsustainable. Anything that doesn't limit itself to a purely market-based framework is thought to be undermined as fantastical idealism. The argument seems to go that any viable improvement would have already been incentivized by market forces, and so its not worth wasting time thinking about what could've been. The only tolerable policies are those that are explicitly tied to market research, but even those are dubious due to the impossibility of perfectly predicting the market.      Part of me gets it. It can be frustrating to constantly see a world motivated by ungrounded ideals, ...

I did spend a large part of the tutorial arguing that lowering exit costs would be almost enough to increase accountability of firms to the point that they can not act arbitrarily, otherwise they would lose their workers. After reading Anderson's response to Cowen, my thoughts have developed a little bit more. Anderson's response to Cowen's argument surrounding lowering exit costs argues that lowering exit costs doesn't matter if there is nowhere to exit to (141). I think there is an argument to go a step further, that even when there is a place to exit to, quitting and/or being fired arbitrarily is suboptimal for everyone.  Take the current Administration's revoking of students' statuses as Anderson's exile analogy of being fired. I'm choosing to focus on students because they often have low costs of exit, they (often) aren't in the country with refugee or other asylum status, can pivot and get an education somewhere else, and are leaving their frie...

    I think Anderson offers some great responses to both Kolodny and Cowen (I especially appreciated how ruthless she was with Cowen, who seems to view all firms through very rose-tinted glasses). As I read it, Kolodny’s main concern lies in determining the point at which analogies between the state and the firm break down, and whether there’s still cause for concern at that point of departure. He presses Anderson to clarify what, specifically, is objectionable about being subject to the arbitrary power of another. He seems to misconstrue her position as opposing governance in general, which she explicitly denies: “I stress that the focus of my lectures is not government as such…my focus is private government – arbitrary, unaccountable authority” (Anderson, 126). She uses the example of the Skylab astronauts’ strike to illustrate how micromanagement and excessive authority, particularly when it significantly encroaches on personal autonomy and agency, not only undermine ...

Upon reading Anderson’s section about pre- and post- industrial revolution pro-market theory I was drawn to compare how Karl Marx and Anderson describe capitalism.  First off: ideology. According to Anderson, “Ideologies do not simply describe and evaluate what exists. They promote ideals yet to be realized, diagnose the obstacles in the way, and suggest ways to remove those obstacles.” (122) Karl Marx frames ideology as a set of beliefs which rationalize oppression. These ideologies are determined by the means of production and spread through the ruling class. Ideologies change in response to changes in the means of production. Conversely, Anderson does not appear to view the same connection between the means of production and ideology.  Instead, she separates capitalism as an ideology between the pre- and post- industrial revolution versions. Pre-industrial revolution and economics of scale, she seems to largely respect capitalism highlighting how early pro-market thinkers d...

    Blackburn provides a compelling account of trust and human psychology that is both nuanced and workable in relation to the other thinkers we have read. Perhaps it is a strength of his account, but he leaves the basis of morality as an entirely mechanistic process. He develops past the traditional model of the prisoners dilemma, but none of the moves he makes are inaccessible to a machine with limited computational power. While I think his framework is broadly accurate, I'm curious if he misses a fundamental desire intrinsic to every human that can pr ovide a basis for our action.      Human cooperation can largely accounted for by efficiency. Because we know that we don't know everything, we may "irrationally" make some decisions such as making the first move to build trust. When the risk of deviating is low, it becomes maximizing to occasionally bet that we are missing something and pursue the option that we haven't tried. Then, once the potential for coope...

Violet and I were discussing the reading and realized we interpreted a section of Blackburn rather differently. I will present my case on why I think Blackburn is making a normative statement on page 189.  Here on page 189, Blackburn is describing the toxin puzzle in which you must truly intent to consume the toxin after receiving the reward.  I am arguing that Blackburn thinks that we, as a society, must “cultivate a disposition” in which we could truly intent to take the toxin and take the toxin. Violet disagrees that he makes such a normative statement! On the following page, he describes how forming a disposition to take the toxin is a sufficient reason for not re-thinking your decision after receiving your reward is normally a dogmatic and unadmirable trait. However, I think he highlights that it is not normally seen as admirable because he wants to cultivate a society in which it is admirable to be dogmatic.  He thinks as a society we should be “moved to co-operate...

 Blackburn touches on the importance of education in the blackmail example by demonstrating its role in what people are concerned about and, therefore, what they choose to do. He also talks about education in a different sense when bringing up Romeo and Juliet. In some sense, the Montagues and the Capulets were educated by the death of their children. They showed that they had learned the costs of their "rational" hate for each other and now have new concerns that include cooperation by erecting the statues.  I had some concerns about this for the argument that Blackburn makes about trust, that by showing little bit by little bit, you act with concern for cooperation allows for maximalization. If education can happen through not acting with concern for cooperation, then it will be really hard to demonstrate that learning as your reputation has already been established as untrustworthy. In some sense this is the hypocrite argument that we talked about earlier in the semester: ...

I really liked MacIntyre when we first read him. I really really like MacIntyre after reading Blackburn. Blackburn makes a key distinction between empirical and theoretical situations to better understand the priorities/concerns of an agent making a utility-maximizing decision. Empirical situations look at the outcomes of what will empirically result from a given decision. I may choose option A over B, because I will earn $100 in option A and I will be imprisoned for 5 years in option B. As someone who values money over imprisonment, Option A has higher utility to me based on the empirical results. Theoretical situations factor in priorities/concerns that are not tied to the empirical results of a decision to more fully explain the decision-making process. I may choose option B over A because I enjoy the activity of option B, or I know the $100 reward for option A was stolen from a poor family.  I find it helpful—and relevant—to characterize empirical situations as considering MacI...