Yes!

We have to start somewhere, and it seems that a sentence's being true is at least as good a place as any. I mentioned previously the circularity of analysing truth in terms of knowledge when knowledge is defined in terms of truth.

Hold truth steady. Then belief that p is holding p to be true, even if it isn't. And knowing that p excludes p being false. The structure is consistent.

Indeed. You and I see this. What of them? :wink:

Another Conversation article spoke about McCarthyism, and the inept far-right “cancel culture” that can be seen even in this thread. The question might be, does the US have sufficient self-awareness to understand this, and to push back on this "new era of McCarthyism" as it has in the past? The re-election of Trump does not bode well.

It seems to me that he cannot know that he knows on his own. "I know that I know ..." is pure pleonasm. But it is an important feature of my attributing knowledge to someone that, by passing on the information that he knows, I endorse the knowledge. So "know" not only has space for endorsement by other people, it is built in to the concept as an unavoidable commitment. If I want to avoid commitment, I say that they believe that p. (If I actually disagree, I can say that they think that p.) — Ludwig V

Yes!

And thanks for introducing me to "pleonasm".

Wittgenstein doesn't think I know about them... — Ludwig V

There's a tension in his writing that it might be best to acknowledge rather than to try to sort out. This is an issue I;ve raised a few times with @Sam26. I read Wittgenstein as saying, for instance, that if knowledge is justified true belief, then we don't know we are in pain - becasue the justification just is the pain - but he also insisted we "look, don't think", and so that nevertheless he would note we do use "knowledge" in this way. There was a time, when cars became commonplace, were the corpses of slow-witted dogs littered the streets, their mangled remains a common sight that might well be used to explain how one felt after surgery. Wittgenstein understood Pascal's use, and so her meaning. In his own terms, he was being obtuse. The conclusion, perhaps unpalatable to Sam, is that we do use talk of knowing in ways that are not only about justified true beliefs.

But when I ask myself whether I believe that p, surely I need to consider whether p? — Ludwig V

How does asking oneself whether one believes that p differ from asking oneself if p is true? The response here must be much the same at the one you just gave to Tim... "I believe that is it true" is pure pleonasm.

Now it's tempting to think that therefore the JTB account amounts to only justified belief. But this fails to recognise that there is also a difference between somethings being believed and its being true. That difference is what allows error.

The "T" is JTB is not about deciding if the proposition in question is true - that's the prerogative of the "B" - it is about insisting that we cannot know what is not true.

Fair, perhaps. The data shows something quite contrary to the narrative it seems is prominent in the US.

How can speech injure? — Fire Ologist

q.v.

Sure. "Discovered" is not my word. After rejecting of the rule of others, one might look to rule with others. Who we are is also who they are. I'll accept a Foucauldian correction.

My problem with hate speech laws is based on just what I see here in the United States. — BC

Well, yes, and the issue there is the same as elsewhere - finding a balance between being able to express an opinion while not being permitted to incite or induce violence. Looking at other jurisdictions might show that the approach in the US, expressed hereabouts as a naïve acceptance of a refusal to forbid any speech, is fraught with inconsistency. We must acknowledge the capacity of speech to injure, beyond mere offence.

Oh, Ok.

Analysis in terms of illocutions and perlocutions - speech and its consequences - provides a structure in which to understand the act as a whole. It's a counter to those who would say that we must protect the right to express oneself, even if the consequences are unacceptable. So it seems we agree in not accepting that the speech and its consequences are separable, at least for the purposes of ascribing complicity.

This is the argument now being put by sections of the commentariat on the right; that the left is complicit in violence that purportedly resulted from what they have said. It's curiously parallel to earlier arguments put by sections of the commentariat on the left, that and that is the apparent target of the OP. The shoe seems to have changed foot.

At some stage one might grow to recognise oneself as a member of a community, to acknowledge the need in others to also overcome themselves.

And then one might begin to consider ethics. One might become an adult.

I continue to think there is a consideration of scope here that is missing from your account.

Notice that knowing is an attitude towards the proposition, hence the requirement that we set out who it is that is doing the knowing. So we want to get to "J knows that p".

According to the JYB account, we must have it that the following are all true:

1. J believes that p
2. p is justified
3. p

Notice that it is the belief that brings J. into the scope of the knowledge statement.

This, at least in part; since it is arguable - and I would argue - that the justification is also an attitude.

Notice that the last, "p", is not justified in any way, nor is it believed - it's just true. It is not about your "finding out" if p is indeed true.

Would the facts necessary (to find out whether X is true) be the exact same ones cited as my justifications for believing X? — J

Notice that you are not asking if p is true, but how you find out if p is true, and so again asking about an attitude. The facts that help you decide on your attitude are irrelevant to whether p is true or not.

I don't like "hate-speech laws" and "hate crimes" either. Their meanings are far too vague, which makes them useful for suppression of speech that someone doesn't like. — BC

And yet outside the USA, they are ubiquitous. Some reasonable sophisticated communities have found ways to live with the tension other than a naïve adherence to freedom of speech.

Another example for consideration. We accept, I hope, that a sign saying "Whites only" on a bus is unacceptable.

Another example, from On ‘Whites Only’ Signs and Racist Hate Speech: Verbal Acts of Racial Discrimination

Imagine that an African American man boards a public bus on which all the other passengers are white. Unhappy with the newcomer, an elderly white man turns to the African American man and says, “Just so you know, because I realize that your kind are not very bright, we don’t like niggers around here,…boy. So, go back to Africa…so you can keep killing each other…and do the world a favor!

What is the salient difference between the utterance as described, and the elderly white man saying "Whites only!"? (Seems that being elderly is relevant - presumed authority. I suspect that now the antagonist would be more likely to be a young white male.)

The conclusion, "we have good reason to believe that some racist hate speech (that in the public bus example) constitutes an illegal act of racial discrimination"; that absolute adherence to freedom of speech is naïve.

So we ought consider the act constituting the locution separately to the act consequential to the locution? The first is protected, the second, not so?

In Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts Rae Langton consider an example elaborated from Austin:

Two men stand beside a woman. The first man turns to the second, and says "Shoot her." The second man looks shocked, then raises a gun and shoots the woman.

Do we say that, since the act of shooting was not constitutive of the utterance of the first man, that he bears no responsibility for the killing? I think not. The consequences of an act might well be considered as part of that act.

Langton uses the argument here to support the case that pornography - a speech act in the broad sense - subordinates and silences women; that the subordination and silencing are inherent in the pornographic act. The subordination and silencing are as much of the pornographic act as the killing is of the order given by the first man.

Recent commentators seem to be in agreement with Langton on this point, when they hold supposed "left wing radicals" responsible for Kirk's murder.

At the least, it is apparent that there is much other consider here. My own intuition is, at least when considering responsibility, to treat the act as a whole, not separating out the illocution of the order from the perlocution of the killing. That is, there are illocutionary acts that are also acts of violence and hate.

Thank you for at least attempting some philosophical analysis.

I fixed an ambiguity in the post. I think we are in agreement.

And now the discussion becomes the usual parochial hectoring, as predicted.

This comes out in an anecdote related by Fania Pascal, who knew him in Cambridge in the 1930s:

I had my tonsils out and was in the Evelyn Nursing Home feeling sorry for myself. Wittgenstein called. I croaked: “I feel just like a dog that has been run over.” He was disgusted: “You don’t know what a dog that has been run over feels like.” — On Bullshit Harry Frankfurt

So he Kirk upset people, and they don't like it, so he shouldn't be allowed to make further comment...?

ok.

Ok. You said "making and searching for meaning is what we do, it’s not our purpose". That appears to imply exclusively that either it's something we do, or it's our purpose. But isn't our purpose something we do?

Hu? Something to do with wearing sunglasses?

Ok.

Seeing stuff as either objective or subjective might be the source of the problem.

Look at the issue instead in terms of whether it is something we decide or something we discover. We don't discover the big picture, but we might decide it, by choosing what counts as being important and what doesn't.

So it's not that the big picture has no purpose, but that we attribute, rather than discover, the big picture.

We don't discover life's meaning, so much as create it.

It's not something we find, so much as something we do.

Or more technically, we might benefit by dropping "objective" and "subjective" and instead thinking about meaning in terms of the direction of our intent. See Anscombe.

Do I have to know that X is true in order to use it as the T in a JTB statement? — J

No. But it has to be true. This was my first reply to you in the present conversation:

Seems to me that folk read JTB as the claim that in order to know something, we must know that it is true. It's hard to get across that this is not what the JTB account is saying. It's not that the proposal is justified, believed and known to be true, but that it is justified, believed and true. — Banno

All good. Self-awareness requires awareness of others, such that they develop together, that you and I are aware differently.

I'm not convinced that Wittgenstein accepted JTB, in the way @Sam26 seems to think. I read him in On Certainty more as pointing out that if we do accept JTB then these are the consequences - there are for instance things that we might casually say we know that are rules out as knowledge by the JTB account. We can't know how a dog that has been run over feels.

we should refuse to show empathy — NOS4A2

I'm told that empathy is now an unpopular term. It's application has become quite selective. The opinion piece cited considered more than Kimmel.

It's good to hear that the white middle class males here can handle themselves and are happy to occasionally be offended. No need to legislate, then.

Well, Downunder is pretty much a client state of the US, so it's no joy for us to watch their democracy fail. And no, the irony of the timing of this thread was not lost on me.

I'm not sure whether you are talking logic or child development here. — Ludwig V

Logic. But I'm thinking of Davidson here, too - interpretation and the principle of charity fit in with your comments regarding empathy...

Belief only makes sense against a background of truth; it is, after all, what is thought true as opposed what is actually true.

Oh, I see. Ok.

You might appreciate this.

...you... — ssu

Me?

Not I. I drew attention to the fact that the US is an outlier, in not having legislation criminalising hate speech.

So physics presents us with mathematical models of how the early universe might have been, used to interpret the experimental results. These interpretations work within the world, hopefully providing us with cogent explanations. They are physical, not metaphysical.

What does metaphysics present us with? In which direction does it look?

Is the term used outside of polemical discourse, or is it just a snappy way of repackaging the notion of vilification and threats to harm? — Tom Storm

That's the conflict, isn't it - it's used "outside of polemical discourse", as the UN example shows, but from the sensitivities expressed by some here, who apparently felt offended or vilified by some uses of the term, as itself an artefact of hate speech.

I've given a few extended and considered replies, referencing various external sources and pointing to various arguments.,

See how your reply is about me?

On one influential argument, unfettered free speech is no more than the privilege of the wealthy to say what they please at the expense of the many; see Murdoch or Musk.

Just so.

...much the sort of thing about which I complained...

Oh well.

Again,

An attempt to analyse truth in terms of knowledge using a definition of knowledge in terms of truth will of course be circular. — Banno

I'd suggest that here truth is foundational, and knowledge derivative.

From "We know that A" we can conclude that A is true, but only because that is how "We know that..." works; this is a bit of grammar only.

...where the external truth-maker is decided by the linguistic community rather than the believer. — sime

For a large class of sentences, the truth of the sentence is decided by how things are, not by how the community thinks they are.

Odd, that without evidence, or even argument, folk accept the theory that "hate speech" was specifically invented as a political weapon to silence conservatives. That seems to be where we are, at least in some countries. The term is recent, however the idea has a long history, back to outlawing libel agains groups, and blasphemy, through reactions to the harm of Nazi propaganda, tot he tension between the Universal Declaration of Human Rights problematically including protection for both freedom of expression and against discrimination. The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination requires states to criminalise “all dissemination of ideas based on racial superiority or hatred". Calls for action came after events in Rwanda, after which media executives were convicted of genocide. The concept of hate speech came long before the present US partisan fights.

As Pam Bondi recently discovered, there is indeed a tension between free speech and hate speech.

There’s free speech, and then there’s hate speech. And there is no place — especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie — [for that] in our society.... We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech. — Pam Bondi

The United States elevates free speech in a way not seen in other jurisdictions, perhaps to the point of fetishising it. Other countries have found it possible to implement restrictions on acceptable speech. Wikipedia kindly provides a list of examples. As with gun law, the United States is an outlier. The preponderance of US citizens here will render the discussion somewhat parochial.

There are indeed plenty of philosophical issues to discuss here. It's a topic of some interest in that it sits at the intersection of ethics and language. Of particular interest to me is how Austin's distinction of perlocutions from illocutions has been used in solidifying the performative aspect of hate speech, in separating the harm caused in the utterance of some particular speech act from harm caused as a later result of that act.

...some instances of hate speech can be seen to constitute acts of (verbal) discrimination, and should be considered analogous to other acts of discrimination—like posting a ‘Whites Only’ sign up at a hotel—that US law recognizes as illegal... — SEP

There was a time not long ago when such discussions might occur in this forum. The partisan and the parochial have changed that.

I am putting it to you that it is not a useful term. — Roke

And yet there it is, being used by the United Nations. Likely the UN decided to use the term "hate" precisely because they need to motivate action and resources for what is essentially an educational approach

Perhaps take a look at the UN document, and see if there is something in the actions therein that is problematic.

The document is specific with regard to freedom of expression:

1. The strategy and its implementation to be in line with the right to freedom of
opinion and expression. The UN supports more speech, not less, as the key means
to address hate speech

Perhaps your point is more about the misuse of an expression rather than an argument that it not be used at all.

So your claim is that some hate speech is not hateful? Or at least that some language that is labeled hate speech may not meet, say, the UN definition?

Ok, so the term can be misused. But nevertheless it is a useful term. Not a nonstarter.