Positivism is well named, because you have to be absolutely positive to believe (as in belief or faith) in it. Free speech and foolish speech are protected by the Constitution. Which is good since positivists need the latter. 😊
Postwar German law is hardly the place to go for this discussion. While many might point you to the current return to official status of Stasi-like methods and tactics, if you just look at the records of the 1990's you will find many more examples of the suppression of free speech -- attributed to "right - wing" and "fascsim" and "skinheads" -- in Germany that we have yet encountered today. Suppression of speech, association, and the right redress were legally mandated in Germany, even after reunification. Note also that rights were similarly suppressed, using much the same language and media slant as today, in Great Britain at the same time.
The resemblance between the Stasi's suppression of the East to the current state of German discourse seems lost on those currently in power.
Brennan's problem is not ignorance, it is indoctrination. She, her production crew and staff, their directors, and their employer have been indoctrinated to conflate the hoax of hate speech with free speech. As a group, they are themselves completely propagandized.
Rather than Bentham v Jefferson, you might better frame this specific discussion as Sowell v. Lippmann. Walter Lippmann described this very process as desireable, if not righteous and evangelistic, in "Public Opinion." Any instance of Thomas Sowell's work might lay up on the opposite argument, but favorite at the moment is "The Vision of the Annointed."
In this case, according to Sowell, Brennan and much of the industry are the Annointed and those of us who are opposed are the benighted sinners: the manufactured consent outcome Lippmann found desirable, although using different terms. Sowell and Lippmann might agree on the effect, yet differ completely on its meaning or desirability.
WRT Ms. Brennan's problem being indoctrination rather than ignorance, did she not refer to the so-called weaponization of free speech and conflate that specious activity with the Far Right regardless of no free speech existing in Germany in the early 1930s through 1945 (the universities were in lock-step, also)? Perhaps I am reaching, but I suspect she has conflated Nazism (National Socialism) with the Far Right rather than the Far Left. Socialism is ensconced on the Left, regardless whether it is national socialism or its' cousin, international socialism. She and her journalistic cohort are not only indoctrinated, but they are ignorant, also. Please accept my apologies for that slight diversion.
I remain utterly puzzled why testing our moral intuitions is meant to be evidence against the metaethical views underlying positivism. Yes, it may well be true that a statistically significant majority of readers of the story all would find prosecuting the woman in the example disturbing! But the fact that many people coming from the same strata have the same psychological reactions to sets of facts is evidence that they share that strata, that they share *something*, such as a context parameter for a contextualist view of morality, or other sociological characteristics, not that they must share a special apprehension of free-floating principles.
That's also the thrust of the argument from disagreement, and it seems like the Strauss take on this is taking obsessively literally the name and wording of the argument and not the metaethical claim it represents. It's not merely that moral disagreement undercuts a presumption in favor of assuming nonindexical facts-of-the-matter (in the technical sense) about a broad concept like justice. It's that we can understand people as having different moral views without assuming that they are evaluated with identical criteria; in other words, morality is explicable in indexical terms, and the reasons why we should have a presumption in favor of the objectivist position are fraught at best and question begging at worst. In the positivist view, perhaps we ought not have such a presumption to rebut. Harts claim can be understood as saying that, yeah, we "recognize evils", that doesn't mean that what we're doing there is recognizing nonindexical properties that correspond with or are isomorphic with the "pervasive reason of the cosmos". It could be that we're recognizing our own preferences.
I also admit to being a little nervous about the bundling of issues here. Some positivists caricature the natural law position as relying on magic words and floaty poetic language in favor of publicly assailable arguments about the details of the underlying metaethical and epistemology of the jurisprudence. That's unfair as a way to present a position. (If you doubt that, consider your reaction to the last two sentences of my previous paragraph.) Selective citations of floaty sounding words may not adequately represent an argument. But neither does focusing on Hart's particular suggestion about the appropriateness of an ex post facto law. Legal positivism does not live or die on the particularized takes of its adherents, and if it does, I hope natural lawyers are ready to defend Wallter Block and Murray Rothbard.
I note with regret that Margaret Brennan is a graduate of the University of Virginia (as am I, thus the regret), founded by Jefferson and described as he instructed on his tombstone as one of his three proudest achievements, the other two being authorship of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia statue for religious freedom.
Positivism is well named, because you have to be absolutely positive to believe (as in belief or faith) in it. Free speech and foolish speech are protected by the Constitution. Which is good since positivists need the latter. 😊
Steven,
Postwar German law is hardly the place to go for this discussion. While many might point you to the current return to official status of Stasi-like methods and tactics, if you just look at the records of the 1990's you will find many more examples of the suppression of free speech -- attributed to "right - wing" and "fascsim" and "skinheads" -- in Germany that we have yet encountered today. Suppression of speech, association, and the right redress were legally mandated in Germany, even after reunification. Note also that rights were similarly suppressed, using much the same language and media slant as today, in Great Britain at the same time.
The resemblance between the Stasi's suppression of the East to the current state of German discourse seems lost on those currently in power.
Brennan's problem is not ignorance, it is indoctrination. She, her production crew and staff, their directors, and their employer have been indoctrinated to conflate the hoax of hate speech with free speech. As a group, they are themselves completely propagandized.
Rather than Bentham v Jefferson, you might better frame this specific discussion as Sowell v. Lippmann. Walter Lippmann described this very process as desireable, if not righteous and evangelistic, in "Public Opinion." Any instance of Thomas Sowell's work might lay up on the opposite argument, but favorite at the moment is "The Vision of the Annointed."
In this case, according to Sowell, Brennan and much of the industry are the Annointed and those of us who are opposed are the benighted sinners: the manufactured consent outcome Lippmann found desirable, although using different terms. Sowell and Lippmann might agree on the effect, yet differ completely on its meaning or desirability.
WRT Ms. Brennan's problem being indoctrination rather than ignorance, did she not refer to the so-called weaponization of free speech and conflate that specious activity with the Far Right regardless of no free speech existing in Germany in the early 1930s through 1945 (the universities were in lock-step, also)? Perhaps I am reaching, but I suspect she has conflated Nazism (National Socialism) with the Far Right rather than the Far Left. Socialism is ensconced on the Left, regardless whether it is national socialism or its' cousin, international socialism. She and her journalistic cohort are not only indoctrinated, but they are ignorant, also. Please accept my apologies for that slight diversion.
explains an issue well so I now have an understanding of it.
Well said. Aligns with my feeling for the issue. And here, where there is Justice considered, feelings matter.
I remain utterly puzzled why testing our moral intuitions is meant to be evidence against the metaethical views underlying positivism. Yes, it may well be true that a statistically significant majority of readers of the story all would find prosecuting the woman in the example disturbing! But the fact that many people coming from the same strata have the same psychological reactions to sets of facts is evidence that they share that strata, that they share *something*, such as a context parameter for a contextualist view of morality, or other sociological characteristics, not that they must share a special apprehension of free-floating principles.
That's also the thrust of the argument from disagreement, and it seems like the Strauss take on this is taking obsessively literally the name and wording of the argument and not the metaethical claim it represents. It's not merely that moral disagreement undercuts a presumption in favor of assuming nonindexical facts-of-the-matter (in the technical sense) about a broad concept like justice. It's that we can understand people as having different moral views without assuming that they are evaluated with identical criteria; in other words, morality is explicable in indexical terms, and the reasons why we should have a presumption in favor of the objectivist position are fraught at best and question begging at worst. In the positivist view, perhaps we ought not have such a presumption to rebut. Harts claim can be understood as saying that, yeah, we "recognize evils", that doesn't mean that what we're doing there is recognizing nonindexical properties that correspond with or are isomorphic with the "pervasive reason of the cosmos". It could be that we're recognizing our own preferences.
I also admit to being a little nervous about the bundling of issues here. Some positivists caricature the natural law position as relying on magic words and floaty poetic language in favor of publicly assailable arguments about the details of the underlying metaethical and epistemology of the jurisprudence. That's unfair as a way to present a position. (If you doubt that, consider your reaction to the last two sentences of my previous paragraph.) Selective citations of floaty sounding words may not adequately represent an argument. But neither does focusing on Hart's particular suggestion about the appropriateness of an ex post facto law. Legal positivism does not live or die on the particularized takes of its adherents, and if it does, I hope natural lawyers are ready to defend Wallter Block and Murray Rothbard.
I note with regret that Margaret Brennan is a graduate of the University of Virginia (as am I, thus the regret), founded by Jefferson and described as he instructed on his tombstone as one of his three proudest achievements, the other two being authorship of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia statue for religious freedom.