Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-crg!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!cartan!brahms!gsmith
From: gsmith@brahms (Gene Ward Smith)
Newsgroups: news.misc,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Abuses of the net
Message-ID: <492@cartan.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Sun, 7-Dec-86 01:39:11 EST
Article-I.D.: cartan.492
Posted: Sun Dec  7 01:39:11 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 7-Dec-86 07:06:58 EST
References: <225@mind.UUCP> <1176@frog.UUCP> <408@mind.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@cartan.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: gsmith@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Gene Ward Smith)
Organization: Math Dept. UC Berkeley
Lines: 49
Keywords: Lenny Bruce
Xref: mnetor news.misc:105 sci.lang:209

In article <408@mind.UUCP> harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad) writes:

>I would like to point out, to those who are genuinely concerned about
>it, that freedom of speech is not at issue in the current discussion
>about ad hominem abuse on the Net.

>The issue is whether the tail ends of the
>gaussian are to be allowed to turn the Net into a Global graffiti
>board...

  There is a contradiction inherent in saying both "freedom of speech is
not an issue" and "are to be allowed". Not allowing something is by defin-
ition coercive and by definition not freedom. Sometimes we want to limit
freedom for reasons which may be good. But be honest and admit that too
much freedom of speech is precisely what you wish to limit.

  Incidently, ad hominem arguments are arguments which attempt to show a
position wrong by stating or implying that the one arguing for it is not
to be trusted. This is often a fallacy; and a rather mild example of ad
hominem is your implication that some of the persons arguing for free
speech really do not care about it, and so (one might infer) their argu-
ments should be discounted. An insult is not strictly speaking an ad
hominem in the same sense; as a person with an interest in language you
would do well to chose your own words more carefully.

>The same judgments would have had to be made in Guttenberg's time, mutatis
>mutandis.

  One of the first results of Gutenberg's invention was the proliferation
of extremely rude printed abuse.

>All this righteous indignation on behalf of the "freedom" to be
>personally abusive!

  I was at a loss as to how to reply, but Matthew recalled an apposite
comment of Sartre's concerning freedom and abuse:

	Now we can see the meaning of the sadist's demand:
	grace reveals freedom as a property of the
	Other-as-object and refers obscurely--just as do the
	contradictions in the sensible world in the case of
	Platonic recollections--to a transcendent Beyond of
	which we preserve only a confused memory and which we
	can reach only by a radical modification of our being;
	that is, by resolutely assuming our being-for-others.
		            Jean-Paul Sartre: "Being and Nothingness"

ucbvax!brahms!gsmith     Gene Ward Smith/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720
"What is algebra exactly? Is it those three-cornered things?"J.M. Barrie