Ah yes, thank you for mentioning this; I’d heard that such things are the case in British law, but had forgotten. A quick googling informs me that certain recent court rulings may have undermined truth as an absolute defense in the United States as well.
All I can say in response is that I think such laws are quite wrong. Truth should be an absolute defense. It is my opinion that most situations where making the truth known harms someone, are cases that highlight some systemic or widespread injustice, rather than cases of the truth being inherently harmful.
I can think of at least one major exception: matters related to privacy. That is quite a different thing, however, from something being offensive… an inherently offensive truth is something of whose existence I’ve yet to be convinced.
All I can say in response is that I think such laws are quite wrong.
But now we’ve moved from the original empirical claim I disputed (“The slander/libel case seems instructive: truth is an absolute defense”) to a normative one. Sticking with the empirical for a moment, I think the way our libel law is actually designed is instructive: it acknowledges that someone can build misleading and/or normative implications into words or images which, taken literally, are wholly, objectively true.
Truth should be an absolute defense.
Maybe I’m burning my Rationalist Conspiracy membership card here, but I don’t agree. Suppose a plumber visits a brothel merely to fix the pipes, but gets photographed by a journalist as they go in & out of the building. If a newspaper used the photographs as part of an exposé of the brothel, giving the pictures a technically truthful caption like “one visitor to the brothel coming and going”, should the plumber lose a libel case because the article & pictures are true, despite the misleading implication that the plumber patronized the brothel?
It is my opinion that most situations where making the truth known harms someone, are cases that highlight some systemic or widespread injustice, rather than cases of the truth being inherently harmful.
Maybe, maybe not. Either way, the law could allow for this with an explicit public interest defence, instead of making truth an absolute defence, which has risks of its own. For example, I could write a newspaper article which truthfully reports slanders uttered by others, without rebutting them or acknowledging their unreliability. I don’t think I should have “well, I was accurately reporting that slander” as a defence. Nor is it an adequate basis for dismissing someone who’s offended by the slander.
an inherently offensive truth is something of whose existence I’ve yet to be convinced.
Well, there’s not an inherently offensive anything. Offence is one of those two-place things. But leaving it at that feels like an evasion of Alicorn’s broader point. If I walk up to a guy on the street and say, “you’re a wanker”, that’s more likely true than not. Even if true, though, I’d say they’re entitled to a little offence.
You raise some interesting points about slander/libel. I don’t dispute the empirical issue (though differences between American and British law here shouldn’t be overlooked), but I don’t think I’m convinced on the normative front, though your examples have made me less certain of my stance.
As for your last point: whether we as a society agree that the target is entitled to take offense seems like the straightforward operationalization of implementing the two-place function of offense as a one-place function. So when I say “I don’t think X should be considered offensive”, I’m not making any sort of claim about whether any particular person will in fact take offense; the claim I am making is something along the lines of “we should not consider offense taken at X to be justified, and we should not care about said offense, or modify our behavior (i.e. stop saying X) on the basis of said offense”.
I don’t dispute the empirical issue (though differences between American and British law here shouldn’t be overlooked),
Fair enough.
but I don’t think I’m convinced on the normative front, though your examples have made me less certain of my stance.
That’s all I can realistically hope for on a wide-ranging normative issue like this.
Your one-place operationalization of offence sounds reasonable, as does your unpacking of what you mean by “I don’t think X should be considered offensive”. (Although even with your definition, I still think there exists X such that X is both true & offensive.)
Ah yes, thank you for mentioning this; I’d heard that such things are the case in British law, but had forgotten. A quick googling informs me that certain recent court rulings may have undermined truth as an absolute defense in the United States as well.
All I can say in response is that I think such laws are quite wrong. Truth should be an absolute defense. It is my opinion that most situations where making the truth known harms someone, are cases that highlight some systemic or widespread injustice, rather than cases of the truth being inherently harmful.
I can think of at least one major exception: matters related to privacy. That is quite a different thing, however, from something being offensive… an inherently offensive truth is something of whose existence I’ve yet to be convinced.
But now we’ve moved from the original empirical claim I disputed (“The slander/libel case seems instructive: truth is an absolute defense”) to a normative one. Sticking with the empirical for a moment, I think the way our libel law is actually designed is instructive: it acknowledges that someone can build misleading and/or normative implications into words or images which, taken literally, are wholly, objectively true.
Maybe I’m burning my Rationalist Conspiracy membership card here, but I don’t agree. Suppose a plumber visits a brothel merely to fix the pipes, but gets photographed by a journalist as they go in & out of the building. If a newspaper used the photographs as part of an exposé of the brothel, giving the pictures a technically truthful caption like “one visitor to the brothel coming and going”, should the plumber lose a libel case because the article & pictures are true, despite the misleading implication that the plumber patronized the brothel?
Maybe, maybe not. Either way, the law could allow for this with an explicit public interest defence, instead of making truth an absolute defence, which has risks of its own. For example, I could write a newspaper article which truthfully reports slanders uttered by others, without rebutting them or acknowledging their unreliability. I don’t think I should have “well, I was accurately reporting that slander” as a defence. Nor is it an adequate basis for dismissing someone who’s offended by the slander.
Well, there’s not an inherently offensive anything. Offence is one of those two-place things. But leaving it at that feels like an evasion of Alicorn’s broader point. If I walk up to a guy on the street and say, “you’re a wanker”, that’s more likely true than not. Even if true, though, I’d say they’re entitled to a little offence.
[Edited 26⁄11 because “pictrues” isn’t a word.]
You raise some interesting points about slander/libel. I don’t dispute the empirical issue (though differences between American and British law here shouldn’t be overlooked), but I don’t think I’m convinced on the normative front, though your examples have made me less certain of my stance.
As for your last point: whether we as a society agree that the target is entitled to take offense seems like the straightforward operationalization of implementing the two-place function of offense as a one-place function. So when I say “I don’t think X should be considered offensive”, I’m not making any sort of claim about whether any particular person will in fact take offense; the claim I am making is something along the lines of “we should not consider offense taken at X to be justified, and we should not care about said offense, or modify our behavior (i.e. stop saying X) on the basis of said offense”.
Fair enough.
That’s all I can realistically hope for on a wide-ranging normative issue like this.
Your one-place operationalization of offence sounds reasonable, as does your unpacking of what you mean by “I don’t think X should be considered offensive”. (Although even with your definition, I still think there exists X such that X is both true & offensive.)