2021年2月14日日曜日

Liberalism, for Mill, was not based on truth; truth was based on liberalism.


 What is forgotten here is that the classic justification of liberalism put forward by Mill made just the opposite argument. Parliament and freedom of conscience and discussion were not based on a common accepted truth; they were supposed to produce that truth. Liberalism, for Mill, was not based on truth; truth was based on liberalism.

The correct response to the torrent of lying, however, is not to respond with a torrent of truth as expert truth. It is instead to create the conditions for rational debate. What one hears instead is the demand to restore “trust in experts”. But the strength of liberalism is precisely that it is not based on trust. And, in any case, after the debacles of the Iraq War in 2003 and the financial crisis in 2008, why should anyone trust in experts?

The point, in any case, is that if one is interested in preserving liberal institutional forms, a further exultation of the experts is a profoundly misconceived way of proceeding. As a defence of liberalism, it is crypto-authoritarian precisely because it demands “faith”: in science, in experts, in the “adults in the room”. But the project should not be to restore trust; rather, it should be to establish the social and political conditions for rational-critical debate.

 さっきの災害時のデマやヘイト投稿にも関連するけど、ここが難しいところだね。

 専門家やツイッター社の社員に判断に任せて、彼らがデマ、ヘイトと判断したものをどんどん削除していいのか、むしろ、合理的な議論をできる場所を提供してくれさえすればいいのか?

 誰にも開かれた場所で理性的な討論をすることを通じて、真理があぶり出されるのであって、誰もが合意できるような真理がどこかにころがっていてそれを専門家が知っていて、その専門家を信じてそれ以外の投稿はすべて削除してしまえば、健全な社会ができるか・・・・というとそうもいかない。

 今回のコロナ危機でも明らかになったように、専門家でも間違っていることーーマスクの着用の有用性などーーーはあったし、専門家同士でも意見は一致しないことは多々ある。

 だから、「〇〇は死ね、◯◯ゴキブリ」など明らかなヘイトは削除しても、原則は開かれた討論の場を確保する。例外的に、怪しい意見には、他の意見も参照にするようにといった注意書きを入れるってのがいいのかもしれんね。





 



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