Month February 2013

When is Intent ‘Magic’?

By Notung • • 17 comments

Justin Vacula has written about blame and intent in a recent post titled “Blame and Intent”. His purpose is primarily to argue against the claim that “intent is not magic”, the meaning of which is, according to him:

that the feelings and beliefs of a person who is a recipient of a message, rather than the intent of the individual, takes priority.

I gave this phrase a quick google (as I don’t recall ever seeing it in any philosophical literature) and it appears to have it’s origin in 2010 in post called “Intent! It’s Fucking Magic!” on a blog called “Genderbitch: Musings of a Trans Chick”. As fascinating as the blog sounds, rather than argue specifically against it I’ll use it to spark some thoughts about the role of intent in meaning, and argue that while intent is not magic (and as far as I can tell, nobody is claiming that it is), at least according to one plausible theory it is an important part of the analysis of meaning.

The Issue of Hate Speech: I. Defining Hate Speech

By Notung • • 11 comments

Having laid out what I consider to be a strong defence of freedom of expression, I must now consider the most common challenge to it: hate speech. In order to make the best case for hate speech legislation, we must first decide upon a working definition of what hate speech is. This definition will be imperfect in that it will not necessarily succeed in drawing a sharp boundary between exactly what is or is not rightly called ‘hate speech’. However, we are considering only whether or not there is some hate speech that should be restricted (as opposed to all), and so this is not a particularly important issue for my purposes.

A Civil Response to Dan Fincke

By Notung • • 10 comments

I want to respond to Dan Fincke’s Civility Pledge, as I won’t be signing it. That’s a shame, I think, because I believe civility to be an indispensable component of a productive discussion.