Clear as usual (at least based on writing) from Borg. However, many of the points seem to be off to me (and too numerous for a comment). So just one substantive remark: I doubt that, in the hate speech case, judges are concerned about recovering and doing justice to whatever the ordinary meaning of the NP “hate speech” happens to be. There are many pressures in that particular legal context that don’t just amount to doing justice/being faithful to ordinary usage-most notably, the imposition of liability and therefore sanction (perhaps serious depending on the jurisdiction) on an individual. Given that context, it is predictable that a judge would tend to be conservative (in the non-political sense!) when evaluating whether the term applies to a particular case. The point applies irrespective of minimalism (which is why I’m a bit curious about why a minimalist should be worried about such cases). Modify the Twitter case study into a toy example (I forget whether this qualifies as hate speech or was assessed in the context of threat): on a day, piqued in a moment of rage, the man says, “if the shittiest airport doesn’t get its stuff together, I’m going to blow it up in a year.” Regardless of the minimal content (the proposition about possibly another airport-say, the worst airport in the world is actually Humberside Airport for example) or the more pragmatically relevant content (a proposition about Robin Hood Airport)-the judge would likely not impose liability for a determination of hate speech even if there is decisive evidence that, for some fleeting moments including when it was uttered, the speaker was being sincere. The reason is the time along with a larger set of concerns the judge has in making the determination-imposing liability for actions threatened, even sincerely, in the distant future would probably looked at in a dim light in common law countries like the UK. And if the details of the toy example have issues, you can modify according while maintaining the point: deciding the debate between minimalism and contextualism is orthogonal to what is often most pressing in cases of legal interpretation. Anyways, there are many other things to be said about the talk, but an interesting topic nonetheless.
Clear as usual (at least based on writing) from Borg. However, many of the points seem to be off to me (and too numerous for a comment).
So just one substantive remark: I doubt that, in the hate speech case, judges are concerned about recovering and doing justice to whatever the ordinary meaning of the NP “hate speech” happens to be. There are many pressures in that particular legal context that don’t just amount to doing justice/being faithful to ordinary usage-most notably, the imposition of liability and therefore sanction (perhaps serious depending on the jurisdiction) on an individual. Given that context, it is predictable that a judge would tend to be conservative (in the non-political sense!) when evaluating whether the term applies to a particular case.
The point applies irrespective of minimalism (which is why I’m a bit curious about why a minimalist should be worried about such cases). Modify the Twitter case study into a toy example (I forget whether this qualifies as hate speech or was assessed in the context of threat): on a day, piqued in a moment of rage, the man says, “if the shittiest airport doesn’t get its stuff together, I’m going to blow it up in a year.” Regardless of the minimal content (the proposition about possibly another airport-say, the worst airport in the world is actually Humberside Airport for example) or the more pragmatically relevant content (a proposition about Robin Hood Airport)-the judge would likely not impose liability for a determination of hate speech even if there is decisive evidence that, for some fleeting moments including when it was uttered, the speaker was being sincere. The reason is the time along with a larger set of concerns the judge has in making the determination-imposing liability for actions threatened, even sincerely, in the distant future would probably looked at in a dim light in common law countries like the UK. And if the details of the toy example have issues, you can modify according while maintaining the point: deciding the debate between minimalism and contextualism is orthogonal to what is often most pressing in cases of legal interpretation.
Anyways, there are many other things to be said about the talk, but an interesting topic nonetheless.
What are your thoughts about Hemingway's word use. I liked the Old man and the sea..................not so much the other stuff.
This is great.
Who is the m.c? He has a lovely tone.