Regressive step?

Ok so there are talks of 'prescreening' content on social networking sites like Facebook and Google with government throwing its weight to put censorship and IT companies refusing to buckle. Shashi tharoor wrote an article 'Virtual reality' (deccon chronicle, 9 Dec,2011) on this controversy. His defense of gov's position is neither consistent nor logically sound.

First as common place among apologists, he empathizes importance of freedom of speech and then starts justifying moves which are indistinguishable from a moderate censorship. He begins by saying that all societies exercise some kind of control on freedom of speech as with US where any racist remarks are de facto bans. But then he ventures from social conventions to government policies arguing that government policies also should curb freedom the way social conventions do. If social traditions can so smoothly be allowed to convert itself into laws then we would never have got rid of untouchability for example, no denying social traditions are a factor for consideration but there are other factors which easily supersede local cultures, and Tharoor wont deny that freedom of expression is such a first principle.

Meaning of freedom of speech does change from place to place but then we can always tell what interpretation is progressive or what is not. Surely Tharoor wont say that freedom in china is just a different kind of freedom and not a regressive one. Western form of freedom of speech is more mature than Indian just as Indian form is more mature than Pakistan or China.

Further he argues if there are regulations on print media, broadcast media then why only internet media is exempted? well even in those media trend is that regulating becomes more and more lax except recent attempts by the same gov to tighten regulations again. Additionally sites like FB and google too are regulated by respective organizations.

Then he gives the example of 'shouting fire in a theater when there is no fire' to empathize again that freedom cant be absolute. Now this shouting-fire metaphor is borrowed from a US SC judgment way back in 1919 which convicted an anti-graft propagandist during world war-I. He uses the analogy wrongly, the judgment also stressed 'clear and present danger' criteria to curb freedom of speech. And in present context where pre-screening is disputed, the danger caused by FB is neither clear(all abstract arguments that it will hurt religious sentiments and all that) nor present(not a remote possibility of FB inciting a riot). If something from US is to be put in context it should be 1969 judgment which acquitted a Ku Klux Klan member upholding freedom of expression despite organization's open provocation to bring down gov through violent means and threats to Jews and niggers(acquittal despite another fact that Ku Klux Klan was a headache for gov sort of semi terrorists)

He is not yet satisfied with metaphors he puts another extremely abstract metaphor, 'match stick near a petrol storage'. Now here is a problem, one can also argue that its not the match stick only that can be blamed but the combustibility of the liquid poses a greater danger. A Gandhian analogy inevitably comes to my mind, he believed that lasting Bramhcharya cant be attained by keeping away from women it can only be achieved by cultivating mental discipline strong enough that sexuality no more troubles you. No doubt there is a dangerous immaturity in a person who will start rioting after reading a Facebook status. So instead of playing guardians of people's sentiments and creating a pampered, hypersensitive society teach them that tolerance is absolutely essential, there should be enough provocations all around that people find nothing provocative at all(case in point is Indian cinema, Delhi belly in black and white era would have sent guardians of morality into a hysteria, but see society has improved we don't feel particularly immoral after watching that movie nor do we go out and rape anyone). Only economic reforms wont do social reforms are equally important though i would hate the idea that government should play any role in such reforms but at least they should remain neutral.

Finally he concludes "I reject censorship. Art, literature and political opinion are to me sacrosanct. But publishing inflammatory material to incite communal feelings is akin to dropping a lighted match at a petrol pump", without giving any clue on how to decide/who will decide what is 'sacrosanct' and what is 'inflammatory'.

In philosophy there have been two schools of thought running counter to each other, one side looks at the material world and from the uniqueness of physical truths(reality) deduces that morality and other value judgments are also of this nature. These abstractions too have eternal veracity like laws of nature. Thus a bad action is a bad action inherently, regardless of its consequences. This is a basic element of Aristotelian thought. On the contrary there goes another school of thought, it looks at the multiplicity of sense-perceptions and variety of moral values and concludes that all facts of the material world have similar multiplicity. There is no single truth(reality), sense perceptions are subjective so are the truths of material world perceived through senses. No this is not exactly like solipsism or anything of that short, because though these schools base their theory on the variety of sense perceptions, they believe that ultimate truth is one and unchangeable. Whereas here it is admitted that truths themselves have multiplicity, for example its possible that two mutually contradictory theories may be true. This I think is distinctively a Hindu philosophy(if that's a proper term), i don't remember to have come across anything like this in western philosophy(in my very limited amount of knowledge). Though this philosophy seems very innovative at first, i think it suffers from a careless metaphysical treatment, it's not well explained or not well understood if explained.

To a modern scientific mindset none of these schools may appeal, however they are very interesting and enlightening.

P.F: written a bit carelessly, may not be a very accurate classification.

On omniscience

       The paradox of omniscience is a favorite argument for rationalists to bring down theistic arguments. I too have used this paradox extensively to win arguments with theist types. But I think the paradox is more interesting than what I've hitherto believed, it has greatly disturbed me since. Let me explain.

       First of all to forestall quantum mechanics from being considered as a possible explaining factor, we'll assume prevailing scientific opinion regarding quantum mechanics. The opinion is that despite our material world being non-deterministic at the sub atomic level, it does follow all the laws of classical physics at the macro or aggregate level. Therefore as the definition of classical physics goes all the events are deterministic. If a state of an object is given, theoretically we can apply laws of physics on that state of the object and determine the subsequent states of it. By this way we can predict each and every event of this world with complete accuracy, all events are knowable before it actually occurs and gets known. For example it is perfectly knowable in advance whether I'll have a glass of juice before I sleep or not. Continuing the same example the answer to this question can be given if some extraordinary super computer is given all equations regarding laws of nature and all the necessary data like the current neural network pattern of my mind, environment information, every minute information about my physiology and internal processes. The ultimate answer will be either 'yes' or 'no'. Here is the paradox, if the machine answers yes I'll go to sleep straight without having juice and if it answers 'no' than I'll have it. In both cases the assumption that 'physical world is deterministic' is violated. But if we dispense with this assumption our entire concept of classical physics will be proven erroneous. So it follows that the paradox of omniscience is not only a pastime argument to irritate theists but it also confuses our understanding of science.

       Looking on the formidable questions that this paradox can raise about science, I think I must admit a probable chance of error in the basic understanding of physics on my part. But so far as my confidence goes I've studied my high school physics too religiously to err on that and I think that for anyone who has an inkling of the philosophy of physics this problem of omniscience will be only too obvious, but surprisingly I've never come across anywhere where this question is considered.