Logic and censorship

Can logic help us with arguments about sexual morality, censorship and so on? Only so far it can expose contradictions and fallacies. At some point in any such argument, someone will invoke a principle or universal proposition, and the problem with principles or universal propositions is that they do not allow exceptions. The proposition 'all swans are white' is false so long as there exists one black swan. It's quite binary. So anyone who asserts such a principle cannot allow any exception to it, without modifying it in such a way that it is still a principle, i.e. such that it contains no arbitrary exceptions or modifications or special pleading. For example, the guy arguing here is dangerously close to a principle:

That's how repressive regimes begin. First you start with the sexual content that offends people, then you move on to the religious content, and finally, the political content. Funny how it's always the people screaming "freedom" and "liberty" the loudest who are always trying to curtail it.

This is called the 'slippery slope' argument. As soon as you are on the slope, you will always slide to the bottom, therefore you must not get onto the slope in the first place. In this person's case, being on the slope means having an image filter on Wikipedia, and the universal principle being "You must not filter out content that offends people". But such a principle allows no exception. Would this person not want to 'filter out' content such as child pornography or torture pornography or snuff pornography?

Is slavery harmful?

Larry Sanger's recent post brought out the usual idiotic comments. But some thoughtful and clever comments too, in particular from someone called 'Carl Gombrich' who I suspect is the grandson of E.H. Gombrich. Some asked for evidence which supports Larry's implicit assumption that pornography is harmful to children. Gombrich replies, asking whether there is any evidence that slavery is harmful.

[…] as far as I know there is nothing we could really call evidence to show that slavery is bad, either collectively or for individuals kept as slaves. Are those refusing to move on restricting the access of children to pornography therefore in favour of legalising slavery until we have ‘evidence’ (presumably a longitudinal study over many years involving several hundred people, control groups etc) to show that slavery is harmful? Specifically that it is so harmful to individuals that it should therefore be outlawed? If they do not advocate such a move, why don’t they? That is the logic of the position: no evidence, no move.

But the important point is that slavery is bad, and the argument that it is bad was successfully made on moral grounds by previous generations in the West. That is why it is outlawed in many countries.

Now ask: is it better or worse for children to come across hardcore pornography? We are talking children, not adolescents searching out of curiosity or for arousal, but children, for whom sexuality is a very different thing. I would like to know the libertarian answer to this question. If you think it is better that children do not see hardcore pornography, then we should something about the fact that, increasingly, many of them do.

Reclaiming prudery

It's well known that 'queer theorists' successfully reclaimed the term 'queer', which used to be a term of abuse for homosexual, and turned it into a sort of verbal flag for the homosexualist movement.

Can we do the same thing for the term 'prude'?  By far the most common statement I see on one side of the porn debate is 'I am not a prude' (the most common statement on the other side is 'I am against any form of censorship').  But I am always puzzled by what a 'prude' is.  It seems like a term of abuse, given that so many people are so eager to deny being one.  I have never seen anyone admit to being a prude. Is this because prudes are a bit like homosexuals were in the 1950s, and afraid to admit this.  Should prudes come out of the closet?  It's difficult to say, because whereas it was clear in the 1950s what 'homosexual' meant, it's not clear what 'prude' means.

So we can't reclaim a term if we don't know what it means. Time for some further research.