Free speech necessary for free thought and reflective action, says Seana Shiffrin

Excerpts below are transcribed from the Why We Argue podcast episode ‘Free speech and free thinking with Seana Shiffrin,’ which I highly recommend listening to. For context on what the interview is about, the podcast blurb says Shiffrin “holds that a central reason for upholding a moral and legal system of free speech is that such a system is necessary for free thought and reflective action.”

(4: 27) All of us, to develop accurate thoughts, considered thoughts, we have to get feedback from other people, and that feedback has to be both critical, aiming to get at the truth and to be correct, but it also has to be supportive and when I say it has to be supportive I don’t mean that other people have to support the content of what you say, but I think we have to try to be supportive in the sense that…sometimes what people say is their first draft of their thoughts and first drafts are often highly flawed but sincere efforts to understand, and people often don’t get it right on their first try. They need assistance, and feedback, and time.

(8:50) In order for people to come to understand sometimes why what they say is hurtful, they have to say it and get feedback. They have to be sincere about what’s on their minds and listen to people and their reactions and their reasons in order to come to a better understanding of the topic that’s motivating them to say the ignorant or biased thing that they say….Sometimes people need to say the ignorant thing in order to learn from others.

Advice for democratic citizens who are trying to realize the model of free speech she recommends:

(22:23) Maybe we can all try to experiment with new forms of engagement. Like going out of our way to be kind to strangers and have short conversations with them. Spending less time bemoaning the general state of the union but talking about specific issues and concerns. I think we often make more progress with people who may have different opinions than we do by talking about quite specific issues to see where our points of disagreement are and one suggestion I have is…to imagine that the point of the conversation is not to resolve the issue in one setting or to persuade your interlocutor but more to listen and to convey your thoughts and worries with a mutual openness to being influenced by the interaction and to think more. I think that deliberation and progress occur over time. And that one thing that sometimes goes wrong in political conversations especially those that are televised is that there’s this kind of model that we’ll fully resolve it in a single setting. I think that model and those expectations are bound to be unsatisfying and more likely to generate conflict and polarization because people dig in. But if instead you approach conversations by thinking that you’re trying to make someone think about something more and that it will be successful if you were heard and you heard them and you think more later, that people might make a little more progress.

(26:39) [Rather than just ask people what their view is on X, which the interviewer says he finds people interpret to mean that you aren’t informed about X.] Maybe the thing to do is to say, “These are my thoughts based on what I know, what do you think?”