1.2 Introductory

Since this work puts more focus on the originality, the summaries of previous studies or other authors are less focused. In many academic papers, it often is seen that they make the summaries of other articles in most part and having less originality in it. The articles that are written as explanatory ones to map the theories of different authors or explain different theories in a skilful manner is helpful for readers and stimulate curiosity, but there are other articles often not much skilful. Just making summaries of other papers is less important because it is what can be understood by reading them. What I care about more in my work is the ideas based on how I look at the world and what I think about it. Since this is not what takes the form of a textbook which explains chronologically what were argued by the previous intellectuals, this writing will put more emphasis on the robustness of the ideas rather than who talked what in the past. The ideas posed are pulled into the texts by being processed in my way of thinking as how I look at the world influences the connections of ideas presented in this writing.

When it comes to the style of this work, I care about philosophy which is practical to the public and has wisdom of the previous generations. Philosophy is not merely to go into the narrower expertise, but also expanding into other domains and ages which enable to find the similar patterns. Detailed expertise in one age or one author is also helpful for reader to understand well on them, however not necessarily one has to persist in studying them. Also, using difficult words or academic words is not what can be spread to the mass. Dialogues between people which is much easier for them to understand in this sense may have helped the works to sustain.

This work is not limited to a discipline, it is related to philosophy, politics, information theory, studies on mind, linguistics, and others if any further development. It is not written to be limited to one domain but written to expand to different domains if possible. This is what this work asserts that it is not necessarily limited to one discipline which many authors do. This doesn’t mean that any work should not be written with the limitation on one discipline. Some of the works maintain its worth by that refinement and provide the insights, however all works don’t have to be limited to one discipline and it sometimes hinder the progress by that restriction. This also insists that writing freely is one of the essential goods that author can bear in oneself. The way that this work is written is to get closer to the anti-disciplinary work(1). In explaining that concept, a better example is that “drunk people look for their keys under the street lights because that’s where the lights are, but there are a lot of keys in the dark areas between the lamps”(2). Learning often makes one become disciplined, but in the meantime one needs to be anti-disciplinary to bring an invention to the world. Even the style of a work can be varied depending on author, and the kinds of format in writing is too limited at least at the beginning of 2020s, particularly in academic papers. I don’t think that I have to follow the frequently used format of academic papers to write this work, that is why I didn’t have that kind of restriction in my mind when writing.

Especially, the academic ones of the beginning of 21^st century has their restriction of narrowness too much, the detailed knowledge on one specific subject, and using academic words. It may not be written in the intention that it is to be spread to the public, but the way they are written is not favourable to the general public limits the influence of a work. People often depends on technical words when having difficulty in explaining it in one perspective, and it is understandable to use it for avoiding prolonged sentences in another, it causes the limitation of their articles. Besides, it feels that what are argued in academic disciplines doesn’t feel close to the life of the general public.

As for academic world, the works by students have to refer to the academic debates, but the ideas presented by students who proposed their ideas not referring to the academic debates of their time and the past could be innovative ideas which progress the intellectual debates of the human beings. The intellectual debates do include the academic ones as well as the ones proposed by those who work outside the academic world. It actually feels that the intellectual progresses are hindered at least in some cases in the academic world by their narrowness and conditions. I don’t even believe that we have to cite others to propose good ideas, and even if one argues that it is their original ones and comes from their thinking it cannot be completely original as we are influenced by the past which have been structured by those who were born earlier than us. Given these conditions, I felt it decreases the possibility that the academic world of the beginning of 21st century can give birth the students like John Locke, John Stuart Mill, or Ludwig Wittgenstein even though their courses often require students to read their works and they often are referred to, the style of output allowed is restricted compared with those works. Writing a work in the style of Mill doesn’t lead to a high score, citing the works of academic ones are demanded which loses individuality.

In addition, whether I have read or cited a number of articles that is commonly read by the researchers should matter a tiny bit, or I would say that it doesn’t necessarily matter whether I have read one paper or not, what matters is what I write by myself and not citing others. The evaluation of certain criteria restricts the uniqueness of a work. Proposing a new paradigm makes sometimes difficult to show evidence as the people of the former generations haven’t said in the way the one is going to make arguments or fewer ones may have said but not found by the one. Even citing or explaining the previous works of others is really required is doubtful. I write in a way that I think, and the necessity to show the works of others makes unnecessary limitation on one’s work. Although I agree that citing others strengthens the theory that I propose, is it really necessary to require it to all cases? It is more difficult to write a new than citing others which is to pull the relevant works to one’s work. Proposing own paradigm to the world requires further efforts. Focusing on the original makes the existence of oneself in the world.

Although the works written by the intellectuals of the previous generations influenced my thoughts and I am grateful for them, the original concepts proposed by them may not totally be the same in my understanding of them, in the most precise degree. That is because to be in the completely same understanding of the concepts with the authors who proposed them is not possible so much as I cannot be in the completely same positions with them. That is to say that I do not study a person, but I do focus on my perspectives on problems that the world has while connecting to interesting ideas which were written by them in the past.

(1) The concept of antidisciplinary comes from the explanation by Joi Ito. He explained it many places, one of which is Ito, J., 2014. Antidisciplinary. [Online] Available at: https://joi.ito.com/weblog/2014/10/02/antidisciplinar.html [Accessed 27 May 2023].

(2) Joi Ito explained the concept by referring to what Ed Boyden often describes in MITLibraries, 2018. Grand Challenges Keynote: Joi Ito. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5F__Jqx3Nk
[Accessed 28 June 2023]. Around 5:27-. According to p. 10 of Ito, J., 2018. The Practice of Change. [Online]
Available at: https://web.media.mit.edu/~joi/files/ito_phd_diss_v1.11.pdf
[Accessed 11 May 2023], Ed Boyden “often refers to the famous adage that the American philosopher, Abraham Kaplan, talks about as ‘the principle of the drunkard’s search'” and “Boyden talks about the need to create flashlights — metaphors for the tools he and his team are designing and building — to facilitate a search for keys that have fallen in the dark areas between street lamps”.

1.1 Introductory

The purpose of this writing lies in proposing the new, or new connections of theories, to the problems around the topic of expression and its governance. In a civilised society where a large number of people live together, it is more likely to have wider range of issues which need to be dealt with. One of them is related to expression, and the importance of coping with it has been increasing. Expression is one of the fundamental human activities that not only lasts through different media and different ages but it also needs to be properly recognised by ourselves.

Expression is one of the fundamentals for people in society, and a core part in our civilisation. In relation with the concept of freedom which people value, the topic of expression is often talked. Freedom of expression frequently comes to the table of discussion, often having tension among several groups of people. While thinking of the importance in securing the freedom of expression, I came to recognise that there’s necessity to propose an idea to this topic by focusing on context. This finding that made me aware of the importance of context led to not only thinking of freedom of expression but also be conscious that the concept of context is indispensable for other domains as well. What work focuses on includes the inner part of oneself to alleviate tension among different groups of people in a society. Besides the argument on policies implemented in a society such as regulation of harmful speech, this work tries to progress the debate around freedom of expression by highlighting the importance of cultivation within oneself.

This work takes look at what expression is in relation to its context as such that expression is linked with the past that we have gone through, this linkage could ultimately lead to the argument that free will doesn’t exist (as things are in relation to the past). In addition, it is written, not limited to looking at the perspectives often come to the discussion on this topic such as whether hate speech should be banned, but expanding its sphere to the topics of context which is rules and how people built up the world, culture, history of language, information theory, and the inner part of oneself such as sentiment. Without taking into consideration these domains, the discussion on freedom of expression rests too limited and cannot expect the further progress. Freedom of expression is a political topic, and reflecting on it from a variety of perspectives finally converges on the topic.

As regards the contents, this work addresses the question: what is the principle, or the solution, that should be promoted to govern freedom of expression in a society where there are different groups of peoples with different backgrounds? The term govern is used in a sense that this writing emphasises the governance of a community and takes the stand that governance of freedom doesn’t have to be based on not merely laws but also norms, cultures, and others if any which have effect on peoples’ activities.

People’s activity has certain effects on others in the community. In many cases where a society or a community is phrased in this work, it is used to mean it in multiple levels. From the smaller to the larger to give a few examples, it covers a multiple scales of community such as a community within a nation-state as multiple communities exist within the nation-state, a nation-state as a community, international community as a community, and others. In others, there are cases that refer to a particular size of community, however it should be better to be noted that many refer to different levels of a community simultaneously in one description which readers would enjoy contemplating on communities whose scale is different. This is because one phrase of a community is applicable to not only one size of a community but also other different sizes as well.

In addition, with regards to the meanings embedded in the question above that different peoples of different backgrounds live in a community, although there is dispute between globalism and nationalism, the benefits the civilisations got from the progresses such as the transferability of persons, goods, and information from one place to another has made possible the interactions of different persons, different cultures. This is a progress in terms of technology which brought about the benefits to the world. Also, the progress in terms of the rights of citizens is that the importance of human rights are what societies came to care for. Securing the sphere of freedom for all persons which is one of the essentials, however, there problems also arise given that the exercise of a protected right means taking a certain action towards society in which persons of different backgrounds and interests live. The world became more complex and is interrelated, in which an action of person has an effect to the society. In this worldview, this writing aims at analysing the nature of freedom, what expression means in society, analysing how it works (in association with freedom of expression). Its purpose is to find a way to have less conflicts among different persons living in the same society while taking into account the importance of preserving freedom, and what can be thought of as a principle to guide. Even though the focus is put in the domain of freedom of expression in this writing, it supposes the further extension towards other domains of freedom. It demonstrates the potentials of this topic’s development towards other domains of freedom as well as the relationship of freedom and persons’ actions in a society.

The reason of choosing the topic of freedom of speech and expression is my recognition that this topic will continue to attract the attention of people including the future generations presumably without disappearing completely the topic from our civilisation. People express their ideas and opinions in their daily life. It is one of their rights regarded as a fundamental human right. However, while many people came to be aware of its importance, the world continues to have controversies around this topic. The continuance of the emergence of problems related to freedom of speech and expression is partly because of the change in the conditions of our life.

We have updated our environmental conditions by implementing new technology in the past. It made possible that people of different context encounter more frequently in the real and online world. For example, the transportation system spread over the globe enabled us to move to a different location in a short period of time. This made easier for people to migrate to a different country, study abroad for a short term as well as a long term, and visit a different country as a tourist. It is a positive result of development of transportation system in the sense that people are able to move more conveniently, but in the same time it changed the condition of the world that visiting a different country have never been that easy for people in the past.

Also, due to the evolution of information technology, people of different backgrounds are able to speech online without having shared context on topics. Even, some groups of people strengthen their views and others also move on their own way. The circumstances around expression have been increasing its complexity. Not just the problem of polarised views, but also there’s been a situation that at least some social media platforms have been trying to regulate hate speech online. As time passes, the world changes, we have problems that we need to deal with.

At the beginning of 21^st century, the world is globalised ever before, people of different backgrounds are more likely to see each other in-person and online. These changes of the conditions of the world due to the updates of societal circumstances require us to think about our world and continue to redefine our world by dealing with the complex issues in the domain of expression.

3.6.2 Reality

With regard to the aspect described in the previous part, in relation to correctability, the standpoint that one looks at the human history at one point of history and another standpoint which is several decades later which is that one looks at the human history with several decades added are different in what elements of history should be emphasised. In individual case, one can recognise the past doing differently. For example, at the age of 18 years old, recognising and interpreting what one does and re-recognising and re-interpreting it at the age of 28 years old could be different as the perspective and objective of one’s life could differ, even if looking at the same action, it can be reasoned different way.

The importance of philosophy, or thinking rests in the condition that at least time and place are limited from humans’ standpoint. That limitation is strong, even if AI or that sort of technology enabled the wider possibility of the world, what humans can listen to and watch are limited. In order to go beyond this limitation imposed on humans, they try to rely on technology, but as far as humans need to make decisions on their societies by meta-recognition, humans require philosophy as philosophy is to recognise the important perspectives to the human beings. Also, by this condition, each person has their own preferences and intimacy towards certain kinds. And each has their uniqueness as they cannot be born and raised in the complete sameness.

It is difficult for human beings to always face the reality. That is why they need to believe in things, which means that they need something they can rely on. The future is unpredictable, and believing in things is in some sense is different from continuously facing the reality. Thinking is related to an inner sphere to which one can try to keep the secure paths to survive the world. That is to say, they make attempts to cope with the harsh reality, in other words it often predeals with difficulties. Without that process of thinking, always accepting realities cannot be endured by the human beings. One example is that people create rules to be put in practice in their community. Its objective is often to make it possible that people of different interests or background can live together. Rule is to limiting the unlimited paths into the more or less limited paths of the future reality. Limiting the possibility of what one wants not to happen. The kinds of things people believe in their life are explained with examples below. For instance, the products that enterprises sell often have some warning or disclaimer on their products to avoid the miscommunication with or potential complaints from their customers. Secondly, traffic light is often installed in intersection which is to avoid car crush, human beings has taken consideration in the past so that they can avoid the crush. However, it is not guaranteed that it doesn’t happen, in reality even if intersection has installed it, it sadly happens with probably decreased possibility. Another case is the train and its timetable. If it doesn’t have timetable, people do not know when it is going to come, the reality of that uncertainty is not what people can endure, that is because they do create the timetable to believe in when it comes, but in the reality it is not guaranteed that train comes on time with its timetable as it delays or stops due to unexpected events. Adding to the above, in a similar way, it could be applied to marriage and eternal love. It has supportive functioning to people’s life.

As for the relationship between reality and trust, if one washes one’s hands to clean in the situation that it is not because one’s hands became visibly unclean but for the sake of sanitation, the hand before and after being washed doesn’t look different. At home, for example, the person doesn’t usually use their mechanical device to check the difference of before and after. What makes difference in being convinced if one has washed their hands or not is their trust towards the world.

Conspiracy arises when mistrust towards the world is accumulated. People cannot look back exactly and precisely what happened in each moment of everywhere around the world. Since it is not possible for persons to know everything happening in the world, their scepticism towards the world dangers the community itself. If they don’t have trust towards the world, trust in a community is a matter of degree, their scepticism grows.

Being completely neutral doesn’t exist, this is because one cannot put an object in the same place of another. If one removes the one put on a table for example and try to put an object on the same place with the removed one, the order of placing affects the neutrality. In addition, placing those two in the nearly same place doesn’t work as it is seen as upper or lower, or right or left, from the perspective of viewer. What is recognised as neutral in a topic a few agents involve, the neutrality is different from the perspective of the outer agent.

To recognise and to give a name on an object loses its neutrality. This is particularly applied to the name of a place. One calls a place by what name is political as the place is called differently by country A and country B(1).

Rightness is consisted of a wider variety of perspectives that always question whether it is right or not while sometimes it corrects itself. President or representatives don’t necessarily make right judgement, additionally saying, just because many, for example citizens, have the same opinion that doesn’t guarantee it is right. In other words, majority rule is not ensured to be right on the one hand, and decision in oligarchy is also not on the other hand.

Rightness can be maintained by always being questioned. When beaten by other arguments, that wasn’t right enough to be maintained. This argument for rightness is closer to the concept of falsifiability. Hiroki Azuma, by referring to Karl Popper’s falsifiability, described that unless a theory proposed in the domain of natural sciences is not proved its falseness by a case, it maintains its theoretical consistency, however it continues to have it opened to the future possibility that it could be demonstrated as false theory by other coming cases that undermine the consistency of the current theory(2).

Whether the community goes to a right direction is partly involved in the leader, given the structure of community where president, prime minister, or any other position is put in place of higher position which has to do with decision-making of community.

This reality can be connected with risks in our life. The newer transportation means such as car enabled persons to move from one place to another conveniently. In the meantime, the invention contains the risk of traffic accident(3).

(1) There are at least several cases of this naming issue in the real geopolitical situations, but a writing by which I came to consciously recognise the perspective was the one written by Hiroki Azuma. 東, 浩紀. 2020. 悪の愚かさについて２、あるいは原発事故と中動態の記憶. in 東, 浩紀(ed.). ゲンロン11. 2020. 東京: ゲンロン. Specifically it is written in p.027.

(2) 東, 浩紀., 2023. 訂正可能性の哲学. 東京: ゲンロン. pp.29-31. He describes the Popper’s falsifiability in the footnote.

(3) 大山, 顕., 2020. 新写真論: スマホと顔. 東京: ゲンロン. p.28.

3.5 Truth

What has been believed true would remain in society whereas it would disappear from the line of being true once the idea is defeated by another. As far as it can demonstrate its rightfulness to others, it would remain as true. There are times in which what has been believed is reversed by another such as heliocentrism. Objects in the world are constantly subject to the risk of its survival. One may come up with the better idea against the conventional one which is in practice, once one’s new idea is spread among the community, it is subject to the competition of ideas. In which, the winning maintains the true than the older one. It is repetition of this cycle in which the older may come up to the society again by the next generation, but would be effective until when it becomes defeated by another by which it may not appear again as true in the world. This potential reappearance of concepts is believed to be applied frequently to humanities when a certain set of conditions comes up to the world which the ancient ideas could be believed to work with the mixture of the present conditions, and to be less applied to natural sciences as the new discovery would prevail against the consistency of the previous truth in that domain. A set of conditions could be technological aspect that new technology enables people to implement what could not have been in the real world or it could be correction of the definition of a concept whose elements were, precisely saying, not totally the same as used before. This correction is close to, or I would say that it is, the correctability(1). By these processes, human beings continue to revalue the concepts which survive through different ages.

In relation to truth, this writing would like to look at the ability to think. It is recognised that “Since Plato, and probably since Socrates, thinking was understood as the inner dialogue in which one speaks with himself (eme emautō, to recall the idiom current in Plato’s dialogues)”(2). The ability to think is thought that “It has, after all, been that ability to think which, when translated to physical terms, has enabled us to transcend our physical limitations and which has seemed to set us above our fellow creatures in achievement”(3).

The true requires thinking as “Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think”(4). Thinking maintains “active state” in the inner and “Its outward inactivity is clearly separated from the passivity, the complete stillness, in which truth is finally revealed to man”(5). Truth has resilience and becomes robust through the thinking in oneself and society.

The true arguments would be likely to prevail. Even if they are not recognised by some people, they are foundations of further development unless those ideas are defeated by others. The right argument would overcome others even if others many times try to be against it(6). That is why discussion among citizens can enhance the outcome. Discussion can convince people before it is implemented and it can inform citizens of its policy beforehand. It can avoid somewhat the probability of social unrest, even if not completely. Democratic discourse can vitalise the society as a whole if the discourse works. Even after the generation changes, that can help the community not lose their vitality.

If a specific person plays the really large role, it is more likely to face trouble in the period of succession(7). Incorporating the democratic process of deliberation is one way to share the knowledge among the people. Discussion makes the community solid, that can be a factor which can connect people and even if they disagree in certain topics, in other topics they may have somewhat of agreement in opinions. In a situation that they are completely different opinions, as far as their fundamental values such as their benefits are shared it works. Discussion is a way to get a community deeper into thoughts, and it is not limited to the time in which it occurred. It has extensive character of making a habit for people to search more think more for a topic they will encounter next time. Even if not strongly rooted as a habit for people, slightly the experience affects people and have community more intelligent. That can let one know what didn’t come up with one’s mind. Democracy is inefficient and it takes time to come to consensus, however it also has the benefit of trying to create the culture by which one gets accustomed to thinking. This voluntary process of thinking in oneself is a fundamental condition in democratic politics. The culture creates the ecosystem in which people of the next generation can get the advantage of it. Since persons are mortal, the advancement of their ecosystem is the one that give benefits to the next generations.

The problem at around the beginning of 21st century lies in the persons’ tendency to take less time in thinking, and takes the form of language as what it means. To the argument of saying that it is not what he meant, one would show the evidence of the sentence that the person has written before. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean what one takes literally, the intended meaning often differs from what that literally means.

One can show himself to another as a different way from what one thinks in his mind. As persons are able not to explicitly show what they truly had thought at the time of publicly disclosing, the emphasis on what’s not visible matters. This could be applied to the cases that the person in power of a country call for the public for their support in a way that is more likely to convince the public although they may not truly believe in what they say. The public requires the judgement by themselves on what politicians say towards them. It is also a matter of what one says is related to one’s position in society. If a politician needs to get support from the public to win next election, the mindset of hoping to get more votes incentivise their speech more or less towards their purpose. Also, people in a public gathering would behave in a different way from the ordinary self. They do not behave as they are with their friends in a place where they need to socialise with others they meet for the first time. In case of socialising, people are to show their good aspects of themselves in many cases to the ones they talk with. It is not only those obvious examples, but applies to those who appear on TV shows, their way of talking has a sort of similar ways that makes their speech easier to be communicated to their audience.

(1) Correctability is explained in the book titled Philosophy of Correctability by Hiroki Azuma. As of 1 October 2023, available in Japanese as follows: 東, 浩紀., 2023. 訂正可能性の哲学. 東京: ゲンロン.

(2) Arendt, H., 2018. The Human Condition. Second Edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. p. 291.

(3) Penrose, R., 2016. The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 3.

(4) Mill, J. S., 2006. On Liberty and The Subjection of Women. London: Penguin. p. 41.

(5) Arendt, H., 2018. The Human Condition. Second Edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. p. 291.

(6) Mill, J. S., 2006. On Liberty and The Subjection of Women. London: Penguin. p. 26.

(7) Buterin, V., 2022. DAOs are not corporations: where decentralization in autonomous organizations matters. [Online] Available at: https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/09/20/daos.html [Accessed 5 November 2022].

3.6.1 Reality

The power of the past is strong as the current people care about that, on the other hand the power of the present is also strong as it has the power of correctability. People are bound by their past experiences, it seems they continue to be motivated by the outer, those choices are also drawn by the previous. Primitive choices date back to their childhood or when they were born, their environments are bound by what their parents choose. Even if we use word choose here, it is more likely that we had to choose that way in many cases given the conditions at each case. The generation of originality is of difficulty.

Reality becomes a bit retrospective in human cognition. Even if one is sure about what happened in the past, it isn’t complete because that is why people do forget or something they think they did wasn’t what they actually did. This forgetting worths being focused on. Forgetfulness work, often not complete forgetfulness, but the state of somewhat forgotten. In the mixed state of remembering and forgetting, one remembers the thing to some extent, but not completely remembering, that can slightly change what has been, that is to say revise, and propose the renewed.

Our civilisations progressed with this power of forgetting with the time passed from one age to another. Even looking at how history has been woven, people continually has been putting their emphasis on what are historically important for human beings. They put value on certain period of time, ideas, objects. Without naming or making sentences such as rules that one can refer to, it is going to be less influential and eventually could be lost by the time it went by, in relation to the power of forgetness. Rules that people recognised important have been written for record.

Being remembered completely doesn’t occur when knowledge is transferred from one to another. That is when one uses symbols to tell what’s in one’s mind and another person comes to receive it. Even misinterpretation of what has been told is what can generate the new, derived from the original.

By emphasising forgetting in this writing, particularly above and below, some may misunderstand that it is not problematic to (pretend to) forget things that are inconsistent to their arguments, but it is likely for others to find and propose the inconsistency to them and the arguments cannot maintain the truthfulness.